Roslavl is a city in the Smolensk region of the Russian Federation. The administrative center of the Roslavl region. It forms the Roslavl urban settlement.
The first written mention of the city of Rostislavl is
contained in the collection of Smolensk episcopal letters and refers
to the years 1211-1218. Historians suggest that it was founded by
Prince Rostislav Mstislavich as one of the support centers of the
princely power on the lands of the Radimichi around 1137. Presumably
Rostislavl was to become a stronghold of the princely power in the
lands of the Radimichi.
From 1197 to 1206, the city
experienced economic growth. This may be evidence of the presence of
the prince in Rostislavl. Having emerged as a center of local
government, moreover, far from trade routes, Rostislavl in the XII
century could not be a center of craft and trade, the main
inhabitants of the city were "people of the princely
administration." The Rostislavl inheritance could have existed from
1197 to 1230s. Probably, it was at this time (1197-1206) that the
prince's residence was in the city. The economic growth of the city
is connected with these years.
Relative prosperity for the
residents of Roslavl ended in the XIII century. The Smolensk prince
was constantly in conflict with the boyars. This weakened the
military and economic power of the principality, which soon split
into feuds, constantly at odds with each other. Roslavl found
himself on the southern outskirts of the appanage principality.
Smolensk lands, already weakened by the pestilence of 1231-1232,
suffered from constant civil strife.
In 1239, the Lithuanians
managed to take Roslavl and Rudnya. The local residents were able to
conquer the city by turning to Yaroslav Vsevolodovich for help.
Nevertheless, in 1258 the Lithuanian princes again embarked on a
campaign against the city, as a result of which Roslavl and its
environs were devastated, however, the Lithuanian power in the city
was not established. In 1286 the city was won back by the Bryansk
appanage prince Roman Glebovich. He wants to subordinate the entire
Smolensk principality to his power, for which he resorts to the help
of the Tatars, but he did not succeed in carrying out his plans.
Smolensk Prince Alexander Glebovich managed to defend his territory
and power. The Roslavl inheritance returns independence.
In
1339, hordes of Mongol-Tatars invaded the Smolensk principality.
Roslavl was one of the first to suffer. The Tatars were unable to
capture the principality, but the border towns were burnt, plundered
and weakened. After the Tatar raids, the subordination of the
principality to the Lithuanian feudal lords took place under Vitovt.
For many years, the inhabitants of the city and the surrounding
region paid taxes to the Lithuanian prince.
In 1358,
Rostislavl was captured by the Lithuanian prince Olgerd and entered
the appanage Mstislavl principality of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
At the end of 1392, Vitovt drives Yuri Svyatoslavich, Skirgailo's
protege, from the Smolensk throne, and puts Gleb there, and sends
Yuri to reign in the city of Roslavl. Tribute was collected not only
in money, but also in food: meat, grain, honey, etc., but payment in
money was preferable. In addition to the tax to the Lithuanian
prince, the population had to pay the Smolensk ruler.
Wanting
to free themselves from foreign domination, the townspeople decided
to go under the rule of the Moscow princes, but they managed to
achieve their goal only after three long and bloody wars.
In
1515, Rostislavl was returned to the Grand Duchy of Moscow by the
governor Andrey Saburov. In 1514, the troops of Vasily III were able
to recapture the Smolensk principality, but Roslavl and several
other cities continued to remain in the hands of Lithuania; the city
managed to be under the rule of the Moscow princes by 1522 under the
terms of the armistice.
After a number of peaceful years, the
Livonian War became another devastating disaster for the
townspeople: in 1563, one of the Lithuanian detachments managed to
break through to the city, but the militia successfully repulsed the
attack this time too. Half a century later Roslavl had to confront a
new enemy: in 1610 the city was captured by the troops of the
Commonwealth and was no longer subordinate to the Russian sovereign,
but to the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund
III, becoming part of the Smolensk Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania. The Roslavl governors themselves gave power to the King
of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, considering the enemy too
strong. After the capture of the city by the Poles, the boyars went
with a bow to Sigismund, who set up his camp near Smolensk. In 1623
Roslavl was awarded the Magdeburg Law Certificate.
In 1632,
voivode Bogdan Nagoy was sent to Kaluga "to gather with military
men" for a campaign against Smolensk against the Poles, in October
of the same year he occupied Serpeisk with a small detachment, in
November defeated a Polish detachment and took Roslavl, and as a
reward for this he received a gold.
In 1654 the city was
taken by the Russian army during the successful military campaign of
Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In 1658-1659 he was briefly captured by
the rebellious Cossacks of Ivan Vygovsky. In 1664 Roslavl withstood
the siege of a large Lithuanian army, repelled the attacks of
Lithuanian troops in 1666.
The city received its modern name in 1755. Driving through Roslavl at the end of the Crimean War, the poet Tyutchev wrote the famous poem "These poor villages, This meager nature ..."
After the abdication of Nicholas II from the
throne, in March 1917, a representative body of local government “in
support of the February reforms” was created in the city - the
Public Executive Committee, which sends a welcome telegram to the
Provisional Government.
The situation on the fronts of the
First World War, mass refugees, funerals, amid the growing and
war-generated economic crisis pushed people to protests with a
desire to change their lives for the better.
The "bourgeois"
representative power that was established after February 1917 in the
city and region and consisted mainly of officials of the old tsarist
administration, representatives from the merchants, nobility,
landowners and clergy did not suit the social democratic forces,
which had their cells and supporters in Roslavl since the beginning
of 1900 -s, which were not properly represented in the new public
council.
On March 4 (17), 1917, after a rally,
representatives of the RSDLP (b), having gathered their supporters
from among the soldiers, workers of oil mills, railway workshops and
other enterprises, moved to the city center. The demonstrators
disarmed the gendarmes and policemen, the soldiers arrested the head
of the garrison. By the end of the day, the prisoners were
politically and administratively released. A Soviet of Workers 'and
Soldiers' Deputies was created in the city.
A group of
Bolsheviks headed by Nikolai Konopatsky joined the Roslavl district
Soviet. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries also had
influence in the council. A Menshevik soldier was elected chairman,
and the "peasant section" was given to the
Socialist-Revolutionaries.
On April 18 (May 1), 1917, a large
rally was held in the city, organized by the Soviet under slogans
demanding the resignation of the Provisional Government and calling
for "to fight against the continuation of the imperialist war", to
achieve the creation of a democratic republic and the introduction
of an 8-hour working day.
By the beginning of autumn 1917,
there were already more than 300 people in the city cell of the
RSDLP (b). Revolutionary sentiments also increased in the
countryside: in the Danilovichi volost in June 1917, peasants under
the leadership of the Bolshevik Semyon Ivanov took the landlord and
church lands from the owners and voluntarily transferred them to the
needy.
In early October, a meeting of workers and soldiers,
natives of the Roslavl district, was held in Petrograd, at which the
question of a trip to their native villages to help the peasantry in
the struggle for the establishment of Soviet power was discussed.
Delegates were elected and sent to the city and surrounding
villages.
Soviet power in the city was established on October
27 (November 9) 1917. NN Konopatsky later recalled: “At the end of
October, a revolutionary committee was formed consisting of Nikolai
Nikolaevich Konopatsky, Nikolai Pavlovich Nosov and Dmitry
Veniaminovich Klochkov. We sit in the Council around the clock. A
specially assigned commissioner is on duty at the telegraph office.
Finally, Smolensk announced the victory of the revolution in
Petrograd and the formation of the Council of People's Commissars.
Soon the first decrees of the Soviet government on peace and land
were received. We immediately reprinted them in the Roslavl printing
house and pasted them around the city, distributed them in the
shelves, and sent them around the county ”.
The civil war in
Russia and foreign military intervention (1917-1923) negatively
affected the development of the city, as well as the development of
the entire young Soviet state.
After the end of the Civil
War, the Soviet government "takes a course" on the development of
industrial cities, thanks to which a new stage begins in the history
of Roslavl. Factories and plants were revived and built,
collectivization was carried out in the countryside.
Stalin's
five-year plans left their mark on the history of the city. Many
factories and enterprises that closed before the revolution and
after it were reconstructed and modernized. In 1929, a vegetable
drying plant was put into operation, which had no analogues in the
entire Smolensk region.
In 1931, a Machine and Tractor
Station appeared in the city, at the end of the 1930s - a poultry
plant and a glass factory.
The administrative-territorial
structure and subordination of the city and district changed several
times. In 1929, Roslavl became the center of the Roslavl District of
the Western Region of the RSFSR, which included 11 rural areas, and
a year later, in 1930, the status of the city was changed due to the
abolition of the administrative-territorial division. Now the city
is the center of the "Western Rural District" (Smolensk Region).
Later Roslavl becomes a city of regional subordination.
At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Roslavl, being a
large transport hub with a developed track facilities, was of
strategic interest to the Wehrmacht High Command in preparing and
organizing an offensive on Moscow, conducting flank strikes in the
rear of the Red Army groupings and uninterrupted supply of its own
troops. In late July - early August 1941, fierce battles unfolded on
the outskirts of the city. The city was defended by units of the
222nd Infantry Division, which was hastily redeployed to the lines
around Roslavl. By July 28, having completed a 350-kilometer march,
units of the division took up defensive positions on the line:
Krivoles - the channel of the Oster River - the vicinity of the
Krapivinskaya station. The situation on the Western Front after the
capture of Smolensk in the last ten days of July, the loss of the
Red Army, "boilers", led to the fact that the 222nd rifle division
was the only division defending the city.
At dawn on July 30,
1941, the XXIV motorized and VII enemy army corps launched an
offensive from the Mstislavl - Krichev area in the direction of
Roslavl and with the aim of encircling and destroying the "Kachalov
group" (145, 149 RD, 104 td), which attempted a counterattack on
Smolensk. The next day, the IX Army Corps struck east of Roslavl
from the Pochinok - Strigino area. By the evening of August 2, the
division was in a "semi-encirclement", and by August 3 (according to
the official version) it was forced to retreat to an intermediate
defense line in the Yekimovichi area, in fact, it began an
indiscriminate retreat, having lost contact with the 774th rifle
regiment.
Under the blows of enemy tank groups and infantry,
it was dismembered. The division commander, who had no contact with
the neighbors, decided to withdraw the division east of Roslavl.
Among the military units defending the city was the 18th PTO
artillery regiment. Fierce battles of the brave artillerymen in the
area of the village of Byval'skoe with the advancing enemy lasted
8 hours. Until late at night, the Germans were unable to break into
the defenses of the two divisions. Many batteries have distinguished
themselves on this day.
On August 3, 1941, at 10:05, the
advance detachment of the 35th Panzer Regiment (Pz.Rgt. 35) of the
4th Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht under the command of General of
the Panzer Forces Wilibald von Langermann und Erlenkamp broke into
Roslavl.
The occupation lasted 784 days. During this time,
industrial enterprises were destroyed, 2/3 of residential buildings
were burned. The central streets of the city and the station area
were damaged. The population decreased from 41,480 people (according
to the 1939 census) to 7,400 people (as of 10/20/1943).
Roslavl became the "district center" with 10 administrative
districts. The district was governed by the "military field
commandant's office of the 1st category". The so-called "local
self-government of civilians" was organized. The burgomaster was
"elected" in the city (the son of the city's architect Aristov
N.A.), and in the villages and settlements - the elders. The
occupants in the city organized a Jewish ghetto in the area of
Krasnoflotsky lanes. In November 1941, over 600 Jews, including
women and children, were shot in the Bukhteev Moat, near the Jewish
cemetery. The notorious Dulag No. 130 transit camp for Soviet
prisoners of war was established in August 1941 on the southwestern
outskirts of the city. Before the war, the School of junior
commanders of the NKVD border troops was located here. From 1942 to
1943, the "Advanced command Moscow" (German: Sonderkommando 7c) of
Einsatzgroup "B" was deployed in the city, formed as a special unit
of the SD in July 1941, with the main task of capturing and
maintaining the archives of Soviet documents. In addition, the team
was ordered to carry out the search, arrest and arrest of persons
named in the “Special wanted list for the USSR”. The group took an
active part on the territory of the Smolensk region in actions for
the "requisition of property", the liquidation of the Jewish
population, underground fighters and partisans in the cities of
Roslavl, Mstislavl, the village of Tatarsk. During the years of
occupation, numerous underground cells operated in the city; back in
June - July 1941, partisan detachments were created.
On
September 25, 1943, the city was liberated by units: 247, 139, 326,
49 rifle divisions of the 10th Guards Army during the Smolensk -
Roslavl operation. Subsequently, all of them were given the honorary
title "Roslavlskys". From the air, the advancing units were
supported: 1st Guards. AK DD, 2nd Guards. AK DD, part of the forces
of the 8th Guards. AK DD. In the skies over Roslavl, in 1943, the
pilots of the 1st fighter aviation regiment "Normandy" also fought.