Dziejaslou Magazine Won’t Be Sold At Bookstores

10.02.2005.

According to RFE/RL

“The nation needs several astonishing victories which would be known to the world, and better in this century…”. It is a quotation from the novel “Day of Conquered” by the well-known Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Yavorivskyi which was published in the 13th number of Dziejaslou magazine together with the letters of Belarusian writer Uladzimir Karatkevich and the poetess Larysa Heniyush which are generally unfamiliar to broad public. However, now there’s a huge obstacle to these materials – bookstores refused to accept the independent magazine though they used to sell it before.

The chief editor of the magazine Barys Piatrovich thusly commented on the decision of “Belkniha” enterprise to break the agreement with the magazine:

-- The formal reason is that the magazine prints materials with four-letter words and the sixth number is mentioned in connection with it. One can look it through and see that the word taken for “foul language” is only one letter and three dots. It is quite strange to hear such things from the administration of “Belkniha” when the bookstores sell books of such Russian authors as Sorokin, Viktor Yerofeyev, Venedikt Yerofeyev and Pelevin where all four-letter words are printed in full, without any dots.

Barys Piatrovich is convinced in the political motivation for this step:
-- We think that the real reasons for throwing our magazine out of bookstores are political ones, first of all because we published works of Vasil Bykaw.

Now Dziejaslou magazine can get to readers only by subscription.