Andrej Mryj (; 13 O.S. 1">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 1September 1893 – 8 October 1943) was the pen name of Andrej Šašalevič (), a Belarusian satirical writer, journalist, translator and a victim of Great Purge, Stalin's purges.

Life

Mryj was born into a middle-class family in the

Mogilev Governorate Mogilev Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit ('' guberniya'') of the Northwestern Krai of the Russian Empire. The governorate bordered the Vitebsk Governorate to the north, the Smolensk Governorate to the east, the Chernigov Gover ...

of the Russian Empire (nowadays the Mahilioŭ region in eastern Belarus). In 1914, he graduated from a seminary in Mahilioŭ and continued his theological education in

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

. In 1916 he was conscripted into the Russian Imperial Army. After the

Bolshevik revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. It was led by Vladimir L ...

, he served in the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

In 1921, Mryj became a teacher and also got involved in amateur theatre, ethnography and journalism. His articles were published in leading newspapers of

Soviet Belarus The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR, Byelorussian SSR or Byelorussia; ; ), also known as Soviet Belarus or simply Belarus, was a republic of the Soviet Union (USSR). It existed between 1920 and 1922 as an independent state, and ...

. In 1933, he was appointed an editor of a popular newspaper, ''

Zviazda Zvyazda (, , ) is a state-owned daily newspaper in Belarus. History and profile ''Zvyazda'' was founded in 1917 as an organ of the Minsk Committee of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks). ''Zvyazda'' was twice closed down by the ...

'' (The Star; ). Mryj was arrested by the

Soviet secret police There were a succession of Soviet secret police agencies over time. The Okhrana was abolished by the Provisional government after the first revolution of 1917, and the first secret police after the October Revolution, created by Vladimir Leni ...

as a "member of an anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organisation" in February 1934 and deported to

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

and then to

Murmansk Murmansk () is a port city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast in the far Far North (Russia), northwest part of Russia. It is the world's largest city north of the Arctic Circle and sits on both slopes and banks of a modest fjord, Ko ...

in the North of Russia. In June 1940, he was re-arrested and sent to one of the

Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

forced labour camps. In March 1943, he was registered as a disabled person by a medical commission. Mryj died on 8 October 1943. The place of his burial is unknown. Mryj was posthumously exonerated during

Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...

de-Stalinisation De-Stalinization () comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the thaw brought about by ascension of Nikita Khrushchev to power, and his 1956 secret speech " On ...

in January 1957, however there is no place of his commemoration in present-day Belarus.

Work

In 1929, Mryj published his best-known work, a satirical novel "The Notes of Samson Samasuj" (). "The Notes" tell a story of a fictional head of a local department of culture in

. An inept official, he compensates his lack of competency by extraordinary activity in accelerating a

cultural revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...

in his district. He organises a series of absurd cultural events and initiatives intermingled with his turbulent love life. The novel was badly received by the authorities. It was branded "vicious libel on Soviet reality". In Belarus, it was only fully published during

Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Commu ...

Perestroika ''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...

in 1988. A film adaptation by a film director, , soon followed.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mryj, Andrei Belarusian male writers Belarusian journalists Belarusian translators Belarusian satirists Belarusian satirical novelists Belarusian novelists 1893 births 1943 deaths Executed Soviet people from Belarus Soviet rehabilitations