Surazh (russian: Сураж) is a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

and the

administrative center An administrative center is a seat of regional administration or local government, or a county town, or the place where the central administration of a commune A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or ...

Surazhsky District Surazhsky District (russian: Сура́жский райо́н) is an administrativeLaw #13-Z and municipalLaw #3-Z district (raion), one of the twenty-seven in Bryansk Oblast, Russia. It is located in the west of the oblast. The area of the distr ...

Bryansk Oblast Bryansk Oblast (russian: Бря́нская о́бласть, ''Bryanskaya oblast''), also known as Bryanshchina (russian: Брянщина, ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is th ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

, located on the

Iput River , image =Iput River at Duby Cemetery in Dobrush 6 May 2014.jpg , image_size = , image_caption =The Iput in Dobrush , source1_location = , mouth = Sozh , mouth_location = , mouth_coordinates = , subdi ...

southwest of

Bryansk Bryansk ( rus, Брянск, p=brʲansk) is a city and the administrative center of Bryansk Oblast, Russia, situated on the River Desna, southwest of Moscow. Population: Geography Urban layout The location of the settlement was originally ass ...

, the administrative center of the

oblast An oblast (; ; Cyrillic (in most languages, including Russian and Ukrainian): , Bulgarian: ) is a type of administrative division of Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine, as well as the Soviet Union and the Kingdom of ...

. Population: 1,599 (1897).

History

It was first mentioned in the 17th century as the village of Surazhichi (); later as a ''

sloboda A sloboda ( rus, слобода́, p=sləbɐˈda) was a kind of settlement in the history of the Old Russian regions Povolzhye, Central Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. The name is derived from the early Slavic word for "freedom" and may be loosely ...

''. Since 1781 it has been known as the town of Surazh-na-Iputi (), and since 1797—as simply Surazh. Jews apparently first settled in Surazh in the first half of the 18th century. In 1897 the Jewish population of Surazh of 2,398 comprised 60 percent of the total population. The Jews of Surazh suffered from pogroms in October 1905 and at the end of winter and in the spring of 1917. In 1918 a pogrom was carried out in Surazh by Red Army soldiers. In 1939 the 2,052 Jews of Surazh comprised about 23 percent of the total population. The town was occupied by the Germans on August 17, 1941. The Jews were forced into a ghetto after which the homes they left were damaged and then burned. In March 1942 all the ghetto inmates were shot near Kislovka village. Surazh was liberated by the Red Army on September 25, 1943.

Administrative and municipal status

Within the framework of administrative divisions, Surazh serves as the

.Law #13-Z As an administrative division, it is incorporated within Surazhsky District as Surazhsky Urban Administrative Okrug.Law #69-Z As a municipal division, Surazhsky Urban Administrative Okrug is incorporated within Surazhsky Municipal District as Surazhskoye Urban Settlement.Law #3-Z

Ecological problems

As a result of the

Chernobyl disaster The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union. It is one of only two nuc ...

on April 26, 1986, part of the territory of Bryansk Oblast has been contaminated with

radionuclide A radionuclide (radioactive nuclide, radioisotope or radioactive isotope) is a nuclide that has excess nuclear energy, making it unstable. This excess energy can be used in one of three ways: emitted from the nucleus as gamma radiation; transfer ...

s (mainly Gordeyevsky, Klimovsky, Klintsovsky, Krasnogorsky, Surazhsky, and

Novozybkovsky District Novozybkovsky District (russian: Новозы́бковский райо́н) is an administrativeLaw #13-Z and municipalLaw #3-Z district (raion), one of the twenty-seven in Bryansk Oblast, Russia. It is located in the west of the oblast and bord ...

s). In 1999, some 226,000 people lived in areas with the contamination level above 5 Curie/km², representing approximately 16% of the oblast's population.

References

Notes

Sources

* * *

External links

The murder of the Jews of Surazh
during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, at

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

website. {{Authority control Cities and towns in Bryansk Oblast Surazhsky Uyezd Smolensk Voivodeship Holocaust locations in Russia