Capturing Memory and Unity: Staff of the Belarusian State Archive of Film, Photo, and Sound Documents at a Rally on Dzerzhinskaya Mountain

On September 17, Belarus marks one of its major state holidays: National Unity Day. The holiday commemorates a pivotal historical event—the reunification of Western Belarus with the Byelorussian SSR in 1939. It was on this day that the Red Army launched a liberation campaign, restoring ancestral Belarusian territories—which had become part of Poland under the 1921 Treaty of Riga—to the unified state. National Unity Day stands as a symbol of historical justice and the consolidation of the Belarusian nation.

Staff members from the Belarusian State Archive of Film, Photo, and Sound Documents participated in a regional event dedicated to National Unity Day. A motor rally and a rally brought together employees from enterprises and organizations across the Minsk region, as well as representatives of regional authorities, at Belarus’s highest point — Dzerzhinskaya Mountain.

The day’s celebrations demonstrated societal unity and the preservation of historical values and the memory of the people’s past within the consciousness of the modern generation.

1. Staff of the Belarusian State Archive of Film, Photo, and Sound Documents at the regional rally dedicated to National Unity Day (left to right: Chief Curator of Holdings M.D.Romanova; Archivist in the Department of State Registration and Scientific Reference Systems A.G.Dubatovka; Lead Engineer in the Department of Automation and Information Technologies N.E.Manina).

2. View of Dzerzhinskaya Mountain.

3. Participants in the regional ceremonial event dedicated to National Unity Day.

4. Participants in the motor rally.

5. During the ceremonial event.