Opening of the interactive exhibition «Partisans of Belarus» in the National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus

On April 20, 2023, the National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus (Belstat) hosted the opening of the interactive exhibition «Partisans of Belarus», organized by the authors of the Internet project of the same name – the Publishing House «Belarus Today» and the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus.

Irina Viktorovna Medvedeva, Chairman of the National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus, Elena Aleksandrovna Stukanova, Deputy Director of the National Archives, and Dmitry Aleksandrovich Zhuk, Director and Editor-in-Chief of the Belarus Segodnya publishing house, addressed the audience at the grand opening of the exhibition with a welcoming speech.

Deputy Director of the National Archives Elena Stukanova noted in her speech that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were able to keep documentary evidence of those times behind them.

«This is incredible, because personnel records, characteristics, award sheets, and other documents were created often in harsh forest conditions, in dugouts, by candlelight. Add to this the frequent fascist punitive operations, blockades. But they were able not only to create and preserve, but also to transfer to us invaluable documents, thanks to which we now have a factual basis showing what was on our earth many years ago. Previously, documents were closed, today everyone can come to the National Archives and touch the priceless past,» Elena Stukanova said.

Thanks to ,the partizany.by portal some Belstat employees received interesting information about their relatives – partisans and told about it during the presentation. For example, the head of the Main Directorate for Coordination and Development of the Statistical System, Alla Bilenko, found information about her husband’s grandmother, Borshchevskaya Anna Nikolaevna, who, along with her entire family, was in the Pobeda partisan detachment in the Cherven district of the Minsk region.

«Anna Nikolaevna performed duties in the economic department, helped the detachment in the assembly of explosives. Subsequently, she was transferred to the combat platoon of the company, where she continued to heroically liberate her native land from the invaders. The third generation of our family bears the memory of the hardships of that time. History must be preserved. We have no right to forget, the world must remember,» Alla Bilenko emphasized.

Inna Konoshonok, Head of the Main Department for Statistics of the Living Standards of the Population and Household Surveys, said:
“It was very unexpected and at the same time pleasant to find information about my paternal grandfather Aniskevich Ivan Ivanovich – he was just an ordinary partisan. I saw his personal sheet of partisan personnel, learned the exact information about when he was drafted into the Red Army, when he arrived in the partisan detachment. In his combat characteristics it is written «ruthlessly fought against the German invaders.» It is very important that information about the partisan movement has become available to everyone. And if before my grandfather’s partisan life was only a family history, family memories, now, thanks to this unique project, it has become a part of the history of our country,” said Inna Konoshonok.

The exhibition presents documents on the partisan and underground movement on the territory of Belarus during the Great Patriotic War from the funds of the National Archives and the Belarusian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents. In addition, a separate section of the exhibition is devoted to materials about heroic ancestors from family archives – these are photographs, documents with which any person has the opportunity to supplement the information presented on the portal.