Ochakiv

Ochakiv also known as Ochakov (Ukrainian: Очаків, Russian: Очаков, Crimean Tatar: Özü,
Romanian: Oceacov and Vozia, and Alektor (Ἀλέκτορος in Greek) is a small city in Mykolaiv
Oblast (region) of southern Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of Ochakiv Raion
(district), the city itself does not belong to the raion and is designated as a city of regional
significance. Population: 13,927 (2021 est.)[1]
 Ochakiv
Очаків
City of regional significance

Ochakiviska district council and district administration

Flag Coat of arms

Ochakiv

Location of Ochakiv
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Coordinates: 46°37′07″N 31°32′21″E (https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?pagename=Ochaki
v&params=46_37_07_N_31_32_21_E_region:UA_type:city(13927))

Country  Ukraine
Oblast  Mykolaiv Oblast
Raion Ochakiv City Municipality
Founded 1492
Government
 • Mayor Mykola Topchyi
Area
  • Total 12.49 km2 (4.82 sq mi)
Population (2021)
 • Total 13,927
 • Density 1,100/km2 (2,900/sq mi)
Time zone UTC+2 (EET)
 • Summer (DST) UTC+3 (EEST)
Postal code 57500-57014
Area code(s) +380 5154
Website mrada.ochakiv.info (http://mrada.ochakiv.info/p
ages/index)

For many years the city fortress served as a capital of the Ottoman province (eyalet).

Geography

The city is located right at the mouth of Dnieper, on the banks of the Dnieper-Bug Estuary.
Between the Cape of Ochakiv (northern bank) and the Kinburn spit (southern bank) there are
only 3.6 km (2.2 mi). The Ochakiv and Kinburn fortresses controlled the entrance to Dnieper
and Bug.

History

Establishment and names

Sigismund von Herberstein places 'Oczakow' (today's "Ochakiv") on the coast of Black Sea (Ponti Evxini) in his 1549
map.
The 1720 map of Johann Baptist Homann where Oczakow also is known as Dziarcrimenda

The strip of land, on which Ochakov is located today, was inhabited by Thracians and
Scythians in ancient times. It was known as a part of Great (i. e. European) Scythia. In the 7th
and 6th centuries BC, Greek colonists had founded a commercial colony town, named
Alektor, near the Thracian coast. Archaeological excavations also show that near the area
was the old Milesian (ancient Greek) colony of Pontic Olbia; it is supposed that the same
Greek expeditions settled Alektor.

In the 1st century BC, Alektor became a Roman colony and part of the Roman empire. The
area was part of the space in which the Romanians' ethnogenesis took place, and was also
more generally a place of passage for many migratory people and tribes. As a result of the
migrations, the city fell and the inhabitants lived in small settlements built on the shores of
the Bug and Dnieper Rivers.

During the Middle Ages the place was named Vozia by Romanians. The name is supposed to
come from a plant known in Romanian as bozii or bozia (Sambucus ebulus), a medicinal herb
frequently found there. The territory was a part of the Brodnici rule. It fell under Tatar
domination in the time of the Mongol invasion of Europe.
Alexandru cel Bun (Alexander I, the Good), ruler of Moldavia (r. 1400–1432), and his ally
Vitovt or Vytautas, Grand Duke of Lithuania (r. 1392–1430), freed the Vozia territory and a
fortress was built again close to Alektor's ruins. Later the stronghold will be mentioned in
Russian chronics as Dashev.

In the 14th century the Senarega brothers, Genovese merchants and warriors, had settled a
castle at the place called Lerici, very close to Vozia city. It was a good point for commerce
with Romanians and Tatars, but the Senarega family's interference in Moldavia's internal
affairs made the Moldavians from Cetatea Albă (today's Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi) take the
castle from them in 1455.

In 1492, Crimean Tatars took Vozia from the Moldavians and named it Özü-Cale, which
literally meant "Dnieper-fortress". The name was also very similar to the then current
Romanian Vozia. At that time, the city was also referred to as Kara-Kerman ("Black city") as
an opposite to Cetatea Albă ("White City", hence the synonymous naming as Ak-Kerman),
also taken by the Tatars and Turkish army from their once Moldavian rulers.

In 1493, the fortress was taken by the cossacks of Bohdan Gliński. Due to its strategic
location the fortress was a site of contest for a long time between Moldavia, Moldavia's ally
Zaporizhian Sich, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Ottoman Empire.

At a later date it became the centre of an Ottoman sanjak which included Khajidereh (today
Ovidiopol), Khadjibey (Odessa), and Dubossary, as well as some 150 villages, and Silistra
Province, sometimes called Özi Province, to which it belonged. Khadjibey later became a
sanjak centre of its own.

In 1600 Mihai Viteazul (Michael the Brave), Prince of Wallachia, took control of the city for a
short time.

Giovanni Battista Malbi noted in 1620 that the town and the land of Vozia, even if ruled by the
Tatars, were inhabited by Romanians, describing them as having the Orthodox religion and a
corrupt Latin-Italian language, with Slavic influences, as in those times the Old Slav language
was the church language in all Romanian countries. The same ethnic note was made by
Niccolo Barsi from Lucca in the same century.

Lawryn Piaseczynski, secretary of the Polish king Sigismund III Vasa, traveling with a
diplomatic mission to Gazi Giray Khan, traversing the region of Cetatea Albă (Ak-Kerman) and
the Vozia or Oceakov region, found only "Moldavian villages under the Tatar Khan's
domination, ruled in his name by Nazyl Aga" ("sate moldoveneşti pe care le ţine hanul
tătărăsc şi pe care le guvernează în numele lui sluga lui Nazyl aga")[2] Similar notes were
made by Giovanni Botero (1540–1617) in Relazioni universali (Venice 1591); Gian Lorenzo
d'Anania in L'Universale fabbrica del Mondo, ovvero Cosmografia (Napoli 1573, Venice 1596
etc.) and Giovanni Antonio Magini (1555–1617), from Padova, în Geographie universae
(Venice 1596).

Daniel Krman wrote that apart from the Turks and Tatars, the conquerors of Vozia, the city
was inhabited by Moldavians (Romanians) and a number of Greek merchants.

Russian conquest

The town and fortress after its capture by the Russians in 1737

Burial in Kherson of siege fallen in Ochakov

During the Russo-Turkish War (1735–1739), the Russian Empire, viewing the Ottoman
fortress as the key for obtaining control of the Black Sea littoral, besieged it in 1737. Russian
troops commanded by Marshal von Münnich took the fortress by storm (July 1737), but the
following year Russia abandoned it, restoring it to Turkey in 1739. The 1737 siege became
famous as the background to one of the tales of the fictional Baron Munchausen.
During the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792, Russian land forces under Alexander Suvorov
and naval units commanded by John Paul Jones started a second siege of Ochakov, which
began in the summer of 1788 and lasted six months. In December 1788, in temperatures of
−23 °C (−9 °F), the Russians stormed the fortress, resulting in a terrible loss of life. The siege
became the subject of a famous ode by Gavrila Derzhavin.[3] The naval Battle of Ochakov
(July 1788) took place alongside the city during the same campaign. The Treaty of Jassy of
1792 transferred Özi to the Russian Empire, which renamed it as Ochakov (Russian: Оча́ков).

Initially the Russian Empire planned to establish a "New Moldavia" as a point of attraction for
the Romanians from Moldavia, Wallachia and other Romanian-speaking areas.[4] Romanians
became a minority in the area as a result of the Russian Empire's policy of Slavic
settlement.[5]

Anglo-French occupation

During the Crimean War the Kinburn Fortress opposite Ochakiv was bombarded by the Anglo-
French fleet and captured on October 17, 1855, in the course of the Battle of Kinburn. The
fortress remained in Anglo-French hands for the remaining months of the war, while the
Russians abandoned Ochakiv and destroyed the fort located there. After that war the coastal
defences around Ochakiv were rebuilt and strengthened.

Recent history

With the establishment of the Ukrainian statehood as the Ukrainian People's Republic the
Ukrainian name of the city became official. Ochakiv was part of the Soviet Union's Ukrainian
SSR and during World War II it was occupied by Romania between 1941 and 1944. This was
the first time in the city's history that the ethnological and sociological research of Ochakiv's
Romanians survivors were made by Anton Golopenția.[6]

Present

Today Ochakiv is a resort town and a fishing port. The current estimated population is around
16,900 (as of 2001).

The town's main sight is the building of the Suvorov Museum, which served as a mosque in
the 15th century. It was converted into the church of St. Nicholas in 1804 and was
reconstructed in the pseudo-Russian style in 1842.

Ochakiv is home to a Ukrainian Navy’s operational control center.[7]

 1. Чисельність наявного населення України на 1 січня 2021 / Number of Present Population of
Ukraine, as of January 1, 2021 (http://database.ukrcensus.gov.ua/PXWEB2007/ukr/publ_new1/2021/
zb_chuselnist%202021.pdf) (PDF) (in Ukrainian and English). Kyiv: State Statistics Service of
Ukraine.

2. "Transnistria înainte şi acum - partea I" (http://romaniancoins.org/rotransnistria.html) .

3. "Осень во время осады Очакова (Державин) — Викитека" (https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9

E%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%8C_%D0%B2%D0%BE_%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%8F
_%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%B4%D1%8B_%D0%9E%D1%87%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D
0%B0_(%D0%94%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B6%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%BD)) .

4. "Archived copy" (https://web.archive.org/web/20131112150622/http://www.agero-stuttgart.de/REVIS

TA-AGERO/ISTORIE/totul%20despre%20transnistria.htm) . Archived from the original (http://www.a
gero-stuttgart.de/REVISTA-AGERO/ISTORIE/totul%20despre%20transnistria.htm) on 2013-11-12.
Retrieved 2014-11-03.

5. Zaporojia-teritoriu de etnogeneza a poporului român (http://foaienationala.ro/zaporojia-teritoriu-de-et

nogeneza-a-poporului-roman.html)

6. [1] (http://www.romlit.ro/o_lucrare_fundamental) . The whole research raport can be read here:

Anton_Golopentia-Romanii_De_La_Est_De_Bug (https://archive.org/stream/Anton_Golopentia-Romani
i_De_La_Est_De_Bug_08__/Anton_Golopentia-Romanii_De_La_Est_De_Bug_08___djvu.txt) .

7. Read more on UNIAN: https://www.unian.info/politics/2079834-ukrainian-interest-putins-maneuvers-

waszczykowskis-advice-and-merkels-rating.html

stroitelstvo-ochakove-komandnogo-1502449040.html

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ochakiv.

Satellite photo from Google Maps (http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=kherson,+u

kraine&ll=46.614132,31.54664&spn=0.040209,0.10849&t=k&om=1)

(in Russian) 1:100,000 topographic map (https://web.archive.org/web/20070301232443/h

ttp://sunsite.berkeley.edu:8085/x-ussr/100k/L-36-052.jpg)

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh,
ed. (1911). "Ochakov". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University
Press. p. 988.
Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Ochakiv&oldid=1081454280"

Last edited 1 month ago by Alaexis