Passion for Kosciuszko

“Under pressure from the Poles, all references to Belarus were removed from the Kosciuszko monument in Switzerland” – with such headlines, “independent” media want to draw attention to the dispute that broke out between the representative of the Association of Belarusians in Switzerland Alexander Sapieha and Polish officials in Switzerland, equating it to an international scandal.

They say that initiative is punishable, and it seems that they are not mistaken.

Alexander Sapega, who once emigrated to Switzerland, initiated the opening of the monument to Tadeusz Kosciuszko - "to give out to the son of Belarus, the hell of the udzyachny suaichynnikau." It was these words that Sapieha wanted to put on the monument.

With a proposal to jointly erect a monument to the “common hero”, Sapieha turned to the official representatives of Poland. Those, of course, agreed and the car, as they say, started spinning. On his own, the Belarusian Swiss raised about six thousand US dollars for the initiative, found a sculptor in Ukraine who agreed to make the monument, oversaw the entire process of its casting and transportation from Ukraine to Switzerland, where in a solemn atmosphere on October 15, the day of the 200th anniversary of the death of Kosciuszko , planned the opening together with the official Polish delegation from Krakow and Warsaw. It was planned to erect a monument in the Swiss city of Solothurn, in which another “extraordinary son” departed to the world.

On the eve of the expected date, the original plans changed dramatically. Not only the lines about the “son” expected by Sapieha disappeared from the tablet, but also the version written in Belarusian. Now the inscription succinctly reads: “Established by the Swiss Association of Belarusians in 2017.” The date of the solemn opening of the monument changed from October 15 to October 21, despite the fact that they even forgot to warn the initiator of the joint Swiss-Polish project about this.

This is a disrespectful attitude, this is the pressure of the Polish authorities on the mayor of Solothurn - an angry emigrant shouts today, but this does not give results. An opening date was also not agreed upon. The Polish side agrees to open the monument jointly, but only on condition that the monument is cleared of any mention of "Belarus".

The mayor of the Swiss city of Solothurn said that he did not intend to establish historical truth, therefore he is completely on the Polish side.

Alexander Sapieha enlisted the support of the Kosciuszko Foundation in Krakow and does not consider it right to divide the “common hero”. After Alexander invited the official Polish side to the opening of the monument as guests of honor, the correspondence was completely cut off, and all communication with the Polish delegation ceased.

It seems that Poland refused to share its hero and eloquently indicated the place and role of an emigrant from Belarus. If we go back to history, then all that connects Tadeusz Kosciuszko with modern Belarus is the place of his birth. Kosciuszko was born in 1746 in the GDL, which was part of the Commonwealth. On the territory of the current Ivatsevichy district of the Brest region - that's actually all. It is clear that the activity of this person had nothing to do with Belarus, because Belarus simply did not exist then.

On the maternal side, he was baptized in the Uniate Church - therefore he received the name Andrei, and at the insistence of his father he was given a double name in honor of Saints Taduesh and Bonaventure, revered by the Catholic Church.

The uprising of 1794, led by Andrei Tadeusz Bonaventure Kosciuszko, was the last attempt to preserve the independence and independence of the Commonwealth within the borders of 1772.

Kosciuszko was just born on the territory of modern Belarus. After graduating from the cadet corps in Warsaw, he studied in Paris for three years. Then he spent seven years in America, where he actively participated in the struggle of the North American colonies against British colonial rule. Kosciuszko was personally acquainted with the first President of the United States, George Washington, and was close friends with one of the authors of the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson. As an honorary citizen of France, Kosciuszko brought purely French slogans to the 1794 uprising. The great French bourgeois revolution took place under the slogan "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity";uprising in 1794 under the slogan "Liberty, integrity, independence". All these big words, of course, referred to the Commonwealth, and in no way to any other territory.

Tadeusz Kosciuszko is rightfully considered a national hero of Poland and the United States and the leader of the 1794 uprising in Poland. During the uprising, Kosciuszko called for the restoration of the Commonwealth within the borders of 1772, in which he was supported by magnates and the gentry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. According to the Polaniec universal - a personal legislative act of the leader of the uprising, they also tried to attract the peasants. They were promised personal freedom, but without allotment of land. However, the peasant could leave the landowner only on condition of payment of debts and state taxes. Was it actually possible? Of course not.The peasants received an illusory hope for freedom, but in fact, their fate was to become brushwood in the furnace of the uprising for Polish independence.

On the territory of modern Belarus, their number could not even reach 1/3 of the total number of those participating in the uprising. The leader of the uprising failed to achieve mass support of the population. It was suppressed, and in 1795 an agreement was signed on the third division of the Commonwealth, according to which the Commonwealth ceased to exist as an independent state, and the last king Stanislav August Poniatowski abdicated. At that stage, Russia ceded the western lands of present-day Belarus.

So who is Tadeusz Kosciuszko for Poland, and who for modern Belarus, and who has the right to call this historical figure his hero?

Perhaps the Poles were rightly offended by the initiative of the former Belarusian. Tadeusz Kosciuszko, by the right of his activity and the historical path chosen by him, put his whole life on the altar of Polish freedom and independence. He, like many politicians in Poland today, dreamed of a Polish renaissance.

and send an invitation to the Poles to jointly open a monument to a purely Polish national hero - this is the height of impudence ... but return the money! Six thousand dollars is not khukhr-mukhr for you. But something tells us that this charity of the Belarusian emigrant Alexander Sapieha is appreciated in Poland. And now, thank you all, everyone is free ...

In Belarus, they do not object at all to considering Tadeusz Kosciuszko “their famous countryman”, but by no means a national hero, and certainly not at our expense!

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