Today is Slutsk uprising Day

On November 27, 1920 military action against the Bolsheviks, who attacked from the East, started.

Armed resistance was carried out by the 1st Slutsk brigade which consisted of Slutsk regiment and the Hrozau regiment. The Slutsk brigade under Anton Sokal-Kutylouski was formed by a decision of the Congress of Sluchchyna (Slutsk region) which started work on November 14, 1920. A political organ, a Rada of Sluchchyna, was elected with the chairman Uladzimyer Prakulevich.

The insurgents recognized of the Council of BNR (the Belarusian People's Republic) as the supreme authority in Belarus, “Nasha Niva” reminds.

Slutsk defenders shielded a frontline of 60 km, Kapyl-Tsimkavichy-Vyzna, and the largest battles took place near the villages of Morach, Vyzna, the town of Kapyl and Semezhava.

In the end of December the uprising was suppressed, and military men were to retreated over the Lan river to the Polish territory.

After the war the day of November 27 was celebrated as Heroes Day by the community in exile. In the south of Bavaria, near Luttensee Lake (not far from Austrian border, near the resort Garmisch-Partenkirchen) in 1948 Belarusians who were kept in camps for displaced persons after the war, a monument for Slutsk heroes was put up.

Ivonka Survilla: “To gain freedom, we must remember our heroes”

The Chairperson of the Belarusian People’s Republic Rada, Ivonka Survilla, has congratulated the Belarusians with Heroes Day which is to be marked on November 27.

“Dear brothers and sisters!

On behalf of the Rada of the Belarusian People’s Republic I congratulate you on the anniversary of Slutsk Uprising!

However, I am doing that today with certain sadness. What would our glorious Slutsk heroes say if they could see that 88 years after their uprising when they were ready to die for our land, a free and independent Belarusian People’s Republic, to live, we are still in bondage?

Yes, we are in bondage, dear countrymen. We haven’t still realized the ideals which had been stated in the Act of March 25! Except for Belarusian youth, whom I greet from the depth of my heart, our nation, our people, are still living in fear, they do not know the sense of words FREEDOM, LIBERTY, HUMAN DIGNITY. The only thing they want, is to survive till the next day, not lose job or pension, -- these are the ideals of our people 88 years after Slutsk Uprising.

And we could be living as our free neighbours, as a developed nation, a part of the European Union; living in prosperity and with dignity, and deciding our future not depending on the will of the dictator and his entourage, but according to our common free expression of the will, in the way which would be the best for us all; so that our children and grandchildren were proud of their country, and not trying to flee it at all costs with a hope to find happiness in a strange land.

But in order to win freedom and prosperity, we must remember our heroes, love Belarus the way they loved it, and believe that “Yes, we can!”, as the newly elected US President said during his campaign. Are be worse than the nations of the free countries of the world? We are none the worse, dear countrymen, but possibly we haven’t understood yet that the future is in our hands. Only we can realize the noble ideals of our legendary ancestors from Slutsk.

Long live Belarus!

Ivonka Survilla, President of BNR Council”