On the basis of archives, fieldwork and manuscripts, the author tries to show the history of the Bear Academy in Smorgon (Belarus) in its development of events and culture. The chronology of the publications dates back to the 15th century when Smorgon belonged to the Zenovichs clan, who might have acquired the Bear school from the Jewish community. As a marriage dowry, the Zenovichs gave an ordinary Bear school to the well-known landowners and politicians Radziwills, whose initiative turned the LITTLE KNOWN ELSEWHERE activity of catching bears and further trade with them into the famous Bear Academy. This happened before the fall and partition of the Polish-Lithuania Commonwealth in 1795. Three sources, namely, publications, archives and travellers’ notes, Jewish manuscripts and the Romani verbal folklore give us ground and reason to state, that regardless of the lack of the municipal and state archives the Academy functioned in reality for more than 170 years. It became a symbol of the joint Belarusian/Polish/ Lithuanian collaboration with the Jewish society and the Gypsy (Romani) community