Minsk (, , ) is the capital and largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach and the now subterranean Nyamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the administrative centre of Minsk region and Minsk district. it has a population of about two million, From 1569, it was the capital of Minsk Voivodeship, an administrative division of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was part of the territories annexed by the Russian Empire in 1793, as a consequence of the Second Partition of Poland. From 1919 to 1991, after the Russian Revolution, Minsk was the capital of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, which became a republic of the Soviet Union in 1922. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Minsk became the capital of the newly independent Republic of Belarus.
Etymology and historical names
The city was historically known as Mensk or Menesk, and according to one version, the name is derived from the Russian menyat ('to barter' or 'to exchange'), as it referred to a marketplace. According to another version, it is derived from the Menka River, a tributary of the Ptsich. The form Minsk (spelled either or ) was taken over both in Russian (modern spelling: ) and Polish (), and under the influence of Russian, this form also became official in Belarusian. The direct continuation of the name in Belarusian is (, ), which some Belarusian-speakers continue to use as their preferred name for the city.
When Belarus was under Lithuanian rule, the names ('Minsk of Lithuania') and ('Minsk of Belarus') were used to differentiate this place name from 'Minsk in Mazovia'. In modern Polish, without an attribute usually refers to the city in Belarus, which is about 50 times bigger than Mińsk Mazowiecki; (compare Brest-Litovsk and Brześć Kujawski for a similar case).
History
Early history
The Svislach River valley was the settlement boundary between two early East Slavic tribes – the Krivichs and Dregoviches. By 980, the area was incorporated into the early medieval Principality of Polotsk, one of the earliest East Slavic principalities of Kievan Rus'. Minsk was first mentioned in the name form Měneskъ (Мѣнескъ) in the Primary Chronicle for the year 1067 in association with the Battle on the River Nemiga. 1067 is now widely accepted as the founding year of Minsk. City authorities consider the date of 3 March 1067 to be the exact founding date of the city, though the town (by then fortified by wooden walls) had certainly existed for some time. The origin of the name is unknown but there are several theories.
In the early 12th century, the Principality of Polotsk disintegrated into smaller fiefs. The Principality of Minsk was established by one of the Polotsk dynasty princes. In 1129, the Principality of Minsk was annexed by Kiev, the dominant principality of Kievan Rus'; however in 1146 the Polotsk dynasty regained control of the principality. By 1150, Minsk rivalled Polotsk as the major city in the former Principality of Polotsk. The princes of Minsk and Polotsk were engaged in years of struggle trying to unite all lands previously under the rule of Polotsk.
Late medieval and early modern era
thumb|left|upright|Minsk in 1772
Minsk escaped the Mongol invasion of Rus in 1237–1239. In 1242, Minsk became a part of the expanding Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It joined peacefully and local elites enjoyed high rank in the society of the Grand Duchy. In 1413, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Kingdom of Poland entered into a union. Minsk became the centre of Minsk Voivodship (province). In 1441, as Grand Duke of Lithuania, Casimir IV included Minsk in a list of cities enjoying certain privileges, and in 1499, during the reign of his son, Alexander Jagiellon, Minsk received town privileges under Magdeburg law. In 1569, after the Union of Lublin, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland merged into a single state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
By the middle of the 16th century, Minsk was an important economic and cultural centre in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was also an important centre for the Eastern Orthodox Church. Following the Union of Brest, both the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Roman Catholic Church increased in influence.
In 1655, Minsk was conquered by troops of Tsar Alexis of Russia. Russians governed the city until 1660 when it was regained by John II Casimir, Grand Duke of Lithuania and 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 army of Charles XII of Sweden and then by the army of Peter the Great.
The last decades of the Lithuanian rule involved decline or very slow development, since Minsk had become a small provincial town of little economic or military significance.
Russian rule
thumb|left|[[Trinity Suburb]]
Minsk was annexed by Russia in 1793 as a consequence of the Second Partition of Poland. In 1796, it became the centre of the Minsk Governorate. All of the initial street names were replaced by Russian names, though the spelling of the city's name remained unchanged. It was briefly occupied by the Grande Armée during French invasion of Russia in 1812.
Throughout the 19th century, the city continued to grow and significantly improve. In the 1830s, major streets and squares of Minsk were cobbled and paved. A first public library was opened in 1836, and a fire brigade was put into operation in 1837. In 1838, the first local newspaper, Minskiye gubernskiye vedomosti ("Minsk province news") went into circulation. The first theatre was established in 1844. By 1860, Minsk was an important trading city with a population of 27,000. There was a construction boom that led to the building of two- and three-story brick and stone houses in Upper Town.
Minsk's development was boosted by improvements in transportation. In 1846, the Moscow-Warsaw road was laid through Minsk. In 1871, a railway link between Moscow and Warsaw ran via Minsk, and in 1873, a new railway from Romny in Ukraine to the Baltic Sea port of Libava (Liepāja) was also constructed. Thus Minsk became an important rail junction and a manufacturing hub. A municipal water supply was introduced in 1872, the telephone in 1890, the horse tram in 1892, and the first power generator in 1894. By 1900, Minsk had 58 factories employing 3,000 workers. The city also boasted theatres, cinemas, newspapers, schools and colleges, as well as numerous monasteries, churches, synagogues, and a mosque. According to the 1897 Russian census, the city had 91,494 inhabitants, with some 47,561 Jews constituting more than half of the city population.
20th century
thumb|left|The [[Jesuit College in Minsk|Jesuit Collegium and town hall (to the right) in 1912]]
In the early years of the 20th century, Minsk was a major centre for the worker's movement in Belarus. The 1st Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, the forerunner to the Bolsheviks and eventually the CPSU, was held there in 1898. It was also one of the major centres of the Belarusian national revival, alongside Vilnius. However, the First World War significantly affected the development of Minsk. By 1915, Minsk was a battlefront 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.
thumb|[[White-red-white flag|Belarusian national flag over the building of the People's Secretariat of the Belarusian People's Republic, 1918]]
The Russian Revolution had an immediate effect in Minsk. A Workers' Soviet was established in Minsk in October 1917, drawing much of its support from disaffected soldiers and workers. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, German forces occupied Minsk on 21 February 1918. On 25 March 1918, Minsk was proclaimed the capital of the Belarusian People's Republic. The republic was short-lived; in December 1918, Minsk was taken over by the Red Army. In January 1919 Minsk was proclaimed the capital of the Byelorussian SSR, though later in 1919 (see Operation Minsk) and again in 1920, the city was controlled by the Second Polish Republic during the course of the Polish-Bolshevik War between 8 August 1919 and 11 July 1920 and again between 14 October 1920 and 19 March 1921. Under the terms of the Treaty of Riga, Minsk was handed back to the Russian SFSR and became the capital of the Byelorussian SSR, one of the founding republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
A programme of reconstruction and development began in 1922. By 1924, there were 29 factories in operation; schools, museums, theatres and libraries were also established. Throughout the 1920s and the 1930s, Minsk saw rapid development with dozens of new factories being built and new schools, colleges, higher education establishments, hospitals, theatres and cinemas being opened. During this period, Minsk was also a centre for the development of Belarusian language and culture.
thumb|Meeting in the [[Kurapaty woods, 1989, where between 1937 and 1941 from 30,000 to 250,000 Belarusian intelligentsia members were murdered by the NKVD during the Great Purge]]
Before the Second World War, Minsk had a population of 300,000 people. At the start of the war, on 11 September 1939, the Belarusian Front of the Red Army was formed shortly before the Soviet invasion on Poland, and its headquarters was located in Minsk. The Germans captured Minsk in the Battle of Białystok–Minsk, as part of Operation Barbarossa; after it had been devastated by the Luftwaffe. However, some factories, museums, and tens of thousands of civilians had been evacuated to the east. The Germans designated Minsk the administrative centre of Generalbezirk Weißruthenien. Communists and sympathisers were killed or imprisoned, both locally and after being transported to Germany. Homes were requisitioned to house invading German forces. Thousands starved as food was seized by the German Army and paid work was scarce. Minsk was the site of one of the largest Nazi-run ghettos in the Second World War, temporarily housing over 100,000 Jews (see Minsk Ghetto). The Germans operated the Dulag 126 and Dulag 127 transit camps for prisoners of war in Minsk in 1941, and then the Stalag 352 prisoner-of-war camp for Soviet and Italian POWs from 1941 to 1944. Some anti-Soviet residents of Minsk, who hoped that Belarus could regain independence, did support the Germans, especially at the beginning of the occupation, but by 1942, Minsk had become a major centre of the Soviet partisan resistance movement against the invasion, in what is known in some post-Soviet states as the Great Patriotic War. For this role, Minsk was awarded the title Hero City in 1974.
Minsk was recaptured by Soviet troops on 3 July 1944 in the Minsk offensive as part of Operation Bagration. The city was the centre of German resistance to the Soviet advance and saw heavy fighting during the first half of 1944. Factories, municipal buildings, power stations, bridges, most roads, and 80% of the houses were reduced to rubble. In 1944, Minsk's population was reduced to a mere 50,000.
thumb|Railway Station Square, an example of Minsk [[Stalinist architecture]]
The historical centre was replaced in the 1940s and 1950s by Stalinist architecture, which favoured grand buildings, broad avenues and wide squares. Subsequently, the city grew rapidly as a result of massive industrialisation. Since the 1960s Minsk's population has also grown apace, reaching 1 million in 1972 and 1.5 million in 1986.
Construction of Minsk Metro began on 16 June 1977, and the system was opened to the public on 30 June 1984, becoming the ninth metro system in the Soviet Union.
The rapid population growth was primarily driven by mass migration of young, unskilled workers from rural areas of Belarus, as well as by migration of skilled workers from other parts of the Soviet Union. To house the expanding population, Minsk spread beyond its historical boundaries. Its surrounding villages were absorbed and rebuilt as mikroraions, districts of high-density apartment housing.
Recent developments
Throughout the 1990s, after the fall of communism, the city continued to change. As the capital of a newly independent country, Minsk quickly acquired the attributes of a major city. Embassies were opened, and a number of Soviet administrative buildings became government centres. During the early and mid-1990s, Minsk was hit by an economic crisis and many development projects were halted, resulting in high unemployment and underemployment. Since the late 1990s, there have been improvements in transport and infrastructure, and a housing boom has been underway since 2002. On the outskirts of Minsk, new mikroraions of residential development have been built. Metro lines have been extended, and the road system (including the Minsk BeltWay) has been improved. In recent years Minsk has been continuously decentralizing, with a third line of the Minsk Metro opening in 2020. More development is planned for several areas outside the city centre, while the future of the older neighborhoods is still unclear.– that is, to Lukomskaye Lake in northwestern Belarus. The average altitude above sea level is . The physical geography of Minsk was shaped over the two most recent ice ages. The Svislach River, which flows across the city from the northwest to the southeast, is in the urstromtal, an ancient river valley formed by water flowing from melting ice sheets at the end of the last Ice Age. There are six smaller rivers within the city limits, all part of the Black Sea basin.
Minsk is in the area of mixed forests typical of most of Belarus. Pinewood and mixed forests border the edge of the city, especially in the north and east. Some of the forests were preserved as parks (for instance, the Chelyuskinites Park) as the city grew.
The city was initially built on the hills, which allowed for defensive fortifications, and the western parts of the city are the most hilly.
Only from the northwestern edge of city lies the large Zaslawskaye reservoir, often called the Minsk sea. It is the second largest reservoir in Belarus, constructed in 1956.
Climate
Minsk has a warm summer humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb, Trewartha Dcbo), although its weather is oftentimes unpredictable, given its location between the strong influence of the moist air over the Atlantic Ocean and the dry air over the Eurasian landmass. Its weather is unstable and tends to change relatively often. The average January temperature is , while the average July temperature is . The lowest temperature was recorded on 17 January 1940, at and the warmest on 8 August 2015 at . Fog is frequent, especially in the autumn and spring. Minsk receives of precipitation annually, of which one-third falls during the cold period of the year (as snow or rain) and two-thirds during the warm period. Throughout the year, winds are generally westerly or northwesterly, bringing cool and moist air from the Atlantic.
Ecological situation
The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Centre of Radioactive and Environmental Control. The change from gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened the ecological situation. Sometimes the maximum normative concentration of formaldehyde and ammonia in air is exceeded in Zavodski District.
Demographics
thumb|City of Minsk population pyramid in 2022