500 Years of Belarusian Book Printing

MINSK, 25 May (BelTA) – A roundtable session will take place in Moscow on 5 June to celebrate the 500^th anniversary of Belarusian book printing, BelTA learned from Belarusian Deputy Information Minister Alexander Karlyukevich during a video conference timed to International Day of Slavic Culture and Literature.

According to the source, the roundtable session will be held as part of the Books of Russia expo. On that day writers and poets, first and foremost, Russian writers, will come to the Belarusian embassy in Moscow. “We will continue the conversation about humanitarian partnership,” said Alexander Karlyukevich.

Alexander Karlyukevich was glad to have an opportunity to talk about humanitarian cooperation, cultural cooperation, cooperation in literature and art between Belarus and other countries. Every year the Information Ministry and the Union of Writers of Belarus arrange a roundtable session for foreign and Belarusian writers. Since 2007 the session has been centered on the idea that fiction should bring people closer to each other. “We are glad that writers come to Belarus not only for this roundtable session but also for the international symposium Writer and Time. We arrange such venues because we’d like to talk about what is going on in every country, to talk about Belarusian literature of today, give advice concerning the translation of works by our modern writers into CIS languages,” said Alexander Karlyukevich.

The official talked about examples of humanitarian and cultural partnership of Belarus and other CIS states. “We are grateful to Chingiz Alioglu for having done a lot of work to present Belarusian literature in Azerbaijan and to organize Belarusian-Azerbaijani literature ties. A short while ago we published a collection of his poetry in Belarusian. I cannot but recall the Nash Sovremennik magazine, which releases a Belarusian edition every year. The edition features new translations of modern Belarusian fiction and poetry. It is now prestigious for many Belarusian writers to get published in this magazine and other editions in various CIS states. I am very grateful to our colleagues from other CIS states for this,” stressed the Belarusian deputy information minister.

Writers, publishers, scientists, and public figures from Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia took part in the video conference on 25 May. They discussed ways to step up humanitarian cooperation in the Commonwealth of Independent States and cultural legacy. They also talked about literature events in the CIS states.