Pinsk — a city in south-western Belarus, in the central part of the Polesie region, at the confluence of the Pina and Pripyat rivers. Population: 123,800 (1991).

First mentioned in 1097. Capital of the independent Principality of Pinsk. Under Lithuanian rule from the 13th to the 16th century; incorporated into Poland in 1569. Seized by Russia in the partition of 1793. In 1920, after the Polish-Bolshevik War, returned to the Polish Republic. Occupied by the Soviets in September 1939 and incorporated into the USSR. Part of independent Belarus since 1991.

A modest industrial centre: shipbuilding (construction and repair of river vessels), timber, clothing and food industries. Road junction and inland port.

Kapuściński on Pinsk and Polesie

Lapidarium IV — “The day before yesterday (30 June 1997) I returned from Pinsk. Pinsk today is three different cities. There is, then:

— Old Pinsk: single-storey or two-storey houses amid gardens and orchards, here and there wooden fences, stone-rimmed wells, cobbled streets that once bore names like Bednarskaya, Franciscan, and Błotna. This Pinsk is shrinking — demolished, decimated — but it still exists, you can still see it, still be captivated by its small-town romanticism.

— Soviet Pinsk, Khrushchev-and-Brezhnev-era Pinsk: the city of grey or brick apartment blocks, heavy, primitive, shoddy prefab construction, muddy, gloomy, unlit housing estates.

— Pinsk of the 1990s: post-perestroika, nouveau riche, all villas, for the chosen, for the winners, a paradise of New Belarusians and New Russians.”

Ryszard Kapuściński in conversation with Barbara Hołub, Przekrój, 24 September 1992:

“In Polesie the poverty was terrible, quite unimaginable. And poverty is still there. One might say, then, that my roots are in destitution. Perhaps that is why I became interested in the Third World. I was able to understand it and feel somewhat at home there.

My childhood home I remember as if through a mist. I have some notion of it now, because people showed it to me when I visited Pinsk in 1979. Pinsk was a small town where there were few Poles — everyone knew each other at least by sight. Poles made up barely a few per cent of Pinsk’s population. Ten per cent were Belarusians and Lithuanians; the rest, about 73 per cent, were Jews. According to pre-war statistics, Pinsk was one of the most Jewish cities in Poland. The local Poles were mostly — as we would say today — newcomers, without real prospects of putting down roots. If anyone put down roots in the Polesie soil, it was the nobility — mostly of Polish lineage or so thoroughly polonised as to consider themselves Poles. That Polesie nobility was not particularly wealthy; compared with the landed gentry of Lesser Poland, it was downright poor. The Radziwiłłs were rich — they held considerable estates in Polesie. But that was an entirely different sphere.

As for the ordinary Pinsk Poles, they can be divided into three categories. The first, and most numerous, were military men. The 84th Regiment of Royal Polesie Riflemen was garrisoned in Pinsk. Besides the infantry there was a river naval flotilla. When the Soviet army entered these territories in September 1939, the sailors took their vessels out onto the lakes and scuttled them. Because of the low water level the ships sank only partially and for a long time their silhouettes projected sadly above the surface.

Besides the military, a large group of Poles were clergy. There was, of course, a Catholic church in Pinsk. The city was known beyond Poland’s borders for its strong Jesuit centre — the most significant in Eastern Europe. The third category, perhaps the smallest, were teachers. My parents belonged to this third group. They were not from Polesie. My mother came from Lesser Poland, from Bochnia; my father from the Kielce region.

After the establishment of the Second Polish Republic, the authorities undertook the re-polonisation of Polesie. Young people who could not find work elsewhere were offered posts in Polesie, including in education. My father came there and enrolled in the teachers’ seminary in Prużany — the same seminary that Piotr Jaroszewicz attended. Father worked first in Unin, then in Pinsk. I suspect that it was while working in Pinsk that he met my mother. I regret knowing so little about all this.

I was born in 1932, so when the war broke out I was only seven years old. Afterwards I was not especially interested in Pinsk or Polesie. As you know, my interests drifted far away. I can tell you more about Africa, South America, the Middle East.

What remains in my memory from those years are isolated events, fragments, impressions, colours, gleams. For instance, I only learned years later about the fire in Pinsk in 1935. I don’t remember the fire itself, but there remained a sensation of brightness, of some terrible light. All of this is very literary, elusive, not firmly anchored in facts — an indispensable reliability. Even somewhat later events become tangled and confused.”

Ryszard Kapuściński, from a review of Grzegorz Rąkowski’s The Spell of Polesie:

“(…) there is a sizeable chapter about Pinsk, where I was once born, in a house at 43 Peretz Street (now Suvorov Street), and where I lived until 1940. Little remains of my pre-war Pinsk. Before the war the city had a distinct architectural character that it lost under the Soviet era. The ethnic composition of Pinsk was entirely different — 73 per cent of its inhabitants were Jewish (no other city in the world had such a high percentage of Jewish population at the time), 10 per cent were Poles. Now mainly Russians and Belarusians live there; some 200 to 300 Poles remain. The old Kresy people are dejected by the state of Pinsk today. (…)”

source: kapuscinski.info