On 11 November, Andrzej Poczobut was awarded Poland’s highest state decoration, the Order of the White Eagle (OOB), by President Karol Nawrocki. The journalist himself will likely not learn of it immediately, as he has been imprisoned by the Lukashenko regime for over four years. We ourselves still do not fully grasp how significant this distinction is for the Polish-Belarusian opposition activist, Gazeta Polska writes.
On the president’s website, we read that “the order will be presented at the earliest possible date.” During the ceremony, President Nawrocki stressed that the situation is exceptional. “Only one Knight of the Order of the White Eagle is with us today. Because the other is in a Belarusian prison. In the prison of Alexander Lukashenko’s regime. Andrzej Poczobut is not with us today because, though he did not deserve it, he chose prison, and although he had been hunted by the Belarusian regime since 2011 and 2012, he did not leave Belarus, fighting for the values that mattered to him,” said the president.
The 52-year-old journalist and blogger has Polish roots, but he used the Belarusian language in his writing. His friend and long-time collaborator Rafał Dzięciołowski explains this cultural blend in Poczobut’s identity: “That is precisely the phenomenon of his identity. Andrzej Poczobut was from the beginning a Pole, a patriot of Polish affairs in Belarus, while at the same time an ambassador of Jagiellonian Polishness, the republican one, in which Poles are to be loyal citizens of a free, democratic, sovereign Belarusian state,” he tells Gazeta Polska. President Nawrocki also invoked the Rzeczpospolita in his words of recognition for Poczobut: “This in absentia decoration for Andrzej Poczobut is also important for me as the President of Poland and, I believe, for the entire Rzeczpospolita, which is sending a clear signal that Poland will always stand up for her sons, for those who live for Poland, who fight for their native language and for whom Polishness is worth even the suffering of a Belarusian prison.”
A Borderland Figure
The journalist was born in 1973 in Brzostowica Wielka, and although biographies always begin with date and place of birth, in this case the location has special significance. Brzostowica lies right by the Polish border, where Poles form a strong community and where one can see everywhere – in churches, in language, in collective memory – the identity of the old Poland. He grew up as a citizen of Belarus with a Polish identity. Something like Józef Mackiewicz, who considered himself a citizen of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a reference point for all sides of the Belarusian political dispute.
Dzięciołowski stresses that Poczobut loved Mackiewicz’s work and, as a journalist, often referenced themes raised by Sergiusz Piasecki, another writer of the Polish-Belarusian borderlands. Poczobut himself can also be called a writer: though he published only one book (”System Białoruś” in 2013), his journalism sometimes resembled the style of Ryszard Kapuściński, and his ideological profile echoed Anna Politkovskaya. Poczobut was repeatedly irritated by naïve foreigners who, seeing clean squares or smooth asphalt on the main road, would praise Belarusian authorities for good governance and “did not see” any dictatorship. Even today, more than one cheerful blogger visits our eastern neighbour, speaks with friendly people and records reflections about a “nice country”. Such attitudes drove Poczobut mad, because he knew that beyond the main tourist routes there was poverty, and that behind the smiling everyday faces there lay fear, hopelessness or opportunistic acceptance of censorship and the rule of the siloviki.
Nationality: anti-Soviet
Poczobut is worth comparing to Politkovskaya because he brilliantly deciphered the Belarusian Putin-in-miniature: Alexander Lukashenko. He never fell – as did Polish politicians of all parties – for any of “Batka’s” propaganda tricks. He did not believe in his image as a folksy peasant, a patriot or a leader defending the country from incorporation into Russia. Already 15 years ago, Poczobut predicted that the dictator dreamt of a dynasty and was grooming his son for power.
“The Belarus system proved attractive to part of Belarusian society. There were moments when a firm-hand government was supported by a clear majority of Belarusians. Thanks to their support, Lukashenko won successive referendums and elections and concentrated more and more power in his hands,” the blogger wrote. He was the first, and in the most forceful way, to portray “Batka” as a brute, a violent Soviet man who used naked force. As a kolkhoz director, Lukashenko beat one of his employees. Later, he shook his fist in parliament, demanding permission to run for president. And from then on, his fist was clad in the uniforms of successive security services.
“Andrzej firmly believed that this regime has an expansionist, totalitarian nature, steeped in post-Sovietness. And he simply did not want to live in the Soviets, and Lukashenko’s Belarus was the Soviets,” explains Dzięciołowski to Gazeta Polska. The journalist recognised the Soviet man in Lukashenko at a time when Poland fell for a simple KGB trick: “detente”. Lenin, Stalin and their successors used it, Putin used it by temporarily replacing himself with the supposedly liberal Medvedev, and Lukashenko sometimes uses it too, pretending he wants to reconcile with the West.
Poczobut experienced this Western naivety, including Poland’s, personally. A story told to us by another friend of the journalist concerns politicians and experts of all political stripes in Poland. “I remember a disastrously failed meeting in Belweder. A representative of the authorities began by stating that ‘the greatest threat to Polishness in Belarus is the revival of Belarusian nationalism’. Andrzej opened his eyes wide: ‘Where have you brought me? These people are idiots.’”
Because national feeling is not the threat, certainly not in Belarus, where communal identity can be a weapon against dictatorship. The problem for the Belarusian state is the Soviets, the Soviets and once again the Soviets. Poczobut worked to ensure that the Polish cause in Belarus and the issue of democracy in Belarus would not become subjects of party conflict in Poland, but it is hard not to point to the mistakes of both governing camps.
In 2019, the United Right government believed experts from certain institutions that Poland could play a role in driving a wedge between Minsk and Moscow. The White House once believed a similar fairy tale, except that the “rebellious” vassal of the Kremlin at that time was Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Romanian dictator. It was all a game of communist services to lure Western governments into a trap. Minsk repeated the same trick, and more than one European capital accepted it uncritically. The current governing party, meanwhile, supported the Belarusian KGB’s operation on Poland’s eastern border and, in the confrontation with the Border Guard, backed the migrants sent by Lukashenko. After coming to power, Radosław Sikorski suspended the Poland Business Harbour project, which had made it easier for Belarusian IT specialists to flee the country and start working in Poland. Various political scuffles, mistakes and naïvetés prevent our country, which aspires to regional leadership, from conducting a consistent and firm policy toward Minsk.
Polish courage
“Andrzej was a young, defiant, very radical activist of the Union of Poles in Belarus (ZPB), associated with Andżelika Borys’s group”, Dzięciołowski continues. “It was the moment of the first serious confrontation with the Belarusian authorities, who were trying to impose leadership of the ZPB controlled by themselves. Even then, Andrzej showed himself as an uncompromising democrat, a believer in freedom, and a Pole.”
If anyone doubted Poczobut’s courage at that time – believing that “Batka” was not so dangerous – then, according to the journalist’s own accurate predictions, his opposition stance was bound to bring him a tragic confrontation with the regime. Formally, he was detained for meetings devoted to the Home Army (AK) – a quintessentially Polish, historical, freedom-related topic. It is hard to imagine a stronger symbol. First came lengthy pre-trial detention, then finally an eight-year sentence in a penal colony in Novopolotsk. That place, for those few who know it, carries a fitting sense of dread. Novopolotsk is home to Belarus’s most important refinery, 100 percent controlled by the government. It produces fuels, asphalt and many other petroleum products. It is the most environmentally harmful place in the entire country – the negative impact on prisoners’ health is an open secret. But even aside from that, Poczobut suffers repression – in photos from the trial he looks like a shadow of a man, and although he lost over 20 kg, his face still shows determination and contempt toward the authorities.
“Andrzej had the option of signing a declaration admitting to wrongdoing against the president of Belarus and leaving the country. He would have been free,” says someone close to Poczobut, quoted by Gazeta Polska. “He refused. We knew he would not do it, because his whole life had been oriented toward this moment of trial and steadfastness,” our interlocutor adds.
“For Andrzej, Polishness and the freedom and courage that come with it are not empty words”, Dzięciołowski insists. “He believes that Poles and Belarusians can build a community in the spirit of the First Rzeczpospolita. The symbol for him is Konstanty Kalinowski, a Polish nobleman and Belarusian leader of the January Uprising, who died for the community of the nations of the Rzeczpospolita. Andrzej lived in that world, in that tradition, as does a large part of the Belarusian intelligentsia.”
Poczobut’s thought
On the occasion of awarding the highest Polish distinction to the journalist, it is worth drawing attention to Poczobut’s writings and his message concerning Poland and Belarus. The blogger firmly rejected any form of Russian imperialism and the East European concept of the nation. In Russia, Belarus and heavily Sovietised Moldova, one can be Polish – pray in Polish, boast about some Polish ancestor, talk about the brotherhood of nations. But Poczobut opposed such a softened definition of nationhood. Working in the Union of Poles in Belarus, he showed that specific values must follow: freedom of choice, freedom of speech, the right to criticism, courage. Dzięciołowski adds that this was not all:
“Andrzej worked on building solidarity among nations, he wanted to create it together with Belarusians, Lithuanians and Ukrainians. You cannot develop or cultivate this in a Soviet system. But it is possible on the tradition of the First Rzeczpospolita.”
A friend of Poczobut explains what this tradition of the old Rzeczpospolita means:
“Speaking with Belarusians, I see that for them this reference is relevant, justified and desirable. When you listen to Belarusian bards, Belarusian poetry, when you read the literature, this motif appears there more strongly than in Ukraine. In Belarusian culture, the Rzeczpospolita or the Grand Duchy of Lithuania truly exist.”
Thus, the reference to the old Rzeczpospolita gains yet another important element: a true hero.