[fic] Dziady
Title: Dziady
Author: Cattiechaos
Genre: Tragedy/
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Belarus
Rating: M for controversial subject and possible triggers.
Summary: This was written to commemorate the victims of Kurapaty, the location of mass exterminations committed by the NKVD (Soviet police) against upwards of 100,000 Belorussian civilians. I was initially hesitant of posting this, as I don't know if it is ever permissible to write about tragedies such as these. I wrote with respectful intentions to pay homage to the victims of Stalin’s regime and to bring light to the genocide at Kurapaty; I sincerely apologize if anyone is offended by this.
A nation, like a human being, has its own individuality. Human beings are bound in time by their own life span, but the nation is eternal in its history.
- “Kurapaty: The Road to Death”
She walks like a pale wraith in the frozen woodland, the warmth of her breath ghosting in the air like hauntings from a time long past. This forest is large but she cannot tread more than a few feet without a cross interrupting her path, a lonely figure in such a desolate landscape.
The area where she now stands has once been the site of a fence. She has been afraid of approaching this fence for many years, because the people who passed through it never returned home. Here the air is heavy, and it bears remnants of great agony as she breathes. Voices that have long been silenced whisper to her in the wind, for here is the memory of slaughtered lives - of those who walked into this night never to leave.
The beauty of a human life, Natalya ponders softly, is found in its transience. Mortal lives are beautiful because they live with the knowledge that each breath they take is a triumph against death, to be savored if but for one more moment. The breaths Natalya takes are not numbered, and a hundred years of quiet endurance weigh heavily on her mind. Her strength is not that of her brother’s; she is not one for brute force, for obliterating that which stands in her path - her strength is resilience, that which does not yield against the bitterest of winds.
And bitter have been the winds over her home. They brought automobiles in the silence of the night taking her people without explanation; taking her peoples’ lives without explanation. And what difference would an explanation have made, to know why they are about to be murdered in the thousands? The hundreds of thousands? Any answer, if one exists, is insufficient.
This land has begun to recover, and she heals with it. The earth here begins to grow again although they bring a strange new phenomenon with it: mushrooms with pink stalks and blood red toadstools develop in clusters around the headstones of the graves, as if they have grown from the blood that was spilled.
History is passed down in blood, from the blood of the innocents that once walked this earth. They remember, even if the world forgets.
The End
Notes:
The victims of Kurapaty are commemorated on Dziady (Grandfathers), an ancient Slavic feast that honored the souls of their forefathers.
Wikipedia page on Kurapaty
NKVD (Soviet police under Stalin)
Other links:
http://old.knihi.com/kurapaty/kurap-e1.html
http://www.belarusguide.com/as/law_pol/disas.html
http://www.massviolence.org/Kurapaty-1937-1941-NKVD-Mass-Killings-in-Soviet-Belarus
http://www.belarus-misc.org/kurapaty.htm
Author: Cattiechaos
Genre: Tragedy/
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Belarus
Rating: M for controversial subject and possible triggers.
Summary: This was written to commemorate the victims of Kurapaty, the location of mass exterminations committed by the NKVD (Soviet police) against upwards of 100,000 Belorussian civilians. I was initially hesitant of posting this, as I don't know if it is ever permissible to write about tragedies such as these. I wrote with respectful intentions to pay homage to the victims of Stalin’s regime and to bring light to the genocide at Kurapaty; I sincerely apologize if anyone is offended by this.
A nation, like a human being, has its own individuality. Human beings are bound in time by their own life span, but the nation is eternal in its history.
- “Kurapaty: The Road to Death”
She walks like a pale wraith in the frozen woodland, the warmth of her breath ghosting in the air like hauntings from a time long past. This forest is large but she cannot tread more than a few feet without a cross interrupting her path, a lonely figure in such a desolate landscape.
The area where she now stands has once been the site of a fence. She has been afraid of approaching this fence for many years, because the people who passed through it never returned home. Here the air is heavy, and it bears remnants of great agony as she breathes. Voices that have long been silenced whisper to her in the wind, for here is the memory of slaughtered lives - of those who walked into this night never to leave.
The beauty of a human life, Natalya ponders softly, is found in its transience. Mortal lives are beautiful because they live with the knowledge that each breath they take is a triumph against death, to be savored if but for one more moment. The breaths Natalya takes are not numbered, and a hundred years of quiet endurance weigh heavily on her mind. Her strength is not that of her brother’s; she is not one for brute force, for obliterating that which stands in her path - her strength is resilience, that which does not yield against the bitterest of winds.
And bitter have been the winds over her home. They brought automobiles in the silence of the night taking her people without explanation; taking her peoples’ lives without explanation. And what difference would an explanation have made, to know why they are about to be murdered in the thousands? The hundreds of thousands? Any answer, if one exists, is insufficient.
This land has begun to recover, and she heals with it. The earth here begins to grow again although they bring a strange new phenomenon with it: mushrooms with pink stalks and blood red toadstools develop in clusters around the headstones of the graves, as if they have grown from the blood that was spilled.
History is passed down in blood, from the blood of the innocents that once walked this earth. They remember, even if the world forgets.
The End
Notes:
The victims of Kurapaty are commemorated on Dziady (Grandfathers), an ancient Slavic feast that honored the souls of their forefathers.
Wikipedia page on Kurapaty
NKVD (Soviet police under Stalin)
Other links:
http://old.knihi.com/kurapaty/kurap-e1.html
http://www.belarusguide.com/as/law_pol/disas.html
http://www.massviolence.org/Kurapaty-1937-1941-NKVD-Mass-Killings-in-Soviet-Belarus
http://www.belarus-misc.org/kurapaty.htm