Slutsk is located in the Minsk region. Slutsk is an ancient city with a rich history. For the first time Slutsk (chronicle Sluchesk) is mentioned in 1116 in the "Tale of Bygone Years" as one of the cities of the Turov land. Slutsk was the third Belarusian city (after Brest and Grodno), which received the Magdeburg Law (1441). Since 1617, the oldest Calvinist gymnasium in Belarus operated in the city. Slutsk is also known for the female rulers Anastasia and Sofia Slutsk, as well as the factory for the production of Slutsk belts. Unfortunately, a huge amount of architectural heritage has not survived to this day.
1 St. Michael's Cathedral (1797), Socialist street, 90. ☎ +375
(1795) 2-45-01. 09: 00-18: 00.
2 Holy Barbara Chapel (1995), st.
M. Bogdanovich (near the Sluch River). Wooden chapel in honor of St.
Barbara the Great Martyr.
3 Monument to Sofia Slutskaya (2000),
st. M. Bogdanovich.
4 Monument to Anastasia Slutskaya (2016), st.
Sofia Slutskaya (near the Wedding Palace (House of Culture)).
5
Building of the Nobility Assembly (1850), st. Lenin, 171 (currently
- museum of local lore).
6 Building of the Slutsk gymnasium
(1617), st. Komsomolskaya, 7. The oldest educational institution in
Belarus
7 The building of the commercial school, st. Lenin, 104
(until recently - a cannery). Then it housed a committee of trade
unions, the House of Culture, a school, since 1927 - a pedagogical
technical school, later reorganized into a pedagogical school.
8
Building of the Slutsk Theological School (1885), st. Vilenskaya, 45
(currently medical college).
9 Corps of the Bernardine monastery
(1770 (1793?)), St. Krasnoarmeyskaya, 2 (currently butter and cheese
base).
10 Roman Catholic Church of St. Anthony and the monastery
of St. Francis (2000), st. Zelenaya, 78.
11 City cemetery, st. 14
partisans. The cemetery is over 400 years old. There are many old
Polish monuments. Many outstanding people are buried in the
cemetery, including the Belarusian writer Algerd Abukhovich. There
are mass graves of Soviet soldiers. The brama chapel of the 19th
century has also survived.
By train
Slutsk is a junction of railways (lines
Baranovichi-Osipovichi, Slutsk-Soligorsk). Train schedule. There is
no direct railway connection with Minsk.
By car
From Minsk
By car, exit from the city from the side of the "AvtoVAZ" car center
and further along the P23 Minsk-Mikashevichi highway 101 km.
By bus
Buses run from Minsk from the Central Bus Station. The
cost is 5-6 rubles. Travel time ~ 2 hours. Schedule and ticket
purchase
Route taxis: departure near the railway station by
appointment by phone. The cost is 6 rubles. Travel time ~ 1-1.5
hours.
Transport
Slutsk bus depot No. 2 serves 37
suburban, 22 urban and 9 intercity routes.
Until recently, the first written mention was officially considered
an entry in the Tale of Bygone Years: “In the summer of 6624. Come
Volodimer to Gleba; Dregovichi fought more deeply and burned Sluchesk
... ". However, there are references to Slutsk before 1116. In the list
of the mid-17th century, as part of the Kiev-Pechersk Patericon, edited
by Joseph Trizna, there is a complex of Turov statutes, which includes a
charter on the establishment of the Turov bishopric, according to which
the Great Prince of Kiev Vasily (Vladimir Svyatoslavich) in the summer
of 6513 (1005) gave Turov bishopric along with other cities and
Sluchesk. According to the description of churches and parishes of the
Minsk diocese in 1879, Slutsk is mentioned for the first time in
historical sources, in the history of the reign of Vladimir Monomakh in
1086. In 1097, by decision of the Lyubech Congress of Princes -
descendants of Yaroslav the Wise, Slutsk, together with Kiev and Turov,
was transferred to Svyatopolk Izyaslavich.
In the XII century,
Slutsk became the capital of the Slutsk Principality of the heirs of the
Turov prince Yuri Yaroslavovich.
In the first half of the 14th century, Slutsk was part of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania. Mentioned in the chronicle "List of Russian cities
near and far". Since 1395, the center of a specific principality
belonging to Vladimir Olgerdovich and his descendants, the princes
Olelkovich. Representatives of the Olelkovich family from the moment
they received the city considered it as a place of temporary shelter, as
they fought for the grand prince's throne. When great political
ambitions cooled down, the Olelkovichi took up the development of
Slutchyna, which allowed the city to become one of the largest economic
and cultural centers of the Principality of Lithuania.
In 1441,
the city received the Magdeburg right to self-government. On the site of
the Slutsk citadel of ancient Russian times, the Upper Castle was being
built, the wooden walls and towers of which were protected by a moat and
an earthen rampart. The Old City (Staro Miasto), once surrounded by a
rampart, is an ancient part of the city with castles on the right bank
of the Sluch. Between the settlement and the castle there was a trading
square, in 1419 a parish church was built here. The new city was built
up later.
The last male representative of this family, Yuri
Olelkovich, personally copied the gospel in 1582, which is known as the
Slutsk Gospel and is a handwritten monument of the late 16th century.
Around the same time, the Slutsk Chronicle was created, a monument of
the Belarusian-Lithuanian chronicle of the 16th century, the only list
of the third, abridged edition of the Belarusian-Lithuanian chronicle of
1446.
From 1502 to 1521, the city was repeatedly raided by the Crimean Tatars; in 1506, the defense of Slutsk was headed by Princess Anastasia Slutskaya. In 1508, the Upper Castle twice withstood the siege of the troops of the rebellious Prince Mikhail Lvovich Glinsky. In the same year, near Slutsk, a detachment of hetman Konstantin Ostrozhsky defeated the Crimean horsemen. And in 1595, the rebel detachment of Severin Nalivaiko broke into the city.
Since 1507 in the Novogrudok district. 1606 became the year of
foundation of the Orthodox brotherhood and brotherly school in Slutsk.
In 1582, the city and the principality were divided between the three
Olelkovich brothers into the Old City, the New City and the Ostrov, and
the last representative of this family, Princess Sofia Yurievna, a
zealous guardian of Orthodoxy, later canonized the Belarusian saints,
reunited the lands of Slutchina again.
Sophia provided material
and moral support to the clergy and residents of the Slutsk
Transfiguration Orthodox Brotherhood, she donated jewelry to the church
and made pilgrimages to the most remote parishes with the rest of the
parishioners.
Being the wife of Janusz Radziwill, she, given his
position at the Polish court, convinced her husband to petition for the
Polish king to issue a charter that would prohibit forcing Orthodox
believers into a union. The diploma was received.
Now the relics
of Sophia are kept in the Holy Spirit Cathedral in Minsk.
In 1581
a printing house was founded, in 1586 a brotherhood at the
Transfiguration Monastery, in the 17th century. Assumption Brotherhood.
The monument to St. Sophia Slutskaya has become the face of modern
Slutsk. After her death in 1612, all possessions passed to Sophia's
husband, Janusz Radziwill.
In 1593, there were 1,100 households and about 7,000 inhabitants in
Slutsk. In November 1595, the city was captured by the rebel army of S.
Nalivaiko.
The Radziwills, who owned the city, built a
first-class fortress here and turned the Upper and Lower Castles into
palace complexes. Since 1617, a Calvinist gymnasium has been operating.
In the 1630s-1640s. Slutsk turned into a fortress city, fortified with
earthen ramparts and ditches, bastions and ravelins. In 1650 there were
930 "smoke" in the city, in 1667 - 1086 "smoke". In the XVI century.
there was a rectangular network of streets with wooden buildings. Both
parts of the city were connected by a bridge. The island was a suburb of
Slutsk, behind the city fortifications. Downstream Slucha was the suburb
of Troychany - a settlement around the Troychansky (Trinity) Monastery.
In 1661, Prince Bohuslav Radziwill built a Bernardine monastery in
Slutsk.
The Slutsk printing house was of great importance in the
affairs of education. It appeared in 1672 on the initiative of Prince
Boguslav Radziwill (1620-1669). But the governor of the Slutsk and Kopyl
principalities, appointed by the prince, Jan Kazimir Krzysztof Klokotsky
(1625-1684), who was also the translator of P. Rico’s work “Turkish
Monarchy” from French into Polish, became its real founder and guardian.
Written by the English envoy in Turkey, the book tells about a country
unfamiliar to Europeans at that time. The book was published in the
Slutsk Radziwill Printing House in 1678. It was a richly illustrated
gift edition, illustrations for it were made in Mogilev by Maxim
Vashchenko (2nd half of the 17th century - 1708), a Belarusian graphic
artist, master of science, founder of the Mogilev school of engraving.
The printing house produced books on military issues, works of art,
translations from French and German, memoirs, calendars, travel notes.
Bukvar had the largest circulation at that time - 3389 copies.
In
1695-1744 Slutsk belonged to the princesses of Neuburg, in 1832-1846
Prince. L.P. Wittgenstein. It is possible that Slutsk had several coats
of arms. Famous coat of arms of the 18th century. - winged horse -
depicted above. In 1661, 1684, 1699, 1700, 1705 and 1744 there were
unrest of the inhabitants in the city.
During the Northern War
Peter I visited Slutsk three times. At that time, the General Synod of
Protestants of the Principality of Lithuania was held there. The place
belonged to Karl Neuburg (Karl Philip Neuburg, 1661-1742), husband of
Ludwika Charlotte Radziwill (1667-1695). According to Adlerfeld,
"Charles XII did not stop overnight in this city, one of the largest in
this country, and returned with an escort to Pinsk."
Founded in
1751 by magnates, the theater in Slutsk lasted 9 years. In the 17th
century The Radziwills opened the first pharmacy on the territory of
modern Belarus.
In 1756, a professional ballet was created in
Slutsk. Antoni Poutini comes here from Vienna and, supposedly, the
brilliant French dancer and choreographer Louis Maximilian Dupre, the
soloist of the Paris Opera, one of the first persons in the history of
male classical dance. At that time, Dupre had 30 years of experience as
a dancer, choreographer and librettist.
In March 1767, the Slutsk
Confederation was created, which set as its goal the equalization of the
rights of non-Catholics with Catholics. Since 1791, the principality as
an administrative unit was liquidated, and Slutsk became the center of
the Slucherets Povet of the Novogrudok Voivodeship.
The
Radziwills owned the city in 1612-1695 and 1744-1832.
The production of the famous Slutsk belts on an industrial basis
began in 1736, when a silk belt manufactory was founded in the city
(creator - Radziwill, Mikhail Kazimir, the Great Hetman of Lithuania),
which existed until 1844, producing belts, silk bedspreads and fringes,
gold and silver galloons , garters, ribbons, stripes, tapestries,
carpets. Initially, the belts were brought from the East - from the
Ottoman Empire, Persia, so they were called Istanbul or Persian. In
1758, a manufactory was organized on the territory of the Commonwealth
to produce belts. Such manufactories were called - "Persian" (Belarusian
Persian), from the place of origin of the prototype of the Slutsk belt.
The most famous was the Slutsk manufactory on the territory of modern
Belarus, the creator of which was Mikhail Kazimir Radziwill (1702-1762),
the great hetman of Lithuania.
At the end of 1757, the famous
Turkish master Hovhannes Majarants, an Armenian by nationality, was
invited to Slutsk. He worked for some time in Stanislav, then in
Nesvizh. Two Slutsk artists, Jan Godowsky and Tomasz Khaetsky, were
trained in Stanislav. In 1758, Hovhannes Madzharants concludes an
agreement with Mikhail Kazimir Radziwill on the creation of a “Persian
factory” for the manufacture of a “belt with gold and silk” with
mandatory training of local craftsmen in “Persian work”.
Initially, masters from the Ottoman Empire and Persia were invited.
Therefore, the first belts were made with oriental patterns. The
weaver's training lasted at least seven years. When local craftsmen
mastered the process of making belts, they began to use local motifs in
belt patterns - forget-me-nots, cornflowers, chamomile, maple, oak
leaves.
In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the name of
Hovhannes Madzharants was changed into the local manner - Jan
Madzharsky.
His great-granddaughter Elizaveta is the mother of
Stanislav Moniuszko, a famous composer and conductor.
At the turn
of the 18th-19th centuries, the son of Madzharsky, Levon (Lyavon),
became a tenant of the Slutsk manufactory, where about 60 weavers
already worked.
The craftsmanship of local weavers was so great
that kuntush belts, made even outside of Slutsk, began to be called
Slutsk. In the 18th century, Slutsk was known as the center of the
textile industry. In 1793, 60 craftsmen worked, there were 28 machine
tools.
On May 3, 1795, the owner's town of Slutsk was appointed the county
town of the Minsk governorate. However, the district appointment was
made with the condition:
... meanwhile, make an effort to acquire
the aforementioned places in Our treasury by buying or bartering, or by
other favorable deals decent for the treasury; why, in the argument of
Nesvizh and Slutsk, is the allowance in the debt to Our treasury
available to the owners of their Prince Radzivil, about which the
Prosecutor General will inform you in detail; in case of inconvenience
in finding others from state-owned villages that are capable of turning
into county towns, and then city rights, as mentioned above in the first
section, are assigned to the mentioned cities from shtetls, from the
owners acquired by them from state-owned villages to such a new title
converted.
PSZRI Volume XXIII No. 17.327
During the Patriotic
War of 1812, the city was occupied by Napoleon's troops.
In 1858,
6694 people lived in the city. According to the First General Census of
the Russian Empire, 14,349 people lived in Slutsk in 1897. Of these,
according to their native language, they considered themselves: Jews -
10,238 people, Belarusians - 2417 people, Russians - 1104 people,
Germans - 31 people, Little Russians (Ukrainians) - 12 people,
Lithuanians - 5 people. , to the Latvians - 4 people.
Already in
the XIX century. the architectural and planning structure of the city is
changing radically. This is due to a number of circumstances. Firstly,
the building of the central part, created under Radziwill (the palace
and its accompanying buildings, manufacturing buildings, etc.) fell into
disrepair and was mostly dismantled. Secondly, the territorial growth of
the city predetermined its going beyond the ring system of the former
fortifications: the ditches were filled up, the ramparts and bastions
were in most cases torn down. Thirdly, the route of the new road from
Moscow to Warsaw was laid through the central area of the city. All
this, of course, fundamentally violated the prevailing in the XVII-XVIII
centuries. Slutsk planning.
The new block building was
subordinated to the route of the road and is strictly regular. Only a
few capital buildings have survived.
From 1909 to 1915, an
enterprise for the transportation of passengers by bus operated in
Slutsk. Slutsk bus became one of the first successful bus systems on the
territory of modern Belarus. In 1915, a railway from Osipovichi was laid
to Slutsk.
In 1915, the headquarters of the 2nd Army of the
Western Front was located here during the First World War.
The
French Slavic professor Jules Legra (1866-1939), who arrived in the
Russian Empire in February 1916 on the instructions of the military
propaganda service department at the second department of the General
Staff of the French Ministry of Defense, describes wartime Slutsk in his
memoirs: “Slutsk is a small ancient city and amazingly dirty, but
lively, with 15 thousand inhabitants; the majority of the population are
Jews. The presence of the Headquarters creates an enormous animation;
however, I cannot say that the population looks at this military
apparatus approvingly.”
In March 1917, the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was
established in the city. Soviet power was established at the end of
1917. In February 1918, it was occupied by the legionnaires of I.
Dovbor-Musnitsky, later by the Germans. In December 1918 it was occupied
by the Red Army. From August 1919 to July 1920 and from October to
December 1920 it was occupied by Polish troops.
The flight of
Polish troops in the summer of 1920 was accompanied by total robbery and
removal of property, cattle theft. The departure of the Polish units
ended with the burning of quarters of cities, surrounding towns, the
destruction of what could not be taken out. As a result of the fire, the
city lost the buildings of the station, commercial schools, gymnasiums,
two houses of the former zemstvo, a synagogue, a church, a public bath
and two bridges across the Sluch River.
In November-December
1920, the Belarusian Social Revolutionaries led the Slutsk uprising
under the slogan of the restoration of the BPR.
After the
Soviet-Polish war, he remained in the BSSR. Since 1924 - the center of
the Slutsk region. In 1939, 22 thousand inhabitants.
From June
27, 1941 to June 30, 1944, during the Second World War, it was occupied
by Nazi troops. During the war, it was actually destroyed, so today
post-war buildings predominate in urban architecture. Before the war,
Slutsk was inhabited mainly by the Jewish population, which was almost
completely destroyed in the Slutsk ghetto. In general, during the
occupation, about 30,000 people died in the city and region.
On
October 12, 1967, mass riots took place in Slutsk, which led to human
casualties.
To carry out state programs, in 1989, on the basis of
the 29th tank division (district training center (OTC) of the Belarusian
military district), the 307th separate training road brigade of the CDSU
of the USSR Ministry of Defense was formed, in 1992 it was reorganized
into the Junior Training School railroad specialists.
In 1952,
the Slutsk Museum of Local Lore was opened.
On October 1, 2016,
Slutsk celebrated the 900th anniversary of the city.
On September
29, 2022, at the session of the Slutsk District Council of Deputies, it
was decided to set the date of the founding of the city of Slutsk -
1005.
In 2023, Slutsk was elected the Cultural Capital of the
Republic of Belarus.