Borzna
Encyclopedia
Borzna is a historic town
in northern Ukraine
. It is the administrative center of the Borznyanskyi Raion (Borzna district
) in the Chernihiv Oblast
. The estimated population of the town is around 10,640 (as of 2011).
. First, find the capital, Kiev
. Go north a few miles up the Dnieper river to where the Desna River
feeds into it. The Desna comes from the north where, at a city Chernihiv
, it curves east. Along this course, where the river bulges southward, is Borzna. More specifically, it is located next to an international highway connecting Kiev
and Moscow
(E101
). Chernihiv
is about 100 km (62 mi) away.
The city derives its name from the river it lies on, a tributary of the Desna
. Although Borzna has no railway
(the nearest railway stations being Doch (14 km (9 mi)) with north-south routes and Plysky (20 km (12 mi)) with west-east routes.
climate
(Koppen
Dfb). The warmest months are June, July, and August, with mean temperatures of 19 °C (66.2 °F). The coldest are December, January, and February, with mean temperatures of -7 C. The highest ever temperature recorded in the town was 41.3 °C (106.3 °F) on July 2010. The coldest temperature ever recorded in the city was -35.9 C on January 1987. Snow cover usually lies from mid-November to the end of March, with the frost-free period lasting 180 days on average, but surpassing 200 days in recent years.
era, with Bronze Age
and Scythian remains also having been unearthed. According to some modern writers, the earliest fortress (8th—13th centuries would have been destroyed by the Batu Khan
in the 1239.
Borzna was known during the 16th century as selishche, a farming community. As Borzna, it was founded in 1633. The area had been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
(in the Kijów Voivodeship
of the Crown of Poland) since before the Union of Lublin
. Control of the town was wrested from the Commonwealth during the Khmelnytsky Uprising
, after which natives of Ruthenia
gained some degree of autonomy under Hetman
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
and his Cossack
state. In 1648, Borzna was transformed into a Cossack regional center Borzna Regiment, and then, in 1650 — sotnia
of the Nizhyn Regiment
.
By 1634 Borzna was granted Magdeburg Rights
.
After 1654, the town became part of the Tsardom of Russia
and became a county town in the Chernigov guberniya
in 1782, adopting the emblem of the Russian period.
240 families of the cossacks and 180 families of the peasant
s living in the town of Borzna in 1748. According to the census of 1859 there were total population of the town of Borzna is about 8,453.
Because of its distance from the railway (14 km), it has not grown (1897 pop 8,582). From 1923 Borzna is the administrative center of the Borznyanskyi raion
(Borzna district).
In World War II
, the town was occupied by Nazi Germany
from September 11, 1941 to September 7, 1943. On January 18, 1942, the Germans rounded up all the local Jews they could find and massacred them at Shapovalivka. 126 people were killed, 179 removed to Germany.
August 26, 1966, Borzna attributed to the category of cities of district subordination.
, Panteleimon Kulish Gymnasium
, and Khrystyna Alchevska secondary school
, as well as a musical school.
Borzna has a concert hall (The House of Culture), Museum of Oleksandr Sayenko (an original artist who, despite being deaf and dumb
, gained prominence by inventing his own technique of creating pictures out of straw), Museum of History, and an historical-memorial complex Hannyna Pustyn (commemorating a famous Ukrainian writer and activist of the 19th century Panteleimon Kulish and a peasant life writer Hanna Barvinok, (husband and wife) which is a ten-minute drive away in the nearby village of Motronivka.
The local newspaper the Visti Borznyanshchyny (The Borzna Herald) is published twice a week. The local community also operates a radio station which regularly produces programs about local events.
Town
A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size a settlement must be in order to be called a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world, so that, for example, many American "small towns" seem to British people to be no more than villages, while...
in northern Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
. It is the administrative center of the Borznyanskyi Raion (Borzna district
Administrative divisions of Ukraine
Ukraine is subdivided into 24 oblasts , one autonomous republic, and two "cities with special status".- Overview :...
) in the Chernihiv Oblast
Chernihiv Oblast
Chernihiv Oblast is an oblast of northern Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Chernihiv.-Geography:The total area of the province is around 31,900 km²....
. The estimated population of the town is around 10,640 (as of 2011).
Location
Looking at a map, one can easily locate Borzna in northeastern UkraineUkraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
. First, find the capital, Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
. Go north a few miles up the Dnieper river to where the Desna River
Desna River
Desna is a river in Russia and Ukraine, left tributary of the Dnieper. The word means "right hand" in the Old East Slavic language. Its length is , and its drainage basin covers ....
feeds into it. The Desna comes from the north where, at a city Chernihiv
Chernihiv
Chernihiv or Chernigov is a historic city in northern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Chernihiv Oblast , as well as of the surrounding Chernihivskyi Raion within the oblast...
, it curves east. Along this course, where the river bulges southward, is Borzna. More specifically, it is located next to an international highway connecting Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
and Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
(E101
International E-road network
The international E-road network is a numbering system for roads in Europe developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe . The network is numbered from E 1 up and its roads cross national borders...
). Chernihiv
Chernihiv
Chernihiv or Chernigov is a historic city in northern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Chernihiv Oblast , as well as of the surrounding Chernihivskyi Raion within the oblast...
is about 100 km (62 mi) away.
The city derives its name from the river it lies on, a tributary of the Desna
Desna River
Desna is a river in Russia and Ukraine, left tributary of the Dnieper. The word means "right hand" in the Old East Slavic language. Its length is , and its drainage basin covers ....
. Although Borzna has no railway
Rail transport
Rail transport is a means of conveyance of passengers and goods by way of wheeled vehicles running on rail tracks. In contrast to road transport, where vehicles merely run on a prepared surface, rail vehicles are also directionally guided by the tracks they run on...
(the nearest railway stations being Doch (14 km (9 mi)) with north-south routes and Plysky (20 km (12 mi)) with west-east routes.
Climate
Borzna has a humid continentalContinental climate
Continental climate is a climate characterized by important annual variation in temperature due to the lack of significant bodies of water nearby...
climate
Climate
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
(Koppen
Köppen climate classification
The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by Crimea German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen himself, notably in 1918 and 1936...
Dfb). The warmest months are June, July, and August, with mean temperatures of 19 °C (66.2 °F). The coldest are December, January, and February, with mean temperatures of -7 C. The highest ever temperature recorded in the town was 41.3 °C (106.3 °F) on July 2010. The coldest temperature ever recorded in the city was -35.9 C on January 1987. Snow cover usually lies from mid-November to the end of March, with the frost-free period lasting 180 days on average, but surpassing 200 days in recent years.
History
Evidence of settlement in the area of present-day Borzna dates back to the NeolithicNeolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...
era, with Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
and Scythian remains also having been unearthed. According to some modern writers, the earliest fortress (8th—13th centuries would have been destroyed by the Batu Khan
Batu Khan
Batu Khan was a Mongol ruler and founder of the Ulus of Jochi , the sub-khanate of the Mongol Empire. Batu was a son of Jochi and grandson of Genghis Khan. His ulus was the chief state of the Golden Horde , which ruled Rus and the Caucasus for around 250 years, after also destroying the armies...
in the 1239.
Borzna was known during the 16th century as selishche, a farming community. As Borzna, it was founded in 1633. The area had been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a dualistic state of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch. It was the largest and one of the most populous countries of 16th- and 17th‑century Europe with some and a multi-ethnic population of 11 million at its peak in the early 17th century...
(in the Kijów Voivodeship
Kijów Voivodeship
The Kiev Voivodeship was a unit of administrative division and local government in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from 1471 until 1569 and of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland from 1569 until 1793 as part of Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown....
of the Crown of Poland) since before the Union of Lublin
Union of Lublin
The Union of Lublin replaced the personal union of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with a real union and an elective monarchy, since Sigismund II Augustus, the last of the Jagiellons, remained childless after three marriages. In addition, the autonomy of Royal Prussia was...
. Control of the town was wrested from the Commonwealth during the Khmelnytsky Uprising
Khmelnytsky Uprising
The Khmelnytsky Uprising, was a Cossack rebellion in the Ukraine between the years 1648–1657 which turned into a Ukrainian war of liberation from Poland...
, after which natives of Ruthenia
Ruthenia
Ruthenia is the Latin word used onwards from the 13th century, describing lands of the Ancient Rus in European manuscripts. Its geographic and culturo-ethnic name at that time was applied to the parts of Eastern Europe. Essentially, the word is a false Latin rendering of the ancient place name Rus...
gained some degree of autonomy under Hetman
Hetman
Hetman was the title of the second-highest military commander in 15th- to 18th-century Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which together, from 1569 to 1795, comprised the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or Rzeczpospolita....
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Zynoviy Mykhailovych Khmelnytsky was a hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossack Hetmanate of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . He led an uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates which resulted in the creation of a Cossack state...
and his Cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
state. In 1648, Borzna was transformed into a Cossack regional center Borzna Regiment, and then, in 1650 — sotnia
Sotnia
Sotnia was a traditional division of the Cossack regiments. For example from earliest records of the Zaporizhian Sich, and means 'a hundred'. It is equivalent to company ....
of the Nizhyn Regiment
Nizhyn Regiment
The Nizhyn Regiment was one of ten territorial-administrative subdivisions of the Cossack Hetmanate. The regiment's capital was the city of Nizhyn, now in Chernihiv Oblast of central Ukraine. Other major cities of the regiment were Pryluky, Hlukhiv and Baturyn....
.
By 1634 Borzna was granted Magdeburg Rights
Magdeburg rights
Magdeburg Rights or Magdeburg Law were a set of German town laws regulating the degree of internal autonomy within cities and villages granted by a local ruler. Modelled and named after the laws of the German city of Magdeburg and developed during many centuries of the Holy Roman Empire, it was...
.
After 1654, the town became part of the Tsardom of Russia
Tsardom of Russia
The Tsardom of Russia was the name of the centralized Russian state from Ivan IV's assumption of the title of Tsar in 1547 till Peter the Great's foundation of the Russian Empire in 1721.From 1550 to 1700, Russia grew 35,000 km2 a year...
and became a county town in the Chernigov guberniya
Guberniya
A guberniya was a major administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire usually translated as government, governorate, or province. Such administrative division was preserved for sometime upon the collapse of the empire in 1917. A guberniya was ruled by a governor , a word borrowed from Latin ,...
in 1782, adopting the emblem of the Russian period.
240 families of the cossacks and 180 families of the peasant
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
s living in the town of Borzna in 1748. According to the census of 1859 there were total population of the town of Borzna is about 8,453.
Because of its distance from the railway (14 km), it has not grown (1897 pop 8,582). From 1923 Borzna is the administrative center of the Borznyanskyi raion
Raion
A raion is a type of administrative unit of several post-Soviet countries. The term, which is from French rayon 'honeycomb, department,' describes both a type of a subnational entity and a division of a city, and is commonly translated in English as "district"...
(Borzna district).
In World War II
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
, the town was occupied by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
from September 11, 1941 to September 7, 1943. On January 18, 1942, the Germans rounded up all the local Jews they could find and massacred them at Shapovalivka. 126 people were killed, 179 removed to Germany.
August 26, 1966, Borzna attributed to the category of cities of district subordination.
Nowadays
While the town benefits from vast farming lands surrounding it, it also has a metalwork and electronic chips plant, a brick factory, a lumber-processing factory, and a food industry. Among its educational institutions, there is an Agricultural Technical CollegeTechnicum
Technicum was a Soviet institute of vocational education. A mass-education facility of "special middle education" category 1 step higher than PTU, but aimed to train low-level industrial managers or specializing in occupations that require skills more advanced than purely manual...
, Panteleimon Kulish Gymnasium
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
, and Khrystyna Alchevska secondary school
Secondary school
Secondary school is a term used to describe an educational institution where the final stage of schooling, known as secondary education and usually compulsory up to a specified age, takes place...
, as well as a musical school.
Borzna has a concert hall (The House of Culture), Museum of Oleksandr Sayenko (an original artist who, despite being deaf and dumb
Deaf-mute
For "deafness", see hearing impairment. For "Deaf" as a cultural term, see Deaf culture. For "inability to speak", see muteness.Deaf-mute is a term which was used historically to identify a person who was both deaf and could not speak...
, gained prominence by inventing his own technique of creating pictures out of straw), Museum of History, and an historical-memorial complex Hannyna Pustyn (commemorating a famous Ukrainian writer and activist of the 19th century Panteleimon Kulish and a peasant life writer Hanna Barvinok, (husband and wife) which is a ten-minute drive away in the nearby village of Motronivka.
The local newspaper the Visti Borznyanshchyny (The Borzna Herald) is published twice a week. The local community also operates a radio station which regularly produces programs about local events.
Notable people
- Khrystyna Alchevska — educator, activist
- Mykhailo Antonovskyi — historian, publisher, graduate of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
- Mykola Hladkyi — linguist
- Halyna Kalchenko — sculptress
- Semen PaliySemen PaliySemen Paliy was a Ukrainian Cossack polkovnyk . Born in Chernihiv region, Paliy settled in Zaporizhia at a very young age and gained fame as a brave fighter and Zaporozhian Cossack....
— Ukrainian Cossack polkovnyk (colonel) - Ivan PlyushchIvan PlyushchIvan Stepanovych Plyushch is a Ukrainian politician. He thrice served as the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada , from July 9, through July 23, 1990 , from December 5, 1991 through May 11, 1994 and from February 1, 2000 through May 14, 2002.-Biography:Ivan Plyushch was born on September 11, 1941 in...
— Ukrainian politician and former Chairman of the Verkhovna RadaVerkhovna RadaThe Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is Ukraine's parliament. The Verkhovna Rada is a unicameral parliament composed of 450 deputies, which is presided over by a chairman...
(Ukrainian parliament) - Pavlo PolubotokPavlo PolubotokPavlo Polubotok , was a Cossack political and military leader and Acting Hetman of the Left-bank Ukraine between 1722 and 1724.- Biography :...
— Acting HetmanActing HetmanActing Hetman was a title during the 17th, and 18th centuries, in the Cossack Hetmanate. The acting hetman was the governing authority in the Hetmanate temporarily substituted for the hetman. The acting hetman was appointed by the hetman himself, to perform the duties of the hetman when absent...
of the CossackCossackCossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
era of UkraineUkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia... - Oleksandr Sayenko — artist, decorator
- Danylo Velanskyi — medical doctor, philosopher
- Yevhen Votchal — academic, botanist
- Viktor Zabila — poet