Lukash Dzekuts-Maley: Holy Scripture and Nation-Building

Lukash Dzekuts-Maley and Belarusian Translations of the Bible: A Collection of Materials, Articles, and Documents (2011). Chief ed. A. U. Unuchak et al. Brest: Alternatyva, 200 pp. + [8] leaves of ill.

Review prepared by Viktar Kakhnovich.

At the end of 2011, the Brest publishing house Alternatyva issued a collection of articles and documents devoted to Lukash Mikalaevich Dzekuts-Maley (1888–1955). He was perhaps the best-known Belarusian Baptist pastor and preacher of the interwar period and, importantly, the translator of the Bible (the New Testament and Psalms) into Belarusian. Symbolically, the edition was signed for printing precisely on Reformation Day, October 31.

The collection contains nine articles, eight of which were written by single authors and one by two co-authors. The authors of the materials are Belarusian historians, local historians, public and religious figures: Andrei Unuchak, Yuras Bachyshcha, Uladzimir Liakhouski, Zakhar Shybeka, Aliaksandr Ilyin, Alena Glagouskaya, Andrei Charniakevich, Stsiapan Pekun, and Antoni Bokun.

In addition to the articles, the collection contains three appendices. The first includes eight letters from Lukash and Serafima Dzekuts-Maley to Anton Lutskevich from 1926–1929 and one letter from L. M. Dzekuts-Maley to Pastor Jan Piotrowski dated January 13, 1945. The second includes letters to Anton Lutskevich from the Methodist pastor John Vitt (seven letters from 1928–1930), from Waldemar Gutsche, chairman of the Union of Baptists in Poland and one of the heads of the Kompas publishing house in Łódź (five letters from 1925–1926 and one from 1930), from the Belarusian poet and member of the Belarusian Committee in Warsaw Halias Liaukovich (one letter from 1925), from the secretary of the Polish branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), Aleksander Engolz (one letter from 1932), as well as three letters from A. Lutskevich to the BFBS secretary Arthur Hague from 1930 and 1932, and a note of thanks from the famous Ukrainian Uniate metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky to the “anonymous translator of the Gospel into Belarusian” dated July 18, 1926.

Also included here are reviews of the Belarusian-language edition of the Gospel of Luke in the newspaper “Przegląd Wileński” in 1926 and the journal “Rodnyia honi” in 1927, as well as an agreement on the translation of the four Gospels into Belarusian between William Kingston, head of the Institute for Translations in London, and Anton Lutskevich and Lukash Dzekuts-Maley (without the parties’ signatures, date, or place of drafting).

The third appendix contains excerpts from sixteen documents reflecting the activities of the Central Belarusian Teachers’ Council of the Hrodna Region (CBTCHR) from September 1919 to March 1920, including excerpts from the minutes of CBTCHR meetings and correspondence with the Central Belarusian School Council (CBSC) in Minsk on issues concerning support for the Hrodna children’s shelter and the expansion of Belarusian education in the Hrodna region.

One should also mention the selection of photographs, which in effect constitutes a fourth appendix in the collection and contains many interesting materials.

Both the researchers’ articles in the collection and the documents published in it are of great interest. Practically all of these documents in the first and second appendices (letters) come from the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences (fond 21, files 260, 279, 281, 282, 283, 302, 306, 346), and in the third appendix (sources on the activities of the CBTCHR), from the National Historical Archive of the Republic of Belarus in Hrodna (fond 604, inventory 1, file 1). To these should be added three excerpts from periodicals of the 1920s–1930s: the journal “Rodnyia honi” and the newspapers “Przegląd Wileński” and “Nasha Dumka”.

It is necessary here to note the fruitful work of the researchers who identified and prepared these sources for publication: Alena Glagouskaya (Helena Głogowska) and Andrei Unuchak, Yury Bachyshcha, Uladzimir Liakhouski, and Andrei Charniakevich. They have undoubtedly made a substantial contribution to the historiography of the Belarusian national movement. Almost all of the archival materials presented here appeared in print for the first time in the edition under review.

While giving the authors due credit for introducing the broader public to the figure of Lukash Dzekuts-Maley, it is nevertheless necessary to note that the famous pastor is simultaneously an object of study and a point of entry into a broader historical, religious, and cultural context. In fact, to a significant extent the collection introduces the reader in general terms to the problems of the Belarusian national church and the emergence of a translation of the Bible into Belarusian.

Thus, special attention should be paid to the article by Professor Zakhar Shybeka, in which he acquaints the reader with the current religious situation in the country and seeks to show the place of Protestantism in contemporary Belarusian society. It turns out that Protestant communities, especially Pentecostals and Baptists, have experienced the most dynamic growth over the past two decades and now rightfully occupy second place in the country by the number of registered communities, only slightly behind the Orthodox. Undoubtedly, the author sought to draw a parallel with the position of Evangelical Christians in Western Belarus in the 1920s and 1930s, and therefore with the period of Dzekuts-Maley’s active work. Yet what interests Professor Shybeka most is not this, but precisely the problem of forming a national Belarusian church.

This problem also becomes central in the articles by other authors in the collection: Andrei Unuchak, Yury Bachyshcha, Uladzimir Liakhouski, and Andrei Charniakevich. These authors not only turn to the figure of Lukash Mikalaevich but also, in their own way, interpret through the prism of his personality the issue of national revival that was relevant to the Belarusian national movement in 1918–1939. In our view, this has a similar effect on contemporary readers in connection with the figure of Lukash Dzekuts-Maley.

The texts in the collection present a picture of Dzekuts-Maley’s active work in defending and expanding Belarusian schooling in Hrodna in 1918–1920, and of his efforts to raise believers’ awareness through sermons in Belarusian among Belarusian and not only Belarusian Evangelical Christians in the interwar period. Alongside this, we can also find photographs with Christian appeals in Russian, references to active cooperation with Polish believers, and the like. Nevertheless, Lukash Mikalaevich’s everyday struggle for a Belarusian national church was the most important sphere of his activity. It was apparently for this reason that he was so concerned with the publication and dissemination of the New Testament in Belarusian.

Questions remain about what this struggle meant for Dzekuts-Maley, when he acquired a stable Belarusian self-consciousness, and whether he had his own project for a Belarusian national church. Unfortunately, answers to these questions do not follow from the texts of the collection.

As follows from Andrei Unuchak’s interview, it is impossible to say precisely when a sincere Belarusian awakened in Lukash Mikalaevich, a native of the Slonim region, but it is beyond dispute that upon his return to his homeland sometime toward the end of 1918 he already held firm Belarusian views. His Belarusian identity was sincere, deep, and indisputable: it was a matter of a completed value-based and spiritual choice. This manifested itself strongly during his pastoral ministry in the Brest region as well (Unuchak, 2013).

Lukash Dzekuts-Maley cared about the recognition, establishment, and spread of the Belarusian language in church life. Let us clarify that, under conditions in which one had to struggle for the recognition of the Belarusian language in the Protestant milieu, Lukash Mikalaevich, according to A. Unuchak, did not understand his ministry as participation in the building of the Belarusian nation as something new. It is very important for us that, as a fruitful participant in nation-building, he did not feel that the Belarusian national project was something exclusively modern; rather, he perceived it as work within an already long-existing and historically rooted tradition (Unuchak, 2013).

Among the other unanswered questions is whether Dzekuts-Maley had a complete conception of a Belarusian national church. One can speak only hypothetically of his project for a Belarusian Evangelical church. In this respect, we would allow ourselves to emphasize the complexity of the problem of priority between the national language and service to God, that is, the preaching of the Word of God, in the life of a Christian. We believe that the same question was not simple for Dzekuts-Maley either. At the same time, of course, one must agree with A. Unuchak that the question of language is a question of value-based and personal choice, and of recognizing the complex character of the world order.

Returning to the content of the collection, one must give due credit to its authors and compilers: it sheds light on many little-known phenomena in the Belarusian national movement. Yet one cannot fail to notice that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the tasks set in the collection are broader: it seems to introduce us to the context of the Belarusian Protestant question and the problem of the place of Protestantism in Belarus. In this context, it also includes the history of the translation of Holy Scripture into national languages, the story of the ministry and life of Lukash Dzekuts-Maley and his son, Dr. Danila Dzekuts-Maley, and the above-mentioned thematic article by Z. Shybeka.

It is difficult to agree with the latter that a national church for Belarus could emerge from the unification of confessional Christian organizations (“churches”) on its territory. At present, neither the Uniate church, nor any Protestant, Catholic, or especially Orthodox church in Belarus can be called national.

Although at times somewhat obscurely, the authors of the collection present from different angles the figures of such zealous builders of the national home as Lukash Dzekuts-Maley and Anton Lutskevich. Incidentally, the latter is not accidentally given much space in the collection. From it we can learn about his Christian views and his major role in the first translation of the New Testament into Belarusian. The authors of the collection leave a whole series of questions open, but this in no way diminishes its importance in the field of Belarusian studies in general.

 

 

Literature mentioned in the review

1. Unuchak, A. (2013). Interview with the author, May 2013.