Vorša, Vorsha or Orsha (Template:Lang-be, Template:Lang-ru, Polish: Orsza) is a city in Belarus which is a major railway node. Vorša is situated in Eastern Belarus, eighty kilometers from Vitebsk, on the Dnieper River (Template:Lang-be), where the Aršyca River (Аршыца) flows into it.

• Location: 54°28′14″N 30°19′05″E / 54.47056°N 30.31806°E / 54.47056; 30.31806
• Population: 125,000 (est. 2004)
• Phone code: +375 216
• ZIP codes: 211030, 211381 – 211394, 211396 – 211398

Vorša was first mentioned in 1067, making it one of the oldest towns in Belarus.

In 1320, Vorša became a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

In 1398-1407 Vorša castle was built.

In 1555, Mikołaj "Czarny" Radziwiłł founded a Calvinist (Protestant) order in Vorša, one of the first on Belarusian lands. In the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries Vorša was a notable religious center, with dozens of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox churches and orders. The town was also home to a large Jewish population.

Vorša was granted the Magdeburg Rights in 1620.

In 1630, S. Sobal opened the first printing house at the Kuciejna monastery, which became a well-known center of Cyrillic-alphabet publishing.

The city was sacked many times during wars, especially with Muscovy, notably during a thirteen-year war in 1654–1667, which resulted in more than 50% of the population).

The famous Battle of Vorša occurred around 1514. Armies from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, half of which were litvins (Belarusians or Ruthenians from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), defeated the Russian army. The battle is regarded as one a symbol of Belarusian national revival by Belarusian nationalists, but its significance is being suppressed by the Belarusian authorities of Alexander Lukashenka ^{[citation needed]}.

Under the agreement of the [[Partitions of Poland}First Polish partition]] the city became part of the Russian Empire in 1772, and became part of the Mogilyov Gubernia. Under Russian rule, it was stripped from its Magdeburg Rights in 1776 and went into cultural and economic decline. The population dropped sharply to just about 2,000 inhabitants. The city symbol in 1781 was changed to one which included the symbol of the Russian empire and five arrows.

In 1812, the city was badly burned during Napoleon's invasion.

During the First World War, the city was occupied by German forces in February–October 1918. From February 2, 1919, Vorša became a part of Homel region (Vitebsk region, 1920) of Soviet Russia. After the formation of the Soviet Union, it was transferred to the Byelorussian SSR in 1924.

The population before World War Two was about 37,000. The city was occupied by Germany on July 16, 1941. The occupiers founded several concentration camps in the city, where an estimated 19,000 people were killed.

The legendary Katyusha multiple rocket launcher was used here for the first time by Soviet forces on July 14, 1941.

The Soviets encouraged and co-ordinated undercover anti-fascist resistance groups, and one of the most famous was a partisan brigade under the command of Kanstantsin Zaslonau (Konstantin Zaslonov), operating from the Vorša train depot. His group planted ninety-three bombs on German trains in just three months. After March 1942 they left to the forests, continued guerilla warfare, until he was killed on November 14, 1942.

Soviet troops liberated Vorša on June 27, 1944.

• 16th-17th century: est. 5,000
• 1776 (after entry into the Russian Empire): less than 2,000
• 1939: 37,000
• 1970: 100,000
• 2004: 125,000

Vorsha became an important transportation center after the construction of a Dnieper River port. The coming of railway lines in the second half of the nineteenth century greatly contributed to the city growth:

• 1871: Moscow–Minsk–Brest
• 1902: Zhlobin–Mahiloŭ–Viciebsk
• 1923: Vorša–Kryčaŭ
• 1927: Vorša–Lepel

Today, Vorša is a major railway node where the Minsk–Moscow crosses the northern Viciebsk line, which branches south to Mahiloŭ and Kryčaŭ. All trains from Moscow and Saint-Petersburg bound for Western Europe pass through Vorša.

The city is also a junction of the important motorways: The M1 (E30) Moscow-Brest and the M8/M20 (E95) Saint Petersburg - Odessa.

Recently, a high rate of oncological diseases attracted attention to this city. Before 1987 there were less than 100 new cancer patients registered each year. Since then the number grew five-fold, with more than 500 new patients registered per year as of 2004. The biggest growth was registered in 2003–04 (178%). This was widely reported in independent media, but Belarusan officials are silent about the alarming health situation and possible reasons for this high cancer rate. Two possible factors mentioned in the independent media are old Soviet military installations in Vorša, and the Chernobyl disaster.

• Uładzimir Karatkievič, Belarusian writer
• Lev Vygotsky, psychologist
• Mikhail Marynich, opposition politician, who was imprisoned in Vorša
• Igor Zhelezovsky (Ihar Zhalezouski), Olympic medalist speed skater
• Dmitriy Snezhko (Dzmitry Sniazhko), Esperanto activist, author of the first Belarusian-Esperanto dictionary
• Kanstantsin Zaslonau (Konstantin Zaslonov), Soviet partisan (there is a monument of Zaslonau in Vorša)
• Sergei Kolevatykh, artist
• Paul Phillip Levertoff (born Feivel Levertoff), pioneering Hebrew-Christian scholar of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century
• Abraham Dob Baer Ben Solomon, rabbi in Vorša in the second half of the eighteenth century
• Francis Dzierozynski, Polish pioneer Jesuit in America [1]

• Coat of Arms (GIF file)
• Photos on Radzima.org
• Map of Vorša
• Memories from a childhood in Vorša
• Jewish Encyclopedia