Orwell’s ‘1984’ Translated into Belarusian and Published in Minsk

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 4 – Hegel famously observed that “the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the end of the day,” a suggestion that often people are deprived of a clear understanding of what they are living through while they are living through it and can appreciate the situation only when it has changed or is about to.

            That philosophical insight springs to mind today given the announcement by Minsk’s Januskevic Publishing House that it is publishing a translation of George Orwell’s anti-utopian classic, 1984. This is not the first such Belarusian translation – that appeared in 1992 – but its publication now confirms Hegel’s idea.

            In reporting this event, the Tut portal quotes the observation of Belarusian cultural historian Yuliya Chernyavskaya about the importance of Orwell’s book. “It was Orwell who opened our eyes to state terror, to its nature and essence,” she says. And once he showed it, its authors could not hope to hide it forever (news.tut.by/culture/695264.html).

            “Reading Orwell, we understand that the world is divided into victims and executioners and our hatred to totalitarianism was developed. Reading Orwell,” she continues, “we became more honest and best, in any case, we thought so” because we could see that his book provided us with “a vaccine against totalitarianism.”

            Once immunized, we would never be its willing victims again.  The people of Belarus have taken to the streets to demonstrate that new reality. One can only wish them well and hope that they will have the opportunity to cast aside one dictator without falling victim to another either homegrown or from the east.

            The new translation is available for sale online at januskevic.by/catalog/pieraklady/4190/.