Belarus, Russia to jointly promote patriotic tourism routes

Cooperation agreements were concluded in the areas of preserving historical memory, developing patriotic tourism, and strengthening humanitarian ties between the National Center for Historical Memory under the Russian president and the National Union of the Tourism Industry of Belarus, the Belarusian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War, the Khatyn Memorial Complex, the Mogilev Oblast Museum of Local History, and the Gomel Oblast Museum of Military Glory.

The documents were signed following the roundtable discussion “Patriotic Tourism and Cooperation among CIS States in Preserving Memory and Educating Future Generations”.

According to Filip Guly, Chairman of the Board of the National Union of the Tourism Industry, both Belarus and Russia have developed tourist routes that include visits to memorial complexes, military museums, and sites of remembrance. “We need tools that can scale these routes and expand them to the Union State,” he noted, adding that over the past 15 years much has been done to create such tourism products with a focus on various regions of Russia. Now it is important to integrate them into youth patriotic education programs and coordinate efforts to promote them.

Elena Malysheva, Head of the National Center for Historical Memory under the Russian president, emphasized that the roundtable discussion topic generated genuine interest. Participants exchanged experiences, shared successful practices, and presented proposals that will help unite local historical narratives into a single system of patriotic routes. The goal is to elevate patriotic tourism to a new level.

“There are many themes that bring us closer together through historical events and facts. Understanding these events unites our peoples,” she said.

In her view, it is necessary to create an information infrastructure that will make patriotic routes accessible to everyone, both tour operators and individual travelers. “Such infrastructure is now being developed. One possible model is the experience of the National Center for Historical Memory under the president of the Russian Federation,” Elena Malysheva noted.

The aggregator is being formed by the developers of the tourist routes themselves. Key routes connected to sites commemorating the genocide of the Soviet people have already been presented. The next step is to supplement them with smaller, lesser-known routes.