MINSK, 18 September (BelTA) – The exhibition “17 September 1939. You are from Western Belarus, I'm from Eastern Belarus” celebrating the 80th anniversary of the reunification of Western Belarus and the BSSR opened at the National Library of Belarus in Minsk on 17 September, BelTA has learned.
17 September 1939 is one of the most significant dates in the country's history. That was when Western and Eastern Belarus were reunited by a decree of the Soviet government.
The exhibits are provided by the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus, Belarusian State Archives of Films, Photographs and Sound Recordings and Belarus' National Library. The exhibition shows original documents, including periodicals of 1939, official photographs, literary reviews of the Belarusian poets on the country's reunification printed in books and periodicals. Moreover, the exhibition also displays the works of Belarusian graphic artists who expressed the mood of the reunited people.
“We think we have managed to show not only the facts and events of that time but also the mood of the Belarusian intellectual class. The majority of poets and writers responded to this event with articles and poems. We can see not only the style of the Belarusian graphics of the reunited Belarus but also feel the mood, the atmosphere of the everyday life of Belarusians thanks to the works of our artists, representatives of socialist realism, who worked in 1960s-1980s,” First Deputy Director of Belarus' National Library Yelena Dolgopolova said.
Yelena Dolgopolova highlighted the National Library's project to develop an electronic database “Literary Heritage of Belarus”. It comprises more than 2,000 magazines that were issued on the territory of Western and Eastern Belarus and also abroad from 1919 to 1939.
“We gratefully accepted the invitation of our partners to participate in this exhibition project. Our archives has unique documents concerning this important historical event for our country. These are the documents on the preparation for the reunification, the process itself, legislative documents and those that reflect the mood and attitude of different segments of the Western Belarusian population to this event. We are pleased to display some of them at this exhibition,” Director of the National Archives Andrei Demyanyuk said.
The exhibition will be running till 7 November.
