My city is Zaporozhye, (part 1)
My city is Zaporozhye
My friend Sigur provoked me with his story about his native Vyborg, and I thought that we were writing various reviews about distant countries and cities, but we could not write about our native Palestine. But in my native city of Zaporozhye, I lived all my life from birth, was absent only while serving in the Soviet army near the glorious city on the Neva, and it was only a year.
How to start? It turns out that if I was born 65 years ago in Zaporozhye, then its history is divided into two parts before Christmas (my birth) and after Christmas. Well, almost like Christ.
Part 1. History of my land before Christmas (of course mine).
Everyone should know that a lot of peoples and civilizations have passed through the current Zaporozhye lands. Even from Herodotus, the country of Scythia was known, which was located in our steppes, it left many mounds, stone women and other monuments of antiquity. When excavating mounds, archaeologists found gold jewelry, harness, weapons, comparable in beauty to Greek ones. All this is now in St. Petersburg, and in Moscow, and something in Kyiv. A wave of Huns swept through these steppes, who fought on equal terms with the Roman Empire. Next - the Sarmatians and other nomadic peoples.
Imagine boundless feather grass steppes, waist-deep grass, the smell of wormwood above the steppe. Pieces of such a steppe can still be found on the island of Khortytsya. In the middle of this Wild Field, the mighty Dnieper flows, which near Zaporozhye squeezed between granite rocks, crashed against the Dnieper rapids and overflowed near the island of Khortitsa, calmed its rapids, its banks were in centuries-old oak forests, reeds, lakes, channels, what is now called the Dnieper floodplains . There is an unbelievable amount of birds in the floodplains, animals in the forests, fish in eriks and lakes. This place was also called the Great Meadow. - a legend! These floodplains can be called a lake district.
But back to history. The Varangians, together with the Slavs, create the state of Kievan Rus, it becomes so powerful that it begins to threaten the Byzantine Empire, the Russians repeatedly besiege Constantinople and even impose tribute on it. One of the episodes remembers the ancient Khortitsa. After a successful campaign against Byzantium, Prince Svyatoslav returned to Kyiv with a rich tribute. There are different versions of this event, but according to one of them, the Pechenegs, incited by Byzantium, surrounded the Russian army in the bed of the Old Dnieper near Khortitsa, defeated it, almost completely destroying it. The previously invincible Prince Svyatoslav also perished. On Khortitsa there is a memorial sign about this, in the park we recently erected a monument to him.
Recently, a fisherman in these places pulled out a Russian sword of those times for a bait, they suggest that this is the sword of Svyatoslav or from his close squad, now they are sorting it out in Kyiv. Such a sensation!
The state of Kievan Rus perished from the Tatar-Mongol invasion. The Great Meadow, the Wild Field was empty, only detachments of the Crimean Tatars sometimes broke the silence of these places.
In the floodplains of the Dnieper, on Khortitsa, dashing guys from Ukraine, Russia, from other places begin to gather, now they would be called adventurers, they unite, choose chieftains. This is how the Zaporizhzhya Sich is formed - a free Cossack republic. You can learn about all this, about the traditions of the Cossacks, their victories and defeats in the Museum of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, where, in addition to the museum, there are reconstructed kurens, a Cossack church, protective tyny Cossacks. This museum is located on Khortitsa. There you can also see the equestrian theater of the Cossacks (dzhigitovka, etc. ). The Cossacks raided the villages of the Crimean Khanate, went out on their seagull boats to the Black Sea, where they terrified the coastal Crimean towns. They participated in the wars of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, after the reunification of Ukraine with Russia, they fought in Russian wars. The Zaporizhzhya Sich was dispersed by Empress Catherine II, part of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks went to the Danube, most of them, at the urgent invitation of the Empress, went to the Kuban to the cordon with the Caucasian peoples, where they live to this day.
In 1736, on the island of Bayda near Khortitsa, the Zaporizhzhya shipyard and a fortress were laid, in which 2 officers', 8 soldiers' dugouts and 31 Cossack huts were built. A large number of ships that were built in Bryansk in 1736, when crossing the Dnieper rapids, received significant damage or sank. Therefore, the command of the Russian army decided to build a ship base beyond the rapids. According to archival reports, at the shipyard in the period 1738-1739. based about 400 ships of various types. At that time, the famous naval commander Vice Admiral N. A. Senyavin visited Khortitsa. Underwater archaeologists found two ships in the bed of the Old Dnieper, they were restored and can be seen in the museum.
After the end of the war, and also due to the spread of the plague in the army, the Russian troops left the Khortitsky island and the Zaporozhye shipyard
After the defeat of the Sich by the tsarist troops on June 5.1775, Khortytsya, as a gift from Catherine II, went to Prince Potemkin. By order of G. A. Potemkin, a garden was laid on the island. An old corporal, who lived nearby in a dugout, was assigned to guard him. Since then, the area (tract) has been named Kapralovo, and the mounds that were located on the highest point of Khortitsa are Potemkinsky.
They even said that Potemkin decided to connect his palace with bridges across the Dnieper. Archival materials and a photocopy of the plan of the famous local historian V. G. Fomenko testify to this. The full title is “The Plan of the Garden on Khortitsky Island of His Serene Highness Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin from Testimony at One of the Different Buildings”, which shows a house, a carriage house and stables, a Turkish house, a Chinese temple, a temple of victory and even an Egyptian pyramid on the ground cut by beams. In 1789, Potemkin handed over Khortitsa to the state treasury.
Instead of the Sich, a chain of small fortresses was built to protect against the Tatars, one of which was the Alexander Fortress in 1775, which later grew into the city of Aleksandrovsk. The impetus for its development was the Southern railway road to the Crimea, so the town gradually developed, some kind of industry, trade, mainly in bread, appeared. Mennonite Germans lived on Khortitsa, you can see their architecture.
Then - a revolution, across the expanses of Ukraine, who just did not walk into a civil war. The Germans, various Gaidamaks, Petliurists, but most of all I remember the detachments of Father Makhno, who wanted to create a peasant-anarchist republic.
But all the battles ended, peacetime came. Since 1921, the name of the city has been changed and since then it has been called Zaporozhye, and the former Aleksandrovsk suddenly received a “lucky ticket”, because
According to the Lenin GOELRO plan, the Dnieper hydroelectric power station should be built on the Dnieper rapids, which would solve the problems of navigation on the Dnieper. The dam would flood the rapids, and ships could sail from the headwaters of the Dnieper to the very mouth. And the electricity from the hydroelectric power station will go to metallurgical plants, which will also be built in Zaporozhye.
And the Great Construction began. The project was created by American engineers; they built cottages on the right bank. Barracks are being built for workers on the Right and Left Banks. These are one-story buildings, where for families there are small compartments-konurki without amenities and kitchens, for singles - two-story bunks. Barrack settlements are being formed, I remember counting more than fifteen of them. And this human anthill is building the Great Dam, carts carry the earth, knead concrete with their feet, but the Dneproges has been built, the factories too. (in November 1927.13 thousand people worked on the construction, then in October 1931 there were already 43 thousand, and in 193.63 thousand builders. And this is without taking into account their family members).
I believe that this is a great feat and should not be forgotten. Dneproges is still one of the most beautiful buildings in Ukraine, worth a look! Of course, not the pyramids, but still! For 10 years after the formation of the Union, hungry, shoeless and undressed people built a gigantic structure, and this is after the devastation in the civil war. Dneprges began to be built in 1927 and put into operation in 1932.
And that's what we have by the forties. The city of Zaporozhye consists of the Right Bank, which was formed from the cottages of Americans and the barracks of 5 villages; on the Left Bank, the so-called. Sotsgorod on the site of the sixth barrack settlement. It is interesting that the project of the social city at the Paris exhibition received the Grand Prix. Other barrack settlements also exist, people live in them.
Here, next to the socialist city, there is an industrial site where factories are located - Aluminum, Zaporizhstal, Special Steel, Electrode, Ferroalloy, Glass, etc. , etc.
In the south of the city, near the railway station, there is old Aleksandrovsk, the maximum building is 3-4 floors, and mostly one-story. And between them is the huge village of Voznesenka. All this is connected by a tram, the benefit of electricity is plenty. The tram also runs along the Dneproges dam, connecting the Right and Left banks.
Patriotic War! Here again the Cossacks accomplished a feat. While the Red Army fought to the death, not letting the Germans into the city, the workers of the factories and the population of the city, under bombing and shelling, completely dismantled the equipment of the factories and took them out of Zaporozhye beyond the Urals. True, in order to detain the Germans, it was necessary to blow up the dam, the attacking Germans were washed away by a giant wave into the lower reaches, but many Red Army soldiers and civilians died. Eternal memory, but there was a war! I will not write about the occupation of Zaporozhye, it was like in all cities of Ukraine. But not all Ukrainian cities had Hitler. He visited us.
The liberation of Zaporozhye was awaited by the entire population of the city, finally, Soviet tanks broke into the city, one of them forever stands on a pedestal on Svoboda Square. The Germans wanted to blow up the hydroelectric power station itself, the body of the dam, but it didn’t work out, our scouts managed to cut the wires and the explosion did not take place. Almost all of them died. Traces of the shelling of the Dneproges were left on the dam forever.
In the lower reaches of the Dnieper near Zaporozhye, the mass heroism of the Red Army made it possible to capture bridgeheads on the Right Bank, from which the Germans were thrown away from my city. This feat is captured by the Crossing monument.
War is over. The time has come to rebuild what has been destroyed.
But this already applies to my era. My birthday took place, and I was already present at this, although I don’t remember everything on that birthday (Joke).
The next chapter will be with my memories.
