Paznyak: “I blacked out, when the white-red-white flag was approved”
On September 19, 1991, parliamentarians were deciding on the new official name of this country and the national symbols. The then leader of the Belarusian Popular Front Zyanon Paznyak told the European Radio for Belarus that when one or two votes were lacking, he personally asked a Communist deputy to back up the new symbols.
“The Communist majority was against. They even didn’t want to rename the country but to leave the Soviet name of BSSR. It was a very nervous and hard struggle. The session lasted for the whole day. We had to make numerous breaks, vote several times, negotiate and make amendments. One or two votes would always be lacking. I recall coming to a communist who was part of the veterans’ faction that would always vote against. I grabbed his hand and asked: “Please vote for the flag and the emblem for the sake of our future. I am asking you as a Belarusian to a Belarusian. Eventually, he voted in favor,” he said.
Paznyak confessed that when he saw the winning vote result, he blacked out for the first time in his life when his feelings overwhelmed.
“When we came out of the building, it was already dark. But people were remaining on the square. They were singing, crying and hugging each other…I remember Piotr Sadouski singing songs into a microphone,” he recalls.
Stanislau Shushkevich, the then speaker of the parliament and the head of the state, recalls that Uladzimir Platonau and Georgi Tarazevich were very helpful in pushing the new flag and emblem through.
“We were able to make it thanks to a decent position of the then chairman of the National Academy of Sciences Uladzimir Platonau and Georgi Tarazevih, a man from the communist party nomenclature which opposed the new symbols. These two people spoke out in support of the new symbols, thus making it possible to approve it,” Shushkevich said.
Immediately after the Law on State Symbols was approved, a white-red-white flag that had been earlier brought in by the deputies from the Belarusian Popular Front, emerged over the House of the Government.
The European Radio for Belarus decided to find the man who was hanging the new symbols of the independent Belarus. Alexander Antsipenka, the then chief of the secretariat of the Supreme Council personally ordered to raise the flag, but does not remember the names of those who did it. Antsipenka said the flag was raised several minutes after the law was passed.
The old green-red flag with the Communist sickle and hammer was carefully removed and stored somewhere, according to Antsipenka. In 1995, the national symbols were changed again back to the green-and-red Soviet colors.
