"The days full of joy and happiness have come again." From the archives of the newspaper "Grodzenskaya Pravda" you can find out with what mood Grodno residents celebrated the holiday of September 17 in 1945-1949 - Новости Волковыска и района, газета "Наш час"

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Понедельник, 25 Октября 2021 18:31

"The days full of joy and happiness have come again." From the archives of the newspaper "Grodzenskaya Pravda" you can find out with what mood Grodno residents celebrated the holiday of September 17 in 1945-1949

On September 17, Belarusians celebrated a new state holiday - National Unity Day.

The chosen date became a symbol of historical justice for the Belarusian people, unwittingly divided under the terms of the Riga Peace Treaty in 1921.
 
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Until September 1939, Western Belarus was part of the Polish state. For about 20 years "after the Polish hour" the Belarusian people were denied the right to national identity, there was an "attack" on national culture, education ... By 1939, for example, not a single Belarusian school remained in the western part of the country.

The events of September 17, 1939, when the Red Army's liberation campaign began, led to the long-awaited reunification of the western and eastern lands of Belarus. Since then, this date has been symbolic in the history of the country. Having gained territorial integrity, the Belarusian people have rapidly strengthened the statehood, economic and cultural potential of the country.
 
From 2021 - the Year of National Unity - September 17 will be a public holiday. However, the older generation probably remembers that about 70 years ago this date already occupied a special place in the holiday calendar: in 1945-1949, September 17 was celebrated as the Day of the reunification of the BSSR and Western Belarus. The Grodzenskaya Pravda also wrote about how it was celebrated at that time. We turned to the archives of the newspaper to touch the true history, and learned how celebrated September 17 in Grodno in 1945-1949.

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“The day of the reunification of the Belarusian people in a single Belarusian state - September 17 - will be held in Grodno as a great national holiday,” says the September 1945 issue of the Grodzenskaya Prada newspaper on the eve of the holiday.
A number of festive events took place then on the eve of the landmark date: gala evenings were held at all enterprises of the city, in the senior grades of schools, themed matinees were held in the lower grades and kindergartens.

In 1945, on the eve of September 17, a large sports festival took place in the city, which brought together 350 best athletes from all over Belarus - participants in the parade of athletes in Moscow. In honor of the anniversary of the reunification, trees of the Year of Victory were also planted. Students of the Grodno Pedagogical Institute, the first higher educational institution in Western Belarus, greeted the holiday with special warmth.

-This day is especially joyful for students. Students of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, including 10 partisans and soldiers of the Red Army, enthusiastically say that they are finally at the university, that in the conditions of old Poland they could never have hoped to get a higher education. Only from that great day when Western and Eastern Belarus became a single Belarusian state, the doors to knowledge, to a joyful, happy life were opened wide before them, ”wrote in“ GrodzenskayaPraўdze ”.

"Before us is a bright future" - under this heading in the 1946 issue of the newspaper, an article was posted on behalf of students of a pedagogical university:

“September 17, 1939, each of us considers his second birthday. From that day on, we learned, felt how good and wonderful life is, how wonderful it is to live in the land of freedom and people's happiness.
 
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That is why we, not fearing death, not sparing life, energetically fought the enemy in the dark days of the German occupation. We believed that Victory would come and happiness would return. And it came.

The days have come again, full of creative and constructive labor, joy and happiness.

Now we are studying at the Grodno Pedagogical Institute. In two or three years we will go to schools to teach our brothers and sisters in our native Belarusian language, to bring knowledge to the people.

Together with us are studying hundreds of children of workers and peasants-Belarusians of Grodno region, who in the landlord's Poland could not even think about higher education. "

September 17 became one of the brightest and most joyful holidays for workers from the western regions of Belarus. On that day, they freed themselves from the enslaving force of the "Polish landlords and manufacturers".

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-Everywhere creative work is in full swing, construction and restoration work is being carried out on a broad front. In the postwar years, the first stage of the Grodno Cloth Mill was commissioned. A sugar factory is being built in Skidel. Old enterprises have become unrecognizable. They have been significantly expanded and equipped with new technology.

<…> Culture is flourishing, socialist in content, national. At the service of workers and their children are schools in their native language, secondary and higher educational institutions, theaters, clubs, libraries, reading rooms. Suffice it to say that there are over 110 thousand students in schools in the region. And how many students are in special secondary and higher educational institutions! Before them - future teachers, agronomists, engineers - the road to life is wide open, ”says the newspaper GrodzenskayaPraўda No. 177 for September 1949.

The workers of the Grodno region celebrated the ninth anniversary of their liberation in an atmosphere of unprecedented political and industrial upsurge. Their successes multiplied every day and were even several months ahead of the five-year plan.

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-In the very first months after the liberation in the western regions of Belarus, large-scale industry was nationalized, unemployment was eliminated, and the construction of new factories and plants was launched. In just one year, the production of industrial enterprises in the western regions of the BSSR has more than doubled in comparison with 1938, ”the September 1949 issue of the newspaper reported.

However, the entire Belarusian people prepared for each anniversary of the country's reunification with special trepidation and joyful excitement. By the way, the Belarusians never stopped at the successes achieved at that time. Uniting, they set new goals for themselves and achieved new victories for the sake of our common future.

Today, thanks to the events of more than 80 years ago, Belarus is a sovereign and independent country. The task of the current generation is to preserve the historical truth, the continuity of generations and the inviolability of the Belarusian statehood, nation and, of course, unity in the choice of strategies for the development of a strong and prosperous state. Of course, I would like to preserve the national liberation campaign of the Red Army in the historical memory of the people, passing it on to subsequent generations as a symbol of freedom and independence of our country.
 
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