Kryvyi Rih is a city in central Ukraine. It hosts the administration of Kryvyi Rih Raion and its subordinate Kryvyi Rih urban hromada in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The city is part of the Kryvyi Rih Metropolitan Region. Its population is estimated at 603,904 (2022 estimate), making it the seventh-most populous city in Ukraine and the second largest by area. Kryvyi Rih is claimed to be the longest city in Europe.
Located at the confluence of the Saksahan and Inhulets rivers, Kryvyi Rih was founded as a military staging post in 1775. Urban-industrial growth followed Belgian, French and British investment in the exploitation of the area's rich iron-ore deposits, generally called Kryvbas, in the 1880s. Kryvyi Rih gained city status in 1919.
Stalin-era industrialisation built Kryvorizhstal in 1934, the largest integrated metallurgical works in the Soviet Union. After World War II, Kryvyi Rih experienced renewed growth through to the 1970s. The economic dislocation associated with the break-up of the Soviet Union contributed to high unemployment and a large-scale exodus from the city in the 1990s. The privatization of Kryvorizhstal in 2005 was followed by increased foreign and private investment which helped finance urban regeneration. Beginning in 2017, there were major labour protests and strikes.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kryvyi Rih has been the target of frequent Russian missile strikes. It was a focus of the southern Ukraine campaign, but the closest ground advance by Russia stalled some 50 kilometres (31 mi) to the south of the city before it was turned back in March 2022.
Etymology
Kryvyi Rih (Кривий Ріг), which in Ukrainian literally means 'crooked horn' or 'curved cape', was the name originally given in the 18th century to the general area of the present city by Zaporozhian Cossacks. According to local legend, the first village in the area was founded by a "crooked" (Ukrainian slang for 'one-eyed') Cossack named Rih (literally, 'horn'). The name likely derives from the shape of the landmass formed by the confluence of the river Saksahan with the Inhulets.
When governed from St Petersburg under the Tsars (1775-1917), the settlement was identified in Russian as Кривой Рог (Krivoy Rog).
History
Early history
In 1734 the Cossack Zaporozhian Sich (or Host) incorporated the area within the Inhul Palanka division of their de-facto republic. A list of villages and winter camps (zymivnyky) from that time mentions Kryvyi Rih. In 1770, Kryvyi Rih was again recorded as the camp of the Zaporozhian Sich.
In May 1775, after the end of the Russian-Turkish War, Russian authorities established Kryvyi Rih as a staging post, in the tradition of the Mongol yam, on the roads to the Russian garrisons of Kremenchuk, Kinburn foreland and Ochakov. In August 1775, on the direct order of Catherine the Great, the Sich was forcibly dissolved. The Cossack lands were annexed to the Russian province of Novorossiya and distributed among the Russian and Ukrainian gentry.
The early 19th century saw the construction of the first stone houses (1828), and three water mills. In 1860, the village was designated a township.
Industrial growth
Alexander Pol is credited with discovering the Kryvyi Rih Iron Ore Basin (Kryvbas). This stimulated the development of a local mining industry. In 1884, Alexander III started the Catherine Railway Kryvyi Rih and the Kryvbas mines to Dnipro. By 1902, the line had extended a further 505 km to the coal-mining region of Donbas.
In 1880, with 5 million francs of capital, Pol founded the "French Society of Kryvyi Rih Ores". In 1882 16.4 thousand tons of ore were extracted from open-cast operations on the outskirts of town by 150 workers. The first underground mine of the basin began operations in 1886. In 1892, the Hdantsivka ironworks was started. Ore began to be processed locally, spawning new metallurgical enterprises spurred by substantial western, and in particular Belgian, investment. At the same time Kryvyi Rih ore began to feed the German metallurgical industry in Silesia.
At the end of the 19th century the tallest building was the Central Synagogue, built by a thriving Jewish community of artisans, merchants and traders. In 1905, the community was subject to pogroms, in which the authorities were complicit. Many Jewish people left the area, emigrating to Germany, Austria-Hungary and the United States.
The surrounding mines attracted prospectors looking to turn a quick profit. The supply of mined ore soon exceeded demand. Many mines had to cut employment or temporarily suspend operations. Workers, many drawn from the Russian-speaking north (from Great Russia), laboured in harsh conditions with no security. Work in the mines induced lung cancer, tuberculosis and asthma. In protest, workers began to develop ideas about socialism and democracy. Labour unrest resulted in several terrorist attacks and in widespread strikes.
The First World War interrupted access to the export markets, and many workers were drafted into the military.
Ukrainian War of Independence
In the Ukrainian War of Independence, Kryvyi Rih changed hands several times.
A council of soviet of Soldiers and Worker's Deputies was formed in 1917. January 1918 saw the first attempt by the Bolsheviks to establish the authority in the town of the new Soviet government in Moscow. In February 1918, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, but then in March conceded the territory under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the German-controlled Ukrainian State.
After the Germans and their Austro-Hungarian allies withdrew in November 1918, the town was successively occupied by the Ukrainian People's Republic, the counter-revolutionary Volunteer Army of General Denikin (the "Whites"), the anarchist Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (the Makhnovshchina) and, from 17 January 1920, by the Bolshevik Red Army.
Afterwards it was administratively part of the Katerynoslav Governorate of Ukraine. In 1922 the region was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR, a constituent republic of the Soviet Union.
Soviet era
Industrialisation and collectivisation
The town, with a population of 22,571, was now designated a city. Mine operations were revived, and in 1924 a 55.3 km (34.4 mi) water-supply system was laid underground. In the summer of 1927, 10,000 people began to work on the Dnieprostroi, a huge dam on the Dnieper River in Zaporizhzhia, whose hydro-electric power drove Kryvyi Rih's industrialisation. The first Mining Institute opened in 1929. The Medical and Pedagogical Institutes were founded.
In line with Stalin's plans for break-neck industrialisation, in 1931 the foundation of the Kryvyi Rih Metallurgical Plant, the future Kryvorizhstal, was laid. The first blast furnace of the metallurgical works produced steel three years later. The city grew rapidly. In the surrounding countryside, industrialisation was accompanied by the collectivisation of agriculture. The dispossession of the peasants and the confiscation of their harvests induced the Holodomor or Great Famine of 1932–33.
By 1941, at over 200,000, the population of the industrial city had increased almost tenfold.
German occupation
During World War II, Kryvyi Rih was occupied by the German Army from 15 August 1941 to 22 February 1944. It was administered for most of that period as part of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. In advance of the Germans, industrial plant and machine operators were evacuated to Nizhny Tagil in the Urals. An initial toleration of Ukrainian cultural activity and propaganda by the pro-German Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in the city ended in January and February 1942 with the arrest and execution of the leading Ukrainian activists.
In 1939, 12,745 Jews had lived in Kryvyi Rih, comprising about 6% of the total population. Those who did not leave the city during the organized evacuation were systematically concentrated and murdered by the Nazi occupiers during the Holocaust. The first mass killing of two to three hundred by an Einsatzkommando occurred at the end of August 1941 at a brick works. On 14–15 October a combination of SS, German police and Ukrainian auxiliaries murdered 7,000 more at an iron ore mine. Children were thrown into the pits alive.
During World War II, the Stalag 338 prisoner-of-war camp was relocated from Kietrz to Kryvyi Rih. The number of POWs ranged from 5,219 in May 1942 to 23,977 in September 1942, and at least 800 POWs died in the camp. In November 1943, the camp was moved to Voznesensk.
Hitler had repeatedly stressed the crucial importance of this area: "The Nikopol manganese is of such importance, it cannot be expressed in words. Loss of Nikopol (on the Dnieper River, today's southwest of Zaporizhzhia) would mean the end of war." The German bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnieper gave the German command a base in order to restore the land connection with their forces locked in the Crimea. During the first half of January 1944, Soviet troops made repeated attempts to eliminate the Nikopol-Krivoy Rog enemy group. The Nikopol–Krivoy Rog Offensive did not succeed in breaking into the city until the end of February. Although the greater part of city was destroyed, a special 37th Red Army detachment prevented the German demolition of the power stations in the city and the Saksahan dams.
Post-war
After the war, people lived among the ruins while rebuilding the housing stock. The housing shortage was met by innovative technological solutions, and temporary barracks and houses were quickly built.
In the late 1940s, re-construction was accompanied by Stakhanovite propaganda: Pre-war iron ore production was restored by 1950. In 1961 this was supplemented by new mines and by the Central and, Northern Iron Ore Enrichment Works. By the end of the Soviet era, Kryvbas was producing 42% of the USSR's and 80% of Ukrainian ore.
At the beginning of the 1960s, the city received a signature 185m-tall, guyed tubular steel TV mast. Housing stock was replaced and expanded with several large Khrushchyovkas apartment complexes. Urban planning incorporated broad tree-lined avenues with trams lines running down their center.
On June 16–18, 1963, increased food prices triggered protests in the city, estimated to involve between 1,000 and 6,000 people. After an ex-serviceman who had interacted with the police was severely beaten, there was rioting. Moscow sent in troops. While the authorities admitted to 4 dead and 15 wounded, witnesses report that soldiers killed at least 7, and that over 200 people were hospitalised with injuries. Fifteen hundred people received prison sentences.
In 1975, the city's two-hundredth anniversary was marked by the development of the Jubilee mine and adjacent residential area, and by the construction of a new city administration building and park. In September 1976, the Krivorozh wool spinning factory was commissioned.
In last years of the Soviet Union, and following a sharp reduction in spending on cultural, sports and youth service, the city witnessed neighbourhood-based gang violence—the so-called "war of Runners". The era of Perestroika was also marked by the emergence of independent trade unions, and of new civic and political organisations.
The former Krivoi Rog Air Base is located nearby.
In independent Ukraine
Redevelopment and politics
In a national referendum on 1 December 1991, Ukrainian independence was approved by 90% of the votes cast in Kryvyi Rih's Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The first 25 years of independence was a period of economic dislocation and adjustment. The population of the city decreased by almost 100,000, from a peak of 780,000 in the late 1980s.
Assisted by Metinvest, investment followed the 2005 privatization of Kryvorizhstal. There was extensive redevelopment including new shopping and entertainment centers. In July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, Kryvyi Rih Municipality and the Kryvyi Rih Raion came under a common city authority. The city remains the second most important in the Dnipropetrovsk region after Dnipro. Krivyi Rih has two independent universities, and several institutes and technical schools.
Until the events of Euromaidan in 2014 and their aftermath, in local and national elections Kryvyi Rih favored Russian-friendly candidates belonging first, in the 1990s, to the Communist Party of Ukraine and then, in the new century, the Party of Regions. In 2010 the city elected Party of Regions Yuriy Vilkul mayor, and helped Viktor Yanukovych to victory in the presidential election. After the Euromaidan events, which were accompanied by demonstrations and clashes in the city centre, support began to ebb from the Party of Regions. Petro Poroshenko, who insisted that Russian separatists in the Donbas "don't represent anybody", was supported in the presidential election of 2014. Vilkul was re-elected mayor in 2015, but amidst large-scale protests alleging electoral fraud.
In the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election the city supported its native son Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who defeated Poroshenko in the second round in April. In the July 2019 elections for the Ukrainian Rada, candidates for Zelenskyy's Servant of the People Party won the city's three parliamentary seats. However, in December 2020, the Servant of the People candidate for mayor, Dmytr Shevchuk, lost to Kostantin Pavlov of the pro-Russian Opposition Platform — For Life.