History is timeless: in Vitebsk awarded the winners of the international contest “Land of the Motherland”

Today at Vitebsk State University named after P. M. Masherov, a solemn ceremony of awarding the winners of the I International online competition of excursion and local lore presentations "The Land of the Motherland" was held, the correspondent of sb.by reports.

More than ten years ago, this competition originated within the walls of VSU as a modest university review. Having received the support of the Ministry of Education, it grew to the republican level, and in 2026 confidently stepped outside the country - acquired international status and entered the plan of the Eurasian Association of Universities.

- This year, students from the Russian Federation joined the competition, notes the curator of the contest Arina Tsyganenko. – The main goal of the project is to preserve historical memory. For us, for the youth of Belarus and Russia, it is important to remember and honor the heroic and patriotic heritage of the Union State. Together, we prove that our history has no boundaries, and gratitude to the winners is beyond time and distance. The memory of the Great Patriotic War for us is common, indivisible and sacred.

The contestants built multimedia bridges between the past and the future in three categories:

♦ Video project. Word, image and music are formed here in a short but capacious narrative about the heroes, the events of the liberation of a small homeland and objects of military-historical heritage.

Photo project. The pictures depict monuments, memorials and obelisks of a small homeland - each frame becomes a recognition of love for the native land and gratitude to those who defended it.

♦ Excursion route. Author's texts of excursions, created by young local historians, lead to places of military glory - through the streets and squares that keep the memory of the feat of the people.

- More than 90 authors participated in the competition. Each work is unique, in each - personal contribution and live participation. It was really difficult to determine the winner, admits the head of the department for ideological and educational work of VSU Natalia Baido.

Among the laureates are students from Vitebsk, Minsk, Brest, Mogilev, Grodno, Pskov and other cities. The children conducted their own original research, restoring the history of the liberation of Belarusian and Russian lands from the Nazi invaders.

The winners (first place) were:

Daniil Pilipenko (Pskov State University, Russian Federation) and BSEU students Georgy Garbuzov and Vladislav Abramovich – for the video projects “Echo of War” and “Through the Prism of Memory”.

Veronika Gindyuk (VSMU) and Ruslan Stelmakh (VSU named after P. M. Masherov) – for photo projects “History of a simple man...” and “Without the right to be forgotten”, which showed that a great feat consists of the fates of ordinary people.

- In our video – “Through the prism of memory” – we created a collective image of a Belarusian guerrilla soldier: we took part of the feat of Marat Kazei and the stories of several other heroes, says Georgy Garbuzov.

Andrey Lukashev shared:

- Our project is a tourist route through the military-historical monuments of the Pruzhan district. We studied the territory during training, calculated different options for passing the route, tried to unlock the potential of each monument. Winning is especially valuable because there is real work behind it.

alimova@sb.by