Two exiled Belarusian publishers share Prix Voltaire for defending their language and culture

By Mark Trevelyan

(Reuters) -Two Belarusians who fled repression in their native country were named on Monday as winners of the Prix Voltaire, a prestigious award that recognises publishers who fight for freedom of expression.

Dmitri Strotsev is a publisher and poet who was briefly arrested and jailed during mass demonstrations in 2020 against Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. He now operates from Berlin.

Nadia Kandrusevich founded Koska, a children's publisher that had books seized and offices closed after the crackdown by Lukashenko's security forces. She now lives in Sweden.

James Taylor, director of communications and freedom to publish at the International Publishers Association, told Reuters the pair were being recognised for the personal risks they had taken and for their contribution to preserving the Belarusian language.

In a telephone interview, Strotsev, 62, said the pro-democracy protests five years ago had provoked an outpouring of poetic expression in Belarus as demonstrators clamoured for Lukashenko, in power since 1994, to step down after a disputed election.

But as the crackdown gathered pace, poets deleted their work from the internet because they feared it could endanger not only themselves but anyone who commented on it or "liked" it.

Strotsev said he himself was arrested in October 2020 by operatives of the KGB security service. He was handcuffed and bundled into a minibus, with a bag placed over his head, then interrogated and sentenced to two weeks in jail for taking part in an unauthorised demonstration.

After his release, he was briefly detained twice more and lived in hiding for a time before leaving the country in 2021.

'POLYPHONY'

In Berlin, he founded the small publishing house Hochroth Minsk as a platform for the poets of the failed revolution, whose voices he compares to a choral symphony.

"It was very important for me to somehow present to Belarusians and the world this polyphony, this one big symphonic choral work. I left Belarus with that task," he said.

Kandrusevich, the children's publisher who shared the prize of 10,000 Swiss francs ($12,200) with Strotsev, said: "This recognition affirms not only the importance of publishing and translating books for children but the belief in the quiet power of words to shape minds, to open hearts, and to build bridges across languages, cultures, and generations."

Both publishers are dedicated to promoting the Belarusian language, although Strotsev has also published Belarusian poets writing in Russian, Yiddish, Polish and even Norwegian.

Russian has been the dominant language in Belarus since Soviet times, so speaking and writing in the native tongue is itself an act of resistance, Strotsev said.

His mission, he said, is "to bear consistent witness to this language and this culture, because if things continue as they are, there will be no Belarusian language in Belarus".

(Reporting by Mark TrevelyanEditing by Gareth Jones)