The bust of an elderly man with his head slightly raised and turned to the left of the viewer, his hair combed back with a bald spot, a high forehead, mournfully pursed lips, dressed in a shirt with a tie and a jacket, pined the Order of the Hero of Socialist Labor to his chest. Ivan Petrovich Shamyakin (1921-2004) was a Belarusian Soviet writer, a screenwriter and a playwright, a public figure. People's writer of the Belarusian SSR (1972). Hero of Socialist Labor (1981). The laureate of the Stalin Prize of the third degree (1951). Member of the CPSU (b) since 1943. An Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (1994).