Seeds of History of Ukrainian Cities 2 Quiz

Answer: Luhansk

Charles Gascoigne was a Scottish industrialist. In 1795, he was approached by the tsarist Russian authorities, who asked him to build a factory to produce cannons for the newly-created Black Sea Fleet. On the river Luhan, among the Ukrainian villages of Verhunka, Kamyanyi Brid and Veselenke, Gascoigne found the ideal site.

The construction of the factory and the first labor in it was provided by the neighboring villages of Fashchivka and Horodishche, also Ukrainian villages which, before the conquest of the region by the Russian Empire, belonged to the Kalmius Palanka (a military-cum-civilian administrative unit) of the Zaporizhzhian Sich, the autonomous proto-state of the Ukrainian Cossacks.

Answer: Luhansk

Most of Luhansk's infrastructure and virtually all developments in the city connected to industrialization were overseen and implemented by people from Western Europe. One of them was Gustav Hartmann, who built his factory in the 1890s. The factory survived both World Wars and was able to successfully resume operations after each.

It also survived the collapse of both imperial Russia and the USSR. However, when Russia-backed proxies seized the city of Luhansk in 2014, conditions became critical and the factory stopped working in 2015.

Answer: Bakhmut

Bakhmut's exact origins are disputed. While some analysts point to 1571 as the founding date, the document cited as a source is only a decree by the Muscovite tsar Ivan IV (also known as Ivan the Terrible), where his armed men are ordered to coordinate the building of a guard post for salt miners. However, Ivan's guard post, which we do not know whether it was indeed built, was never mentioned again. It is more plausible that Bakhmut was founded in the last twenty years of the 17th century by Ukrainian Cossacks from the Izyum Regiment.

In the 1737 "London Gazette" article, it is said that "Field Marshal Lacy is marching with his army to Bakhmut in the Ukraine". Lacy was a military commander of Irish origins who was fighting against Crimea on the behalf of Moscow.

Answer: Bakhmut

One of the most plausible theories concerning the etymology of the name Bakhmut is that is derives from the Tatar word bakhmat, from Altaic pakhn at, meaning "steppe horse". The word is attested in both Ukrainian and Polish and denotes a horse ridden by nomadic populations like the Tatars. One of the nearby rivers is named Zherebets, which means "steppe stallion" in Ukrainian, thus increasing the possibility.

Answer: Mariupol

The territory of modern Mariupol has seen human settlement since the Neolithic. Kremnoi was an emporium (a commercial colony) established by the ancient Greeks roughly on the site of modern Mariupol. According to Herodotus, the Greeks traded there with the local Scythians. Papacoma is an obscure settlement, denoted in late medieval Genoese maps depicting the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Adomakha is first mentioned in the late Middle Ages as being "in the country of Brodnia".

While such a country never existed, the Brodniki were warriors guarding riverine fords in much of today's eastern and southern Ukraine and were predecessors of the Cossacks. Later, an Ukrainian Cossack fortress known as Domakha is mentioned in the site of Mariupol, existing probably since 1511.

Answer: Mariupol

The eviction of the Greeks from the Crimean Peninsula happened because of the personal wishes of the Russian Tsarina Catherine II. Wishing both to dilute the Ukrainian character of the territories that Russia had claimed after destroying the Zaporizhzhian Sich and to deprive the Crimea of the active mercantile class of the Greeks, Catherine ordered their compulsory resettlement in 1778, forcing the Khan of Crimea to agree to that by coercion.

The journey was perilous and many Greeks perished from the cold, from starvation and occasional violent acts committed by the tsarist troops. Upon arriving at their destination, the Greeks founded the city of Mariupol.

Answer: Kostyantynivka

Kostyantynivka takes its name from Kostyantyn Nomikossov, son of Panteleimon Nomikossov, a Greek whose original name was Panteleimon Nomikos (Greek for "law expert"). Nomikos founded the settlement of Santurynivka, in honor of Santorini, his birthplace.

His son's name was given to a smaller settlement adjacent to Santurynivka. As time went by, the two settlements merged and eventually became one with the Cossack village of Novoselivka. The conglomeration came to include the Lutheran German village of Novodmytrivka, whose inhabitats were later repressed by the NKVD in 1937 and those who were not executed were forcibly removed in 1941, never to be heard of again.

Answer: Kostyantynivka

Kostyantynivka is widely described as the glassmaking capital of Ukraine. This came to be due to the effort of three Belgian businessmen, namely Louis Lambert from Charleroi, Joseph Cizele from Antwerp and Paul Noble from La Louviere. They created a corporation named "Joint-Stock Company of Donetsk Glass and Chemical Plants" and built their factory on land purchased by the Nomikossov family.

It remained on Belgian hands until the establishment of Soviet power.

Answer: Konotop

"Kony" means "horses" in Ukrainian (singular form: "kin") and the verb "topnuti" means "to get trampled, to drown". The name is generally assumed to refer to the marshes near the city, which are very difficult for an equine to traverse. Local lore relates that the Tatars in the 13th century were unable to attack Konotop (then a relatively small fortress town of the Principiality of Chernihiv), because their horses could not cross the swampy terrain.

Answer: Konotop

The Battle of Konotop was fought on June 29, 1659. Led by Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky (with his chief subordinate Ivan Bohun playing an important role) and some allied detachments from Poland and the Crimean Tatars, a Muscovite army led by Prince Trubetskoi was annihilated and, in great terror, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich of Moscow ordered the capital city to be fortified hurriedly. Moscow's move to conquer Ukraine had been foiled for the time being, but the decisive defeat of Muscovy in the military sphere did not translate into a political victory, bcause of the different goals of the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Polish landowning aristocracy.