Father Lew Goroszko and the Vanished Intelligentsia: Memory, Identity, and Conflict in Western Belarus
- Peripheral Histories ISSN 2755-368X
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Stanisław Boridczenko
Among the private papers of Fr Lew Goroszko — now archived in the Francis Skoryna Belarusian Library and Museum situated in northern London — there lies a chilling, handwritten note.[1] It begins:
Killed by Poles
Rokidorovich – head of [unreadable] in Szczuczyn + 19 VI 1942
Grutski – teacher in Szczuczyn + 20 II 1942
Shlyakhtun – inspector [unreadable] + 20 XI 1942 [2]
The list continues with 23 names in total mostly teachers, priests, and administrators. These people were representatives of the Belarusian intelligentsia who were killed in the Grodno region between 1942 and 1944. At first glance, this note may appear to be ‘just’ another list of wartime casualties. But in fact, it serves as a formidable symbol of the deeper, more personal wars waged not just over land or resources, but over identity — especially within Eastern Europe’s contested borderlands.
Two Competing Readings of History
This document invites at least two sharply contrasting interpretations. The first comes directly from Fr Lew Goroszko’s own writings.
The description of the first days of the Nazi occupation of Baranowicze in Goroszko’s autobiography clearly reveals the foundation of his interpretation. He describes the events as follows: “The military commandant appointed a mayor — a Pole named Gibowski from Galicia — who had been an officer in the Austrian army. Poles filled the magistrate. A police force was being formed, comprised almost entirely of Poles. The same happened in every city in Western Belarus. Strangely, both the Soviet and Polish press remain completely silent about this – yet these were the first and most diligent collaborators with the Germans”.[3] As one can see, his focus is not primarily on the appearance of a foreign occupying regime, but rather on the issue of the dominance of Poles within power structures and their ability to utilize these institutions to achieve their own aims.
This evident preoccupation with the ‘Polish question’ and the relative disregard for the Germans should come as no surprise. From Goroszko’s perspective, the presence of Poles in the region was to be interpreted in distinctly negative terms as they were seen to be engaging in systematic violence against the Belarusian nation within the framework of a long-standing policy of national suppression. In contrast, the German occupation was viewed as temporary and not an immediate threat to the local intellectual elite; indeed, it was perceived as potentially useful for advancing Belarusian national consciousness. The murdered intelligentsia, in this view, were martyrs: victims of a prolonged effort to erase Belarusian national identity by targeting its cultural vanguard. They were individuals who sought to awaken the Belarusian peasantry from a state of national indifference. It is precisely such individuals who appear on the list cited at the beginning of this text.
A Life in Between Nations
Fr Lew Goroszko was born in 1911 in the village of Troszczyce, which was then part of the Russian Empire. By the time he reached adulthood, the same land had passed through multiple regimes: the Second Polish Republic after the First World War, the Soviet Union in 1939, and then Nazi Germany in 1941. These seismic shifts left deep scars and forced choices on those like Goroszko who found themselves caught in between state entities that they perceived to be alien.
He attended Belarusian-language schools in his youth, then studied theology in Lwów and Innsbruck. By the late 1930s, he had returned home as a Greco-Catholic priest and Belarusian intellectual with a clearly anti-Polish attitude. Back then, he was already attracting the suspicion of the Polish state due to his critical stance and open promotion of Belarusian cultural identity.
According to his memoirs and the records of like-minded intellectuals, this promotion was carried out through seemingly peaceful means: by subscribing to Belarusian periodicals, sharing their content with the local population, and consistently using the Belarusian language in liturgy.
However, according to the Polish authorities, the issue was not merely cultural expression, but the spread of anti-Polish sentiment among the peasantry—something they viewed as a direct threat to the unity and security of the state. Consequently, Polish bureaucrats regarded him as a destabilizing figure and reassigned him to increasingly remote parishes in an effort to marginalize his potential influence.
Figure 1
In 2023, a book featuring a selection of Fr Lew Goroszko’s personal materials was published in Białystok. The book cover displays a photograph of Fr Goroszko taken during his emigration.
Nazis, Soviets, and Strategic Alliances
With the Soviet annexation of Western Belarus in 1939, Goroszko briefly worked as a teacher in Baranowicze, but quickly soured on communist rule. “Saying one thing, doing another,” he wrote, condemning the gap between the official Soviet rhetoric and its repressive reality.[4]
When Nazi Germany invaded in 1941, Goroszko saw a new — yet deeply flawed — opportunity. He helped organize a local Belarusian committee (which was almost immediately dismissed by the German authorities) and became involved in several German-approved Belarusian organizations. He saw the Nazi regime as a temporary enabler of Belarusian nation-building and was optimistic that, through strategic cooperation, the Belarusian intelligentsia might finally complete the national awakening process and overthrow both Polish and Russian domination.
The end of this chapter of his life was marked by his participation in the Second All-Belarusian Congress in June 1944, which was a last-ditch effort by Belarusian nationalists to declare some form of cultural autonomy under German protection. As the Red Army approached, Goroszko fled his homeland and settled in Western Europe, first in Berlin before 1945 and afterwards in Munich, Rome, Paris, and London. He remained an active figure in the Belarusian émigré community and its religious life throughout this time.
A Second Interpretation
The second reading of Horoszko’s list comes from a radically different perspective – namely, that of the Polish underground during the German occupation. In this case, verification is relatively straightforward, as relevant archival materials can be found in central and western London.
Figure 2
The attitudes of the local population in certain regions of Poland became a subject of particular interest to the Polish government-in-exile, which sought to monitor developments and commissioned situational reports on local conditions. One such report on situation in Belarus is currently available at the PISM under the reference number A.9.V.34.
From this point of view, the individuals on the list were not heroes but traitors: collaborators, formally being the Polish citizens who worked within Nazi structures to eliminate Polish presence within a region regarded as an integral part of Poland. These included bureaucrats who helped implement occupation policies, clergy who promoted an ethnic and cultural Belarusian nationalism that either implicitly or explicitly supported cleansing of the region of all Others, and Belarusian schoolteachers who had begun spreading anti-Polish sentiment among the peasantry even before the war. Moreover, cooperation with the Nazis meant participating in the exploitation and looting of the local population. Thus, the elimination of such individuals was interpreted by the Polish underground as a method to defend the national interests and the local community.
According to records, by 1942 the Polish resistance movement had become strong enough in the Grodno and Nowogródek regions to carry out targeted assassinations. These were not considered acts of terrorism, but rather a form of military justice. As stated in reports from Polish underground cells—now available primarily in the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum and the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust — the targets were not civilians but political operatives aligned with the enemy who used the occupation as a cover to pursue nation-building at the expense of others, sometimes even directly participating in ethnic cleansing.
This perspective is clearly expressed in a report produced in 1943 by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Polish government-in-exile: “Within the borders of the Republic of Poland, the masses of Belarusians are anti-German. It is the intelligentsia that collaborates with the occupier, as they are no longer able to withdraw. They have taken up lower levels of administration and are suppressing Polish identity, seeking to create a fait accompli.”[5]
Crucially, many Polish memoirs claim that the punitive actions and elimination of members of the Belarusian intelligentsia who collaborated with the Germans enjoyed support from the local population. From this perspective, the Belarusian nationalist intelligentsia lacked genuine grassroots backing and existed only thanks to the support of foreign occupiers — whether Soviet or German. A vivid example of this perception appears in the memoirs of Stanisław Sędzyk, a chief of staff of the Home Army in Nowogródek District in 1942–1944: “During the occupation, it was extremely important for us to observe what stance these people [the Belarusian peasantry] would take toward the occupier. We didn’t have to wait long to find out. They immediately became our silent allies – silent, because such was the directive from our higher political and military leadership.”[6]
Figure 3
A photograph of Stanisław Sędziak, taken between 1940 and 1945, during the period in which he commanded the Polish underground in the same region where Fr. Lew Goroszko was active. Source: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe, Sygnatura: 37-1136-1, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Tragic Logic of Borderland Nationalism
The tragedy is that both this narrative and other similar narratives contain elements of truth.
On one hand, Fr Goroszko was indeed part of a small, committed, and culturally important Belarusian intelligentsia. This broader milieu was the first to promote education in the native language, the first to call for sovereignty, and the first to believe that Belarus had a historical and spiritual identity worth preserving. Their fate — repressions, exile, assassination, or their post-war fade into obscurity — speaks volumes about the difficulties of building national identity in a land traditionally interpreted as an integral part of larger neighbouring powers.
On the other hand, their idealism was often paired with strategic naivety or criminal brutality in a willingness to cleanse ‘their’ land of all those deemed to be ‘alien.’ In the chaos of war, any attempt to reimagine the identity of the population – especially under the protection of a genocidal regime like Nazi Germany — was bound to provoke violence. Just as Ukrainian nationalists’ struggle for independence led to ethnic cleansing in Wołyń, Belarusian aspirations stirred similar acts in Western Belarus.
Moreover, the status of ‘alien’ could often be applied in Western Belarus to the Belarusian intelligentsia themselves, who did not enjoy the support even of their own society, whose interests they tried to represent. The process of creating a national intelligentsia — which in the Belarusian case had never been completed — was only beginning. The few representatives of this social group acted in the name of ideals that were detached from reality. Thus, their desire for national awakening was not representative of the will of the broader population, but only of an extremely narrow stratum.
On this issue, the Special Report on the National Issue from 1942, commissioned by the Polish government-in-exile, seems to be especially relevant: “The [Belarusian] peasants are indifferent to nationalist slogans, and they are also hostile toward Belarusian officials collaborating with the occupier.”[7]
In this tragic calculus, the Belarusian intelligentsia cannot be interpreted either as the voice or the scapegoat of their people. With the broader population largely indifferent to their cause, it was the educated class that bore the brunt of symbolic violence from rival groups — be they Polish, Russian, or Soviet, without any hope to find support from the ‘masses.’
Figure 4
The situation in Western Belarus during the second year of the German occupation had devolved into a conflict of all against all. The Belarusian intelligentsia, as can be judged from situational reports from Polesie, was not even perceived as a significant actor. One vivid description of this reality can be found in a record held in the PISM collection under sign B.3034
A Legacy in Exile
After fleeing Belarus, Fr Goroszko continued to write, teach, and minister to the Belarusian diaspora in Western Europe. In his later years, he authored many texts, one of which, Under the Sign of ‘Russian and Polish Faith, was on the religious history of Belarus. He stated the main aim of the text as following: “And this was precisely the result of centuries of propaganda of the ‘Russian’ and ‘Polish’ faiths; it would be a crime on our part to leave the attacks on the soul of the Belarusian people unanswered.”[8] Within the text he framed both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches as often instrumented by Poles and Russians with the aim of Belarusian colonization. Even in religious questions, he remained committed to a vision of a free Belarus — independent, spiritual, and sovereign.
And yet, his life — like that of so many Eastern European nationalists of the mid-twentieth century — is rife with paradoxes. He cooperated with the Nazis, but opposed their ideology. He promoted peace, but was linked to a movement that provoked deadly reprisals. He believed in the people, yet had little popular backing.
A List, A Warning
In the end, the list in his archive is more than a footnote. It is a silent scream — a record of an erased community, of lives caught between ideologies, societies and states. It tells us that identity, especially in the borderlands, is not a given. It is fought over, imagined, imposed, and sometimes, should the circumstances allow, defended. As a result, the status of a hero or a villain often depends not just on the perspective of the narrator, but on the simple fact of who won the conflict and, therefore, was able to create a national myth.
Acknowledgements
This text was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange through a Bekker Fellowship (No. BPN/BEK/2024/1/00123), and to Professor Jim Bjork for kindly agreeing to host me during the research. I would also like to thank Jadwiga Kowalska, Deputy Keeper of Archives and Cultural Projects Coordinator at PISM, for her assistance in approving the use of the attached photographs from the Institute’s collection.
Dr Stanisław Edward Boridczenko is a research assistant at the Institute of History, University of Szczecin (Poland), currently based at King’s College London on a research fellowship. His academic interests include the study of empires and imperialism, as well as the phenomenon of national and state indifference—particularly in the context of the Polish–Russian frontier.
[1] Fr Lew Goroszko (1911–77) was a Greco-Catholic priest and a religious and social activist of Belarusian origin. A full biography, along with relevant literature, is available on Wikipedia in English and all Eastern Slavic languages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Garoshka
[2] Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum: 01 – 02, 14 “Bielaruś u datach, likach i faktach” (research notes) n.d.
[3] A manuscript of Horoszko's autobiography is available at the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum and was recently published in Poland. Additionally, portions of his memoirs – quoted in the text above – are publicly accessible on the following website: https://pawet.net/library/history/bel_history/_memoirs/051aa/%D0%93%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%88%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%9B%D0%B5%D1%9E._%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B7_%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D1%96%D1%86%D1%8B_%D1%96_%D0%BD%D1%8F%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%8B._%D0%A3%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BC%D1%96%D0%BD%D1%8B_%D0%B7_%D0%B3%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%BE%D1%9E_1930-1944.html
[4] Ibid.
[5] The Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, A.9.E/113, Stan sprawy białoruskiej 20/3/43.
[6] The Polish Underground Movement (1939-1945) Study Trust, BI 1010, 100.
[7] The Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, A.9.E/113, Meldunek nr 111 z 2/3/42, Raport specjalny.