Brest, Belarus

Brest (Брест) is a major transport hub on the border with Poland, tourists traveling in this direction by rail or road are likely to travel through the city. If we consider the attractiveness of Brest separately, then certainly many history lovers come here to see the legendary Brest Fortress. If you have extra time, you can walk around the central part of the city, visit museums, and even go to the nature in the equally famous Belovezhskaya Pushcha.

The fourth in terms of population, over 300 thousand people. There is a large road and rail crossing on the border with Poland, on the Polish side of the border opposite Brest is the city of Terespol.

 

Destinations

Brest Fortress Old Brest Fortress became a symbol of heroic resistance of Soviet soldiers against Nazi German army. 

Berestye Berestye is an abandoned medieval Slavic settlement that gave rise to a city of modern day Brest, Belarus. It is one of the best preserved archeological sites in the country.

The city is divided into two parts by the Mukhavets River (four road and two railway bridges are thrown across the river). To the north of the river there are quarters of the historical center (built up with one-two-story houses of the late 19th - early 20th centuries), vast quarters built up with private houses, the Vostok microdistrict built up with multi-storey residential buildings, as well as industrial development areas. To the south of Mukhavets, new areas of mass development of Kovalevo and Vulka are actively developing.

In 2000-2017, the total area of the city's housing stock increased by more than 1.6 times, from 5,134.6 thousand m² to 8,452.7 thousand m², housing provision - from 17.8 m² per person to 24.3 m². If in 2000 the city occupied one of the last places in the country in terms of housing provision (among large cities), then by the end of 2017 it took the 3rd place, slightly behind only Bobruisk and Baranovichi. Housing prices in Brest are among the highest among major cities in the republic. According to the results of the 1st quarter of 2019, the price of 1 m² of apartments sold in the city averaged $701 (higher only in Minsk ($1286) and Soligorsk ($704)). In 2014, prices for residential real estate in Brest for some time exceeded $1,000 per 1 m².

The main street of the city is Masherova Avenue (turns into Moskovskaya Street). The main pedestrian street of Brest is Sovetskaya Street, which cuts through the city center and is crossed by boulevards. Gogol Street has been partially turned into an Alley of Forged Lanterns. The reconstruction of a number of main central streets (Sovetskaya, Kosmonavtov and Shevchenko Boulevards, Masherov Avenue, etc.) is underway or planned in the near future. The total length of streets, roads and driveways of the city in the middle of 2005 is 231.2 km.

For more than 10 years, every evening on Sovetskaya Street, the Brest Lamplighter has been lighting old kerosene lanterns.

The main tourist attraction of Brest is traditionally considered the memorial complex "Brest Hero Fortress", as well as the archaeological museum "Berestye" and the Museum of Saved Values. In Brest, several buildings that are architectural monuments have survived: the massive St. Nicholas Garrison Cathedral (1856-1879), the railway station (1886, heavily rebuilt), the St. Nicholas Brotherhood Church (1904-1906), the St. Simeon Cathedral (1865- 1868), the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (1856), etc. Of particular interest, as monuments of the Medieval city, are also the ruins of the Bernardine monastery (XVII-XVIII centuries), the Jesuit Collegium and the Peter and Paul Basilian Church (end of the XVIII century), in the building of which there was subsequently Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed.

The "Defensive barracks" Zh-Z "(Iyulskaya st., 10a) is located, which is a historical and cultural value.

Among the monuments in the city, the Brest Millennium Monument, opened in 2009, stands out.

The Greenberg Pharmacy Museum is open to visitors, where an exposition on the topic of the history of pharmacy is collected. In 2007, the museum of the Brest militia appeared.

Nearby, in the village of Chernavchitsy on the highway Brest - Kamenets - one of the oldest monuments of medieval Belarusian architecture - the Trinity Church (end of the 15th - 1580s). In the city of Kamenets, there is a defensive watchtower of the 13th century. Near the north-west of the city, in the village of Skokie, there is the estate of the Nemtsevichs, built in 1770 in the Baroque style.

To the north of Brest is the National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha".

The oldest and largest cemetery in the city, the Trishinsky cemetery, is included in the State List of Historical and Cultural Values of the Republic of Belarus.

 

Getting here

By plane
There is an airport in the city, but there are no regular passenger flights in any direction.

By train
On trains going to Europe, towards Poland and Germany.

From Russia direct trains depart from the Belorussky railway station in Moscow, as well as from Saratov and Novosibirsk,
Domestic trains from Minsk, Vitebsk, Gomel, Mogilev, Baranovichi and the city of Kostyukovichi (Kommunary station).
By car
Brest is located on the route of the E30 motorway (Moscow-Berlin). In Belarus, this road is called M1.

By bus
Buses run from many Belarusian and foreign cities to Brest. The new Brest bus station is located next to the railway station.

On the ship
Despite the fact that the Mukhavets River is navigable, there are currently no regular water routes from other cities in the region to Brest. Nevertheless, in the summer season the motor ship "Grodno" runs along the river. At the moment, his route lies within the city and is an overview one (starts and ends at one point).

Transport around the city
Brest has a well-developed network of public transport (buses, trolleybuses, route taxis). In fixed-route taxis, the fare is transferred to the driver after boarding. In buses and trolleybuses, travel tickets and coupons are valid, which are checked from time to time by teams of controllers.

 

Оrigin of name

The ancient name of Brest is Berestye. According to the most famous version, the name of the city comes from the word "birch bark" (the outer layer of birch bark), and the modern form Brest, probably already artificially - from the word "birch bark" (a type of elm, Ulmus).

In 1863, the traveler Pavel Shpilevsky wrote down a legend about the origin of the name Brest, connected with a trip to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of one rich merchant with his comrades. Unexpectedly, the wagon train was blocked by a swamp, around which many birches grew. The travelers cut down trees and were able to pass the swamp along the birch flooring. They went out to the island, which was formed by a large river and a small river flowing into it. For the fact that everything went well, the merchant decided to thank the pagan god Veles and built a temple on the island. After some time, returning from Lithuania, where there was a successful trade, the merchant and his comrades again stopped at the Veles temple, built huts and founded a city, which they called Berestye.

In the annals of the 12th-13th centuries, the name Beresty is also found, in the historical documents of the 16th century - Berest (this name was used by residents of the city's environs until recently). In the XVII - early XX century, the city was called Brest-Litovsky, and then Brest-Litovsk, which indicated its location in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and also made it possible to distinguish it from the Polish city of Brest-Kuyavsky, during the period of being part of Poland (1921-1939) the city was called Brest-nad-Bug (Polish Brześć nad Bugiem)[29] to distinguish it from another Polish city; Brześć Kujawski, whose name is now translated into Russian as Brześc-Kujawski, previously it was called Brest-Kujawski. Since September 1939, after joining the BSSR - Brest.

In the West Polissian dialects, the name of the city is used in the form Baryst, Berest.

 

History

Middle Ages

The ancient origin of the city was confirmed as a result of archaeological excavations on the cape formed by the Western Bug River and the left branch of the Mukhavets River. Scientists have discovered the settlement of ancient Brest (now the territory of the Volyn fortification of the Brest Fortress). It consisted of the Brest citadel, triangular in plan, with an area of about 1 ha, fortified on the floor side with a moat, an earthen rampart and a palisade, and a roundabout city (posada), which was located opposite the citadel on the island. Streets paved with wood, the remains of more than 200 residential and utility buildings, one-story log cabins made of coniferous logs, were excavated on the citadel. During the excavations, tools, household utensils, various decorations and items made of metal, glass, stone, wood and leather were found. The finds testify to the development of crafts, trade and cultural ties with the cities of Ancient Rus' and with neighboring countries. Archaeological studies allow us to conclude that Brest arose on the territory of the settlement of the Dregovichi - an East Slavic tribal association, the Beresteiskoe settlement existed in the 11th-13th centuries, the detinets was founded at the turn of the 10th-11th centuries. Now the Berestye archaeological museum has been created on its territory.

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 Berestei.

In the XI century, Berestye was a trading center and a fortress on the border with Polish and Lithuanian possessions. The place where the ancient Berestye was located was at the intersection of two ancient trade routes. One of them went along the Western Bug from Galician Rus and Volyn to Poland, the Baltic states and Western Europe, the other - along Mukhavets, Swamp, Pina, Pripyat, Dnieper and connected Berestye with Kiev, the Black Sea region, and the Middle East. In connection with the border location, the city often acted as an object of internecine struggle and military clashes, passed from hand to hand, was plundered and destroyed more than once. In 1016, he was conquered by the Polish prince Boleslav the Brave. The Grand Duke of Kiev Yaroslav the Wise undertook campaigns against Berestye in 1017, 1022 and 1031, and in 1044 he returned it to the Kyiv principality. Since the second half of the 12th century, Berestye has been part of the Vladimir-Volyn principality (since 1199 the Galicia-Volyn principality), in the annals it is mentioned under 1153 as the possession of Prince Vladimir Andreevich, in 1173 - Prince Vladimir Mstislavich. In the early feudal period, it was one of the largest cities in the Berestey land, which, however, despite many attempts by the local nobility, did not stand out as an independent principality - the city developed only as a trade and craft center.

In the 12th century in Berestye, which once again turned out to be conquered by the Poles, King Casimir the Just built a wooden castle (it was rebuilt in the second half of the 13th century), a fortification for trade caravans. In Berestye they took myt (duty) for the transport of goods.

In 1210, the city was captured by Konrad of Mazovia and Leszek Krakow, but in 1213 the army of Daniel of Galicia returns it. In the 1240s, the Beresteiskaya land, which was still a subject of rivalry between the Galician-Volyn and Polish princes, was under the threat of subjugation by the Mongol-Tatars. In January 1241, a battle between the Birch Regiment and a detachment of troops of Batu Khan took place near the city, as a result of which the defenders of the city and many residents were killed by the Mongols, the bodies of the dead lay unburied for 4 months until the Romanovichs returned in the spring of 1241. The chronicle says: “Danilov and his brother came to Berest. And I can’t go into the field, for the sake of the stench and the multitude of the beaten. In the second half of the 13th century, Berestye was owned by the Volyn prince Vladimir Vasilkovich, under whom a stone donjon tower was built on the territory of the castle in 1276-1288, and a stone church of St. Peter was erected. The tower subsequently helped the townspeople withstand brutal sieges. In 1319, the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gedimin “without much resistance” annexed the Berestey land to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but already in 1320, Prince Andrei I of Vladimir-Volyn returned Berestye back to his principality. However, in 1321, Gediminas defeated the Russian army on the Irpin River, killed the last Russian prince of Vladimir-Volyn from the Romanovich family, Andrei I, took the cities of Vladimir, Lutsk, went to Berestye for the winter, and finally annexed it to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1379 Berestye was burnt down by the Teutonic knights.

At the end of the 14th century, Berestye, mentioned in the “Lithuanian cities” section of the chronicle “List of Russian cities far and near”, was a trade and craft center of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the population was about 2 thousand inhabitants. Local merchants exported furs, leather, timber, hemp, grain to Western Europe, imported salt, cloth, silk, paper, and much more. Merchants from Vilna, Kyiv, Chernigov, Moscow passed through Berestye. In 1380, a guest yard was built in the city, fairs were organized, crafts were actively developed: pottery, blacksmithing, leather, jewelry, shoemaking, sewing, carpentry. In 1390 the city received Magdeburg rights. Of the cities of present-day Belarus, he received it first. The management of the city began to be carried out by a council, consisting of lavniki, radtsev, two burmisters (Catholic and Orthodox), who alternately presided over it. The head of the city council, as well as the court, was a voit appointed by the Grand Duke of Lithuania. The power of the city extended to the territory adjacent to it. In 1390, according to the charter for the Magdeburg right, the city was granted about 1,500 hectares of arable land, in 1408 - the village of Kozlovichi.

Further economic development of Berestye was delayed by the Great War of 1409-1411 of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania against the Teutonic Order. At a secret meeting in the city in December 1409, the Polish king Jagiello and the Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas developed a plan for a general battle with the crusaders. In the Battle of Grunwald on July 15, 1410, the Teutonic Order was defeated; Beresteyskaya banner fought as part of the united armies. By the privilege of 1441, Berestye was officially assigned to the main cities of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1463 Berestye was burnt down by an army of Crimean Tatars led by Mengli Giray. In 1413-1510, the city was part of the Troki Voivodeship.

 

New time

By the end of the 15th century, there were already more than 5 thousand inhabitants in Berestye, 928 built-up plots. The city has been exempted from paying taxes more than once. In 1500, the city was sacked by the troops of the Crimean Khan Mengli I Gerai. Since 1520, Berestye has been the center of the povet (county) of the Podlasie Voivodeship. In 1566 the city became the center of the Beresteysky Voivodeship. In 1554, according to the privilege of Sigismund II Augustus, Berest was allowed to use an official seal with the image of a hipped tower at the confluence of two rivers. According to the data of 1566, the city consisted of 3 main parts: the castle, erected on the former citadel of ancient Berestye, the "place" - the main urban area located on the island formed by the Western Bug and the branches of the Mukhavets and connected to the castle by a bridge, and "Zamukhavechya" - on the right bank of the Mukhavets. The city had 6-7 thousand inhabitants. In the central (castle) part of it there were the buildings of the magistrate and the court, the market square, the houses of wealthy citizens, churches and monasteries. The streets were paved with wood; in 1588, cobblestone pavements appeared.

In the 16th century, Berestye was an important trade and craft center of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Brest merchants maintained close trade relations with important trading centers of Eastern Europe: Slutsk, Minsk, Mogilev, Polish Warsaw, Poznan, Torun, Lomza, Lublin, cities of the Russian state. The annual trade turnover of the city in the first half of the 16th century reached 750 thousand rubles, and the Brest customs took the second place in the income of the state treasury. In the 1550s, Nikolai Radziwill Cherny, the elder of Berestei, founded a printing house in the city, the first on the territory of present-day Belarus. In 1563, the "Brest Bible" was printed in it, which is an outstanding monument of book printing. In the second half of the 16th - the first half of the 17th centuries, religious brotherhoods, which were organized at Catholic monasteries and Orthodox churches, were of great importance in the socio-political life of the townspeople. They sought to preserve the folk culture and language, opened printing houses and fraternal schools. In 1596, at the church council in Brest, the Union of Brest was adopted - the unification of the Catholic and Orthodox churches on the territory of the Commonwealth.

In 1614, a college of Jesuits was founded in Brest[39]. By the second half of the 17th century, the city center was formed on the island (now the citadel of the Brest Fortress). There was a market square with a town hall and shops, stone buildings of the monasteries of the Jesuits, Basilians, Bernardines, the Uniate church, the synagogue. In 1659, the Brest Mint was founded, where in 1664-1666 small copper coins - solids - were minted with the image of the "chase" - the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the 17th century, Brest-Litovsky became the meeting place for military confederations (1605, 1612), the Seim of the Commonwealth (1653). Brest-Litovsky, by that time one of the main cities of the Commonwealth, flourished. In the middle of the century, there were about 11 thousand inhabitants in the city, it was rich and was considered the “gateway” to the country, but the “Catastrophe” happened when Brest underwent three terrible devastating ruins in a short time. In 1648, the Cossacks of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, led by Colonel Maxim Gladky, occupied Brest with the help of local rebels. The Moscow ambassador Yegor Kunakov, who was passing through Brest at the beginning of 1649, testified: “... Brest-Litovsky was devastated to the ground. All the Poles, and the Jews, and women, and their children were beaten without a trace, and the mansions, and the stone houses were drilled and scattered, and the wooden ones were burnt and razed to the field exactly. During the Russian-Polish war of 1654-1667 and the war unleashed by Sweden in 1655 against the Commonwealth and in 1656 against Russia, Brest-Litovsky was repeatedly in the zone of hostilities. On November 15, 1655, Russian troops under the command of the Novgorod governor Prince S. Urusov defeated the army of the hetman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania P. Sapieha near Brest-Litovsk, but they could not take the fortified city, which had a large garrison. In 1657, the Swedes and the Hungarians captured the Brest castle and devastated the city. In January 1660, the city was captured by Russian troops under the command of Prince Ivan Khovansky, who destroyed about 1,700 people hiding in the castle, leaving only 50 Starshin alive and sending them captive to Moscow, led by the castle commandant. In 1661 it was again occupied by the Polish-Lithuanian troops. As a result of Khovansky’s raid, the city of Brest-Litovsk, like other cities captured during a long raid by Russian troops, was “destroyed and burned down to the last building”, a “very small handful” of the population remained, all members of the magistrate died, shop documents burned down and master's books.

In the 17th century, the fortifications of Brest-Litovsk consisted of a pentagonal castle with bastions.

During the Northern War of 1700-1721, by agreement with the Elector of Saxony and the King of Poland, August II the Strong, the Russian army entered the territory of the Commonwealth in 1705. Provision warehouses were created in the city to supply the Russian army. In 1706, Swedish troops, pursuing the retreating army of Peter I, occupied Brest-Litovsky and ravaged it. The second half of the 17th - the first half of the 18th centuries in the history of the city is characterized by a sharp economic decline caused by prolonged wars, famines and epidemics. The number of its inhabitants decreased, handicraft production and trade fell into decline. Only in the second half of the 18th century did the revival of the economy begin. Brest-Litovsky became the main river port on the Western Bug, through which grain, hemp, timber, etc. were exported. In the 1770s, the Lithuanian treasurer A. Tizengauz founded a cloth factory in Brest-Litovsky, which had 7 looms.

At the end of the 18th century, the city had 3.5 thousand inhabitants. In 1792, the residence of the leaders of the Targowice Confederation was located here. In 1795, Brest-Litovsk, as a result of the third partition of the Commonwealth, was annexed to the Russian Empire. As a county town, at first it was part of Slonim, from 1797 - Lithuanian, from 1801 - Grodno province. The city was gradually built up, in 1797 it had 623 houses, of which 21 were stone, cloth factories and a distillery. Fires caused great damage to the city: in 1802, about 160 houses burned down, in 1822 - the commercial part of the city (150 shops) and 70 residential buildings.

In the 18th century, the chief marshal of France M. Saxony, speaking of Brest-Litovsk, noted: "Whoever owns this stronghold in wartime, he has great benefits over the adjacent country."

 

19th century

With the fall of the Polish-Lithuanian state, the decline of Brest-Litovsk begins: frequent fires, robberies of Polish troops, wars completely ruined the city.

In 1807, engineer-general P. Sukhtelen, by the Highest order, turns Brest-Litovsk into a stronghold for the defense of the western border of the empire and draws up a project for a new fortress, since before that the border was completely open. But the war of 1812 prevented its implementation.

During the Patriotic War of 1812, on the territory of the Brest land, the French army faced serious resistance from the Third Western Russian Army under the command of General A. Tormasov. On July 25, near Brest-Litovsk, the advanced units of the Russian troops, led by Major General A. Shcherbatov, defeated the enemy cavalry units and forced the French troops to leave the city. Military operations in the vicinity of the city continued to be conducted in October-November 1812.

At the end of the war, the Russian military decided to build a fortress in Brest-Litovsk as an element of the fortification system being created in the west of the country. The Brest-Litovsk fortress was built according to the project approved in 1830 on the territory of the city. As a result, the former city, which had existed for more than 500 years, was practically destroyed.

In 1819, the last Orthodox Simeonovskaya church burned down, and in 1823 the Simeonovsky monastery was abolished, and only in the dining room of the monastery a parish church was built for a small number of Orthodox townspeople, which was demolished in 1834 during the construction of the fortress, and the city was left without an Orthodox church.

In 1835, the urban development was moved to the east by 2 km, boundary signs were installed between the lands of the city and the fortress - rubble pillars (one of them was preserved at the corner of Lenin and Gogol streets). On April 26, 1842, the grand opening of the new fortress took place. The Brest-Litovsk fortress was reflected in the coat of arms of Brest-Litovsk approved in 1845: on the cape at the confluence of two rivers, a circle of silver shields, a fortress standard rises above it, in the upper part of the coat of arms there is a bison - the coat of arms of the Grodno province, in which moment included Brest-Litovsk.

In order to build a fortress, the Russian authorities completely destroyed the old city located between the Western Bug and the branches of Mukhavets, in which there were ancient residential quarters with a town hall and a castle of the 17th century, and in its place in the 1830-1840s, according to the project of K. Opperman, fortifications were erected fortifications.

As part of the Russian Empire, the city finally got a respite from endless wars and raids. But the district Brest-Litovsk was only a pale copy of that prosperous and significant city of the Commonwealth, which once existed between the Mukhavets and the Bug. The economy developed slowly, the city was actually an “attachment” to a strategic fortress, its life was entirely dependent on the military. In 1825, about 11 thousand people lived in the city, in 1845 - about 18 thousand people. There were 250 shops in Brest-Litovsk, auctions were held 3 times a week, and 2 fairs annually. With the development of capitalism in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the city, which previously consisted of three-quarters of wooden houses and barracks, began to be built up, stone residential and public buildings, various enterprises and workshops were erected, and its territory expanded. In the 1860s, 5 tobacco factories, 8 candle factories, leather, sewing, dyeing and other workshops operated in Brest-Litovsk. In 1861 there were 178 shops, 60 taverns, 5 inns and 22 visiting houses, a tavern, a confectionery; population - 20.9 thousand people.

The growth of the city at the end of the 19th century was associated with a large-scale modernization of the Brest-Litovsk fortress (1878-1888) and, in particular, with the accelerated construction of railways that connected Brest-Litovsk with the center and south-west of Russia. In 1869, the Brest-Litovsk - Warsaw road was put into operation, in 1871 - Moscow - Brest-Litovsk, in 1873 - Kiev - Brest-Litovsk, in 1886 - Brest-Litovsk - Gomel. In 1886, the building of the railway station was built, which since 1888 has been lit with electricity (160 light bulbs were installed in the halls, service rooms and platforms).

In 1889, there were 2,663 buildings in the city, 248 of which were made of stone. The catastrophic fire of 1895 destroyed most of the city's buildings, including residential buildings, enterprises and workshops, shops, hospitals and schools, the railway station, burned out the city center; the damage amounted to 5 million rubles.

According to the first All-Russian census of 1897, the population of the city was 46,568 people (25,509 men and 21,059 women), of which 30,260 people were Jews and 12,141 were Orthodox. The following were indicated as the native language: Jewish - 30,109, Russian - 10,217, Polish - 3,358, Belarusian - 1,231, Ukrainian - 704. However, the city had neither running water nor sewerage; almost the entire population used water from Mukhavets, in 1896 only 5 wells in the city had drinking water. There was one hospital with 15 beds. Since 1865, a four-class gymnasium has operated, at the end of the 1870s - city four-class and parochial schools, a private boarding school for noble maidens, since 1874 - a private library, since 1885 - a musical and drama amateur society, in 1903-1904 two high schools were built.

 

World War I

With the beginning of the First World War, the role of the city as a major transport and logistics hub increases. This is how Russian artillery officer Iosif Ilyin describes him in his diary, returning to the front at the end of 1914 after being cured.

29th of November. Brest. There is a very big traffic jam here, and therefore we will probably stand for two or three days until they deal with us ... Brest is a small, almost exclusively Jewish town. Today is Saturday, everything is closed, there are almost no cabs, because out of a hundred and fifty - one hundred and thirty Jews ... The weather here is amazing, eight or ten degrees of heat. It especially seems wild after deep snow, fox hunting. It turns out that there is almost no winter here at all, and no one even thinks about sleighs. A week before our arrival, a whole tragedy broke out here, and Nikolai Nikolaevich urgently came here. It is forbidden to write about this, and they try to keep it a secret. Eighty thousand shells exploded, about five hundred people died, a whole company of sappers with officers who had recently been buried. Explosions went sequentially, starting from eight in the morning until five in the evening. Almost all the windows in the city burst, and fragments poured from the fortress; most fled in panic into the field outside the city. Fortunately, all the warehouses and cellars with pyroxylin survived and did not detonate, otherwise, as one officer told me, there would be no trace of the city, inhabitants and fortress. At the station just at that time, when the explosions began, there was a whole train loaded with pyroxylin, and only thanks to the resourcefulness of the station chief and the courage of the machinists, he was taken out, otherwise the whole station would have gasped.

During the "great retreat" of the Russian troops on August 7, 1915, the command of the Russian army decided to urgently evacuate the garrison of the fortress, already well prepared for the defense by that time, due to the fact that news had come of the fall of the fortresses in Kovno and Novogeorgievsk, which turned out to be defenseless from the used gas by the Germans. On August 12, by order of the commandant of the fortress, artillery general V. Laiming, on the last day of the evacuation, already under German artillery fire, fortifications, forts, powder magazines were blown up, bridges, warehouses, and barracks were set on fire. The city, located not far from the burning fortress and in the center of two outer rings of exploding and burning defensive forts and fortifications, was almost completely engulfed in fire and burned out by 70%.

The High Command decided that the Brest-Litovsk fortress would not be on the defensive. She had to be evacuated. The cars were given to the military for the removal of property. Refugees were sent on foot, which was a tragedy for many locals.

Russian troops left the fortress on the night of August 12-13, 1915. The procedure for undermining the fortifications from August 12 to 13 was determined by order of the chief of staff of the 3rd Army. They destroyed everything they could. The retreating Russian troops set fire to the city during August 7-8.

On August 7-8, the city was burned by special teams of militias and Cossacks, who drove around the city, drove the locals who remained from their houses and set them on fire. Trading rows, shops, tenement houses - everything was on fire.

A participant in those events, the head of the fortress engineers, Major General Ivan Liders, looked at the burning city, standing on the highway near the Trishin farm:

“We witnessed an unforgettable, soul-shattering picture of an enchanting fire: not only the entire city, its environs, the buildings of the engineering workshop at Fort III were on fire, but also the surrounding villages in all the space available to the eye, and even individual crosses sticking out in the cemetery were engulfed in flames and burned in the form of torches,” he wrote in his memoirs.

And here is what an officer of the German army, Captain Pelman, who observed the city from a hill on the left bank of the Mukhavets, wrote:

“As if rooted to the spot, we stopped, looking at this gigantic spectacle. As far as the eye could see, we saw a continuous huge sea of fire rising to the sky, over which, darkening the sun, a huge cloud of smoke rose, announcing to the whole neighborhood: “Brest is dead.”

The fire destroyed 70% of the housing stock of Brest-Litovsk. Of the total number of 3,670 houses that existed before the war, 2,500 were destroyed with a total of 15,000 dwellings.

The Germans entered the ashes and were engaged in the removal of what had survived, and the dismantling of the affected buildings into bricks. They took bricks, channel bars and took them to Germany.

Leaving, the Russian troops blew up caponiers, casemates and powder magazines in almost all forts.

From December 9 (22), 1917 to March 3, 1918, peace negotiations between Soviet Russia and Germany took place in Brest-Litovsk, as a result of which, on March 3, 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers was signed in the White Palace of the Brest Fortress, and also the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) and the Central Powers, according to the last agreement, Germany and Austria-Hungary transferred territories south of the Kamenetz-Pruzhany line to the Ukrainian People’s Republic, with subsequent clarification of the border by a mixed German-Ukrainian commission, taking into account the ethnic composition and wishes of the local population, which led to the fact that Brest-Litovsk became part of the Ukrainian People's Republic as the administrative center of the Podlachie land.

In March 1918, the Kholmsky provincial starostvo (province) was formed as part of the UNR, the administrative center of which became Berestye.

At this time, local residents began to return to Brest-Litovsk, who settled in neighboring settlements. Until that moment, entry to Brest-Litovsk was prohibited.

During the Soviet-Polish war, from February 9, 1919, Brest-Litovsk was already under the control of the Polish Republic. On August 2, 1920, as a result of a counteroffensive, units of the Red Army occupied it. And on August 18, after the defeat of the Red Army near Warsaw, the city was again occupied by Polish formations. According to the results of the Riga Treaty, he went to the Polish Republic. Refugees began to return to the city en masse. It was the most difficult time, the conditions were terrible, epidemics broke out. City baths were urgently restored, and local residents needed to have a certificate that he visited the bath twice a month. Those who did not obey were fined and ordered to wash by force. City authorities removed construction debris, restored streets, buildings, social facilities. Humanitarian missions helped with the construction of barracks where refugees could be accommodated. There was not enough housing for everyone, the inhabitants huddled in tents, basements of destroyed buildings. The restoration of the city was carried out all 20 years during the period of interwar Poland. By the Second World War, Brest had not fully recovered.

Since 1923, the city was called Brest-nad-Bug (to distinguish it from another Polish city Brest-Kuyavsky), the center of the Polessky Voivodeship.

 

The Second World War

On September 14, 1939, during the invasion of Poland, the German 19th motorized corps attacked the city and occupied it; On the morning of September 17, the fortress was also occupied by the Germans. On September 22, Brest was transferred, in accordance with the Non-Aggression Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union (also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), to the 29th Tank Brigade of the Red Army during an "impromptu parade" and included in the USSR as the center of the newly formed Brest region of the BSSR. The Soviet-German state border ran along the Western Bug River.

On June 22, 1941, at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the city and the fortress were among the first to be attacked by German troops. The defense of the Brest Fortress, in which at the time of the attack there were about 6-7 thousand Soviet military personnel, as well as members of the commanders' families, became a symbol of steadfastness, courage and military prowess. Instead of several hours allotted by the German command to capture the fortress, the 45th division of the Wehrmacht had to, suffering significant losses, fight here for a whole week, and separate pockets of resistance lasted for a month. Subsequently, two participants in the heroic defense - Lieutenant A. Kizhevatov (posthumously) and Major P. Gavrilov were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, many others from the legendary garrison were awarded orders and medals.

The occupation authorities included Brest in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.

During the years of German occupation, about 40 thousand inhabitants of the city were destroyed; The Jews of Brest were herded into the Brest ghetto organized by the Nazis and almost completely destroyed. The economy of Brest virtually ceased to exist.

On July 28, 1944, during the Lublin-Brest operation, the city was liberated by the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front. In honor of this event, one of the streets of the city was named (st. July 28). Also on July 28, City Day is celebrated.

According to the results of the Yalta Conference, held in February 1945, the border of Poland along the Bug and the presence of Brest as part of the USSR was confirmed.

 

Postwar years

After the end of the Great Patriotic War, Brest began to develop rapidly as an industrial center. The population of the city increased rapidly. In February 1947, the first bus route "Railway Station - Bagpipe - Southern Town" was opened.

From August 1955 to April 1959, the Brest regional organization of the Communist Party of Belarus was headed by P. Masherov, the future first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Belarus.

Since 1967, the construction of a new large residential microdistrict "Vostok" began. In 1981 trolleybus traffic was started. In 1986, a modern air terminal complex was built.

 

Modern period

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of the Republic of Belarus, in which Brest remained the regional center, the flow of tourists to the city decreased. At the same time, the Brest Fortress is the leader of Belarus in terms of attendance in 2012, and the 2nd place after the Nesvizh Museum in 2013. In 2013, 390 thousand people visited this historic place.

In the 2000s, the city's streets were improved and large housing projects were built. Mass housing construction continued.

In 2001, the Nativity of the Theotokos Monastery was opened.

The 2010s were marked by the development of road infrastructure. The left-bank (“river”) part of the city is actively developing.

In 2011, the city was affected by the events of the Revolution through social networks. From June 8, silent rallies began to take place there. The police responded by arresting the protesters, but their numbers still grew. However, the authorities took measures (limited access to gathering points of protesters, arrested them, etc.), so the number of Brest demonstrators began to fall. After the actions on July 27, which took place in the markets and squares, a break was made. In September, the actions resumed again, but due to their small number they became ineffective and soon ceased.

Also in 2011, a stop-gasoline action was held near Brest.

Protests in Belarus in 2017 again affected Brest. On February 19, about 100 participants gathered, on February 26 - 300 participants, and on March 5 from 1000 to 2000 people.

Brest was one of the centers of the 2020 protests. On August 10, clashes between OMON officers and protesters took place in the city, during which the OMON used stun bombs, and the protesters set up barricades. In response, an unconventional method of temporarily neutralizing them was used against the security forces - spraying foam from spray cans on the transparent elements of helmets and shields. On August 11, protester Gennady Shutov was wounded in Brest. He was transferred in critical condition to the hospital of the Ministry of Defense, where he died on August 19.

 

History of the Jewish community of Brest

Jews settled in Brest-Litovsk even before the reign of Keistut (1341-1382). Vitovt's letter of July 1, 1388 was originally given to the Jews of Brest and only later turned into a privilege for all the Jews of Lithuania.

In 1388, Grand Duke Vitovt granted the Brest Jewish community privileges that provided Jews with freedom of religion and certain rights in financial affairs and trade.

During the XIV-XVII centuries Brest was the main center of the Jewish communities of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In Yiddish, the city was called Brisk.

In 1411 Prince Vytautas allowed the Berestya Jews to build a synagogue and even donated bricks and clay for free. The large stone synagogue was famous throughout Europe for its architecture and decoration (it was destroyed in 1842 during the construction of the Brest-Litovsk fortress). The local Jewish community received compensation which, together with private donations, enabled the building of a new synagogue in 1862. The foundation and walls of the former Great Synagogue are now the cinema "Belarus".

According to the 1860 census, 19,343 people lived in Brest, including 10,320 Jews. According to the 1897 census, there were 46,586 inhabitants in the city, of which 30,608 were Jews (65.8%).

In 1802, a fire destroyed most of the Jewish quarter. The fire of 1828 again destroyed many Jewish buildings, among them five prayer houses.

In 1939, 21,518 Jews lived in Brest (41.3% of the total population). In May 1937, a Jewish pogrom took place in the city, during which 3 Jews were killed and more than 50 were injured. The Jewish quarter was destroyed. The Polish military garrison of the city did nothing to prevent the pogrom, which lasted 16 hours. Also, the city authorities and the police did not come to the defense of the Jews.

Already in the first days of the Great Patriotic War, German troops occupied Brest and immediately involved many Jews in forced labor.

During the German occupation of the city during the Great Patriotic War, in June 1941 alone, the Einsatzgruppe B unit, together with units of the Wehrmacht, shot from 4 to 5 thousand Jews. In December 1941, the Jewish population of Brest was imprisoned in the Brest ghetto. In October 1942, about 17 thousand Jews of Brest were taken to the Bronnaya Gora railway station and shot.

In 1970, according to estimates, about 2 thousand Jews lived in Brest (less than 2% of the population).

The last Soviet census in 1989 registered 1,080 Jews in the city (0.4% of the total population). Since the early 1990s, large numbers of Jews from Brest have emigrated to Israel and other countries.

According to the 1999 Belarusian census, 415 Jews lived in Brest. In 2009, the Jewish population of the city was about 200 people.

 

Geography and ecology

Geography

Geographically, the center of the Brest region is located 320 km southwest of Minsk, on the western outskirts of Polesye, which is a swampy flat lowland, rather deforested due to human impact. The relief of the territory on which Brest lies is flat (absolute heights from 123 m, the heights of the Western Bug edge, up to 130 m), slightly lowering towards the floodplain of the Mukhavets. On the western outskirts of the city, Mukhavets flows into the Western Bug, bifurcating into two branches. On the territory of Brest, Mukhavets does not receive tributaries. A small river Lesnaya flows along the northern outskirts of Brest, the right tributary of the Western Bug.

Brest is located in the time zone designated by the international standard as Eastern European Summer Time (UTC+3).

The area of the city is 14,527 hectares, the share of green spaces is quite large. The city is surrounded by a forest park area covering an area of 2,500 hectares. On the territory of Brest there are a number of parks (including the park named after May 1, the park of soldiers-internationalists, etc.) and squares. Starting from October 15, 2012, the boundaries of the city and the Brest region were changed by the decision of the Brest Regional Council of Deputies dated September 11, 2012 No. 219, according to which the land plots with a total area of 85 .8281 hectares (0.86 km²), including 85.7071 hectares of land of the communal unitary agricultural enterprise "Sovkhoz Brestsky" and 0.121 hectares of land of the communal unitary enterprise "Brest City Department of Capital Construction", as a result of which the territory of the city is currently the moment is 14,612 hectares or 146.12 square kilometres.

On the territory of the city there is one natural monument of republican significance, a unique tree: common spruce of a serpentine shape in the city park.

The landscapes surrounding the city are mainly anthropogenic - agricultural land, summer cottages, there are separate forests (pine, aspen, etc.).

Near Brest there is a landscape reserve of republican significance "Pribuzhskoe Polesie", as well as 3 reserves of local significance:
"Bugsky" (in the floodplain of the Western Bug and Lesnaya rivers);
"Brestsky" (in the floodplain of the Mukhavets River near the village of Vychulki);
"Barbastella" (near the village of Kozlovichi), where the largest colony of bats in Belarus is guarded on the territory of ancient forts.

 

Climate

Meteorological observations in Brest have been conducted since 1834. The climate in the city area is temperate continental. Due to the influence of sea air masses, mild winters and moderately warm summers are characteristic. The cyclones that cause this move from the Atlantic Ocean from west to east. The average temperature in January is −2.6 °C, in July +19.3 °C. The annual rainfall is 609 mm. The average annual air temperature in Brest is +8.2 °C, the average annual wind speed is 2.6 m/s, the average annual air humidity is 76%. The growing season lasts 214 days.

It rains on average 160 days a year and snows 68 days. Fogs are observed for 33 days, thunderstorms - 27 days.