‘I Wish All Of Us To Wait And See Independent Belarus’

Chairperson of the BPR Ivonka Survila congratulated Belarusians on the New Year.

Chairperson of the Belarusian People's Republic Ivonka Survila addressed Belarusians on New Year’s eve.

The New Year address is posted on the Facebook page of the BPR Council.

“My dear fellow Belarusians! Another year has passed, which we lived through with anxiety in our hearts because of the daily threat to the independence of our land, and the unbearable life of our people under the boot of a sick dictator,” says Ivonka Survila. “So I will start this greeting on behalf of the BPR Council and from me personally, wishing all of us success in our struggle for the best fate of our people.”

“Our most effective weapon in this struggle is our culture and our good name,” continues the Chairperson of the BNR Council. “This is exactly what I want to tell you. And to help you not lose hope, I am giving you, along with holiday wishes, a gift that a wonderful Belarusian poet left us and which I have always considered one of the most vivid works of our literature: the Apocryphon by Maksim Bahdanovich. I am sure that it will fill your heart with love for everything Belarusian and with the desire to return to our people the dignified life to which they have the right, like all the free peoples of the earth.

I will not read you the entire Apocryphon, but I want to convey to you the words that have given me joy for many decades.

The author depicts Jesus Christ, who returned to Earth and found himself in Belarus, admiring the blossoming cornflowers on our country’s fields, together with two Apostles.

When one of the Apostles suggested, reproachfully, that it would have been better if rye had been there instead of flowers, as “man needs food, not just beauty”, Christ answered: “There is no beauty without food as beauty itself is the food for the soul.”

And so Christ told Peter: “You condemned the song as you sympathized with the hungry people, while the hungriest of them did not condemn it. A living soul still rests there, in this people.”

To the words of the landlord who said that since childhood the beauty of cornflowers had pleased his soul and filled his heart with joy, Christ proclaimed: “It is good to be an ear but happy is he who is given to be a cornflower,” and saying that, He heard the song of the harvesters and recounted: “Listen what the words of this song say! The song was composed by the people who know the value of bread!”

The last lines of the Apocryphon really make us think at the end of 2023:

“And Christ’s bare feet were leaving footprints in the warm soft dust of the road as he walked … But woe to you, people, since you had long trampled them out!”

I just couldn’t omit these words. Forgive us, dear Lord, if we have trampled the footprints out. Not all of us have heard You. Not all of us have understood,” Ivonka Survila finishes the quote.

“So, I congratulate you on the Holidays, my dear friends,” continues the Chairperson of the BPR Council. “I wish you happiness, health and fruitful work! And above all, I hope that next time we will hear and understand clearly!

I wish all of us to wait to finally see an independent Belarus, a Belarus that will be our Motherland, and not a territory occupied by aliens, which they need only to defend their empire, the “interests” of the “Russian world”, hostile to us.

I wish you to see the love and respect of our people for each other and solidarity between us, because we are one nation, the sons and daughters of the very ancestors who preserved this land, often in very difficult conditions, and handed it over to us. I wish that we too could pass it on to our children and grandchildren as a reborn, and forever Belarusian, independent and wealthy country! I hug you! Long live Belarus!” Ivonka Survila concludes.