What is unique about the urban village of Kopys in the Orsha region?
In this unusually beautiful place on the left bank of the Dnieper, past and present organically intertwine, erasing all time boundaries. This is a real clot of history and a real “village” of the future: small but expensive. The ancient city of craftsmen lives its measured life, without falling behind everything that is new and progressive. A unique historical heritage is “Petrovsky Val” with an ancient settlement, where Peter 1 spent a lot of time defending the borders of a great power. Today, restored, “Petrovsky Val” is one of the most favorite and most visited places by tourists in the Vitebsk region. Builders, together with scientists, restored wooden towers with observation platforms.
From the high bank you can see the bridge, opened thanks to concern for the small homeland of the head of state Alexander Lukashenko, connecting the Vitebsk and Mogilev regions.
Despite the cyclones that have recently hit the northern region of the country, Kopys greets you with cleaned and filled roads and sidewalks, neat streets: at 8 am it is clean and calm. On the way to the Kopys village Council of Deputies and the executive committee, I start a conversation with local resident Elena Vinarskaya, who, despite the early hour, is already rushing to her workplace in the House of Culture to prepare the next event. The woman says that she moved to the village with her family from Kaliningrad at the age of one.
– She grew up, studied here, got married. My husband’s grandfather inherited the house, which was reconstructed over time,” she adds. “For the 25 years that my husband and I have been living here, we haven’t even thought about moving somewhere else. What for? Kopys has everything you need for life. And in recent years the village has completely changed. Look how clean, cozy and comfortable our place is. You go outside in winter and are not afraid that you will get stuck in snowdrifts on the way to the store or to work. The eldest son, who is 23 years old, went to Russia for a “better” life, and now wants to return back to his native place. Believe me, there is a job for everyone here, if there is a desire. My daughter has been going to vocal and choreography lessons at our House of Culture since she was three years old. She is a local star. Everyone finds something to their liking and interests, I tell you completely without embellishment, both a local resident and an artistic director. Without involving third-party artists, we prepare many events on our own for all age categories. All of them are the author’s developments of our creative director of the House of Culture, Victoria Zezyulina. There are no empty seats in the auditorium during concerts, competition programs, and theatrical performances. Sometimes even additional chairs have to be substituted.
