Photo survey of the patrimony of Vjaljejka and Smarhon’ Districts 2018.
Фотавандроўка па спадчыне Вялейскага й Смаргоньскага раёнаў 2018 г.
World War I cemeteries (part LXXXII): memorial to 19 named soldiers of the Russian Imperial Army, Papoutsy (Vjaljejka District).
From September 1915 to November 1917 the German, Austrian and Russian imperial armies, indifferent to the rights of the Belarusian nation, contested part of the World War I Eastern Front on a static southwest to northeast line across Belarusian lands. According to Belarusian photographer-historian Uladzimir Bahdanau, during that time the German, Austrian and Russian imperial armies established more than 300 military cemeteries along this section of the front.
After World War I the newly-formed German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge — VDK or “Volksbund”) paid the government of the Second Polish Republic to look after German war cemeteries on Polish territory. Between 1921 and the joint Nazi-Soviet invasion of September 1939 Polish territory incorporated the western Belarusian lands, including Papoutsy.
In stark contrast, at no time did the Soviet regime show interest in honoring World War I Russian imperial army graves in territories under Soviet occupation. After occupying the western Belarusian lands when it invaded Poland in September 1939 together with Nazi Germany and again after driving the Germans out in 1944, the Soviet regime neglected, or allowed the destruction of, World War I cemeteries there.
It was the practice of the Russian Imperial Army to bury its Eastern Front World War I dead in individual graves marked with wooden crosses, which soon decayed. Only with the efforts of Belarusian local historians and volunteers, as here in Papoutsy, have some Russian imperial World War I cemeteries been marked anew; in some cases — as here — volunteers have erected memorials with the names of Rusian imperial soldiers buried there.
Могілкі Першай сусьветнай вайны (частка LXXXII): помнік вызначаным па імені 19 палеглым у Першай сусьветнай вайне салдатам Расійскай імператарскай арміі, Папоўцы (Вялейскі р.).
Такія помнікі салдатам Расейскай імператарскай арміі пастаўляўцца змаганьнем беларускіх мясцовых краязнаўчаў.
