Minsk History

Minsk History:  
The Origins and Early History

There are many legends relating to the foundation of Minsk and the origin of its name. Situated on the watershed of the river-routes linking the Baltic to the Black sea, its trading history going back to prehistoric times some have thought that the city owes its name to the word miena or "barter". Others look at a hill-fort known as Haradysczy by Stroczyce, a "Skansen"-village, a few kilometers away on the west from the city on the banks of the river Menka, which flows to the river Pticz and on to join the Pripiat' and Dniapro. A heroic folk legend that a giant called Menesk or Mincz kept a mill on the banks of a river, and ground rock and stones to make flower for bread in order to feed the war-band he had assembled to protect his settlement, and safeguard its prosperity. This depended, no doubt, on the portage of goods between the headwaters of Pripiat, Dniapro, and Nioman. So Menesk -- later Mensk -- came into being. The reference to "stone-flour" can allude to kneading and baking of potters clay used in brick-making and ceramics industry, which from the earliest times flourished in the area. There was no lack of wood to fire the kilns.

Ancient Minsk

In prehistoric times the "domain of the bear" predominated over "the domain of the goose"(as Napoleon soldiers aptly dubbed the forest- and meadow-lands of the area) with vast and impenetrable primeval forests covering most of the country and serving as a Delphic "wooden wall" to its successive inhabitants against attacks from the East. Scattered Lithuanians and Jatvyhs hunted and gathered, until merged with the more advanced Slavonic tribes moving northwards from the Carpathians during the so-called Dark Ages. These settled the area forming the watershed of the rivers flowing to the Baltic and the Black Sea, where the early Belarusians founded prosperous townships of Polacak, Viciebsk, Smalensk, Minsk, and Harodnia. Of these Polacak, first mentioned in the chronicles for 862, was to become the most important.

During the era of Viking expansion along the East European waterways, many towns and principalities were ruled over by Scandinavian warlords; in the 9th century the lands of Polacak were raided by two Viking princes Askold and Dir, and by the 10th century a Prince Ravhalod(Norse: Ragnvald) reigned over the Belarusian principality of which early Minsk formed part. The Belarusian nobility to this day distinguishes between families of old Lithuanian and those of Scandinavian descent(Hedymoviczy and Rurikoviczy).

Minsk History:  
Minsk and the Principality of Polacak

Rahvalod's daughter Rahnieda(Norse: Ragnheid) was baptized; she became the wife of Prince Volodimir(Norse: Valdemar) of Kiev and bore him a son Iziaslau. Volodimir was baptized a Christian by missionaries from Constantinople in 988; the population of Polacak accepted Christianity in 989, and by 992 the city had its Bishop. On the death of Volodimir, Iziaslau' became Prince of Polacak, and his half-brother Jaraslav -- Volodimir's son by a previous marriage -- became Prince of Novgorod and later of Kiev. Other sons acquired his domains among the Finno-Ugric tribes of what was to become Muscovy. "Since that time, as the chronicler recorded, "the grandchildren of Rahvalod raised the sword agains the grandchildren of Jaroslav". From the outset there was little unity between the warring princes of "Rus'". Iziaslau'(d. 1001) was succeeded by his son Braczaslau, who it turn was followed by his son Usiaslau the Enchanter (1044 - 1101).

Usiaslau the Enchanter

The dynastic rivalry between the houses of Kiev and Polacak explains the turbulent history of Minsk in its early years, situated as it was on the southern borders of the latter principality. The center of the town had shifted to a new cite giving access to the headwaters of the Vilija and Biarazima and the confluence of the Niamiha and Svisloch rivers. Here also the steep banks of the Niamiha, the high mound south of the stream and Trinity Golden hill offered a good defensive position. Public buildings, dwelling houses, and fortifications were raised of timber. The first recorded mention of Minsk in 1066 relates however to dynastic wars with Kiev. After Usiaslau of Polacak had raided Novgorod and brought to his capital the bells of the Cathedral of St. Sophia, to hang them in his own Cathedral of that name, the three sons of Jaraslav in retribution attacked the city of Minsk: "The people of Menesk(Minsk) barricaded themselves in the town, but the three brothers took Menesk and killed the men, carried off the women and children into captivity, and went towards the Niamiha".

Treacherously seized whilst attending a parley in Smalensk with Isiaslau and the princes of Kiev in 1067, Usiaslau and his two sons were kept captive in Kiev, until an uprising of the inhabitants set them free. Prince Usiaslau fled to Poland, and the Prince of Polacak was offered the throne of Kiev in his stead. The story goes that Usiaslau' longed to return home, and declined the honor for the love of his native land. He was, as the chronicler records, called back to Polacak "by the pealing bells of St. Sophia". The first uncensored Belarusian historical opera performed in Minsk: Usiaslau the Enchanter, Prince of Polacak (1944) by the composer Kulikovicz dealt with this romantic theme. The bells of St. Sophia were to become for Belarusian exiles the symbol of the call of the homeland.

Usiaslau principality of Polacak was, on his death, divided between his sons: the fiefdom of Minsk fell to Hleb, who thus became the first sovereign prince of the city. Internecine quarrels weakened the northern principalities and encouraged the Kievans to reopen hostilities. In 1104 they ravaged the principality of Minsk and shortly thereafter the warlike Lithuanians moved in from the west. Vladimir Monomach again besieged and took Minsk in 1116. Three years later in a further campaign against Polacak, after a battle on the banks of Biarazina, the Kievans "attacked the town, and left neither man nor beast in it".Prince Hleb Usiaslavavicz, together with his two sons, Rascilau and Valadar, was taken into captivity, where he died in exile later that year. He was succeeded by his son Rascislau, but yet again the Kievans attacked in 1129, and placed their nominee Isiaslau Mscislavicz on the throne dispatching Gleb children to serve the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople.

The Grand Duke Hedymin

However, the principality reverted to the princes of Polacak in 1146, with the return of the two sons of Hleb, Rascilau and after him Valadar(1151 - 1158), though Syrakomla gives different dates and the chronicles for this period are incomplete. On the death of the latter prince, Minsk is though to have been governed by Valadar's son Prince Vasylka, at least until 1195. During the reign of the Grand Duke Mindauh(c. 1200 - 1263) of Lithuania, Polacak entered into an alliance with him to expel the Baltic Germans, who had invaded the principality. Thereafter, it appears to have become a Lithuanian appanage, for by 1220 the overlord of Minsk was Prince Edzivil, a nephew of Mindauh. Minsk continued as a semi-independent principality allied with Lithuania, for as late as 1326 the records mention a Prince Todar Svjataslavavicz of Minsk as a witness to a treaty between the Grand Duke Hedymin(d. 1341) and the city-state of Novgorod.

The fall of Kiev to the Mongols in 1240 during the great invasion of Batu Khan, the submission of Jaroslav, the Grand Duke of Moscow, to the Tatars in 1243 and the Lithuanian victory over the Asian invaders first at Kojdanava(1241) under Prince Skirmunt and then at Kruta Hora (1249) a few miles from Minsk, served to consolidate the union between the Belarusian principalities and the Grand Duchy. In 1252 Mindauh and his his leading nobles were baptized, and the Grand Duke was crowned with the approval of Pope Innocent IV in 1253. He fixed his capital in the Belarusian city of Navahrudak, some 100 km west from Minsk.

Minsk History:  
The Early Years of the Grand Duchy

Little is known of the history of the city under the early Grand Duke Vajszelak(d. 1269), Trojdzen(1271 - 1282), and Lutaver (1282 - 1295). In 1323, during the reign of Hedymin (1316 - 1341), the capital of the Grand Duchy was moved from the Navahrudak to Vilnia.

The Kinf of Poland and Grand Duke Jahajla

The fact that Prince Jaunut Hedyminavicz received from the Grand Duke Kejstut the principality of Zaslaue, and reigned in Minsk in 1345, where he was succeeded his son Michal, suggests that the city was by then a royal suzerainty. Prince Michal was present at the coronation in 1386 of Grand Duke Jahajla as King of Poland in Krakow, and gave his oath of allegiance "for himself and his own". In 1390 Jahajla endowed a Catholic Church in Minsk dedicated to the Holy Trinity and Ascension of Our Lady, perhaps in part performance of his written bond on his marriage in 1389 to Queen Jadviha of Poland, to establish Latic-rite Catholicism in his domains; its site in the city is not known, and the wooded building is reputed to have been destroyed by fire in 1409. Many of the suzerains of the Russian principalities to the east of Smalensk, anxious for protection against Moscow -- now reduced to a state of Tatar satrapy, -- sought alliance or union with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, so that soon the Grand Duke Alhierd(1345 - 1377) acquired the title of Rex Litvinorum Ruthenorumque, with domains stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

The Grand Duke Vitaut

Union did not imply subservience however; and it is noted by Syrakomla that the banner of Minsk was not among the united army of Lithuanians, Belarusians, and Poles, who under Grand Duke Vitaut(1392 - 1430) defeated the Teutonic Order at the Battle of Gruenwald in 1410. The city had sided with Grand Duke Svidrihajla in a dynastic dispute against Grand Duke Hedymin, and Prince Urustaj of Minsk appeared in 1408, as a witness to a Treaty of mutual aid signed by Svidrihajla and the Grand Duke Basil of Moscow. The establishment of Minsk as a Namiesnictva(Royal Shire) coincided with the absence, noted by Syrakomla, of the city's seal from the Charter of Horadla in that year, -- though few other noblemen of the Greek rite were present at the conference. Thereafter the city appears to have been governed by a namiesnik of Sheriff representing the Grand Ducal authority as hereditary Prince of Zaslaue. This might indicate that Minsk had declined in importance since the Mongol invasions, the sack of Kiev, and the growing threat to the Black Sea trade from the advancing Turks. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the subjection of Crimean Tatars to Ottoman rule in 1475, were to have far reaching effects on the economic, political, and religious life in Minsk, and indeed of the whole Grand Duchy.

Minsk History:  
Renaissance Minsk

In 1499 Grand Duke Alexander Jahajlavicz granted to the city of Minsk a specially favoured autonomous status known as the Magdeburg privelege, manifestly to stimulate trade. This weak and vaccilating monarch in an attempt to pacify his increasingly aggressive Eastern neighbor, the self-proclaimed Tzar Ivan III of Moscow, sought the hand of his daughter, the Grand Dutchess Helen, whose mother was Sophia Paleogos, a relative of the last Byzantine Emperor. Alexander unwisely signed a marriage contract fraught with opportunities for Muscovite interference in Lithuanian religious affairs and the matters of state. Urged on by her Muscovite chaplains, Helen pressed the candidature of her confessor Jonas, Archimandrite of the Ascension monastery in Minsk, to be appointed Metropolitan of Kiev in 1502. This simple but inflexible man was to be the first Lithuanian Metropolitan since 1439 unwilling to support the Florentine Union, entered in between the Latin and Greek churches in the face of Muslim Turkish threat. The highly critical historian Vakar observed that, until the appointment of Jonas, the Catholics and Orthodox, maintained quite friendly relations in Belarus: "The Orthodox clergy in the Grand Duchy took a sympathetic attitude towards the Union of Florence (1439), and would not have rejected it, save for the direct pressure from Moscow". Therein lay the root of the religious discord in the country over the next five centuries.

Grand Duke Zhyhimunt II

The visit to Minsk in 1502 the Grand Duke Alexander and the Grand Duchess Helen did little to avert a succession of disasters. The Eastern principalities of the Grand Duchy were progressively lost to Moscow. Minsk was besieged by the Muscovites, relieved by Prince Hlinski and again sacked, (with the exception of the castle) by the Crimean Tatar Khan, Machmet-Girej(1506). The key Eastern fortress of Smalensk was taken by Tsar Basil III(1513), scarcely before the Grand Duchess of Lithuania, his sister, was cold in her coffin. Fortunately, by his victory over the Russians at Orsza in 1514, the Hetman of the Grand Duchy, Prince Constantine Astrozhski, saved the city from further immediate misfortune. Prior to the battle, the Grand Duke Zhyhimunt II(Pol. I) and the whole court came from Vilnia to Minsk to direct the campaign, in which the Namiesnik(Sheriff) of the city, Prince Bahdan Zaslauski, also took part. However, whilst Zhyhimut was away fighting the Teutonic knights in Prussia, the Muscovite in 1519 once again returned to ravage Lahojsk, Minsk, Hajna, Radaszkaviczy, Barysau', and other towns, despite the stout resistance put up by Mikalaj Radzivil, Albrecht Hasztold and the then sheriff of Minsk, Mikalaj Zaslauski. Both Hasztold and Radzivil attended the Vienna congress in 1515 to set up a coalition against the Turks, and banner were depicted by Skaryna in his allegorical engraving of the March of the Twelve Tribes(1519) as examples of "worthy princes and commanders to protect us from the hand of the heathen". Evidence of the impoverishment of the city is to be found in the military levies for 1529 fixing at 1500 kop hroszau the contribution from Vilnia, 300 from Kouna, Mahiliou: 200, Biarescie: 150, whilst Minsk was only required to underwrite 50 kop.

A Reformist church in Zaslaue

The sorry decline of the traditional Greek- and Latin-rite churches in Belarus, both of which had become corrupt and refused to adopt the Belarusian vernacular, coupled with the failure of attempts to renew the Florentine Union, to consolidate the national church in the face of Muscovite intrigues and the continuing Turkish threat, led many of the most eminent noblemen and soldiers of the age -- Radzivil, Sapieha, Kiszka, Chadkevicz, Pacz, and others as well as some of the ablest writers and thinkers of the day, such as Vasil Ciapinski(1530 - 1603), Symon Budny(1530 - 1593) and the engaging diarist Todar Eulaszeuski(1546 - 1616) -- to embrace the Calvinistic reformed faith. For the less reputable, it was a convenient means of revoking church endowments secured by their forbears on family estates, the churches now being divided. Some of the finest Belarusian church architecture of the period in the Byzantino-Gothic style is to be found at the evangelical churches at Zaslaue(1590), Dzieraunaja(1590), Novy Sverzhan'(c. 1550), all near Minsk, and Smarhoni(1554) amongst many others. The development of a peculiarly art-form in music -- the kantyczka or hymn, was also largely a product of the Reformation. It was the exodus of the nobles and burghers to Calvinizm, rather than any schemings of the Jesuits (who in any case were not then established in Minsk), which resulted in the dereliction of the 13 Greek-rite churches, which according to the local historian Spileuski(1853) had flourished in Minsk at the close of the Middle Ages, including the ancient monastery of the Ascension. Moreover, in 1547 the city was once again devastated by fire, which destroyed the castle and the number of churches in the Lower Town. As a result, in the latter part of the 16th century the Upper town was laid out with broader streets and greater recourse to brickwork in the reconstruction of the city. There were no stone or brick ramparts, the rivers Svislocz and Niamiha served as moats to the east and north, whilst to the south and west the main defence was made up of semi-circular earth-works. In the light of the growing threat from the East, the stockade and redoubt in Trinity suburb were strengthened. The defence of the inhabitants of Minsk, however, depended on the superior fire-power of their artillery, the dense forests to the East, and the embargo by the Catholic European powers on the sale of fire-arms to the troublesome Muscovites.

Minsk History:  
Minsk under the Commonwealth

There can be little doubt that the Council of the Stoglav in Moscow(1551), proclaiming supremacy of the Russian Orthodoxy over all other forms of the Greek-rite faith, the invasion of Belarus of Ivan IV("The Terrible"), the subsequent capture and destruction of Polacak(1563-1579) by the Russians, the estabkishment in 1589 the Patriarchate of Moscow as the "Third Rome", and the breaking after 1558 of the embargo of arms for Muscovy by Protestant England and Holland, were four events so fraught with danger for the Grand Duchy, that it had virtually no choice other than seek a political union with the Kingdom of Poland at Lublin in 1569, and renewed ecclesiastical union with Rome at Biarescie in 1596.

One of many Greek-rite clerics concious of the danger was Michael Rahoza. In 1576 he was appointed Archimandrite of the Ascension monastery in Minsk, which had remained vacant for several decades. He was consecrated the Metropolitan of Kiev in 1588 by the visiting Patriarch Jeremija of Constantinople who, "being unable to meet the financial demands of the Turks, had come to the North to look for money"(Guepin). Two years previously, the Patriarch of Antioch, Joachim had returned to his Turkish overlords, "carrying off large sums of money" collected from pious Orthodox believers in Belarus and Ukraine, which in turn helped the Turks to finance their campaigns against the Grand Duchy. The Greek Catholic(Uniate) Archbishop of Polacak, Josaphat Kuncevicz, stressed the peril in his reply to Chancellor Leu Sapeha's famous letter reproaching him with his hostility to the Constantinopolitan faction, the non-Uniate Cossacks of Ukraine and their then covert supporters, the Turks: "Are we to allow the Patriarch, a Metropolitan, a bishop, nay, even a pasha who has taken the precaution of donning a monks habit and assuming the title of Exarch, to come to this land with janissaries, on the pretext of a pastoral visitation, in order to spy and hatch treasonable plots? Are not we to prevent because this would indispose the Cossacks?". Minsk was to play an important part in the struggle for the restoration of the Florentine Union, as the only means of ending both the pretensions of the Tsar and Patriarch of Moscow, and of Constantinople, to political and ecclesiastical supremacy over "all the Russias and all the countries of the North". A council of the clergy of the Greek church was held in Minsk in 1620 presided over by Metropolitan Rutski with a view to obtaining adherence of the passive majority to the Union. The session, according to Syrakomla, appears to have been stormy, as a result of the bold intervention of the conservative anti-Union monk, Todar Jarmolicz. However, as the French church historian Guepin observed, "The extinction of the Ruthenian schism had become a matter of State".

The political union with Poland in 1569, and the problems involved in selection a joint ruler for the Kingdom and the Grand Duchy, resulted in some curious situations, as where a reluctant French Prince, Henri de Valois, brought back from Paris as ephemeral sovereign in 1574, by a delegation including Chancellor Radzivil, began appending his signature and seal as Grand Duke to the decrees written in the old Belarusian language. The union also altered the status of Minsk, which became instead of a Grand Ducal Namiestnictva(Shire), a standard Vajavodstva (County) of the Reczypaspalitaja(Commonwealth) with Hauryla Harnastaj as its first Vajavod(High Constable), Mikola Talvasz as Castellan and Bazyl Tyszkevicz as Starasta(Lord Lieutenant). Minsk became not only the seat of its own County Court and Land Tribunal, but also after 1581 a session town, in which the High Court of the Grand Duchy would sit when on circuit, the privelege it shared with Vilnia and the former capital Navahrudak. An occational pleader in the Minsk Courts was Todar Jeulaszeuski, who in his diary mentions his appearances at the sessions there in 1583. During the wars against Ivan the Terrible(1563-1579) Minsk once again served as operational headquaters for the Grand Ducal armies, and the King and Grand Duke Zhyhimunt III(Pol. II) sojourned there during the campaigns of 1563 and 1568. His successor Zhyhimunt IV(Pol. III) confirmed the city in its priveleges, granted the merchants the right to hold two Fairs each year and endowed municipality with additional lands in 1592.

Mialecii Smatrycki

This was not always appreciated by the local population, stirred up by false rumors of impeding liturgical and festival changes, and fearful of the interference of an increasingly Polish-oriented sovereign into the affairs of the Grand Duchy. Mialecii Smatrycki (1577 - 1633), for a time hostile to, but later a supporter of the Uniate cause, has been received at the Salamarecki estate at Siomkava, near Minsk, on his return from Leipzig, and was said by Syrakomla to have written a part of his anti-Uniate polemical work Threnos of the Complaint of the Eastern Church during his stay there. When the Union of Biaresce was signed in 1596, many of the inhabitants of Minsk accepted it without protest. Those who did not follow the advice of the Vilnia Holy Ghost Confraternity, obtained from the Minsk magistrates in 1613 the grant of land for a church by the Niamiha, and called for non-Uniate priests from Vilnia to service it. The Grand Duke, who resented the establishment of these non-Uniate confraternities, which, with their schools and fund-raising activities for Muslim-occupied Constantinople, began to look very much like a hostile state within a state, sent two Uniate Greek-rite priests with royal letter-patents to seize the church building. The fair minded city fathers, however, appear to have been sympathetic to the Minsk cofraternity, and received the royal envoys, Luckebicz and Hainski, with some coldness, declaring that the city council had many other worries apart from the church affairs, and in the event nothing was done. Indeed, the first decade of the 17th century had been a time of sharp famine and plague, as well as of outbreaks of fire in the city(1602), so their calm had some justification. The three attempts in August 1616 on the newly established non-Uniate Cathedral confraternity, led by a shoemaker Danila Palavinka, to seize the Holy Ghost Cathedral, followed by the unlawful detention by the mob of the Catholic and Uniate burgomasters Aliaksej Philipovicz and Siamion Chatkevicz merely served to strengthen the fears of the peaceful majority of the townspeople over the political undertones of the Confraternity's campaign, and to advance the cause of the Greek Catholics. The publication in 1617 by Liavon Kreuza's Oborona Jednosti Cerkovnoj ("Defense of the Union") in reply to Smatrycki's Threnos was a skillful and convincing polemical work, which won over many waverers of the Union.

The Cathedral of the Holy Ghost

Since 1596 the bitterest dispute had arisen between the two factions over the ownership of Church property. These resulted in two outbreaks of unrest in Minsk(1597, 1616), and the martyrdom of the Uniate Archbishop of Polacak Josaphat Kuncevicz(1580 - 1623); they were finally settled at the conciliation meeting between the contending parties, held in Minsk in 1625. Both the Uniate Metropolitan Jasep Veniamin Rucki and the non-Uniate Metropolitan Peter Mohila attended the conference, which took place at a time when Muscovite rulers, weaked by internal strife, driven back from Novgorod and Smalensk, and at odds with Cossacks, were not in a position to interfere with the affairs of the Grand Duchy. Another Uniate School of SS. Cosmo and Damian opened in 1619. At this time also were built the Dominican monastery(1622), the Bernadine convents(1628, 1642), and the Basilian Church of the Holy Ghost(1645), all in the Upper Town, as well as the Basilian convent of the Holy Trinity in the Trinity suburb(1630). A privelege was also granted by the Grand Duke Uladzislau I (Pol. IV) in 1633 to the Basilian convent of the Holy Ghost and the Orthodox Confraterity of SS. Peter and Paul to establish printing presses; in the same year the increasingle wealthy Confraternity established a hospital and a school "for the instruction of Christians and their children". By the mid-17th century the Uniate churches in Minsk had seven confraternities owning houses, shop and land; the majority of the city churches and their endowments however remained in the hands of Greek Catholics, secure from the Turkish Sultan and the Russian Tsar.