“We are faithful to this memory”: an exhibition of military-patriotic clubs, detachments, and school museums dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Victory opened in Vitebsk
May 8, 2025
Military-patriotic search detachments play a special role in preserving historical memory, with their primary task being to immortalize the memory of fallen soldiers. Behind every relic found by searchers on battlefields lies the fate and name of a person who was considered missing in action all these years.
The Museum of the History of Private Collecting in Vitebsk presented the thematic exhibition "We are faithful to this memory." The initiator of the exhibition project was Larisa Brueva, Chairperson of the Council for Interaction of Search Detachments of the Vitebsk Region "Poshuk." The exhibition showcases materials from the history of the search movement in the Vitebsk Region from 1984 to the present day.
The first search detachments and clubs began to appear in the Vitebsk Region in the 1980s: "Iskatel" (Seeker) of Vocational School No. 96 and "Poisk" (Search) of Vocational School No. 19 in Vitebsk, "Razvedchiki voinskoy slavy" (Scouts of Military Glory) of Secondary School No. 2 in Novopolotsk, and "Rusichi" of Vocational School No. 110 in Orsha.
The first "Watches of Memory" and search expeditions in Belarus were conducted in the Dubrovno, Vitebsk, Liozno, Shumilino, and Polotsk districts of the Vitebsk Region. And after the first regional search camp for educational institutions was held in the Losvido Lake area, search detachments began to be formed based on the councils of school museums of military glory.
In April 1991, there were about 30 detachments in the Vitebsk Region, part of the Vitebsk Regional Association "Poshuk," registered by the All-Union Association of Search Organizations "People's Memory of the Fallen Defenders of the Fatherland."
The glorious traditions of the search movement in the Vitebsk region, within the framework of the Belarusian-Russian program "Sky of the Motherland," are today continued by searchers from the detachments "Razvedchiki Voinskoy Slavy" of Novopolotsk, "Gromovtsy" of the State Educational Institution "Secondary School No. 40 in Vitebsk named after M.M. Gromov," and "Aviapoisk" of Borisov.