Gomel, Mogilev & the East

The east lies on the old river roads between the Baltic and the Black Sea, and its first power was Turaŭ, on the Pripyat, recorded in the late 10th century as the seat of a principality; its 12th-century bishop Cyril of Turaŭ is remembered as a writer and saint. Gomel on the Sozh is first mentioned in 1142, and Mogilev on the Dnieper in 1267. The region passed into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and then the Commonwealth, and it suffered badly on the frontier with Muscovy, above all in the wars of the 1650s and 1660s, when Mogilev's townspeople rose against their Muscovite garrison in 1661.

The first partition of 1772 brought the region into the Russian Empire. Catherine the Great gave Gomel to Field Marshal Pyotr Rumyantsev, whose family built its palace, and in 1834 it passed to Prince Ivan Paskevich. Babruysk gained a large fortress. The towns became trading centres with large Jewish populations, and Gomel suffered a pogrom in 1903. From 1915 to 1917 Mogilev housed the headquarters of the Russian army, where Nicholas II lived for long spells as commander-in-chief.

The Second World War destroyed Mogilev, Gomel and Babruysk and murdered their Jewish communities; Soviet rebuilding made them industrial cities. On 26 April 1986 the Chernobyl explosion, just across the border, spread fallout over large parts of Gomel and Mogilev Regions. Villages were evacuated and the southern districts closed as a reserve, and the disaster's legacy remains part of daily life.

The east is the most Russian-speaking and Soviet-shaped part of Belarus, with close family and trade ties to neighbouring Bryansk and Smolensk in Russia and, until 2022, to Chernihiv in Ukraine. Orthodoxy is strongly dominant, and war memorials and Victory Day parades carry great weight in cities rebuilt from ruins.

Polesia, in the south, has a distinct culture. Its villages among the marshes were isolated for centuries, and their dialects sit between Belarusian and Ukrainian. Folklorists still record Polesian songs, spring rituals and weaving and embroidery traditions, and dugout boats were used on the rivers into living memory. Vetka, near Gomel, was founded by Old Believers fleeing Russia in the late 17th century and became famous for its icons, manuscripts and woodcarving, now collected in a museum.

Chernobyl shaped identity as well as the landscape: evacuated villages, annual memorial days on 26 April, health programmes and summer stays abroad for children became part of the region's shared experience. Mogilev and Gomel both have theatre and folk-ensemble traditions, and Gomel's riverside park is the scene of the city's summer festivals.

Gomel, with about 500,000 people, is the second city of Belarus, and Mogilev has about 360,000. Babruysk, with about 200,000, Mazyr, Zhlobin, Rechytsa, Svetlahorsk and Asipovichy are the other main towns, while rural Polesia and the Chernobyl-affected south have lost much of their population.

The region is heavily industrial. Gomel makes combine harvesters and other farm machinery, Mazyr has one of the country's two big oil refineries, the small Belarusian oilfields lie around Rechytsa, Zhlobin has a large steel works, Babruysk makes tyres, and Mogilev builds lifts and chemical fibres. Agriculture continues outside the contaminated zones, under strict monitoring of milk, meat and crops.

Daily routines follow the national rhythm, but the war in Ukraine is felt more closely here: the Ukrainian border is closed, military traffic has increased, and families with relatives across it can no longer visit. Gomel keeps a lively centre along the Sozh, with its parks and river beach busy on summer evenings.

Eastern cooking is the national potato table with Polesian and Russian touches. Draniki, potato babka and kalduny are everyday food, often with machanka pork gravy, and borsch and sauerkraut soups are eaten year-round. In Polesia the rivers supply pike, tench, catfish and crucian carp, fried, baked with sour cream or cooked into yushka fish soup, and villages keep bees and gather cranberries from the marshes.

Pickles are central: cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage and wild mushrooms preserved for winter, although gathering in the contaminated south is restricted and state laboratories test produce. Buckwheat, pork, salo, sausages and home-baked rye bread fill out the table, and blini, thin pancakes, are eaten at Maslenitsa and at memorial meals.

Gomel's Spartak factory produces chocolates and sweets sold across the country, and the region's dairies make milk products such as tvarog, fresh curd cheese, and smetana, sour cream. Kvass in summer, tea in winter and samahon in the villages are the usual drinks.

Gomel's palace and park are its centrepiece: the Rumyantsev-Paskevich Palace, a classical mansion on the high bank of the Sozh, stands in a landscaped park with the Peter and Paul Cathedral, the Paskevich family chapel and a riverside promenade. The city also has a regional museum in the palace and a bridge across the Sozh to its beaches. Vetka's Museum of Old Belief lies a short drive from Gomel.

Mogilev has its rebuilt town hall and square, the St Nicholas convent, the Stanislaus church and the site of the tsar's wartime headquarters, and on its outskirts the Buinichi Field memorial marks the 1941 defence of the city. Babruysk keeps the remains of its Berezina fortress, and in the Mogilev Region's east the old town of Mstsislaw has old Carmelite and Jesuit churches and a castle hill.

The south belongs to the Pripyat marshes of Polesia. Pripyatsky National Park protects floodplain oak woods, oxbow lakes and water meadows, and boat trips on the Pripyat and the Turaŭ meadow reserve draw birdwatchers in spring to see waders, storks and eagles. Turaŭ itself has a museum on the site of the medieval town. Further south-east, the Polesie State Radiation-Ecological Reserve covers the evacuated Chernobyl districts, closed to ordinary visits.