White-red-white flags, flowers, national unification of Belarusians. In the last days of November thousands of Belarusians honor the bravery of the fallen who gave their lives at the Slutsk uprising for the independence of their Motherland almost 90 years ago. National Diasporas of the United States, European Union as well as people inside Belarus for several decades keep the memory of the last century event.

  In 1920 in a small place Slutsk, the Red Guard received a smashing strike from unknown before enemy—people of Belarus. The Bolsheviks tried to explain the surrender of several urban centers by the intrusion of polish armed forces, refusing to believe that the people itself rebelled against hunger, arrests, and executions. The commander of the Red Army Lev Trotsky could not understand how barely breathing peasants, hectic engineers and crippled by the First World War officers could set mobile armed forces able to defeat the Reds, capture their vehicles and armor, cleaning up Belarusian cities from Bolsheviks. More than 16 thousand people armed only with rifles and their self-reverence represented a real hazard for the Reds not only on the territory of Belarus but in RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Social Republic) itself.

 

When Bolsheviks left Pskov, by the Council of People's Commissars headed by Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin there was taken a decision to send all the forces including borderline reserves into the uprising zone. Only due to the deployment of forces from the Crimea peninsula to the western borders of Russia the Reds managed to start a counter attack. The Bolsheviks who ten times outnumbered their enemy severely suppressed the uprising of people and left thousands of freedom fighters buried in the ground forever as forever they left a memory of the great beginning and establishing of a nation in Belarusian hearts.

 

Today young people, new generation of Belarusian Diaspora still hold the colour of their ancestors high. By word and deeds they struggle for the same values: Belarusian independence, national culture and language. /November 2009, New Jersey, USA/