It was in Kobrin district

Kobrin → Outstanding persons → Alexey Mikhaylovich Martynov

To understand the events happening on the States of Kobrin district during origin of the Belarusian Soviet republic it is necessary to remember fluently a military situation of earlier period of World War I.

In summer months 1915 badly armed Russian army under the pressure of superior forces of the opponent was forced to clear so-called Privilensky provinces. And in the middle of August the Brest fortress which appeared under the threat of an environment on which before the Russian command laid great hopes was handed over without fight. The more fiercely resistance to the East from Brest where the Russian troops put to the opponent big losses was also more persistently shown. Extensive German military cemeteries in Polyatichakh, Tevlyakh, Gaykovke, Bogs, Borodichakh and other settlements of the area with hundreds of burials on everyone testify to their scales.

At approach of the front the population was forcibly evacuated in depth of the country. Could avoid evacuation only residents of more remote, remote villages. And on the iron road, in the crowded commodity cars, there could leave only the small minority, mainly citizens. The main mass of refugees started in a mournful way on the horses, it is obligatory with the cow attached to a cart. Extremely exhausting was this mass outcome during a hot drought, with clouds of the suffocating dust hanging over hackneyed country roads. There was often nothing to satisfy painful thirst as roadside wells and reservoirs were taken out to the bottom. Hundreds of unknown graves left behind multikilometer wagon trains of refugees.

By order of the Supreme Commander grand duke Nikolay Nikolaevich, the adherent of hopelessly outdated theory of "scorched earth", the villages left to the enemy were liable to ruthless destruction. Quite often it happened that the chain driven by the Cossack lashes a supply just left a native village fence as on the opposite side of the village the flame of the fires leaving heaps of the ashes already inflamed.

In Kobrin the central part of the city with completely burned down malls and adjacent houses strongly suffered. The devastating fire did not spare also a number of suburban streets with the wooden houses covered by straw.

To complete the picture it should be noted that at that time most of citizens was made by Jews who amicably preferred to remain on familiar spots what the authorities did not object to. There were in own dwellings also few lonely old men of other nationalities.

According to the plan of evacuation, intended for moving of Kobrin refugees Kaluga gubernya, in particular – the Masalsky County where archives of city institutions were brought. However, the overwhelming mass of refugees ignored bossy plans, spontaneously spreading on immense open spaces of the Russian land, up to Ufa, Astrakhan, and even creeping to the Urals.

Whereas the refugee families broken by a military hurricane from familiar spots hastily adapted to new conditions, the mobilized adult man's population of Kobrin district was in ranks of field army.

After October revolution many hundreds them voluntarily entered Red army, actively participating in protection of the young Country of Councils. To pertinently remember names at least of several of our fellow citizens who came back home with reliably hidden Book of the Red Army man of a sample of 1918, so expensive to them, approved by Lenin. So, the inhabitant of Zalesye K.I. Prokopuk in a pea jacket of the seaman of the Baltic Fleet sailor stormed Winter, and died in 1941 from a bullet of Hitlerite executioners. The native of Turnaya D. Borisyuk who became in civil war by the red commander finished the days in 1943 when smelting tolite for guerrilla min. Hereditary kobrinets D.P. Rafalovich, V. K. Moyseevich, M. K. Lagonchuk bravely battled on fronts of civil war, were awarded for services in battle.

Within three years Kobrin district pined under a yoke of enemy occupation. The first steps of a vilgelmovsky soldatna were marked by a general robbery at the population of any copper ware. Hunting behind candlesticks, pans, samovars was conducted, up to door handles: war industry already tested an acute shortage in non-ferrous metals. The massive bronze eagle who was succeeded to restore only in 1951 was at once stolen from a monument of 1812. In nodal points of the county the basic military points-vakhi which are vigilantly watching the dependent population put on a hungry ration settled down. Suspected of hostile actions ruthlessly publicly were hung up. At peasants systematically requisitioned the remained horses, pigs. Hands of the mobilized inhabitants mercilessly cut down and took out "na faterlyand" forests. However, did not disdain also such melochishka: the brick from the burned-down houses went to near East Prussia …

Under the terms of the Brest peace treaty, to the Russian prisoner of war, natives of the occupied territory, an opportunity to return to native places was given. The considerable quantity them thus appeared in Kobrin district where in the different ways data on revolutionary events in Russia filtered. Under the influence of ideas of Great October there was an armed guerrilla group for fight against invaders here. In one of operations the Polish landowner of Shemet who embittered the behavior of local peasants was destroyed. Germans, and subsequently the belopolsky authorities cruelly dealt shortly with all guerrillas.

Already from the second half of 1918 the separate refugee families which appeared closer than a line of demarcation began to make the way by hook or by crook to the native land. Here in the first years repatriates in a full measure had to take it is dashing, with extreme difficulties, in the most unimaginable conditions fighting for a survival. On the place of the native ashes primitive dugouts were constructed. Some of them served as shelters still for a number of years. Pretty often, in the absence of horses, the run wild kitchen gardens, not to mention the plowed land strips which often were in time to overgrow a melkolesye were manually won from weeds. Fortunately the winter that year was late and up to new 1919 it was possible to be engaged in agriculture.

When in November, 1918 the vilgelmovsky army capitulated in the West, among freely feeling invaders in the east there was panic. Messages about revolutionary events in Germany to the basis shook praised German discipline, and soldier's masses spontaneously rushed home. Still so recently at a meeting with the German officer the local had to stop and take off a cap low. Now quite often it was possible to observe how yesterday's haughty "sverkhchelovek" obediently gave to the grown bolder teenagers an individual weapon.

The vacuum of anarchy formed after flight of invaders was immediately used by henchmen of Germans – petlyurovets. Intoxicated with the fallen-down good luck, they committed excesses when carrying out the most unbridled Ukrainization. To old residents it was remembered as at the conversation heard on the street in Russian or Polish passersby mercilessly quarreled and were even beaten by lashes. However, the next governors held on here too not for long and in the middle of 1919 were forced to give way to Pilsudsky's Poles.

Meanwhile the flow of repatriates uncontrollably accrued. Many families by sharing the cost got horses with vehicles on which children with simple belongings were loaded. Within many weeks thousands and thousands of refugees measured the legs hundreds of kilometers just as it occurred in the opposite direction in the fall of 1915. Meanwhile also railway refugee echelons began to be adjusted. This outcome only by 1923 dragged on.



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