Sakko i Vantsetti (; , ) is a

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

Bakhmut Raion Bakhmut Raion (), known as Artemivsk Raion () between 1924 and 2016, is a raion (district) within the northeastern part of Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine. Its administrative center is Bakhmut. Its area is , and its population is approximately ...

(

district A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municip ...

) in

Donetsk Oblast Donetsk Oblast, also referred to as Donechchyna (, ), is an Oblasts of Ukraine, oblast in eastern Ukraine. It is Ukraine's most populous province, with around 4.1 million residents. Its capital city, administrative centre is Donetsk, though d ...

, eastern

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

. It is part of

Soledar urban hromada Soledar urban hromada () is a hromada of Ukraine, located in Bakhmut Raion, Donetsk Oblast. Its administrative center is the city Soledar. It has an area of and a population of 20,581, as of 2018. It was formed on 15 September 2016 by merging l ...

, one of the

hromada In Ukraine, a hromada () is the main type of municipality and the third level Administrative divisions of Ukraine, local self-government in Ukraine. The current hromadas were established by the Cabinet of ministers of Ukraine, Government of Uk ...

s of Ukraine.

History

Sakko i Vantsetti was originally created as a commune in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

in 1923–1924. It was closely connected to nearby Vasiukivka. It was named after the Italian

anarchists Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or hierarchy, primarily targeting the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state w ...

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were controversially convicted in 1921 of murdering a paymaster and a security guard at a shoe factory in the United States, executed in 1927 and rehabilitated in 1977 by Massachusetts Governor

Michael Dukakis Michael Stanley Dukakis ( ; born November 3, 1933) is an American politician and lawyer who served as governor of Massachusetts from 1975 to 1979 and from 1983 to 1991. He is the longest-serving governor in Massachusetts history and only the s ...

Soviet propaganda Propaganda in the Soviet Union was the practice of state-directed communication aimed at promoting class conflict, proletarian internationalism, the goals of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the party itself. The main Soviet cen ...

celebrated Sacco and Vanzetti as unjustly accused proletarians and revolutionaries. Amid the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

, on February 1, 2023,

Yevgeny Prigozhin Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin (1 June 1961 – 23 August 2023) was a Russian mercenary leader and oligarch. He led the Wagner Group, a private military company, and was a close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin until launching a ...

claimed his

Wagner Group The Wagner Group (), officially known as PMC Wagner (, ), is a Russian state-funded private military company (PMC) controlled 2023 Wagner Group plane crash, until 2023 by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former close ally of Russia's president Vladimir Pu ...

paramilitary A paramilitary is a military that is not a part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the use of the term "paramilitary" as far back as 1934. Overview Though a paramilitary is, by definiti ...

fighters had captured Sakko i Vantsetti, posting a photograph purporting to show four of his soldiers posing in front of what they called "the only surviving house" in the village. By the middle of May 2023, Russian forces were claimed to have retreated from the village following local Ukrainian counterattacks.

Demographics

The 1989 Census in the

Ukrainian SSR The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, abbreviated as the Ukrainian SSR, UkrSSR, and also known as Soviet Ukraine or just Ukraine, was one of the Republics of the Soviet Union, constituent republics of the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991. ...

of the

recorded a total population of 19 in Sakko i Vantsetti, 12 men and 7 women. The population declined by the time of the first independent Ukrainian Census of 2001, which recorded 3 inhabitants in the village.

References

{{Donetsk-geo-stub Villages in Bakhmut Raion Sacco and Vanzetti Soledar urban hromada