I have the honour to be the sixth president in exile of the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic. The BNR Rada is the longest-living government in exile. It left Belarus close to 90 years ago because of the aggression and the subsequent occupation of our independent state by our communist neighbour.

Communism can be examined according to its large scale, long-term impact on the lives of individual human beings and also according to the impact on the appropriated nations, nations that do not define the political and cultural epicentre of communist power, but rather find themselves in forced subjugation. This is the reality and legacy of the communist experience, felt by many nations in modern times, evidenced by Tibet’s real-time struggle and by countries like Belarus who continue to experience the fallout of the Soviet experience.

While the academic conceptualisation of the communist experience is usually articulated on a theoretical level, I would like to begin this testimony on a personal level. Because of communist aggression, I lost my homeland at the age of eight; I grew up as a refugee and have lived most of my life far from my people, from my culture, from my
extended family. I had to adapt to four new cultures before I reached the age of 12. At the age of three, I was deprived of the presence of my father while he was in Soviet jail. My grandfather died while being deported to Siberia. My only sister died at the age of 18 months as a consequence of the ordeal my family went through while fleeing the Soviets.

I am one of the six million Belarusians whose life has been altered or destroyed by what we still call communism, but what in fact is a deficient ideology which has become a powerful tool in the hands of a corrupt and amoral neighbouring empire. Three generations of Belarusians have been victimised by the communist ideology used to brainwash or terrorise a nation into submission. The effects of this process are an exacerbated survival instinct that continues to deprive the people of Belarus of the most basic of human rights – freedom.

The forced collectivisation, from the end of the 1920s to the beginning of the 1950s, affected the totality of the Belarusian rural community and resulted in 350,000 deaths (Zaprudnik, 1998). Mass murder, as evidenced by the mass graves of Kurapaty near Minsk, uncovered 20 years ago by Zianon Pazniak, who is going to present a paper later today, and the many other mass graves in Belarus, contain the remains of hundreds of thousands of innocent Belarusians who died as a result of Stalinist purges between 1937 and 1941. One in every four Belarusians died as a result of World War II, which was partly fought on Belarusian territory. Both German Nazis and Soviet Russia must be held responsible for this slaughter.

The post-war purges in Belarus and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Belarusians to Siberia up until the end of the 1960s are another chapter of the history of Soviet Belarus. The way the authorities have dealt with the Chernobyl catastrophe is another example of the inhuman genocidal policies of the Soviet regime. In 1950, my predecessor, Mikola Abramtchik, published his famous “I accuse the Kremlin of genocide of my nation”. The concept of “captive nations” has come to be widely used. It was clear to all of us that the perpetrators of the new wave of crimes against humanity were the rulers in the Kremlin. Communist ideology had become a marketing tool used to extend Russia’s rule to as many hotspots in the world as possible. Little did we, the Belarusian diaspora, know up to the very end of the 1980s that Moscow had completed its cynical task of brainwashing the people of Belarus into believing that Russia was in fact the benevolent “big brother” without whom they had no chance to survive. The Russian-speaking homo sovieticus was born.

The second category of the Kremlin’s crimes against the people of Belarus was intended not only to subjugate but to erase from the maps of the world the very existence of the country of Belarus and of the nation which had lived on its territory for a thousand years. The first offence in that category was the aggression and destruction of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in 1918 and the division of Belarus by the Treaty of Riga. The territory of the Belarusian Socialist Soviet Republic, which was created to replace the independent Belarusian Democratic Republic, was reduced to a fraction of the ethnic territory of Belarus. I would count in this category the extermination of Belarusian writers, artists, politicians and the vast majority of the national intelligentsia which lasted from the end of the 1920s to the end of the 1930s. According to historian Jan Zaprudnik, “Of the 238 writers arrested during the years of repression, only about 20 survived. The Belarusian Academy of Sciences lost ‘nearly 90 percent’ of its members.” (Zaprudnik, 1993).

Our historical memory and the Belarusian language – the very foundation of our national identity – were for most of the 20th century and still are the victims of the Soviet imperial policies and of their most loyal present-day disciple, Alexander Lukashenka. I would like to mention that in 1990, there was not a single Belarusian school in the capital of Belarus, Minsk. Our churches were blown up, our material heritage has been destroyed not only by war, but through political mandate, because is was material proof of the long existence of a highly civilised European country. Belarusian history runs in the face of Soviet attempts to suggest that nothing of value had existed in the land before 1919.

The most serious threat to the existence of Belarus, however, still is Moscow’s desire to make it a province of the Russian Federation, whose goals are surprisingly similar to those of the Soviet Empire. This was clearly stated by Mr Putin in August 2002. The second most serious threat to the existence of our nation has been the damage which communist propaganda, fed to our people for close to a century, has done to their self-perception, critical thinking and sense of place. It will take many generations to normalise the right to explore, to feel pride, to simply be after such a deeply scarring colonial experience.

You may have noticed that for me as a Belarusian, communism is closely linked to our eastern neighbour using communist ideology as a tool to achieve its expansionist goals. But communism has affected the lives not only of people who have been ruled by its adepts in the Soviet Union. This has also been the case of millions of people who have been affected by the actions of communist sympathisers in the world who, as President Havel said it, have often unknowingly been helping delinquent regimes to continue perpetrating crimes against humanity and who are at this time helping the Russian Empire to regain its strength.

After our family escaped the Soviet Empire, my father considered it his mission to explain to anybody he met and mainly to the French intellectuels de gauche – we lived in France at that time – what living under communism meant. At my father’s funeral, a good friend told me that he realised my father was telling the truth only after the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968… For 20 years this friend, who was a lawyer and had every chance to verify the facts, was obviously not able to admit that he was wrong. This is probably also why there are still people in Belarus who readily believe the propaganda of the present regime.

We rarely learn from the mistakes of the past. I hope, however, that the time will come when the Soviet lesson will be learned by the thinking portion of humanity.

Thank you.

IVONKA SURVILLA President of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in Exile, Civic Leader and Artist, Canada

Studied Art at the Parisian École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts and is a graduate of the Sorbonne (1959). Since 1969, she has been living in Ottawa, working for the government and also engaged in Belarusian civic, scholarly and artistic activities. Founded and headed (1989–1997) the Canadian Relief Fund for Chernobyl Victims in Belarus. In 1997, elected President of the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in Exile.

Introduction

The purpose of this presentation is to refer to the particular experience of Belarus with regard to Communist crimes without statutory limitations, in order to set forth the arguments that underpin the Rada’s position on international measures to secure legal redress for such crimes, as well as its support for creating an appropriate judicial body in the EU.

After a brief historical background overview, I will firstly point out that it follows from the particular experience of Belarus that unblocking the way to legal settlement for Communist crimes without statutory limitations will require, as a prerequisite, securing redress also in relation to crimes committed although after the formal demise of Communism – but deriving directly from the Communist system and ideology. I will also mention how that affects the current EU member states. Secondly, the experience of Belarus does highlight the need for creating a robust international legal framework to attain justice with regard to Communist crimes, as well as Communist-derived crimes. Finally, I will announce a proposal from the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in Exile for creating a norm of international law that would be instrumental for enabling international legal settlement for Communist crimes without statutory limitations.

Historical Background – Communist Crimes in Belarus

Waging a “revolutionary” war for Communist takeover in order to establish a world-wide Communist system was a core tenet and policy of Bolshevism when it took hold of Russia. Hence for such a government, the territory and resources of the country it controlled were only means for waging a war of aggression on its neighbours. In that sense, the Soviet Communist state a-priori resembled internationally a criminal enterprise rather than a proper state, and Belarus became one of its earliest victims.

A democratic Belarusian state was declared fully independent on the 25 March 1918 as the Belarusian Democratic Republic. Recognised by several other states but lacking support from the great powers of the age, in early 1919 it was overrun by Soviet Russia’s Red Army, its state institutions went into exile. Belarus was declared a Soviet republic, with the Red Terror fully unleashed. In 1921 it was then partitioned between Soviet Russia and Poland by the Treaty of Riga. A puppet Belarusian Soviet Socialist republic was re-established east of that border, incorporated into the USSR, and subjected to the full scale of early Soviet Bolshevik and later Stalinist terror. From 1929 on, the Communist “social cleansing” in Belarus was complemented by systematic persecution and destruction of its national educated class[1].

Special NKVD operations were also ordered from Moscow in Belarus in 1936-1937 targeting the Latvian, German and Polish ethnic minorities. After September 1939, the same fate was unleashed onto the Western areas of Belarus[2]. The repressions continued on a lesser scale after the Second World War. The overall number of peacetime victims[3], for which documentary references could be traced, is currently estimated around 700,000, i.e. about 10% of the population. A mass grave site near Minsk, Kurapaty, partially excavated in 1988, was estimated to have contained over 150,000 victims. Persecutions of dissidents, as well as policies of wiping out the country’s particular national identity (“denationalisation”[4]), continued in Belarus in various forms until late Perestroyka, as the Communist party there remained notoriously hard-line.

Lack of Justice for Communist Crimes at the National Level

Apart from a particular severity and length, the Communist crimes described above were largely a common experience of countries under Soviet domination. But unlike most others, neither a full vindication for the victims, nor bringing the perpetrators to justice, has become possible in Belarus at the national legal level so far.

In 1990-91 the Belarusian Popular Front’s pro-democracy minority in the last Soviet-era parliamentary assembly of Belarus achieved the adoption of several legal provisions, granting the cleared of charges (rehabilitation) status to the victims of “unfounded political repressions” for “counter-revolutionary crimes” since 1920, as well as political crimes up to 1988. However, this did not extend to those proven to have actually opposed or resisted the Soviet authorities, or found guilty of “treason” to the Soviet state. Those cleared of charges were estimated to amount to 60-65% of the victims. Following the restoration of Belarus’s independence, in 1992-93 they were offered small-scale state benefits such as discounts for medicines. In 1994 Belarus co-operated with Lithuania in the extradition of ex-Communist officials Burokevičius and Jermalavičius, later sentenced for involvement in the killing of 14 civilians in the Lithuanian capital in January 1991. But crucially, no legal acts were implemented in Belarus condemning Communism, establishing the past illegality of its rule in Belarus, condemning Communist crimes, or aimed at bringing to justice – or publically identifying – the perpetrators. It became evident in Belarus by mid-1990s that ignoring the past crimes politically, and leaving them without proper legal redress, had not laid any solid foundation for upholding reliable legality for the future. Moreover, that became a major factor paving the way in 1994 for the political revenge of the forces of Soviet continuity in Belarus.

Communist Continuity Crimes as an Obstacle for Justice for Communist Crimes

That early progress was halted and reversed when the regime of Alexander Lukashenka, professing its neo-Soviet ideology, established itself in Belarus between 1994 and 1996 as a dictatorship. As early as in 1995 the victims of Soviet political repressions were stripped of all benefits. The regime of Lukashenka not only restored the Soviet-like state symbols and reintroduced the Russian language as official, and returned the Soviet version of history in the system of education, but went on brutally to suppress its political opponents, effectively resuming political repressions against virtually all the former ideological opponents of Soviet Communism[5]. In some cases the succession has been institutional, as e.g. the KGB in Belarus did not even change its name. The Lenin All-Soviet Communist Youth Union in Belarus was preserved under an amended name, only to be restored under Lukashenka into the official youth organisation and put in charge of the neo-Soviet and pro-Lukashenka political indoctrination of the youth, and recently authorised to form paramilitary units in support of the state police forces.

Hence, all progress to legal settlement for Communist crimes in Belarus was blocked and reversed at the national level, as Lukashenka’s state authorities began to commit a series of new severe violations that have been Communist-derived or pertaining to Communist continuity in their motives and nature. This name appears appropriate here, as those acts of illegality in Belarus have been fundamentally motivated by the objectives of preserving and/or restoring elements of the Soviet Communist system, as well as protecting the political power – or social or economic assets – gained by particular individuals and groups as a direct result of (proceeds of) the earlier Communist rule and its crimes. Since 1995 in Belarus such crimes of Communist continuity by Alexander Lukashenka’s regime have been recorded to include imprisonments, arbitrary arrests, grievous bodily harm, forced hard labour, forced “disappearances” of several prominent political figures, confiscation of property, rigging of elections and usurpation and abuse of state authority, degrading treatment. Recently there have also been presented testimonies of widespread torture suffered by political prisoners[6].

Furthermore, the regime of Lukashenka in Belarus has been obstructing the course of justice internationally in relation to EU member states, by creating a safe haven for individuals from other parts of the former Soviet Union, sought by other countries in connection with Communist crimes, from the Stalinist era to 1991. Lukashenka’s officials refused to release documents on Polish PoW officers allegedly executed in Belarus in 1940 in parallel with the Katyn massacre (“the Belarusian List”) to Poland’s Katyn investigation. Lukashenka’s authorities refused to co-operate with Lithuanian investigators regarding the allegations against Rev. Juozas Bulka (died 2010) relating to a number of assassinations of members of the Lithuanian anti-Soviet underground in the early 1950s. Lukashenka’s regime also refused all extradition requests from the General Prosecutor’s Office of Lithuania for Uładzimir Uschopčyk (Vladimir Uskhopchik) and Stanislava Juonienė, on charges relating to the Soviet army killing of civilians in January 1991.

International Judicial Infrastructure to Include Communist-Continuity Crimes

Therefore, today the regime in Belarus stands as an international and domestic obstacle to attaining justice for Communist crimes, as well as a major current perpetrator of severe Communist-derived violations within the country. The existing international legal framework has been clearly inadequate for the arising problem. Recently there have been attempts to use the private prosecution tool against top members of Lukashenka’s regime travelling outside Belarus, but the national legal framework for that appears insufficient in many EU states[7].

Moreover, the unlawful nature of the regime’s current actions has not been adequately recognised or investigated in the EU framework. As a result, there have been insufficient legal safeguards against the proliferation of the regime’s repressive activities internationally. That has enabled Lukashenka’s authorities maliciously to exploit Belarus’s mutual legal assistance agreements to obtain sensitive information from Poland and Lithuania in order to imprison Aleś Bialacki, Belarus’s leading organiser of human rights activism, an former anti-Communist dissident since 1982. Mr Bialacki is in a prison camp now, and it is feasible to envisage that future legal settlement claims may arise from cases like that of Mr Bialacki, where persons or entities from within EU member states had provided – by intent or negligence – information enabling the regime in Belarus to carry out political repressions potentially leading to crimes against humanity (torture).

Conclusions and Proposals

Based on the particular experience in Belarus, the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs of the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in Exile points out, firstly, that the establishment of an EU-backed judicial body for the crimes of Communism without statutory limitations – thereby “internationalising” justice for Communist crimes – would make attaining justice by far more likely even in cases when that would all too likely fail at the national level, and/or when inter-state bilateral legal assistance procedures prove fruitless[8]. It would make it more difficult for those implicated to escape justice exploiting local legal circumstances or barriers between national judicial systems. Secondly, the experience of Belarus further highlights the need for extending the international framework for legal settlement also to include the Communist-derived type of crimes. Their perpetrators pursue the objectives of securing Communist continuity domestically and internationally, in order to continue to benefit from the proceeds of – and to obstruct the course of justice in relation to – the original Communist crimes.

The Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in Exile will call upon any future democratic authority in Belarus to support the creation of an international judicial body for the crimes of Communism, and Communist-derived crimes, without statutory limitations.

We further suggest that, upon the establishment of that judicial body (whether EU-backed or not), the recognition of its jurisdiction should be made a binding condition for any state wishing to enter into an association agreement, to join the EU, or to enter into, upgrade or extend, other types of agreements with the EU.

Finally, the Rada of Belarusian Democratic Republic in Exile proposes that a norm of international law should be created binding states not to withhold evidence pertaining to crimes against humanity.

Mikałaj Pačkajeŭ

Deputy Secretary for Foreign Affairs

Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in Exile

5 June, 2012

European Parliament, Brussels

Endnotes

[1] As an example of Belarusian intelligentsia being exterminated with particular severity, while the Belarusian Union of Writers and other Belarusian PEN-type associations in 1930 counted about 700 members in Soviet Belarus, only 7 members were known to remain alive and free in 1939. Also, by 1939 not a single place of worship of any religion remained open anywhere in the Soviet-controlled Belarus.

[2] Prior to that in Poland as a result of the 1921 Riga Peace Treaty.

[3] This excludes the victims of e.g. Communist summary executions and other war crimes in Belarus, against PoWs and the population at large, during the Red Army’s offensive against the Belarusian Democratic Republic (winter 1919), Soviet-Polish war (1919-1920), the Red Army’s offensive against the Belarusian Democratic Republic’s authorities in Słucak District (November-December 1920), and the Second World War, as well as during Soviet anti-partisan operations in the 1920s and 1944-1950s.

[4] This term was coined for Belarus in English by David Marples in: Belarus: a Denationalised Nation. Amsterdam: Harwood, 1999.

[5] While these new repressions did not affect most churches, still e.g. the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox (in exile since 1944) remain suppressed in Belarus.

[6] A legal firm in London has been representing the victims and their relatives in that respect, as of May 2012.

[7] In January 2012 a case was filed in a court in Paris on behalf of a group of Belarusian prisoners’ relatives against the Interior Minister of Belarus, Anatoli Kulašoŭ (Anatoly Kuleshov) for “torture and cruel and degrading treatment”, but this did not result in measures to bring him before an inquiry:

http://www.rferl.org/content/french_torture_charge_against_belarus_minister/24457304.html

[8] Apart from the failed extraditions from Belarus, in July 2011 Lithuania was refused by Austria to extradite ex-KGB Colonel Mikhail Golovatov, a visiting Russian citizen, wanted for alleged involvement in the Soviet army killing of 14 civilians in the Lithuanian capital in January 1991.