Where unity was forged: the secrets of the Loshitsk estate and its underground school

Loshitskaya Estate is not only a picturesque corner of Minsk, but also a place where the history of Western Belarus was forged. From 1924 to 1938, the underground special school of the KPZB “Garden” worked here, among the graduates of which was the legendary Sergey Pritytsky. On the eve of the Day of National Unity, a rally was held near the walls of the museum, the participants of which proposed to perpetuate the memory of the school with a memorial sign. Details - in the material of the correspondent of the agency "Minsk-Novosti".

Did you know?

Loshitskaya estate is not just a picturesque corner of Minsk. From 1924 to 1938 there, deep outside the present Belarusian capital, worked strictly secret underground school "Sad". Meanwhile, among its teachers were the future Hero of the Soviet Union Vera Khoruzhaya, the famous writer Mihas Lynkov, the first secretary of the LCMB Central Committee Nikolai Orekhvo. One of the most famous graduates of the educational institution was Sergey Pritytsky.

There are data that in a year the school produced 20-25 comprehensively trained underground and party workers. It was in Loshitsky Park that the processes began, which ensured the victorious offensive of September 17, 1939 and the historical reunification of Western Belarus and the young Soviet Republic.

The fact is that when units of the Red Army began their liberation campaign in Western Belarus, among those who helped them to liberate cities and towns were those who were trained in the school “Sad”.

Legendary graduate

It is worth admitting that we know and do not know many heroes at the same time. For example, most Belarusians know Sergey Pritytsky. 100 years ago, on January 27, 1936, his name thundered around the world. Then a well-trained saboteur opened fire on the provocateur and traitor Yakov Strelchuk right in the hall of the Vilna court. When trying to escape from the courtroom, Pritytsky was shot at point-blank range. He was pulled from the dead by the doctors of the Vilna hospital to be put on trial from the medical chamber, where a 23-year-old communist was sentenced to two death sentences by hanging and one life imprisonment. However, there was a wave of outrage in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people demanded that the hero Pritytsky live. As a result, the death penalty was abolished, and life sentences were left. Immediately after the reunification of the Belarusian lands, yesterday’s prisoner gained freedom and became the main person of the People’s Assembly of Western Belarus, which opened on October 28. And on November 2, S. Pritytsky, who became deputy chairman of the Bialystok Regional Executive Committee, at an extraordinary session of the Supreme Soviet held in the Kremlin, in the presence of I. Stalin, announced the new status of Western Belarus. He passed the Great Patriotic War, headed the headquarters of the partisan movement in Poland, having done much to make it Soviet. After the war he worked in leading positions in a number of Belarusian regions, showing himself perfectly. He was elected Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the BSSR – in fact, the head of the republic. Unfortunately, his injuries in 1936 were not in vain. S. Pritytsky died suddenly in June 1971, when he was under 60. The first secretary of the CPB Central Committee, Petr Mironovich Masherov, who does not need to be introduced, called his ally very precisely: “The People’s Hero.” Today, the Communist Party of Belarus is working to clear the names of the heroes of that era from the sand of the inexorable time.

The Bridge Between Ages

Opening the rally in Loshitsky Park, Pyotr Petrovsky, Secretary of the CPB Central Committee for Ideological Work, stated the importance of historical continuity and justice:

- We Belarusians are fair people, he said. After September 17, 1939, Polish schools were closed. National minorities and their centers have not been eliminated. We did our best to ensure that representatives of all nationalities and religions continued to live in harmony and in peace.

Speaking about the legacy of the reunification victory won on September 17, 1939, Petrovsky emphasized:

- We must not only honor this memory, we must fight together for these values of social justice, equality, solidarity and friendship of peoples, establishing an invisible bridge between eras. Together we will win.

The ideas are simple

Head of the Department of Theory and Practice of Socialism of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus Alexey Dzermant said that today Belarus celebrates not just the Day of Remembrance of the events of September 17, 1939:

Today we celebrate the day of mobilization, mobilization of spiritual, ideological, political. We must understand that the President should have support in the form of ideological, convinced and firm people. Such as the heroes of the struggle for the liberation of Western Belarus - Pritytsky, Orlovsky, Korzh, Horuzhay. Our ideas are simple then and today. We want social justice, so that, regardless of ethnic, religious, social background, you all have the right to decent health care, education, the opportunity to be who you want. And these ideas are invisibly hovering over and inside the building that once housed a school to train fighters for the unification of Belarus.

In the beginning was the word

Kirill Kazakov, deputy general director of Minsk-Novosti, noted that the Minsk Courier newspaper, together with the KPB, prepared a series of publications about people who brought closer the unity of Belarus and was one of the first in the country to tell about the events that took place in Loshitskaya Estate about 100 years ago.

- It should be admitted, but today there are enough forces in the world that do not like our history, he said. On the eve of a live broadcast on the Essentially TV channel, where it was just about the Day of National Unity and, in particular, about the role in the events of September 1939 and the history of the special school “Garden”, the channel was once again thrown out of the YouTube platform. But the main thing is that despite such boorish challenges from the outside, we will continue to tell about the events of our amazing common history.

STV columnist Grigory Azarenok was traditionally and consistently emotional:

- If anyone tries to talk about the occupation of miserable Poland by the bloody Bolsheviks in September 1939, who shared it with Hitler, ask two questions. One. What would have happened if Hitler had attacked the USSR from under Minsk and not from under Brest? Yes, he would have seized Moscow and the ancestors of those who today broadcast about the occupation went for soap. And the second question. What would have happened to the Belarusians in the territory of Grodno and Brest region if the Red Army had not come there in 1939, and the fascists took root there two years before the Great Patriotic War? One thing remains to be said. Glory to Comrade Stalin, who gave us this holiday. And glory to Father Lukashenko, who returned this holiday to Belarusians.

Leaders of the Communist Party of Belarus, who participated in the rally, took the initiative to install a memorial sign on the building of the restored landlord estate in Loshitsa in memory of the school of the Communist Party of Belarus and the events that took place here.

Photo by Diana Shabala