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Minsk: Cities
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In 1654, Minsk was conquered by troops of Tsar Alexei of Russia. Russians governed the city until 1667, when it was regained by Jan Kasimir, King of Poland. By the end of the Polish-Russian war, Minsk had only about 2,000 residents and just 300 houses. The second wave of devastation occurred during the Great Northern War, when Minsk was occupied in 1708 and 1709 by the Swedish army of Charles XII and then by the Russian army of Peter the Great. The last decades of the Polish rule involved decline or very slow development, since Minsk had become a small provincial town of little economic or military significance. By 1790... it had a population of 6,500-7,000 and was slowly re-expanding to the city limits of 1654.
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During World War II (1939-1945) Minsk was devastated by German occupation. Between 1941 and 1944 German troops exterminated nearly all of the city’s Jewish residents. Soviet armies liberated the city toward the end of the war, and most of Minsk lay in rubble by the time the Germans were driven out.
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Before World War II, Minsk had had a population of 300,000 people. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June, 1941, as part of Operation Barbarossa, Minsk immediately came under attack. The city was bombed on the first day of the invasion and was occupied by the German Army four days later. However, some factories, museums and tens of thousands of civilians had been evacuated to the east. The Germans designated Minsk the administrative centre of Reichskomissariat Ostland and treated the local population harshly. Communists and sympathisers were killed or imprisoned; thousands were forced into slave labour, both locally and after being transported to Germany.
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In the early years of the 20th century, Minsk was a major centre for the worker's movement in Belarus. It was ... one of the major centres of the Belarusian national revival, alongside Vilnia. However, the First World War affected the development of Minsk tremendously. By 1915, Minsk was a battle-front city. Some factories were closed down, and residents began evacuating to the east. Minsk became the headquarters of the Western Front of the Russian army and also housed military hospitals and military supply bases.
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Minsk was already in existence as a Slavic village in 1067, when it was first mentioned in records. In 1101 it became the seat of a principality. In 1326 Lithuania gained control of the city. When Lithuania and Poland joined forces in 1569, Minsk came under Polish rule. In 1793, the second partition of Poland put the city in Russian hands.
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The first Jew to lease the custom duties of Minsk was Mikhel Danilevich from Troki (Trakai), in 1489; Jewish families began to settle in the city of Minsk during the 16th century. In 1579, King Stefan Batory granted the Jews a charter allowing them to engage in commerce in the city; in 1606, by request of the Christian population, King Sigismund III invalidated the charter, but by 1629 he reinstated the Jews’ commercial rights, permitting them to open shops in Minsk. In 1633, King Ladislav IV granted the Jewish community permission to buy land for a new cemetery and acquire real estate on the market square.
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