BSAMLA: about receiving gratitude
On February 19, 2024, gratitude was sent to the Belarusian State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art from the Lida History and Art Museum for its active participation in the organization of the joint exhibition «The pumping itself came to your house…», dedicated to the 110th anniversary of the birth of Valentin Tavlay.
The opening of the exhibition took place on February 8, 2024 at the site of the Lida Historical and Art Museum with the participation of BSAMLA workers.
Valentin Pavlovich Tavlay (1914–1947) was born into the family of a railway worker. He graduated from a Polish school in Lida. He entered the Slonim Teachers’ Gymnasium, from where he was expelled in 1925 for refusing to enroll as a Pole. In 1927–1929 he studied at the Vilna Belarusian Gymnasium. He was arrested for underground Komsomol activities and was in Slonim and Grodno prisons in 1929–1930. From October 1930 he lived in the BSSR (worked as an instructor for the Komsomol district committee in Rechitsa, at the newspaper «Zvyazda», and studied at the newspaper department of the literary department of the BSU). From December 1932, he was sent to underground work in Western Belarus (member of the editorial board of the Communist Party of Western Belarus, one of the editors of the Belarusian Newspaper, etc.). On January 4, 1934, he was arrested, sentenced to 8 years in prison in the Grodno prison, sentenced to death on September 22, 1939 and released by Red Army soldiers. Worked for the Lida newspaper Uperad. Member of the Writers’ Union of Belarus since 1941. During the Great Patriotic War, he was a liaison officer of the partisan detachment of R. Katovsky, brigade named after F. Derzhinsky of the Baranovichi formation, head of the Novogrudok intelligence network of the Burevestnik special group. In 1943, together with his parents and younger sister, SD was arrested in Lida and miraculously escaped. In 1945–1947, V. Tavlay was one of the founders and deputy director of the Yanka Kupala Literary Museum. He was buried at the Military Cemetery in Minsk.
