Belarus Tour Guide: Ideas for Your Trip!

Minsk post-war residential development in atmospheric photos

The post-war Minsk was a sad sight: only a fifth of the city development remained; the downtown was in ruins. The future of Minsk hang in the balance. There were proposals to build a new city a few kilometers from the old one. But the viewpoint about building Minsk back in the previous place won.

One of the residential neighborhoods of the post-war development was Osmolovka. It got its name from the name of architect Mikhail Osmolovsky, who participated in the project. The new neighborhood rose up in 1945-1949; it was built by German prisoners of war. The complex of standardized two-storey sand-colored houses occupies an area of about 7 hectares in the center of Minsk. The microdistrict is within the streets of Bogdanovicha, Kiseleva, Kommunisticheskaya and Kuibysheva. Colorful courtyards, draped in lush greenery in the warm season, are regular chosen as movie locations.

The center was not the only place developed in Minsk at that time. In 1946 a decision was taken to open a tractor factory on the site of an aircraft factory on the outskirts of the then Minsk. A neighborhood was built for its workers, which mainly featured two- and three-storey houses and a community center. German prisoners were involved in the construction of the neighborhood along with Soviet citizens. The new development area featured spacious courtyards with plenty of green space.

The core of the Traktorozavodskoi neighborhood comprises neoclassical buildings decorated with ornamental details such as stucco, pilasters, balconies of unusual shape, “Greek” relief vases, laurel wreaths, towers with spires, wrought iron ornaments and flower beds under the windows.... The neighborhood includes Oleg Koshevoy, Stakhanovskaya, Budenny, Gritsevets, Dolgobrodskaya, Chebotarev, Shcherbakov, Klumov, Vaneyev streets, Partizansky Avenue, Uchenichesky Lane and Traktorostroitelei Boulevard.

In the 1940s, a neighborhood for workers of Minsk Automobile Plant was built on a similar principle. Unlike Traktorozavodskoi neighborhood, it is divided into two parts (north and south) by Partizansky Avenue. The neighborhood consists of Tsentralnaya, Trudovaya, Sotsialisticheskaya, Liza Chaikina, Shosseinaya, Chelyuskintsev and Kotovskogo streets.