Usvyaty

Usvyaty stands among lakes north-east of Vitebsk, in a district long contested by the rulers of Polotsk, Lithuania and Moscow. A chronicle records that Yaroslav the Wise ceded Usvyaty and Vitebsk to Prince Bryachislav of Polotsk in 1021. In the fourteenth century it came under Lithuanian rule, and Prince Algirdas was associated with the town through his marriage to the Vitebsk princely house.

In the sixteenth century Usvyaty changed hands between Lithuania and the Russian state. Ivan IV ordered a fortress built after Russian troops occupied it in 1562, but Stephen Báthory's forces captured it in 1580 during the Livonian War. The settlement returned to Lithuanian control under the truce of Andrusovo in 1667. The first partition of the Commonwealth brought it into the Russian Empire in 1772.