For Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...

's book, see Mirgorod (Gogol)

Mirgorod (Gogol)

Mirgorod is a collection of short stories by Nikolai Gogol meant to be a sequel of sorts to his two volumes of Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka...

.

Myrhorod or Mirgorod is a city

City

A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...

 in the Poltava Oblast

Poltava Oblast

Poltava Oblast is an oblast of central Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Poltava.Other important cities within the oblast include: Komsomolsk, Kremenchuk, Lubny and Myrhorod.-Geography:...

 (province

Oblast

Oblast is a type of administrative division in Slavic countries, including some countries of the former Soviet Union. The word "oblast" is a loanword in English, but it is nevertheless often translated as "area", "zone", "province", or "region"...

) of central 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...

. Serving as the administrative center

Capital City

Capital City was a television show produced by Euston Films which focused on the lives of investment bankers in London living and working on the corporate trading floor for the fictional international bank Shane-Longman....

 of the Myrhorodskyi Raion

Myrhorodskyi Raion

Myrhorodskyi Raion is a raion in the central Ukrainian province of Poltava. The raion's administrative center is the city of Myrhorod, which has a separate administrative status within the oblast'....

 (district

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"...

), the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast, and is located on the river Khorol.

History

The town was founded either in the 12th or 13th centuries as an eastern border fort of Kievan Rus'

Kievan Rus'

Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....

. According to legend, the fort was a place of peace negotiations that gave it its name (literally the City of Peace).

Myrhorod was first mentioned in chronicles in 1575 when Stephen Bathory, King of Poland made it a regiment city. According to some historians, there was an earlier mentioning of the city in 1530, when the city coat of arms were established - yellow cross over an eight-pointed star, which signifies the victory of Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 over Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

.

Myrhorod was the regimental base of the Myrhorod Cossacks who were very active in several Ukrainian

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...

 Cossack uprisings, particularly during the peasants'-and-cossacks' revolt of 1638 under the leadership of 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....

 Yakov Ostrianytsia against the Polish nobility (szlachta

Szlachta

The szlachta was a legally privileged noble class with origins in the Kingdom of Poland. It gained considerable institutional privileges during the 1333-1370 reign of Casimir the Great. In 1413, following a series of tentative personal unions between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of...

). The Myrhorod Cossack regiment

Myrhorod Regiment

The Myrhorod Regiment was one of the 10 territorial-administrative subdivisions of the Cossack Hetmanate. The regiment's capital was the city of Myrhorod, now in Poltava Oblast of central Ukraine....

 was among the best units in the army of Hetman 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...

 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...

 (1648–1654).

After the Treaty of Pereyaslav

Treaty of Pereyaslav

The Treaty of Pereyaslav is known in history more as the Council of Pereiaslav.Council of Pereyalslav was a meeting between the representative of the Russian Tsar, Prince Vasili Baturlin who presented a royal decree, and Bohdan Khmelnytsky as the leader of Cossack Hetmanate. During the council...

, the city became an uezd city, center for the Myrhorod regiment. The famous Sorochyntsy Fair is located 25 km from the Myrhorod.

Myrhorod became famous in world literature through a cycle of stories Mirgorod

Mirgorod (Gogol)

Mirgorod is a collection of short stories by Nikolai Gogol meant to be a sequel of sorts to his two volumes of Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka...

by Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...

.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, Myrhorod is also known as a resort town for its underground mineral waters lodged inside the layer of rocks deposited during the Jurassic

Jurassic

The Jurassic is a geologic period and system that extends from about Mya to  Mya, that is, from the end of the Triassic to the beginning of the Cretaceous. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic era, also known as the age of reptiles. The start of the period is marked by...

 period. Commercial drilling for this ecologically pure water started in 1927.

In 1999, an English [Language] Resource Center was established at Myrhorod School #9, one of four such centres opened in Ukraine with the continuous help from Siena College

Siena College

Siena College is an independent Roman Catholic liberal arts college in Loudonville, in the town of Colonie, New York, United States. Siena is a four-year, coeducational, independent college in the Franciscan tradition, founded by the Franciscan Friars in 1937. It has 3,000 full-time students and...

 since 1995. Other contributors to this project were Americans for Democracy in Ukraine (ADU), Canadian Credit Bank, and Narodna Kasa from Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. In 1995 a group of Myrhorod teachers, former participants at the seminars conducted by methodologists from Siena College Teacher Training Institute, organized Poltava Oblast's English Teachers' Association. The Myrhorod English Resource Center is supervised by the local Teachers' Association.

Tourist attractions

"Myrhorodska" (or "Mirgorodskaya") water is rated as "slightly mineralized chloride-natrium water". It is clear, and tastes a little bit salty. For its unique health curative effects, the "Myrhorodska" water is recommended by doctors for people suffering from gastritis

Gastritis

Gastritis is an inflammation of the lining of the stomach, and has many possible causes. The main acute causes are excessive alcohol consumption or prolonged use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin or ibuprofen. Sometimes gastritis develops after major surgery, traumatic...

, colitis

Colitis

In medicine, colitis refers to an inflammation of the colon and is often used to describe an inflammation of the large intestine .Colitides may be acute and self-limited or chronic, i.e...

, and other disorders of the digestive system. It is also used as table water because it effectively quenches thirst and produces the general health-beneficial effect. There are several health resorts in Myrhorod and the vicinity.

Notable residents

Taras Shevchenko

Taras Shevchenko

Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko -Life:Born into a serf family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven...

, Vasily Kapnist

Vasily Kapnist

Count Vasily Vasilievich Kapnist , , was a Russian poet and playwright who wrote in somewhat rough Russian language....

, Vladimir Borovikovsky

Vladimir Borovikovsky

Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky was a Russian painter who dominated Russian portraiture at the turn of the 19th century.-Biography:Vladimir Borovikovsky was born Vоlоdymyr Borovyk in Myrhorod on July 24, 1757. His father, Luka Borovyk was a Ukrainian Cossack and an amateur icon painter...

 and Hryhorii Skovoroda lived in the city, while Boris Grekov

Boris Grekov

Boris Dmitrievich Grekov was a Soviet historian noted for his comprehensive studies of Kievan Rus and the Golden Horde...

 was born there.

The famous Georgian writer Davit Guramishvili

Davit Guramishvili

Prince Davit Guramishvili was a Georgian poet who authored the finest pieces of pre-Romantic Georgian literature. His poetic talents thrived far from his motherland, being forced by personal misfortunes and turmoil in Georgia to spend several years in the Russian military service until his...

 had an estate in Myrhorod and consequently spent a lot of time living and working there. The poet also spent his last years in Myrhorod and is buried there. The town's Central Park has a sculpture depicting Guramishvili in his older years.

Partner towns

Since 1991, Myrhorod administration signed international agreements of mutual cooperation in the spheres of economics, commerce, and culture with four foreign partner towns including Gorna Oryahovitsa

Gorna Oryahovitsa

Gorna Oryahovitsa is a town in northern Bulgaria, situated in Veliko Tarnovo Province, not far from the city of Veliko Tarnovo. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Gorna Oryahovitsa Municipality...

, Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

 (1991) and Randolph, Vermont

Vermont

Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...

, USA (1999).

External links

• Official site.
• City portal - English navigation, mixed Russian, Ukrainian and English content.