Borzna (, ), also referred to as Borsna, is a historic

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

in northern

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

, in

Nizhyn Raion Nizhyn Raion ( uk, Ніжинський район) is a raion (district) of Chernihiv Oblast, northern Ukraine. Its administrative centre is located at Nizhyn. Population: On 18 July 2020, as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, the ...

of Chernihiv Oblast. It hosts the administration of Borzna urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Population:

Location

Borzna is located on the Desna, next to an international highway connecting

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Kyi ...

and

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

( E101).

Chernihiv Chernihiv ( uk, Черні́гів, , russian: Черни́гов, ; pl, Czernihów, ; la, Czernihovia), is a city and municipality in northern Ukraine, which serves as the administrative center of Chernihiv Oblast and Chernihiv Raion within ...

is about away. Borzna has no

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

(the nearest railway stations being Doch () with north–south routes and

Plysky Plysky ( uk, Плиски) is a selo in Nizhyn Raion, Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine. It hosts the administration of Plysky rural hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. The village has a population of 1,333. Here was born American biologist Alexa ...

() with west–east routes. The city derives its name from the river it lies on, a tributary of the Desna.

Climate

Borzna has a

humid continental A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and freez ...

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologi ...

(

Koppen Koppen is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Dan Koppen (born 1979), American football offensive lineman * Erwin Koppen (1929–1990), German literary scholar * Luise Koppen (1855–1922), German author * Wladimir Köppen (1846� ...

''Dfb''). The warmest months are June, July, and August, with mean temperatures of . The coldest are December, January, and February, with mean temperatures of . The highest ever temperature recorded in the town was in July 2010. The coldest temperature ever recorded in the city was in 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

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

era, with

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

and

Scythian The Scythians or Scyths, and sometimes also referred to as the Classical Scythians and the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern * : "In modern scholarship the name 'Sakas' is reserved for the ancient tribes of northern and eastern Centra ...

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 ( – 1255),, ''Bat haan'', tt-Cyrl, Бату хан; ; russian: хан Баты́й was a Mongol ruler and founder of the Golden Horde, a constituent of the Mongol Empire. Batu was a son of Jochi, thus a grandson of Genghis Kh ...

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 The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and, after 1791, as the Commonwealth of Poland, was a bi- confederal state, sometimes called a federation, of Poland and Lithuania ru ...

(in the

Kijów Voivodeship The Kiev Voivodeship ( pl, województwo kijowskie, la, Palatinatus Kioviensis, uk, Київське воєводство, ''Kyjivśke vojevodstvo'') was a unit of administrative division and local government in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ...

of the

Crown of Poland The Crown of the Kingdom of Poland ( pl, Korona Królestwa Polskiego; Latin: ''Corona Regni Poloniae''), known also as the Polish Crown, is the common name for the historic Late Middle Ages territorial possessions of the King of Poland, includi ...

) since before the

Union of Lublin The Union of Lublin ( pl, Unia lubelska; lt, Liublino unija) was signed on 1 July 1569 in Lublin, Poland, and created a single state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest countries in Europe at the time. It replaced the per ...

. 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 ( uk, гетьман, translit=het'man) is a political title from Central and Eastern Europe, historically assigned to military commanders. Used by the Czechs in Bohemia since the 15th century. It was the title of the second-highest military co ...

Bohdan Khmelnytsky and his Cossack state. In 1648, Borzna was transformed into a Cossack regional center Borzna Regiment, and then, in 1650 —

sotnia Sotnia ( Ukrainian and ) was a military unit and administrative division in many Slavic countries. Sotnia, deriving back to 1948, has been used in a variety of contexts in both Ukraine and Russia to this day. It is a helpful word to create s ...

of the

Nizhyn Regiment The Nizhyn Regiment or Nezhin Regiment ( uk, Ні́жинський полк, russian: Нѣжинскій полкъ) was one of ten territorial-administrative subdivisions of the Cossack Hetmanate. The regiment's capital was the city of Nizhyn, n ...

. Ivan Korsak, the Sotnik ((со́тник; en: group leader of one hundred Cossack voisko) of the city of Borzna received nobility on October 1, 1684. Borzna Nicholas Church 1

By 1634 Borzna was granted

Magdeburg Rights Magdeburg rights (german: Magdeburger Recht; also called Magdeburg Law) were a set of town privileges first developed by Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (936–973) and based on the Flemish Law, which regulated the degree of internal autonomy within ...

. After 1654, the town became part of the

Tsardom of Russia The Tsardom of Russia or Tsardom of Rus' also externally referenced as the Tsardom of Muscovy, was the centralized Russian state from the assumption of the title of Tsar by Ivan IV in 1547 until the foundation of the Russian Empire by Peter I ...

and became a county town in the

Chernigov governorate The Chernigov Governorate (russian: Черниговская губерния; translit.: ''Chernigovskaya guberniya''; ), also known as the Government of Chernigov, was a guberniya in the historical Left-bank Ukraine region of the Russian ...

in 1782, adopting the emblem of the Russian period.Borzna. Encyclopedia of Ukraine
/ref> 240 families of the cossacks and 180 families of the

peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of 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 A raion (also spelt rayon) is a type of administrative unit of several post-Soviet states. The term is used for both a type of subnational entity and a division of a city. The word is from the French (meaning 'honeycomb, department'), and is co ...

(Borzna district). In

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, the town was occupied by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

from September 11, 1941, to September 7, 1943. On January 18, 1942, the Germans, with the support of Ukrainian police, rounded up all the local Jews they could find and massacred them at Shapovalivka. 126 people were killed, 179 removed to Germany. On August 26, 1966, Borzna was attributed to the category of cities of district subordination. Until 18 July 2020, Borzna was the administrative center of

Borzna Raion Borzna Raion ( uk, Борзнянський район) was a raion (district) of Chernihiv Oblast, northern Ukraine. Its administrative centre was located at the city of Borzna. The raion was abolished on 18 July 2020 as part of the administrat ...

. 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 Borzna Raion was merged into Nizhyn Raion.

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 Technicum, 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 Deaf-mute is a term which was used historically to identify a person who was either deaf and used sign language or both deaf and could not speak. The term continues to be used to refer to deaf people who cannot speak an oral language or have som ...

, 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,Hanna Barvinok. Encyclopedia of Ukraine
/ref> (husband and wife) which is a ten-minute drive away in the nearby village of Motronivka. The local newspaper the ''Visti Borznyanshchyny'' ( en, 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

* Panteleimon Kulish — writer, critic, poet, folklorist, and translator *

Semen Paliy Semen Paliy ( uk, Семен Палiй, pl, Semen Palej) (c. 1645 – 1710) was a Ukrainian Cossack polkovnyk (colonel). Born in Chernihiv region, Paliy settled in Zaporizhian Sich at a very young age and gained fame as a brave fighter and ...

— Ukrainian Cossack

polkovnyk ''Polkovnik'' (russian: полковник, lit=regimentary; pl, pułkownik) is a military rank used mostly in Slavic-speaking countries which corresponds to a colonel in English-speaking states and oberst in several German-speaking and Scandin ...

(colonel) *

Ivan Plyushch Ivan Stepanovych Plyushch ( uk, Іван Степанович Плющ; September 11, 1941 – June 25, 2014) was a Ukrainian politician. He thrice served as the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada (parliament of Ukraine), from July 9 to July 23, 1990 ...

— Ukrainian politician and former Chairman of the

Verkhovna Rada The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine ( uk, Верхо́вна Ра́да Украї́ни, translit=, Verkhovna Rada Ukrainy, translation=Supreme Council of Ukraine, Ukrainian abbreviation ''ВРУ''), often simply Verkhovna Rada or just Rada, is the ...

(Ukrainian parliament) *

Pavlo Polubotok Pavlo Polubotok ( uk, Павло Леонтійович Полуботок, russian: Павел Леонтьевич Полуботок, pl, Paweł Połubotok; born around 1660, died on 29 December 1724), was a Ukrainian Cossack political and mil ...

— Acting Hetman of the Cossack era of

* Ivan Kharchenko —

Hero of the Soviet Union The title Hero of the Soviet Union (russian: Герой Советского Союза, translit=Geroy Sovietskogo Soyuza) was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded together with the Order of Lenin personally or collectively for ...

, awarded for the World War II battles, born in the village Komarivka of the current Borzniansky rayon * Ivan Korsak — Cossack

Sotnik Sotnik or sotnyk (, uk, сотник, bg, стотник) was a military rank among the Cossack '' starshyna'' (military officers), Strelets Troops (17th century) in Muscovy and Imperial Cossack cavalry (since 1826), the Ukrainian Insurgent A ...

1684

Gallery

File:Borzna monumentWW 1.jpg, ''Monument to the lost countrymen'' File:Borzna nature 3.JPG, ''Meadows near the Borzna'' File:Borzna nature 2.JPG, ''The Stork Nest, Borzna'' File:Borzna old MTS 1.JPG, ''New Year's Eve. 1967'' File:Borzna pokrovsky fair 2.jpg, ''Pokrovsky fair in Borzna'' File:Borzna Hanna 's Desert 1.jpg, ''Historical-memorial complex Hannyna Pustyn''

References

Bibliography

* ''Історія міст і сіл Української CCP — Чернігівська область (1972) (History of Towns and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR — Chernihiv Oblast)'', Kiev. * * David S. DuVal. (2004). ''Ukrainian Soul: The Story Of The Family Volkoff From Borzna''. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse. — 193 p.

External links

Official Borzna District Website

The murder of the Jews of Borzna
during

, at

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

website. {{Authority control Cities in Chernihiv Oblast Borznyansky Uyezd Shtetls Cities of district significance in Ukraine Cossack Hetmanate Blackboard places Holocaust locations in Ukraine