Place:Baturyn, Chernihiv, Ukraine

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Batúryn, is a historic town in Chernihiv Oblast (province) of northern Ukraine. It is located in Nizhyn Raion (district) on the banks of the Seym River. Baturyn lost its city status in 1923 and received it back only in 2008. It hosts the administration of Baturyn urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Population:

History

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Evidence of settlement in the area of present-day Baturyn dates back to the Neolithic era, with digging having also revealed Bronze Age and Scythian remains. According to some modern writers, the earliest fortress at Baturyn would have been created by the Grand Principality of Chernihiv in the 11th century. The contemporary name for the settlement, however, was first mentioned in the 1625, likely referring to the fortress of Stefan Batory (1533-1586, King of Poland, Prince of Transylvania, and Grand Duke of Lithuania), which was built and named in his honor.

The area had been part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (in the Kijów Voivodeship (Kyiv) of the Crown of Poland) since before the Union of Lublin of 1569. Control of the town was wrested away from the Commonwealth by Ukrainian forces during the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648–1657, when natives of Ruthenia gained some degree of autonomy under Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1595-1657) and his Cossack state. In 1648 Baturyn was transformed into a Cossack regional center (sotnia), first hosting the Starodub Cossack Regiment and then the Nizhyn Regiment.

By 1654 Baturyn, home to 486 cossacks and 274 villagers, was granted Magdeburg Rights. As the settlement grew, more merchants flocked to it, and great fairs took place quarterly. The capital of the Cossack Hetmanate (an autonomous Cossack republic in Left-bank Ukraine) was located in Baturyn from 1669 to 1708 and from 1750 to 1764. In Baturyn Hetman Ivan Briukhovetsky signed the Baturyn Statutes in 1663, which further elaborated the treaty with the Tsardom of Russia which Khmelnytsky had initiated with the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654.

The area prospered under the rule of Hetman Ivan Mazepa (1687–1708), increasing in size and population (with upwards of 20,000 residents). Baturyn boasted 40 churches and chapels, two monasteries and a college for government officials and diplomats (the Kantseliarsky Kurin). In 1708 the Zaporozhian Cossacks became involved in the Great Northern War. Hetman Mazepa, after realizing that the Russians planned to remove him from power, switched his allegiance to Sweden (then at war with the Russian Empire) and began to place more emphasis on Ukraine's independence.

On 13 November 1708 a Russian army under the command of Alexander Menshikov sacked and razed Baturyn and slaughtered all of its inhabitants in a punitive response. The Russians broke , the commanding officer of the Baturin garrison, on the wheel. Historian Serhiy Pavlenko estimates that Menshikov's army murdered 6 to 7.5 thousand civilians and 5 to 6.5 thousand military personnel. In 1708 the city had had a population of 20,000; by 1726 it had become a ghost town.

The town was rebuilt in the 1750s, and served as the capital for Hetman Count Kirill Razumovsky (in office 1750-1764). Andrey Kvasov designed Razumovsky's palace in the Baroque style (later Charles Cameron rebuilt it in the Neoclassical style in 1799–1803). The home of the famous Cossack Vasyl Kochubey ( 1640-1708), constructed some 50 years earlier, is surrounded today by a park in his name (although hostilities devastated this building during World War II, it was restored during Soviet times).

Following the death of Hetman Razumovsky (1803) the town lost most of its political stature. In 1756 a textile plant was founded with 12 weaving machines. It quickly grew to include 76 machines. When Russian empress Catherine II (reigned 1762-1796) abolished the Ukrainian Cossack state and incorporated its territories into the Russian Empire, Baturyn continued manufacturing textiles, feeding a growing demand for carpets. In 1843 Taras Shevchenko stayed in the town, using his time to paint many of the architectural sights.

In June 1993 the Ukrainian government declared Baturyn the center of a national site of Ukrainian history and culture. In August 2002, at the prodding of President Viktor Yushchenko, a government program was approved to restore Baturyn to its former glory.

On 22 January 2009 Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko officially opened the "Hetmans' Capital" monumental complex (including the newly renovated Razumovsky Palace).

Until 18 July 2020, Baturyn belonged to Bakhmach Raion. The raion was abolished in July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Chernihiv Oblast to five. The area of Bakhmach Raion was merged into Nizhyn Raion.

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