Aleh Trusaŭ
Aleh Anatolievich Trusaŭ is a Belarusian historian, archaeologist, politician, and social activist. He is one of the founders of the BPF Party and the Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly, both of which are organizations and parties with a national and independence-oriented character. From 1990 to 1995, he was a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic/Supreme Council of Belarus of the 12th convocation and a member of the BPF Party parliamentary opposition faction. He holds the academic title of Candidate of Sciences and is a historian specializing in Belarusian architecture. Since 1999, he has been the chairman of the Francišak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society.
Early life
Aleh Trusaŭ was born on 7 August 1954 in Mstsislaw, Mogilev Region, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. In his family, communists were disliked, and no one was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. During his childhood, he was raised by his great-grandmother Maryja Drazdouska, the wife of a Belarusian nobleman, who often spoke of the suffering the family experienced in 1918 when the communists confiscated their property. This had an impact on Trusaŭ's later skeptical attitude toward communism.He studied at the Faculty of History at the Belarusian State University. In his fifth year, he received a Lenin Scholarship of 100 rubles and was the head of his group. When he was offered membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and a postgraduate position at the Department of Scientific Communism, he declined. In 1976, he graduated and was assigned to work in the restoration workshops of the Ministry of Culture of the Belarusian SSR. There, he first met nationally oriented people striving for the revival of Belarusian culture and language, including Zianon Pazniak. After starting a correspondence postgraduate program at the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, he met Belarusian historians with similar views, such as Michaś Tkačoŭ and Anatol Hrytskevich. He also established contacts with academic circles in neighboring Lithuania, who impressed him with their patriotism and dreams of liberating their country from Soviet occupation.
Aleh Trusaŭ noticed that many of these people were communists, members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He concluded that the path to Belarusian national revival lay through evolutionary changes within the Communist Party. Therefore, when in 1978 he was again offered membership in the party, after consulting with Zianon Pazniak, he applied for membership.
In 1980, Trusaŭ completed his postgraduate studies. In 1981, he defended his candidate dissertation and obtained the degree of Candidate of Historical Sciences. The topic of his dissertation was Monumental Building Monuments of Belarus in the 11th–17th Centuries. Architectural and Archaeological Analysis. From 1976 to 1991, he worked as a research associate and later head of the Department of Comprehensive Scientific Research at the Belarusian Conservation Design Institute. In 1988, the topic of his doctoral dissertation was determined, but he never defended it.
Early political and social activism
In 1979, already a party member, Trusaŭ participated with a group of architects and historians led by Zianon Pazniak in a successful campaign to preserve the historical center of Minsk. He later expressed that this was possible partly due to his access to the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia, Pyotr Masherov. In the 1980s, he headed the basic organizational cell of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at his workplace. It was the first in the Soviet district of Minsk to start writing its reports in Belarusian. This event was announced in the Belarusian media.On 19 October 1988, he participated in the founding conference of the "Martyrology of Belarus" at the Church of Saints Simon and Helena in Minsk, where he was elected to the newly formed Organizing Committee of the BPF Party – the first anti-communist and independence organization in Belarus of that period. On Monday, October 24, he was publicly condemned at a meeting of Communist Party secretaries of the Soviet district of Minsk for his participation. His speech caused a significant stir among the attendees, some of whom left the hall, some attacked him, and some defended him. Simultaneously, the state press started a campaign against all BPF Party activists, calling them scum on the wave of perestroika. In June 1989, at the Founding Congress of the BPF Party, he was elected to the first Sejm of the BPF Party – the governing body of the organization.
In 1989, he represented democratic-minded communists from the Soviet district of Minsk at the Democratic Platform Communist Party congress in Moscow, aimed at reforming the party and transforming it into a social-democratic group. This initiative failed, but through it, Trusaŭ established contacts with Russian democrats within the communist party – Yury Afanasyev, General Oleg Kalugin, Gleb Yakunin, and others.
In the same year, he co-founded the Francišak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society.
Parliamentary activity
In 1990, Aleh Trusaŭ was nominated by the Belarusian Language Society as a candidate in the 1990 Belarusian Supreme Soviet election. He won a seat as a People's Deputy from the electoral district No. 33 in Minsk. Trusaŭ joined the BNF Parliamentary Group and became its deputy chairman under Zianon Pazniak in early June 1990. He served as the deputy chairman of the Supreme Soviet's Commission on Education, Culture, and Preservation of Historical Heritage, and was also a member of the Supreme Soviet's Commission on International and External Economic Relations.Trusaŭ participated in drafting and adopting the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Belarus and in preparing legislative projects during the extraordinary session of the Supreme Soviet from 24 to 25 August 1991, which declared Belarus' independence. He co-authored the Concept for the Transition of the Belarusian SSR to a Market Economy and several legislative projects in culture and education. Trusaŭ was one of the contributors to the official design of the Pahonia coat of arms and the white-red-white flag, the new state symbols of Belarus.
In the latter half of 1994, after President Alexander Lukashenko came to power, Trusaŭ became one of his most active critics, accusing him of attempting to establish a dictatorship. Trusaŭ participated in the hunger strike by BNF Opposition deputies from 11 to 12 April 1995 in the Oval Hall of the parliament, protesting the president's referendum on making Russian the second state language, changing Belarus' state symbols to Soviet-style symbols, economic integration with Russia, and the president's right to dissolve parliament. On the night between April 11 and 12, he and other protesters were forcibly removed from the parliament hall by masked military and special service personnel, beaten, loaded into a car, driven away, and then dumped on the street in central Minsk. From 13 to 14 April 1995, Trusaŭ participated in a Constitutional Court trial where the BNF Opposition accused President Lukashenko of monopolizing mass media.
In 2010, Zianon Pazniak described Aleh Trusaŭ from the early 1990s in his memoirs:
A characteristic feature of his personality was optimism. Aleh knew how to remain calm and convincing in the sharpest parliamentary debates, never getting lost or agitated like some communists, maintaining a clear mind and avoiding panic where there was real danger... he was always an active defender of the Belarusian language.During the 1995 Belarusian parliamentary election, Trusaŭ ran again for deputy. He repeatedly gained voter support, advancing to the second round, but each time, the second round was disrupted by the executive power. Ultimately, he did not make it to the Supreme Soviet, thus ending his parliamentary career.
Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly
In the summer of 1990, Aleh Trusaŭ announced his resignation from the Communist Party at the Supreme Soviet. Together with Michaś Tkačoŭ, he initiated the creation of a new social democratic party oriented towards Belarusian national revival. He joined the Organizing Committee of the Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly. The new party was registered in March 1991. At the Founding Congress, Trusaŭ was elected as the first deputy chairman of the Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly Central Council, and in 1992, he became its chairman. In the 12th Supreme Soviet, the Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly was the only political party to form its own parliamentary faction consisting of 15 deputies. In the 1994 Belarusian presidential election, the Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly supported Stanislav Shushkevich, and Trusaŭ led his campaign team.In the parliamentary elections at the turn of 1995 and 1996, the Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly, like other democratic groups, faced defeat. This led to an internal party crisis. The left-wing faction criticized Trusaŭ for being too close to the BPF Party and the national-democratic camp. In July 1995, an extraordinary party congress narrowly voted Trusaŭ out as chairman. The new party leadership moved the Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly leftwards and prepared to unite with the parties of Siachka, Pashkevich, and Yarmalitsky. Trusaŭ and his supporters opposed this policy and soon formed a faction within the Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly aiming to maintain the party's independence. In May 1995, Trusaŭ's faction supported the initiative of a "round table of Belarusian political parties" to remove President Alexander Lukashenko from office. In October of the same year, they actively participated in preparing and holding the Congress in Defense of the Constitution.
In 1996, the left-wing Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly leadership decided to merge the party with the People's Concord Party, creating the Belarusian Social Democratic Party. In January 1997, at the request of the party's leadership, the Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly was dissolved. Soon after, Aleh Trusaŭ initiated its revival. An Organizing Committee for the new Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly was formed, chaired by Stanislau Shushkevich. On 15 February 1998, at the Founding Congress of the revived Belarusian Social Democratic Assembly, Trusaŭ was elected deputy chairman of the party.