Svetlahorsk, Gomel Region, Belarus

🇧🇾 Svietlahorsk (Светлаго́рск) or Svetlogorsk, known as Shatsilki : Шацілкі) until 1961, is a town in Gomel Region, Belarus. It serves as the administrative centre of Svietlahorsk District. It is situated on the Berezina River. Svietlаhorsk-na-Biarezinie (Svietlаhorsk on Biarezina) is also a railroad station on the Zhlobin — Kalinkavichy railway line. It has suffered radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl disaster.

Town structure Svietlahorsk is divided into two major parts: agricultural-industrial area on the east of Svietlahorsk and the residential area on the west of Svietlahorsk. There are no occupied residential buildings in its industrial area (apart from lechebno-trudovoy profilaktoriy, which is a type of prison of the Soviet legacy, dedicated to forced rehab of alcoholics and drug-addicts).

Industrial area The industrial area's main street is the Zavadskaja vulica. Along Zavadskaja street, five major factories are located: • Svetlogorskkhimvolokno ("Svietlahorsk Chemical Fibre Plant"), an artificial fibre plant, one of the main chemical plants in Belarusian chemical sector. • The cellulose and cardboard factory, which mainly produces cardboard and cardboard packaging. • The cellulose whitening plant, a recently built plant which produces sulfur-whitened crude cellulose from raw wood. • Svetlogorskiy domostroitelnyy kombinat ("Svietlahorsk house-building plant") which is dedicated to production of mixed metal-concrete blocs used for large-scale apartment block buildings.

Near the centre of Zavadskaja street there is a turn to vulica Sviardlova (Sverdlova street) the start of which is also located in industrial area. Along it there are large stretches of ogorods (kitchen gardens) and garage blocks. There are also industrial railway lines of Svetlogorskkhimvolokno's cellulose and cardboard factories, crossing Sverdlova street under the bridge. At the end of the industrial area, Sverdlova street's part is the: • Svetlogorskiy ZhBiK ("Svietlahorsk Mixed Metal-Concrete Plant") which mass-produces smaller metal-concrete blocks used in construction. But unlike Svietlahorsk house-building plant, ZhBiK does not produce complete sections of multifloor apartment blocks, mainly the smaller blocks like metal-concrete curbstones and metal-concrete blocks used to enclose technical wells.

Near the end of Zavadskaja street, near the cellulose-whitening plant, there is a crossing with Savieckaja vulica (Saveckaja street) and a few other plants are located along its starting part: • Svetlogorskaya ovoschnaya fabrika ("Svietlahorsk vegetable greenhouses") which produces a range of vegetables for the local population: potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, etc. • Svetlogorskiy rybkhoz ("Svietlahorsk fish farm") which mainly produces locally bred fish for local consumption • Svetlogorskaya TETs ("Svietlahorsk Power Plant"), the 150MWt mixed-fuel (mainly gas) power plant, supplying Svietlahorsk, and also partly Rechitsa and Zhlobin.

Residential area The residential area encompasses the town of Svietlohorsk's main part and it is the area were all people in Svietlahorsk live. It is mainly divided into the communal area and the private area, which a few exceptions there and in between.

Communal living area Communal living area of Svietlahorsk is the area where all utilities (electricity, water, sewerage, TV, broadband, and, most importantly, external house renovation) are all largely provided by the state-owned Kommunalno-zhilischnoye unitarnoe predpriyatie Svetoch ("Svietac communal-living unitary enterprise"). It's a densely-populated main residential area of Svietlahorsk, which is home to around 55,000 of its people.

Unlike the name may suggest, there are almost no true communal residential houses in the area, and this is where most multifloor apartments blocks of Svietlahorsk are located. Most apartments are privately owned by families living in them, although in the same buildings there are a number of state-owned apartments which the state leases to people living in them.

Communal residential area at first was built along two first streets of modern Svietlahorsk: Lienina vulica and Internacyajanalnaja vulica and that part of the communal residential area in Svielahorsk is now called Stary horad ("The Old Town")

From 1964 to the current time, coinciding with the start of Chemical fibre plant construction the approach to housing in Svietlahorsk changed. Instead of building houses along expanding streets, the experimental architectural policy demanded that the rapidly-built apartment blocks were only subdivided to mikrorajón (microdistricts) without the internal street-based addressing in the borders of mikrorajón.

Addressing schemes From 1964 on, all buildings within mikrorajón were getting mikrorajón-based addresses, e.g. mikrorajón 1, house 14, flat 30, if it was for flats, or mikrorajón 1, house 12A, if it was a kindergarten or other building not dedicated to housing.

To add to this experimental scheme, at first, mikrorajón were only listed by natural numbers, which led to the short addressing scheme which looked like 1-10-11, which stood for "mikrorajón 1, house 10, flat 11". This short addressing scheme is still widely used in Svietlahorsk hospital patients' medical records.

Later, the mikrorajón numbers were augmented with human-sounding names, for instance, mikrorajón 1 became mikrorajón "Oktyabrski". However, the previous short scheme persists to this day, and still it is widespread to call mikrorajón by numbers.

To add to the complexity of addressing, not all multi-storey apartment blocks were parts of mikrorajón. There were de facto mikrorajóns which had no mikrorajón-level subdivision (for instance the "Pyatisotki" district) of addresses, but street-level subdivision. From 2018 onwards, "Svetoch" started to implement the all-Belarusian law demanding the street-level addressing for all buildings in Belarus.

Mikrorajón, according to implementation of the aforementioned law by "Svetoch" have not perished, but were left only as to signify the discrete sets of apartment blocks delimited from one another. That is how the "Pyatisotki", which was previously addressed by streets and not by mikrorajón, became the new valid mikrorajón. For the mikrorajóns like Stary Horad and Piatisotki, the older, sole street-based addressing was left in place, as the houses in them were never previously addressed by mikrorajón.

The normalization of addresses led to the fact that all following addresses are currently referring to the single flat in Svietlahorsk (and all of them are correct and being used as of 2021): 1-48-1

Mikrorayon 1, house 48, flat 1

Mikrorayon Oktyabrski, house 48, flat 1

Zavulak Startavy, house 1, flat 1

whereas, "Zavulak Startavy, 1" is the new address for the same house that was previously called "Mikrorajón Oktyabrski, house 48".

Despite the new street-level addressing, the post offices continue to serve mikrorajón-level addressed parcels, and so do the rest of administrative and commercial structures in Svietlahorsk.

Current microdistricts The list of microdistricts (mikrorayons) of Svietlahorsk, as of 2021: • Mikrarajon Stary Horad (Mikrorayon Staryy Gorod, previously unnumbered) • Mikrarajon Kastrycnicki (Mikrorayon Oktyabrski, mikrorayon 1) • Mikrarajon Piersamajski (Mikrorayon Pervomayskiy, mikrorayon 2) • Mikrarajon Maladziozny (Mikrorayon Molodezhnyy, mikrorayon 3) • Mikrarajon Jubiliejny (Mikrorayon Yubileynyy, mikrorayon 4) • Mikrarajon Piatisotki (Mikrorayon Pyatisotki, previously unnumbered) • Mikrarajon Sacilki (Mikrorayon Shatilki, mikrorayon 5) • Mikrarajon Biarezina (Mikrorayon Berezina, mikrorayon 6) • Mikrarajon Paliessie (Mikrorayon Polesye, mikrorayon 6A) • Mikrarajon Paudniovy (Mikrorayon Yuzhnyy, mikrorayon 8)

Mikrarajon Kastrycnicki Mikrarajon Kastrycnicki was the first numbered mikrorajón of Svietlahorsk, largely built between 1964 and 1969, with an additional houses built on its edge during the 1989 to 1991 and some additional houses being built there to this day, albeit sporadically (the last one was built in 2012). It mostly consists of five-floor khrushchyovkas spanning several podyezds (but not less than 2 podyezds per apartment block) with, typically 60-120 apartments per block.

Houses built in 1989 - 1991 are nine-storey apartment buildings with one to five podyezds each.

Mikrorajón Kastrycnicki has one school, one stadium with taekwondo school, sprint running school and a gym, four kindergartens, one kindergarten for children with special needs, one boxing sportschool and an internal park.

Mikrarajon Piersamajski Mikrarajon Piersamajski was the second numbered mikrorajón built in Svietlahorsk, largely in 1967–1972. It is around the size of the Kastrycnicki mikrorajón, and also largely consists of khrushchyovka. Few additional sets of nine-floor apartment blocks were built there in the late 1980s and in the 1990s. nine-storey apartment blocks built along the vulica Batava, contain two-floor apartments, which was a novelty for Svietlahorsk at the time they were built.

Mikrarajon Piersamajski has two schools, four kindergartens.

Unlike Kastrycnicki, which was built from a cleaned-up construction site and later planted with mainly deciduous trees, Piersamajski was built preserving the pine forest where it was sited, so all internal yards of Piersamajski contain actual pine forest.

Mikrarajon Maladziozny Mikrarajon Maladziozny is by far the largest mikrorajón in Svietlahorsk. It has more than 90 apartment blocks and most of those apartment blocks are 9-floor houses spanning several podyezds. It was the Maladziozny, which foreseen the architectural policy change in 1976 which forbade the construction of 5-floor blocks in favour of 9-floor blocks. Maladziozny was mostly built in the 1970s and the 1980s, with the most recent houses built there in the early 2010s.

Maladziozny is the first numbered mikrorajón in Svietlahorsk not completely contained within enclosing streets: Maladziozny is itself crossed by vulica Azalava and vulica Lunacarskaha.

Maladziozny has four schools, multiple kindergartens, a pediatric clinic, and a centre for after-school education of children.

Mikrarajon Piatisotki Mikrarajon Piatisotki is a small mikrorajón mostly built in the late 1960s to the early 1970s behind the market on Internacyajanalnaja street, which first passed through the Stary Horad, then went through the central town market. Unlike with all other previously built mikrorajón, Piatisotki apartment blocks largely consisted of malosemeykas (reduced-area single room flats), built to house the growing worker population of Svietlahorsk around that time. Two houses, five-floor and nine-storey with full-fledged non-malosemeyka apartments where additionally built there later, in the late 1980s.

Piatisotki has one school, no kindergartens, Svietlahorsk court and Svietlahorsk military command office.

Mikrorajón Jubiliejny Internacyajanalnaja street, before the Jubiliejny was built, spanned the Stary Horad, then it went through the town market and then to Piatisotki. In the late 1980s, architectural policy demanded to demolish the town market and to establish a new town square and town centre, enclosed by two new mikrorajóns.

Jubiliejny was one of these two mikrorajóns and it was built on the site of the demolished town market. It completely consists of 9-floor apartment buildings with the only exception of the so-called shesnadtsatietazhka ("the 16-floor one"), which has 16 floors and is a peak of architectural ensemble, foreseeing the new town square.

Mikrorajón Šacilki Construction of the new town square demanded also that the village Šacilki, where Svietlahorsk started, had to be mostly demolished near the new town square. But the construction, which started in the early 1990s, stopped halfway, due to Soviet Union collapse and the changed attitudes towards property and private housing, which became preferable to apartment-block living in the new post-communist era. Therefore, mikrorajón (microdistrict) Šacilki was never properly built. It now consists of one five-storey two-entance house, one nine-floor residential house and two conjoined 10-storey multi-entrance residential houses overlooking the town square, including the so-called dom s chasami (house with a clock).

In the early 2010s, the renewed interest to construction in this mikrorajón was brought in by the Iranian investment to the construction of two-large malls in mikrorajón Šacilki, which are popularly called Iranskiy kvartal (Persian quarter). Malls were built, went into service, but the further plans to build several more multifloor apartment blocks behind Iranskiy kvartal by 2015 were never realized.

Apart from Iranskiy kvartal, mikrorajón Šacilki also hosts Svietlahorsk Office of Prosecutor.

Economy: Industry Within Svietlahorsk there are many industrial activities and organizations, including the power plant, a chemical man-made fiber plant, a reinforced concrete industrial complex, a petroleum producing industry, a pulp and paper milk industry, butter-making factory, a bakery, and an industrial college.

Religion Eastern Orthodoxy is by far the dominant religion in Svietlahorsk, followed by Catholicism. There are several Protestant churches. There are three Eastern Orthodox churches, one Catholic cathedral built in 1997, a Baptist prayer house on Paryckaja street, an Evangelical church behind the sixth microdistrict and a New Apostolic church near the town's banya (public baths).

Apart from mainstream Christian congregations, there is a prominent Jehovah's Witnesses community in Svietlahorask. Earlier, in the 1990s and the early 2000s there has also been an active local Protestant community called "The Light Of Truth" (in Russian: Svet Istiny), which ceased most of its operations by the late 2000s.

Sights • Eastern Orthodox cathedral with a gold-plated domes near the fourth microdistrict. • Catholic cathedral near the city near the Svietlahorsk waterfront • The quay • Museum of local lore on Lenina street • Art gallery "Tradition" (Belarusian: Karcinnaja halereja Tradycyja) near the corner of the second microdistrict, which hosts exhibitions and a variety of paintings, drawings and art objects by the painters from Svietlahorsk and beyond • Monument to Raman Sacila, the purported founder of Sacilki • Monument to Petr Miroshnichenko, Hero of the Soviet Union who shielded the battalion of Soviet soldiers from a German machinegun with his chest in battles near Svietlahorsk, depicting Petr in his battle munition, kneeling • monument to the Unknown Soldier near the town's railway station, where particularly harsh battles between German and Soviet army units took place, depicting an unknown soldier in his battle munition, kneeling • Monument on the town's waterfront dedicated to all and everyone who fell a victim to the Second World War; it is bell-shaped • Monument to soldiers from Svietlahorsk who died in Soviet-Afghan war, depicting two Soviet male soldiers near a crashed helicopter, on the town's waterfront • Tank remade into a monument on the town's waterfront. • A wedding vow arc on the town's waterfront where newly-wed couples leave locked doorlocks on it as a symbol to their marital commitment. • Vityaz (knight) sculpture carved from tree stump near the Pyatisotki microdistrict. • Wooden sculpture of mother and child near the "Tradition" art gallery. • Wooden monument to youth near the corner of the third microdistrict • Statue of Prometheus holding fire near the House of Culture of the Energy Workers. • Additional monuments to Prometheus near all major highway entrances to Svietlahorsk • Great Gatsby mural on the private house near the town's waterfront.

Health Svietlahorsk, like much of Gomel Region, suffered extensive radioactive fallout after the Chernobyl Accident of 1986. This has led to significant health and ecological issues in the city and surrounding countryside.