Kobrin

a city in Brest Oblast, Byelorussian SSR, located where the Dnieper-Bug Canal merges with the Mukhavets River, 52 km east of Brest. Kobrin is a highway junction and a station on the Brest-Gomel’ railroad line. Population, 26,300 (1972).

A construction materials combine and several factories are located in the city, including a tool-making plant, a motor-vehicle repair plant, a factory making reinforced-concrete structural elements, a flax mill, a creamery, a cannery, a poultry farm, a clothing factory, a weaving factory, and a furniture factory. The A. V. Suvorov Military Historical Museum is located in the city (Suvorov lived in Kobrin for several years).

The first reference to Kobrin dates from the 11th century. It became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the first half of the 14th century and was the administrative center of Kobrin Principality from 1404 to 1519. The city has been part of Russia since 1795, becoming a district city in the same year.

The vanguard of the Russian Third Army of General A. P. Tormasov defeated a 4,000-man detachment of the Saxon corps of General J. Reynier near Kobrin during the Patriotic War of 1812. On July 10 (22), in the region of Lutsk, Tormasov attacked the rear of Reynier’s troops—these troops were threatening the southern flank of the Russian Second Army—and sent advance detachments to Brest and Kobrin. On July 15 (27), Russian cavalry surrounded a detachment commanded by General Klingel in Kobrin. With the approach of Russian infantry, the enemy surrendered, and 2,500 men and eight pieces of artillery were captured. Reynier’s principal forces retreated from Antopol’ to Slonim to join the Austrian corps of General K. Schwarzenberg. Kobrin was occupied by Polish troops in 1919, remaining part of bourgeois Poland until 1939. It was the administrative center of the district of Poles’e Województwo (Province). In 1939, Kobrin became part of Brest Oblast of the Byelorussian SSR. The city was occupied by fascist German troops from June 23, 1941, to July 20, 1944.