The Dzisna Region

In No. 102 of 7 May of this year, the newspaper "Dziennik Wileński" printed a correspondence under the pseudonym "R. K." about the celebration of 3 May and about the mood in Dzisna county generally. Usually one does not have to pay attention to the babbling of the scribblers in "D. W.", but I shall dwell on this correspondence because it also gives an occasion to show the true state of affairs. Mr. "R. K." must have greatly cheered himself and his "przyjaciół" with the news that everything in the county is going like clockwork. The "Sixteen" and "Wyzwolenie" have lost their influence over the peasantry, and in their place, to general greetings, there has crawled out the "landowner-lord"; the Belarusian movement has died out completely, and the "korytarzowe powiaty" are regaining their Polishness, and so on. It is clear that Mr. "R. K." is deliberately fooling the public with his inflated joy, and has forgotten the old proverb that one cannot find what one has not lost. Let the "macierz szkolna" enjoy the help of the whole world in order to destroy the Belarusians, let Belarusian children be driven into Polish schools, if only with fines and whips: nothing will help. The soul of the Belarusian will live as long as his body lives. Mr. "R. K." is delighted by the crowd in the street on 3 May. But let us see what it was made up of: voyts, soltyses and their deputies, who had been summoned to Hlybokaye, often from more than 60 versts away (Mikalayeuskaya gmina). To get them to Hlybokaye, 3–4 farmers were taken from each village, and they had to drive the authorities free of charge to a Polish holiday, and on top of that over utterly impassable roads. True, it seems that they were paid about 4 million marks in this way, but that payment again falls on the peasant's neck. And the children from the schools? Did they, too, go without compulsion?!

Well, enough about that. Let us return again to our landowner-lords, whom our peasantry supposedly greets, and for whom they, that is, the landowners, have made a good life?! Look, what kind of life is this? At a time when our peasant cannot get timber to build himself a house, because to rot and waste away in a dugout for yet another year is no longer possible, the lords, instead of helping, have busied themselves with rebuilding their sawmills, and having built them, they hurry to ship the timber abroad or wherever else, so long as it does not fall to our wretched people. Or take the life of the farmhands, the plowmen, or even the petty tenants: the lords have harnessed them into such a yoke that, despite oneself, the accursed memory of the "panshchyna" comes to mind. But to describe all those wrongs and mockeries, an ox-hide would not be enough.