Ashmyany
Template:Short description Template:Redirect Template:Refimprove Template:Infobox settlement Ashmyany or OshmyanyTemplate:Efn is a city in Grodno Region, Belarus.<ref name="enc">Template:Cite book</ref> It is located Template:Convert from Vilnius in Lithuania, and serves as the administrative center of Ashmyany District.<ref name="pop"/><ref name="enc"/> The river Ashmyanka passes through the city. As of 2025, it has a population of 16,804.<ref name="pop"/>
Name
Since time immemorial, Ašmena and its surroundings were ethnic Lithuanian territory.Template:Sfn However, many of the indigenous inhabitants died out during the wars, famine and plague in the late 17th and the early 18th centuries, and the Belarusian population replaced them.Template:Sfn Lithuanians were slavicized along the Minsk-Ašmena-Vilnius axis, and by the mid-19th century, the numbers of Lithuanian-speakers had severely decreased.Template:Sfn
Presently, its Lithuanian past is sealed in the towns's name, which is of Lithuanian origin.Template:Sfn The town's name is derived from the name of the Ašmena (modern Ashmyanka River), itself derived from the Lithuanian word akmuo (stone).Template:Sfn The link between consonants š and k is old and present in the Lithuanian words, respectively ašmuo (sharp blade) and akmuo (stone).Template:Sfn The present name Ashmyany uses the plural form of the name and is a modern invention. Through the ancient town's history, its name was recorded in the Lithuanian singular form.Template:Sfn Lithuanian papers ignore other findings by historians, such as those of Polish historian Zbysław Wojtkowiak. This historian's findings, based on archival data, indicate that in the 15th and 16th centuries, Ashmyana and its surrounding areas were contrasted with Lithuanian lands (located to the west) and referred to as 'the lands of Ruthenia.' This means that the ethnically Ruthenian element predominated in the Ashmyana area.<ref>Z. Wojtkowiak. 2005. Lithuania Transvilnensis saec. XIV–XVI. Podziały Litwy Północnej w późnym średniowieczu. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, p. 19–20.</ref> Polish papers note already in the mid–15th century sources mention the Slavic name of the town, i.e. Oszmiana (hominisque na Rusi et Oszmiana).<ref>Z. Wojtkowiak. 2005. Lithuania Transvilnensis saec. XIV–XVI. Podziały Litwy Północnej w późnym średniowieczu. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, p. 19.</ref>
History
Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Ašmena is mentioned first as a town in the Duchy of Vilnius in the 1350s.Template:Sfn The first reliable mention of Ašmena is in the Lithuanian Chronicles, which tells that after Gediminas' death in 1341, Jaunutis inherited the town.Template:Citation needed In 1384, the Teutonic Order attacked and destroyed the town with the goal of destroying Jogaila's hereditary state.Template:Citation needed The Teutons recorded the town as "Aschemynne".Template:Citation needed The Teutons managed to destroy the town, but it quickly recovered.Template:Citation needed By 1384, there is a manor of the Grand Duke of Lithuania in Ašmena.Template:Sfn The Roman Catholic Template:Interlanguage link was built after 1387.Template:Sfn This church was one of the first in the whole of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.Template:Sfn The church was administrated by the Franciscans.Template:Sfn
In 1402, the Teutons attacked once more, but were bloodily repelled, so the Teutons withdrew to Medininkai.Template:Citation needed In 1413, the town became one of the most notable trade and commerce centres within the Vilnius Voivodship.Template:Citation needed Hence, in 1432 Ashmyany became the site of an important battle between the royal forces of Jogaila under Žygimantas Kęstutaitis and the forces of Švitrigaila, who was allied with the Teutonic Order.Template:Citation needed After the town was taken by the royalists, it became the private property of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania and started to develop rapidly.Template:Citation needed
Hanseatic trade routes passed through the town in the 15th century.Template:Sfn On 1 September 1432, Švitrigaila was deposed from the throne in Ašmena.Template:Sfn On 8 December 1432, Ašmena was the site of the Battle of Ašmena between Švitrigaila and Sigismund Kęstutaitis.Template:Sfn There was a residential palace in Ašmena from the early 15th century to the end of the 18th century.Template:Sfn
The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven burnt down in 1505, but was rebuilt.Template:Sfn The Muscovite army destroyed and burnt Ašmena to the ground in 1519, during the Fourth Lithuanian–Muscovite War.Template:Sfn The town was granted the Magdeburg rights in the 16th century.Template:Sfn From 1566, Ašmena was the centre of the Template:Interlanguage link.Template:Sfn
Ashmyany did not recover as quickly as previously after 1519, and in 1537 the town was granted several royal privileges to facilitate its reconstruction.Template:Citation needed In 1566, the town finally received Magdeburg rights, which were confirmed in 1683 (along with the privileges for the local merchants and burghers) by King John III Sobieski.Template:Citation needed In the 16th century the town was one of the most notable centers of Calvinism in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, after Mikołaj "the Red" Radziwiłł founded a college and a church there.Template:Citation needed
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
The Muscovite army occupied Ašmena in 1655.Template:Sfn Due to the widespread destruction and impoverishment during the Deluge, the town was exempt from taxes in 1655, 1661 and 1667.Template:Sfn In 1667, the Dominican Order Template:Interlanguage link was built.Template:Sfn
In 1792, King Stanisław August Poniatowski confirmed all previous privileges and the fact, that Oszmiany, as it was then called, was a free city, subordinate only to the king and the local city council. With this, the town received its first ever Coat of arms. Composed of three fields, it featured a shield, a hand holding scales and the bull from Ciołek coat of arms, the monarch's personal coat of arms.
During the Uprising of 1794, Ašmena was the site of the insurgent staff under Jokūbas Jasinskis.Template:Sfn At the same time, an insurgent group led by Mykolas Kleopas Oginskis was organised in the town.Template:Sfn
Russian Partition
In 1795, the town was annexed by the Russian Empire in the last Partition of Poland–Lithuania. The Church of Saint Michael the Archangel burnt down in 1797 but was rebuilt.Template:Sfn
The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven was also rebuilt in bricks in 1812; however, the church decayed over the 19th century.Template:Sfn During the French invasion of Russia, the Grande Armée took over Ašmena in 1812, and during several battles, the town partially burnt down.Template:Sfn
November Uprising (1830-1831)
During the November Uprising, it was liberated by the town's citizens, led by a local priest, Jasiński, and Colonel Count Karol Dominik Przeździecki.Template:Citation needed However, in April 1831, in the face of a Russian offensive, the fighters were forced to withdraw to the Naliboki forest.Template:Citation needed After a minor skirmish with Stelnicki's rearguard, the Russian punitive expeditionary force of some 1,500 officers and soldiers proceeded to burn the town and massacre the civilian population, including some 500 women, children and elderly, who sought refuge in the Dominican Catholic Church.Template:Citation needed Even the local priest was murdered.Template:Citation needed Nothing is known of the fate of Ashmyany's Jews.Template:Citation needed In the Uprising of 1831, the Imperial Russian Army razed the town and massacred 150 locals in one of the town's churches.Template:Sfn
Rebuilding
In 1845, as the town was rebuilding, it received a new coat of arms, in recognition of its population increase.Template:Citation needed It never recovered from its earlier losses, and by the end of the 19th century it became rather a provincial town, inhabited primarily by Jewish immigrants from other parts of Russia 'beyond the Pale'.Template:Citation needed
The Church of Saint Michael the Archangel was closed down in 1850, but rebuilt in 1900–10.Template:Sfn In the late 19th century, a tavern was built and the Russian authorities built a Russian Orthodox church.Template:Sfn
In 1912 the local Jewish community built a large synagogue.Template:Citation needed
World War I
After the end of World War I and the withdrawal of the German army from the German-ruled Lithuania District in 1919, Ashmyany came under Polish jurisdiction.Template:Citation needed According to the Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty, signed on 12 July 1920, Ašmena was part of Lithuania.Template:Sfn However, the Lithuanian territory was seized by the Polish Army that same year.Template:Sfn After the Polish–Soviet War, Ashmyany was given to Poland by the Peace of Riga.
In interwar Poland
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It was a county center, first of Wilno Land, then of Wilno Voivodeship during Polish rule. The town was capital of Oszmiana County. According to the census from 1931, Poles constituted 81% of the inhabitants of the Oszmiana County. On the other hand, Poles and Jews dominated the town of Oszmiana.
World War II
Following the Soviet-German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Soviet Union occupied the area until 1941.Template:Sfn Ashmyany was given to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.Template:Sfn Ashmyany was a raion center in Vileyka Region between 1939 and 1941.Template:Citation needed At the very end of the Soviet occupation, on the night of June 22 and morning of June 23, 1941, the NKVD murdered and buried in one mass grave 57 Polish prisoners from Ashmyany.Template:Citation needed
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The town was captured by German forces on June 25, 1941.<ref name=ushm>Template:Cite book</ref> Around two weeks later, the Germans committed a massacre of some 40 Jews and Poles, accused of collaboration with the Soviets.<ref name=ushm/> After the Wehrmacht drove out the Soviet occupiers, the town was part of the Generalbezirk Litauen in Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941–1944.Template:Sfn On July 26, 1941, the Einsatzkommando 9 committed a massacre of 527 adult male Jews.<ref name=ushm/> Either in September or October 1941, a ghetto was established for Jews from the town and nearby villages.<ref name=ushm/> The Jews were subjected to overcrowding, foot shortages and single executions.<ref name=ushm/> In August 1942, 280 Jews (80 men and 200 women) were deported to forced labour in German-occupied Lithuania.<ref name=ushm/> On 23 October 1942, the German occupiers with the participation of the Jewish Police from Wilno rounded up and massacred 406 elderly Jews.<ref name=ushm/> In March and April 1943, the ghetto was liquidated and Jews were deported to forced labour camps in occupied Lithuania or to the Vilna Ghetto, whereas 713 people were massacred in the Ponary massacre.<ref name=ushm/>
On July 7, 1944, it was reoccupied by the Red Army during the Vilnius offensive. In 1945, the town was annexed by the USSR to the Byelorussian SSR. After 1944, the town was once more part of Vileyka Region, and between 1944 and 1960 it was incorporated into Molodechno Region until that region was disestablished. At that point Ashmyany became part of the Grodno Region, where it remains today.
Recent history
Since 1991, it has been a part of Belarus.
Climate
This climatic region is typified by large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and cold (sometimes severely cold) winters. According to the Köppen climate classification system, Ashmyany has a humid continental climate, abbreviated "Dfb" on climate maps.<ref>Climate Summary for Ashmyany</ref>
Demographics
- 1848 – 4,115 inhabitantsTemplate:Sfn
- 1859 – 3,066 inhabitants<ref name=sgk>[1]</ref>
- 1871 – 4,546 inhabitants<ref name=sgk/>
- 1880 – 5,050 inhabitants (2501 Jews, 2175 Roman Catholics, 352 Orthodoxs)<ref name=sgk/>
- 1897 – 6,400<ref>[2] Template:Webarchive</ref> or 7124Template:Sfn inhabitants
- 1907/08 – 8,300 inhabitants
- 1914 – 8,200 inhabitantsTemplate:Sfn
- 1921 – 6,000 inhabitants
- 1939 – 8,500 inhabitants
- 1970 – 9,621 inhabitantsTemplate:Sfn
- 1974 – 10,000 inhabitants (Great Soviet Encyclopedia)
- 1991 – 15,200 inhabitants<ref>[3]</ref>
- 2004 – 14,900 inhabitants
- 2006 – 14,600 inhabitants<ref>[4]</ref>
- 2007 – 14,269 inhabitants<ref>[5] Template:Webarchive</ref>
- 2023 – 16,870 inhabitants<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- 2024 – 16,787 inhabitants<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- 2025 – 16,804 inhabitants<ref name="pop"/>
Landmarks
- Catholic church of St. Michael the Archangel
- Catholic church of Franciscan, built in 1822
- Synagogue, built in 1912
- Orthodox church of Resurrection, built in 1875
- Watermill
Gallery
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Dominican Church of Saint Michael the Archangel
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Borunsky Bridge
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Synagogue
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Lejba Strugacz Manor
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Court
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Miscellaneous
- Alternate names: Oshmianka (Polish), Oszmiana, Aschemynne, Oshmyany, Ašmena, Oshmana, Oshmene, Oshmina, Osmiany, Oszmiana, Ozmiana, Osmiana, Oßmiana, Possibly Oschmjansky (Middle Ages maps)
- Mentioned in: Memoirs of Baron Lejeune, Volume II, Chapter VII.
Notable people
- Jan Swołyński (died between 1644 and 1647), marszałek of Oszmiany
A number of persons were awarded the title of "honorary citizen of Ashmyany.<ref>Ганаровыя грамадзяне (Template:Webarchive)</ref>
Birth place
- Abba Kovner (1918–1987), Jewish partisan during World War II
- Template:Ill (1857–1929), Polish poet, critic, publicist, historian, local expert, social activist
- Jacob Saphir (1822–1886), writer, ethnographer, researcher of Hebrew manuscripts, a traveler and emissary of the rabbis of Eastern European Jewish descent who settled in Jerusalem during his early life
