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| Volchansk is ours! How the Russians gained a foothold on the outskirts of the Wild Field |
| 2024-06-20 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Ilya Knorring [REGNUM] In the Kharkov direction, the most fierce fighting continues to take place outside the city of Volchansk. As a result of the rapid offensive that began on the night of May 9-10, by the end of the month our military had already liberated half of the city blocks, reaching a natural barrier - a river, through which the Ukrainian Armed Forces blew up bridges. The enemy, “ raking up ” reserves, imposed heavy positional battles from street to street. But although slow, the advance of Russian troops continues. The goal is not only to secure Belgorod, Shebekino and other Russian border cities from Ukrainian attacks (raids on the Belgorod region and artillery shelling often took place from positions near Volchansk and Liptsy; Volchansk was the base for Ukrainian DRGs). The task is also to liberate the ancient Russian city, which found itself part of “independent” Ukraine due to a historical accident. The decisive events took place during the anniversary year - the city turns 350 years old in 2024. On the battlefield, Russia has to remind and prove that these places were developed and developed by it long before the founding of St. Petersburg, or even more so Sochi. UKRAINIAN RUSSIAN LAND The Moscow Central Archive of Ancient Acts contains a document confirming the founding date of the city. In 1674, the Belgorod voivode, Prince Grigory Romodanovsky, wrote to the Chuguev voivode Fyodor Sokovnin : “By decree of the Great Sovereign, Tsar Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich, Nizhegolsky Cherkashenin Martyn was ordered to build a settlement on the Volchye Vody River, and to call his brothers Cherkas from the Little Russian and Trans-Dnieper cities for living; and don’t accept other people at all.” Chuguev, where the Duma nobleman Fyodor Sokovnin was in charge, was founded during the time of the first tsar from the Romanov dynasty, Mikhail Fedorovich, as an outpost of the Russian kingdom. Now in the Kharkov region, for now under the control of Ukraine, in the rear of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Nezhegol, from where the Cherkashenian (a native of Little Russia) Martyn was called up by royal order, is now a village on our side of the border, in the Belgorod region. But these lands of the former Wild Field had nothing to do with Little Russia itself. The land on which the Volchi Vody settlement was founded belonged to the Russian sovereigns since 1503, but was not developed for a long time due to the danger of Tatar raids. Serious construction began only under Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, when the sovereign allowed Orthodox refugees from the possessions of the Polish king to settle on the undeveloped lands of the Wild Field and the adjacent forests. Immediately after the founding of the future Volchansk, in the same 1674, the Russian authorities had to carry out a kind of special operation on the new frontier. It turned out that the “Nizhegol Cherkashenian” Martyn, sent to found the border settlement, was hosting “regimental and city people” and “sheltering them from service.” those. does what was directly prohibited by Voivode Romodanovsky: he gives refuge to deserters from the tsarist army, instead of attracting Little Russian Cossacks from the possessions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Therefore, “Reitar Major Roman Belguzin with various people” was sent from Belgorod to Volchi Vody to restore order. Coat of arms of the city of the Russian Empire Volchansk, Kharkov province Despite all the local peculiarities, both the “Cherkasy from the cities beyond the Dnieper” and the officials sent from Moscow equally considered themselves Russian and Orthodox. Those of them who lived in the border areas of the then states were called Ukrainian. Slobozhanshchina was such a Ukrainian land of the Russian state - the current territories of the Sumy and Kharkov regions of Ukraine, the north of the DPR and LPR and the southwest of the Bryansk region of the Russian Federation. Slobozhanshchina was governed by tsarist governors and local regimental commanders. Attributing these lands to the Hetmanate - the supposedly independent “Cossack state” of the 17th–18th centuries, to which modern Ukraine elevates itself, will not work, no matter how much the Kyiv ideologists want. There was no hetman's rule here; it began beyond the Kolomak river. There was Little Russia. Thus, the city of Volchansk, previously called Volchye Vody, arose on Russian soil and was inhabited by Russian people. We can learn about who lived in Volchansk in 1682, when the Chuguevian Roman Ozhegov swore the oath of oath to the young Tsars Ivan and Peter, from the Book of the Cross, where all the service people were recorded. It lists both Cossacks and boyar children (the military class, which, among other things, performed guard duty). All are undisputed subjects of the Russian sovereigns. Many of them fought under the command of governor Grigory Romodanovsky in the “Chigirin Seat” - the defense of the Chigirin fortress from the Turks and Crimean Tatars in 1677. Many would fight in the Crimean campaign of Prince Vasily Golitsyn, the favorite of Princess Sophia, and in the Azov campaigns of young Peter I, and in the Northern War. RUNNING WOLF IN A BLUE FIELD The Volchanskaya Sloboda itself remained one of the outposts on the troubled steppe border - until the Russian state advanced further to the south. More than a century and a half ago, Archbishop Filaret (Gumilevsky) wrote: “You just need to note that the ancient earthen fortress of Volchanskaya was located a mile from present-day Volchansk to the northeast. Its remains are still visible today. The construction of the town on the current site dates back to 1688, as the general opinion suggests.” The Church of St. Nicholas was also moved there from the old fortress. Since the end of the 17th century, the town was already in the near rear - the frontier moved to the Izyum line, the defensive line from the current village of Streletskoye (Krasnogvardeisky district of the Belgorod region) to the city of Tsarev-Borisov (now a settlement in the Izyum district of the Kharkov region). By the end of the next century, the Russian Empire, as a result of several Russian-Turkish wars, reached the Black Sea. By that time, the lands of the former suburban Cossack regiments had long become “ordinary” provinces. On April 25, 1780, Catherine the Great established Volchansky district. With minor changes, later called a district, it existed until July 17, 2020, when, already under Vladimir Zelensky, it was mechanically annexed to the Chuguevsky district. On September 21, 1781, by decree of Catherine II, the coats of arms of the cities of the Kharkov province were approved, including the coat of arms of Volchansk: “In the upper part of the shield is the coat of arms of Kharkov. At the bottom there is a running wolf in a blue field, meaning the name of this city.” “NOBODY UNDERSTANDS UKRAINIAN HERE” This is how this region lived all the years, actively interacting with neighboring lands, and there was no hard dividing line separating it from the rest of Russia. The lands of the landowners Rebinder, for example, were located mainly in Volchansky district, and the estate was in Shebekino (now in the Belgorod region). In Volchansky district was born the popular playwright in Soviet times, the author of “Yarovaya Love” Konstantin Trenev, from whose legacy the remark is most remembered: “Let, let Dunka go to Europe!” It is less known that Trenev’s historical drama “Pugachevshchina” was staged at the Moscow Art Theater by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (himself a native of the Little Russian Cossack elders, who turned into nobles of the Chernigov province). Needless to say, the playwright wrote in Russian. But the events of 1917 again turned a quiet provincial town in the Russian outback into a strategic point on, as they would now say, the line of military contact. Until April 1918, Volchansk was part of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic, which was part of the RSFSR. After the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, the city was occupied by German troops - and it ended up in the puppet “Ukrainian State” of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky. It is interesting that this time - November 1918 - dates back to a document concerning attempts to Ukrainize schools in Volchansky district. Almost all schools then said an unequivocal “no” to the language. The most typical answers in the questionnaires were given: “1) the Russian language is more familiar to us than Ukrainian; 2) teaching in Ukrainian is completely incomprehensible to us; 3) conduct classes in Russian, considering the transition from Russian to literary Ukrainian, leaving the local language, difficult; 4) not in Ukrainian, which no one here understands.” And it should be noted that rural schools were surveyed. FROM THE ARTIFICIAL BORDER TO THE FRONT LINE During the Civil War, the city was captured either by “independents” - the Petliurites, or by supporters of a united and indivisible Russia from Denikin’s army, or by the Red Army. As a result of the war, the Bolsheviks chose not to restore the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic (abolished by a decision of Moscow in February 1919), but to include Slobozhanshchina and Donbass into the Ukrainian SSR. So the Volchansky district ended up being part of Ukraine, and the neighboring Shebekinsky district, which is not much different from it, became part of the Kursk and then the Belgorod region of the RSFSR. The name of the city, instead of a hard sign at the end (Vovchansk), officially acquired a “Ukrainian” soft sign - Vovchansk. In 1991, the virtual administrative border became a real, state border, and thirty years later it turned into a front line. The places where Russia's front lines once stood became a springboard for attacks on Russia - just like 350 years ago, during the time of the Wild Field. First in the spring of 2022, and then now, with the beginning of the May offensive, Russian troops are fighting for the liberation of Slobozhanshchina. Baksheevka, the native village of the Soviet classic, Stalin Prize winner Konstantin Trenev, became the base for the 82nd Airborne Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (which was damaged during the battles on May 25). More and more reinforcements of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are being transferred to Volchansk from near Kupyansk, Chasov Yar and from more distant sections of the front. The liberation of the city will mean that it will be at the forefront - just as at the time of its founding, in those days when Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich gave instructions to the governors on the defensive lines: “Together these new cities and the Cherkasy servicemen living in them are captured and plundered do not give it away." |
| Posted by:badanov |