Bialystok

History

Archaeological discoveries show that the first settlements in the area of present day Bialystok occurred during the Stone Age. Tombs of ancient settlers can be found in the district of Dojlidy. In the early Iron Age a mix of Prussians, Yotvingians and Wielbark culture people settled in the area producing kurgans, the tombs of the chiefs in the area located in the current village of Rostolty. Since then, the Bialystok area has been at the crossroads of cultures. Trade routes linking the Baltic to the Black Sea favored the development of settlements with Yotvingia-Ruthenian-Polish cultural characteristics.

The city of Bialystok has existed for five centuries and during this time the fate of the city has been affected by various political and economic forces.

Surviving documents attest that around 1437 a representative of the Raczkow family, Jakub Tabutowicz of the coat of arms Labedz, received from Michael Zygimantaitis son of Sigismund Kestutaitis, Duke of Lithuania, a wilderness area along the river Biala that marked the beginning of Bialystok as a settlement.

The first brick church and a castle were built between 1617 and 1826. The two-floor castle, designed on a rectangular plan in the Gothic-Renaissance style, was the work of Job Bretfus. Extension of the castle was continued by Krzysztof Wiesiolowski, starost of Tykocin, Grand Marshal of Lithuania since 1635, and husband of Aleksandra Marianna Sobieska. In 1637 he died childless, and as a result Bialystok came under the management of his widow. After her death in 1645 the Wiesiolowski estate, including Bialystok, passed to the Commonwealth to cover the costs of maintaining Tykocin Castle. In the years 1645–1659 Bialystok was managed by the governors of Tykocin and was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

In 1661 it was given to Stefan Czarniecki as a reward for his service in the victory over the Swedes during the Deluge. Four years later, it was given as a dowry of his daughter Aleksandra, who married Hetman Jan Klemens Branicki, thus passing into the hands of the Branicki family. In 1692, Stefan Mikolaj Branicki, the son of Jan Klemens Branicki (Marshal of the Crown Court), obtained city rights for Bialystok from King John III Sobieski. He constructed the Branicki Palace on the foundations of the castle of the Wiesiolowski family. In the second half of the eighteenth century the ownership of the city was inherited by Field Crown Hetman Jan Klemens Branicki. It was he who transformed the palace built by his father into a magnificent residence of a great noble.

The end of the eighteenth century saw the division of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in three steps, among the neighboring states. The Kingdom of Prussia acquired Bialystok and the surrounding region during the third partition. The city became the capital of the New East Prussia province in 1795. Prussia lost the territory following Napoleon Bonapartes victory in the War of the Fourth Coalition as the resultant 1807 Treaties of Tilsit awarded the area to the Russian Empire, which organized the region into the Belostok Oblast, with the city as the regional center.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the majority of the citys population was Jewish. According to Russian census of 1897, out of the total population of 66,000, Jews constituted 41,900 (so around 63% percent). This heritage can be seen on the Jewish Heritage Trail in Bialystok. The first Anarchist groups to attract a significant following of Russian workers or peasants, were the Anarcho-Communist Chernoe-Znamia groups, founded in Bialystok in 1903. The Bialystok pogrom occurred between 14–16 June 1906 in the city. During the pogrom between 81 and 88 people were killed, and about 80 people were wounded.

During World War I the Bialystok-Grodno District was the administrative division of German-controlled territory of Ober-Ost. It comprised the city, as the capital, and the surrounding Podlaskie region, roughly corresponding to the territory of the earlier Belostok Oblast. At the end of World War I the city became part of the newly independent Second Polish Republic, as the capital of the Bialystok Voivodeship (1919–1939). During the 1919-1920 Polish-Soviet War, possession of the city by the Red Army and the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee occurred during the lead up to the Battle of Warsaw. During the resultant counteroffensive, the city returned to Polish control after the Battle of Bialystok.

With the beginning of World War II, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and initially the city came under Soviet control, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It was incorporated into the Byelorussian SSR from 1939 to 1941 as the capital of the Belastok Voblast. After the Nazi attack on Soviet Union in 1941, Bialystok was occupied by the German Army on 27 June 1941, during the Battle of Bialystok–Minsk, and the city became the capital of Bezirk Bialystok, a separate region in German occupied Poland, until 1944.

From the very beginning, the Nazis pursued a ruthless policy of pillage and removal of the non-German population. The 56,000 Jewish residents of the town were confined in a ghetto. On August 15, 1943, the Bialystok Ghetto Uprising began, and several hundred Polish Jews and members of the Anti-Fascist Military Organisation (Polish: ) started an armed struggle against the German troops who were carrying out the planned liquidation of the ghetto with deportations to the Treblinka extermination camp.

The city was liberated by the Red Army on 27 July 1944 and on 20 September 1944 transferred to Poland. After the war, the city became capital of the initial Bialystok Voivodeship (1945–1975) of the Peoples Republic of Poland. After the 1975 administrative reorganization, the city was the capital of the smaller Bialystok Voivodeship (1975–1998). Since 1999 it has been the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship, Republic of Poland.