Amid the disastrous retreat from Russia in 1812, Napoleon left the remnants of the Grande Armée at Smorgon on December 5 to return to Paris.[4]
From 1921 until 1939, Smarhon (Smorgonie) was part of the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, the town was occupied by the Red Army and, on 14 November 1939, incorporated into the Byelorussian SSR.
Smorgon is known as the place where a school of bear training, the so-called "Bear Academy", was founded.
Smarhon baranki
Up until World War II, Smarhon was widely known for its baranki,[5] traditional Eastern European ring-shaped bread rolls, similar to bagels and bubliki. Russian food historian William Pokhlyobkin considered Smarhon to be the birthplace of baranki.[6] Baranki were supposedly used to feed bears in the Bear Academy. Written accounts of Smarhon baranki appeared in the 19th century. Polish-Lithuanian journalist Adam Kirkor wrote in the encyclopedia Picturesque Russia: "In Smorgon, Oshmyany district, Vilna province, almost all the petty bourgeois population is busy baking small bubliki, or kringles, which are widely known as Smorgon obvaranki. Each traveller would definitely buy several bundles of these bubliki; besides, they are transported to Vilna and other cities."[7]Władysław Syrokomla mentioned Smarhon as "the capital of obwarzanki famous in all Lithuania".[8] Smarhon obwarzanki were a traditional treat at Saint Casimir's Fair in Vilnius.[9][10]
David Raziel (1910–1941), fighter for the emancipation of Jews in Palestine, commander of the Irgun Tzvai Leumi nationalist resistance organization, killed in Iraq on an anti-Nazi mission
↑ Баранки. In: В. В. Похлёбкин, Кулинарный словарь от А до Я. Москва, Центрполиграф, 2000, ISBN5-227-00460-9 (William Pokhlyobkin, Culinary Dictionary. Moscow, Centrpoligraf publishing house, 2000; Russian)
↑ Адам Киркор (1881). Живописная Россия. Vol.1. p.217. (Adam Kirkor (1881). Picturesque Russia (in Russian). Vol.1. p.217.)
↑ Уладзіслаў Сыракомля (1993). "З дарожнага дзённіка 1856 года". Добрыя весці: паэзія, проза, крытыка (in Belarusian). Маст. літ. pp.425–433.
The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Byelorussia or simply Byelorussia, was a republic of the Soviet Union (USSR). It existed between 1920 and 1922 as an independent state, and afterwards as one of fifteen constituent republics of the USSR from 1922 to 1991, with its own legislation from 1990 to 1991. The republic was ruled by the Communist Party of Byelorussia. It was also known as the White Russian Soviet Socialist Republic.
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The Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania and Belorussia, alternatively referred to as the Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania and White Russia or simply Litbel (Lit-Bel), was a Soviet republic that existed within the parts of the territories of modern Belarus and Lithuania for approximately five months during the Lithuanian–Soviet War and the Polish–Soviet War in 1919. The Litbel republic was created in February 1919 formally through the merger of the short-lived Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Socialist Soviet Republic of Belorussia.
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