Over 80 spectacular events will be organized at 15th International Arts Festival "Slavonic Bazaar in Vitebsk", culture minister Vladimir Matveichuk said today at a press-conference dedicated to the opening of the festival.
Besides from the "Summer Coliseum" where some 20 concerts will run, another 10 stages will take part in the arts marathon. Almost 90 thousand people are expected to attend the festival shows.
Among the highlights of the Slavonic Bazaar, as Vladimir Matveichuk said, there will be Days of Culture of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, a Day of the Belarus-Russia Union State and theater and cinema projects. The Kremlin guard unit will take part in the events celebrating the Day of Moscow which is scheduled for July 12. The international contest of pop singers "Vitebsk-2006" and the children’s song contest will be also held. Belarusian-Russian joint concerts are expected to be interesting as well: a concert of composer Kim Breitburg, dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the Day of Unity of the peoples of Belarus and Russia, a jubilee concert of Yadviga Poplavskaya and Alexander Tikhanovich, in which Russian guests of the artists will take part.
Apart from pop songs the jubilee festival will present classical music and jazz, circus and fine arts.
According to the culture minister, this year the festival is expanding its international contacts. Delegations from more than 30 countries will take part in it. For the first time Argentina, Cuba and Cyprus will delegate their participants. About 350 representatives of mass media outlets will cover the festival. //BelTA
The Konstanty Kalinowski scholarships, named after a 19th-century Polish-Belarusian journalist and revolutionary, paves the way for 300 Belarusian students expelled from their home universities for opposing Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko's authoritarian regime to continue their studies in neighboring Poland.
Lukashenko won a third term as president in a March 19 election, beating opposition candidate Alexander Milinkevich in balloting the opposition and Western observers and governments called illegitimate. Lukashenko won 83 percent of the vote.
Two weeks after the election, Milinkevich and Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz signed an agreement in Warsaw laying the groundwork for the scholarship program.
Marcinkiewicz and Milinkevich are both expected to take part in Wednesday's ceremony at Warsaw University.
Poland has long pushed for democratic change in neighboring Belarus, a former Soviet republic, and the program is the latest move in Warsaw's support of the opposition.
Before the March 19 presidential election, the Polish-backed Radio Racja began broadcasting from northeastern Poland to give Belarusians the chance to receive information uncensored by authorities in Minsk, the AP reports.
7 July 2006