Letters from Zaprudnik

Zaprudnik's collection dates from 1943 to 2018. The bulk is between the 1970s and 2000s. Jan Zaprudnik gave a part of his archive to the Belaruski Dziarzhaŭny Arkhiŭ-Muzei Litaratury I Mastatstva (Belarusian State Archive for Literature and Arts). The papers available at Rutgers primarily document Zaprudnik's career as a journalist, historian, and political activist in exile. His other activities, such as participation in the local community's life and writing poetry, are also documented. The documents are mostly in Belarusian. Several folders, especially dealing with Belarus-US relations and participation in local activities in New Jersey are predominantly in English. There are also selected documents in French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian in a collection. Isolated issues of newspapers in Polesian microlanguage are also available.

Dr. Zaprudnik's collection includes correspondence, agendas and minutes of business and political meetings, published and unpublished articles, talks he delivered, scripts of the Radio Free Europe\Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) programs he prepared as a journalist and editor, issues of newspapers and journals, leaflets, reports, travelogues, interviews, memoirs, poems, and musical scores. Greeting cards, invitations, expressions of sympathy are included as well. Zaprudnik's collection is organized chronologically and divided into nine series largely following his life trajectory. Three of them are divided into thematical sub-series, folders in which are also arranged chronologically.

The first series, Jan Zaprudnik and Belarusian Emigrant Community in Europe (1939-2002), includes the documents from the early steps of Zaprudnik's emigration. The second series, Jan Zaprudnik in the United States (1953-2018), consists of the documents he produced during his life in the US. The third series, Belarusian Emigrant Community in North America (1944-2018), describes various aspects of Belarusian community's life including religion, academic studies of Belarus, Belarusian emigration organization's activity, politics, and community's relations with the US political, actors. It also documents Belarusian community's cultural events. The fourth series, Belarusian Community Worldwide (1944-2016), shows the relations between Zaprudnik and Belarusian emigration in other countries, such as Australia, Canada, and Great Britain. It also contains several letters and articles created by Belarusian emigrants outside their own country. The fifth series, Jan Zaprudnik's letters (1948-2018), covers his extensive epistolary legacy. The sixth series, Belarusian newspapers (1950-2007), consists of various issues of newspapers published both in Belarus and abroad, mostly unofficial and self-published. The seventh series, Belarusian Politics (1977-2004), documents political process in Belarus after it became an independent state in 1991 and Zaprudnik's participation in it. The eighth series, Miscellanea (1948-2018), includes miscellaneous sources documenting his life, the life of his wife, Nadzeia Kudasava-Zaprudnik, several non-written sources such as pictures, invitation cards, and musical texts. The ninth series, The Books of Jan Zaprudnik (1944-2013), consists of several books and pamphlets in Belarusian and English.

Several letters and memoranda from the collection are hard to read. Some items like theater posters, the original of Dvanatstsatka (The Twelve)'s manifesto, several IDs and newspapers from the time of Nazi-occupied Belarus, originals of the verses, etc. have an intrinsic value as well.