11.11.2018 TUT.BY

100 years ago, on November 11, 1918, the First World War ended. What was it for Belarus, what consequences did it bring, and why do we hardly remember about it?

Today is a huge part of the globe, and as if all of Europe is celebrating the centenary of the Armistice of Compiegne, the end of the First World War. Who fought, why, what happened in the lands of Belarus - Denis Martinovich has collected some answers.

Who fought?

Before the war, almost all the participants in the conflict had territorial claims to their neighbors, so one should not consider Germany an aggressor, and her opponents as victims and noble heroes. For example, France dreamed of returning Alsace and Lorraine, which were lost after the war of 1870-1871. The main European countries claimed the territory of the Ottoman Empire, which was in crisis (for example, Russia dreamed of capturing Constantinople). These, as well as many other factors (for example, union obligations, militarism as the main policy of European countries, etc.) made the conflict inevitable. Therefore, the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand was just a pretext for starting a war. If it had not happened, the "great powers" would have found another suitable event.

Germany and Austria-Hungary entered into a military alliance in 1879. Italy joined them in 1882. This is how the Triple Alliance came into being. On the other hand, there was the "Union of the Heart" - the Entente as part of France, Russian Empire and Britain. Already during the hostilities, regroupings took place: Italy moved to the Entente camp, and Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire joined the Triple Alliance (which became the Quarter Alliance).

Serbia and Montenegro, Japan and Romania also sided with the Entente, in 1917 the United States joined the war, as well as some countries in Africa, Asia, South and Latin America.

What happened during the First World War in Belarus?

According to various sources, from 800 to 923 thousand Belarusians were drafted into the Russian army. 70 thousand of them died. These losses are quite comparable with the losses of Belgium, which is considered one of the main victims of the First World War.

The main events of the First World War on the territory of Belarus are the Narochanskaya, Baranovichi and Krevskaya operations. Most During the war, positional confrontation took place on all fronts - it was not for nothing that Remarque's famous novel was titled All Quiet on the Western Front.

In 1915, the German-Russian front stabilized for two and a half years along the Dvinsk - Postavy - Smorgon - Baranovichi - Pinsk line. Belarus became the arena of hostilities (civilian casualties amounted to about 60 thousand people), and the western part of the country came under the control of the Germans. This led to numerous requisitions and robberies (both by the Germans and the Russians - we are talking about both the army and the civil administration).

According to the historian Vladimir Bogdanov, the Russian command used scorched earth tactics.

We tried not to leave anything to the enemy that he could catch hold of. They took out equipment, livestock, property, destroyed factories, factories, blew up bridges. People shared their memories: when the Germans approached Smorgon in September 1915, the Cossacks gave local residents three hours to get ready and leave the city.

The authorities wrote receipts and promised people to reimburse everything after the end of the war. But revolutionary times came, and, of course, no one remembered these promises.

As a result, many Belarusians became refugees. total number it is impossible to establish precisely. Nevertheless, it is known that on June 1, 1916, there were 2,757,735 refugees. Slightly less than half of them (47.1%) were residents of Belarus. Two years later, in the spring of 1918, 2,292,395 refugees from Belarusian provinces were in Russia. Not all of them returned to their homeland.

How did World War I change the map of the world?

The changes have taken place dramatically. The main result of the war is the collapse of the empires (Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman). Instead, many independent states appeared on the European map. Some peoples have been waiting for independence for many years (for example, the Poles - since the third partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795).

The First World War was a blow to the monarchies. Instead of the German Empire, a republic arose. And the state formations that appeared in the place of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, were originally created precisely as republics (although later, due to the weakness of democratic institutions, authoritarian regimes arose in them).

After the First World War, the German colonies came under the control of Great Britain and France. In addition, there has been a serious redrawing of European borders. At the same time, the knots of future conflicts were already tied at that time. Many states were given territories with a compact population of national minorities. For example, the Sudetenland region, in which the Germans lived compactly, became part of Czechoslovakia. This later gave Hitler a reason to interfere in the affairs of this country. And the Belarusian and Ukrainian lands, which did not even receive autonomy, were included in Poland.

Another result of the war was the emergence of the League of Nations - a kind of predecessor of the UN. An organization arose through which the victorious countries sought to prevent hostilities and settle disputes between countries through diplomatic negotiations. But the real mechanisms to curb the aggressor states have not been formulated. Therefore, the League of Nations was unable to prevent the Second World War.

What is the main result of the First World War?

The First World War created the preconditions for the Second World War. We will try to explain the reasons for this through the differences between these two conflicts.

With a certain similarity between the two totalitarian monsters (Stalin's USSR and Hitler's Third Reich), World War II was really a struggle "for the sake of life on Earth." The struggle for freedom and independence (Germany occupied a number of European countries from Denmark and Norway to Poland and Czechoslovakia). The fight against the anti-human Nazi ideology, the carriers of which destroyed entire nations (Jews and Gypsies).

The policy of the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition (with all the many disagreements) was common: Germany should be denazified, fascism should not be revived. And this position was understandable both to most of the participants in the war, and to their contemporaries in different countries... To some extent, these actions can be called the restoration of justice in memory of people who died or died during the hostilities.

But the First World War as a whole was a battle of aggressors, equal to each other. In this conflict, there were practically no right and wrong countries (perhaps with the exception of Serbia). Punishing Germany and her allies was not a way to restore justice, which was not discussed in that situation, but just an attempt to shift the responsibility onto others' shoulders.

Lose France and Great Britain, they would pay reparations, would be forced to give Germany part of their territories (including the colonies). In any case, there would be a desire for revenge among the losers. Therefore, a future conflict was inevitable.

How did the First World War affect the development of Belarus?

The Belarusian national movement began to develop seriously only at the beginning of the twentieth century (much later than among its neighbors), therefore, the majority of Belarusians were characterized by a low level of national self-awareness. In Belarus, a national bourgeoisie has not formed, which could be interested in the creation of its own state and would finance its activities.

Perhaps the gradual growth of self-awareness would have taken place in times of peace. And then the issue of autonomy within the Russian Empire would first be put on the agenda, and then independence would be discussed.

But the processes had to be accelerated during the war. On the one hand, the Belarusians were able to take advantage of certain contradictions between other nations. For example, the Germans who occupied Western Belarus were not interested in the development of the Polish national movement. Therefore, they allowed the opening of Belarusian schools (which was opposed by the tsarist administration). And most importantly, the Russian Empire ceased to exist, which allowed Belarus to take another step towards independence.

On the other hand, the fragile Belarusian national movement turned out to be not ready for a sharp leap (from the outside it resembled a breakdown in a teenager during adolescence). Perhaps that is why the BNR (unlike the Baltic countries and Poland) was unable to realize itself as a full-fledged state.

Let's not forget that there was a multinational front on the territory of Belarus, and Bolshevik sentiments were popular among the soldiers. This largely determined the victory of the Soviet regime and the subsequent incorporation of Belarus into the USSR.

Why do Belarusians hardly remember this conflict?

In Western Europe, the First World War is still called the Great. Largely because the belligerent countries suffered huge losses. According to some estimates, twice as many Britons, three times as many Belgians and four times as many French died in the First World War than in the Second World War.

The nature of the hostilities was also different. The French and British armies fought on the fronts for all four years. Whereas during the Second World War, France surrendered quickly enough, and the Resistance still had the character of an underground and partisan struggle.

For England, France, the war ended with a concrete victory - the Compiegne Armistice and the subsequent Versailles Peace Treaty. But the Brest-Litovsk Peace, according to which Russia withdrew from the war, was just one of the many events for the inhabitants of these countries.

For Belarus (as, by the way, for Russia and Ukraine), the First World War smoothly turned into a revolution, a struggle for power and an endless change of political regimes. These events overshadowed this conflict in the minds of people. And the new authorities, based on ideological guidelines, focused on the victory of the Bolsheviks and considered the First World War only as a prerequisite for October 1917.

Remember.

What were the reasons and nature of the First World War?

Educational task.

Determine the position of the Belarusian population and the position of representatives of the Belarusian national movement in the context of the German occupation policy.

The beginning of the war. The mood in society. From the first days of the war, which began for the Russian Empire on July 19 (August 1) 1914, the Belarusian provinces were transferred to martial law. A tough military-police regime was established, the activities of political parties, meetings and rallies were banned. Most of the Belarusian organizations have ceased their activities.

The one and a half million tsarist army was stationed in Belarus. Cities and towns were overcrowded with soldiers, headquarters, hospitals, warehouses, weapons repair shops. In Minsk alone, 150,000 servicemen were stationed. Headquarters was placed in Baranovichi Supreme Commander-in-Chief... Passed mobilization(conscription) of hundreds of thousands of residents of Belarusian provinces to the Russian army, on whose officers and soldiers the fate of Belarus now depends.

The tsarist government organized numerous "patriotic" demonstrations and prayers for the victory of "Slavic weapons", collecting money for the "defense of the Fatherland." Monarchist and liberal parties, as well as Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Bundists, came out in support of the tsarist government. In October 1914, Tsar Nicholas II visited Minsk, where he received a large sum of money for "the needs of the war."

The Bolsheviks opposed the war. They considered it imperialist in nature and called for its transformation into a war for power within the country with the aim of overthrowing the autocracy.

The newspaper "Nasha Niva", whose editor at that time was Y. Kupala, condemned the war and showed its meaninglessness. For this, the editorial board of the newspaper was accused of almost betraying Russia.

". Come not in years and freedom of life

I don’t zvyyalichyts praўdu mіzh people, -

Life is good,

Shlyakh scavenge your corpses, castsmi. "

From the poem by Y. Kupala "1914"

Military operations on the territory of Belarus. Occupation of the western part of Belarus. Hurray-patriotic sentiments soon gave way to disappointment, as in early 1915 Russian troops suffered a series of defeats. The front was rapidly approaching Belarus. In the summer of 1915, it became the arena of military operations for millions of armies and the main theater of war. The Belarusian land was covered with trenches, surrounded by barbed wire, watered with human blood.

The Russian army was forced to leave a significant part of the territory of Belarus. In August - September 1915, German troops occupied Brest,

Grodno and other Western Belarusian cities. In this regard, the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief was transferred from Baranovichi to Mogilev. The offensive operation of the German army, known as "Sven-tsyansky breakthrough", created a threat to capture Minsk. With tremendous efforts, the Russian troops managed to push the enemy back to the area of ​​the Svir and Naroch lakes and eliminate the breakthrough.

After that, the front was established along the Dvinsk - Postavy - Smor-gon - Baranovichi - Pinsk line. Smorgon's defense lasted 810 days. It was the only city on the front from the Baltic to the Black Sea that the Russian army defended for so long and stubbornly during the First World War.

In 1916, for the first time on the Eastern Front, German troops used poisonous gas near Smorgon.

Offensive operations Russian army in March 1916 in the area of ​​Lake Naroch and in June - July in the area of ​​the city of Baranovichi were unsuccessful. In an attempt to break through the front, the Russian army lost about 80,000 soldiers in each of these operations.

Already in August 1914, a native of the Mogilev province, Staff Captain Sergei Arkadievich Boyno-Rodzevich, distinguished himself in hostilities. Even on the eve of the war, he became one of the first and famous military pilots in the Russian Empire. For the successful conduct of aerial reconnaissance, he was awarded the St. George weapon, the Order of St. George, 4th degree. The full Georgievsky Knight, awarded four crosses for courage and heroism shown in battles, was a native of the Volkovysk district, platoon commander Mikhail Ivanovich Zdanovich, who was awarded the rank of senior non-commissioned officer.

German troops captured almost half of the territory of Belarus - its western part, where 2 million people lived before the war. The front line divided Belarus into two parts and remained unchanged until February 1918. The West Belarusian lands were under the German occupation.

The policy of the German authorities in the occupied territory. Situation of the population of Western Belarus. The German authorities viewed Belarus as an economically and culturally backward part of Russia with its own ethnographic specifics. The German command had a program for the colonization and Germanization of Belarus by resettling the Germans to the occupied lands.

In the occupied territory of Belarus, the German military administration established its own laws, a regime of robbery and violence. A tough system of various taxes, fines, forced labor was in place, requisitions were carried out - the compulsory alienation of property and products to provide for the German army. The population between the ages of 16 and 60 paid a poll tax. Food, horses and livestock were taken from people. German soldiers occupied the houses and apartments of civilians. Any attempt at resistance was brutally suppressed, up to and including the death penalty.

The able-bodied population was exported to Germany, as well as material values ​​- equipment industrial enterprises, agricultural products, animals (**).

The German authorities banned teaching in Russian and introduced primary school teaching in Belarusian, but only on the basis of the Latin alphabet. Studying was compulsory German language.

Belarusian National Movement. Political activities were prohibited on the territory of Belarus occupied by German troops. All pre-war Belarusian national-cultural organizations disintegrated. In 1915, in Vilna, a charitable Belarusian Society for Aid to War Victims was created, headed by brothers Anton and Ivan Lutskevich and Vaclav Lastovsky. It organized food centers, canteens, hostels, orphanages, provided material assistance to refugees, opened Belarusian schools in the occupied territory, and published textbooks for them. The society grouped around itself the national forces that remained in the German-occupied Vilna.

The German occupation policy gave no reason to hope for the creation of a Belarusian state. Therefore, the Belarusian People's Committee (BNK), formed in 1915 in Vilna, turned to the idea of ​​reviving the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. According to this idea, the Belarusian and Lithuanian lands occupied by Germany were to be united into one state with the Diet in Vilna.

Supporters of the idea of ​​the revival of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania formulated the goal of their activities as follows: so that “the Lithuanian and Belarusian lands, which had long belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and now captured by German troops, would, under new conditions, become an indivisible body on the foundation of the independence of Lithuania and Belarus, as an integral state, preserving all nations all rights are within it. "

The occupation authorities verbally supported the idea of ​​reviving the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. They sought to use the national movement to strengthen their power in the occupied territories. However, Germany's plans did not include the creation of an independent Belarusian-Lithuanian state. This romantic project was not destined to come true. The very idea of ​​the revival of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was unrealistic at that time.

The idea of ​​reviving the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was replaced in 1916 by another - the creation of a union of independent states - the United States of Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Baltic-Black Sea Union, in the opinion of A. Lutskevich, the author of this idea, could ensure the independence of young states from Poland and Russia, strengthen their defenses and help restore the economy destroyed during the war. With this idea, the Belarusian delegation headed by V. Lastovsky spoke at the international conferences of the peoples of Russia in 1916 in Stockholm and Lausanne.

V. Lastovsky's speech in Lausanne noted: “Now, thanks to the conference of peoples, we are. we can finally hope that, whatever the end of the war, the European peoples will help us assure Belarus of all political and cultural rights that will give our people the opportunity to freely develop their intellectual, moral and economic forces, and that these rights will allow us to be masters of our own land. "

But the governments of European countries, involved in the world war, remained deaf to the needs of the Belarusian nation.

In June 1917, a group of leaders of the Belarusian national movement headed by V. Lastovsky spoke out for complete state independence and territorial integrity of Belarus within its ethnographic borders. Lastovsky was the first among Belarusian political leaders who expressed the idea of ​​full independence of Belarus.

Concepts and terms to learn: mobilization, "Sventsiansky breakthrough", occupation.

Cultural and historical environment

** The German invaders plundered the forest resources of Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Several sawmills and 300 km of narrow-gauge railway were built to cut down and export valuable timber. During the two years of occupation, 4.5 million cubic meters of wood of the most valuable species were exported to Germany. This is almost as much as it was prepared in the entire previous history. By 1919, bison and fallow deer practically disappeared in the Pushcha, and the number of deer and wild boars sharply decreased. At the same time, active work began to preserve the Pushcha.

In 1992, by decision of UNESCO, the State National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" was included in the World Heritage List, it was given the status of a biosphere reserve, which in 1997 was awarded a diploma of the Council of Europe for successes in nature conservation. In 2009, the 600th anniversary of the establishment of the reserve status of Belovezhskaya Pushcha was celebrated.

Questions and tasks

1. Compare the attitude to the war of various political parties and the newspaper "Nasha Niva". Explain the reasons for the hurray-patriotic sentiments of a part of the Belarusian society at the beginning of the war and disappointment in 1915. 2. Describe, using a map in a paragraph or a map in the atlas, the military-political situation of Belarus during the First World War. 3. Describe the occupation policy of the German authorities in the western part of Belarus. 4. Work on the keyword method with the text of the paragraph beginning with the words: “The German occupation policy gave no reason. ", As well as with the heading" Voices of the Past ", which begins with the words:" Supporters of the idea of ​​the revival of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania formulated. ". 5. Fill in the table “Projects of education of the Belarusian statehood” in the notebook.

6. Why was it impossible to implement the idea of ​​reviving the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the West Belarusian territory occupied by German troops? Explain your opinion.

To the lesson "Our Land". Learn about the fate of your fellow countrymen - participants of the First World War, as well as about the monuments in your area, testifying to the events of this war.

• SECTION I. Belarus at the end of feudalism: late 18th - mid 19th centuries
  • § 1. The position of the Belarusian lands at the end of the 18th - the middle of the 19th centuries. general characteristics
  • § 2. The policy of the tsarist government in Belarus in the late 18th - early 19th centuries.
  • § 4. Social and political movement in the first third of the nineteenth century.
  • § 5. Changes in the policy of the Russian government in Belarus in the 1830-1840s.
  • § 6. Confessional relations at the end of the XVIII - the first half of the XIX century.
  • § 7. Agriculture and the situation of the peasants in the first half of the nineteenth century.
  • § 9. Industry, trade, cities and towns in Belarus in the first half of the 19th century.
  • § 12. Belarus at the end of the XVIII - the middle of the XIX century. Generalization lesson
• SECTION II. Establishment of capitalism in the Belarusian lands: the second half of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century.

100 years ago, the First World War came to Belarus. The researcher of its history Vladimir Bogdanov told "Salidarnasts" what relations were between the occupiers and the local population, how the Bolsheviks surrendered the country to the Germans and how to treat the cemeteries of that war.


Photo from gazetaby.com

- This year marks 100 years since the First World War came to the territory of Belarus. When and where did it happen?
- Really large-scale hostilities on the Belarusian soil began in the summer of 1915. But even earlier there was an episode of the war, on the threshold of the 100th anniversary of which we are just now. I mean the battles at the Grodno fortress in the winter of 1915.
In February, as a result of the German offensive in Poland in the Augustow forests near Grodno, the XX corps of General Bulgakov was surrounded. The Russians tried to break through to the forts of the Grodno fortress, but the Germans threw troops forward to cut off the retreat. On February 15, German patrols were first seen near Sopotskin (a village about 30 km north of Grodno). On February 17, the city was bombed by German aircraft, and in the area of ​​Sopotskin, as well as the villages of Ratichi, Kaplanovtsy, fierce battles unfolded. For several days, the Germans tried to break through to the Neman and bypass the fortress. But they did not have enough strength, and by March 6 they were forced to retreat back to Poland. And from the encirclement, only two Russian regiments of the XX corps broke through to their own, the rest were killed or taken prisoner. Thousands of those killed on both sides remained in numerous cemeteries and mass graves north of Grodno.
Then there were no hostilities on our territory for several months, and in the summer the war came in earnest and for a long time. The Russian imperial army, under the onslaught of the Germans, left Brest, Grodno, Baranovichi, but in the fall of 1915 it stopped retreating and entrenched itself on the front line, which for two and a half years divided present-day Belarus from north to south from Braslav Lakes to Polesie bogs. Since that time, almost all the main events on the Eastern Front took place on our territory.
- Why the Belarusians, if they know about the First World War on the territory of Belarus, then quite a bit. Why was she forgotten?

- Because in the Soviet Union, for ideological reasons, they tried not to remember her. There was nothing to be proud of, this war was lost. Including because the Bolsheviks destroyed the army. In order not to once again emphasize their negative role, the stamps "imperialist", "unjust" were stuck on the First World War and they forgot about it. Although World War II is a continuation of the First, so to speak, the second series.
- According to the data disseminated in the media, during 1914-18, 800-900 thousand Belarusians took up arms. 70 thousand died in the ranks of the army, the loss of civilians amounted to 60 thousand, another 50 thousand people were forcibly driven to Germany and Austria-Hungary. How do you assess these losses?

- I would not trust too much the figures that are voiced in the media. They are mostly speculative - what kind of serious statistics could be talked about right after October revolution? Second world soldier, of course, they did not count at all, but in the First there were real massacres. Then, too, they often tried to take by numbers, this was a tactic, and not only in the Russian army. Take the same Naroch offensive operation in the spring of 1916, when the command, day after day, drove the Russians through snow, mud, swamps to a fortified defense line. It is no coincidence that some historians called it a "ten-day slaughter" - Russian troops lost about 100 thousand people, of which more than 20 thousand were killed, 5 thousand were missing. The Germans, according to their estimates, have about 20 thousand killed and wounded.


The Germans bury Russian soldiers who died in the Naroch operation near the village of Intoka (April 1916, Postavy district). Photo from gazetaby.com

The Baranovichi operation in the summer of the same year - during the week of the offensive, Russian losses - about 40 thousand killed, 60 thousand wounded; German and Austro-Hungarian - about 8 thousand killed, 13 thousand wounded. I have German regimental stories in which soldiers note that on such days, machine-gun shooting turned into routine work, like in a slaughterhouse, they ceased to understand what they were doing - you shoot and shoot, and the "brown wave" rolls in and out.
- In the spring of 1918, there were about 2.3 million refugees in Russia from Belarusian provinces - every third Belarusian lost his home. 400 thousand people never came back. Why did Belarusians become refugees so massively?

- The Russian command used the scorched earth tactics. We tried not to leave anything to the enemy that he could catch hold of. They took out equipment, livestock, property, destroyed factories, factories, blew up bridges. The authorities wrote receipts and promised people to reimburse everything after the end of the war. But revolutionary times came and, of course, no one remembered these promises.


Belarusian refugees in the fall of 1915. Baranovichi district. Photo from gazetaby.com

The refugees of Belarusians were organized by the authorities. People shared their memories: when the Germans approached Smorgon in September 1915, the Cossacks gave local residents three hours to get ready and leave the city. Can you imagine what it is? For generations, people have lived in one place, and here they are given several hours to break away from their acquired place and go to no one knows where, deep into Russia.
The Germans issued a series of photo postcards depicting the destroyed Brest: they say, look how we found the city after the Russians left.


Brest. Destroyed factory. German postcard from 1915. Photo from gazetaby.com

Author's digression
Near my grandmother's house in the village of Voloki, Korelichi district, there is a crypt, to which I went all my childhood to get jam. Where it came from, I never wondered. The crypt is like a crypt. Imagine my surprise when I recently learned that it was built by the Germans in the First World War. The front line just passed near the village. The family of my great-grandmother at that time was a refugee. She returned home a few years after the end of the war from the territory of the Don region. And the whole big family at first lived in this concrete crypt, because the houses burned down during the war. Our rolls are still in this crypt.
- For almost two and a half years, the front stood stably on the line Pinsk - Baranovichi - Korelichi - Smorgon - Myadel - Postavy - Braslav. How did part of the country live under German occupation?

- The atrocities that took place during the Second World War did not happen. Of course, the life of Belarusians under the Germans was not like sugar, after all, they were occupiers. They drove the population to work, forced to build roads, fortifications, etc. If someone remained from the youth, they could send them to Germany. But in general, the relationship was quite civilized.
This year I was in the Vitebsk region in the village of Norkovichi near Postavy. I ended up with a photo album of a German soldier who was quartered in this village. In the pictures taken during the First World War, girls dance in a club with the Germans under an electric lamp, grandmothers read newspapers (it is not clear in what language), the owners of the huts are photographed with the soldiers-guests. I showed these photos to a local resident, he looked: "No, this is definitely not our village." Why? "Look - the electric poles are standing. And I remember how during my lifetime they pulled light to us" ...
"Ilyich's lamps", about which they talked so much before, came to our villages long before Lenin. And with the establishment of Soviet power, they went out for a long time.

Norkovichi village, Postavy district, 1916. Photo from gazetaby.com

I even have pictures of cinemas that were in the villages. I talked in Polesie with an elderly man. He remembered the story of his grandmother: the Germans gathered them, the children, pulled a sheet in front of them, and then a train would burst on them from there! The children got scared and ran away - just like at the classic premiere of "The Arrival of the Train" by the Lumière brothers.
Once a man in the village told me that he had a German plow. I ask: why do you think he is German? "Because German is bigger and wider, it can carry two horses."... Indeed, I have many pictures of German soldiers plowing in Belarus with two horses.


German soldiers doing agricultural work in the village of Gurnofel, Oshmyany region, 1916. Photo from gazetaby.com

We also have collapsed German power plants, for example, in the Ostrovets district. During the war, railways were developed from two sides. Such a network was built that we still use it.
Since the front stood stably for two and a half years, life continued both on the German side and on the Russian side. I saw the documents where the priest turns to the regiment commander with a request to allow a marriage between a soldier and a local peasant woman, because otherwise it is impossible: she is 16 years old, and she is already expecting a child. There are photographs of the First World War from the weddings of Russian soldiers and Belarusian women.


The wedding of a Russian soldier-Siberian and a Belarusian. Lyakhovichi district. 1917 year.
Photo from gazetaby.com

By the way, no one has photographed Belarus at the beginning of the 20th century like the Germans. From the point of view of local lore, this is a very great heritage. Many Germans traveled with cameras, they were interested in foreign lands, so tens of thousands of photographs remained. Recently I managed to acquire a good series created by a German bridge builder who sailed along the Western Bug and Pripyat and photographed everything: villages, churches, churches, crafts, people.
Many buildings, temples that we see in the photographs of that time are no longer there.
- The front line was stable for a long time, how did the Germans eventually come to victory?
- The fact that Germany was able to cling to the victory on the Eastern Front is solely the "merit" of the Bolsheviks. As a result of "democratization", the Russian army was completely destroyed and demoralized by them. The infantry chose their commanders and voted whether to attack or not. In the summer of 1917, generals and officers literally persuaded the soldiers to go on a decisive offensive, Kerensky himself came to the front with persuasion. And in the end, after the most powerful artillery barrage, the soldiers reached the German trenches, collected things there and turned back. To maintain morale, to inspire by their example, Bochkareva's female battalion went on the attack near Smorgon and took up positions in the Novospassky forest. But no one supported them.
By the end of 1917, Germany's resources were almost completely depleted, she was on the verge of defeat, the troops lacked the bare essentials. But after the armistice concluded in December in Solakh near Smorgon, the Germans acquired everything they needed from Russian soldiers. Special platforms were built for the so-called exchange trade. I will quote an excerpt from one of the German regimental books:
"It was a funny sight, trade with its machinations. Our commander of the 1st machine-gun company lured from the Russians, mainly with the help of vodka, everything that could be useful to our poverty-stricken homeland: tea, metals, rubber, soap ..." People of honor of the Russian revolution "sold the military property of their homeland".

On February 18, 1918, when the two-month truce ended, punctual Germans fired a couple of warning shots from cannons. "as a sign of renewed hostilities", climbed out of the trenches and entered the Russian positions. And found them "abandoned and partially neglected".
- On February 21, 1918, the Germans occupied Minsk. Was there any fight to protect him?

- Did not have. There was no one to fight - the so-called "self-demobilization" had an effect, or, to put it simply, general desertion. The Germans occupied Minsk and moved on. Approaching Pskov, they dispersed the scattered detachments of the Red Army and on February 23 sent a telegram to Lenin with an ultimatum, gave a day to think. Lenin hastily sent a telegram that he accepts all German conditions. As a result of the ensuing negotiations, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3, 1918. Under the agreement, the Soviet government gave the Germans Belarus, as well as other territories, agreed to pay a huge indemnity.
And today we celebrate February 23 as Defender of the Fatherland Day. But if for Russia it can somehow be justified, then for modern Belarus it is a holiday "with special cynicism."


Germans in Minsk. The year is 1918. Photo from gazetaby.com

Finally, the Germans left Belarus only in 1919 (from Minsk - in December 1918), after Germany recognized its surrender in the First World War to the Western allies of Russia.
- What traces have remained in Belarus from the First World War?

- I believe that no war has left as many traces on our territory as the First World War. These are the lines of fortification, and railways, and cemeteries whose history I study.
The defensive structures remained mostly German, as they are concrete.


German dugout in the forest in the Smorgon region. Photo from gazetaby.com

The Russians built from earth and wood, and during the war they had to dismantle both houses and churches for these purposes. But these were quite powerful fortifications, traces of which remain to this day.


Russian dugout. 1916 Photo from gazetaby.com

Traces of Russian fortifications of the First World War at Lake Naroch.Photo from gazetaby.com
As for the graves, a feature of the First World War was that both Germans and soldiers of the Russian army were often buried in the same cemeteries. More than 300 cemeteries have survived since that war in Belarus. Of these, about 90 are Russian, about 130 are German-Austrian, and about 60 are mixed.
Today we have a lot of destroyed and abandoned cemeteries. After the Second World War, German graves were often literally at war. In the village, a drunk tractor driver took a sledgehammer and went, as he believed, to fight for a just cause. In addition, the harsh XX century dealt a strong blow to human morality. Many cemeteries were dug up, often not by black diggers, but by the local population. People today remember: yes, we ourselves ransacked here in childhood. It was in the nature of things.


1917 year. Monument to the German 249th Infantry Regiment at the cemetery in the village of Karabany (Myadel District) .Photo from gazetaby.com

Modern look.Photo from gazetaby.com

Sometimes people ask me why I got involved in the topic of cemeteries. I found the answer for myself: so that there is no shame. If we strive for European values, then we must somehow try to comply.
The real work on the restoration of cemeteries today is carried out mainly by the hands of enthusiasts, including the Kroki Foundation for the memory of the First World War, in which I am a member. So, last year, a cross was erected on the site of the discovered mass grave, where the victims of the most powerful German gas attack near Smorgon, which took place on July 20, 1916, are buried.
By the way, I could not find this mass grave right away. I knew that she was located near the Zalesye station in the cemetery near the church. But there was no church. It turned out that during the Soviet Union the chairman of the collective farm burned it on Easter. It was possible to determine the place of the mass grave only from the preserved stone monuments.

Having enlarged the old photo, we managed to read the inscription on the cross - "Here rest the grenadiers of the 14th Georgian, 15th Tiflis and 16th Mingrelian and Lower ranks of the 6th infantry. Libavsky regiment, poisoned by suffocating gases on July 20, 1916". Now this text will be on the new monument. Photo from gazetaby.com

I am amazed at the attitude of the Russian side to the cemeteries of the First World War. If you are talking about patriotism, you think that the roots modern Russia come from the Russian Empire, then it should be remembered that the people lying in numerous cemeteries on the territory of Belarus defended your homeland. Don't they deserve a decent memory and some money from such a powerful budget?
But nothing but the spells "no one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten", I do not observe. Conversations about the need for restoration and maintenance of cemeteries often remain just conversations.
For some reason, Belarus is dealing with the saddest legacy of the First World War without the support of its eastern neighbor - by the forces of enthusiasts, individual administrations, the special battalion of the Ministry of Defense. Yes, it's great that the cemetery on Starozhevka in Minsk was saved from construction and now it has a civilized look. But the Union State has been building a memorial near Smorgon for seven years, and still cannot finish it. They deployed a gigantic construction site with completely absurd, ridiculous monuments, but even by the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the war, they did not manage to complete it. It is not a fact that they will have time to graduate by the 100th anniversary. And this is in peacetime! It remains only to wonder how the Germans were able to build many memorials during the war, which are still reminiscent of the First World War.

At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. formed two opposing blocs: the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy) and the Entente (England. France. Russia). The most aggressive policy in the world arena was pursued by Germany, which sought to redistribute the spheres of influence in Europe and the world in its favor.

August 1, 1914 the First World War began, which involved 38 countries. Belarusian provinces were transferred to martial law, during which the activities of political parties were prohibited, the distribution printed publications, holding meetings, rallies, processions, strikes, military censorship was introduced.

In 1914, all political parties, with the exception of the Bolsheviks, supported the government in an effort to wage the war until victory. The Bolsheviks characterized the war as unjust, conquering and called for the transformation of the "imperialist war into a civil war for socialism." The editorial board of the newspaper "Nasha Shva" condemned the war.

V August - September 1915 hostilities spread to the territory of Western Belarus. The Russian army was forced to retreat. Brest was occupied. Grodno. Vilno. The headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief in July 1915 was transferred from Baranovichi to Mogilev.

At the end August - September 1915 the German army carried out an offensive operation known as the "Sventyansky breakthrough", the purpose of which was to capture Minsk. Parts of Russian Western Front managed to eliminate the breakthrough, the front was established along the line Dvinsk - Postavy - Smorgon - Baranovichi - Pinsk. The defense of Smorgon lasted 810 days. V March - July 1916 the Russian army spent Naroch and Baranovichi offensive operations , however, they ended in vain and with heavy losses.

Until February 1918, the front line passing through the territory of Belarus remained unchanged. Part of Belarus was also under German occupation. The German occupation authorities introduced a system of taxes, fines, forced labor, and carried out requisitions. Livestock, foodstuffs, timber, industrial equipment, and the able-bodied population were exported from Belarus to Germany. Counting on a long-term occupation, the German command developed a plan for the colonization and Germanization of Belarus by resettling colonists from Germany here. It was forbidden to use the Russian language in schools, and the compulsory study of the German language was introduced. In elementary school, teaching was introduced in the Belarusian language, but using the Latin alphabet.

In connection with the retreat of Russian troops and military operations from the territory of Western Belarus to the east moved 1.3 million refugees. They are located in settlements in the eastern part of Belarus, in cities and villages of central Russia. There was virtually no evacuation plan and Government program assistance to refugees. This was done by public organizations, zemstvos, the Red Cross, but their efforts were not enough. Asylum gave birth to epidemics, crime, begging.

Martial law was in force in the unoccupied territory of Belarus. The adult able-bodied population was obliged to perform state and military duties (repair and construction of roads, bridges, crossings, defensive structures, harvesting). Agriculture in wartime found itself in a difficult situation. About 50% of the male population was drafted into the active army. Agricultural work was carried out by women and adolescents. The labor of prisoners of war was widely used in the estates of landowners. There were requisitions of livestock, food, fodder.

Industry of Belarus that produced products necessary for the army (footwear, sewing, food, metalworking). carried out military orders. The share of civilian products dropped to 15-16% of the pre-war level. The number of large enterprises and the number of workers at them has significantly decreased. Industrial decline and Agriculture caused a rise in prices and a decrease in the living standards of the population.

During wartime, the Belarusian national movement underwent changes. Some of his leaders were evacuated to Russia. In 1915, the publication of "Our seams" was discontinued. In 1915 in Vilno A. and I. Lutskevichi together with V. Lastovsky created an organization Belarusian Society for Aid to War Victims , which actually became the center of the Belarusian movement in the occupied territory. Brothers Lutskevich and V. Lastovsky, together with Polish, Jewish, Lithuanian organizations, came up with the idea of ​​creating an independent Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the territory occupied by the Germans. The German occupation authorities did not support this idea. In 1915, the Central Union of Belarusian National Public Organizations was formed in Vilna, which headed Belarusian People's Committee (BIK). At the beginning of 1916, in the occupied territory, the Belarusian language received an equal status along with Polish, Lithuanian and Hebrew. BNK began to open Belarusian schools and prepare textbooks. The newspaper "Goman" was published. Representing the BNC at the conferences of the peoples of Russia in Lausanne and Stockholm (1916), V. Lastovsky put forward a plan to create a union of independent states of Belarus. Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine ("Baltic-Black Sea Union"), which was directed against Poland and Russia. This project also found no support. At the end of 1916, the BNK's attempts to agree with the Lithuanian National Committee on the creation of a Lithuanian-Belarusian state were unsuccessful. The Lithuanians refused to discuss this issue.

In the unoccupied territory, from the second half of 1915, St. Petersburg became the main centers of the Belarusian movement. Moscow. Minsk and other cities where Belarusians-refugees have established their organizations. In 1916, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia authorized the publication of the newspapers Dennitsa and Svetoch. They were published in Petrograd until the end of 1916 - the beginning of 1917.

One of the bloodiest and most widespread wars in the history of mankind ended one hundred years ago. On November 11, 1918, an armistice was signed in the Compiegne forest, which ended the First World War. The Belarusian lands, perhaps, suffered the most from the destructive impact of this unjustly forgotten military conflict, since it was here that the front line stopped for more than two years. The date "1916" is included in the title for a reason. Since 1916, the troops of both sides begin to engage in capital strengthening of their defensive positions. There is a widespread construction of firing points, shelters, observation posts, trenches and artillery caponiers.

The German-Austrian troops, possessing a high-level material and technical base, strengthened their positions much more thoroughly and better than the Russian army. During 1916-1917, German-Austrian engineers built great amount various fortifications made of concrete and steel, while on the Russian side, construction was carried out from wood and earth. In addition to various fortifications, auxiliary front-line infrastructure was being actively built. The number of buildings built during this time on the territory of Belarus goes to thousands, which makes them the largest monuments in the history of the First World War. We drove almost the entire front line from north to south and looked at the current state of the silent evidence of that terrible time.

Vidzy

We will start our journey from the village of Vidzy. This small village in the north of Belarus is largely known for the most beautiful Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. The construction of the temple was completed just before the outbreak of the First World War, in 1914. At the time of construction, the church was considered one of the tallest buildings in Belarus. Its towers towered over 70 meters above the ground. Once at the forefront, the German troops that occupied Vidzy actively used the church as an observation post.

Observers could look far into the depths of the Russian positions and adjust artillery fire on them. In early March 1916, just before the start of a large-scale offensive known as the Naroch operation, Russian troops fired at the church very heavily, almost completely destroying the towers and depriving the Germans of the possibility of observation. In memory of those events, several Russian artillery shells were embedded in the walls of the church.

On the shore of Lake Vidzov there are several fairly large concreted observation posts of the German-Austrian army. The pillbox located on a hill is divided into two rooms. It was equipped with a ladder leading to an observation position. The structure was severely destroyed by an internal explosion. According to local residents, here they exploded the ammunition found on the beach.

Naroch

In the history of the First World War in Belarus, military graves occupy a special place. A huge number of various cemeteries and mass graves left behind the front that stopped in Belarus. On this moment about 200 burials are known - both German-Austrian and Russian. Of course, there were more of them, but after hundreds of years, many have been lost and forgotten. An interesting fact is that in cemeteries, German graves are often adjacent to Russian ones. The fact is that after each battle, sanitary brigades worked on the battlefield, collecting the bodies of the dead and burying them without national identity, handing over the documents of the dead to the enemy. From the dead, there was no longer any demand.

At the Catholic cemetery in the village of Naroch there is a large monument with an eagle spreading its wings. A German military cemetery is located at the foot of the monument. The inscription on the monument reads "For the heroes who died for their homeland, to their honor and memory." The eagle in the German military tradition is called upon to guard the peace of dead soldiers.

The date on the monument is July 1916. Apparently, it was installed here shortly after the Russian army carried out the Naroch operation - the largest diversionary maneuver in the history of the First World War, the purpose of which was to draw off part of the German forces from the Western Front in order to help the very French allies near Verdun, who were in a difficult situation after the beginning of the German offensive. As a result of the fighting, the Russian army lost 78 thousand people, while the losses of the Germans were almost half as much - 40 thousand killed and wounded.

The next burial is located closer to the front line, near the modern village of Pronki. According to estimates, there are more than one and a half thousand graves of soldiers and officers here, which makes this burial one of the largest known in Belarus. Many burials date back to 1916, which indicates that a large number of those who died during the Naroch operation were buried here. In the center of the cemetery there is a stone monument with the inscription "Heroes of the 80-1 Reserve Division", also dated 1916.

It is curious that initially this cemetery was located south of the village of Pronki and was moved in 1930 during reconstruction. Only one monument with the inscription "To the Heroes of the 250 Reserve Infantry Regiment" remained in the old place.

Vishnevo

To the south of Lake Vishnevskoye, the front line actually ran along the modern border of Grodno and Minsk regions. The German and Russian positions were located opposite each other at a distance of literally several hundred meters. Given the complex nature of the trench warfare, which lasted more than two years, both sides carried out serious work on the construction of fortifications on the front line - thousands of kilometers of deep trenches and shelters were dug and thousands of firing points were built. German troops had more high level material support and could afford to build on the front line fortifications of steel and concrete, while the Russian army erected in its bulk only wood-earthen structures.

In the forests near Lake Vishnevsky, the German defensive lines have been very well preserved - the lines of trenches and trenches are clearly traced, winding in labyrinths in the impassable forest thicket, every 100 meters there are concreted machine-gun nests, observation posts and shelters.

In addition to building fortifications and shelters, German engineers erected a huge amount of related infrastructure along the front line: bridges, roads, railways and other objects that were necessary to supply the front line with ammunition, food, medicine and soldiers. Not far from Vishnevo, the pillars of the railway bridge over Viliya, built by the Germans during the war, have been preserved. For the needs of the front, a narrow-gauge railway was used, but the scale with which the military engineers approached the matter is striking: seven massive concrete supports speak of the capital quality of construction. This approach to the construction of auxiliary infrastructure is striking, especially against the background of the complete absence of concrete fortifications in the Russian army.

Dubatovka

In the village of Dubatovka, there are two German concrete bunkers, which are remarkable for their decoration. Most likely, these structures were used as shelters or storage facilities. The first is located right at the entrance to the village and is clearly visible from the road. It is very heavily covered with earth, but is still distinguishable.

Directly above the entrance, there is a concrete bas-relief with the inscription Gartners Heim, which means "Garden House". Now it is difficult to guess the irony or a serious message, but the level of artistic performance on an absolutely ordinary auxiliary structure is beyond praise. Such details speak of the desire of people to brighten up the terrible everyday life and strive for beauty in any life circumstances.

The adjacent building also has an inscription above the entrance, but more modest, which says that this fortification was erected by the 2nd battalion of the 33rd regiment in May 1917. For a long time this fortification was used by some of the local residents as a barn.

Traces of the unnamed sculptor's activities can be found a few kilometers east of Dubatovka. In the forests near the village of Abramovshchina, in addition to trenches and faceless shelters, there is another pearl of military engineering architecture - German field cuisine. It consists of two large concrete rooms with wide entrances.

Above one of them, a comical bas-relief is depicted: the cook fills the tank of the field kitchen with water and heats up the stove, while the pig and the rooster, who do not want to become part of the soldiers' dinner, scatter in different directions. Such details a few hundred meters from the advanced trenches were supposed to cheer up people exhausted by the protracted war.

Birch trees

On a hill near the village of Birch, there was a large German stronghold. During the trench warfare, each high hill was of great strategic importance: such positions are very difficult to assault by infantry forces, so they were strengthened quite strongly. Several interesting military structures have been preserved there. One of them is a round machine-gun pillbox.

It did not have an entrance from the surface, it was possible to get inside only from a trench. A metal staircase leads to the embrasures. This small casemate could house one or two machine-gun crews. The unusual shape of this pillbox is due to the use of a semicircular corrugated metal sheet as a formwork for pouring concrete, which was widely used to strengthen the ceiling vaults of almost all German shelters. We have never seen pillboxes of a similar design in Belarus.

At the foot of the hill is another concrete hideout for soldiers.

Smorgon

During the First World War, the small town of Smorgon became a real stumbling block. The front line passed through the city. As a result of positional battles, which lasted 810 days, locality actually ceased to exist. The press of that time called Smorgon "a dead city": there was no life here, only death and war. German trenches and pillboxes surrounded the city from the west, and Russian positions from the east. There are now several dozen different permanent German structures cast from concrete in the vicinity. Russian positions can no longer be found.

German pillbox at the bypass road

Another machine-gun firing point is located on the territory of the modern city cemetery. During the war, this place was located outside the city.

Krevo

The Kreva Castle, built in the XIV century, is known not only as a monument to the period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It was also strongly affected by the First World War, which actually completed the process of destruction of the most important historical monument of modern Belarus. The castle turned out to be on the territory occupied by the Germans, observation posts and shelters were built near the walls and in the courtyard. A concrete pillbox was built in the small tower of the castle, adding variety to the architecture of the defensive structure, which is almost 800 years old. The current deplorable state of the Krevo Castle is due to the fact that in the summer of 1917 it survived one of the most powerful artillery attacks in the entire history of the First World War.

For fire support of the Russian offensive operation almost 900 guns of various calibers were used, which tirelessly bombarded the German positions at the Krevsky castle with shells. However, the Russian attack did not have any strategic success.

As a result of the fighting in the summer of 1917, a church in the village of Novospassk was seriously damaged. The temple located between the Russian and German trenches was shot from both sides. The walls of the church are abundantly covered with traces of bullets and shells. It was never possible to restore it.

Chukhni

In the fields between the villages of Chukhny and Verebushka, south of Krevo, there is a large number of various German fortifications. Here, the position of the artillery battery, which was located behind the line of the fort, has been perfectly preserved, which has four artillery caponiers for small-caliber guns, as well as several concrete shelters and observation posts.

Shelter for soldiers in the field between the villages of Chukhny - Verebushki

A freestanding sanitary dugout is of particular interest. A red cross is laid with bricks over its entrance. The structure was severely damaged by artillery fire in the summer of 1917.

From the side of the Russian positions, there are characteristic traces of hitting large-caliber shells. Inside, splinters cut through the I-beams of the ceiling. Until now, fragments of shells from a hundred years ago are found in the fields.

Boruns and Foremen

In the village of Boruny, located far from the front line, there is another large German cemetery. Among the hundreds of graves of German soldiers and officers is the grave of the crew of the Russian bomber "Ilya Muromets", which was shot down here during an air battle in 1916.

One of the most beautiful and well-groomed memorials to the fallen soldiers of the First World War is the military cemetery in the village of Desyatniki. As in the Naroch, here German graves peacefully coexist with Russians. This cemetery was equipped in 1922 by the Poles, after the signing of the Riga Treaty, according to which these territories were ceded to Poland.

The burial is located on a gentle hill at the bend of the river and looks more like a park. It is surrounded by a low stone fence along the perimeter. At the entrance there is a monument with an eagle, which, according to tradition, keeps order and protects the peace of the dead.

Baranovichi

In the Baranovichi area, the German-Austrian army had especially strong artillery support. This area was considered a strategically important section of the Eastern Front and was seriously reinforced with heavy artillery.

An interesting artillery battery is located near the village of Stolovichi. It was built before the start of the large-scale Baranovichi operation, which was carried out by Russian troops in the summer of 1916. The Russian offensive lasted almost a month and did not lead to any results, except for the loss of 80 thousand soldiers killed and wounded. German losses were much more modest - 13 thousand people. The artillery battery consists of two free-standing concrete structures for different types of guns.