Joining the Pioneers at Stalin Line

19 May 2022 marked the 100th anniversary of the Pioneer Organisation. 

On this day, pupils from Gymnasium No. 3 in Borisov formally joined the Pioneers at the Stalin Line Historical and Cultural Complex. Following the ceremony, the young Pioneers were given a guided tour along the historical route, where they learnt about the Stalin Line as a system of defensive fortifications. They discovered that it had been built along the Soviet Union’s western borders between 1928 and 1939, when the USSR bordered Romania, Poland and the Baltic states. However, Poland ceased to exist in 1939, and the Soviet Union acquired a common border with Nazi Germany. Consequently, when the Great Patriotic War began in 1941, the Stalin Line had to be used not to defend against Polish Army infantry and cavalry, but against German armoured divisions. Despite this, the Red Army managed to delay the Germans: for four days in the Minsk Fortified Region, 20 days in the Polotsk Fortified Region, nine days in the Novograd-Volynsky Fortified Region, 14 days in the Korosten Fortified Region and 60 days in the Kiev Fortified Region, while the Karelian Fortified Region held out throughout the war. Germany could not win a protracted war and therefore relied on a short campaign — a blitzkrieg. The 107-day delay to the German advance caused the blitzkrieg to fail, and Nazi Germany lost the war. The Stalin Line had not been built in vain.