Early history of the region

Archaeological excavations show that in the classical period, Kharkiv’s territory was populated by the Scythians, Sarmatians, proto-Slavs, and tribes of Cherniakhiv culture, which consisted of the Geto-Dacians, Sarmatians, Goths, and early Slavs.


In the eighth century, the Slavs founded their settlement, which, in the tenth century, became known as the town of Donets, a fortress and a centre of crafts and trade. The Chronicle first mentioned Donets in 1185. This town is also known from The Tale of Ihor's Campaign, a medieval poem. Donets were destroyed by the Mongols in the middle of the thirteenth century[1].

[1] https://www.city.kharkiv.ua/uk/o-xarkove/istoriya/istoricheskij-ocherk.html

Cossack fortress and a gubernia centre

Kharkiv was founded in 1654 as a fortress by Ukrainian Cossacks who migrated from the Hetmanate, the Cossack state in central Ukraine. It is no wonder why the local legend calls Cossack Kharko the founder of Kharkiv. Originally, Cossacks were a military estate in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth composed of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine.
From its origins, Kharkiv was Ukrainian and Cossack by its nature. Its first cathedral, Pokrovskyi monastery, was built in 1726 in the style of the Cossack baroque, a unique kind of baroque that exists only in Ukraine.
Many of its oldest street names and toponymy evidence that the founders were Ukrainians: Rymarska Street (the street of strap horse harness makers), Poltavskyi Shliakh (the way to Poltava), Chobotarska (the street of bootmakers), Sliusarnyi provulok (the lane of locksmiths), Stoliarnyi provulok (the lane of carpenters) etc.
In 1654, Kharkiv became a client city of the Moscow state, or Muscovy, which, in the eighteenth century, became known in Europe as the Russian Empire. As a client city, Kharkiv was obliged to protect the borders of Russia, having in return administrative autonomy and exemption from taxation and other duties.
1765 Catherine II abolished all of Kharkiv’s rights and incorporated them into the Russian empire.
Despite all political upheavals, the city grew as a big commercial centre. Its main architecture by the early 1800s was still baroque, though, this time, not the Cossack one. An example of the Baroque is the Uspensk Cathedral, built in the late 18^th century and modernised by erecting the bell tower after the victory in the Napoleonic wars in 1812.
In 1804, a group of merchants led by a nobleman, Vasyl Karazin, opened the first university. It became a new impetus for Ukrainian cultural and national life and was the only higher educational institution in Dnieper, Ukraine, until 1834 when Kyiv University was established.
In the nineteenth century, Kharkiv played the role of the one of educational and industrial centres in Ukraine. The Russification unfortunately made its way and gradually, the Ukrainian language became restricted to the narrow circle of intellectuals, though the countryside continued to speak Ukrainian and still speaks.
In Kharkiv, one could see the appearance of Ukrainian literature written in the new literary Ukrainian, including the moving novel Marusia by Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, the first of its kind in the country. This showed how sophisticated and emotional the Ukrainian language could be contrary to all Russian propaganda that Ukrainian was the rude language of peasants and serfs, suitable only for humorous literature.
Also, Kharkiv became the place where the first political Ukrainian party was established in 1900.
Another important thing about Kharkiv is that it is and has always been a multicultural city consisting of Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Polish, etc. To some extent, it was reflected in the city's religious architecture: Catholic cathedral, Jewish synagogue, Lutheran church, and, of course, Orthodox cathedrals. Russian Bolsheviks later diminished some of them, but some are still there. Due to the Second World War, Germans and Jews drastically decreased in number, but the Jews are numerous in modern Kharkiv. The fact that a significant German minority lived in Kharkiv is reflected in one of the district names, Nova Bavaria.

Under the Soviets

1917, the Russian Empire lost in the First World War and collapsed in the February Revolution and the Civil War.
From 1917 to 1920, Kharkiv joined other Ukrainian people fighting for the independence of Ukraine. Still, it was overcome by the Russian Bolsheviks, who proclaimed the city their first capital in Soviet Ukraine, part of the Soviet Union since it was established in 1922. Kharkiv was close to the Russian border and, therefore, easy to control. In 1934, the capital of the Soviet Ukraine became Kyiv.
There was a Bolsheviks-made famine from 1921 to 23 in Ukraine and Kharkiv region particularly.
It was followed by a relatively calm period, which lasted till 1928. Bolsheviks needed time to secure their power, develop a bureaucratic apparatus and secret police, calm down and de-weaponise the population after revolutionary years.
During this relatively moderate period, Kharkiv, the capital of Soviet Ukraine, experienced a cultural boom. New generations of writers, artists, actors, etc., actively developed the Ukrainian culture: films, literature, pictures, theatre, Berezil, music, architecture, etc.… The unique constructivist building, Derzhprom, rose in the centre.
Outstanding intellectuals were settled by authorities in the house “Slovo” (literally Word), designed as a laboratory where all creative individuals had to join and combine their talents and efforts.
The 1920s are known as the period of the second Ukrainian national revival, or Renaissance, after the one which was in the nineteenth century. Kharkiv was the centre of it again.
Simultaneously, the city experienced further industrialisation: new factories were set up in the 1920s and 1930s. New educational institutions were established to serve the new industrial objects. This way, the Soviet government not only produced equipment for their army but also brought up a new generation of supporters since every factory and every institution propagated the ideas of Communism.
Unfortunately, once the Russian Bolsheviks acquired more vital positions, they cracked down on the national cultures in the Soviet Union. The repressions were led and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin. Bolsheviks organised the Holodomor, or Great Famine (1932–1933), to subjugate peasants. Millions of peasants, carriers of the Ukrainian traditional culture, died due to the Famine, many in the Kharkiv region.
Simultaneously, NKVD hunted intellectuals in cities. Most of those who lived in the house of Slovo were repressed. Many of them were killed. The atmosphere of fear was all around in Kharkiv. Yurii Shevelev, an outstanding scholar in the field of philology, wrote in his memoirs that every time he went to the university, he looked at the names list at the entrance with fear because a name there meant a request to come to the NKVD secret police, where people disappeared.
Repression against the Ukrainian culture is called the executed Renaissance or shot revival.
Kharkiv did not forget its tragic memory and is going through a new tragedy caused by Russia again.
On the waves of repressions, the city entered the Second World War. In 1939 – 1941, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany cooperated to the extent that they together invaded Poland and divided its territory. Sadly, Kharkiv became one of the places where NKVD executed Polish POWs. Nearly 3,800 of them were murdered in Khakiv, where one can now see the Memorial devoted to the victims of the Stalinist terror.
After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Kharkiv was occupied twice by the Nazis with the combined effects of everyday racial discrimination, artificial Famine, and, of course, the Holocaust. Nazis set up a Ghetto in the Kharkiv Tractor Factory district and began to execute the Jews in mass in the Drobytskyi Yar (ravine) by shooting them.
After a relatively short period of post-war recovery, Kharkiv experienced growth in its industrial facilities. By 1962, the population had reached nearly 1,000,000 people, second after Kyiv. In 1975, the underground was opened in the city.
Kharkiv had and still has many educational institutions, schools and universities. However, the Soviet educational system promoted the Communist ideology and Russified the Ukrainian youth.
The Ukrainian language and culture were not cherished but disgraced by the Russian government as exclusively rural and backward.
The situation changed when the Soviet Union declined, and the Reconstruction policy began after 1985. Mass protests, political opposition and international pressure, resulted in the collapse of the USSR.
On 24 August 1991, Ukraine proclaimed its independence. Shortly after this, the Soviet Union collapsed.

Kharkiv in the independent Ukraine

Kharkiv went through an uneasy post-Soviet decade with an economic crisis, hyperinflation, vast corruption, and social discontent.
Only in the late 1990s and the early 2000s did the conditions improve. As the economy recovered and the middle class strengthened, civil society displayed more actively. The spreading of the Internet and computerisation contributed to this tendency, making people more organised. The significant effect of the Internet and computers was seen in Kharkiv, which was and still is the city with so many educational institutions that it is known in Ukraine as the city of students. It is worth saying that before the full-scale invasion, every 5th dweller in Kharkiv was a student.
In 2004, students and other Kharkiv dwellers actively participated in the Orange Revolution against falsifying the Presidential election by pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych.
In 2013-14, many Kharkiv dwellers participated in the Revolution of Dignity, struggling for human rights, human dignity, and the European choice of Ukraine against pro-Russian forces personified again in Yanukovych.
In 2015, Kharkiv formed volunteer battalions that went to Eastern Ukraine to stand against Russia and pro-Russian separatists.
Despite all the upheavals, Kharkiv remained Ukraine's significant cultural and industrial centre with universities and schools, museums (English tank of 1919), theatres and conservatories, beautiful parks and river sights, attractions, and just pleasant places. Kharkiv flourished, becoming more and more attractive to the outer world, but this tendency was interrupted by Russian aggression.