Naša Niva
Encyclopedia
Nasha Niva is one of the oldest Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

ian weekly newspapers founded in 1906 and re-established in 1991.

The current editor-in-chief is Andrej Skurko, who succeeded Andrej Dyńko
Andrej Dynko
Andrej Dyńko is a Belarusian journalist and chief editor of the oldest Belarusian weekly newspaper, Naša Niva, and one of the editors of the magazine Arche.He was arrested in the protests surrounding the 2006 Presidential Elections, spent ten days in Jail and has since published his prison...

.

1906-1915

The newspaper was founded in 1906 by members of the Belarusian Socialist Union (Hramada) in Vilna
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...

 (modern Vilnius) that was a centre of the Belarusian national movement at that time.

Nasha Niva was among the first newspapers in Belarusian language
Belarusian language
The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...

. It published news about Belarus and literary works by Belarusian authors. In 1915 the newspaper was closed down because of the World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. During the Soviet rule Nasha Niva was claimed to be “counter-revolutionary” and “capitalist” despite the fact that its founders and authors were mostly adherents of socialism.

Since 1991

In 1991 the newspaper was re-established in Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...

 by the editor-in-chief Siarhiej Dubaviec
Siarhiej Dubaviec
Siarhiej Dubaviec is a Belarusian journalist and writer.Graduated from the Belarusian State University journalism faculty....

.

Under the presidency of Alexander Lukashenko
Alexander Lukashenko
Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko has been serving as the President of Belarus since 20 July 1994. Before his career as a politician, Lukashenko worked as director of a state-owned agricultural farm. Under Lukashenko's rule, Belarus has come to be viewed as a state whose conduct is out of line...

 the newspaper was subjected to state pressure. At one point in the late 1990s there was an attempt to close down the newspaper because of its use of Taraškievica
Taraškievica
Taraškievica or Belarusian Classical Orthography is a variant of the orthography of the Belarusian language, based on the literary norm of the modern Belarusian language, the first normalization of which was made by Branisłaŭ Taraškievič in 1918, and was in official use in Belarus until the...

 orthography.

In October 2003, former Czech President Václav Havel
Václav Havel
Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...

 granted the cash portion of the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award to Nasha Niva editor Andrey Dynko. The Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award is given each year by the Prague Society for International Cooperation
Prague Society for International Cooperation
The Prague Society for International Cooperation is an organization dedicated to business, politics and academia in Central Europe. A rigorous agenda is achieved through transparent networking, off-the-record dialogues and numerous international functions in order to develop a new generation of...

 to an individual who has dedicated his or her life to public service with the stipulation that the financial portion of the award be passed to a gifted young person. "I pass this award to Mr. Dynko because we, who have benefited so much from international solidarity, must show solidarity ourselves," Havel said at the award ceremony in Prague. "'Nasha Niva' in Belarus is a symbol of independence on the one hand and an island of freedom on the other."

Since 2006 Nasha Niva was expelled from the media subscription system of Belarus (controlled by the state monopolist Belposhta) and has been distributed by enthusiasts until its re-inclusion into the subscription system in late 2008.

In April 2006 the ideology administration of Minsk executive committee ordered Nasha Niva to vacate their offices in an attempt to close the paper. The staff members sent letters of appeals to Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

 to apply to UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

for including the newspaper into the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

As of August 2009, Nasha Niva has a circulation of over 6,000 copies.

External links

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