Writer Maksim Harecki (Максім Гарэцкі) (Feb. 18, 1893 - Feb. 10, 1938) Photo Credit: Belaruskaya Mova: Entziklapediya, (pub. 1994, page 123; photo taken approximately late 1920's).

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(Also spelled "Maxim Goretski")

The following is a merging and a summary of (1) his entry in the Historical Dictionary of Belarus (by Jan (Ia) Zaprudnik, 1998; pp. 116-117), and from (2) A History of Byelorussian Literature (Die Literatur der Weissrussen): From its Origins to the Present Day, by Arnold B. McMillin; Giessen, W. Germany, 1977; pages 141-143; 146; & 261:

One of Belarus's classical writers, historian of Belarusan literature, lexicographer, teacher--and victim of Stalinist terror. McMillin states, "Harecki is in fact one of the most interesting figures in all twentieth-century Byelorussian literature, but has suffered serious neglect due mainly to the overtly nationalistic character of much of his work." (p. 261)

Maksim Harecki was born into a peasant family in the Mahilou region, and became acquainted with Nasha Niva while studying at the Horki agricultural college. Educated as an agriculturist, Harecki early in his life revealed considerable literary talent and a philosophical bent. He began to contribute to Nasha Niva in 1912, and quickly established himself as a highly gifted writer, particularly after the publication of his first prose collection, Spring Shoots (Run) in 1914.

Harecki was also actively engaged in the Belarusan Rebirth Movement. Much of his prose reflects events of World War 1. Harecki's literary heroes are peasants and first generation members of the intelligentsia seeking to comprehend the complexities of life and the ultimate meaning of existence while struggling to assert themselves and their people.

Harecki's short stories of the Nasha Niva period are notable for their formal and stylistic variety. In some, like Spring Shoots (Run; written in 1912 and published in 1914) he adopts a documentary approach, using diaries and letters, while A Minstrel's Song (Lirnyja Shpievy; 1913) are simply folk legends retold, In the Master's Forest (U panskim lesie; 1913) a prose miniature, and Cries from the Heart (Stohny dushy; 1913) a lyrically impressionist sketch. One of the most technically adventurous and intellectually satisfying stories is Why is He to Blame? (U chym jaho kryuda?; 1914), which consists of letters between the central character Koschia Zaremba, and his beloved, his friend, and his parents. Harecki displays masterly control in revealing the moral conflict around which the work revolves, at the same time capturing the correspondents' individual "voices" with a rich sense of psychological detail, equal to the best prose of Kolas or Biadula.

The theme of this story, which is in fact dominant throughout nearly all of Harecki's pre-revolutionary work, is the fate of the national intelligentsia, in particular, the new, first generation intelligentsia, to which the author himself belonged. Stories like The Native Root (Rodnaje karennie; 1913) and In the Bathhouse (U lazhni; 1912) addressed themselves directly, and yet with a total absence of didacticism, to the problematic relationship between the backward, mistrustful, often hostile peasantry and the members of the new intelligentsia who found themselves repulsed by many aspects of the life from which they had emerged, and yet morally bound to remain true to their origins and to try to help the suspicious, resistant peasants: "One must not give in and become a traitor," reflects Klim Shaouski, the hero of In the Bathhouse, "for to love and honor one's native land is an obligation, a duty." The moral anguish of the intelligentsia revealed in these stories with sympathy and subtlety make Harecki's deeply intellectual works an original and important contribution to prose of the time, anticipating some of the concerns of the next major period in Belarusan literature, the age of the novel.

Harecki's plays include Anton (1914), an episodic moral drama showing a rich panorama of scenes and characters from rural life. The play's mood is one of total gloom, and Anton's eventual suicide comes as no surprise.

One of the first stories to be written after the Revolution was A Quiet Current (Cichaja plyn; 1918), originally entitled For What Purpose? (Za Shto?). Like the great majority of Harecki's fictional works, it consists of a series of short sections which by means of contrasting style, theme, and manner, build up a rounded overall picture, in this case of a peasant boy's miserable sacrifice in the First World War.

Still greater horrors are recounted in the collection of stories about serfdom, Before Dawn (Doshvitki; 1926). To take but one example, the story The Lord's Bitch (Panskaja suchka; 1926) relates how a wealthy landowner, distressed at the death of his favorite English bitch, drags a bereaved peasant woman from the grave of her baby to nurture the bitch's three orphaned puppies, and after they have died from a surfeit of rich milk condemns her to die of thirst in appalling agony by forcing her to eat quantities of salted herring with nothing to drink. Another gloomy work is Melancholy (Melancholija; 1916-28), an excerpt from an unfinished novel, The Cross (Kryzh), which describes the hero's suicidal moods resulting from his own personal angst combined with the uncertain state of Belarus's national development.

In many ways the pivotal point of Harecki's prose writing is the short novel Two Souls (Dzhvie dushy; 1919), in which the author reveals a remarkable grasp of political tendencies at a time when much was still completely uncertain. The hero, Abdziralovich, is a strangely unemotional man, unable on the one hand to overcome his instinctive regret at the violence and destruction of the Revolution or on the other to dismiss his conviction that radical social change is both necessary and inevitable. Himself incapable of deciding what is germane and what alien to Belarus's true interests, he is brought into contact with a series of different character sfrom various strate of contemporary society: the millionaire's daughter Ala Makasiej whom for a time he loves, the cynical opportunist Prince Halshanski, the police agent Harshchok, genuine revolutionaries such as Vasil, adventurers like the ruthless Captain Harelik, and, most importantly in ideological terms, a number of convinced Belarusian nationalists who believe, as did Harecki, in the validity of the Belarusian revival, Ira Sakavichanka, the student Suchavej, and village teacher Mikola Kancavy.

Harecki's post-revolutionary writing belongs to the history of the Belarusan novel, but he is also remembered for his valuable lexicographical and ethnographical work, and particularly as the author of the first Belarusan-language History of Belarusan Literature (Historyja bielaruskaje literartury; Vilnia, 1920), a pioneering work which is still of value today, both for the biographical information it contains, and for the author's remarkably acute literary judgment. His Reader of Belarusan Literature: From the 11th century to 1905 (1922) was also significant, and both works were popular textbooks during the 1920s. In the early 1920s, he taught at the Belarusan High School in Vilnia, where he was imprisoned for alleged contacts with Communists. In 1923 he moved to Minsk and became active as a teacher and scholar.

Arrested in 1930, he was in exile at Vjatka during the years 1930-35 as a political prisoner and was prevented from returning to Belarus. Arrested for a second time in 1937, he was executed as an "enemy of the people."

Owing to the circumstances of his life, Harecki's literary heritage is fragmented, and no complete edition of his writings has yet appeared [n.b., as of 1976], although from time to time since the partial rehabilitation that was effected in the late 50s newly discovered or re-discovered works have been published, a recent example being an unfinished novel of the 30s, The Kamarouka Chronicle (Kamarouskaja chronika), excerpts from which appeared in Polymia in 1966.

Note:

• In the preceding excerpt, terms in bold refer to other entries in the Historical Dictionary of Belarus. The Historical Dictionary of Belarus is an important summary of the history of Belarus.

Photograph: Writers Maksim Harecki and Uladzimir Dubouka, about 1928

Photo Credit: Literature Museum of Maksim Harecki [Літаратурны Музэй Максіма Гарэцкага (Кароткі Даведнік)], 1997 (unnumbered page).

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