The Pearl of the Sea of Azov Trivia Quiz

Answer: Azov Land

The Ukrainian War of Independence occurred from 1917 to 1921. It was facilitated by the fact that both countries occupying Ukraine (Tsarist Russia and Austria-Hungary) were about to disintegrate, with the ongoing hostilities of World War One taking their toll on them.

The Azov Land included parts of modern-day Donetsk Oblast and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Mariupol was designated as its center. The administrative division into Lands was abolished in April 1918 by Pavlo Skoropadskyi, who appointed himself as Hetman of Ukraine and restricted the rule of the Rada. Later, Skoropadskyi himself was replaced by the Directory, chaired by the revolutionary Symon Petlyura.

Answer: Kryvyi Rih

During the Ukrainian War for Independence, Mariupol changed hands 17 times among the Ukrainians, the Bolsheviks, and the Whites. After a great number of combat clashes in and around the city, it was included in the USSR, as part of Soviet Ukraine.

The ephemeral Donetsk-Kryvyi Rih republic was a project directly authorized by Vladimir Lenin, who wanted both the rich crops of Ukraine and the industrial zones of its easternmost districts. However, the short-lived republic found little resonance with the local Ukrainians. In Mariupol, the people themselves rose against the Bolsheviks in April 9, 1918 and drove them out. A similar uprising had happened earlier in Slovyansk, but without success.

Answer: The Whites

Nestor Makhno had a unique political position, which can be described as anarchist, yet also combined elements of Ukrainian nationalism. Called "Batko" ("Father" in Ukrainian) by his retainers, Makhno was especially active in southern and eastern Ukraine, against both the Red and the White Army.

In the battle of the village Salhyr Yana Sala, today the settlement of Yanisol or Velyka Novosilka, then part of the Mariupol territorial unit, the 9th regiment (consisting largely of Mariupol Greeks) and the 12th (consisting of Ukrainian retainers of Makhno) clashed with the White Army units led by Andrei Shkuro (or Shkura), who later fought for Nazi Germany in the Second World War. The fact that Shkuro had previously plundered the neighboring villages added a personal desire for revenge on the Ukrainians. After the heavy defeat, Shkuro retreated towards Taganrog, in Russia.

Answer: Greeks

The beginning of the 1930s in Mariupol coincided with the Holodomor genocide, the man-made famine which aimed to eliminate the nationally conscious Ukrainians who were actively resisting Soviet rule, including the despised practice of collectivization. Officially, the Soviet authorities lumped all those resisting this practice as "kulaks", thus apparently taking action to liquidate a social class instead of a nationality.

The repression of the Greeks culminated in the 1937 Greek Operation of the NKVD, which consisted of mass arrests, shootings and deportations of Greek populations, chiefly in Donetsk Oblast, but also in the surrounding regions, like Zaporizhzhia Oblast and Kharkiv Oblast. The number of victims ranged from 15000 to 50000. In the vicinity of Mariupol, at least 3479 names of executed Greeks have been fully established and this figure covers only the first days of the operation.

Answer: Vasyl Bulavsky

Vasyl Bulavsky was born in 1917, in Rivne, in western Ukraine. He became a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the 1930s and was active against the repressive Polish occupation policies in his hometown, which earned him a conviction in 1937.

In 1941, the revolutionary wing of the OUN dispatched him to the Donetsk Oblast (which was officially called Stalino by the USSR). Out of the 35 districts in which the region was organized, the OUN soon became active in 17. Later, Bulavsky became an advisor of strategic planning for the Bohun detachment of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and was killed in 1943 in the village of Hryadky, while fighting against the Nazis.

Answer: Andriy Avramenko

The OUN was of the opinion that education in Ukrainian would strengthen and bolster the national consciousness of the population. In operating Prosvita societies, they were following in the footsteps of the 19th century Ukrainian patriots and liberation ideologues.

Andriy Avramenko was born fin 1893 in the village of Shyroke, in modern-day Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. He had long been associated with the Ukrainian liberation movement and had been repressed both by Tsarist Russia and the USSR before the Second World War.

When the Germans occupied Mariupol, where he happened to be in 1941, while en route to his village returning from an exile in North Caucasus, Avramenko caught up with the OUN, which was trying to organize an underground movement against both Nazi and Soviet occupation. His activities in the Prosvita had a minimum legal pretext, yet the Gestapo arrested him and had him promise to lure the local OUN cadres into a trap. Yet, Avramenko alerted OUN member "Lahoda" (a fake name that the member had assumed for conspiratorial reasons) and the Gestapo arrested him once more. Later, after the Nazis retreated from the area, Avramenko was detained by the Soviet NKVD as a "Nazi collaborator" and was ultimately executed after torture.

Answer: Dnipro

Stasyuk was a well-known figure in Ukraine for decades. He had been one of the members of the Central Rada in 1917-1918, when Ukrainian independence was proclaimed against both White and Red Russian forces. His political leaning had, up to that point, been Socialist, but this did not prevent him from joining forces with the OUN when it was formed.

Either in 1931 or in 1933 he was arrested by the Soviets for his activities and was in a harsh labor camp until 1940. After that, when the OUN attempted to form its network in Donetsk Oblast, he became leader of the Mariupol branch, which recruited over 300 local people for underground activities in a short span. Stasyuk and fourteen of his associates were arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and were shot. In the honor of Stasyuk, a scholarship has been established by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, starting from 2018, in Agricultural Sciences and Food.

Answer: 1989

The exact date of the restoration of Mariupol's name is January 13, 1989, id est even before the restoration of Ukrainian independence.

Soviet rule was harsh for the city, which was plagued by poverty, repression and high levels of street-gang violence. The name Zhdanov was viewed by most residents as a manifestation of those misfortunes. The restoration was followed by the removal of monuments of Zhdanov and with the revival of the ethnic Greek community of the region.

The entire Donetsk Oblast, Mariupol included, voted overwhelmingly in favor of Ukrainian independence in the 1991 referendum.

Answer: June 13

Mariupol became a theater of hostilities, as it is part of the region of Donbas, parts of which were sized by Russian and Russian-backed forces, which formed the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic" and "Luhansk People's Republic", unrecognized by virtually every sovereign state.

The liberation of Mariupol from the so-called "DPR", as well as the liberation of the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk within the summer of 2014, meant that the anti-terrorist operation that the Ukrainian government had announced was gaining momentum, which forced Russia to first fire artillery shells from within its territory against the Ukrainian army and later covertly send troops, including elite paratroopers, in Ukraine, some of which were captured in the month of August.

June 13 was designated a local holiday in Mariupol shortly afterwards its liberation.

Answer: Azovstal Iron and Steel Works

The Siege of Mariupol lasted from the beginning of the full-scale invasion (February 24, 2022) to the 20th of May, when the last defenders of Azovstal were taken out of the destroyed complex. The siege cost tens of thousands of civilian lives, with the number being possibly as high as 100,000, id est one-fourth of the pre-invasion population of Mariupol.

The most tenacious defense was put by the Azov Regiment, led by Denys Prokopenko, who was taken captive at the end of the siege, but later exchanged, alongside many senior commanders of his unit. In 2025, Azov was expanded into the 1st Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine.