Dear readers!

The editorial board of web-magazine “Culture. Nation” sincerely wishes you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We wish you and your families happiness, health, prosperity, and good mood!

Let this year will be successful, calm and dignified!

Our magazine is 5 years old. Yes, it was founded in December 2012 and it has since come out regularly, every three months, 4 issues per year. Now you are holding in your hands the 20th issue of the magazine. Over the past five years, the magazine published the original materials of 29 authors. In total, 119 original articles were published. The total volume of the magazine was about 1,400 pages, i.e., on average, each issue includes about 70 pages.

The magazine “Culture. Nation” is located on our website www.sakavik.net, where during five years we have placed 936 materials from other sites, magazines and newspapers. Currently, in the extremely informative time you may find quite a lot of Belarusian sites. Nevertheless, we believe that we also find an information space and our own audience. In less than five years, our website and magazine were visited by more than 16,600 readers (with more than 30,700 views). We are proud to say – most readers come from Belarus (56.2%).

Traditionally, the magazine includes “the Strategy of Development of the Belarusian Nation” and begins with it. As we already reported, at the 7th Congress of Belarusians of the World, organized by the Association of Belarusians of the World “Batskaushchyna” (Minsk, July 15-16, 2017), the text of the “Strategy” has been circulated to the delegates of the Congress; in the final general resolution the Congress urged the Belarusian authorities to take into account the decisions made “for the development of the state’s national development strategy and the strengthening of independence in terms of changed geopolitical challenges.”

At the recent congress of the Belarusian Language Society (TBM) at the end of October 2017, the texts of the “Strategy” were distributed to the delegates and also transferred to the district organizations of the TBM. As always, we invite our readers to send their comments and suggestions to improve the content of the “Strategy” at: chasopis.sakavik@hotmail.com . Editors ask organizations, who basically agree with the provisions of the Strategy, to join the implementation of its tasks.

 Me, editor, wrote two articles. One of them concerns the further development of the theme of the Belarusian-Ukrainian or Western-Ruthen civilization, and the second one tells the story of a conscious revolt for an independent Belarus (Slutsk defence action).

As always we are very pleased with the materials provided by Siargey Paniznik. This time, he sent an article “See into the sun’ eyes” dedicated to the 135th anniversary of our poets Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas, a reflection of cultural events related to their names which took place in Latvia in the interwar period. A significant role in the organization of these events played schools and institutions that were created and patronized by the Belarusian statesman Kanstantin Ezavitau and by other conscious Belarusians who lived at that time in Latvia. Believe it! The support from Latvia at that time for Belaruskasc was quite as important as the support from abroad now!

I have got the pleasant news from my small homeland, from Jazep Kwach. Recently, he published three books, “Padzisnenskiya couplets (prypeuki)”, “I love you”, and Kwachy Kwachami”. We include the author’ forewords to these books in the 20^th issue. We publish the texts of those books as well at our website www.sakavik.net in the “Literature” section. I believe that those publications will not leave you without any emotions.

At the conclusion, we publish a letter to the members of the Belarusian Institute of Science and Arts in Canada (BINIM), in which Dr. P. Murzionak, the President of the Institute, presents his vision of BINIM prospects for the near future; we also give a statistical information about Belarusians in Canada, based on the last Census-2016, and the summary of the conferences, seminars, symposia, held in Ottawa in October-November 2017.

At the end of the magazine the most important calendar dates for 2017 are placed.

Wishing you pleasant reading.

The magazine Founder and Editor,

Piotra Murzionak

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