Famous People of Lepel Region
Vertinsky Anatoly Ilyich
Born on 18 November 1931 in the village of Demeshkovo, Lepel District.
In 1956, he graduated from the Journalism Department of Belarusian State University.
He worked in the editorial offices of district newspapers in Davyd-Haradok, Kamyanyets, Klimavichy, and Rahachow. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper “Lіtaratura i mastatstva” and an editor at the “Belarus” publishing house. He was the Secretary of the Board of the Union of Writers of the BSSR. A poet with great civic pathos.
He translated into Belarusian individual works of classical and modern Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Bulgarian, Polish, and Hungarian poetry.
He was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the BSSR.
In 1988, he was awarded the State Prize.
Klyashtorny Todor Todorovich
Born on 11 March 1903 in the village of Porechye, Lepel District, Vitebsk Region, into a peasant family.
He studied at the workers' faculty in Orsha. In 1931, he graduated from the literary and linguistic department of the pedagogical faculty of Belarusian State University. He worked on radio, in republican newspapers and magazines. He was a member of “Maladnyak”, “Uzvyšša”, and BelAPP. In the autumn of 1936, he was arrested. On 29 October 1937, he was sentenced to the highest measure of punishment. Executed on 30 October 1937. Rehabilitated in 1957.
His first poems were published in 1925 (in the magazine “Arshanski maladnyak”). Poetry collections published include “Klyanavyja zavei” (1927), “Svetaceni” (1928), “Vjetrazi” (1929), “Praz shtorm i shturm” (1934), the poem “Pali zagamanili” (1930), and a children's picture book “Pra zajca, vaŭka i myadzvedzya” (1935). In 1960, the poetry book “Zalatoye vyazmo” was published, and in 1970, Selected Works.
He translated into Belarusian the novel “Bruski” by F. Panferov (with M. Bahun, Part 1, 1932), and individual works by V. Mayakovsky, M. Aseev, A. Bezymensky, M. Golodny, A. Lakhuti, and L. Pervomaisky.
Dudo Pyotr Dmitrievich
Born on 4 September 1911 in the village of Zabolotye, Lepel district. Participant of the Great Patriotic War. Since 1935, he served in the Red Army. Graduated from the Communist Institute of Journalism in Minsk in 1940. From 1940, he was the deputy editor of the newspaper “Volnaya Pratsa” (Belostok), and from 1949, he was a correspondent for the newspaper “Vo Slavu Rodiny”. Author of essays, short stories, the novella “Piershy Salut” (1959), and the satirical comedy “Chortau Tuzin” (1963). Awarded 4 orders and medals. Died in 1958.
Moroz Iosif Kondratievich
Born in 1856 in the village of Bocheikovo, Lepel uyezd. His father was a serf of the Bocheikovo landowner Tikhonovetsky. In 1888, Iosif Kondratievich purchased the khutor (small farmstead) of Fatyń from the Vitebsk provincial treasurer Merling. Following this, construction began on a residential house, outbuildings, and greenhouses. Iosif Kondratievich conducted numerous experiments in both crop cultivation and horticulture.
The fruit nursery contained over 100 varieties of apple trees and more than 50 varieties of pears, dozens of stone fruit trees, and many bushes of currants, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries, etc.
The orangery housed: date palms, high-grade laurels, grapevines, cypresses, and other southern plants. Horticulture occupied the main place in Moroz's activities.
The khutor of Fatyń was declared an experimental research farm in the early years of Soviet power. Students with their teachers, peasants from surrounding villages, and delegations from other uyezds frequently visited. He was a gardener and breeder. He developed a new variety of apple tree – Antonovka Sweet, white cabbage, and everbearing strawberries. In the early 20th century, his farm was recognised as the best peasant farm in the northwestern region. He participated in numerous agricultural exhibitions, where he received various awards.
In his work, Moroz Iosif Kondratievich utilised the achievements of renowned Russian scientists and researchers. He maintained long-term correspondence with many of them. In the late 1920s, he was forced to sell the remainder of his farm and move to Siberia, where he died in 1933.
Tuftov Ivan Nikolaevich
Born on 24.12.1912 in the village of Gorodinets, Lepel District. At the front since 1941. Machine gunner, private. Distinguished himself in battles for the liberation of Ukraine. In March 1944, during the crossing of Soviet troops across the Southern Bug, he destroyed two enemy machine-gun nests with machine-gun fire, ferried his machine gun on a makeshift raft, and destroyed over 20 Hitlerites in battles for the bridgehead. On 22.09.1944, near the city of Mogilev-Podolsky, he forced the Dnieper with a machine gun and continued the offensive.
Awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on 13.09.1944. Died on 21.07.1974.
Yalugin Pavel Vladimirovich
Born on 02.09.1910 in the village of Yanova, Lepel District. Graduated from a military infantry school. From 1941, served on the North-Western, Stalingrad, and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts. Participant in the defence of Sevastopol. Guards captain, commander of a rifle battalion. Distinguished himself in battles during the crossing of the Dnieper near Dnepropetrovsk.
Awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on 09.03.1944. Lieutenant Colonel. Lived in Moscow. Died on 22.03.1990. Buried in the village of Susha, Lepel District.
Erashov Ivan Mikhailovich
Born on 26.09.1911 in the city of Lepel. Graduated from Lepel Pedagogical College, Stalingrad Military Aviation School, and Air Force Academy. Worked as a teacher. At the front since May 1943. Commander of an assault aviation regiment. Participant in battles at the Kursk Bulge and the liberation of Ukraine. Awarded the Order of Lenin, two Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of Alexander Nevsky, and medals.
Awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on 04.02.1944. Died in 1948. Buried in the city of Novocherkassk. School No. 2 in Lepel is named after him.
Kvitinsky Vyacheslav Antonovich
Born on 25.11.1920 in the village of Antovylnya, Lepel District. Graduated from Kyiv State University. Participant in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940. From 1941, served on the South-Western Front. From October 1941, a member of the Novohrad-Volynsky underground organization. Later, a machine gunner and leader of a sabotage group of the 1st Volynsky detachment, which operated in Ukraine and Belarus, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and later in the separate partisan brigade named after Klement Gottwald.
Awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on 02.05.1945.
Zanko Fyodor Petrovich
Tomashevich Nikolay Nikolayevich
Born on 13 May 1921 in the village of Novye Volosovichi, Lepel District. Served at the front from 1941. Participant in battles in Estonia and the Arctic. As a Guards junior lieutenant and tank commander, he distinguished himself in the battles for the liberation of the Leningrad Region.
Awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on 28 August 1944. Served in the Soviet Army until 1956.
Zanko Alexandra Fyodorovna
Born on 10 November 1927 in the village of Velevshchina, Lepel District. Graduated from Lepel Pedagogical College and Minsk Pedagogical Institute named after A.M. Gorky. From 1945, she worked as a caregiver at the Lepel orphanage; from 1951, she was a teacher at Secondary School No. 2 in Lepel. Honoured Teacher of the BSSR. Awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour in 1978. Decorated with the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. Died in 1990. Buried in Lepel.
Mazalo Anna Vasilyevna
Born on 22 December 1925 in the village of Zakolivye, Lepel District.
From 1944, she worked as a collective farmer in the "Krasny Luch" collective farm, as a field brigade leader, a pig breeder, and secretary of the party organisation of the Zhdanov collective farm. She was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the BSSR and a delegate to the XXIV Congress of the Communist Party of Belarus. Decorated with the Order of Lenin and medals.
Awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour in 1966.
Kustinsky Mikhail Frantsevich
Born on 28.09.1829. Received his initial education in the Lepel region, graduated from the Vilnius Noble Institute and the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. However, he chose not the simple work of an archaeologist as his main occupation. In 1859, he began his scientific activities with excavations on the watershed between the Volga, Dnieper, and Western Dvina rivers, in the homeland of the ancient Krivichi. In 1855, he finally settled in his estate Zavidichi in the Lepel district. In 1861 and 1883, near the town of Kublichi, he found iron axes, spears, and a clay lamp. He photographed his excavation materials and created a whole card index. He created an archaeological map of the Lepel district and published several works: "On the Barrows of the Lepel District", "Notes on Archaeological Excavations in the Vitebsk Governorate", "An Attempt at Archaeological Research in the Lepel District of the Vitebsk Governorate", "Notes on Finds in the Vitebsk Governorate in Barrows with Cremation". For his significant contribution to the scientific research of the Lepel region, he was elected a corresponding member, and from 1874, a full member of the Moscow Imperial Archaeological Society. In 1875, he was elected an honorary justice of the peace for the Lepel district. Died in 1905.
Lobanok Vladimir Eliseevich
Born on July 3, 1907, in the village of Ostrov, Pukhovichi District, Minsk Region, into a peasant family. Belarusian. Member of the CPSU since 1930. Graduated from the Belarusian Agricultural Academy in 1931. From 1931 – agronomist, assistant People's Commissar of Agriculture of the BSSR; from 1933 – agro-economist, plenipotentiary of the People's Commissariat of State Farms of the USSR for the BSSR. From 1939 – Director of the Smoliany Agricultural Technical School, Vitebsk Region. From 1941 – First Secretary of the Lepel District Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus. During the Great Patriotic War, V.E. Lobanok was one of the organizers and leaders of the communist underground and partisan movement in Belarus. From August 1941 to June 1944 – First Secretary of the Lepel Underground District Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus; concurrently, from March 1942 – commander of the 68th partisan detachment; from August 1942 – commissar of the Chashniki partisan brigade "Dubova". In June 1943 – commander of the Lepel partisan brigade named after Stalin. He assisted Soviet troops in the liberation of Belarus. Awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on August 16, 1943. In December 1943, he headed the operational group of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus and the Belarusian Headquarters of the Partisan Movement for the Polotsk-Lepel partisan zone. From June 1944 – in leadership positions in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus, Chairman of the Polotsk and Gomel Regional Executive Committees, Secretary of the Polesie Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus. In 1956, graduated from the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the CPSU. From 1956 – First Secretary of the Vitebsk Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus. From 1962 – First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the BSSR. From 1974 – Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the BSSR. At several congresses of the CPSU, he was elected a member of the Central Auditing Commission, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus, a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 2nd-10th convocations, and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Lived in Minsk. Awarded 3 Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, the Orders of the Red Banner, Suvorov 1st Class, the Patriotic War 1st Class, 3 Orders of the Red Banner of Labour, and medals. Author of the books "In Battles for the Motherland", 3 editions, Minsk, 1964; "Partisans Engage the Enemy", Minsk, 1976, and others.
Died on November 4, 1984.
Named in his honor are the state farm-technical school in Maryina Gorka, Lepel Secondary School No. 1, and streets in Lepel and Minsk.
Motyl Vladimir Yakovlevich
Born on 26 June 1927 in Lepel, Vitebsk Region.
He graduated from the Theatre Institute in Sverdlovsk and, by correspondence, from the Faculty of History and Philology of the university there. He worked for ten years in theatres in the Urals and Siberia, directed over 30 plays on the provincial stage, and at the age of 27 became the chief director of the Sverdlovsk Theatre for Young Spectators.
Motyl's film debut took place in Tajikistan. His film "Children of the Pamirs" (1963) brought him unanimous recognition from authoritative critics in the central press. His second work was "Zhenya, Zhenechka and Katyusha".
The Experimental Film Studio invited the disgraced director to stage the script "Desert"... Motyl's Russian "Western", "White Sun of the Desert" (1969), became a bestseller in both national and global distribution of Soviet film production.
V. Motyl managed to write the script and direct the tragicomic fantasy based on Chekhov's short stories, "An Incredible Bet" (1984). Also for television, based on a script co-written with A. Salynsky, V. Motyl directed the two-part TV film "Once Upon a Time There Was Shishlov" (1987).
In the 1990s, Motyl primarily served as artistic director for films by young directors ("Identification of Desires", "Tanks Patrol Taganka", "Shooting Angels", "Stone", etc.).
Motyl returned to filmmaking only during the perestroika years, writing the screenplay for a two-part romantic parable based on a story by F. Iskander and directing the film "Let's Part While We're Good" (1991). The only film shot in the current reality was "The Horses Carry Me" (1996).
The director writes scripts not only for his own productions: "Honour to Serve" was co-written with M. Zakharov for the "Moldova" studio, and "Okhlamon" (1994) was co-written with E. Redzhenov for the Turkmen studio. In 1997, at a competition of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, V. Motyl was awarded a grant from the President of Russia, and a two-part screenplay for the historical film novel "The Crown of Fate's Hostages" was created.
Since the 1990s, Motyl has been repeatedly elected to the board of the Union of Cinematographers; he is the secretary of the Union of Cinematographers of Moscow. For more than the last ten years, the director has been teaching at film and television schools and has led masterclasses at the Higher Courses for Screenwriters and Directors.
Motyl provided artistic direction for the productions of film debutants: "Where Are You, Bagira?" (Odessa Film Studio, 1973), "No Smoke Without Fire" (Turkmenfilm, 1977), "Tanks Patrol Taganka" (Ars Studio, 1991), "Okhlamon" (Turkmenfilm, 1995). He was awarded the title of Honoured Art Worker of the RRussia (1992), awarded the Order of Honour (1997). Almost three decades after the release of the film "White Sun of the Desert", he became a laureate of the State Prize of Russia. V. Motyl is also a laureate of the Rudaki State Prize for the film "Children of Pamir" (Tajik SSR, 1964), Honoured Art Worker of Tajikistan (1998), and an honorary citizen of the republic's capital, Dushanbe (1998). At various festivals, V. Motyl received many awards: the USSR Union of Cinematographers' prize for the film "Children of Pamir", the prize of the All-Union Film Festival "Leningrad" (1964); the prize of the Jakarta International Film Festival for the film "Children of Pamir" (1965); the honorary diploma "Best Films of the World" at the 1977 international festival (Belgrade, SFRY) for the film "The Star of Captivating Happiness"; the "Golden Ostap" festival prize (Petersburg, 1995) for the film "White Sun of the Desert"; the "Golden Ticket" TV festival prize (1996) for the film "White Sun of the Desert"; the main prize of the "Crimean Film Riviera" festival (Yalta, 1996) for the film "My Horses Carry Me"; the "Listapad" festival prize (Minsk, Belarus, 1997) for the film "My Horses Carry Me".
V. Motyl was elected a full member of the International Informatization Academy under the UN.
Danukalov Alexey Fyodorovich
Alexey Fyodorovich Danukalov was born on February 29, 1916, in the village of Novoroslyayevka, Novouzensky District, Saratov Region, into the family of a village blacksmith. He graduated from the Balashov Agricultural Mechanisation Technical School (1936). He joined the Red Army in 1937. He graduated from the Irkutsk Military School (1941). From June 1941, he was at the front, participating in the defence of Lepel, Orsha, and Smolensk. He was encircled. He organised the partisan detachment "Rodina" in October 1941 in the Slobodsky District of Smolensk Region. In April 1942, the detachment was transformed into the partisan brigade "Alexey". In May 1942, the brigade moved to the Liozno District of Vitebsk Region. In October 1943, the brigade participated in the Lepel operation and was encircled in April–May 1944. Lieutenant Colonel Danukalov died on April 27, 1944, in battles against punitive forces. A.F. Danukalov is buried in Lepel on Freedom Square in the park. Hero of the Soviet Union.
Mukhin Valentin Grigoryevich
Born on December 20, 1926, in the city of Lepel, Vitebsk Region.
Served in the army from 1944. In 1945, graduated from the Tashkent Military Aviation School for Gunners-Bombardiers. In 1949, graduated from the Kachin Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots and remained there as a flight instructor (until 1951).
In 1953, graduated from the Test Pilot School, and in 1959 - from the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI).
From 1953 to 1957, was engaged in flight testing at the Flight Research Institute.
He piloted for the first time and conducted tests of the E-50/1 (January 9, 1956), and participated in the fine-tuning tests of the MiG-17 and MiG-19.
From 1957 to 1989, was engaged in flight testing at the A.S. Yakovlev Design Bureau. From 1982 to 1991, served as Head of the Flight-Testing Department of the A.S. Yakovlev Design Bureau. He piloted for the first time and conducted tests of the Yak-27V, Yak-28L, Yak-30, Yak-32, Yak-36, Yak-38; participated in the tests of the Yak-40 and Yak-42. Set 3 world aviation records. Retired in 1992.
Resides in Moscow.
Laureate of the USSR State Prize (1981). Awarded the Orders of Lenin, the October Revolution, the Red Banner, and various medals.