In a Ukrainian village called “Lithuania”, there is both anger at Moscow and the pentagram

Sursko Lytovska is only 20 kilometers from Dnipro, a city of one million people, on both sides of the road to Zaporizhia. The Dregnasis Surskas stream flows through the village, and it got its name because this 134-kilometer-long tributary of the Dnieper River flows through grasslands in many places and is very shallow, only a dozen centimeters deep.

According to the old local tradition, the names of settlements built on streams consist of two words, the first of which is the name of the river. Therefore, the settlement founded 230 years ago by order of Russian Tsar Catherine II also got the double name – Sursko Lytovske.

Confusion about the village’s connection to Lithuania has arisen not only because of the word “Litovsk” in the village’s name, but also because of false statements by Russian historians. Ukraine During the feudal crisis of 1825-1860, it is recorded that Tsar Catherine II ordered the settlement of the “wild” steppes of southern Ukraine, so people from Lithuanian and Belarusian villages were moved to one of the newly established settlements.

In fact, as early as 1795 only the inhabitants of the village of Dubrovna in the Mogilev Region of Belarus were relocated – employees of the silk and cotton factories operating there and their families, a total of 1,000 people. 792. Since the Belarusian residents of Moscow were called “Litvins” according to ancient custom – this is a Slavic word that describes the residents of LDK, the newly formed village also received this word.

225 huts were built for the displaced people of Dubrovnik, but due to crop failure, water shortages and disease, two-thirds of the 1,000 people died within the first four years. 792 people arrived. Forty years later, the factory closed because negligence and theft by officials had led to losses, so the state decided it would be cheaper to order military uniforms from private manufacturers.

Later, no new factories appeared in the village, but residents could easily find jobs in the rapidly developing Dnieper. During the Soviet era, six collective farms were established in Surskoltovsk, which were later merged into one. The village also had a secondary school, a hospital and a cultural center.

Now more than 20 nationalities live in the village, and more people speak Russian than those around it. Because Ukrainian schools were opened in neighboring villages during the Soviet era, Russian schools were also built here. “This is Moscow’s policy – they invite workers from various Soviet republics to factories being built on the Dnieper River and encourage the use of Russian, while mocking Ukrainians as a ‘dark nation,'” said a man on the street who asked not to be identified.

After walking along the main central street of the town, I was convinced that Sursko-Litovsk is still facing a serious stage of de-Russification and de-Sovietization. Some houses next to the new names still have the old signs saying “Lenin Street”, which does not bother the locals even in the third year of the massive war. The villagers are not angry about the huge monument to the Soviet liberator fighters and the red star next to it, although in western Ukraine all these monuments were removed during the war.

“The name of the village misleads not only some historians, but also tourists who ask about Lithuania, despite the fact that our parishioners are Belarusians“When I was a child, my parents and grandparents didn’t speak the language of our ancestors, but we don’t speak it anymore, although we use quite a few Belarusian words in everyday conversation, which is why residents of neighboring villages continue to call us “Litvinians” or “Litovchi,” said Aliona Lomakina, head of the district’s social care department.

“Unfortunately, my uncle had a stroke and the doctors did not allow him to disturb him because he wrote a book about the village and knew its history best,” said Svetlana Ivanova, the village administrator. The woman suggested going to the library to get more detailed information.

There, I attended a rehearsal of the “Sveikatėlė” choir and was given a cake because one of the singers was celebrating her birthday. The choir’s director, Valentina Shulgina, said that most of the singers had retired because young people no longer spoke Belarusian. He also talked about how he changed his repertoire after the war began and stopped singing Belarusian and Russian songs.

The choir was founded by the staff of the local hospital during the Soviet era, so it is still called “Sveikatėlė”, although there are few doctors left among them. The singers say that during the Soviet era, their village developed close friendly relations with the Belarusian village of Dubrovna, from which “Lithuanians” were brought here 230 years ago.

The choir attended the International Folklore Festival in Dubrovnik with village leaders, who donated an artificial surface sports field to the school in Surska Lytovske. “In 2014, we had to go there again for the festival, but after the festival started, Callas They destroyed mutual relations, and now they have completely severed ties because Minsk is helping Moscow,” said a choir member.

It is 650 km from the capital Kiev to the front line in the Donetsk region and only 200 km from the Dnieper River, which is why the Dnieper River has great strategic significance in the war – soldiers pass through it to the front line, weapons are transported through it, and the wounded are brought here for treatment. Dnieper is not attacked as often as Kharkov, but enemy rockets arrive here almost every week, and there are several exploded and Sursko in Litovsk.

Fortunately, they only destroyed houses and did not cause casualties. However, a dozen front-line soldiers are already buried in the cemetery, as Dnipro residents often buried their relatives here, as it was cheap. The last soldier buried was a local resident, but died not at the front, but after returning from there after being seriously wounded and partially disabled. At home, the man did not behave well, and on that fatal night, after an argument with his wife and mother, he blew himself up with a grenade, destroying part of his home at the same time.

The village’s population did not officially decrease during the war and still numbered 4,000 people, but hundreds of them left, replaced by 350 refugees from frontline villages in the neighboring Donetsk region.

Dozens of men went to the front from Sursklitovska, three of them (two sons and a son-in-law) escorted by 73-year-old pensioner Aleksandra Vovk. A woman who sells fruit and vegetables from a table near her home in the city center saw the Lithuanian license plate on my car, thanked Vilnius for its support and boasted that she had raised patriotic sons. They said Sergey, 37, had been boxing since 2014, and Sasha, 14 months older, since February 2022. With their encouragement, Roman, the husband of one of the three sisters, soon went to the front.

“All my thoughts were about my sons fighting at the front, and because of them, I wrote poems while experiencing them. When I did not receive news for several days and my heart began to tremble with anxiety, I would grab paper and express my feelings, although I had written only a few poems before the war. I wrote about the love of a mother for her children, about the heroic defenders of the Motherland, in which I criticized the Russian Tsar Putin and urged our people to help the front and believe in victory,” said A. Vovk.

The pensioner said that when she was young she loved reading, but later she had no time for it, she raised children, worked as a veterinarian on a collective farm and took care of her farm. “The sons claim that they are not injured, maybe they are lying, maybe not, the most important thing is that they are alive, I hope they are, I send a death curse to Putin,” Vovk said.

The pensioner boasted that she recited verses during village festivals and offered to listen to several poems. The village poet revealed that one of her favorite stanzas goes like this: “Both my sons went out to fight/to defend our beautiful Ukraine from the orcs/Be independent, Ukraine, don’t kneel/Putin is not worth your tears.”