Dnipro is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants.Ukrcensus.gov.ua — City URL accessed on 8 March 2007 It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnipro River, from which it takes its name. Dnipro is the administrative centre of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. It hosts the administration of Dnipro urban hromada. Dnipro has a population of
Archeological evidence suggests the site of the present city was settled by Cossack communities from at least 1524. Yekaterinoslav ("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 19th century, the town attracted foreign capital and an international, multi-ethnic workforce exploiting Kryvbas iron ore and Donbas coal. Up until the German occupation in World War II, more than a third of the city population was Jewish.
Renamed Dnipropetrovsk in 1926 after the Ukrainian Communist Party leader Grigory Petrovsky, it became a focus for the Stalinist commitment to the rapid development in the Soviet Union of heavy industry. After World War II, this included nuclear, arms, and space industries whose strategic importance led to Dnipropetrovsk's designation as a closed city.
In December 1991, the city's voters overwhelmingly approved Ukraine's declaration of independence. Following the Euromaidan events of 2014, they shifted their allegiance from pro-Russian parties to those favouring closer ties with the European Union. As a result of the ensuing "decommunization", the city was renamed Dnipro in 2016. 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.
Name Current names
Former names Novyi Kodak 1645–1784 Yekaterinoslav (also spelled Ekaterinoslav; ; ) 1784–1796 Novorossiysk ( ; ) 1796–1802, briefly renamed during the reign of Catherine II's son, tsar Paul I; however, the previous name was restored by tsar Alexander I after his father's assassination Yekaterinoslav 1802–1918, called Catharinoslav on some nineteenth-century maps. Sicheslav ( ) 1918–1921 (unofficial name) Yekaterinoslav/Katerynoslav 1918–1926 Dnipropetrovsk ( ; ), also Dnipropetrovske () according to the Kharkiv orthography 1926–2016. The word originates from ("Dnieper River") + , after Soviet revolutionary Grigory Petrovsky.
Name history The original name of a Ukrainian Cossack city on the territory of modern Dnipro was Novyi Kodak ( , 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 Vasily Chertkov 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.
In the 17th century the city was also known as Polovytsia.Mikhail Levchenko. Hanshchyna (Ганьщина Україна). Opyt russko-ukrainskago slovari︠a︡. Tip. Gubernskago upravlenii︠a︡, 1874
In 1918, the Central Council of Ukraine of the Ukrainian People's Republic proposed to change the name of the city to Sicheslav; however, this was never finalised.Rada approves historic bills to part with Soviet legacy, The Ukrainian Weekly (17 April 2015)
In 1926 the city was renamed after communist leader Grigory Petrovsky.Poroshenko signed the laws about decomunization. Ukrayinska Pravda. 15 May 2015Poroshenko signs laws on denouncing Communist, Nazi regimes, Interfax-Ukraine. 15 May 20Goodbye, Lenin: Ukraine moves to ban communist symbols, BBC News (14 April 2015) In some Anglophone media Dnipro was nicknamed the Rocket City during the Cold War.
The 2015 law on decommunization required the city to be renamed. On 29 December 2015 the Dnipro City Council officially changed the reference of the city naming from referring to Petrovsky to being in honor of Saint Peter,LB.ua, Днепропетровск собираются "переименовать" в честь Святого Петра (Dnepropetrovsk to be "renamed" in honour of St. Peter), 29 December 2015. thus making the name consistent with the law without actually changing the name itself.
On 3 February 2016 a draft law was registered in the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) to change the name of the city to Dnipro. In Rada registered a bill to rename Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrayinska Pravda (3 February 2016) On 19 May 2016 the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill to officially rename the city (to Dnipro). The resolution was approved by 247 out of the 344 MPs, with 16 opposing the measure. Верховна Рада України (Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine), Поіменне голосування про проект Постанови про перейменування міста Дніпропетровська Дніпропетровської області (No.3864) (Roll-call vote on the draft resolution on renaming of Dnipropetrovsk Dnipropetrovsk region No.3864), 19 May 2016.
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.Ukraine, The World Factbook, as accessed on 9 February 2023 Thus until a lengthy and complicated process of amending is carried out, it officially retains the name Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
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 BC) 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 Taras Shevchenko Park. The area of modern Dnipro was part of the Scythian empire from approximately the 1st 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 the 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. The Dnipro city council officially set 1526 as the date of the city's foundation in August 2026. (Previously 1776 was the official date of the foundation of Dnipro.) This year of foundation is based on the existence of the Stara Samar settlement on the territory of the modern Dnipro. Starting in December 2025 the city council had been consulting with experts to set a new official year of the city's foundation; since they believe 1776 "is a myth of imperial Russia", and that the city existed many years before 1776.
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 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 Dnipro's coat of arms and Dnipro's official flag.
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 Vasily Chertkov 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..." (referring to Novyi Kodak). 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.