Nasha Niva

(Our Field), a Byelorussian sociopolitical and literary illustrated newspaper published weekly in Vilnius between 1906 and 1915. Its editor and publisher was A. Vlasov, who was succeeded in 1914 by I. Lutsevich (Ia. Kupala).

Nasha niva was an openly published mass circulation newspaper with general democratic tendencies and was intended for a readership chiefly of peasants and provincial intellectuals. It opposed social and national oppression and defended the right of the Byelorussian people to an independent national and historical development. Nevertheless, the solutions that the newspaper proposed to fundamental sociopolitical problems were characterized by a liberal-reformist, even Enlightenment, approach.

As the only legally published newspaper in the Byelorussian language, Nasha niva was the center of Byelorussian literary life. Appearing in its pages were Ia. Kupala, Ia. Kolas, M. Bogdanovich, Z. Biadulia, T. Gartnyi, Sh. Iadvigin, and other Byelorussian writers.