"For partisan movement and labor merits": exactly 55 years ago, the Vitebsk region received the Order of Lenin
From the very first days of the occupation, popular resistance to the invaders unfolded in the Vitebsk region. In the Surazh district, the detachment of Batka Minay (Minay Filippovich Shmyrev), created in July 1941, was active. During the same period, the detachment of "Uncle Kostya" (Konstantin Sergeyevich Zaslonov), formed on the basis of a group operating in the Orsha underground, began to fight the enemy. Bright pages in the history of the Vitebsk underground were Vera Khoruzhaya and Efrosinya Zenkova, who were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (Khoruzhaya posthumously), Ivan Bekishev, Alexander Belokhvostikov, and others.
The liberation of the region began in the autumn of 1943 and continued in the summer of 1944 during Operation Bagration.
During the war years, Vitebsk, Polotsk, and Glubokoye suffered the greatest human losses. For example, the regional center was destroyed by more than 93 percent. All enterprises, public utilities, trade, education, healthcare, culture, and residential buildings lay in ruins. The examples of the restoration of individual enterprises testify to the strenuous work of workers and employees, their selflessness, and their desire to restore the region's industry as quickly as possible. For instance, after the city's liberation, skilled workers began to return to the "Znamya Industrializatsii" (Banner of Industrialization) factory. In the very first days, mechanical and carpentry workshops were equipped and began to operate. Thirty sewing machines suitable for operation were collected from the ruins and assembled; a custom tailoring workshop was temporarily equipped. A shop and a public canteen for workers, and a medical station began to operate. By the end of the 1950s, 4 industrial enterprises were operating in the Vitebsk district: a building materials complex, the "Znamya Industrializatsii" and "Krasny Oktyabr" (Red October) factories, and a grinding machine tool plant. In the 1960s, 25 factories and artels were already producing goods here.
In just two decades, many large modern enterprises have been built in the region. New cities have appeared on the map, becoming major industrial centers of Belarus: Novopolotsk and Novolukoml. Their emergence is associated with the start of the construction of the largest oil refinery in Europe, Novopolotsk (1958), and the Lukomlskaya GRES (1964).