International Parliamentary Conference “Historical Memory: The Great Victory Won by Unity”
On June 14-15, 2022, Minsk hosted the International Parliamentary Conference “Historical Memory: the Great Victory Won by Unity”, which was aimed to unite the efforts of the international community to protect the historical memory, to share experiences in the field of legislation to prevent the rehabilitation of Nazism and the glorification of Nazi criminals, and to strengthen cooperation in the CIS in countering falsification of the historical truth and memory about the events of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War.
The conference was attended by parliamentarians from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, representatives of the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly, the Parliamentary Assembly of Belarus and Russia, government bodies, scientific and expert communities.
The conference program included five thematic sections: “The Great Patriotic War in Modern Historiography”, “The Sacred Duty of the Living”, “Crimes without a Statute of Limitations”, “Historical Memory. The Connecting Thread of Generations”, “The Great Victory in the Public and Media Discourse”.
Representatives of the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus and the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus took an active part in the work of the sections and the plenary session of the conference. The Belarusian archivists presented two thematic exhibitions: June 14 – “Fiery Miles of the War” at the Central House of Officers of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus, June 15 – “Documentary Memory” at the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus. The exhibitions were based on the unique documents from the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus: handwritten partisan magazines, newspapers and leaflets, stories of the creation and activities of partisan detachments and brigades, award lists of “people’s avengers”, materials of the Belarusian Headquarters of the Partisan Movement as well as documentary evidence of the Nazi crimes against the civilian population of Belarus in the Great Patriotic War. The exhibitions aroused great interest among all participants of the conference.
