Cadet schools are focused on the patriotic education of youth

Cadet schools provide quality education and focus on the patriotic upbringing of youth. Stanislav Zas, acting State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus, stated this in Polotsk, having taken part in the solemn ceremony of handing over a copy of an ancient Belarusian military banner of the 1844 model (banner of the Polotsk Cadet Corps) to the cadet school.

Stanislav Zas emphasized that now it can be stated with absolute certainty that five years ago, the state made the right decision to establish cadet schools in the country. "These guys (cadets. - Ed. BELTA) have very good opportunities for quality education, spiritual and intellectual development, and it is important that these schools are geared towards patriotic upbringing," said Stanislav Zas.

The solemn ceremony will take place in Polotsk on Freedom Square with the participation of the district leadership, military personnel, the public, and, of course, cadets. It is planned that until the house church is established at the Polotsk Cadet School, the copy of the relic will be kept in the Epiphany Cathedral.

The banner of the Polotsk Cadets of the 1844 model was taken out of the country in 1920. Since 1957, it was kept in the Synodal Znamensky Cathedral in New York (USA). Over the past few years, the public association "Belarusian Union of Suvorovites and Cadets" has been negotiating with the chairmen of the New York Association of Cadets and the Presidium of Cadets Abroad on the issue of returning the relic to their homeland. A combined delegation of cadet schools of Belarus and the Belarusian Union of Suvorovites and Cadets, representatives of the country's ministries of defense and education, transported a casket with particles (several small fragments of worn fabric) of the oldest banner to Belarus on September 23, 2013. On May 4, 2014, a ceremony was held in the city of Bela Crkva (Serbia) to hand over a recreated copy of the banner (with sewn-in fragments of the original) to the Belarusians. The copy was transferred for temporary storage to the Belarusian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War, and today it has arrived in Polotsk.

The Polotsk Cadet Corps was a primary military educational institution of the Russian Imperial Army, which trained children and adolescents for military service. The corps was opened in 1835 by the decree of Nicholas I, and it was located in the buildings of the Jesuit Academy and monastery built in the 18th century. Cadets were recruited from noble children of the Vitebsk, Minsk, Mogilev, Vilna, Grodno, and Smolensk provinces, aged 12 to 14 years. Each province sent candidates for enrollment in the corps depending on the amount of the contribution paid. The staff of the Polotsk Cadet Corps was intended for 400 cadets, divided into four companies: one grenadier, two musketeer, and one unranked. The first graduation of officers took place in 1857.

In 2006, the first cadet class began operating in Polotsk on the basis of Secondary School No. 4, and on September 1, 2010 (in the year of the 175th anniversary of the Polotsk Cadet Corps), the Polotsk Cadet School was opened.

Alena Tikhonova, BELTA.