Pinsk ( , ), a town in
Belarus
, in the Polesia region,
traversed by the river Pripyat, at the
confluence of the Strumen and Pina rivers. The region is known as the Marsh of Pinsk
. It is a fertile agricultural center.
It lies
south-west of Minsk
. The
population is about 130,000. The city is a small industrial center
producing ships sailing the local rivers.
The historic city has a beautifully restored downtown full of
two-story buildings dating from the 19th century and the beginning
of the 20th century.
History
Pinsk is first mentioned in the chronicles of 1097 as Pinesk, a
town belonging to
Sviatopolk
of
Turau. The name
is derived from the river Pina.
Pinsk's early history is closely linked with
the history of Turau
.
Until the mid-12th century Pinsk was the seat of Sviatopolk's
descendants, but a cadet line of the same family established their
own seat at Pinsk after the
Mongol invasion of Rus in 1239.
The
Pinsk principality had an
important strategic location, between the principalities of
Navahrudak
and Halych-Volynia,
which fought each other for other Ruthenian territories.
Pinsk did not take part in this struggle, although it was inclined
towards the princes of Novaharodak, which is shown by the fact that
the future prince of Novaharodak and
Voyshalk of Lithuania spent some time in
Pinsk.
In 1320 Pinsk was won by the rulers of Navahrudak, who incorporated
it into their state, known as the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania. From this
time on Pinsk was ruled by
Gedimin's eldest
son,
Narymunt. Afterwards, for the next two
centuries the city had different rulers.
In 1581
Pinsk was granted the Magdeburg
rights and in 1569, after the union of Lithuania with the Crown of the Polish Kingdom, it
became the seat of the province of Brest
.
From 1633 on Pinsk had a secondary school, a so-called brotherhood
school (the brotherhoods were religious citizens' organisations
with the aim of providing education for their members and their
children). During the Cossack rebellion of
Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1640), it was
captured by
Cossacks who carried out a
pogrom against the city's Jewish population;
the Poles retook it by assault, killing 24,000 persons and burning
5,000 houses. Eight years later the town was burned by the
Russians.
In 1648, on the eve of the
Russo-Polish War , Pinsk was
occupied by Ukrainian Cossack army under commander Niababy and
could only be reconquered with great difficulty by prince
Janusz Radziwiłł, a high-ranking
commander in the Polish-Lithuanian army. During the war between
Moscow and Poland-Lithuania (1654-1667) the city suffered heavily
from the attacks of the Muscovite army under Prince Volkolnsky and
its allied army of Ukrainian
Cossacks.
Charles XII took it in 1706,
and burned the town with its suburbs. In spite of all the wars the
city recovered and the town developed with the existence of a
printing workshop in Pinsk from 1729-44.
Pinsk fell to the
Russian
Empire
in 1793 in the Third Partition of Poland.
Up to the
Second World War and the
Holocaust, like many other cities in
Europe, Pinsk had a significant Jewish population: according to
Russian census of 1897, out
of the total population of 28,400, Jews constituted 21,100 (so
around 74% percent), making it one of the most Jewish cities in the
Eastern Europe.
In April 1919, at the beginning of the
Polish-Soviet War, thirty-five Jews from
Pinsk were murdered by Polish soldiers, in an incident known as the
Pinsk massacre. The Poles suspected
them of being
Bolshevik collaborators.
This event created a diplomatic incident that was noted at the
Versailles Conference.
Pinsk
became part of Poland
in 1920
after the Polish-Soviet War and
was occupied by the Soviet
Union
in 1939. At this time, the city's population
was over 90% Jewish.
From 1941 to 1944, Pinsk was under
Nazi
Germany. In 1939, the population of Pinsk totaled 30,000, of
whom 27,000 were Jews. Most of them were killed in late October
1942, after their deportation by the Nazis from the Pinsk ghetto.
Ten thousand were murdered in one day.
Since the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1991 Pinsk has belonged to the Republic of
Belarus.
Landmarks
Two main sights of the town are lined along the river. These are
the Assumption Cathedral of the monastery of the
greyfriars (1712-30) with a campanile from 1817
and the Jesuit collegium (1635-48), a large Mannerist complex,
whose cathedral was demolished after the
World War II. The foremost among modern
buildings is the black-domed Orthodox cathedral of St.
Theodore.
Notable residents
St. Theodore Cathedral
- Ryszard
Kapuściński (1932-2007), Polish writer and reporter
- Anzia Yezierska (c. 1890-1970),
writer
- Simon Kuznets (1901–1985), 1971
Nobel laureate in
economics
- Golda Meir (1898–1978), fourth
prime minister of Israel,
born in Kiev, lived two years of her childhood in Pinsk
- Adam Naruszewicz (1733–1796),
Polish poet, historian, bishop
- Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952), first
president of Israel, born in
Motal, near Pinsk and educated in Pinsk
- Ivan Zholtovsky (1867–1959),
Russian and Soviet architect
- Igor Kolb (1977?-), principal dancer
of Mariinsky Ballet
- Shlomo Lipsky (1899-1989), Israeli
businessman
- Vladimir Chub (1948-) governor of
Rostov Oblast in Russia
- Izya Shlosberg (1950-), Jewish
American artist, born in Pinsk and lived in Pinsk for 44 years
Bibliography
- The Jews of Pinsk, 1506-1880 Mordechai Nadav, Stanford
University Press
References
- Joshua D. Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the politics of
nationality, Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2004, ISBN 0299194647,
Google Print, p.16
- Best of the memory books, Marcin Wodzinski,
Haaretz, Books, February
2009, pp.28-30
- Best of the memory books, Marcin Wodzinski,
Haaretz, Books, February
2009, pp.28-30
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