Babruysk

Babruysk, Babrujsk, Bobruisk, or Bobruysk ( , Łacinka: , ,  ) is a city in the Mogilev Region of eastern Belarus. It is on the Berezina River. , its population was 209,675. It is the seventh-largest city in Belarus by population and area.

The name Babruysk (as well as that of the Babruyka River) probably comes from the Belarusian word  (; 'beaver'). Many beavers used to live around the Berezina. However, they were almost gone by the end of the 19th century because of hunting and pollution.

Babruysk has an area of . It has over 450 streets.

Babruysk is at the intersection of railroads to Asipovichy, Zhlobin, Aktsyabrski and roads to Minsk, Homyel, Mahilyow, Kalinkavichy, Slutsk, and Rahachow. It has the biggest timber mill in Belarus. It is also known for its chemical, machine making and metal-working industries.

In 2021, there were 38 public schools in Babruysk, and over 24,000 students. There are three schools focusing on music, dance and visual arts. There is also a medical school.

History
Babruysk is one of the oldest cities in Belarus. It was first mentioned in writing in the middle of the 14th century. Archaeologists found that in the 5th and 6th centuries there were Slavic settlements up the river Berezina from where Babruysk is right now. Stone tools and weapons found suggest that people have lived there since the Stone Age.

During the reign of Vladimir I, Prince of Kiev, Babruysk was a small village. The people of the town were fishermen and beaver trappers. This is where the name Babruysk comes from. Babruysk was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth for many centuries. It was an important border post and military base. In the 14th century, a castle was built on one of the hills near the Berezina River.

Babruysk was also a big trade center. There is evidence of a market with almost one hundred stalls. In the first half of the 17th century, Babruysk became a big trade outpost. This is because of its position at the intersection of major trade routes and the Berezina River. There were many types of artisans in the village, including carpenters, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, and bakers. The population in the first half of the 17th century was between 2,000 and 5,000 people.


The town was surrounded by fortifications made from wood and dirt. It stretched for over . In the walls there were openings for firearms. After the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, the village went into the hands of Imperial Russia. In 1810, the construction of a fortress to mark the border between Russia and Austria and Prussia began. In 1812, it was almost done and was successful in pushing back Napoleon's attack for four months. The building was rebuilt on a large scale after the war. It was finished in 1820. The Babruysk fortress worked well for many decades and today is a major tourist attraction.

The 1861 census said the town had a population of 15,766. The ethnic groups living in Babruysk then included Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews. Most of the buildings were made from wood. This was common for cities in Belarus at the time. In 1866, there were 1,498 houses. Only 29 of these were made from brick.

The Jewish population of Babruysk went up after the Napoleonic Wars. By 1897, 20,760 of the 34,336 people living in the city were Jews.Joshua D. Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the politics of nationality, Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2004, , Google Print, p.16 This was about 60% of the population. Most of them were employed in crafts, industry, and trade.


In 1902, the Great Fire of Babruysk left 2,500 families homeless and destroyed over 250 businesses, 15 schools, and the market. There were more than 7 million rubles in property damage. However, the city was quickly rebuilt. This time, it was built with brick and stone.

In 1904, the 40th Infantry Division of the Imperial Russian Army had its headquarters here.

During the Russian Civil War, the Red Army fought the Polish I Corps in Russia in Babruysk. This was known as the Battle of Bobruysk. It was fought between February 2 and March 11, 1918. The Polish troops, commanded by General Jozef Dowbor-Musnicki, eventually took the town.


On 28 June 1941, troops of the German Army Group Centre took Babruysk. Thinking that the German troops would not attack civilians, many Jews stayed behind. Because of this, 20,000 Babruysk Jews were shot and buried in mass graves. A ghetto and labor camps were set up in the southwest part of town. Soon the Nazis began executing the Jews in the ghetto in groups of about 30. By 1943, the labor camps were cleared of Jews. The Jews who escaped joined partisan forces in the nearby forest. They attacked enemy railroad lines. There is a small memorial dedicated to the memory of Babruysk Jews killed in the Holocaust. It is in the Nahalat Yitzhak cemetery, Giv'atayim, Israel, as part of the Babi Yar memorial.

In July 1941, a battle started near Babruysk. This became part of the Battle of Smolensk.

On June 29, 1944, the Red Army took Babruysk back. The city was ruined. The population was 84,107 in 1939. After the war, it was 28,352. Thousands of workers and prisoners of war worked to clear the factories and streets of rubble. They filled in craters made by the bombardment. The machine building factory had been almost completely destroyed. It was fixed and started working again by the end of 1944.

In 1944, Babruysk Voblast was created. Babruysk became the administrative center of the voblast. The voblast was abolished in 1954.

The population grew a lot after the war. In 1959 it was 96,000, 116,000 in 1965, 122,500 in 1968, 136,000 in 1970, and 232,000 in 1989. This was mostly because of urbanization. Many people moved into the city from the nearby rural areas.

Belarus left the Soviet Union in 1991. Babruysk became part of the new country. 

Climate
Babruysk has a humid continental climate (Dfb) in the Köppen climate classification system.

Notable people
 Abba Ahimeir (November 2, 1897 – June 6, 1962), journalist, historian and political activist. He was a follower of Revisionist Zionism. He was the founder of the Revisionist Maximalist faction of the Zionist Revisionist Movement (ZRM) and of the secret Brit HaBirionim.
 Andrei Arlovski (born 1979), former UFC Heavyweight champion.
 Both founders of the Russian band Bi-2 were from Babruysk.
  (born 1981), Ukrainian movie director and screenwriter.
 Eliyahu Dobkin (December 31, 1898 – October 26, 1976), leading figure of the Labor Zionism movement, a signatory of the Israeli declaration of independence and a founder of the Israel Museum. He was also active in the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization.
 Celia Dropkin (1887–1956), American-Yiddish poet.
 Arkadi Duchin (born 1963), Israeli singer-songwriter and musical producer.
 Baruch Epstein (1860–1941), Lithuanian rabbi, best known for his Temimah commentary on the Torah. He was the son of Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein.
 Yechiel Michel Epstein (January 24, 1829 – February 24, 1908), rabbi and authority in Jewish law in Lithuania, known for his book Aruch HaShulchan.
 Joshua Louis Goldberg (January 6, 1896 – December 24, 1994), American rabbi, who was the first rabbi to be commissioned as a U.S. Navy chaplain in World War II (and only the third to serve in the Navy in its history), the first to reach the rank of Navy Captain (the equivalent of Army Colonel), and the first to retire after a full active-duty career.
 Zalman Gorelik (1908–1987), geologist, tectonist
 Avraham Katznelson (1888 – May 18, 1956), Zionist political figure in Mandate Palestine and a signatory of the Israeli declaration of independence.
 Berl Katznelson (1887–1944), chief figure in Labor Zionism, instrumental to the establishment of the modern state of Israel.
 Rachel Katznelson-Shazar (October 24, 1885 – August 11, 1975), active figure in the Zionist movement. Her husband was Zalman Shazar, the third President of the State of Israel.
 Ruslan Kogan (born 1982), Australian entrepreneur and self-made millionaire.
 Kadish Luz (1895–1972), Israeli Minister of Agriculture (1955–1959) and Speaker of the Knesset (1959–1969), acting president for one month in 1963.
 Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov (born Leiba Lazarevich Feldbin; August 21, 1895 – March 25, 1973), colonel in the Soviet secret police and NKVD Rezident in the Second Spanish Republic. In 1938, Orlov refused to return to the Soviet Union because he realized that he would be executed, and instead fled with his family to the United States.
 Grigory Nemtsov (1948–2010), Latvian journalist and politician.
 Yelena Piskun (born 1978), two-time world champion in artistic gymnastics.
 Dovid Raskin (1927–2011), rabbi associated with the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement.
 Efraim Sevela (1928–2010), Soviet writer, screenwriter, director, and producer, who after his emigration from the Soviet Union lived in Israel, USA and Russia.
 David Shimoni (August 25, 1891 – December 10, 1956), Israeli poet, writer, and translator.
 Eliyahu Simpson (1889–1976), rabbi
 Yitzhak Tabenkin (1888–1971), Zionist activist and politician, one of the founders of the Kibbutz Movement.
 Yosef Tunkel (1881–August 9, 1949) was a Jewish–Belarusian–American writer of poetry and humorous prose in Yiddish.
 Gary Vaynerchuk (born 1975), serial entrepreneur, CEO, investor, author, public speaker, internet personality and self-proclaimed owner of the American football team New York Jets.
 Avraam Zak (1829–1893), Russian-Jewish banker and philanthropist.

 International relations 

Babruysk is twinned with:

 Anenii Noi, Moldova
 Batumi, Georgia
 Comrat, Moldova
 Daugavpils, Latvia
 Grozny, Russia
 Gulbene, Latvia
 Hengyang, China
 Iglesias, Italy
 Ishim, Russia
 Kobuleti, Georgia
 Kolpino, Russia
 Kostroma, Russia
 Luga, Russia
 Morogoro, Tanzania
 Murom, Russia
 Naro-Fominsky District, Russia
 Novomoskovsk, Russia
 Odense, Denmark
 Oskemen, Kazakhstan
 Petrogradsky (Saint Petersburg), Russia
 Púchov, Slovakia
 Samarkand, Uzbekistan
 Sevlievo, Bulgaria
 Shaoxing, China
 Sokolniki (Moscow), Russia
 Talin, Armenia
 Vladimir, Russia
 Warsaw West County, Poland
 Wuxi, China

 References 

Other websites

Bobruysk. Synagogues 
Bobruisk.by  – OfficialBabruysk website
Bobr.by  – PopularBabruysk related portal
Photos on Radzima.org
Photos of famous historical sites in Babruysk
Babruysk website 
The murder of the Jews ofBabruysk during World War II, at Yad Vashem website.



Category:Cities in Belarus
Category:Mogilev Region