Описание (английский)
Vyazma is a town and the administrative center of Vyazemsky District in Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Vyazma River, about halfway between Smolensk, the administrative center of the oblast, and Mozhaysk. Throughout its turbulent history, it defended western approaches to Moscow.
Vyazma was first mentioned in a chronicle under the year of 1230, although it is believed to be much older than that. The town was named after the river, whose name was from Russian word "вязь" (vyaz'), meaning "bog" or "swamp". At the time, the town belonged to a lateral branch of the Rurikid House of Smolensk. In 1403, the local princes were expelled by Lithuanians to Moscow, where they took the name of Princes Vyazemsky. The most notable among them were Pyotr Vyazemsky, an intimate friend of the poet Alexander Pushkin and a poet himself, and Sophie Viazemski, a French writer, for a time married to Jean-Luc Godard.
In 1494, Vyazma was captured by the Grand Duchy of Moscow
and turned into a fortress, of which but a single tower remains. Two
important abbeys were embellished with stone churches, including a rare
three-tented church dedicated to Our Lady of Smolensk (Hodegetria) and consecrated in 1638 except Polish occupation between 1611–1634. A barbican
church of the same abbey dates back to 1656, and the town's cathedral
was completed by 1676. Other churches are designed mostly in baroque style.
During the French invasion of Russia
in 1812, there was a battle between the retreating French army (up to
37,000 troops) and the Russian army (25,000 men) near Vyazma on
October 22, 1812. The vanguard of the Russian army under the command of
Lieutenant General Mikhail Miloradovich and a Cossack unit of General Matvey Platov attacked the rearguard corps of Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout east of Vyazma and cut off his retreat. Owing to the intervention of Eugène de Beauharnais and Józef Poniatowski, Davout managed to break through the Russian army's encirclement.
However, the French army's attempts to hold the heights near Vyazma
and the town itself were unsuccessful.
By the evening of October 22,
Russians seized Vyazma, which had been set on fire by the French. The
French lost 6,000 men during the battle; 2,500 soldiers were taken prisoners. The Russians lost around 2,000 men.
In 1941, during World War II, Vyazma was the scene of a battle of encirclement.
Red Army units were trapped in the town after it was surrounded by the
German Third and Fourth Panzer armies. Vyazma was occupied by German
forces between 7 October 1941 and 12 March 1943. In October 1941, 11
Jews were shot in the town and two were hanged. In December 1941, 117
Jews were killed in a mass execution perpetrated by the Einsatzgruppe B.
The town was heavily damaged in the fighting, then rebuilt after the war. U.S. journalist Quentin Reynolds, of Collier's Weekly, visited Vyazma shortly after the German withdrawal in 1943 and gave an account of the destruction in his book The Curtain Rises
(1944), in which he stated that the town's population was reduced from
60,000 to 716, with only three buildings remaining. The Nazis also
established two concentration camps in the town, Dulag 184 and Dulag
230. About 80,000 people died there and were buried in mass graves. The
victims included Jews, political officers, and POWs.