Mahilyow

Name

The name Mogilev may be derived from Russian mogila (lit. 'grave') and lev (lit. 'lion'); according to folk legend, the city was named after the grave of a young peasant, which was known as the "Tomb of the Lion", and it was around this burial mound that a fortress was built. Its founding has also been linked to Galician prince Leo I.

History

The city was first mentioned in historical records in 1267. From the 14th century, it was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and since the Union of Lublin (1569), it has been part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where it became known as Mohylew. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the city flourished as one of the main nodes of the east–west and north–south trading routes.

In 1577, Grand Duke Stephen Báthory granted it city rights under Magdeburg law. In 1654, during the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667), the townsmen negotiated a treaty of surrender to the Russians peacefully, if the Jews were to be expelled and their property divided up among Mogilev's inhabitants. Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovitch agreed to their proposal. However, instead of expelling the Jews, the Russian troops massacred them after they had led them to the outskirts of the town. During this war, the city was besieged twice by the Lithuanian army: in 1655, and in 1660. In 1661, residents started an uprising against the Russian military occupation. The city was set afire by Peter the Great's forces in 1708, during the Great Northern War. After the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Mogilev became part of the Russian Empire and became the centre of the Mogilev Governorate.

In the years 1915–1917, during World War I, the Stavka, the headquarters of the Russian Imperial Army, was based in the city and the Tsar, Nicholas II, spent long periods there as Commander-in-Chief.

Following the Russian Revolution, in 1918, the city was briefly occupied by Germany and placed under their short-lived Belarusian People's Republic. In 1919, Mogilev was captured by the forces of Soviet Russia and incorporated into the Byelorussian SSR. Up to World War II and the Holocaust, like many other cities in Europe, Mogilev had a significant Jewish population: according to the Russian census of 1897, out of the total population of 41,100, 21,500 were Jews (i.e. over 50 percent). In 1938 the leadership of Soviet Belarus decided to move the capital of the country from Minsk to Mogilev because Minsk was too close to the then-Polish-Soviet border. Due to that, the now-Mogilev City Council building was built in 1938–1940 to be the government building. It was designed to resemble the Minsk Government building.

During Operation Barbarossa, the city was conquered by Wehrmacht forces on 26 July 1941 and remained under German occupation until 28 June 1944. Mogilev became the official residence of High SS and police leader (HSSPF) Erich von dem Bach. During that period, the Jews of Mogilev were ghettoized and systematically murdered by Ordnungspolizei and SS personnel. Heinrich Himmler personally witnessed the executions of 279 Jews on 23 October 1941. Later that month, several mentally disabled patients were poisoned with car exhaust fumes as an experiment; the method of killing was thereafter applied in several Nazi extermination camps. Initial plans for establishing a death camp in Mogilev were abandoned in favour of Maly Trostenets.

Religion

Mohilev was the episcopal see of the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Mohilev until its 1991 merger into the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Minsk-Mohilev.

It remains the see of the Eparchy (Eastern diocese) of Mogilev and Mstsislaw in the Belarusian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Economy

After World War II, a huge metallurgy centre with several major steel mills was built. Also, several major factories of cranes, cars, tractors and a chemical plant were established. By the 1950s, tanning was Mogilev's principal industry, and it was a major trading centre for cereal, leather, salt, sugar, fish, timber and flint: the city has been home to a major inland port on the Dnieper river since and an airport since. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the establishment of Belarus as an independent country, Mogilev has become one of that country's main economic and industrial centres.

Notable sites

The convent of St. Nicholas has a cathedral built in 1668, as well as the original iconostasis, bell tower, walls, and gates. As of 2014 it was under consideration to become a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Geography

Climate

Mogilev has a warm-summer humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dfb) with warm summers and cold winters.

Notable citizens

Rita Achkina, cross country skier

Matest M. Agrest, ethnologist and mathematician

Modest Altschuler, orchestra conductor

Abe Anellis, microbiologist

Olga Bogdanova, chemist

Petr Elfimov, musician

Svetlana Baitova, gymnast

Ihar Hershankou, serial killer

Alyona Lanskaya, singer

Eugenia Logvinovna Lashnyukova, nun

Joseph Lookstein, Rabbi and President of Bar-Ilan University

Leonid Isaakovich Mandelshtam, physicist

Andrey Melnikov, soldier and recipient of Hero of the Soviet Union award

Andrej Mryj, satirical writer, journalist, translator and a victim of Stalin's purges

Ivan Nasovič, author of the first Belarusian dictionary

Stanisław Julian Ostroróg, Polish count, Crimean War veteran, noted Victorian Photographic portraitist, naturalised British subject

David Pinski, Yiddish playwright

Simeon Piščević, major-general and governor of Mogilev (1777)

Lev Polugaevsky, International Grandmaster of chess

Sports

City sports teams:

Football: FC Torpedo Mogilev, FC Dnepr Mogilev and ZhFC Dnepr Mogilev, Nadezhda Mogilev

Hockey: HK Mogilev

Basketball: BC Borisfen

Twin towns – sister cities

Mogilev is twinned with: