Polotsk

A small town of Polotsk was founded by the Krivichi tribe on the Polota and its name is associated with the name of the river. It is a historical cradle of the Republic of Belarus. For the first time Polotsk was mentioned in the chronicles in 862.

There were many attempts to conquer Polotsk during its long and glorious history. For example crusaders tried to capture the town 12 times but failed.

During Vseslav’s ruling Polotsk developed politically. But in the second half of the 13th century Polotsk turned to the Great Duchy of Lithuania for help and lost its independence.

But Polotsk was situated on the trade ways and gradually it became the richest town and got Magdeburg rights.

In the 16th century in Polotsk Francisk Skorina was born. He was the first to print books in Slavonic languages, to translate the Bible into Byelorussian. Polotsk Pedagogical College, a street and a square are named after him.

In 1563 Polotsk was conquered by Ivan the Terrible and joined to Russia for 16 years.

In 1579 Stephan Batoriy conquered Polotsk and it became a part of Rzecz Pospo1ita for 2 centuries.

After the Great October Revolution Polotsk was a provincial town. And in 1940 it had only 33,000 people.

During the Great Patriotic War Polotsk was occupied by fascists and suffered destruction and famine. It was destroyed completely.

But nevertheless it survived and was rebuilt anew and now it has the population of 100,000 people. Nowadays Polotsk is a tourist and cultural centre of our Republic. It has a lot of places of interest the most famous of which are Sophia Cathedral, St. Eufrosinia Church, the monument to Scarina and Peter the First House. The town has a lot of museums such as the Region Musium, the Museum of the Belarusian book-printing, Nature and Ecology Museum and many others. Besides Polotsk has 20 industrial enterprises such as glass fiber plant “Steclovolokno”, furniture, bread, milk, meat factories, etc. 16 schools, 3 technical colleges, 2 sports schools, a musical school and an art school, 54 libraries and a cadet corps where two faculties of Polotsk State University are situated.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-21