"introduces readers to the Ivatsevichi Museum of History and Local Lore and its branch - the memorial complex of partisan glory "Khovanshchina", where you can see a reconstruction of partisan life.
The Ivatsevichi Museum of History and Local Lore was opened in 1996 on the basis of the folk museum of the pioneer hero Kolya Goishik. Now the museum is located in a building built in the mid-20th century, which has quite a rich history: at first it was a hotel, and now it houses the museum’s exposition.
A branch of the museum, the Khovanshchina memorial complex, is very popular among visitors to the city. It is located in a forest tract near the village of Korochin, Ivatsevichi district.
Capture of German officers and policemen
The memorial was created in 1971 at the request of the Brest Regional Council of Veterans. In August 1998, it was transferred by the Brest Regional Museum of Local Lore to the culture department of the Ivatsevichi District Executive Committee as a branch of the Ivatsevichi Museum of History and Local Lore.
“Khovanshchina” recreates the wartime environment. The museum tells how partisans lived during World War II through interactive reconstruction.
Interrogation of a captured officer
The memorial complex is located on a piece of land surrounded by swamps and ditches. This is an island in the thick of the forest, to which, as in previous years, there is a single masonry. But during the war, the masonry was buried in water and was completely invisible from the air. Now there is a bridge here. It is raised above the water so that current visitors do not get their feet wet.
Descendants of the partisans
One of the memorial signs is installed at the entrance to the complex. It is a reminder that during the harsh years of the war, here, in the Khovanshchina tract, in 1943-1944, the headquarters of the Brest partisan unit, the regional committee of the Communist Party of Belarus, the regional committee of the Komsomol and the underground editorial office of the newspaper Zarya were located.
This memorial is a page in the living and imperishable history of the military exploits of our fathers and grandfathers. It is open to the younger generation. This is a tribute to the grateful memory of those who fell in fierce battles for the freedom, honor and independence of our Motherland. An excursion to the Khovanshchina museum complex is a lesson in courage and patriotism, says Raisa Gorbach, director of the Ivatsevichi Museum of History and Local Lore. “That’s why it takes place in such a live format, with the reconstruction of historical events.
The action takes place at all facilities of the complex: at the headquarters of the partisan unit, in the editorial office of the regional newspaper "Zarya", in the regional Komsomol committee, in the medical unit, in the forest school. Before the eyes of visitors, the partisan camp lives its own life.
One day in the life of a partisan detachment
Interactive participants
In the dugouts you will see sun loungers, tables, and benches that were used by the partisans.
At the headquarters, a plan for a combat operation is being developed, the next issue of the Zarya newspaper is being typed up in the editorial office, preparations for the conference are being actively carried out in the Komsomol, and wounded partisans are being treated in the medical unit.
Komsomol members design a wall newspaper
In the editorial office of the Zarya newspaper you can see photographs, some issues of the newspaper itself, and a leaflet with an appeal to young people.
The Information Bureau report is being printed
At the headquarters itself there are photographs of the commanders of partisan detachments, documents, leaflets, newspapers (copies), bowler hats, lamps, a field bag, and an ink set. The attention of visitors is always drawn to the map of the development of the partisan movement in the Brest region. The authenticity of the furnishings consists of two sun loungers, benches, a long table, and a stove.
Lessons are going on at the forest school. Children write letters to the front and count. Together with the teacher, they dream of victory, of a peaceful life in which there will be beautiful schools with spacious and bright classrooms, with gyms and swimming pools.
At the school you can see desks, benches, a blackboard, a teacher's desk and even real textbooks from the 30s and 40s of the last century!
Forest school lesson
Partisans who have returned from a mission are eating by the fire. An accordion player plays military melodies, women sing songs, cooks treat everyone to partisan porridge, lard and bread.
What a delicious partisan porridge
Guerrilla wedding
Visitors to the interactive reconstruction often describe the naturalness of the action; it seems that time has turned back and we all became participants in those distant events.
The interactive action is not repeated. Every year a new script is written, new participants are involved.
About 5 thousand people visit the Khovanshchina memorial complex annually, most of them are residents of the city and region, schoolchildren of the Ivatsevichi, Baranovichi, Berezovsky districts and the cities of Brest, Bobruisk, as well as foreign delegations (France, Denmark, Germany, Australia). Guests came from Moscow, Chelyabinsk, Smolensk, Kyiv, Chernigov.
On the basis of the memorial complex, bicycle and car races, tourist rallies are held annually, correspondents of Russian media, schoolchildren and students from Russia come here as part of the “Little Heroes of the Great War” campaign for the patriotic education of youth, participants in the pilot project of the UNESCO youth club “Unity” (G . Moscow) together with active children's and youth organizations of the city of Brest, participants in the socio-political action dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Belarus from the Nazi invaders during the Great Patriotic War, “From Minsk to Berlin”, “Youth of the Union State on the Way to a culture of peace and harmony,” veteran organizations of Belarus.
In the year of the anniversary of the Victory, we decided to talk about the partisan camp located in the Sporovsky swamps in the Khovanshchina tract (now Ivatsevichi district), and see what is there now. Essentially this is a borderland, and the history of this place is inextricably linked with the Berezovshchina. Many residents of nearby villages - Sporovo, Peski and others - were among the partisans, many were in contact with them.
They took with them Fyodor Stepanovich Trutko as a guide, who spent the entire war in a partisan detachment. And one of our goals was to find out whether there is now a direct road to Khovanshchina from our area. Attempts to find out this from the residents of Pesok and Sporovo led nowhere. Therefore, we went there in a detour, through Ivatsevichi. By the way, you can order a thematic excursion at the Ivatsevichi Museum, but we decided to make do with the services of F.S. Trutko.
“Once upon a time there was a road from Korochin (a village in the Ivatsevichi district) to Peski, people rode horses and collected firewood,” says the guide. “From Peski, for more than a kilometer, the road went through a very swampy swamp, there was rowing, and no equipment would have passed along it. In some places the horses could not stretch their legs. But we somehow got around on horseback; in winter it was easier.”
Forest roads brought us to the sign “Memorial complex of partisan glory “Khovanshchina”. Not a soul there. You can see from everything that the area is swampy. To get to the memorial complex you have to walk along a special and rather long bridge, rising above the swamp and lost somewhere among the trees. Fyodor Stepanovich says: “There was no road here, this was already done specifically for the museum. We walked here along the paths. There were paths on land, and treasure troves in the water so that they couldn’t be seen from airplanes.”
Reference sources report: “In the forest tract Khovanshchina, from April 1943 to July 1944, the Brest underground regional committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the Brest underground regional committee of the LKSMB, the headquarters of the Brest partisan unit, the editorial office and printing house of the newspaper Zarya, the organ of the Brest underground, were based regional committee of the CP(b)B.
The underground regional committee of the party carried out a lot of organizational and political work to mobilize Soviet people to fight the Nazi occupiers. Under his leadership, there were 2 underground inter-district committees, 10 underground district committees, the Brest underground city committee of the CP(b)B, 58 primary party organizations. There were 1,258 communists in the regional party organization. The regional committee regularly issued combat leaflets, appeals, reports from the Sovinformburo, etc., and published the newspaper “Zarya” (beginning of May 1943 - July 1944, editor V.F. Kaliberov).
The Brest partisan unit was created by decision of the Brest underground regional committee of the Communist Party of Belarus. Operated from April 1943 to July 1944. Commander - S.I. Sikorsky (“Sergey”), chief of staff - P.V. Pronyagin. By the time of the connection with the Red Army, there were 11 brigades, 13 separately operating detachments, and more than 13 thousand partisans. The people's avengers attacked the enemy's communications, destroyed more than 60 thousand Nazis, blew up more than 26 thousand rails, 2126 railway trains, 644 bridges on railways and highways, defeated 110 enemy garrisons and headquarters, and carried out many other military operations. Unit commander S.I. Sikorsky was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union."
I will also add that our regional newspaper “Mayak”, in those years called “Plamya”, was also founded here.
In 1971, a memorial complex was created in the Khovanshchina tract - four wooden huts, two dugouts, a well, and a “forest school”. There was a shield with the text of the oath of the Belarusian partisan, other information stands and a large boulder with a commemorative inscription.
Entrance to the dugouts is free, we carefully look into one of them. The construction breaks the usual ideas about dugouts. This minimum could accommodate about sixty people, with only long wooden bunks as equipment.
“Initially there was nothing in the Khovanshchina tract. First we made dugouts, then we built houses from logs. The Chertkov detachment was stationed here, then more people arrived, there were many families with children, and the command decided to separate the people, to separate the family detachment from the combat one. There were about 120 people in the combat detachment, and several hundred lived in the family camp. The dugouts were warmed up a bit with potbelly stoves. I myself spent two winters in a dugout. They lay down so close to each other that if one gets up, it will wake everyone up and it will be difficult to wedge back into their place.”
Let's move on to the houses. In these huts, green with time, the doorways are barred, but you can see what is inside: roughly put together tables and benches, lanterns, other utensils of that time, visual propaganda, etc. Every house has a sign. Here is the headquarters of the partisan unit, the editorial office of the Zarya newspaper with an old typewriter and bottles of ink, the regional committee of the Leninist Young Communist League of Youth (there is an accordion on the table inside), a medical unit (table, benches, bunks).
Fyodor Stepanovich and I walk around the camp on wooden floors. Its former resident shows one of the kitchen places: “They selected several nearby trees with foliage, pulled and tied them by the tops, and in this shelter they lit a fire. A bucket was hung above it, and then a cauldron to cook for the whole detachment. The firewood was collected dry to reduce smoke. But they still used blackout and tried to cook at night. Our boys' task was to collect firewood. There was constant duty in the kitchen.”
We move on to the “forest school”. Now there are two rows of wooden tables with benches. F.S. Trutko takes his place in the last row: “Back then our tables were not made of planks, but made of perches. And next to them lay armfuls of branches. As soon as an enemy plane appears in the sky - we are under the tables, and there are branches on top for camouflage. The board was about the same as it is now. All children studied at the same time. The younger ones sat on the small tables in front. They wrote on birch bark, on all sorts of German propaganda leaflets with charcoal. The first-graders still had a bag of yellow sand at hand and wrote numbers and letters on it on the ground next to them. We had two teachers - Pyotr Ivanovich Ivanovsky - he taught literature and history, he knew a lot of works in both the Belarusian and Russian languages. And the mathematician Faina Petrovna Karabetyan.”
“We also had our own weapons workshop. And a Tula gunsmith. Give him a rifle barrel and he will turn it into a military weapon. And we always had weapons in use. Even during the day, from the edge of the forest, the partisans fired armor-piercing bullets from an anti-tank rifle at steam locomotives, and at night they mined highways and railways. The locomotive was breaking down. Until a repair tractor arrives from the station and the holes are riveted, traffic is paralyzed. Let it be for at least two or three hours. But adults did such things. We, who were older, as well as women and old people, were trained in fire training. It happened that they took me on forays. I could smell Germans a hundred meters away; they loved to wear cologne. And especially if they still smoke tobacco... I sensed ambushes from afar.”
Taking this opportunity, I ask about some moments of partisan life that are omitted in books and memoirs:
- What did they smoke in your camp?
- Grass from under your feet.
- Did you make moonshine?
- It wasn’t made of anything. They took it from people. But only for needs, there was no drunkenness. Although Peskovsky alcohol was more often used for medicinal purposes. There, our man Alexander Kozhukh worked as a basement worker and brought us alcohol. I went to his house for this. He lived next to the gate, right next to the distillery. I remember a case where one Yugoslav, who surrendered to us, was blown up by a mine. His leg was amputated with a hacksaw. They disinfected it with alcohol, drank a glass of alcohol as an anesthetic, and fell asleep.
- There were women in the detachment. Have there been any weddings?
- No. Everything was strict. Men were prohibited from entering the women's dugout. One day one disobeyed, for which he was shot on the spot by the commander.
-Where did you get the medicine?
- Treated with herbs. I myself suffered from typhus in the camp. The Sporians saved me and cured me with herbs. From time immemorial they did not know a doctor; they were treated with what nature provided.
- Have you made any preparations for the winter?
- Yes, we collected mushrooms, berries, nuts, dried them in the sun, over a fire.
- Did you hunt?
- Then there were more partisans than animals. Finding the animal was a problem. I don't know where they went. The fish were caught together with Sporozoans on the lake. They caught constantly.
There were no animals - pigs, dogs, cats - in the camp. There were several milk cows, milk for small children, the wounded, and the sick. They made huts for the animals for the winter and prepared hay.
We had one German in the camp. He didn’t want to fight and surrendered to us. Not all Germans who were driven to the front shared the Fuhrer’s ideology. He was not taken on combat missions; he performed various jobs in the camp in the economic platoon. After the war he was released and went to Germany.
- Are movies about war, partisans and real life in a detachment very different?
- Yes. Everything in the movie is fake. There is little reality there; real life is not shown. It's not easy to restore now. And no one needs it.
- What is your message to the world?
- The most important thing is that there is friendship among the people. Our squad was called international. There were Poles, Jews, Yugoslavs, Hungarians, and all the nationalities of the Union. I would like people to live as good neighbors even now.
We ask the hunters for directions and return directly to the Berezovsky district. Along the way, Fyodor Stepanovich shows a place, a “lesnichovka”, where during the war there was a partisan observation post. “Observers were constantly on duty in tall spruce trees. When they knew that the Germans would come, the road was mined. We also had our own post on the road, a machine-gun bunker. The Germans only approached us along this road once, but they came under fire and didn’t try again.”
The road took us to the village of Peski on the street. Partisan.
The partisan camp in Khovanshchina is worth visiting for everyone who has not been there before. It's close, interesting, educational and provides good food for thought.
The memorial complex of partisan glory in the Khovanshchina tract, thirty kilometers from Ivatsevichi, was opened in 1971. During the Great Patriotic War, the headquarters of partisan detachments, the underground regional committees of the Communist Party of Belarus and the Leninist Young Communist League, as well as the editorial office of the regional newspaper Zarya were located there. In the victorious 1945, the partisans made a promise to each other that they would meet there every year on the last Sunday of May. Today this tradition, started by war veterans, is supported by their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A Zarya.by correspondent also attended the festive events, which took place for two days this year - May 28 and 29.
In front of us is a small, cozy forest clearing. Birds chirp, a cuckoo is heard somewhere in the depths of the forest. The hot summer sun barely rises above the tops of centuries-old fir trees, but its rays are already in the myriad beads of morning dew lying on the silken grass. Rainbow tints of lights flash here and there. Suddenly a horse jumps out of the forest into a clearing. The hooves mercilessly knock off the dew, it goes out, leaving long, ragged tracks... The rider, a boy of about fourteen, steers the horse from side to side. He rushes around the clearing, clearly looking for someone. A man in paramilitary uniform, in a gray cap, with a rifle in his hands comes out of the forest towards him.
Karniks! Vyadutsya v veski ў yar zhanchyn i dzyatsy! I want to unravel! Damn it! - the guy shouts, pulling on the reins and trying to keep the horse in place.
I'm happy to help you! I'll shut them up. Hibernate! - the man with the rifle orders.
As soon as the rider disappears into the forest, a disorganized column of women and children emerges into the clearing, escorted by German soldiers and policemen. Women hug their children, screams and crying are heard. The punishers urge the villagers on with commands and blows from rifle butts, install a machine gun and prepare it for execution. The lamentations and despair of the doomed are heartbreaking, but the punishers are relentless.
The chief executioner raises his hand for the command, another moment and the “infernal machine” MG-42 will sow death. A shot is heard from the forest. The leader of the firing squad falls. A partisan runs out of the forest into a clearing, inviting punitive fire on himself.
In the ensuing firefight, women and children flee to the protection of the forest. The punitive forces, realizing that the partisan is alone and already wounded, advance, trying to surround him and take him prisoner, but the main forces of the partisan detachment arrive in time and attack from three sides. The people's Avengers roll out a 45 mm cannon and fire at the enemy. The punishers, who did not expect such a turn of events, panicked and the survivors surrendered. Victory! The partisans, having taken the wounded and prisoners, retreat to their camp.
This is the picture of the wartime, telling about one of the episodes of the Zditovsky defense of the partisans in April 1944, at the beginning of the event, the reenactors of the clubs “Two Wars” from Ivatsevichi, “Garrison” from Brest and “4th Air Force” tried to reproduce as accurately as possible for veterans and guests -landing corps" from Minsk.
At the memorial sign to the partisan unit, the director of the Ivatsevichi Museum of History and Local Lore, Raisa Gorbach, said that the partisan camp was located on a small island in the middle of the swamps. In addition to the headquarters, the editorial office of the newspaper “Zarya”, and the underground regional committee, the commandant’s platoon, scouts and messengers were housed in 2 dugouts. The entire camp was well camouflaged from the air by trees and bushes. It was not allowed to light fires or light stoves during the day. A torch and bowls of fat were used for lighting. Despite repeated attempts by the enemy to destroy the headquarters and defeat partisan detachments during punitive operations, during the entire existence of the Brest partisan unit, not a single enemy soldier entered the territory of Khovanshchina.
Now a narrow masonry bridge leads to a small island in the middle of a swamp in the forest.
Walking along it, we again seemed to be transported to the war years. At the scouts' dugouts, on a spread out raincoat, a group of partisans was preparing to go on a mission - cleaning weapons, collecting ammunition and explosives. At the headquarters house, the detachment commander and the chief of staff, bending over the map, discussed intelligence data. The radio operator was tuning the radio station in anticipation of a communication session, and the guarantor was whittling a branch with a knife while awaiting orders.
The time for the communication session comes and the radio operator receives the radio message. “Big Land” reports the transfer of large enemy forces from the front to Ivatsevichi. The commanders decide to send a reconnaissance group to the area.
At the editorial office of the partisan newspaper they brought us a sheet of “Dawn”, still smelling of printing ink, with descriptions of the military affairs of the people’s avengers. In the hospital dugout, partisan girls washed and dried bandages, rearranged bottles, counted medicines, and bandaged the wounded.
We also visited the regional committee of the Komsomol, the “forest school”.
The excursion ended in a forest clearing, where employees of the Ivatsevichi Museum of History and Local Lore treated us to bread with nettles, buckwheat porridge and herbal tea prepared according to partisan recipes.