The grave of Yuzef Drozdovich has become a historical and cultural value

In the year declared by the President of the Republic of Belarus as the Year of the Small Motherland, the State List of Historical and Cultural Values in the Vitebsk region is being expanded. In May 2018, by a resolution of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Belarus, the folk youth game "Yashchar" in the village of Guta, Postavy district, was recognized as a non-material historical and cultural value.

By the decision of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee dated September 12, 2018, No. 516, the status of a historical and cultural value was granted to the grave of the famous Belarusian artist, folklorist, and ethnographer Jazep Drozdovich, located in the village of Lyaplyany, Gluboksky district.

It is symbolic that this happened on the eve of the next anniversary of the death of our countryman, who died on September 15, 1954, and a month before the 120th anniversary of the birth of the classic of Belarusian art. The Gluboksky District Executive Committee initiated the inclusion of Jazep Drozdovich's burial place in the State List.

Jazep Narcizavich is buried in an ordinary village cemetery. In 1982, a slab with a bas-relief (sculptor A. Shaternik) was installed at the burial site.

According to G.U. Savitsky, Chairman of the Vitebsk Regional Council for Historical and Cultural Heritage and Director of the Vitebsk Regional Museum of Local Lore, this proposal was unanimously supported by everyone. The only issue was with the localization of the monument, as this cemetery is very often associated with the village of Maly Davydzki, and the village of Lyaplyany was called Lipliany for a long time. These names can be found in numerous publications on the life and work of the artist. Therefore, when localizing the historical and cultural value, it was used that both variants of the name are found in normative reference books, and at the moment, on all official maps and databases, the village is named Lyaplyany (in the Russian version "Leplyany").

Thanks to the new historical and cultural value, the total number of heritage sites in the Vitebsk region has reached 953. This is the second place in the republic after the Mogilev region. The decision of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee became the first example of expanding the State List of Historical and Cultural Values at the regional level in the region, after

as such an opportunity was granted to the regions by the Code of the Republic of Belarus on Culture. To date, similar decisions have only been made in the Grodno and Minsk regions. A copy of the decision will be posted on the website of the Ministry of Culture.