In Mogilev today, as well as throughout the country, material assistance is being paid to veterans and victims of the consequences of the Great Patriotic War. Among the first to receive it was Nikolai Zheludovich , a legendary man who is better known as the founder of Belarusian reportage photography.
Nikolai Sergeevich was born in the village of Novoselki near Mogilev. As a teenager, he survived the Great Patriotic War and the German occupation, served as a sapper in Chukotka for six years, worked for the TASS-BELTA news agency for 28 years, and lived in Crimea for 23 years.
The facts of the author's personal biography are closely intertwined with historical events and people that many have only read about in school textbooks and seen on TV. Nikolai Sergeevich personally knew and photographed personalities of such magnitude as three times Hero of the Soviet Union, Air Marshal Ivan Kozhedub, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus Pyotr Masherov, Hero of the Soviet Union and Socialist Labor Kirill Orlovsky. Marshal of the Soviet Union Ivan Yakubovsky also got into the lens of the famous master of photography. By the way, now Nikolai Zheludovich lives on the street, which bears the name of the marshal.
Chairman of the Mogilev city executive committee Maxim Gurin , chairman of the Mogilev City Council of Veterans Zinaida Penkova , director of the Center for Social Services for the Population of the Leninsky District Elena Argudyaeva came to congratulate Nikolai Sergeevich on the upcoming holiday . Despite his venerable age - this September he will be 96 years old - he is still cheerful, following the life of the country and the development of photography. And even the fellow photographers who came along with the guests were immediately instructed where to stand in the apartment in order to get good pictures.
Numerous sincere wishes of health were voiced that day to Nikolai Zheludovich, and he, wearing a festive jacket decorated with numerous awards, happily spoke about the service and the most memorable heroes of the photographs. Among them is the Head of State Alexander Lukashenko during the period when he was still the director of the state farm. And the friendly conversation ended with the presentation of material assistance by the specialist of RUE “Belpochta”.
“Unfortunately, with each Victory Day, there are fewer and fewer participants in the Great Patriotic War. Therefore, it is so important on the eve of the May holidays to visit all our defenders, to express to them huge words of gratitude for the feat on the front line, in the rear, in the post-war period, for the peaceful sky over the heads of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, - said Maxim Gurin.- We are well aware of the contribution of these people to the Victory, development, formation of our state. And every veteran is an example to follow, an example of how to love the Motherland, family, and your children. Nikolai Zheludovich is a legendary person and a living example of how difficult the fate of those who were still very young had to feel the war and post-war times. It's nice that even at such an advanced age he remains a professional. Even if our communication was not long, but from the first words, a special energy of a patriot is felt in a person, whose whole life is saturated with love for the Fatherland and people.
Today, according to Zinaida Penkova, 45 participants of the Great Patriotic War, 11 Leningrad blockade survivors and 313 prisoners of fascist concentration camps live in Mogilev.
