Sputnik / Victor Tolochko
Volunteers from Russia, Belarus, Estonia and Kyrgyzstan have discussed the experience in the search teams in a video conference mode. The event took place on the eve of the Soldier's Fate international conference, Sputnik news agency reports. A large-scale forum will open in Moscow on November 22. Search groups, historians, archives staff from most of the former Soviet republics will focus on the impediments in identifying soldiers' fates.
According to Olga Shabelnik, a representative of the Belarusian search movement, the country is concerned about the burial of war veterans who died in the post-war period. She explains that the legislature allows to liquidate the graves if no one takes care of them. The volunteers counted several dozens of such graves only at a cemetery in Minsk. The decision to eliminate them is already taken. Olga Shabelnik says that they plan to gather volunteers in winter and start work in the spring. Several graves have already been restored but there are many of them and more help is required.
Andrei Lazurin, the head of the Front Line Estonian military historical association, says that it is often difficult to find a particular grave where a solder is buried. He also claims that the 1940-1950s graves in the Baltic republic are very desolate. Laws does not regulate them and patrons and sponsors helped to cope with the problem by 80%.
Search groups in Kyrgyzstan look for the graves of their compatriots - Soviet Union Heroes. The coordinator of the Our Victory search movement Svetlana Lapteva expressed regret that the memory of the heroes in the republic was almost not preserved. Young people do not know these names. She notes that the school curriculum hardly covers the Second World War.
Russkiy Mir
