Dnipro

Dnipro, previously called Dnipropetrovsk from 1926 until May 2016, is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnieper River, after which its Ukrainian language name (Dnipro) it is named. Dnipro is the administrative centre of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. It hosts the administration of Dnipro urban hromada. The population of Dnipro is

Archeological evidence suggests the site of the present city was settled by Cossack communities from at least 1524. The town, named Yekaterinoslav (''the glory of Catherine''), was established by decree of the Russian Empress Catherine the Great in 1787 as the administrative center of Novorossiya. From the end of the nineteenth century, the town attracted foreign capital and an international, multi-ethnic, workforce exploiting Kryvbas iron ore and Donbas coal.

Renamed ''Dnipropetrovsk'' in 1926 after the Ukrainian Communist Party leader Grigory Petrovsky, it became a focus for the Stalin-era commitment to the rapid development of heavy industry. After the Second World War, this included nuclear, arms, and space industries whose strategic importance led to Dnipropetrovsk's designation as a " closed city".

Following the Euromaidan events of 2014, the city shifted politically away from parties and political figures supportive of continued close ties to Russia, and toward those wishing to celebrate the achievement in 1991 of Ukrainian national statehood and to develop relations with the European Union and the West. The change has been reflected by the removal of Soviet-era symbols including, from May 2016, "Petrovsk" from the name of city.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Dnipro rapidly developed as a logistical hub for humanitarian aid and a reception point for people fleeing the various battle fronts.

Names

Current names (2016-present):

Ukrainian: Дніпро , Russian: Днепр

Former names (1926-2016)

Ukrainian: Дніпропетро́вськ , Russian: Днепропетро́вск

Toponymy

The original name of a Ukrainian Cossack city on the territory of modern Dnipro was New Kodak.New Kodak
(26 March 2022) Also on the territory of Modern Dnipro, the Russian Empire founded Yekaterinoslav (''the glory of Catherine''). This name was first mentioned in a report to Azov Governor to Grigory Potemkin on 23 April 1776. He wrote "The provincial city called Yekaterinoslav should be the best convenience on the right side of the Dnieper River near Kaydak..." (Which referred to ). The construction was officially transferred to the right bank in a decree of Empress of Russia Catherine II of 23 January 1784.

Over time, Dnipro has been known by a number of names:
*New Kodak 1645–1784
*Yekaterinoslav ( rus, Екатериносла́в, p=jɪkətʲɪrʲɪnɐˈsɫaf}, uk, Катеринослав, Katerynoslav , sometimes romanized as Ekaterinoslav) 1784–1796
*Novorossiysk 1796–1802, briefly renamed during the reign of Catherine II's hated son, tsar Paul I; however, the previous name was restored by tsar Alexander I after he had his father assassinated
*Yekaterinoslav 1802–1918
*Sicheslav ( uk, Січеслав) 1918–1921 (unofficial name)
*Yekaterinoslav / Katerynoslav 1918–1926
*Dnepropetrovsk ( rus, Днепропетровск, p=dʲnʲɪprəpʲɪˈtrofsk)) / Dnipropetrovsk ( uk, Дніпропетро́вськ} , also Dnipropetrovske according to the Kharkiv orthography 1926–2016. The word originates from Ukrainian Дніпропетро́вськ, from Дніпро́ (Dnipró, "Dnipro river") + Петро́вський (Petróvsʹkyj), after Soviet revolutionary .
*Dnipro 2016–present

The spelling Catharinoslav was found on some maps of the nineteenth century.

In some Anglophone media the city was known as the Rocket City during the Cold War.

In 1918, the Central Council of Ukraine proposed to change the name of the city to ''Sicheslav''; however, this was never finalised.

In 1926 the city was renamed after communist leader Grigory Petrovsky.Poroshenko signed the laws about decomunization
Ukrayinska Pravda. 15 May 2015
Poroshenko signs laws on denouncing Communist, Nazi regimes
Interfax-Ukraine. 15 May 20
Goodbye, Lenin: Ukraine moves to ban communist symbols
BBC News (14 April 2015) The 2015 law on decommunization required the city to be renamed, and on 19 May 2016 the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill to officially rename the city to ''Dnipro''..

Following the renaming of the city the reference to Petrovsky has been removed from institutions named after the city. A notable exception is the name of the surrounding province, which is listed in the territorial structure of Ukraine in the Constitution. Thus until a lengthy and complicated process of amending is carried out, it officially retains the name Dnipropetrovska oblast.

Among other names it was also known as Polovytsia.

Disputed year of foundation

Scholarship concerning the foundation of the city has been subject to political considerations and dispute. In 1976, to have the bicentenary of the city coincide with the 70th anniversary of the birth of Soviet party leader, and regional native son, Leonid Brezhnev, the date of the city's foundation was moved back from the visit Russian Empress Catherine II in 1787, to 1776.Riding the currents
The Ukrainian Week (18 August 2017)

Following Ukrainian independence, local historians began to promote the idea of a town emerging in the 17th century from Cossack settlements, an approach aimed at promoting the city's Ukrainian identity.Portnov, Andrii and Tetiana Portnova (2015)
"The 'Imperial' and the 'Cossack' in the Semiotics of Ekaterinoslav-Dnipropetrovsk:The Controversies of the Foundation Myth"
in Urban Semiotics: The City as a Cultural Historical Phenomenon, Igo Pilshchikov ed., Tallinin, TLU Press, pp. 223–245, ISBN 9789985588079 They cited the chronicler of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, Dmytro Yavornytsky, whose ''History of the City of Ekaterinoslav'' completed in 1940 was authorised for publication only in 1989, the era of Glasnost.''"Літописець Запорозької Січі – Минуло 150 років від дня народження Дмитра Яворницького", Ukraina Moloda, November 2011'',

History

Early history

Human settlements in current Dnipropetrovsk Oblast date from the Paleolithic era. According to archeological finds, in the Paleolithic period (7—3 thousand ''Anno Domini'') human settlements appear near the in what is now Chechelivskyi District and on Monastyrskyi Island. A Neolithic stonecrafter's house has been excavated in one of Dnipro's city parks. In the Bronze Age the area was settled by diverse tribes. Traces of Cimmerian settlements during the Bronze age have been found near today's . The area of modern Dnipro was part of the Scythian empire from approximately the 1th century BC until the 3rd century BC. During the Migration Period (300–800) nomadic tribes of the Huns, Avars, Bulgarians, and Magyars passed through the lands of the Dnieper region, they came into contact with local agricultural East Slavs.

The area of modern Dnipro was part of Kievan Rus' (882–1240). The region witnessed fighting between the armies of Kievan Rus' and Khazars, Pechenegs, Tork people and Cumans. In the 13th century the Dnieper region was devastated during the Mongol Empire conquest of Kievan Rus'. The area of modern Dnipro city was incorporated into the Mongol's khanate Golden Horde.

In the 15th century the area became part of the Kiev Voivodeship (1471–1565) of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Archeological finds in today's Dnipro's urban district Samarskyi District suggest that the important river crossing was a trading settlement from at least 1524. In 1635, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth built the Kodak Fortress above the Dnieper Rapids at ''Kodaky'' on the south-eastern outskirts of modern Dnipro near the current Kaidatsky Bridge, only to have it destroyed within months by the Cossacks of Ivan Sulyma.Plokhy, Serhii, ''The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine'', pub Oxford University Press, 2001, , pages 26, 37, 40, 51, 60–1, 142, 245, and 268. Rebuilt in 1645, it was captured by Zaporozhian Sich in 1648.

Around the fortress a settlement emerged that became a town in (province) of the Zaporizhian Sich called . Cossacks often hid the true number of the population in order to reduce taxation and other obligations, but according to documentary evidence, it can be assumed that the population of New Kodak was at least 3,000 people. The fortress was garrisoned by Cossacks until the Sich, allied with the Ottoman Empire and their Tartar vassals, drove out the encroaching Tsardom of Russia. Under the terms of the Russian withdrawal—the Treaty of the Pruth in 1711—the Kodak fortress was demolished.day.kyiv.ua ''Above Kodak, this year the unique fortress marks its 375th anniversary''
by Mykola Chaban, 2010.

In the mid-1730s, the fortress and Russians returned, living in an uneasy cohabitation with local cossacks. From mid-century they co-existed with the Zaporozhian sloboda (or "free settlement") of ''Polovytsia'' located on the site of today's Central Terminal and the ''Ozyorka'' farmers market.Establishment and development of the Dnipropetrovsk city (Виникнення і розвиток міста Дніпропетровськ)
The History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR.

In the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774), the Zaporozhian cossacks allied with Empress Catherine II. No sooner had they assisted the Russians to victory than they faced an imperial ultimatum to disband their confederation. The liquidation of the Sich destroyed their political autonomy and saw the incorporation of their lands into the new governates of Novorossiya. In 1784, Catherine ordered the foundation of new city, commonly referred to at the time as Katerynoslav.

In 2001 the seal of Kodak Palanka became the central element of and .

Imperial city

Establishment of Catherine's city

The first written mention of a town in the Russian Empire called Yekaterinoslav can be found in a report from Azov Governor to Grigory Potemkin on 23 April 1776. He wrote "The provincial city called Yekaterinoslav should be the best convenience on the right side of the Dnieper River near Kaydak..." (Which referred to ). In 1777, a town named Yekaterinoslav (''the glory of Catherine''), was built to the north of the present-day city at the confluence of the Samara and Kilchen rivers. The site was badly chosen – spring waters transformed the city into a bog. The surviving settlement was later renamed Novomoskovsk.S. S. Montefiore: Prince of Princes – The Life of Potemkin

The territory of modern Dnipro, despite the modern-day city's size, still has not expanded to encompass the territory of (Chertkov's) Yekaterinoslav of 1776. On 22 January 1784 Russian Empress Catherine the Great signed an Imperial Ukase directing that "the gubernatorial city under name of Yekaterinoslav be moved to the right bank of the Dnieper river near Kodak". The new city would serve Grigory Potemkin as a Viceregal seat for the combined Novorossiya and Azov Governorates.

On , in the course of her celebrated Crimean journey, the Empress laid the foundation stone of the Transfiguration Cathedral in the presence of Austrian Emperor Joseph II, Polish king Stanisław August Poniatowski, and the French and English ambassadors. Potemkin's grandiose plans for a third Russian imperial capital alongside Moscow and Saint Petersburg included a viceregal palace, a university (Potemkin envisioned Yekaterinoslav as the ' Athens of southern Russia'), courts of law and a botanical garden, were frustrated by a renewal of the Russo-Turkish war in 1787, by bureaucratic procrastination, defective workmanship, and theft, Potemkin's death in 1791 and that of his imperial patroness five years later.Charles Wynn
Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms: The Donbass-Dnepr Bend in Late Imperial Russia, 1870–1905
– " he Empressand her favorite, Prince Grigorii Potemkin, the city's first governor-general and the de facto viceroy of southern Russia, had big plans for Ekaterinoslav. Potemkin envisioned Ekaterinoslav as the 'Athens of southern Russia' and as Russia's third capital – 'the centre of the administrative, economic, and cultural life of southern Russia.'"

In 1815 a government official described the town as "more like some Dutch ennonitecolony then a provincial administrative centre". The cathedral, much reduced in size, was completed in 1835.

Growth as an industrial centre

While into the late nineteenth the principal business of the town remained the processing of agricultural raw materials, there was an early state-sponsored effort to promote manufacture. In 1794 the government supported two factories: a textile factory that was transferred from the town of Dubrovny Mogilev Governorate and a silk-stockings factory that was brought from the village of Kupavna near Moscow. In 1797 the textile factory employed 819 permanent workers, 378 of whom were women and 115 children. The silk stocking workers, the majority being women, were serfs bought at an auction for 16,000 rubles. Conditions, as Potemkin himself was forced to admit, were harsh, with many of the workers dying from malnutrition and exhaustion.

From 1797 to 1802, while serving under the Emperor Paul I as the administrative centre of a centre of the Novorossiya Governorate, the settlement was officially known as ''Novorossiysk.''

Despite the bridging of the Dnieper in 1796 and commerce was slow to develop. 1832 saw the establishment of the small Zaslavsky iron-casting factory, the town's first metallurgical enterprise. Industrialisation gathered a pace in the 1880s with the establishment of the first railway connections. Rail construction responded to the enterprise of two men: John Hughes, a Welsh businessman who built an iron works at what is now Donetsk (then Yuzovka) in 1869–72, and developed the Donetsk coal deposits; and the Russian geologist Alexander Pol, who in 1866 had discovered the Kryvyi Rih iron ore basin, Kryvbas, during archaeological research.

In 1884, a railway to supply pig iron foundries in Kryvyi Rih with Donetsk coal crossed the Dnieper at Yekaterinoslav. It proved a spur to further industrial development and to the creation of the new suburbs of Amur and Nyzhnodniprovsk.

In 1897, Yekaterinoslav became the third city in the Russian Empire to have electric trams. The ''Yekaterinoslav Higher Mining School'', today's Dnipro Polytechnic, was founded in 1899.Message of Greeting from Rector
, University official website Within twenty years the population had more than tripled, reaching 157,000 in 1904. The immigrants flowing into the city were mainly ethnic or cultural Russians and Jews, with the Ukrainian population remaining rural in this stage of the industrial revolution.

The Jewish community and the 1905 pogrom

From 1792 Yekaterinoslav was within the Pale of Settlement, the former Polish-Lithuanian territories in which Catherine and her successors enforced no limitation on the movement and residency of their Jewish subjects. Within less than a century, a largely Yiddish-speaking Jewish community of 40,000 constituted more than a third of the city's population, and contributed a considerable share of its business capital and industrial workforce.

Such apparent strength did not protect the community—members of whom had had the unpopular task of collecting government taxes and recruiting young men for the army— from communal violence. In 1883, three days of rioting destroyed Jewish business, and persuaded many to temporarily leave the city. There was a return of anti–Semitic incitement among the Christian public in 1904, but attacks on community were, at that time, suppressed on the order of a liberal governor.

In the widespread social unrest that followed the 1905 defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, the political life of the city was dominated by the revolutionary opposition (including the Jewish Workers Socialist Party and the Bund) and by the insurrectionary spirit of the nascent labor movement. The local czarist authorities were able to ride out the wave political protests and strikes, in part by playing on division between Jewish workers who predominated as clerks and artisans in the city, and Russian workers employed in the large suburban factories. There was a wave of anti-Semitic attacks. With the army intervening against Jewish defense groups, about 100 Jews were killed and two hundred wounded.

According to local historian Andrii Portnov, 40% of the local Yekaterinoslav population was Jewish in the years leading up to World War I.Dnipropetrovsk region. Pragmatic area
The Ukrainian Week (8 May 2014)

The Soviet era

War and revolution

Directly following the Russian February revolution, in the night of 3 March O.S (16 March N.S) to 4 March 1917 a provisional government was organised in Yekaterinoslav headed by the (since 1913) chairman of the provincial land administration . Also on 4 March a Council of Workers' Deputies was formed. On 6 March the prime minister of the Russian Provisional Government Georgy Lvov removed the governor and the vice-governor of Yekaterinoslav Governorate, temporarily handing these powers to Hesberg. On 9 March a Yekaterinoslav Council of Workers and Soldiers deputies was formed.

On 16 May the Council of Workers' Deputies and the Council of Workers and Soldiers merged, to become named the Revolutionary Council in November 1917. All these power structures existed in duality, with Hesberg's provisional government often being in a disadvantage. In 1917 the city saw numerous meetings, rallies, meetings, conferences, congresses and demonstrations by political parties all over the political spectrum. Due to intense political agitation the newly formed factory committees and professional unions by autumn of 1917 mainly supported the Bolsheviks, significantly strengthening their positions.

In June 1917 a Central Council ( Tsentralna Rada) of Ukrainian parties in Kyiv declared Yekaterinoslav to be within the territory of the autonomous Ukrainian People's Republic. On 13 August 1917 the first democratic Yekaterinoslav 120 seats city Duma election took place. The Bolsheviks gained 24 seats and the Mensheviks 16, with pro-Ukrainian parties picking up 6 seats. was elected Mayor of the city. Osipov was Mayor until the dissolution of the city Duma in May 1918. On 10 November 1917 a parade of Ukrainian troops was held, organized by the Yekaterinoslav Ukrainian Military Council in support of the Third Universal of the Ukrainian Central Council, the proclamation of the Ukrainian People's Republic.

In the November 1917 elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviks secured just under 18 percent of the vote in the Governorate, compared to 46 percent for the Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionaries and their allies. On 22 November 1917 the Revolutionary Council and the city Duma pledged their allegiance to the Tsentralna Rada. The Bolsheviks then left these organisations. During December, the situation in the city worsened with both sides preparing for military action.

On 26 December pro-Tsentralna Rada forces presented to the Bolsheviks an ultimatum to completely disarm. The Bolsheviks rejected the ultimatum. The following day the pro-Tsentralna Rada forces began artillery shelling of the Yekaterinoslav's Bryansk plant, where the headquarters of the Bolsheviks and its main forces were located. The shells hit a barracks holding Austro-Hungarian army prisoners of war, who worked at the plant, killing six and wounding 28. Fighting continued until 29 December 1917, when the Bolsheviks seized power in Yekaterinoslav, greatly helped by the arrival of an armored train with troops the previous day. The Bolsheviks were able to keep it under their control until 4 April 1918. The Bolsheviks declared the city part of a Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic.

In the March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Bolsheviks conceded their Ukrainian held territory. In the aftermath of this treaty the Central Powers forces advanced over 500 miles, capturing the whole of Ukraine and some territory beyond. On 5 April 1918 the Imperial German army took control of Yekaterinoslav. 500 Bolshevik Red Guards were publicly executed. Repression against workers continued in the following days.

From 9 April to 29 April 1918 the Ukrainian People's Republic was in charge in the city. After a Central Powers intervention on 29 April 1918 the German-controlled Ukrainian State replaced the Ukrainian People's Republic authority (also in Yekaterinoslav).

On 18 May 1918 the Hetman of the Ukrainian State Pavlo Skoropadskyi ordered that previous nationalized enterprises should be returned to their former owners. On 18 August the Ukrainian State dissolved the city Duma elected in 1917 and replaced it with the one installed in 1914. In the summer of 1918 Yekaterinoslav experienced mass unemployment and major strikes. The forming of organized labour groups was suppressed. Austro-Hungarian troops that occupied the city tried to forcefully end the strikes.

In the fall of 1918 the Ukrainian State was deteriorating and its grip on Yekaterinoslav consequently weakened. In November and December the Bolsheviks tried to gain control of the city through various strikes but were unable to do so because of lack of support of more moderate forces. In November various parts of the city were controlled by either the Bolsheviks, the Directorate of the Ukrainian People's Republic, German and Austro-Hungarian occupation forces or forces loyal to the White movement.

On 5 December forces loyal to the Directorate issued an ultimatum to the Germans to leave the city. After another ultimatum on 19 December and four days of urban warfare German and Austro-Hungarian occupation forces left the city on 23 December 1918. From 20 November to 30 December 1918 Yekaterinoslav was controlled by the Directorate of the Ukrainian People's Republic.

On 25 December 1918, Directorate forces launched an open offensive against the Bolsheviks and forced them to retreat. On 26 December the Bolsheviks formed an alliance with the anarchist Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (the ''Makhnovshchina)'' to regain control of Yekaterinoslav. On 27 December the Makhnovshchina with a force of 600 insurgents took control of the city on behalf of the Bolsheviks, after four days of fighting to clear out the remaining forces loyal to the Ukrainian People's Republic. Because the Makhnovshchina held control of the city, the Bolsheviks abandoned their military positions and this allowed the Ukrainian People's Republic to gain control of the city. Many Makhnovshchina soldiers died. From 1 January until 26 January 1919 the Ukrainian People's Republic was able to keep the city under their control.

On 24 January 1919 Bolshevik Red Army troops commanded by Pavel Dybenko launched an offensive to capture Yekaterinoslav. Despite stubborn resistance of troops loyal to the Ukrainian People's Republic, on 27 January 1919 the city was in full control of the Red Army. (page 77) On 11 May 1919 troops loyal to Nykyfor Hryhoriv, as part of the Hryhoriv Uprising, captured large parts of Yekaterinoslav. On 15 May Bolshevik troops had fully cleared the city of Hryhoriv's troops.

On 10 June 1919, after the anti-Bolshevik White movement Armed Forces of South Russia had gained control of the Donbas region located next to the city, the Bolsheviks decided to turn Yekaterinoslav into a fortified area. Despite this and fierce resistance, the Armed Forces of South Russia took control the city on 28 June 1919. The following days looting in the city became chronic. The Bolshevik Crimean Soviet Army, using a small flotilla on the Dnieper river, was briefly able to retake the city on 14 July 1919. In August 1919 the city was in an acute food crisis due to a peasant insurgency against the White movement policies. Twice, from 28 October to 6 November 1919 and from 9 November to 8 December 1919, Yekaterinoslav was captured by the Makhnovshchina.

On 29 December 1919 the Red Army again tried to control the city, and on 30 December 1919 they reestablished their control of Yekaterinoslav. On 20 September 1920 the Bolsheviks partly evacuated from the city due to it being threatened by the White movement South Russia's Northern Taurida Operation. This lasted for several days, until the situation at the front was determined as Yekaterinoslav not being in danger.

Due to years of fighting, 320 buildings in the city were destroyed, and most of the housing stock needed repair. In 1917 about 268,000 people lived in Yekaterinoslav. In 1920 this number had dropped to 189,000.

Stalin-era industrialisation

In late May 1920 the food supply to Yekaterinoslav deteriorated, resulting in a wave of strikes. In June 1920 Soviet authorities quelled one such protest by arresting 200 railway workers, of which 51 were sentenced to immediate execution.

In 1922 the region was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR, a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. In 1922 the Soviet government ordered that "all nationalized enterprises with names related to the Company or the Surname of the old owners must be renamed in memory of revolutionary events, in memory of the international, all-Russian or local leaders of the proletarian revolution." In 1922 and 1923 the factories were renamed, as well as dozens of streets, alleys, driveways, squares and parks. In 1923 the city council adopted a resolution to organize a competition to rename the city itself.

In 1924 a Provincial Congress of Soviets adopted a resolution on renaming the city of Yekaterinoslav to the city of Krasnodniprovsk (and Yekaterinoslav Province to Krasnodniprovsk). Following this, many organizations and institutions began to name Yekaterinoslav Krasnodniprovsk in official documents, only to be reminded in the press that the renaming of settlements could only be decided by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. In 1926 a provisional District Congress of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies adopted a resolution on renaming Yekaterinoslav to the name Dnipropetrovsk in honour of the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets's chairman of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee, Grigory Petrovsky.Ukraine tears down controversial statue
by Rostyslav Khotin, BBC News (27 November 2009)
Same article on UNIAN.
/ref>

Petrovsky was present at this congress and he did "accept this honor with great gratitude." The resolution of the congress was approved by a resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet dated 20 July 1926. In the 1920s and 1930s dozens of streets, alleys, driveways, squares and parks continued to be renamed in the city, this continued in the 1940s and in subsequent years.

By 1927 the industry of Dnipropetrovsk was completely rebuilt, and according to some indicators exceeded pre-war levels. Due to agrarian overpopulation, an influx of unemployed from other settlements, a higher birth rates among other reasons, both employment and unemployment in Dnipropetrovsk rose. In the late twenties, the authorities had to contend with growing labor unrest. "Do not strangle us, our children are dying of hunger, we have been placed in worse conditions than under the old regime" read one protest.

The city figured prominently in Stalin's Five-Year Plans for industrialisation. In 1932, Dnipropetrovsk's regional metallurgical plants produced 20 per cent of the entire cast iron and 25 per cent of the steel manufactured in the Ukrainian SSR. By the end of the thirties the Dnipropetrovsk region became the most urbanised of Soviet Ukraine with more than 2,273,000 people living in the region and over half a million in the city proper. Dnipropetrovsk became an important cultural and educational centre with ten colleges and a State University.

The surrounding countryside was devastated by the policy of forced collectivisation and grain seizures. Peasants had died en masse during the Holodomor of 1932–33. Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in the years 1932–33 lost 3.5 to 9.8 million people. Making it one of the most affected areas of the famine.

Drawn by employment in the expanding heavy industry, the survivors changed the ethnic composition of the city. The percentage of residents recorded as Ukrainian rose from 36 percent of the population in 1926 to 54.6 percent in 1939. The Russian percentage fell from 31.6 to 23.4, and the Jewish share fell from 26.8 to 17.9. The city's population during the Interwar period grew rapidly. 368,000 people lived in Dnipropetrovsk in 1932. In the 1939 Soviet Census, this number had grown to more than half a million (500,662 people).

Soviet Ukrainization and Korenizatsiya were implemented in Dnipropetrovsk. The Communist party of Ukraine organized special courses in Ukrainian studies. Soviet authorities greatly increased the number of schools, and by the mid-1930s had eradicate illiteracy in the city. New universities were opened. At the end of the 1930s Dnipropetrovsk had 10 higher and 19 special educational institutions. In the 1930s a significant number of new secondary schools and hospitals were built in the city, and city parks were improved.

The Great Purge, following the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, also reached Dnipropetrovsk. In 1935 the Dnipropetrovsk NKVD arrested 182 " Trotskyists". In 1935, 235 alleged "internal enemies" were executed, including a few university rectors. In 1936, 526 people were executed. In 1937, the regional administration of the NKVD killed 16,421 people.

Nazi occupation

Dnipropetrovsk was under Nazi occupation from 26 August 1941 to 25 October 1943. The city was administered as part of the '' Reichskommissariat Ukraine.'' The Holocaust in Dnipropetrovsk reduced the city's remaining Jewish population, estimates for which range from 55,000 to 30,000, to just 702. In just two days, 13–14 October 1941, the Germans killed 15,000.

In a series of camps in the city (''Stammlager 348''), the occupiers are estimated to have killed upwards of 30,000 Soviet POWs.

In November 1941 Dnipropetrovsk's population was 233,000. In March 1942 this number had fallen to 178,000. On 25 October 1943 the population on the right-bank of the city numbered no more than 5,000. According to official statistics, in 1945 the population of Dnipropetrovsk had increased to 259,000 people.

Post-war closed city

As early as July 1944, the State Committee of Defence in Moscow decided to build a large military machine-building factory in Dnipropetrovsk on the location of the pre-war aircraft plant. In December 1945, thousands of German prisoners of war began construction and built the first sections and shops in the new factory. This was the foundation of the Dnipropetrovsk Automobile Factory. In 1954 the administration of this automobile factory opened a secret design office, designated OKB-586, to construct military missiles and rocket engines.

The high-security project was joined by hundreds of physicists, engineers and machine designers from Moscow and other large Soviet cities. In 1965, the secret Plant No. 586 was transferred to the USSR Ministry of General Machine-Building which renamed it "the Southern Machine-building Factory" (Yuzhnyi mashino-stroitel'nyi zavod) or in abbreviated Russian, simply Yuzhmash. Yuzhmash became a significant factor in the arms race of the Cold War ( Nikita Khrushchev boasted in 1960 that it was producing rockets "like sausages" ).

In 1959, Dnipropetrovsk was officially closed to foreign visitors. No foreign citizen, even of a socialist state, was allowed to visit the city or district. Its citizens were held by Communist authorities to a higher standard of ideological purity than the rest of the population, and their freedom of movement was severely restricted. It was not until 1987, during perestroika, that Dnipropetrovsk was opened to international visitors and civil restrictions were lifted.

The population of Dnipropetrovsk increased from 259,000 people in 1945 to 845,200 in 1965.

Notwithstanding the high-security regime, in September and October 1972, workers downed tools in several factories in Dnipropetrovsk demanding higher wages, better food and living conditions, and the right to choose one's job. Labor miiltancy returned in the late 1980s, a period in which promises of Perestrioka and Glasnost raised popular expectations. In 1990 two thousand inmates rioted in the women's remand prison in a further of sign of growing unrest.''New York Times'', 20 June 1990 ''Evolution in Europe; Soviet Troops Kill an Inmate During Riot in Ukrainian Jail''
This stated that TASS had issued a statement saying that there had been a riot by 2,000 inmates in a prison in Dnipropetrovsk. The riot broke out on Thursday 14 June 1990, and was quelled by Soviet troops on Friday 15 June 1990, killing one prisoner and wounding another.

Dissent and youth rebellion

In 1959 17.4% of Dnipropetrovsk students were taught in Ukrainian language schools and 82.6% in Russian language schools. 58% of the city's inhabitants self-identified as Ukrainians. Compared with the other 3 biggest cities of Ukraine Dnipropetrovsk had a rather large share of education conducted in Ukrainian. In Kyiv 26.8% of pupils studied in Ukrainian and 73.1% in Russian while 66% of Kyiv residents considered themselves Ukrainian, in Kharkiv these numbers were 4.9%, 95.1% and 49%. In Odesa these numbers were 8.1%, 91.9% and 40%.History of Ukraine. Standard level. Grade 11. Strukevich § 9. The state of culture during the period of de-Stalinization
History , Your library (2009–2022)

As in the overall Ukrainian SSR, Dnipropetrovsk saw an influx of young immigrants from rural Ukraine. Dnipropetrovsk Oblast saw the highest inflow of rural youth of all Ukraine.

According to KGB reports, in the 1960s " Samizdat" and Ukrainian diaspora publications began to circulate via Western Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk. These fed into underground student circles where they promoted interest in the " Ukrainian Sixtiers", in Ukrainian history, especially of Ukrainian Cossacks, and in the revival of the Ukrainian language. Occasionally the blue and yellow flag of independent Ukraine was unfurled in protest. The authorities responded with repression: arresting and jailing members of underground discussion groups for "nationalistic propaganda".

The growing evidence of dissent in the city coincided from the late 1960s with what the KGB referred to as "radio hooliganism". Thousands of high-school and college students had become ham radio enthusiasts, recording and rebroadcasting western popular music. Annual KGB reports regularly drew a connection between enthusiasm for western pop culture and anti-Soviet behavior. In the 1980s, by which time the KGB had conceded that their raids against "hippies" had failed suppress the youth rebellion, such behavior was reportedly found in an admixture of Anglo-American" heavy metal, punk rock and Banderism—the veneration of Stepan Bandera, and of other Ukrainian nationalists, who in the Soviet narrative were denounced and discredited as Nazi collaborators.

In an attempt to provide Dnipropetrovsk youth with an ideologically safe alternative, beginning in 1976 the local Komsomol set up approved discoteques. Some of the activists involved in this "disco movement" went on in the 1980s to engage in their own illicit tourist and music enterprises, and several later became influential figures in Ukrainian national politics, among them Yulia Tymoshenko, Victor Pinchuk, Serhiy Tihipko, Ihor Kolomoyskyi and Oleksandr Turchynov.The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music and Social Class
ed. Ian Peddie, New York / London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020, , page 318 + 319

The "Dnipropetrovsk Mafia"

Reflecting Dnipropetrovsk's special strategic importance for the entire Soviet Union, party cadres from the "rocket city" played an outsized role not only in republican leaderhip in Kyiv, but also in the Union leadership in Moscow. During Stalin's Great Purge, Leonid Brezhnev rose rapidly within the ranks of the local ''nomenklatura,''Bacon, Edwin; Sandle, Mark, eds. (2002). ''Brezhnev Reconsidered''. Palgrave Macmillan, p. 9. ISBN 978-0333794630B from director of the Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute in 1936 to regional (Obkom) Party Secretary in charge of the city's defense industries in 1939.

Here, he took the first steps toward building a network of supporters which came to be known as the " Dnipropetrovsk Mafia". They spearheaded the internal party coup that in 1964 saw Brezhnev replace Nikita Khrushchev as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and call a halt to further reform.

Independent Ukraine

In a national referendum on 1 December 1991, 90.36% of Dnipropetrovsk's voters approved the declaration of independence that had been made by the Ukrainian parliament on 24 August. Amidst the economic dislocation and soaring inflation that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union, output declined. Although its economic contraction was at a rate below the national average, the Dnipropetrovsk city and oblast witnessed one of the largest population declines of all the regions of Ukraine. By 2021, the city's population, which had stood at over 1.2 million in 1991, had been reduced to 981,000. Young people from Dnipropetrovsk were among the millions of Ukrainians who left the country to find work and opportunity abroad.

The continuation into the new century of the chaotic fallout from the collapse of the Soviet Union was symbolized for many in Dnipropetrovsk by two violent episodes. In June and July 2007, Dnipropetrovsk experienced a wave of random video-recorded serial killings that were dubbed by the media as the work of the " Dnipropetrovsk maniacs". In February 2009, three youths were sentenced for their part in 21 murders, and numerous other attacks and robberies. On 27 April 2012, four bombs exploded near four tram stations in Dnipropetrovsk, injuring 27 people. No one was convicted. Opposition politicians claimed to see the hand of President Viktor Yanukovych intent on disrupting the October 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election