An Archaeologist Recounted How Students Discovered Belarus's Most Mysterious City

• 8.10.2026, 17:42

It lasted only 12 years.

A blogger who writes posts about the history, archaeology, and ethnography of Belarus shared on the social media platform Threads how ordinary first-year history students at Belarusian State University made one of the most significant discoveries about our country’s past.

“In 2008, we went on an archaeological field trip. Half the group went to Yurovichi to excavate a 9th–11th-century settlement, while the other half went to the Svetlogorsk District to dig up an ancient Scythian settlement,” he writes. There wasn’t a trace of the Scythians there. We started finding coins and 17th-century thalers. Later, we discovered a mass grave of people showing signs of violent death.

There wasn’t supposed to be anything at that site. We started combing through the archives and discovered that this was the town of Kazimir, which was destroyed in 1655 by Khmelnytsky’s Cossacks.
This town existed for only 12 years. Despite this, it was a center of trade and crafts governed by Magdeburg law. The town was so thoroughly destroyed that after the war, it was never rebuilt, and its very existence was simply forgotten until 2008.

I really regret not being part of that particular group. To say we were jealous would be an understatement. A TV crew came and filmed a fantastic segment. That’s how ordinary first-year students made history.”

As evidenced by the “Privilege of Queen Cecilia Renata of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania,” Kazimir was founded from the settlement of Sloboda in the Bobruisk district and, from the time of its founding, was governed by Magdeburg law.

The charter was discovered and published by Sergei Rassadin, Ph.D. in History Sergei Rassadin. According to his findings, the town was located on the site of the modern village of Koroleva Sloboda-2 in the Krasnovsky Village Council of the Svetlogorsk District, Gomel Region.