Yakub Kolas is a nominal classic of Belarusian literature of the 20th century. I will say right away that I do not like Kolas' books - all the problems raised in them have long crumbled and withered along with the system that gave birth to it. Or even earlier. Or even it did not exist at all, this problematic.

In short - all Kolas' books are about peasants and about the village. Even when he wrote about the city, it still turned out to be a villager's book about the village. He did not know how to write about anything else and did not want to. Endless dull wooden huts, a gray and uninteresting life, homespun shirts and rotten potatoes, endless misfortunes of honest working people "fall under the yoke of the pans". For you to understand, it's about as if the entire history of the United States is reduced to the life of African-American ghettos. Then the endless partisans began, speaking in quotations from the reference book of the young Chekist.

For this, he received a bunch of titles and awards and died in a warm bed. And this at a time when Kafka and Joyce, Thomas Mann and Bertrand Russell were creating. When sparks fell from under the literary anvil, forging a new understanding of what a person is.

However, let's not talk about sad things. Be that as it may, Kolas still remains a prominent figure in the culture of Belarus, the central square of the capital and the street on which the house with my Minsk apartment stands are named after him. Let's just see how "dzyadzka Yakub" lived in the fifties.

03. Kolas House is located in Minsk, near the Academy of Sciences. In the early fifties, it was the outskirts of the city, and now it is the most that neither is the center - the city has grown strongly in an easterly direction. The house was built by the architect Georgy Zaborsky; the same one that designed many buildings in Minsk in the fifties. The house looks quite recognizable and interesting.

05. Walk around the house. To the left of the entrance there is a cellar - "lyadounya".

07. To paraphrase a well-known aphorism - "You can take your grandfather out of the village, but you can never take the village out of your grandfather."

08. Behind the fence you can see a simpler building, where the children and relatives of Yakub Kolas were moved after his death, making a museum out of his house. For some reason, it seems to me that they began to design and build this house during the life of Yakub, right in front of the window of his office - but more on that later.

09. On the reverse side, the Kolas House looks like this.

11. Let's look inside. The house begins with a hanger (I recalled the proverb about the theater), on which the original copper hooks are still preserved. Unfortunately, this is one of the few original details left in the house - especially on the first floor.

12. This is the view from the hallway. On both sides of the shooting point - two walk-through rooms. Directly - something like a former kitchen. Now in the Kolas house there is an exposition of the museum, made in the best Soviet traditions - to throw away everything real and leave the ideologically correct. There was no bathroom or kitchen left in the house - as you know, Soviet writers do not pee or eat, but only constantly think about the fate of the people, the world revolution, and write and write.

13. Here, for example, the door. Personally, it is much more interesting to me than the endless collections of works by Yakub Kolas, exhibited around. What was behind her? What did it look like real life in the house? I can look at the book in the store. Why did they throw out the old pen and screw on a Chinese gold-plated one, bought for $ 2 at the Household Goods on Logoisk Trakt?

14. Books under glass. On the right, by the way, is an excellent illustration in the traditions of the Belarusian book graphics, but still - books do not belong here. Bring back the Kolas kitchen, I want to see where he had breakfast every day.

15. Let's look for more original parts. Here, for example, is a stucco plinth. I don't know if he was here in the fifties.

16. The door frame is definitely original. Maybe a little tinted during the renovation.

17. Let's go to the second floor, there are more interesting original pieces left. Ladder. Under the ceiling - a typical lamp of the fifties (I have the same one at home, left from the previous owners of the apartment), to the right - the doors to the large balcony-terrace, straight ahead - the doors to the office and Kolas's bedroom (we'll look there), to the left - the doors to the front part of the house. Let's go there.

18. On the second floor, the original parquet of the fifties has been preserved. Yes, just like that - not very high quality, uneven. The joints between the rooms "got" from the remains. When walking, the parquet creaks. By the way, on the ground floor, under the modern gray carpeting, the same parquet was left - old and creaky.

19. Living room. The original furniture remained here - Kolas brought it, it seems, from somewhere in the Baltic states, and already at that time it was antiques. The furniture, in my opinion, is rather tasteless.

20. Despite the rather presentable appearance, the house smells of a poor village - the smell of dampness and mice. I don't know why.

21. Under the ceiling in the living room - a lurid socket.

22. TV. I don't know if Kolas watched it. At present, only one frame remains from the original TV set of the fifties, inside of which there is a horizontal "cube" - already also old.

24. Modern double-glazed windows were inserted into the old window frames. It's good, they left the pens.

25. Dining room on the second floor. Reminds me of a typical Minsk apartment of the fifties.

26. The furniture here is nicer than in the living room.

28. Door handle. This real life- a roller with which the door was closed. Most often, it fell inward - and it was necessary to knock out an elastic band on the door frame so that the door closes tightly. The screws are also very remarkable - they often did not twist, but were hammered - once and for all.

30. Typewriter. This is still a pre-revolutionary model, to which the Belarusian letter "u is not warehouse" is added. An eloquent text was typed on paper - about the wise policy of the Communist Party, the Soviet people, blah blah blah. And this at a time when Elias Canetti... well, let's not talk about sad things.

24. Bookcase. I will not comment on the choice of the writer's books.

24. Clock on a bookcase. In general, there are quite a few clocks and several barometers left in the room - this produces a rather strange and mysterious impression. And I think I figured out this riddle. Sitting in the office of his new house and now and then looking at the clock, so quickly counting the time, the already very elderly Yakub Kolas realized that this house was not built for him at all - but for the future museum named after him. In which ideologically faithful guides will tell about his life.

25. I know how Kolas felt, every day sitting down at new table working office. Books are no longer expected from him, poems are not expected; there is a kind of ban on transformations - he must remain a "Belarusian writer about the village." Nothing more needs to be written.

26. Life is lived. You live in a museum of your own caution, spinelessness, loyalty. Those who were different are lying in the ground with their heads laid out. You survived, you're better than them. Really, Jacob? asks the owl-press-weight.

27. I do not know what Kolas answered his conscience.

28. The last door remains. The door to the writer's bedroom is a small walk-through room from the office. It leaves an amazing impression - a small room lurks in the farthest corner of a huge house. The ceiling is lower than in the rest of the house. In the corner is a small, almost teenage bed. At the foot of the bed is the door to the lavatory, to the left of the door is the stove.

Everything is very reminiscent of a small room in a village house.

29. A portrait of a son and a barometer hang on the wall. It seems to me that it was in this room that Kolas felt comfortable. He recalled the days of "Nasha Niva" - when there was still neither the USSR, nor titles and regalia, nor the daily need to write about successes at the sowing field, nor the nervous duty to answer daily calls from a "benevolent organization."

He reminisced about life without the golden cage.

30. I woke up, looked at the ceiling and thought, thought.

30. And on the chair is the writer's briefcase...

Over the last four years of his life in the new house, Yakub Kolas did not write a single new book.

Yakub Kolas is a nominal classic of Belarusian literature of the 20th century. I will say right away that I do not like Kolas' books - all the problems raised in them have long crumbled and withered along with the system that gave birth to it. Or even earlier. Or even it did not exist at all, this problematic.

In short - all Kolas' books are about peasants and about the village. Even when he wrote about the city, it still turned out to be a villager's book about the village. He did not know how to write about anything else and did not want to. Endless dull wooden huts, a gray and uninteresting life, homespun shirts and rotten potatoes, endless misfortunes of honest working people "fall under the yoke of the pans". For you to understand, it's about as if the entire history of the United States is reduced to the life of African-American ghettos. Then the endless partisans began, speaking in quotations from the reference book of the young Chekist.

For this, he received a bunch of titles and awards and died in a warm bed. And this at a time when Kafka and Joyce, Thomas Mann and Bertrand Russell were creating. When sparks fell from under the literary anvil, forging a new understanding of what a person is.

However, let's not talk about sad things. Be that as it may, Kolas still remains a prominent figure in the culture of Belarus, the central square of the capital and the street on which the house with my Minsk apartment stands are named after him. Let's just see how "dzyadzka Yakub" lived in the fifties.

03. Kolas House is located in Minsk, near the Academy of Sciences. In the early fifties, it was the outskirts of the city, and now it is the most that neither is the center - the city has grown strongly in an easterly direction. The house was built by the architect Georgy Zaborsky; the same one that designed many buildings in . The house looks quite recognizable and interesting.

05. Walk around the house. To the left of the entrance there is a cellar - "lyadounya".

07. To paraphrase a well-known aphorism - "You can take your grandfather out of the village, but you can never take the village out of your grandfather."

08. Behind the fence you can see a simpler building, where the children and relatives of Yakub Kolas were moved after his death, making a museum out of his house. For some reason, it seems to me that they began to design and build this house during the life of Yakub, right in front of the window of his office - but more on that later.

09. On the reverse side, the Kolas House looks like this.

11. Let's look inside. The house begins with a hanger (I recalled the proverb about the theater), on which the original copper hooks are still preserved. Unfortunately, this is one of the few original details left in the house - especially on the first floor.

12. This is the view from the hallway. On both sides of the shooting point - two walk-through rooms. Directly - something like a former kitchen. Now in the Kolas house there is an exposition of the museum, made in the best Soviet traditions - to throw away everything real and leave the ideologically correct. There was no bathroom or kitchen left in the house - as you know, Soviet writers do not pee or eat, but only constantly think about the fate of the people, the world revolution, and write and write.

13. Here, for example, the door. Personally, it is much more interesting to me than the endless collections of works by Yakub Kolas, exhibited around. What was behind her? What did real life look like in the house? I can look at the book in the store. Why did they throw out the old pen and screw on a Chinese gold-plated one, bought for $ 2 at the Household Goods on Logoisk Trakt?

14. Books under glass. On the right, by the way, is an excellent illustration in the traditions of Belarusian book graphics, but still, books do not belong here. Bring back the Kolas kitchen, I want to see where he had breakfast every day.

15. Let's look for more original parts. Here, for example, is a stucco plinth. I don't know if he was here in the fifties.

16. The door frame is definitely original. Maybe a little tinted during the renovation.

17. Let's go to the second floor, there are more interesting original pieces left. Ladder. Under the ceiling - a typical lamp of the fifties (I have the same one at home, left from the previous owners of the apartment), to the right - the doors to the large balcony-terrace, straight ahead - the doors to the office and Kolas's bedroom (we'll look there), to the left - the doors to the front part of the house. Let's go there.

18. On the second floor, the original parquet of the fifties has been preserved. Yes, just like that - not very high quality, uneven. The joints between the rooms "got" from the remains. When walking, the parquet creaks. By the way, on the ground floor, under the modern gray carpeting, the same parquet was left - old and creaky.

19. Living room. The original furniture remained here - Kolas brought it, it seems, from somewhere in the Baltic states, and already at that time it was antiques. The furniture, in my opinion, is rather tasteless.

20. Despite the rather presentable appearance, the house smells of a poor village - the smell of dampness and mice. I don't know why.

21. Under the ceiling in the living room - a lurid socket.

22. TV. I don't know if Kolas watched it. At present, only one frame remains from the original TV set of the fifties, inside of which there is a horizontal "cube" - already also old.

24. Modern double-glazed windows were inserted into the old window frames. It's good, they left the pens.

25. Dining room on the second floor. Reminds me of a typical Minsk apartment of the fifties.

26. The furniture here is nicer than in the living room.

28. Door handle. This is real life - a video with which the door was closed. Most often, it fell inward - and it was necessary to knock out an elastic band on the door frame so that the door closes tightly. The screws are also very remarkable - they often did not twist, but were hammered - once and for all.

30. Typewriter. This is still a pre-revolutionary model, to which the Belarusian letter "u is not warehouse" is added. An eloquent text was typed on paper - about the wise policy of the Communist Party, the Soviet people, blah blah blah. And this at a time when Elias Canetti... well, let's not talk about sad things.

24. Bookcase. I will not comment on the choice of the writer's books.

24. Clock on a bookcase. In general, there are quite a few clocks and several barometers left in the room - this produces a rather strange and mysterious impression. And I think I figured out this riddle. Sitting in the office of his new house and now and then looking at the clock, so quickly counting the time, the already very elderly Yakub Kolas realized that this house was not built for him at all - but for the future museum named after him. In which ideologically faithful guides will tell about his life.

25. I know what Kolas felt when he sat down at a new desk in his office every day. Books are no longer expected from him, poems are not expected; there is a kind of ban on transformations - he must remain a "Belarusian writer about the village." Nothing more needs to be written.

26. Life is lived. You live in a museum of your own caution, spinelessness, loyalty. Those who were different are lying in the ground with their heads laid out. You survived, you're better than them. Really, Jacob? asks the owl-press-weight.

27. I do not know what Kolas answered his conscience.

28. The last door remains. The door to the writer's bedroom is a small walk-through room from the office. It leaves an amazing impression - a small room lurks in the farthest corner of a huge house. The ceiling is lower than in the rest of the house. In the corner is a small, almost teenage bed. At the foot of the bed is the door to the lavatory, to the left of the door is the stove.

Everything is very reminiscent of a small room in a village house.

29. A portrait of a son and a barometer hang on the wall. It seems to me that it was in this room that Kolas felt comfortable. He recalled the days of "Nasha Niva" - when there was still neither the USSR, nor titles and regalia, nor the daily need to write about successes at the sowing field, nor the nervous duty to answer daily calls from a "benevolent organization."

He reminisced about life without the golden cage.

30. I woke up, looked at the ceiling and thought, thought.

30. And on the chair is the writer's briefcase...

Over the last four years of his life in the new house, Yakub Kolas did not write a single new book.

It is cozy in the house-museum of Yakub Kolas: it seems that footsteps on the stairs are about to sound, the armchair in the office will move away by itself, the sofa springs will bend, the typewriter will chirp. The spirit of the poet hovers here definitely. Tourists are slowly wandering through the halls, and the SB correspondent, together with the director of the State Literary and Memorial Museum of Yakub Kolas Zinaida Komarovskaya, is looking at the tasks for the future: two important dates are coming in 2018 - the 95th anniversary of the creation of the poem "New Land" and 100 years of lyrical epic poem "Simon-music".

The current staff of the museum is small, but it is amazing what work is carried out by only 5 researchers. The poet had close ties with Vilnius - today cooperation has been established with Lithuanian colleagues from the Literary Museum of A.S. Pushkin, a joint walking tour route “Kolas and Vilnius” has been developed along the places described in the poem “New Land” in the sections “Dzyadzka ў Vilni” , "Castle Gara" and "Pa Darose ў Vilnius". The Pushkin Literary Museum plans to create a separate exposition dedicated to Kolas. Its funds contain items from the house of Kamensky (relatives of the writer's wife): a table, a bed, a wall clock, an icon in a silver setting, a candlestick engraved in 1910.

In 2017, when the 135th anniversary of the classic was celebrated, in Vilnius, at the initiative of our embassy in Lithuania, a memorial plaque was installed on the house where Yakub Kolas worked for the Nasha Niva newspaper. The writer is not forgotten in Uzbekistan, where he lived in evacuation in 1942-1943: in Tashkent, a memorial plaque was restored on his house and a bas-relief by sculptor Marina Borodina was installed. And poets from St. Petersburg for the first time translated the entire “Symon-music” into Russian and published it in Northern Palmyra.

In a word, there is something to be proud of and there are long-established plans, which the museum is starting to implement in the new year, preparing to celebrate two significant dates at once. But the most serious problem and the biggest pain of Zinaida Komarovskaya for all the decades of work is the Lastok estate, part of the Nikolaevshchina branch, which unites 4 former foresters on the Radziwill lands, where the poet's parents lived. Lastok is a unique corner where a house built in 1890 has been preserved, and the only one of all the estates included in the branch, which requires serious restoration and conservation. The director does not hide sadness:

Zinaida Komarovskaya.

12 km from the city, forest road - places really remote from civilization. But... on 2 hectares of land next to Lastok, an agroestate could well appear, or even better - a writer's house like those that can be found in the corners of Poland or Estonia: a place where authors from all over the world come all year round to meet, get acquainted , work, and at the same time translate the Belarusian classic into their own languages ​​- so that the word of Kolas would continue to spread around the world.

Stolbtsovshchina pleases not only with natural beauties and historical details. In Akinchitsy, Albuti, Smolny and Lastok, an art-memorial complex “Way of Kolas” was created: wooden sculptures of folk craftsmen, rare in expressiveness, based on the works of Yakub Kolas, unite all the museums of the branch.

- We would like more visitors,- Zinaida Komarovskaya sincerely worries. - Many years ago, they considered the excursion route Minsk - Nesvizh - Mir, and I raised this issue: you can call in Akinchitsy, it's only 2 km from Stolbtsy. It is necessary to show not only castles, it is necessary to see the life and life of those who served the Radziwills. However, this topic has been omitted. We have developed both cycling and skiing routes, and walking tours, but there are not as many guests as we would like.

But the Kolas places could become a nature reserve, no less serious and visited than the Russian Pushkinogorye. Is it really such a great difficulty to slightly correct popular tourist routes?

The Yakub Kolas Literary Memorial Museum is a museum whose exposition is dedicated to the life and work of the outstanding Belarusian poet, prose writer, playwright, publicist and teacher Yakub Kolas (Konstantin Mikhailovich Mickiewicz, 1982-1956).

About the museum

The Yakub Kolas Museum was founded in 1956 and opened to the public in 1959. The museum is located in the house where he spent last years of his life, the national poet of Belarus Yakub Kolas. Double decker wooden house and the garden adjacent to it with an area of ​​0.4 hectares are located on the territory of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus.
The museum exposition is located in 10 halls, two of which (a study and a bedroom) contain the original interior of the Kolas house. Among the exhibits of the museum are personal items, historical documents and photographs, manuscripts and books.

Information for tourists

Working hours: Monday - Saturday from 10.00 to 17.30; Sunday is a day off. The cash desk is open from 10.00 to 17.00.
Ticket price: for adults - 20 thousand Belarusian rubles, for students - 14 thousand Belarusian rubles, for children - 10 thousand Belarusian rubles; for the privileged category of citizens, admission is free.
On the last Saturday of each month, admission to the museum is free for everyone.
Telephone: + 375 17 284 17 02
How to get there: walk from the metro station "Academy of Sciences". The museum is located behind the main building of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus.
Official site: www.yakubkolas.by

Museum of Yakub Kolas in Minsk open to the public since 1959, before that it was the house of Kolas, where he lived for the last 11 years of his life. Yakub Kolas (real name Konstantin Mikhailovich Mitskevich) is a famous writer, poet, public figure and scientist. During his lifetime, the house at 5 Akademicheskaya Street was a kind of spiritual center of the capital, in which a friendly and creative atmosphere reigned. Famous writers, artists, artists, scientists, political and civil figures were frequent guests of Kolas.

State Literary and Memorial Museum of Yakub Kolas includes the writer's house and the territory adjacent to the house, including trees planted by Kolasam himself.

On the first floor at home there are expositions telling about life and creative way Yakub Kolas, about his social and scientific activities. On the second floor, a bedroom, a study, a living room and a dining room have been preserved in the form they were during the life of the poet. In his personal account, since the day of the writer's death, his things have not yet been touched. Even the unfinished letter to Kolas has been lying on the desktop for 50 years. While writing this letter, Yakub Kolas died of a heart attack on August 13, 1956.

Yakub Kolas is rightly considered the founder of national prose, he author of poetic masterpieces - the poems "New Earth" and "Simon-Music". This man made an invaluable contribution to the Belarusian culture and literature, he opened the Belarusian written word to other countries of the world and sang the Belarusian people.

The works of Yakub Kolas have been repeatedly translated into foreign languages, many of his novels and stories were staged on the stages of theaters, and some were even filmed. Since 1972, the Yakub Kolas State Prize has been awarded every two years for the best prose and literary works. Libraries, squares, streets of cities and villages of Belarus are named after him. In many places there are monuments and memorial plaques to the people's poet.

The Yakub Kolas Museum in Minsk conducts general, thematic excursions and lectures. Among them: "Great Patriotic War in the fate of Yakub Kolas”, “Little-known facts of the biography of Yakub Kolas”, “The poem “New Earth”: the history of the work, images and prototypes”, “Yakub Kolas during the years of imprisonment: unknown facts(on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the liberation of Yakub Kolas from Pishchalovsky Castle), etc. In addition, the museum holds events for preschoolers and younger children school age as well as various cultural and educational events. The most famous of them are "Kolasoviny" is a literary and musical holiday dedicated to the poet's birthday.

A visit to the Yakub Kolas Museum in Minsk contributes not only to a close acquaintance with the activities of the national poet, Belarusian literature and art, but also to the spiritual uplift of tourists who prefer holidays in Belarus. Many literary excursions in Belarus, educational tours in Belarus and weekend tours in Belarus include a visit to the Yakub Kolas Museum in Minsk.