Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 221, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1917 — PINSK WAS RUINED [ARTICLE]

PINSK WAS RUINED

Railroads Cause Commerce of Important Russian City to Decline Rapidly. SUFFERED MUCH FROM FIRE Much of Water-Borne Traffic Which Formerly Passed Through Town Diverted —Exchange Point for Trade With Germany. The important district town of Pinsk, ‘with a population of 37,000 before the outbreak of the European war, nearly two-thirds of whom were Jews, is described in a bulletin issued by the National Geographic society following the news that the city has been set on fire by the Russians in their effort to drive out the Germans who captured it two years sigo. “In the midst of the great swamps through which the Prii>et river seeps toward the Dnieper, Pinsk was an important industrial center at the beginning of the world war, its factories for the manufacture of Russian leather being. famous, while its output of oils, soaps, beer, pottery, luinlier and matches was considerable. Ruined by Railroads. “Contrary to the usual trend -Of progress, railroads have caused Pinsk’s commerce to decline, for when.the steel arteries of trade began to thread the polietude (forest land) district of the province of Minsk they diverted much of the water-borne traffic which formerly passed through this town. Pinsk was an exchange point for trade with Germany and Poland via the DnieperBug canal, with the fertile Dneiper valley via the Pripet river, and with Baltic provinces and the Niemen river valley via the Oginsky canat

“Since 1872 the Russian government has been more or less active in.reclaiming much of the swamp land which surrounds Pinsk, and it was estimated that 20 years ago fully 8.000,000 acres had been drained at a cost of not more than 3-shillings to the acre. This drained land increased in value from 4 rubles to 28 rubles per dessyatln (equivalent to 2.7 acres). “Pinsk is situated on the Pina river, a tributary of the Pripet. and Is 105 miles by rail east of Brest-Lltovsk. Minsk, the capital of the province or ‘government’ of Minsk, is 196 miles to the northeast by rail. Has Been Ravaged by War. “Pinsk first figured in the chronicles of medieval Europe at the end of the eleventh century, when it was a possession of a prince of Kiev. In the following century it was annexed to the principality of Minsk, and after the Mongol invasion of 1232 it became the' chief town of its own principality. “The - present war is not the first occasion when Pinsk has been.ravaged by fire and sword. During the terrible uprising of the Cossacks under Bogdan Uhmlelnicki. instigator of the indescribably horrible ‘serfs’ fury,* it was captured by the Poles, and 14,000 of its people were put to the sword and the torch applied to 5,000 homes. Less than a decade later (1648) it was burned by' the Russians. Just as in the present catastrophe. Then came Charles XII. 58 years later, and reduced both the town and its suburbs to ashes. for the third time. “Pinsk became a Russian town in 1795.”