Mogilev

Mogilev, or Mahilyow,Template:Efn is a city in eastern Belarus. It is located on the Dnieper River, about Template:Convert from the border with Russia's Smolensk Oblast and Template:Convert from Bryansk Oblast. As of 2025, it has a population of 352,896. In 2011, its population was 360,918, up from an estimated 106,000 in 1956. It serves as the administrative centre of Mogilev Region, and is the third-largest city in Belarus.

Name

The name Mogilev may be derived from Russian mogila (Template:Lit) and lev (Template:Lit); 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 Lev Danilovich.

History

Template:Stack 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 Stefan Batory 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 Template:Ill. In 1661, residents started Template:Ill 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-Template:Ill was built in 1938–1940 to be the government building. It was designed to resemble the Minsk Government building.

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-138-1091-29A, Russland, Mogilew, Ansicht.jpg

Mogilev in July 1941

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.

In 1944, with the Mogilev offensive, the devastated city was liberated by the Red Army and returned to Soviet control. Mogilev then was the site of a labour camp for German POW soldiers.

Since Belarus gained its independence in 1991, Mogilev has remained one of its principal cities.

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.

Cityscape

The town's most notable landmark is the late 17th-century town hall, named the Ratuša (Rathaus), that was built during the times of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The grand tower of the town hall sustained serious damage during the Great Northern War and the Great Patriotic War. It was eventually demolished in 1957 and rebuilt in its pre-war form in 2008.

Another important landmark of Mogilev is the six-pillared St. Stanisław's Catholic Cathedral, built in the Baroque style between 1738 and 1752 and distinguished by its frescoes. It became the episcopal see of the Archdiocese of Mohilev (created in 1772, archdiocese after 1782), once (until 1991) the largest Catholic diocese of the world. Now it's the co-cathedral of the Archdiocese of Minsk-Mohilev.

The convent of St. Nicholas preserves its magnificent cathedral of 1668, as well as the original iconostasis, bell tower, walls, and gates. It is currently under consideration to become a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Minor landmarks include the archiepiscopal palace and memorial arch, both dating from the 1780s, and the enormous theater in a blend of the Neo-Renaissance and Russian Revival styles.

At Polykovichi, an urban part of Mogilev, there is a Template:Convert guyed TV mast, one of the tallest structures in Belarus.

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  The Convent of St. Nicholas
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  Church of the Three Holy Hierarchs

Geography

Climate

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

Notable citizens

File:David Pinsky.jpg

David Pinski around 1900

• Rita Achkina, cross country skier
• Matest M. Agrest, ethnologist and mathematician
• Modest Altschuler, orchestra conductor
• Abe Anellis, microbiologist
• Olga Bogdanova, chemist
• Kanstancin Dziubajla (nom de guerre "Dranik") (1988–2022), Belarusian volunteer killed in action defending Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion
• 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
• Leo Rogin, Economist and Writer
• Otto Schmidt, scientist, mathematician, astronomer, geophysicist, statesman, academician
• Issai Schur, mathematician
• Spiridon Sobol, Belarusian enlightener and printer; published the first ABC-book in Belarus in 1631
• Mikałaj Sudziłoŭski, revolutionary and scientist
• Sergey Evtuhov (born 1953), painter

Sports

File:Стадион "Спартак" (обновленный) - panoramio.jpg

Spartak Stadium

City sports teams:

• Football: FC Torpedo Mogilev, FC Dnepr Mogilev and ZhFC Dnepr Mogilev, Nadezhda Mogilev
• Hockey: HK Mogilev
• Volleyball: Mogilev Lions, Kommunalnik
• Handball: Masheka
• Basketball: BC Borisfen

Twin towns – sister cities

Mogilev is twinned with: Template:Div col

• Template:Flagicon Al Rayyan, Qatar
• Template:Flagicon Bursa, Turkey
• Template:Flagicon Changsha, China
• Template:Flagicon Eisenach, Germany
• Template:Flagicon Gabrovo, Bulgaria
• Template:Flagicon Kerch, Ukraine
• Template:Flagicon Kragujevac, Serbia
• Template:Flagicon Mykolaiv, Ukraine
• Template:Flagicon Nanjing, China
• Template:Flagicon Penza, Russia
• Template:Flagicon Sokolinaya Gora (Moscow), Russia
• Template:Flagicon Sumgait, Azerbaijan
• Template:Flagicon Tabriz, Iran
• Template:Flagicon Tula, Russia
• Template:Flagicon Villeurbanne, France
• Template:Flagicon Wittenberg, Germany
• Template:Flagicon Pivdenne, Ukraine
• Template:Flagicon Zhengzhou, China
• Template:Flagicon Zvenigorod, Russia

External links

• Mogilev city executive committee
• Photos on Radzima.org
• Historic images of Mogilev
• Mogilev Jewish Center Template:Webarchive
• Jewish Encyclopedia on Moghilef (Mohilev)
• Template:Cite EB1911
• The murder of the Jews of Mogilev during World War II, at Yad Vashem website
• Template:JewishGen-LocalityPage

City and regional maps of Mogilev

• Zoomable map of Mogilev and Belarus -> In page click КАРТЫ in middle
• Overview map of roads and railways
• General overview of Baltics, Belarus and east-europe
• Belarus, topographic map
• General detail, downloadable PDF map of Belarus