Documentary exhibition «Everything for a subbotnik!»

Published: April 20, 2023

On April 20, 2023, the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus opened a photo-documentary exhibition prepared by the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus and timed to coincide with the republican subbotnik.

The first subbotnik took place on April 12, 1919. On their day off, 15 workers of the Moscow-Sorting Depot of the Moscow-Kazan Railway decided to volunteer to work. They repaired three steam locomotives. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had a hand in popularizing Subbotniks. The leader of the world proletariat called the voluntary work of the railroad workers a great initiative.
In Minsk, the first subbotniks began to be organized in the summer of 1920. Initially, no specific dates were set for labor exploits – everything happened chaotically, according to the decision of the work collectives. After Lenin’s death, the All-Union Subbotnik, which took place in all the republics of the USSR, was timed to coincide with April 22, the leader’s birthday. The movement flourished in the 1930s.

In addition to the traditional April subbotniks after the Great Patriotic War, residents of the liberated capital voluntarily participated in the restoration of the city, which lay in ruins. The first took place on July 9, 1944. About 25 thousand people came out to clear the rubble.
The venue, the scope of work were determined in advance, and inventory was prepared. The effectiveness of organized subbotniks turned out to be much higher. For a few more years, Minsk residents voluntarily cleared the rubble, filled in the pits, and collected the surviving bricks.

On April 22, 2023, a republican clean-up day will be held in Belarus. Having long replenished the treasury of traditions of modern Belarus, it will continue the glorious historical chronicle of creation, rooted in the distant past and predetermined in many respects our peaceful and comfortable life today.

The exhibition project, timed to coincide with the republican subbotnik, presents documents from the archive fund «Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus». This is the information of Department of Organizational and Party Work of the Central Committee of the CPB I. Yakushev to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPB P.M. Masherov on the participation of the workers of Belarus in the communist subbotnik of April 21, 1973, Resolution No. 95 of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus and the Council of Ministers of the Byelorussian SSR on the use of manufactured products and earned money on the day of the subbotnik dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the birth of V.I. Lenin, to eliminate the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant dated April 18, 1990. All visitors to the exhibition were of great interest to the preserved Regulations on subbotniks of the Borisov Committee of the CPB dated January 10, 1921, protocol No. 2 of the meeting of the Bureau of Subbotniks dated December 27, 1920.

The exhibition presents for the first time editions of the newspaper collection of the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus: «Zvezda» dated April 22, 1974, «Savetskaya Belarus» dated April 22, 1977.

The head of the department of the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus M.A. Starostenko introduced the employees of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus and the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus to the exhibition.