The «Merchant and the Poet» – 50th Anniversary

15 may 2026

Interesting

The «Merchant and the Poet» is a significant work in the literary career of the Belarusian writer Ivan Shamyakin and in Belarusian prose of the 1970s as a whole. The writer Yan Skrigan described the novella as the most striking work in the literature on the Minsk underground. Through the fates of ordinary people, the author revealed the nationwide nature of the struggle against the Nazi invaders during the Great Patriotic War.

I. Shamyakin’s work was, in essence, based on a real event. The writer came across a notebook of poems brought to the Writers» Union by a woman. During the Great Patriotic War, her aunt had ransomed a sick young man from German captivity. He became the prototype for Ales Shpak in the novel. The prototype for the poet»s saviour was Olga, a market trader known throughout the Komarovo market – «a beauty, a merry soul, a laugh-a-minute». She inspired the writer to write A Tale of a Market Trader and Underground Activist.

I. Shamyakin had been interested in the subject of the Minsk underground since the post-war period. He wanted to tell the truth about Ivan Kovalev, the organiser of the underground movement who had been captured by the Germans. For a long time, this heroic underground fighter was regarded as a traitor, and it was not until 1957 that the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus exonerated him. In the novella, Ivan Kovalev – the prototype for the underground fighter Evsey – is a secondary but important character of the plot.

The story «Merchant and the Poet was published in the magazine «Plamya» (1976). In 1977, a Russian translation of the work appeared in print in Moscow in the popular publications of the time: the magazines «Molodaya Gvardiya» and «Roman-Gazeta». Based on the novella «The Shopgirl and the Poet», I. Shamyakin wrote the screenplay for the film of the same name. It was directed by Samson Samsonov at the Mosfilm studio in 1978.

Based on the materials from the National Library of Belarus

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Photo: Zlara Lukashevich