Professor Andrei Kaliada is dismissed from Belarusian Academy of Arts for political reasons
Professor Andrei Kaliada has been dismissed from the Belarusian Academy of Arts because of his collaboration with Belarus Free Theatre and literary translations.
Professor is known in Belarus as a leading voice coach, whose text-books are popular among some generations of students, and as a prominent translator into Belarusian of works by Dostoevsky, Bunin. Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak. Andrei Kaliada published 26 books and there more are in the process of preparation – translations of selected prose by Ivan Bunin, a collection of three novels by Nobel Prize winners and a collected book of Belarusian and British drama.
Being a provost of the Belarusian Academy of Arts on academic affaires, Kaliada gained that 65% of courses were read in Belarusian in 1994. When the current president came to power and Russification began, Kaliada left his post of provost and started teaching elocution in Belarusian.
In October professor Kaliada was informed a contract with him wouldn’t be extended, though he was reading two courses he should have been finished, logically. The administration was unsatisfied with him because of the translations and collaboration with the Free Theatre, headed by his daughter Natallia and son-in-law Mikalai Khalezin. A collection of plays by young Belarusian playwrights Generation Jeans translated by Andrei Kalyada reach the end of rector Rychard Smolski’s tether. The rector said in warm blood ‘Kaliada’s son-in-law and daughter are a shame for the country, and professor Kalyada is a shame for the Academy of Arts’.
Commenting on his dismissal from Belarusian Academy of Arts, Andrei Kaliada said: ‘I expected it to happen any moment because the academy has turned into an establishment that is not worth this sonorous title. Academic process is a hostage of ideological dogmas, dictated from above.’ The first step towards dismissal was deprival of bonuses for academic titles. This measure is used to those who don’t agree to work according to ideological clichés.
'Bonuses for academic titles are not provided by law today, but a right of a university to lead personnel in a string, depriving people of means of living. It has become common to speak about Russification of pedagogical process,’ Andrei Kaliada said.
