The State Archives of the Vitebsk Region has launched a virtual exhibition on the establishment of Soviet power in Western Belarus
According to Alesya Bogdanova, the leading archivist and author of the project, the exhibition includes memoirs of eight participants in the events, as well as protocols of the Vitebsk City Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus on the preparation for the celebration of the 10th and 11th anniversaries of the reunification of the Belarusian people into a single Belarusian Soviet state, and issues of the newspaper "Vitsiebski Rabochy" from 1947, 1949, 1950, and 1969, telling about the significance of the autumn of 1939.
However, the memoirs of the participants are of particular value and interest, of course.
They Created a Guard
Vladimir Kozlovsky was born in 1909. From 1933 to 1936, he was a political prisoner and was held in the Lukishki prison in Vilnius. After his release, he worked as a hired laborer at a fishing enterprise in Perebrodye (now Miory District). Since September 1939, he served as the chairman of the temporary rural peasant committee:
"After the liberation of Western Belarus by the Red Army, local activists, including myself, appeared in our territory, and we decided to create a local guard based on the former Polish police station to maintain public order in the town of Perebrodye and the surrounding villages.
A few days after the organization of the guard, which protected the property abandoned by some landowners, as well as maintained order in the villages and participated in the protection of activists, border guards – Soviet soldiers – arrived in the town of Perebrodye. Our people met them with great joy; all the people from the surrounding villages gathered for the meeting, carrying banners, red flags, and singing Russian songs. Then the commander of the Red Army suggested that we elect a temporary rural peasant committee, and here, in front of everyone, 7 members were elected. The "Internationale" was performed by the Perebrodye church choir, the soldiers saluted and left, and our committee began to distribute the territory of the rural district among the members for accounting and propaganda work among the population.
Then, at their volost meeting, all committee members discussed what needed to be done first. It was the end of September, children needed to be taught in schools, and there were neither Russian nor Belarusian textbooks. However, we decided that all schools would operate using Polish textbooks. The issue of sowing winter crops was acute, as some landowners had left, and their lands remained. A decision was made to inventory all their property. Meetings were held in all villages, and authorized representatives of Soviet power were elected. They assisted committee members in inventorying all abandoned property, as well as the property of landowners who were still living on their estates.
Later, at a meeting of the volost committee, all urgent issues were coordinated. There were 12 main ones, including the school issue, winter sowing, how to handle landowners' land and livestock, preparations for winter, forest distribution, taxation, and many other issues that arose from life itself. As the chairman of the temporary volost peasant committee, I traveled to the district executive committee in Braslav to present all these issues. At a meeting there, we were told to distribute the landowners' land to those in need, to provide horses to those without them, and to allocate livestock to the poor who did not have cows. All this work in our volost proceeded in an organized manner thanks to the extensive preparatory work of confiscating firearms from settlers, landowners, and other individuals, and the creation of a Soviet guard. Of course, not everyone was satisfied with Soviet power; there were those who organized attacks on committee members. Even among the committee members was Shimansky V.P., who wrote provocative denunciations against me and other honest activists who worked tirelessly and fearlessly.
Then, commissars were sent to us. They conducted purely propaganda work among the population, without interfering in our economic matters.
Interest in meetings
Ivan Vasilievich (born 1915), from October 1939 to March 1940, was the secretary of the Braslav District Committee of the LKSM(b):
«A meeting was held with Komsomol workers assigned to work in the Western regions by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus, P. K. Ponomarenko.
…The entire population, not just the youth, showed great interest and activity in the meetings and discussions, where many different questions were asked about the Soviet state system. About the Constitution, about collective farms, about public education, about public healthcare, about the attitude towards religion and the church, and many other everyday and political topics. It was interesting and engaging for all of us to work with people. Sometimes the meetings and discussions lasted for several hours.»
«Hello, comrades!»
Vasily Osenenko (born 1916), a native of the village of Lipniki, future Hero of Socialist Labor:
«On September 1, 1939, when the Polish-German war began, mobilization into the Polish army started from the first day. But I and my friends Evgeny Brodovich, Iosif Shurpik, and others were not called up for military service as unreliable. On September 3, Evgeny and I met and agreed to hide, because if we were not called up for the army, we would definitely be arrested and dealt with. This is what happened: on September 4, gendarmes came to our place, but since they didn't find me at home, they left a note asking me to appear at the gendarmerie in Postavy on September 5. But Brodovich and I left for a farmstead 18 kilometers away to his relatives and hid there in the forest, listening to a homemade radio.
On September 17, we heard a broadcast from the Soviet Union that the Red Army had crossed the Polish border and extended a fraternal hand to the Western Belarusians. We ran home with great joy to tell our comrades that liberation was coming to us. I arrived in my native village in the evening, just as the police had left, who demanded that the peasants deliver bread for the Polish army. The bread was already loaded onto carts. I told them that the Red Army was coming to liberate us and suggested turning the carts back home; everyone gladly agreed.
Our village is located three kilometers from Postavy, and in the evening we went to Postavy. People gathered from all the nearby villages. Gendarmes and police fled in the direction of Vilnius. We set up guards at the power station, post office, bridge, warehouses, and began to build an arch at the end of the street to welcome the Red Army.
On September 18, 1939, tanks entered the city in the morning. The first tank stopped in front of the arch, the hatch opened, a lieutenant appeared and said: "Hello, comrades!" We cried from these words, from joy, like children, rushed to the tank, began to hug, kiss the lieutenant and treat him with everything we had.
Joyful news
Gennady Demeshko (born 1918), a native of the village of Treskuny (now Miory district):
"...But real joy came on the morning of September 17, when my father and I saw the settler Valyansky near our house. He saw us and, taking off his hat, greeted us unusually politely: "Good day! The Bolsheviks have arrived." I couldn't sit at home from such news. I asked my brother for a bicycle and rode to Pyotr in Mastishcha. And together with him, we set off along the Miory – Disna road. And here we saw cavalrymen with red stars on their hats – our liberators.
The next day, Pyotr and I collected weapons from former Polish servants – settlers, to hand them over to the new government.
Under the new government, Pyotr became a teacher at the school, and I was elected secretary of the Lipatinsky rural council. Soon I received a Komsomol ticket, with which I went to serve in the Red Army in the autumn of 1940."
As reported by Vladimir Kokhanko, head of the department for the use and publication of documents of the State Archives of the Vitebsk Region, a new virtual exhibition will be posted on the "Archives of Belarus" website. Along with the film "Reunification," created on the basis of chronicles by the Belarusian State Archives of Film, Photo and Sound Documents, it will also be used during lectures, memory lessons, and meetings with the public. By the way, in the first half of the year, more than 40 events were held with educational institutions, most of which were related to the 80th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War.