Svetlahorsk

Svyetlahorsk (, ) or Svetlogorsk (), previously known as Shatsilki until 1961, is a town in Gomel Region, Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Svyetlahorsk District. It is situated on the Berezina River. In 2019, its population was 67,054.Статистический ежегодник Гомельской области 2019.
/ref> As of 2025, it has a population of 61,812.

''Svyetlаhorsk-na-Byarezinye'' (Svyetlаhorsk-on-Byarezina) is also a railroad station on the Zhlobin — Kalinkavichy railway line. It has suffered radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl disaster.

Town structure

Svyetlahorsk is divided into two major parts: agricultural-industrial area on the east of Svyetlahorsk and the residential area on the west of Svyetlahorsk. 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:
* ("Svyetlahorsk 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.
* ("Svyetlahorsk house-building plant") which is dedicated to production of mixed metal-concrete blocs used for large-scale apartment block buildings.

Near the center of Zavadskaja street there is a turn to (Sverdlova street) the start of which is also located in industrial area. Along it there are large stretches of (kitchen gardens) and garage blocks. There are also industrial railway lines of 's cellulose and cardboard factories, crossing Sverdlova street under the bridge. At the end of the industrial area, Sverdlova street's part is the:
* ("Svyetlahorsk Mixed Metal-Concrete Plant") which mass-produces smaller metal-concrete blocks used in construction. But unlike Svyetlahorsk house-building plant, 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 (Saveckaja street) and a few other plants are located along its starting part:
* ("Svyetlahorsk vegetable greenhouses") which produces a range of vegetables for the local population: potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, etc.
* ("Svyetlahorsk fish farm") which mainly produces locally bred fish for local consumption
* ("Svyetlahorsk Power Plant"), the 150MWt mixed-fuel (mainly gas) power plant, supplying Svyetlahorsk, and also partly Rechitsa and Zhlobin.

Residential area

The residential area encompasses the town of Svyetlohorsk's main part and it is the area were all people in Svyetlahorsk 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 Svyetlahorsk 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 ("Svyetac communal-living unitary enterprise"). It is a densely populated main residential area of Svyetlahorsk, 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 Svyetlahorsk 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 Svyetlahorsk: and and that part of the communal residential area in Svielahorsk is now called ("The Old Town")

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

=Addressing schemes

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

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

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

To add to the complexity of addressing, not all multi-storey apartment blocks were parts of . There were de facto which had no -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.

, 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 , became the new valid . For the 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 .

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

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

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

=Current microdistricts

=
The list of microdistricts (''mikrorayons'') of Svyetlahorsk, 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 of Svyetlahorsk, 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 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.

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 built in Svyetlahorsk, largely in 1967–1972. It is around the size of the Kastrycnicki , and also largely consists of . 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 , contain two-floor apartments, which was a novelty for Svyetlahorsk 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 in Svyetlahorsk. 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 in Svyetlahorsk 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 center for after-school education of children.

=Mikrarajon Piatisotki

=
Mikrarajon Piatisotki is a small 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 , Piatisotki apartment blocks largely consisted of (reduced-area single room flats), built to house the growing worker population of Svyetlahorsk around that time. Two houses, five-floor and nine-storey with full-fledged non- apartments where additionally built there later, in the late 1980s.

Piatisotki has one school, no kindergartens, Svyetlahorsk court and Svyetlahorsk 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 center, enclosed by two new .

Jubiliejny was one of these two 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 ("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 Svyetlahorsk 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, (microdistrict) Šacilki was never properly built. It now consists of one five-storey two-entrance house, one nine-floor residential house and two conjoined 10-storey multi-entrance residential houses overlooking the town square, including the so-called (house with a clock).

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

Apart from , Šacilki also hosts Svyetlahorsk Office of Prosecutor.

Industry

Within Svyetlahorsk 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 Svyetlahorsk, 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 (public baths).

Apart from mainstream Christian congregations, there is a prominent Jehovah's Witnesses community in Svyetlahorask. Earlier, in the 1990s and the early 2000s there has also been an active local Protestant community called "The Light Of Truth" (in ), 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 Svyetlahorsk waterfront
* The quay
* Museum of local lore on Lenina street
* Art gallery "Tradition" () near the corner of the second microdistrict, which hosts exhibitions and a variety of paintings, drawings and art objects by the painters from Svyetlahorsk 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 Svyetlahorsk, 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 Svyetlahorsk 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.
* (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 Svyetlahorsk
* Great Gatsby mural on the private house near the town's waterfront.

Health

Svyetlahorsk, 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.

International relations

Svyetlahorsk is twinned with:

* Călărași District, Moldova
* Călărași, Romania
* Chernushinsky District, Russia
* Helmstedt, Germany
* Ivanteyevka, Russia

* Kingisepp, Russia
* Kommunar, Russia
* Mendip, England, United Kingdom
* Mtskheta, Georgia
* Obzor (Nesebar), Bulgaria
* Pushkinsky District, Russia
* Sliven, Bulgaria
* Svetlogorsk, Russia
* Svetly, Russia

Notes

References

External links

Светлагорск (Шацілкі). Суполка землякоў , Svietlahorsk (Šacilki). Local group , Светлогорск (Шатилки). Группа земляков // Facebook

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Populated places in Gomel region
Svyetlahorsk district
Populated places in Belarus

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