Minsk

Minsk, chief town of a Russian government, stands on an affluent of the Beresina, 331 miles by rail ENE. of Warsaw. Pop. (1893) 80,070, many of whom are Jews. The town existed in the 11th century; was Lithuanian in the 13th and Polish in the 15th; and was annexed by Russia in 1793. The government of Minsk has an area of 35,282 sq. m., and a pop. (1895) of 1,993,475, embracing White Russians (67 per cent.), Lithuanians (4½ per cent.), Poles (11 per cent.), and Jews (10 per cent.), with Tartars and Germans. Seventy per cent. of the soil is covered with marshes, swamps, moors, lakes, and forests; less than 24 per cent. of the total area is actually cultivated.