Petrovichi, Smolensk Oblast
Coordinates: 53°59′N 32°09′E / 53.983°N 32.150°E
Petrovichi (Russian: Петро́вичи) is a rural locality (a village) in Shumyachsky District of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located about 400 kilometers (250 mi) southwest of Moscow and 16 kilometers (9.9 mi) east of the border between Belarus and Russia.
The village is the birthplace of Isaac Asimov. Asimov left at the age of three, with his parents and sister, emigrating to the United States. There is a stone memorial at the site of his birth.
In the Russian Empire, Petrovichi was a shtetl in Klimovichsky Uyezd (an uyezd with the seat in Klimovichi) of Mogilev Governorate. The governorate, historically Belarusian land, was a part of the Empire's Northwestern Krai. Petrovichi's population was half Jewish, half Belarusian. It had both a church and a synagogue, each one with a school attached to it. According to Asimov's memoirs, the place had never known of pogroms. There were amicable business connections and even friendships between the two communities. Asimov even reports non-Jews paying a friendly visit to the local synagogue on at least one occasion.
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