Zaporizhzhia (also: Zaporoshje, Zaporoschje, Zaporishshja, Zaporishja or Zaporishshja)

Ukrainian: Запоріжжя (transliterated as Zaporižžja)

Russian: Zaporozhye, historically: Aleksandrovsk

The city’s current name refers to its location on the Dnieper. It is derived from the Russian word ‘porogi’ (= rapids). The areas along the Dnieper to the south-east of Kyiv/Kyïv were once known as the ‘za porogami’ regions (= ‘behind the rapids’).

Zaporizhzhia is situated approximately 70 km south of Dnipropetrovsk on the lower reaches of the Dnieper, at 47° 50' north latitude and 35° 8' east longitude. The city area also includes Khortytsia (Plautdietsch: Gortiz), the largest island in the Dnieper. It is approximately 13 km long and 1.5–2 km wide.

Zaporizhzhia is situated in the East European Plain, a steppe region with fertile black earth soils.

Black Sea region

Zaporizhzhia is the sixth-largest city in Ukraine.^[1] This city with independent municipal status is a political, cultural and industrial centre, as well as the capital and administrative centre of the oblast of the same name.

The upper part of the town’s two-part coat of arms depicts two crossed Cossack muskets on a green background. In the lower part, set against a raspberry-coloured background, is a black bow with three arrows, their tips pointing downwards. The coat of arms symbolises the Cossacks’ victorious battle against the Tatars. Reinstated as the town’s official coat of arms on 31 January 2003, it is largely modelled on the coat of arms of the town of Aleksandrovsk from 1811.

In the 8th and 7th centuries BC, the Scythians invaded the regions to the north and east of the Black Sea; archaeological finds at Kamenka-Dneprovskaya in what is now the Zaporizhzhia Oblast bear witness to the legacy of Scythian nomadic tribes. Historians believe this to have been the administrative and economic centre of the Steppe Scythians.^[2]

Between the 9th and 13th centuries, what is now the Zaporizhzhia Oblast was inhabited by Slavs, many of whom left the area in the 13th century in the wake of the Mongol invasion (the Golden Horde). In the 14th century, Cossacks who had fled Polish serfdom settled in the area.

There is some debate amongst historians as to exactly when the first settlements began to take shape. From 1552 onwards, there was a fortress on what is now the island of Chortytsia, which served as a base for the Cossacks in their defence against the Tatars. Ukrainian historians regard the so-called Zaporizhian Sich as the first form of autonomous Ukrainian statehood.^[3]

In the 18th century, the Cossacks were brought under the rule of the Russian tsars and deployed to defend the outer borders of the Russian Empire. During the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774), they built a fortress in 1770 on the orders of Catherine II (1729–1796), they built a fortress on the lower reaches of the Dnieper, beside which the settlement of Aleksandrovsk – later the city of Zaporizhzhia – was founded. The fortress was part of a line of defence against the Tatars, which included six other fortresses. In 1775, the fortress of Aleksandrovsk became a suburb.

Building of the girls’ school in Zaporizhzhia, founded in 1895 by Mennonites

[Photo: © M. Leppert].

At the invitation of Catherine II, Mennonites from Danzig/Gdańsk, and later also from West Prussia, settled in Chortytsia in 1789 and founded the first German colony on the territory of present-day Ukraine. The exact number of villages that belonged to the parent colony remains unclear today. Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, numerous daughter settlements sprang up from the ‘Old Colony of Chortycja’. According to Stumpp, there were 170 German settlements in the area of what is now the Zaporizhzhia Oblast.^[4] Some former Mennonite settlements, including the villages of Einlage/Kičkas, Chortica Island/Ostrov Chortica, Alt-Kronsweide/Velikij Lug and Rosenthal/Kanzerovka, now form part of Zaporizhzhia. Until the outbreak of the First World War, the Chortycja settlement enjoyed economic prosperity.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the town of Aleksandrovsk was assigned to the Yekaterinoslav Governorate; in 1806, it became a district town. By the time of the First World War, it had developed from a provincial town into a regional centre for trade and transport.

In December 1917, the October Revolution reached Aleksandrovsk. On 2 January 1918, the Bolsheviks seized power and began expropriating all large factories, including those owned by Germans. From March to November 1918, Aleksandrovsk was briefly occupied by Austrian and German troops. Amid the turmoil of the Civil War (1918–1921), the town was ravaged by devastating looting, heavy fighting, famine and a typhus epidemic. Numerous Mennonites fell victim to the murderous and looting gangs led by the anarchist leader Nestor Makhno (1888–1934). After the Bolsheviks recaptured the town, Aleksandrovsk was renamed ‘Zaporizhzhia’ in 1921. In the period that followed, Soviet policy was characterised by progressive industrialisation, ‘dekulakisation’ and forced collectivisation, from which the German population also suffered. In 1932–33, the city endured a terrible famine (Holodomor). In 1939, Zaporož’e became an administrative centre. During the Second World War, large parts of the city were destroyed and it was temporarily occupied by German troops (1941–1943), before being recaptured by the Red Army. During this period, the Soviets deported most of the Mennonites from Khortytsia, primarily to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Numerous German prisoners of war were held in Soviet Prisoner of War Camp 100; many of them died in captivity. German prisoners of war were also conscripted to help rebuild the city.

In 2001, there were approximately 2,200 ethnic Germans living throughout the Zaporizhzhia Oblast. In the city of Zaporizhzhia, with a population of 815,300, Russians constituted the largest minority, ahead of Belarusians and Bulgarians; Germans accounted for just under 0.1 per cent of the city’s population.^[5] Today, Zaporizhzhia has a population of 722,713 (as of 2021).^[6]

From the 1860s onwards, the town experienced an economic boom and the first workshops and factories began to spring up. The Mennonites distinguished themselves by establishing factories producing agricultural machinery and mills. From the 1870s onwards, Aleksandrovsk developed into an important centre for the food industry, aided by the connection of the railway to the line southwards to Sevastopol’ (1875) and the construction of the town’s harbour. By the end of the 19th century, Aleksandrovsk had become a centre for agricultural machinery manufacturing – the agricultural machinery produced by the firms Lepp & Wallmann^[7] and Abraham Koop became bestsellers.^[8]

The so-called ‘castle’ of Andreas Wallmann of Lepp &
Wallmann now houses part of the Ukrainian Ministry of Education
[Photo: © M. Leppert].

At the beginning of the 20th century, the rapid economic boom continued in sectors such as the construction and textile industries. In 1915, work began on the manufacture of aircraft engines, and in 1927 on the construction of the DneproGES hydroelectric power station (completed in 1932). From the 1930s onwards, the city underwent a programme of industrialisation and modernisation, as part of which heavy industry plants were established and the ‘Socgorod’ construction project was implemented.^[9] In the 1960s, the city developed into a centre of the automotive industry with the production of the popular Zaporožeс car brand (now AvtoZAZ-Daewoo).

In the Verchnjaja Chortycja district, a number of former Mennonite buildings have been preserved, including a girls’ school, the villa of the mill manufacturer Jakob Dyck (1811–1875) and the Art Nouveau ‘castle’ belonging to the Wallmann family of industrialists.

• Heinrich Bergen: Chortitza Colony Atlas. Old Colony. Saskatoon 2004.
• Gerhard Fast: The End of Chortitza. Winnipeg 1973.
• Isaac Peter Klassen: The Island of Chortitza. Impressions, Thoughts, Memories. Winnipeg 1997.
• Nickoli J. Kroeker: First Mennonite Villages in Russia 1789–1943. Khortitsa, Rosenthal. Vancouver 1981.
• Adina Rieger, Delbert Plett: These Stones. The Russian Mennonites. Manitoba 2001, pp.49–136.
• Henry Schapansky: The Old Colony (Chortitza) of Russia. Early History and First Settlers in the Context of the Mennonite Migrations. New Westminster 2001.
• Karl Stumpp: The German Settlements in the Zaporizhzhia Region, formerly the Taurida Governorate and the southern part of Yekaterinoslav (Dnipropetrovsk). In: Association of Germans from Russia (ed.): Heimatbuch der Deutschen aus Rußland (1957), pp.5–12.
• Natalia Ostasheva Venger: The Mennonite Industrial Dynasties in Alexandrovsk. In: Journal of Mennonite Studies 21 (2003), pp.89–110.

• misto.zp.ua/ (City portal)
• chort.square7.ch/FB/D0716.html (Mennonite history of the town)

[1] As at March 2012. For further statistical data, see pop-stat.mashke.org/ukraine-cities.htm (accessed 8 June 2021).

[2] See, for example, Boris Nikolaevič Grakov: *Kamenskoe gorodišče na dnepre* [The Fortified Settlement of Kamenskoe on the Dnieper]. Moscow 1954 (Materials and Research in the Archaeology of the USSR 30).

[3] In particular, the uprising led by the Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1595–1657) against Polish rule, which began in 1648, is regarded by many Ukrainian historians as the first attempt to establish a Ukrainian state. A good overview of this is provided by F. E. Sysyn: ‘Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s Image in Ukrainian Historiography since Independence’. In: Österreichische Osthefte 42 (2000), pp. 179–188.

[4] See Stumpp: *Die deutschen Siedlungen*, p. 10.

[5] The figures are taken from the official website for the 2001 census. URL: 2001.ukrcensus.gov.ua (accessed 29 April 2013). Figures on historical population trends are not yet available.

[6] pop-stat.mashke.org/ukraine-cities.htm (accessed 8 June 2021).

[7] Originally, it was a watchmaker’s workshop founded by Peter Lepp (1817–1871). In 1880, his brother-in-law Andreas Wallmann (1857–1930) became a partner.

[8] Cf. Dietmar Neutatz: Rural Entrepreneurs in the Black Sea Region. The Southern Ukrainian Agricultural Machinery Industry before the First World War. In: Dittmar Dahlmann (ed.): “…the only country in Europe that has a great future ahead of it.” German Companies and Entrepreneurs in the Russian Empire in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries. Essen 1998 (Publications of the Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe 8), pp. 541–574, here pp. 549ff.

[9] Socgorod describes the concept of building a socialist city in which the urban functional areas of housing, work, leisure and transport are separated from one another. This concept can be traced back to the Soviet urban planner Nikolai Aleksandrovich Miljutin (1889–1942). In the case of Zaporizhzhia, a complex of residential buildings was constructed on the left bank of the reservoir between 1929 and 1937.

Manuel Leppert: Zaporizhzhia. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2013. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/54462.html (as at 8 June 2021).