Guests from Tula, Russia, visited the State Archives of Mogilev Region, 18 May 2011

18 May 2011, the State Archives of Mogilev Region received guests from Tula, Russia. A guided tour of the archive facilities was given to the students of the L.N. Tolstoy Teachers State University of Tula.

The first-year students at the Tula University’s History and Law Department arrived in the twin city of Mogilev to exchange experience with the A.A. Kuleshov Teachers State University of Mogilev and do practice in museum and archive business.

The department head for information, publication and scholarly use of records at this Archives, Nina Sergeeva, held an excursion for the guests. She told them about the defense of Mogilev in June-July 1941 (noteworthy that the 179th division, which was formed in Tula, took part in the defense of Mogilev). The students were shown the unique old documents such as the 1910 Memory Book of Mogilev Province dating from the times of Emperor Nicholas II and the publication issued by the Central Statistics Committee at the Interior Ministry of the Russian Empire, which contains data on the first census in Mogilev Province in 1897.

The students got acquainted with the Archives’ history and holdings. They were shown the unique war records (war letters, photographs, handwritten recollections of the participants in World War Two, records from the State Security Committee (KGB) for Mogilev Region concerning the persons who returned from Germany and other countries in Western Europe, a list of soldiers born in Tula Region who died during the defense of Mogilev in 1941, etc.), prewar and postwar documents, records from the personal file of writer Maxim Gorodetsky, who in the 1920s taught at the local agricultural academy, now the main agricultural institution in Belarus.

The guests saw exhibitions dedicated to the 66th anniversary of Belarus’s liberation from the Nazi invaders and the 25th anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl NPP, made a tour of the archive repositories and had a chance to read interesting historical documents.