The lost twentieth anniversary: to the 70 anniversary of reunion of Z.B. with BSSR 

Kobrin → Outstanding persons → Alexey Mikhaylovich Martynov

World War I. Migration of huge human masses. Thousands of our fellow countrymen were mobilized in army and participated in military operations. Much of them were not fated to return home - more successful were directly involved in revolutionary events, defending the young Soviet power.

Alexey Martynov, the honourable citizen of Kobrin, the first director of the museum of Suvorov was one of direct witnesses of events of those years. His memoirs reflect features of spiritual and social life of indigenous people of Kobrin district in the period of the belopolsky power.

"... Tens of thousands of countrymen of different age for which in normal conditions even the trip to the city was a memorable event in August, 1915 were broken by a military whirlwind from familiar spots and dispelled on Fatherland open spaces, learning sense by personal experience quite foggy to this word "Russia". Acquaintance to others environment, customs and orders forced to estimate critically the foundations of own life in the left native places seeming before is firm strong. Could not pass completely and revolutionary shocks in which thick - refugee masses was participants or witnesses-. In a word, from distant wanderings at all not those hammered poleshuk which got used to kowtow the whole generations to the sir, and absolutely other people who realized the human dignity came back. This circumstance also played a crucial role in spontaneous counteraction to a massive pressure of denationalization.

The attitude of the Polish authorities towards "returnees" - to potential carriers of "a red infection" - was alerted and mistrustful. The bands of variegated officials which are hastily imported from the Polish voivodeships considered themselves as carriers of "the highest culture" and, copying the fulfilled example of the western colonialists, in the relation to local population behaved extremely haughtily. Among representatives of the Polish administration there was a lot of such who sincerely considered himself nearly as the victim which is unfairly thrown in "a hole which from light is filled with boards". However, already after a while the vast majority of official brotherhood ceased to sigh for the cultural West, strongly taking roots on an open space of "damned cress", and hurried to attract somewhat quicker here the relatives and friends, having realized more perspective opportunities in comparison with the overpopulated Poland. It was proved, by the way, not by prudent and prosaic motives, but highly patriotic consciousness of need of "strengthening of the Polish elements" on hostile lands.

To be fair it is worth noticing that the contingent, not best in moral sense, aspired to these administrative positions. Prosperity of impudent bribery, distribution of all requisitions and contributions with which officials assessed dealers, entirely dependent on them, is explained by it. The wastes and embezzlement of public funds veiled by fashionable then Latin word "defraudation" turned into original epidemic. With reports on scandalous trials over high-ranking defraudant the press was overflowed, however guilty persons, as a rule, left dry of water.

As the main stronghold of the mode served the numerous and highly paid police, secret and obvious. Feeling full masters of the situation, the police concerning "lackeys" behaved extremely provocatively, with impunity allowing the sheer arbitrariness. The system of provocations and briberies prospered, the network of informers worked. It is not necessary to speak about unjustified arrests and beatings - they were an everyday occurrence. In revenge for revolutionary performances of peasants so-called "patsifikation" - suppressions practiced. They were followed by knocking-out of windows and doors in houses politically unreliable, breakage of agricultural cars, destruction of furnaces.

The domestic policy of the multinational state in which Poles made from 55 to 65 percent concerning so-called "cress" differed in a tendency to as it is possible for the fastest opolyachivaniye. First of all efforts were directed to a polonization of the Polesia voivodeship, thus seeking to hammer a wedge between the Belarusian masses in the north and Ukrainian in the south. And national transition so closely intertwined with religious that on the standard treatment transition from Orthodoxy to Catholicism was equivalent to automatic transfer in the Polish nationality. Was considered as an axiom,

that each Catholic - the Pole. Served as the most powerful levers of a polonization school with exclusively Polish of training and the Catholic church which is reliably connected with ruling circles. Soon in Kobrin there were conventuals-urshulyanki who are engaged in education of girls in religious spirit. Catholic monks in turn organized a shelter for orphan boys of a rural origin who freely were exposed to processing and opolyachivatsya. To the same purpose served mixed marriages: "the inoverchesky party" surely had to pass into Catholicism, otherwise marriage had no validity. It was impossible, without being a Catholic, to arrive also on public service. Also Jewish dealers in whom need to talk to clients only in Polish was inspired were involved in business of an opolyachivaniye of poleshuk.

However all this time continuous fight of a people at large of Kobrin district for the economic and social release continued. Events of 1920 when after release from belopolsky occupation in Kobrin the revolutionary-military committee worked, the first body of public authority, at us are immortalized on a marble memorial board. About 150 Red Army men buried on a cemetery in Tevlyakh, Bogs, Polyatichakh remind mass graves of military operations in Kobrin district during this period. The May Day of 1925 was marked by the organized action of revolutionary youth in Kobrin's center dispersed by police. Far outside Poland the echo of Novosyolkovsky revolt of peasants which heads in 1933 were threatened by the gallows responded - only thanks to mass protests of workers the sentence was changed to life imprisonment. Despite counteraction of the authorities, the organized resistance of the population to actions of belopolyak did not stop up to 1939. National performances were expressed in the strike movement, meetings and demonstrations, posting of revolutionary slogans and distribution of leaflets. Indicative fact: at approach of revolutionary holidays at the authorities even entered into custom to make preventive arrests of suspicious activists for several weeks.

Such is there was a hard atmosphere in which the population of Kobrin district vegetated during all "the lost twentieth anniversary"...

A. Martynov

Martynov, And. The lost twentieth anniversary: to the 70 anniversary of reunion of the Western Belarus with BSSR / A. Martynov//Kobrynsk_ vesn_k. – 2009. – 8 krasav_k. – Page 4.



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