Khoiniki

Khoiniki is the administrative center of the homonymous district of the Gomel region. The city is located 60 km from Mozyr, 105 km from Gomel, 57 km from the border with Ukraine. The roads of Khoiniki are connected with Bragin, Rechitsa, Kalinkovichi. Also the Vasilevichi - Khoiniki railway line passes through the city.

For the first time, Khoiniki is mentioned in written sources as a village in the Bragin region in 1532. In the first half of the XVIIth century, the owners of the town, the princes Vishnevetsky, built a defensive castle in Khoyniki in the marshy floodplain of the Kves river, which existed until the XVIIIth century. As a result of the Second Section of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1793, the Khoiniki were part of the Russian Empire. According to the census of the Russian Empire in 1897, about 2,700 people lived in Khoiniki. In the town there were two distilleries, a sawmill and an iron-processing plant, two water mills, two schools, shops, and hotels.

In 1919, Khoiniki as part of the Gomel region became part of the RSFSR, and in 1926 as a result of the second consolidation of the BSSR, the city again became part of Belarus and the center of the region. Before World War II, the city’s population numbered about 3,500. The Khoiniki were occupied by the German fascist invaders on August 25, 1941. The district was heavily damaged during the German occupation: 26 villages shared the tragic fate of Khatyn. From the Nazis Khoiniki were liberated by the troops of the First Belarusian Front on November 24, 1943.

After the war, the city actively developed and expanded as a result of the accession of nearby villages and villages. The Khoiniki District is one of the three regions of Belarus that suffered the most from the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. In the twenty years that have passed since the accident, more than 20,000 people were evacuated from the territory most contaminated with radionuclides, the population almost halved. 49 out of 99 settlements have ceased to exist. Today Khoiniki is a small regional center where industrial enterprises, cultural and educational institutions function.

The tourist potential of Khoiniki is mainly represented by museum institutions. The Khoiniki District Local History Museum is located in a reconstructed historic building - the Abraham's estate house in the city center. The museum exhibits items of everyday life and ethnography, photographs, documents, personal belongings of participants in the liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl NPP accident. In the village of Glinische of the Khoiniki district there is a branch of the museum of local lore The house of Ivan Melezh. Ivan Melezh is the famous Belarusian Soviet prose writer, playwright, author of the cycle «Polessye Chronicle».

In May 2007, the Museum of the Tragedy of Chernobyl, was founded in Khoiniki, which memorialized the heroes of Chernobyl. In addition, the museum exposition attracts public attention to the problems associated with the Chernobyl disaster and its consequences. The museum is located on the second floor of the Khoiniki local history museum.

On the territory of the Khoiniki district, is located the Polessky Radiation and Ecological Reserve is the largest reserve in Belarus, with an area of more than 2,000 square kilometers. There is no population on the territory of the Poles'e Reserve Zone and any economic activity has ceased. A distinctive feature of the reserve is the presence of high levels of environmental pollution as a result of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant by radionuclides. The territory of the reserve includes 92 resettled villages. To get to the territory of the Polesia radiation-ecological reserve can only be obtained by special permission, which must be issued at least 10 days before the trip. In order to protect the territory from unauthorized entry, 11 checkpoints have been established.

You can visit Khoiniki on the way to Mozyr or Gomel.