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Baranavichy or Baranovichi is a city in the Brest Region of western Belarus. (2025). 9789854581989, Тэхналогія. ISBN 9789854581989 It serves as the administrative center of Baranavichy District, though it is administratively separate from the district. As of 2025, it has a population of 170,817 and is the eighth largest city in the country.
The city is home to an important railway junction and to Baranavichy State University. It is characterized by a favourable geographical position and is a major junction of the most important railways and highways. It is close to the main gas pipeline, has a developed system of energy and water supply, and a favourable climate. A number of large industrial enterprises are located in the city, which is one of the most important industrial, cultural, and educational centers of Belarus.
In 1874, a railway junction appeared. In the wooden station buildings lived the railway workers of Baranavichy. The new railway linked Moscow with the western outskirts of Imperial Russia.
The impetus for more intensive settlement of the areas adjacent to the station from the south was the 27 May 1884 decision by the governor of Minsk to build a town, Rozvadovo, on the lands of the landlord, Rozwadowski. The town was built according to the governor's approved plan. The contained 120 houses and 500 people.
The plans approved by Emperor Alexander III assumed that there would also be one railway linking Vilnius, Luninets, Pinsk, and Rivne. Therefore, from the station, the Moscow-Brest railway crossed the track of the Vilnius-Rovno from Polesie railway. At the junction was another station, Baranavichy (according to Polesie Railways), which became the second centre of the city.
As before, workers and traders settled near the station. The new settlement was called New Baranavichy, unlike Rozvadovo, which became informally called Old Baranavichy. It was developed on the land owned by peasants of the villages near the new station (Svetilovichi, Gierow, and Uznogi). More convenient than the landlords' land, its lease terms and proximity to administrative agencies contributed to the rapid growth of this settlement.
After the settlement was left by the Germans, it was captured on 5 January 1919, by the Soviets. In the early stages of the Polish–Soviet War, it was briefly captured by the Poles on 18 March 1919Lech Wyszczelski, Wojna polsko-rosyjska 1919–1920, Bellona, Warsaw, 2010, p. 70 (in Polish) and again captured, for a longer period, in April 1919, five months after Poland regained independence. The Russians retook it on 17 July 1920, but the Poles took it again on 30 September 1920.
On 1 August 1919, as Baranowicze, Baranavichy received city rights and became the administrative centre of a powiat in the Polish Nowogródek Voivodeship. According to the 1921 census, the city had a population of 11,471, 56.2% Jews, 25.5% Polish people, 16.6% Belarusians and 1.5% Russians. Soon, the city started to grow and became an important centre of trade and commerce for the area. The city's Orthodox cathedral was built in the Neoclassical style from 1924 to 1931 and was decorated with mosaics that had survived the demolition of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Warsaw. In 1930, a monument to Hungarians Lieutenant colonel Artur Buol, a hero of Polish fights in the Polish–Soviet War, was unveiled in Baranowicze. In the interwar years, the grandparents and the father of Polish politicians Lech Kaczyński and Jarosław Kaczyński lived in Baranowicze.
The city was also an important military garrison, with a KOP Cavalry Brigade, the 20th Infantry Division and the Nowogródzka Cavalry Brigade stationed there. Because of the fast growth of local industry, a local branch of the Polish Radio was opened in 1938. In 1939 Baranavichy had almost 30,000 inhabitants and was the biggest and the most important city in the Nowogródek Voivodeship.
During the invasion of Poland at the start of World War II, the Soviet Union took the city on 17 September 1939 and annexed it to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. The local Jewish population of 9,000 was joined by approximately 3,000 Jewish refugees from the Polish areas occupied by Germany. After the start of Operation Barbarossa, the city was seized by the Wehrmacht on 27 June 1941. It became part of Generalbezirk Weißruthenien in Reichskommissariat Ostland during the German occupation. In August 1941, the Baranavichy Ghetto was created in the city, with more than 12,000 Jews kept in terrible conditions in six buildings on the outskirts. From 4 March to 14 December 1942, the entire Jewish population of the ghetto was sent to various extermination camps and killed in . Only about 250 survived the war. Hugo Armann, head of a unit that arranged travel for soldiers and security police, saved six people from a murder squad and another 35 to 40 people who worked for him. The Germans operated a subcamp of the Stalag 337 prisoner-of-war camp in the city. (2025). 9780253060891, Indiana University Press, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. ISBN 9780253060891
The city was recaptured by the Red Army on 8 July 1944.Soviet General Staff, Operation Bagration, ed. & trans. R. W. Harrison, Helion & Co., Ltd., Solihull, UK, 2016, Kindle ed., vol. 2, ch. 10 It was the seat of the Baranavichy Voblast from 1939 to 1941 and again from 1944 to 1954. Meanwhile, intensive industrialization took place. In 1991, the city became part of independent Belarus.
The population density is more than 2,000 people per .
Baranavichy is located on flat terrain at an altitude of from above sea level, with the altitude of the city itself being above sea level. The city extends from west to east, from south to north, from the southwest (from Brestskaya Street) to the northeast (to Fabrichnaya Street), and from the north (Sovetskaya Street) to the southeast (Frolenkov street). The total area of the city is , as of 12 August 2012).
The northernmost point of the city is Korolik Street, located to the north of the Baranovichsky automatic lines plant at 53°10' north latitude, and the southernmost is the village of Uznogi, located at 53°06' north latitude. The extreme western point is located in the vicinity of Badaka Street at 25°57' east longitude, and the extreme eastern point is located in the vicinity of the intersection of Egorov Street and Kashtanovaya Street at 26°04' east longitude. The geometric center of the city is Lenin Square. In total, the city has about five hundred streets and lanes with an overall length of , of which are landscaped and lighted.
The first rail line through the city opened in around 1870. Additional railways helped the city become an important rail junction.
The large airbase, south of the city, is used by the Belarusian Air Force.
In 2022 Jelgava, Latvia (2006) suspended the cooperation agreements with Baranavichy due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Jelgava suspends cooperation agreement with twin cities Magadan (Russia) and Baranovichi (Belarus)
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