Museum of soldiers-internationalists

Museum of soldiers-internationalists was founded in Vitebsk in 1992 by the Vitebsk Association of Veterans of the War in Afghanistan in order to perpetuate the memory of soldiers who died during the war in Afghanistan in 1979-1989. It was opened in 1996.

The museum is housed in a 14-storey building at 20 Soldiers-Internationalists Street.

The area of the exposition, which is located in three halls, is 112 (136) square meters. Museum funds include more than 6000 items.

The museum exhibition tells about the history of Afghanistan, the beginning of the war, the sacrifices and military operations of the 103rd Vitebsk Guards Airborne Division, which defended Kabul. Among the exhibits are a map of the defense of Kabul, personal belongings of fallen Soviet soldiers, works of sculpture and painting, documents, a mountain howitzer of 1900 and a Chinese machine gun of 1933.

The search club "Krasny Kliver", consisting of pupils of the secondary school №19 in Vitebsk, began collecting material about the fallen of Vitebsk. Vitebsk, headed by Belarusian language and literature teacher Kharkevich Galina Nikolaevna. Inquiries were made to all Komsomol district committees and district military committees of the region in order to gather information about the dead. Children wrote letters to the families of the fallen soldiers-internationalists - answers came - with photos and biographies. In 1989 in the House of Pioneers of the Pervomaisky district a room of Memory was opened. Visits to the bereaved families were organized in the districts of the region. Every year in February, there were memorial evenings, to which parents of the deceased children and their relatives from the entire region came. More and more guests came each evening (from 20-30 people at the first one to more than 150 at the last one). Simultaneously pupils of SSH №25 headed by the deputy director on educational work Anzel Lilia Antonovna created a school museum about Komsomol and collected materials about the perished "Afghans" from Vitebsk.

In 1990 the artistic project of exposition of the museum was prepared by the Afghan war veterans, the city association of soldiers-internationalists and its heads Govorushkin S., Germanov V. In 1990 the author of the project was J. Chernyak, member of the USSR Union of Artists.

Website of the museum