Dorogobuzh is a city in central Russia, the administrative center
of the Dorogobuzh district of the Smolensk region. Population - 9357
people. (2020).
The city is located 25 km from the Moscow -
Minsk highway, on the banks of the Dnieper River, 113 km from
Smolensk.
Within the framework of the organization of local
self-government, it forms the municipal formation Dorogobuzhskoe
urban settlement as the only settlement in its composition.
Dorogobuzh is one of the oldest cities in Russia.
According to historians, the city was founded by Prince Rostislav of
Smolensk for the defense of the eastern borders of the Smolensk
principality after in 1147 Prince Svyatoslav Olgovich from the
Chernigov-Seversk lands sacked and devastated the eastern borders of
the principality. The first written mention of the city in the
episcopal charter "On the suburb", which dates back to the beginning
of the XIII century (according to L. V. Alekseev, to 1211-1218).
It is assumed that the city was originally called Dorogobuzhets
(from the Old Russian road buzhat - to pave roads). There is another
explanation: Dorogobuzh is a road uphill (bougie is a mountain).
Dorogobuzh, located in the upper reaches of the Dnieper and near
the road from Smolensk to Moscow, was of great strategic and
military importance. From the middle of the XIII century, it may
have been part of the Vyazemsky inheritance of the Smolensk
principality; mentioned in the annals under 1300, when the Smolensk
prince Alexander Glebovich besieged Dorogobuzh and the Vyazma prince
Andrei Mikhailovich came to the aid of the "Dorogobuzhan".
Around 1345, the Vyazma and Dorogobuzh prince
Fyodor Svyatoslavich married his daughter to the Moscow ruler Simeon
the Proud, left his possessions and received a patrimony in Volok
Lamskoy. Together with Smolensk and Vyazma, Dorogobuzh was annexed
in 1403-1404 to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), within which the
status of Dorogobuzh was gradually changing.
For some time
its own prince (Andrei Dmitrievich) remained in it. Since the 1440s,
the city has been the patrimony of the Trok voivode Jan Gashtold,
and then his son Martin. Since the end of the 1480s, it has been
known as a governorship (governors: in 1489 - Prince Timofey
Vladimirovich Mosalsky, since 1499 - Senko Pleshkin). The creation
of a number of governorships on the eastern border of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania (Demena, Luchin-Gorodok, etc.) was obviously
dictated by the desire to form a line of defense against the Grand
Duchy of Moscow. Already in 1492, on his way to Moscow, Prince
Semyon Fedorovich Vorotynsky for a short time seized the Great Pole
Dorogobuzh volost. The governor or owner of Dorogobuzh since March
1494 was Prince Fyodor Ivanovich Odoevsky. However, he soon went
into the service of the Moscow Grand Duke, and from May 1494
Dorogobuzh again became the patrimonial possession of the Gashtolds
(transferred to Anna, the widow of Martin Gashtold).
In May-June 1500 the city was taken by the Russian army
led by the governor Yuri Zakharyich Koshkin. Near Dorogobuzh in
1500, the Vedrosh battle between the Lithuanian and Moscow armies
took place, representing an important stage in the formation of the
centralized Russian state.
According to the armistice of
1503, it became part of the Russian state and became the center of
the district, which originally united 28 volosts, taken mainly from
Smolensk. At the same time, Grand Duke Vasily III ordered the
construction of a wooden fortress in Dorogobuzh and sent Italian
craftsmen from Moscow for this. The "painted list of Dorogobuzh"
dated 1694 gives an idea of the Dorogobuzh fortress of that time.
The length of the fortress wall was 180 sazhens (more than 380
meters). The fortress had 14 towers, one of them (southern) was
called Spasskaya. There were 43 copper and iron squeaks in the
fortress; the artillerymen of that time had 2683 cores.
However, the attempt to fortify the city and preserve it was
unsuccessful. During the war of 1507-1508. during the attack of the
Lithuanians, the city was burned down and occupied by the hetman of
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Stanislav Kishka. According to the
eternal peace of 1508 and the armistice of 1522, 1527, 1537, 1542,
1549, 1553 and 1556. Dorogobuzh remained with Moscow. During the
Livonian War in 1580, the detachment of the Orsha head Philon
Kmita-Chernobyl was repulsed from Dorogobuzh.
The cultural,
spiritual and economic development of the Dorogobuzh land in the
16th century was largely facilitated by the foundation in 1530 near
Dorogobuzh by the Monk Gerasim of the Boldinsky monastery.
Presumably, the construction of the monastery fortifications was
supervised by the outstanding architect Fyodor Savelyevich Kon, who
later built the Smolensk fortress wall. The cathedral, bell tower
and refectory erected in Boldino were among the best architectural
structures of the Moscow state. All these buildings were surrounded
by a fortress wall about a kilometer long with corner towers and
watchtowers. At the end of the 16th century, this monastery owned
about 100 villages and villages and was the largest patrimony in the
entire Smolensk land.
Gradually Dorogobuzh recovered from its
former ruin. It was famous for the trade in hemp, flax, honey, lard,
meat, leather. Three monasteries were founded in the city. Here
there was a customs office, and from ancient times duties were taken
from passing merchants. In Dorogobuzh, the tsar's envoys met foreign
ambassadors traveling to Moscow.
At the beginning of the 17th century, Russia was shaken by unrest
and the Dorogobuzh region was at the epicenter of events. During the
intervention of the Commonwealth in Russia in the winter of
1609-1610, Dorogobuzh was occupied by a detachment of captain
Neljubovich sent by King Sigismund III from the besieged Smolensk.
During the years of the Polish occupation, Dorogobuzh and the county
were called Dorogobushchyzna, a county, or a highway, or a headman,
was part of the Smolensk Voivodeship.
In 1613 Dorogobuzh was
conquered. In 1614, the Dorogobuzh voivode wrote to Moscow that
“after the Polish devastation, only 10 people remained in the city,
and the Cossacks owned the district”. In 1617, the prince Vladislav
approached the city and the Dorogobuzh voivode Ivan Adadurov
surrendered the city and took the oath to the king along with the
inhabitants. In 1618, under the terms of the Deulinsky armistice,
Dorogobuzh remained a part of the Commonwealth, received the status
of the povet center of the Smolensk Voivodeship (the Russian
administrative division was borrowed while maintaining the
composition and boundaries of the Dorogobuzh district). On May 28,
1625, Dorogobuzh received a privilege for Magdeburg law, was awarded
the coat of arms (the symbol of St. Mary), which was reflected on
the city seal. The city has repeatedly passed from hand to hand of
the warring parties. Battles, military campaigns, flight of the
population completely ruined the Dorogobuzh land.
In 1632,
during the outbreak of the Smolensk war, Dorogobuzh was taken by the
troops of the governor M. B. Shein and became the main stronghold of
the further offensive against Smolensk. In October 1633, he
withstood the siege of the Polish-Lithuanian troops, but according
to the Peace of Polyanovo in 1634 he was left behind the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the war, the letter of
Sigismund III on Magdeburg law was lost, and King Vladislav IV
refused to the request of the Dorogobuzhians to confirm the
privilege (1635), explaining that the city had almost no resistance
to the Moscow troops. For Dorogobuzh, the post of voyt was retained,
the lands granted, but he lost the right to self-government.
In June 1654, Dorogobuzh was taken by Moscow troops and in 1667,
according to the Andrusov armistice, finally withdrew to Russia.
The city becomes the administrative center of
the Dorogobuzh district. In 1763, Dorogobuzh experienced a severe
fire, as a result of which the entire central part of the city
burned out. The restoration continued until the beginning of the
19th century. During this time, a number of stone churches, trade
and administrative buildings were built in the city.
The
pride of the Dorogobuzhan people is the architectural complex of the
village of Aleksino, which has belonged to the Baryshnikovs since
1774. Here at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries,
remarkable structures were erected: a palace-house, buildings of a
horse yard, a Kremlin with turrets, etc. Stucco decorations,
paintings on walls and ceilings, furniture - all this was created by
the Aleksin peasants. They planted a park, dug a horseshoe-shaped
lake in the center of the estate, built openwork bridges and
gazebos. Construction in Aleksino was carried out by serf architects
Yakov Zhdanov and Dmitry Polyakov under the guidance of the famous
architect Domenico Gilardi. In 1773, in the park, according to the
project of Matvey Fedorovich Kazakov, the Archangel Michael Church
was built, decorated with classical porticoes with a colonnade.
During the Patriotic War of 1812, the Dorogobuzh
land again found itself on the enemy's path. Before Dorogobuzh, the
commanders of the Russian armies MB Barclay de Tolly and PI
Bagration planned to give the French a general battle, but the
position chosen by the staff officers was considered unsatisfactory,
and the Russian troops left the city. The damage from the war was
enormous, two-thirds of the city burned out. In October 1812, during
the Patriotic War of 1812, a battle took place here between the
retreating troops of Napoleon and the advanced units of the Russian
imperial army pursuing them.
In the middle of the 19th
century, Dorogobuzh remained a merchant city selling traditional
goods - hemp, bacon, leather. Up to 4 fairs were held annually in
the city. The city center is built up with stone merchant houses.
The construction of the railway aside from Dorogobuzh hindered the
industrial development of the city. There were mainly small
processing enterprises here.
Zemstvo contributed a lot to the
economic and cultural development of the Dorogobuzh region. Prince
V. M. Urusov and A. M. Tukhachevsky were prominent uyezd and
provincial zemstvo leaders. A great contribution to the development
of the city was made by the permanent mayor D.I.Sveshnikov.
For the first time the city was occupied by the Germans on October 5, 1941. The partisan detachments "Hurricane", "Ded" and "Grandfather" were engaged in the liberation of the city during the 1942 Rzhev-Vyazemsky operation. From February 15, 1942 - June 7, 1942, the city was under the control of the Soviet troops.
The city was finally liberated on September 1, 1943 by the troops
of the Western Front during the Elninsko-Dorogobuzh operation by the
forces of the 5th Army. However, by the time of the liberation of
Dorogobuzh by Soviet troops, only 64 buildings remained in it, which
could be restored, the rest were a heap of ruins and ashes.
Retreating German units blew up all the main buildings of the
Boldinsky monastery. The historical appearance of the city has
almost disappeared.
From December 1943 to July 1944, the city
housed the administration (headquarters) and units of the 1st
separate female volunteer rifle brigade of the NKVD troops.
Dorogobuzh celebrates City Day on the last Saturday of August, on
the eve of the City's Liberation Day (September 1, 1943)
In the late 50s, the rebirth of the ancient land began. After the construction of the Dorogobuzh state district power station, the Dorogobuzh industrial hub appears. A nitrogen fertilizer plant, a boiler house, and a cardboard-roofing plant are under construction. In 1956, the urban-type settlement Verkhnedneprovsky was founded and began to develop rapidly. Thus, the Dorogobuzh region has turned from an agrarian into an industrial one.
By order of the Government of the Russian
Federation of July 29, 2014 No. 1398-r "On the approval of the list
of single-industry towns", the city was included in the category
"Single-industry municipalities of the Russian Federation
(single-industry towns) with the most difficult socio-economic
situation".
On March 6, 2017, the Prime Minister of the
Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree on the creation
of the only territory of advanced social and economic development in
the Central Federal District - Dorogobuzh.
Dorogobuzh is beautiful with its "Shaft" (old detinets), temples:
the Church of Peter and Paul (1835), the monastery of Dmitry
Solunsky, etc., old houses, views of the Dnieper. The city is home
to the Svyato-Dmitrievsky convent, the ensemble of the zemstvo
hospital.
The city has the Dorogobuzh Museum of History and
Local Lore, which has up to 2500 items of the main fund, of which
two-thirds are constantly on display. The exposition of the museum
includes 3 halls: "The history of the region from ancient times to
the beginning of the XX century", "The Great Patriotic War", "Our
fellow countrymen, culture and post-war history of the region."
The Gerasimo-Boldinsky monastery is located 15 km east of
Dorogobuzh, in the village of Boldino. 19 km from Dorogobuzh, in the
village of Aleksino - the Baryshnikovs' estate.
Not far from
Dorogobuzh, a modern autodrome has been built - the Smolenskoye
Koltso circuit for automobile circuit races.
An unusual art
object was built in Dorogobuzh in 2007 - the largest globe in
Europe. The globe is 12 meters high, 10.5 meters in diameter and
weighs 46 tons. The design of the globe is a metal spherical tank, a
former gas tank used to store nitrogen. The device expired and the
company's management, instead of scrapping it, decided to make a
globe out of it. The ball was painted by professional artists from
Smolensk, specially trained to work at heights, under the
supervision of the project manager, designer Mikhail Shvedov, who
conceived of making it a geographic map of the world as a kind of
symbol of Earth protection. The globe itself is located near the
PJSC Dorogobuzh plant. The plant is indicated on the surface of the
globe by a small illuminated dot.
By car
Dorogobuzh lies a couple of tens of kilometers south of the
busy M1 Belarus highway, exit from the highway onto the P137 road in the
Mishenino area. Also, when traveling from Moscow, if you have a passable
car, a little adventurism and a bit of romance, you can drive along the
Old Smolensk Road P134, which connects Moscow and the regional center
through Mozhaisk, Gagarin, Vyazma and, accordingly, Dorogobuzh.