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Founding
Founding of Lysychansk
city in Luhansk Oblast (province) of Ukraine
- 1710
- Europe
Founding
city in Luhansk Oblast (province) of Ukraine
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Lysychansk is a city in Sievierodonetsk Raion, Luhansk Oblast, eastern Ukraine. It is located on the high right bank of the Donets River, approximately 115 kilometres (71 mi) from the administrative center of the oblast, Luhansk. It faces Sievierodonetsk across the river, which is considered its twin city, and is also situated close by to Rubizhne and Kreminna. Its population before the Russian invasion of Ukraine was approximately 93,340 (2022 estimate)., making it the 40th-largest city in Ukraine and the fourth-largest city in Luhansk Oblast.
Lysychansk is popularly believed to have been settled permanently starting in 1710, with the founding of the Cossack settlement of Lisya Balka. In 1721, the settlement gained notoriety when the first ever coal in the entirety of the Donbas was discovered there, and in 1795, under orders by Empress Catherine II, the first ever mine in the Donbas was also set up in the area. The intended purpose of the mine was to supply the foundry in the also newly established city of Luhansk. Over the next few decades, the settlement would rapidly grow as a regional mining centre, eventually transitioning into the name Lysychansk in the 1850s–60s. After the October Revolution, it was claimed by the Soviet Union after a change of hands in late 1919. The settlement of Lysychansk was reclassified as a city in 1938, but was again devastated by World War II. After reconstruction, the city became known for its glass and coal mining industry, and eventually oil with the opening of the Lysychansk Oil Refinery. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the city became part of a newly independent Ukraine. In 2014, during the War in the Donbas, the city was seized by pro-Russian separatists, who incorporated it into the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic. Ukrainian troops regained the city in July 2014 after the separatists' defeat at the Siege of Sloviansk. After a few years of recovery, in 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the city became the site again of the Battle of Lysychansk, which ended with the capture of the city by Russian forces and the Luhansk People's Republic on 2 July. Up to 12,000 were estimated to have remained in the city, according to Ukrainian authorities. Russia has claimed the city following its declared annexation of the region in September 2022.
Lysychansk has historically been a large industrial centre in Luhansk Oblast, known initially for its coal mining and then also its glass industry and oil. However, the city has been undergoing a major industrial collapse, especially after 2010, when most of the large industrial enterprises were closed. Cultural landmarks include the Steiger School, the two Polovtsian stone women, the monument to soldier-pilots with a L-29 aircraft, and the protected area of Congressiv Yar. The main museums of the city are the City Museum of Local Lore and the Museum of the History of Mining. The city was formerly home to many association football clubs that played at Shaktar Stadium; however, most of them have since been shut down. The city is also home to seven institutions of higher education, most notably the Mining-Industrial Professional College and the Lysychansk Medical Professional College. After the War in the Donbas, some universities also relocated to the city from occupied territory, including ones from Kadiivka and Brianka.
The city is generally thought to have been founded in 1710. This came after a 1703 decree by Peter I ordered that the Cossacks be resettled from Right-Bank Ukraine, which was put into fruition by Hetman Ivan Skoropadsky on 5 July 1710 when he relocated three companies of Zaporozhian Cossacks to the area. This settlement took on the name of Lisya Balka, which came from the ravine they settled in. The ravine, even prior to any settlement, was known as Lisya Balka, meaning "Fox Ravine" because there were once a lot of foxes that resided in the area. Sometimes, the settlement is also referred to as a section name of Oleniachi Hory, meaning "Deer Mountains", because, much like Lisya Balka, deer also used to be common there, but it quickly fell out of use since the deer were all hunted into extinction by the end of the 18th century. A 1710 charter and a 1712 survey both refer to the name of the area as Lisya Balka or Oleniachi Hory.
For the next few decades, Lisya Balka would remain as the name of the village. In 1795, the first mine in the Donbas was opened up in Verkhnie, which was next to Lisya Balka and was for some time a separate village before being incorporated into Lysychansk. At the same time, a separate settlement popped up around the mine, which went by various names in its early years. An 1803 court document does not give it a name, just referring to it as "at Fox Ravine", and an 1821 map labeled the new settlement as just "workers' quarters". Informally, the new settlement went by the name Lysychansk, which was first referred to in an 1829 article in the "Mining Journal", referring to a deposit of coal known as the "Lysychansk deposit". An 1838 document also lists the name of the settlement as the "Lysychansk coal working", and gradually the name started to catch on. An 1864 charter is generally considered when the name finally transitioned into Lysychansk. Lysychansk itself is also derived from the original ravine's name, much like Lisya Balka.
The first attested inhabitation around the area that would become Lysychansk was during the Lower Paleolithic era on the banks of the Donets River. It was later inhabited during the ancient period by people of the Catacomb culture, as evidenced by large Kurgan stelae found in the city. This was followed by many steppe people, such as the Scythians who left barbed arrowheads in the city, and the Polovtsian people who left behind stone statues and objects that are now located in a former building of a school. After an initial decline, the area was taken over by the khanate of the Golden Horde and then briefly the Grand Duchy of Lithuania who built a fortification to the east of the city. For many centuries afterwards, the area became a contested, uninhabited land. The three main parties in the area that contested the land were the Polish-Lithuanian union, the Grand Principality of Moscow, and the Crimean Khanate. The Tatars, in particular, used a route that went through the city as a raiding route, but also as an area of diplomacy with other nations.
This was then followed up by two notable sites within the city: a fortification and Borivske. The fortification was built in 1672 by the Cossacks to monitor the Crimean Tatars, while Borivske was the first stable settlement in the city, also established by the Cossacks. Prior to this, no permanent settlement had existed in the city, mostly because a raiding route ran through it, making settlement dangerous. After Borivske, two more settlements were founded shortly thereafter, called Krasnianskyi, founded in 1678, and Lisya Balka, founded in 1710. The 1710 settlement is popularly considered the founding date of Lysychansk, as the entrance sign to the city uses 1710. Both were also Cossack settlements, with Lisya Balka being founded in response to Peter the Great forcibly relocating the Cossacks from Right-Bank Ukraine in retaliation for the Bulavin Rebellion. However, all three settlements established up to this point were not on the right bank, as modern-day Lysychansk now is, because even though their territory hypothetically extended into the right bank, settlement was made impossible on the right bank by the Crimean Tatars or Nogai people who would destroy these settlements as they claimed the land.
In 1721, the settlements gained notoriety following a survey that discovered the first ever coal in the entirety of the Donbas near Lisya Balka. The Donbas would later become a major regional coal producer. However, for many years, nothing came out of it following the death of Peter the Great. In 1753, the Cossacks were pushed out when a new settlement was established by decree of the Imperial Russian government on the right bank. Upon the decree, the new area would be known as Slavo-Serbia, and mainly be inhabited by hussar regiments consisting of Balkan people. The settlement would become known as the Third Company or Verkhnie, and would thereafter rapidly grow. In November 1795, the topic of coal was finally returned to under Catherine II, who established the first mine ever in the Donbas in the village of Verkhnie. The mine was meant to supply the foundry in the new city of Luhansk, which would then go to the Black Sea Fleet. It was the only mine in the Donbas until 1801.
For the first decade of coal mining in the Donbas following the 1795 decree, the new mine known as "Petropavlivska" in Verkhnie would supply nearly 91.5% of all coal production from the Donbas. Around the mine, a settlement would grow known variously but most commonly as the Workers' Quarters, which is generally considered the village that Lysychansk now is, as Verkhnie would spin off into its own village before being incorporated into Lysychansk. Due to this, the settlement became greatly important, although by the 1850s the name for the Workers' Quarters fell out of use and Lysychansk transitioned to being the formal name. The name was cemented in an 1864 charter for the "village of Lysychansk. This development though, would not last long, as by the late 1800s, Lysychansk would undergo a major decline, in part due to the Emancipation reform of 1861 which stopped the previously used obligatory worker status. In 1890, the Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay built a soda plant with surrounding infrastructure for the Belgian staff. He also built the "Konstantin Skalovsky" mine, which at the time was the largest and most technically advanced in all of the Donbas. It included the Donbas's first aerial cableway meant for coal transport. This was considered a turning point, as with the foreign investment, Lysychansk began to rapidly recover. With the advent of World War One, the need for coal also increased significantly. In 2017 these buildings (a gymnasium, a hospital and a range of residential buildings) won the 'Belgian Heritage Abroad Award'.
In 1917, following the October Revolution, where the Bolsheviks took over power from the Provisional Russian Government after the February Revolution, Lysychansk was heavily impacted. In response to the Bolshevik takeover, the Ukrainian People's Republic declared its independence, starting the Ukrainian-Soviet War as part of the Russian Civil War. After this declaration, the settlement was seized by the Soviets, who incorporated it into the Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, encountering little resistance from the UPR. A local newspaper has been published in the city since January 1918. Bolshevik control, however, would not last long, as by April 1918 the Imperial German Army, as part of the Central Powers intervention in the war, retook the settlement. Under the Germans, the settlement became de jure parts of the UPR, until the Ukrainian State was also established in late April, which vied for power with the UPR, which eventually, in November 1918, led to the Anti-Hetman Uprising. The UPR then established firm control in the region. The Ukrainians were unable to defend the settlement in January 1919 following the Soviet invasion, and the Bolsheviks recaptured Lysychansk shortly thereafter. A few months later, in July 1919, the White movement then took over from the Soviets until December 1919, when the Bolsheviks would regain the settlement for the last time.
The Ukrainian War of Independence, in the end, decimated the settlement and its industries. In particular, it was prone during this time to banditry and severe famines. In 1920, the Bolsheviks nationalized the mines and plants in Lysychansk. Afterwards, it was administratively part of the Donets Governorate of Ukraine. In 1922, the settlement became part of the Soviet Union following its establishment. During this time, the economy gradually recovered, in particular the glass industry in Lysychansk, which grew with the establishment of a new mechanised glass plant. Since Lysychansk was an industrial centre, it was not as heavily impacted by the Holodomor. Instead, it became a prime destination for peasants from the countryside who were experiencing mass starvation, which would lead to a rapid increase in the population. Thus, Lysychansk by decree was reclassified as a city in October 1938.
This growth was dramatically halted by World War II and the start of Operation Barbarossa. After its start, most of the city's industries would be evacuated to Chelyabinsk in the Urals on the orders of the USSR. The city was then manned by a reserve division of the 37th Army as part of the Southwestern Front, which was backed up by partisans from Dobropillia and Bakhmut that were brought over. The Soviets would hold the city for another eight months, in part due to the nearby forestry, until Operation Case Blue under the Germans, who broke through the Soviet line (which by this time was mostly held by the 275th Rifle Division) with the use of the 76th Infantry Division. The city fell to the Germans on 10 July 1942 after they crossed the Donets, pushing back the Soviets to Rubizhne. The city would then remain occupied until 6 February 1943, when it was briefly liberated when the Soviets crossed the Donets again. However, the Germans returned with new divisions, and reoccupied the city on 3 March 1943. The second occupation, in particular, was far deadlier than the first. More than 2,300 people were deported from Lysychansk under German orders, and the Germans massacred hundreds of civilians, including in a notable ravine of 27 people off Donetska Street. In addition, as part of the Holocaust, the Germans murdered 37 Jewish families. After this devastation, the city was retaken a second time on 2 September 1943 by the 279th Rifle Division.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Lysychansk”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.