Pages of History
Miory region can rightfully be called a quiet land of lakes, swamps, and forests. Yet, this perception is deceptive: our lands have never been bypassed by the turbulent events of history.
The Miory region was settled in the Mesolithic era – over 10 thousand years ago, after the retreat of the last glaciers. However, permanent settlements are known primarily along the banks of rivers and lakes from the Neolithic (5-4 thousand BC) and Bronze Age (2 thousand BC) near the villages of Poddubniki, Yazno, Sharagi, Subochevo, Sobolevshchina, Ponizovo, Prudniki, Ostrovo, etc., where people lived for centuries. The earliest Slavic settlement was identified near the village of Kukhtintsy, and kurgans (burial mounds) – near the villages of Kublischino, Lesnaya, Chemary, Churilovo, Vyata, Poddubniki, Leonpol, Snegi.
People in these places have long worshipped boulders. In Yazno, there is a huge stone known, according to various legends, to have been dined upon by either Napoleon or Catherine II. A boulder near the village of Bertovshchina is said to have been a stopping point for the French in 1812. And near Staroye Pogost, there was a "sewing stone" which, according to legend, used to sew clothes for people until a certain woman angered it. Near the villages of Novgorody, Volkovshchina, Snegi, Belarusskaya, Perebrodye, Churilovo, there were so-called "footprint stones".
But the most famous were the Boris stones, or "Pisaniki," located in the Western Dvina riverbed. One of them, a piece of red granite, was transported to Moscow with great difficulty back in 1878 and is now located in the Kolomenskoye museum-reserve.
One can also get an idea of the Boris stones from a boulder near the St. Sophia Cathedral in Polotsk, which was raised from the Western Dvina riverbed in our time. However, in the river itself, the latter can only be seen in the urban-type settlement of Druya.
It is not excluded that the most famous Polotsk prince Vseslav Bryachislavich (1044-1101), also known as Vseslav of Polotsk, Vseslav the Sorcerer, visited our lands more than once. This is evidenced by the discovery of his signet ring in 1914 in the vicinity of Disna. In this regard, the version of archaeologist, traveler and artist Yuzef Drozdovich is intriguing, according to which the legendary Dudutki, from which Vseslav Bryachislavich "jumped" to Nemiga, as stated in "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", are located in the valley of the Auta River on the border of modern Miory and Glubokoye districts.
Disna – the oldest settlement in the district. Initially, people lived on a cape at the confluence of the Disna River into the Western Dvina. It was here that the outpost of the Krivichi-Polochans was located in the 10th-11th centuries, which repeatedly resisted regular raids by the crusaders in a later period. In the Chronicle of Herman Wartberg, under the year 1374, the New Castle of the Russians is mentioned, which the Master of the Order with significant forces unsuccessfully stormed in 1377. The exact location of this castle has not been established, but the most convenient place for it is precisely in Disna, the first written mention of which in the "Lithuanian Metrica" dates back to 1461: "And the king himself judged in Disna". Prince Skirгайло transferred the settlement to Stefan Dyak, which was later confirmed by King Aleksander Kozemirovich. Later, Polotsk boyars owned lands here.
Later, Disna was known as Kopets-gorodok. The castle here occupied about 5 hectares. Its ramparts originally rose 5 meters high, topped with an oak palisade, and later with fortifications. With the fall of Polotsk during the Livonian War (1558-1583), the importance of Disna grew. The fortifications of the then "old" castle were restored by "a good knight and soldier" Borkulab Ivanovich Korsak. It is not difficult to imagine them: an island surrounded by the waters of the Daugava and Disna rivers rose 10 meters high, on it were ramparts of the same height, and even higher – wooden walls with 9 towers, on which stood 14 copper and 13 iron cannons, and 30 "hakonits". It was called the Upper Castle, as the town also hid behind ramparts with walls and 14 towers in the area between the same Daugava and Disna rivers. A feature of the Lower Castle was that it was built from 1569 "at the expense and by the efforts" not of the state, but of the local population and the Polotsk residents who had escaped after the fall of the city. Its walls mounted 40 cannons of various calibers.
King Sigismund II Augustus highly valued the importance of the fortifications in Disna. Three years after its revival, the town received the right to duty-free trade, and a year later Sigismund Augustus granted it new privileges and a coat of arms – "three towers of brick". At the request of the townspeople, Disna soon received Magdeburg law and a new coat of arms – a boat.
From the 16th century, Cheresy, Yazno, Novgorodtsy, Kurilovichi, Yundelovo, Ist, Dedino, and others are known. On January 13, 1517, Sigismund the Old approved the land exchange between Getavt Kalenikovich and the Podlasie voivode Ivan Sapega, according to which I.S. Sapego received Ortsy and Miory, earned by Kalenikovich from Queen Elena. This is the first written mention of our district center.
King Sigismund Augustus, for special merits, granted Magdeburg law to the village of Perebrodye on February 25, 1571, which never grew into a town.
The Polish King Stephen Báthory showed great interest in Disna. Before the Polotsk campaign in 1579, he camped here and reviewed his troops. Upon his return in the autumn, he left artillery in the castle. In the summer of 1581, he began his campaign to the Pskov region from here. According to legend, wishing to further strengthen the Disna castle, the king ordered the moat in front of it to be deepened, thus connecting the Daugava and Disna rivers. "Báthory's trench" turned the castle into an island.
During the "Time of Troubles" (1611), King Sigismund III received 230 Muscovite boyars into his allegiance in Disna. King John II Casimir spent the night here after the Battle of Kushliki, where there was a hard-won victory over the troops of Khovansky and Nashchokin. Disna is also mentioned in connection with the campaign of the "most quiet Tsar" Alexei Mikhailovich in the summer of 1656 "near Riga". Muscovite troops rested opposite the town on the other bank of the Daugava on their way there, and on their return, they moved along the left bank through Gorki.
Peter I, through diplomatic channels, advocated for the defense of a small and little-known Orthodox monastery in Miory, which was plundered on December 20, 1690. This royal protest highlighted the significant figure of Simeon Polotsky for Belarusians – S.E. Petrovsky-Sitnianovich, the tutor of the children of the Muscovite Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, who bequeathed all his property to Belarusian monasteries, including those in Miory and Disna.
The last of the reigning monarchs in our region was the Russian Emperor Alexander I. Together with the 1st Western Army, he retreated under the pressure of Napoleon's troops in 1812 to the Drissa fortified camp, which was located on the left bank of the Western Dvina in the area of the villages of Bredevo, Barsuki, Sloboda (Putry), Shchebery, Dvorchany.
Many real and legendary events are connected with our region. For example, during the Northern War, Prince Alexander Menshikov served as headman in Disna for some time. After the Battle of Poltava, when Russian troops moved towards Riga, artillery was transported overland first to Disna, and from there by water.
Biographers of A.S. Pushkin and literary critics of a later period provide grounds to assume that the prototypes of the famous Dubrovsky were the nobleman Ostrovsky from the ancestral estate Arzhanivich or Ostrovshchina in the Disna district on the road to Polotsk, 8 km from the district center. The owner of 20 peasant souls, whose noble documents burned down, could not confirm his origin during the "nobility review". And the recent participant in the 1830-31 uprising, 22-year-old Pavel Ostrovsky, who escaped from custody in Pskov, became a noble robber, a true local Robin Hood, which captivated Alexander Sergeyevich. Only the writer moved his hero further away from the areas explosive with the uprising.
The scribe of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Nikolai Lopatin, built a palace in Leonpol in 1750 and organized the production of fabrics and products from the so-called Druya flax, highly valued in the market. This settlement became a cultural center thanks to a large library, a printing house, and collections of paintings by famous European artists, including Rubens. And it is not by chance that in 1793, on the outskirts of Leonpol, the local nobility erected a column in honor of the first constitution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of 1791. Participants in this event became associates of Tadeusz Kościuszko in the near future.
And again the "Napoleonic tract" near Disna, yellowed with sand under the protection of oaks along the Dorozhkovichi estate with an old park on the banks of the Dvina. In the mid-19th century, it belonged to the Kostrovitsky family. The mistress of the estate knew the poet Adam Mickiewicz well, and the poem "Maithek" was written in her album by the author's hand. This served as the basis for another beautiful legend that the freedom-loving poet himself hid from the authorities here in the chapel for some time.
A graduate of the Disna Gymnasium, the famous Polish writer Jan Huszcza (born in the folwark Zadvorje, 3 km from Tsvetsino) linked the Kostrovitsky family from Dorozhkovichi, active participants in the 1863 uprising, with Guillaume Albert Apollinaris Kostrowitzky, better known as the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire.
At the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, Disna was the largest district town of the Vileyka Governorate, a significant trade and craft center. Steamships and other vessels were loaded and unloaded here, and rafts with timber were formed. It was from Disna that the first trip around Belarus by the then amateur theater troupe of Ignat Buynitsky began. Its performance here was called "a great national holiday" by "Nasha Niva".
The Disna region fully experienced the hardships and deprivations of the First World War and the Civil War. In the Disna area, the hero of the Civil War G.D. Gay formed his 3rd Cavalry Corps before the Red Army's march to Warsaw in June 1920. This included 4097 sabers, 46 machine guns, and 20 cannons. These forces began their offensive on the Driguchi estate on July 4.
Nevertheless, according to the Treaty of Riga, Miory region became part of Poland. The restoration of the national economy was slow. However, a railway was built past Novy Pogost and Miory to Druya. A "factory" for matchsticks appeared in Miory, and consumer cooperation developed. In agriculture, settlement, хуторизация (establishment of individual farmsteads), and the sale of lands belonging to landlords were persistently imposed.
Gradually, all Belarusian schools in the region were closed, and education was carried out in 39 primary schools, 7 six-year schools, and the Disna gymnasium in Polish. Incidentally, the gymnasium provided a solid education and allowed many local talents to emerge. Among them were the poet Dmitry Kosaty, the writer Jan Huszcza, and the Archbishop and Metropolitan of Białystok, Edward Kisel.
Pyotr Vasilievich Metla, born in the village of Kukhtintsy (now part of the village of Zautye), who was elected a deputy of the Polish Sejm in 1922, participated in the creation of Belarusian schools in Western Belarus. He was a member of the Belarusian Parliamentary Club and one of the founders and a member of the Central Committee of the Belarusian Peasant-Worker Community.
Teacher Flor Donatovich Mantsevich, who taught at the schools of the villages of Nivniki and Starye Kryuki, being a deputy of the People's Assembly of Western Belarus in Bialystok in 1939, acted as a rapporteur on the second main issue "On the accession of Western Belarus to the Belarusian SSR", presented the declaration on the accession of Western Belarus to the BSSR and the USSR at the session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in Moscow. He is the first teacher of the People's Artist of the USSR Gennady Ivanovich Titovich – a Belarusian ethnomusicologist, conductor, collector of musical folklore and choral figure, who was born in 1910 in the village of Novy Pogost.
A new life came to our lands with the reunification of Western Belarus in 1939. The collectivization of agriculture began, and economic and all public life was transferred to the Soviet model. Among the first kolkhozes established were "September 17" in Leonpol, "Pravda" in Kamenpolye, "Red Banner" in Sloboda, "Paris Commune" in Sverdl.
Elections to the Soviets were held, and the district newspaper "Bolshevik Tribune" began to be published.
On January 15, 1940, the Miory District was established.
In the 1940s-1950s, the Miory and Disna districts were included in the Polotsk Oblast
On January 8, 1954, the Disna and Miory districts were included in the Molodechno Oblast
In 1959, the Disna District was abolished
On January 10, 1960, the Miory District became part of the Vitebsk Oblast
In 2004, a round-the-clock care unit for elderly citizens was opened in the city of Disna
In 2008, a bridge was built across the Western Dvina River, connecting the Miory and Verkhnedvinsk districts
Since 2008, the festival "Perabrodskaya Zorka" has been held
Since November 2005, a day care unit for elderly citizens has been opened in the city of Disna
On February 28, 2010, a sports and recreation complex was opened in the city of Miory.
September 2012 – the ecological festival "Cranes and Cranberries of Miory Region" was held for the first time.
May 31, 2018 – Grand opening of the new Miory District Hospital (commissioned on May 8).
May 9, 2019 – Opening of the sculpture "Children of Peace – Children of War".
December 28, 2020 – The tinplate plant in Miory was commissioned.
July 22, 2022 – Opening of a memorial sign in honor of the liberators of Miory from the Nazi invaders in Miory.