How many more architectural monuments are protected in Poland and Lithuania compared to Belarus. Horrifying figures

The Telegram channel "Spadchyna" drew attention to the differences in the scale of what is protected in the three states.

The Colossal Polish List

According to the report by the Central Statistical Office of Poland for 2024, almost 80,000 immovable heritage objects are protected in the neighboring country.

The Polish register is physically divided into three books: Book A (immovable monuments) includes 79,935 objects, Book B (movable) — 278,897, Book C (archaeological) — 7,830.

At the same time, according to official Belarusian statistics, the State List of Historical and Cultural Values of Belarus includes 5,685 objects. Of these, 5,366 are considered immovable. If 2,226 archaeological monuments are subtracted from this number, only 3,140 actual buildings, urban development complexes, mass graves, and historical sites remain.

Thus, the difference in the number of officially recognized architectural and historical monuments between Poland and Belarus is 25 times.

The density of protected historical buildings also demonstrates a colossal disproportion. In Poland, there are an average of 25.5 immovable monuments per 100 square kilometers of territory, while in Belarus, there are only 1.5. If translated into real terms, then

in a hypothetical 10x10 km square in Belarus, one might find, at best, one or two buildings with a protective plaque. At the same time, in Poland, an analogous area contains more than two dozen monuments — a volume comparable to the historical buildings of an entire town.

The disproportion is evident even at the regional level: 13 out of 16 Polish voivodeships (provinces), despite their incomparably smaller area, surpass all of Belarus in the number of immovable monuments.

Moreover, in five voivodeships (Lower Silesian, Masovian, Greater Poland, Warmian-Masurian, and Lesser Poland), the number of architecture under state protection even exceeds the total number of all objects in the Belarusian State List.

The difference is significant: only in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship, 9,047 objects are protected, in Masovian — 8,325, and in Greater Poland — 8,010.

In the category of movable heritage (works of art, technology, decorative elements), the Polish state protects almost 279,000 objects, whereas the Belarusian state protects only 138 (a 2000-fold difference).

The only category where Belarus is numerically ahead is intangible heritage: 181 items against 107 in Poland. In the last decade, various traditions and rituals have indeed been frequently placed under protection in the country. The reason is quite prosaic — a prestigious status does not require any financial outlays from the state, and local communities ensure preservation independently.

Such a colossal gap cannot be explained by the difference in the size of the states: Poland is only 1.5 times larger than Belarus in area, 4.1 times in population, and 2.8 times in GDP per capita. Yet, for some reason, it surpasses Belarus by as much as 25 times in the number of official monuments.

Poles Never Abandon Their Own. And Us?

The official starting point for state protection of monuments in the neighboring country is considered to be the Decree of the Regency Council of October 31, 1918, "On the Protection of Art and Culture Monuments," adopted before the formal proclamation of the Second Polish Republic.

This work did not stop even during the most difficult times for Poland. Stanisław Lorentz, the future long-serving director of the National Museum in Warsaw, became a symbol of the continuity of this endeavor.

Incidentally, from 1929 to 1935, he headed the monument protection departments in the Vilnius and Navahrudak voivodeships.

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During World War II, Lorentz, as head of secret documentation under the government-in-exile, not only organized the rescue of treasures from the burning Royal Castle but also kept detailed records of destruction for future restitution. Thanks to the efforts of people like Lorentz, Karol Estreicher, and Jan Zachwatowicz, it was possible to preserve not only physical fragments of monuments but also the documentation necessary for their post-war restoration.

After the war, according to principles formulated by architect Jan Zachwatowicz (whose family apparently originated from the Lida region) in 1946, only objects built before 1850 were recognized as monuments. Later, from the 1960s to the early 1970s, a system of classes (from 0 to IV) was in operation.

In the 1990s, the sector faced a crisis: the gigantic system of State Monument Conservation Workshops (PKZ) went bankrupt. The state completely ceased funding, yet the register of monuments was not abolished. Hundreds of objects ended up with local authorities without funds for maintenance; intentional arson of historical buildings by private owners to remove protective status was recorded.

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The legal crisis was resolved in 2003 with the adoption of a new law "On the Protection of Monuments and Care for Them." It abolished strict time limits: now, the criteria for protection are historical, artistic, and scientific values. In 2004, Poland joined the European Union, gaining access to European targeted funds for heritage restoration. The process of delisting from the register became the exclusive prerogative of the General Conservator of Monuments and is strictly controlled: in 2024, 54 decisions were made to remove status, while in 77 cases, authorities officially denied owners' requests.

The highest status, "Monument of History" (Pomnik Historii), which is granted by presidential decree, was awarded to five objects already under protection in 2024.

In 2023, such objects included, for example, the Supraśl Annunciation Monastery and the Jabłeczna Monastery of St. Onuphrius, both connected with Belarusian history, as well as the urban complex of Nowa Huta in Krakow — an example of socialist urban planning from the 1950s.

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A unique case was the granting of monument status to the Greek Catholic Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Biały Bór, built between 1992 and 1997 according to a design by Jerzy Nowosielski and Bohdan Kotarba. The document emphasizes that this is a conscious precedent where the exceptional artistic value of the object outweighed the formal requirement for "antiquity." In Belarus, it is impossible to imagine that not only modern architecture but even Soviet modernism, which already meets the age criterion — 40 years since construction — would be placed under protection.

The Half-Million List

The figure of 80,000 monuments under state protection in Poland (Rejestr zabytków) is only the highest, elite level, for which voivodeship conservators are responsible. But there is also a municipal level in the country — the Gmina Register of Monuments (Gminna ewidencja zabytków — GEZ).

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And its scale is truly fantastic. According to data from the National Heritage Institute for 2021, over 600,000 entries are collected in the gmina registers across the country. Among them are more than 160,000 immovable monuments of traditional historical architecture and over 444,000 archaeological sites.

Compared to Belarus (where there are only about 5,000 objects in total), the Polish municipal list is a hundred times larger.

This register is maintained by local authorities, and buildings included in it are subject to strict restrictions: any window replacement, change of facade color, or demolition must be coordinated with the conservator. At the same time, such status provides neither tax breaks nor the right to state subsidies for restoration. The owner only receives obligations.

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The Polish system of Gmina Register of Monuments is far from ideal: it suffers from bureaucratic chaos and underfunding, is the cause of numerous lawsuits based on owners' complaints, and a significant portion of gminas, as revealed during inspections, completely ignored its maintenance.

However, Polish problems seem like child's play against the backdrop of Belarusian realities. For example, voivodeship heritage protection departments in Poland are chronically understaffed due to low salaries, which leads to delays in issuing decisions and certificates for years.

But in Belarusian regional executive committees, such departments do not exist at all — monuments are handled by the same people, without education or qualifications, who are also responsible for organizing local amateur talent competitions.

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Moreover, owning a historical and cultural value of any category in Belarus not only does not provide state subsidies, but owners are charged 5% of all profits obtained from activities on a historical object, directed to a non-transparent President's Fund for the Support of Culture and Art, from which all state restorations are subsequently financed.

And even such a cash cow seems like an unnecessary burden to the Belarusian authorities, let alone to the owners?

A Blow from Lithuania

One could attribute this colossal gap to Poland being a large, economically developed state with completely different budgets for culture. But even Lithuania, a country with which we shared a single state for centuries, today demonstrates a completely different attitude towards historical heritage.

Lithuania's territory is almost three times smaller than Belarus's, and its population is only about 2.8 million people. Yet, the Lithuanian Register of Cultural Values (KVR) records more than 26,600 immovable objects.

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This is five times more than in the analogous Belarusian list, even including archaeology.

If Lithuania were the size of Belarus, it would today have approximately 79,000 more immovable monuments than Belarus currently has.

There are about 40.7 immovable monuments (including archaeological ones) per 100 square kilometers of the territory of the Republic of Lithuania. In Belarus, this figure does not even reach three (2.6).

Looking at these statistics, one might get the impression that Belarus is a desolate wasteland where nothing ever existed, and therefore has as few monuments as water in the Sahara. But this is not the case; it's simply that in Lithuania, neither the state, nor the scientific community, nor society is indifferent to its heritage, and therefore they preserve it.

In Belarus, the status of a monument is perceived exclusively as an unbearable burden, unfairly imposed on the young republic and its strong economic managers.

Annually, the Lithuanian register is replenished with hundreds and even thousands of monuments. Such scales are only possible with methodical work by scientific institutions and local municipalities.

For 2025 alone, the Department of Cultural Heritage (KPD) added 1,455 new objects to the register (735 immovable and 720 movable).

In previous years, the figures were also high: for example, in 2024, 1,459 registration decisions were made.

Such mass inclusion also has a downside. In Lithuania, registered monuments are quite often stripped of protection due to physical destruction or loss of valuable characteristics. Since the inception of the modern Lithuanian register, only 1,089 immovable objects have been completely stripped of protection. For example, in 2021, 53 objects lost their protection. But this is a drop in the ocean.

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Lithuania readily places outstanding examples of Soviet modernism under protection, which are entirely unrepresented in the Belarusian State List. For example, the National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Vilnius (built in 1974) and even the "Bor" ("Pušynas") sanatorium in Druskininkai (opened in 1982) have long been in the register.

Also included are such unusual objects as, for example, interwar Lithuanian border posts, battle sites of the "Forest Brothers," and even former NKVD-MGB prison buildings in small towns as places of suffering and torture — one such building was placed under protection in Ignalina.

What's Wrong with Monument Protection in Belarus

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, which is usually associated with complete indifference to national heritage and its deliberate destruction, Belarus, paradoxically, lost most of the monuments that had been placed under state protection in the 1980s.

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While the official directory "Collection of Monuments of History and Culture of Belarus" (1984-1988), which served as a state register, recorded over 14,000 objects, in the modern State List, only 5,685 remain. Despite the fact that the Soviet list included a significant number of ideological objects that had no real value,

during the formation of the new list in the 2000s, a paradoxical situation arose: most mass graves were transferred to the new register, while a significant portion of architectural monuments were not.

The late Soviet state, at least on paper, protected more churches, chapels, manor houses, and noble estates than independent Belarus, which ceased to see historical and cultural value in many of them.

The reason for such a disproportion was the procedure for forming the State List: lists of objects for inclusion were to be submitted by local authorities, who often deliberately did not include buildings for which they might be held responsible for restoration.

As a result, today in Belarus, there are entire districts where not a single architectural monument is registered in the State List. For a millennium, it seems, officials believe, nothing worthy of preservation for descendants was built here.

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The expansion of the State List primarily occurs through intangible values and archaeological monuments, which the National Academy of Sciences practically automatically includes upon their discovery.

According to data from the Ministry of Culture, in 2023, the State List was supplemented with a record 25 new objects. For comparison: during the same period in Poland, the list increased by 578 objects, and in small Lithuania — by 1,455 (735 immovable).

To rectify the situation, the Ministry of Culture tasked each region with "identifying and nominating for status no fewer than two new material objects per year." This plan envisions an annual increase of approximately 14 objects nationwide, but so far, no tangible results are visible.

The very procedure for granting protected status in Belarus has effectively turned into a tool for legalizing demolition. While in neighboring countries, state institutions are responsible for identifying monuments, in Belarus, the entire burden of preparing scientific justifications falls on citizens themselves, with almost absolute inaction (and even opposition) from local authorities and specialized institutions.

Even well-prepared proposals for granting protected status are most often rejected by regional councils, which are guided by the economic interests of the executive committees more than anything else.

Moreover, the refusal to grant status usually becomes the official signal for destruction: soon after a negative decision, the building goes under the bulldozer.

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A telling case also occurred in Minsk, where the building of the former regional children's hospital at Petrusia Brovki Street, 5, was recently demolished. The 1930s building, designed with the participation of French architect André Lurçat, was stripped of its protected status in 2019 at the initiative of republican authorities, based on commissioned conclusions prepared by obliging academics.

In Grodno, the physical demolition of unique examples of 1930s wooden constructivism, which were not placed under protection, continues: houses on Osipenka Street, Chkalov Street, and at the intersection of Mickiewicz and Metropolitan Filaret Streets have been destroyed. Commercial objects are being designed in their place. A similar situation was recorded in Babruysk, where a pre-revolutionary wooden house at Karl Liebknecht Street, 57, likely belonging to the family of a local rabbi, was demolished.

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During the preparations of Zaslaŭje for the regional festival "Dazhynki," a wooden building from 1927 at Savetskaya Street, 45, which had been under state protection until 2014, was demolished, as were pre-revolutionary buildings of an inn and a pharmacy. In Vileyka, the district executive committee decided to demolish the 1924 Border Protection Corps barracks, directing the construction debris for road surfacing. In Mogilev, the building of the first city power station from 1910, which authorities deliberately refused to grant protected status on the eve of its demolition, was destroyed for the construction of a multi-story residential building. In Vyalikaya Berastavitsa, a wooden coaching inn, which was an architectural monument during Soviet times, was ruined.

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In 2022, the year of Ignat Domeyko's 220th birthday, the church in Vyalikaya Myadzvyadzka, visited by the famous scientist, was denied the status of a historical and cultural value. It was not destroyed, but the local priest rebuilt it beyond recognition. In the same year, Minsk officials sabotaged the consideration of a proposal to grant monument status to the architectural and urban planning ensemble of Winners' Avenue, to prevent it from hindering construction work.

On May 6, 2026, the Ministry of Culture officially removed St. Michael's Church in Stsyapanki from the State List. The 18th-century temple burned down in 2025, after which it was discovered that there were no archival records or measurements of the architectural monument in the country to restore it.

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Last year, authorities in the Brest region sought specialists to prepare conclusions on the "impossibility of scientifically sound restoration" of the ruins of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Yazviny, and also the Puzyna family estate in Hrymyachy.

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Historical buildings in Belarus not officially recognized as monuments are constantly included in demolition lists, and for local officials, there is no difference whether it is an economic building of an estate or the ruins of a religious structure. For example, a couple of years ago, the Dubrava Church in the Maladzyechna district ended up on such a list. And this year, local authorities of the Dzyarzhynsk district sold the ruins of the Peter and Paul Church in the village of Starynki with the sole condition of demolishing the building.

The colossal gap in the statistics of protected heritage between Belarus on one side and Poland and Lithuania on the other cannot be explained solely by economic factors, different historical development, or the destruction of the 20th century. By factors of a few — one might believe, but when the count is in dozens, the reason is clearly elsewhere.

The endless list of historical objects lost in recent years shows that the resource of material heritage in Belarus is far from exhausted — there is ample room to expand the State List.

However, no real systematic work is being carried out towards preserving and increasing this heritage.

On the contrary, it appears that Belarus is pursuing a deliberate policy of ignoring cultural heritage, creating insurmountable legal barriers to placing it under protection, and administratively facilitating the removal of such protection and the physical destruction of historical buildings.

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