Early history In the second half of the 17th century, the village of Baranavichy housed a
Jesuit mission. In the second half of the 18th century, Baranavichy was the property of
Massalski and
Niesiołowski families. The village was administratively part of the
Nowogródek Voivodeship until the
Third Partition of Poland (1795) when it was annexed by
Imperial Russia. In the 19th century, it belonged to the
Countess E.A. Rozwadowski. It was part of the Novogrodek (now
Navahrudak)
okrug, which was part of
Slonim Governorate, the Lithuania Governorate, the
Grodno Governorate and then the
Minsk Governorate.
Growth The town's history began on 17 November 1871 (
O.S., 29 N.S.), the beginning of construction of a railway line to a new section of Smolensk-Brest. The name of the station arose during the construction of the nearby village, Baranavichy, whose first mention was in the testament of
A.E Sinyavskaya in 1627. Then, in 1871, not far from the station, a locomotive depot was built. In 1874, a railway
junction appeared. In the wooden station buildings lived the railway workers of Baranavichy. The new railway linked
Moscow with the western outskirts of Imperial Russia. The impetus for more intensive settlement of the areas adjacent to the station from the south was the 27 May 1884 decision by the governor of Minsk to build a town, Rozvadovo, on the lands of the landlord, Rozwadowski. The town was built according to the governor's approved plan. The contained 120 houses and 500 people. The plans approved by Emperor
Alexander III assumed that there would also be one railway linking
Vilnius,
Luninets,
Pinsk, and
Rovno. Therefore, from the station, the Moscow-Brest railway crossed the track of the Vilnius-Rovno from Polesie railway. At the junction was another station, Baranavichy (according to Polesie Railways), which became the second centre of the city. As before, workers and traders settled near the station. The new settlement was called New Baranavichy, unlike Rozvadovo, which became informally called Old Baranavichy. It was developed on the land owned by peasants of the villages near the new station (Svetilovichi, Gierow, and Uznogi). More convenient than the landlords' land, its lease terms and proximity to administrative agencies contributed to the rapid growth of this settlement.
20th century At the beginning of World War I, Baranavichy was the location for the
Stavka, the headquarters of the Russian General Staff, until the
Great Retreat. After the settlement was left by the Germans, it was captured on 5 January 1919, by the Soviets. In the early stages of the
Polish–Soviet War, it was briefly captured by the Poles on 18 March 1919 and again captured, for a longer period, in April 1919, five months after
Poland regained independence. The Russians retook it on 17 July 1920, but the Poles took it again on 30 September 1920. On 1 August 1919, as Baranowicze, Baranavichy received
city rights and became the administrative centre of a
powiat in the Polish
Nowogródek Voivodeship. According to the 1921 census, the city had a population of 11,471, 56.2%
Jewish, 25.5%
Polish, 16.6%
Belarusian and 1.5%
Russian. Soon, the city started to grow and became an important centre of trade and commerce for the area. The city's Orthodox cathedral was built in the
Neoclassical style from 1924 to 1931 and was decorated with mosaics that had survived the demolition of the
Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Warsaw. In 1930, a monument to
Hungarian Lieutenant colonel Artur Buol, a hero of Polish fights in the
Polish–Soviet War, was unveiled in Baranowicze. In the interwar years, the grandparents and the father of Polish politicians
Lech Kaczyński and
Jarosław Kaczyński lived in Baranowicze. The city was also an important military
garrison, with a
KOP Cavalry Brigade, the
20th Infantry Division and the
Nowogródzka Cavalry Brigade stationed there. Because of the fast growth of local industry, a local branch of the
Polish Radio was opened in 1938. In 1939 Baranavichy had almost 30,000 inhabitants and was the biggest and the most important city in the
Nowogródek Voivodeship. During the
invasion of Poland at the start of
World War II, the
Soviet Union took the city on 17 September 1939 and annexed it to the
Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. The local Jewish population of 9,000 was joined by approximately 3,000 Jewish refugees from the Polish areas occupied by
Germany. After the start of
Operation Barbarossa, the city was seized by the
Wehrmacht on 27 June 1941. It became part of
Generalbezirk Weißruthenien in
Reichskommissariat Ostland during the
German occupation. In August 1941, the
Baranavichy Ghetto was created in the city, with more than 12,000 Jews kept in terrible conditions in six buildings on the outskirts. From 4 March to 14 December 1942, the entire Jewish population of the ghetto was sent to various
extermination camps and killed in
gas chambers. Only about 250 survived the war.
Hugo Armann, head of a unit that arranged travel for soldiers and security police, saved six people from a murder squad and another 35 to 40 people who worked for him. The Germans operated a subcamp of the Stalag 337
prisoner-of-war camp in the city. The city was recaptured by the
Red Army on 8 July 1944. It was the seat of the
Baranavichy Voblast from 1939 to 1941 and again from 1944 to 1954. Meanwhile, intensive industrialization took place. In 1991, the city became part of independent
Belarus. == Demographics ==