On the first day of the forum, there were nine sections devoted, among other things, to the ancient history of the two peoples. On the second day, a plenary session of the forum was held at the site of the Institute for Scientific Information of Social Sciences (INION) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was attended by Secretary of State of the Union State Dmitry Mezentsev.
Opening the plenary session, he stressed the unity of the positions of the national leaders of Belarus and Russia in assessing and protecting historical truth.
The Secretary of State recalled the unique project “State Library of the Union”, launched last year
- We are sometimes asked from the West: “Why do we talk so much about the Great Patriotic War?” Like, it’s time to forget, soon it will be 80 years of Victory. Many participants in the Great Patriotic War have already passed away from this life, and we need to think about today and tomorrow. But how not to talk about the war, if for the vast Fatherland, for the post-Soviet republics, in particular for Belarus and Russia, the Great Patriotic War is a moral scale of evaluation, a scale for understanding the scale made not only for the good of their country, then of the Soviet Union, but for the good of human civilization? Is it possible to measure how much or little we talk about the war, as the facts of falsification of history become the state policy of the largest European countries, – said Dmitry Mezentsev.
The State Secretary of the Union State recalled that last year the Russian Foreign Ministry presented unique documents relating to the 250th anniversary of the entry of Belarusian lands into the Russian Empire. These are hundreds of historical documents that show that the traditions of the Belarusian people, the national way of life, were only upheld, not belittled. Dmitry Mezentsev announced that this year the funds of the union budget for the financing of humanitarian programs have been increased by one and a half times. For the first time, the patriotic project “Memory Train” is financed, when Russian and Belarusian children will travel through the places of heroic deeds, from Brest to Stalingrad.
The Secretary of State recalled the unique project “State Library of the Union”, the first book of the series of which was published last year and was devoted to the exploits of the infantry regiments of Brest, Vitebsk , Minsk, Mogilev and Polotsk in the Patriotic War of 1812.
- On June 22 of this year, we will present a new book of this series, which will confirm the facts of genocide against the peoples of the Soviet Union, against citizens who lived on the territory of Belarus in 1941-1944. We will say that the blockade of Leningrad and the barbaric and brutal attitude of the Germans towards the inhabitants of the Leningrad region is also a fact of genocide, historically and legally confirmed, – said Dmitry Mezentsev. According to the Secretary of State, as part of the presentation, it is planned to hold a round table with the participation of prosecutors general of Russia and Belarus, chairmen of investigative commissions, authoritative historians and young people .
The President of the Russian Historical Society, Sergei Naryshkin, emphasized in his speech that modern relations between Russia and Belarus are truly allied and strategic:
- The spiritual ties and the spiritual unity of the brotherly peoples of the two countries rest on the solid foundation of a common culture, of universal values, on the inseparability of historical destinies. The origins of this community go back to the time of the birth of the ancient Trinitarian Russian people, the formation of the “Russian land”, of which the principalities of Polotsk and Turov were a part.
Deputy head of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science Konstantin Mogilevsky said that in modern geopolitical conditions the centuries-old brotherly ties of the two states reach a qualitatively new level in terms of integration within the state of The union.
– First of all, we are talking about such fundamental issues as the fight against the falsification of history and the glorification of Nazism, the protection of monuments of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Russia and Belarus treat their common history carefully, noted Konstantin Mogilevsky. He underlined that today, in the question of the continuity of generations, work with young people should play a key role.
- We carefully study the Belarusian experience of teaching history in higher education institutions. Last year in Belarus was declared the Year of Historical Memory, the year they started teaching a new course on the history of the Belarusian state. We consider this to be a great success. In Russia, from the next academic year, the history of the Fatherland will be taught in universities in an increased volume and in a modernized format, and it seems to me that we can work here to bring the content of these courses even closer in time , – said Konstantin Mogilevsky.
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