| Svyetlahorsk | |
| Native Name: | |
| Nickname: | Svietly (The Bright), |
| Settlement Type: | Town |
| Flag Size: | 150 |
| Pushpin Map: | Belarus |
| Pushpin Label Position: | left |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Name: | Belarus |
| Subdivision Type1: | Region |
| Subdivision Name1: | Gomel Region |
| Subdivision Type2: | District |
| Subdivision Name2: | Svyetlahorsk District |
| Established Title: | First mentioned |
| Established Date: | 1560 |
| Area Total Km2: | 25.85 |
| Population As Of: | 2024 |
| Population Footnotes: | [1] |
| Population Total: | 62,602 |
| Population Density Km2: | 2594 |
| Timezone: | MSK |
| Utc Offset: | +3 |
| Coordinates: | 52.6333°N 73°W |
| Elevation M: | 131 |
| Postal Code Type: | Postal code |
| Postal Code: | 24743х |
| Area Code: | +375 2342 |
| Blank Name: | License plate |
| Blank Info: | 3 |
| Website: | Official website |
Svyetlahorsk (in Belarusian pronounced as /sʲvʲetɫaˈɣorsk/) or Svetlogorsk (Russian: Светлогорск), previously known as Shatsilki until 1961, is a town in Gomel Region, Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Svyetlahorsk District.[2] It is situated on the Berezina River. In 2019, its population was 67,054.[3] As of 2024, it has a population of 62,602.[1]
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.
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).
The industrial area's main street is the Zavadskaja vulica. Along Zavadskaja street, five major factories are located:
Near the center of Zavadskaja street there is a turn to Belarusian: vulica Sviardlova (Sverdlova street) the start of which is also located in industrial area. Along it there are large stretches of Belarusian: ogorods (kitchen gardens) and garage blocks. There are also industrial railway lines of Belarusian: 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:
Near the end of Zavadskaja street, near the cellulose-whitening plant, there is a crossing with Belarusian: Savieckaja vulica (Saveckaja street) and a few other plants are located along its starting part:
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 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 Belarusian: Kommunalno-zhilischnoye unitarnoe predpriyatie Svetoch ("Svyetac communal-living unitary enterprise"). It's 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: Belarusian: Lienina vulica and Belarusian: Internacyajanalnaja vulica and that part of the communal residential area in Svielahorsk is now called Belarusian: 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 Svyetlahorsk changed. Instead of building houses along expanding streets, the experimental architectural policy demanded that the rapidly-built apartment blocks were only subdivided to Russian: mikrorajón (microdistricts) without the internal street-based addressing in the borders of Russian: mikrorajón.
From 1964 on, all buildings within Russian: mikrorajón were getting Russian: mikrorajón-based addresses, e.g. Russian: mikrorajón 1, house 14, flat 30, if it was for flats, or Russian: mikrorajón 1, house 12A, if it was a kindergarten or other building not dedicated to housing.
To add to this experimental scheme, at first, Russian: mikrorajón were only listed by natural numbers, which led to the short addressing scheme which looked like 1-10-11, which stood for "Russian: mikrorajón 1, house 10, flat 11". This short addressing scheme is still widely used in Svyetlahorsk hospital patients' medical records.
Later, the Russian: mikrorajón numbers were augmented with human-sounding names, for instance, Russian: mikrorajón 1 became Russian: mikrorajón "Oktyabrski". However, the previous short scheme persists to this day, and still it is widespread to call Russian: mikrorajón by numbers.
To add to the complexity of addressing, not all multi-storey apartment blocks were parts of Russian: mikrorajón. There were de facto Russian: mikrorajóns which had no Russian: 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.
Russian: 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 Russian: mikrorajón, became the new valid Russian: mikrorajón. For the Russian: 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 Russian: mikrorajón.
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 "Russian: Mikrorajón Oktyabrski|italic=no, house 48".
Despite the new street-level addressing, the post offices continue to serve Russian: mikrorajón-level addressed parcels, and so do the rest of administrative and commercial structures in Svyetlahorsk.
The list of microdistricts (mikrorayons) of Svyetlahorsk, as of 2021:
Mikrarajon Kastrycnicki was the first numbered Russian: mikrorajón 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 Russian: [[khrushchyovka]]s 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.
Russian: 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 was the second numbered Russian: mikrorajón built in Svyetlahorsk, largely in 1967–1972. It is around the size of the Kastrycnicki Russian: mikrorajón, and also largely consists of Russian: 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 Belarusian: vulica Batava, 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 is by far the largest Russian: mikrorajón 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 Russian: mikrorajón 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 is a small Russian: 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 Russian: mikrorajón, Piatisotki apartment blocks largely consisted of Belarusian: malosemeykas (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-Russian: malosemeyka apartments where additionally built there later, in the late 1980s.
Piatisotki has one school, no kindergartens, Svyetlahorsk court and Svyetlahorsk military command office.
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 Russian: mikrorajóns.
Jubiliejny was one of these two Russian: 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 Belarusian: shesnadtsatietazhka ("the 16-floor one"), which has 16 floors and is a peak of architectural ensemble, foreseeing the new town square.
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, Russian: mikrorajón (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 Belarusian: dom s chasami (house with a clock).
In the early 2010s, the renewed interest to construction in this Russian: mikrorajón was brought in by the Iranian investment to the construction of two-large malls in Russian: mikrorajón Šacilki, which are popularly called Belarusian: Iranskiy kvartal (Persian quarter). Malls were built, went into service, but the further plans to construct several more multifloor apartment blocks behind Belarusian: Iranskiy kvartal by 2015 were never realized.
Apart from Belarusian: Iranskiy kvartal, Russian: mikrorajón Šacilki also hosts Svyetlahorsk Office of Prosecutor.
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.
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 Russian: [[Banya (sauna)|banya]] (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 Russian: Svet Istiny), which ceased most of its operations by the late 2000s.
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.
See also: List of twin towns and sister cities in Belarus.
Svyetlahorsk is twinned with:[4]
Călărași District, Moldova
Călărași, Romania
Chernushinsky District, Russia Ivanteyevka, Russia Kingisepp, Russia Kommunar, Russia
Mtskheta, Georgia Pushkinsky District, Russia Svetlogorsk, Russia Svetly, Russia