Mariupol is a city in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. It is situated on the northern coast (Pryazovia) of the Sea of Azov, at the mouth of the Kalmius River. In January 2022, prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was the tenth-largest city in the country and the second-largest city in Donetsk Oblast, with an estimated population of 425,681; in August 2023, Ukrainian authorities estimated the population of Mariupol at approximately 120,000.
Historically, the city was a centre for trade and manufacturing, and played a key role in the development of higher education and many businesses and also served as a coastal resort on the Sea of Azov. In 1948, it was renamed Zhdanov () after Andrei Zhdanov, a native of the city who had become a high-ranking official of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and a close ally to Joseph Stalin. The name was part of a larger effort to rename cities after high-ranking political figures in the Soviet Union. The historic name was restored in 1989.
Mariupol was founded on the site of a former encampment for Cossacks, known as Kalmius, and was granted city rights within the Russian Empire in 1778. It played a key role in Stalin-era industrialization; it was a centre for grain trade, metallurgy, and heavy engineering including the Illich Iron and Steel Works and the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works.
The city was largely destroyed by Russian forces during the siege of Mariupol that lasted from 24 February 2022 until the last Ukrainian troops remaining in Mariupol surrendered at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works on 16 May 2022, for which it was named a "Hero City of Ukraine" by the Ukrainian government. The Russian military secured complete control over the city by 20 May.
Within months, local Russian-backed authorities signed into law a sweeping new bill outlining the reconstruction of Mariupol, as a Russian city, up to the year 2035.
History Ancient history
Neolithic burial grounds excavated on the shore of the Sea of AzovBulletin, American School of Prehistoric Research: The Prehistory of Eastern Europe, Alseikaitė, American School of Prehistoric Research, p.46. Harvard University, 1956. Via Google Books, Pennsylvania State University date from the end of the third millennium BCE. Over 120 skeletons have been discovered, with stone and bone instruments, beads, shell-work, and animal teeth.
Crimean Khanate
From the 12th through the 16th century, the area around Mariupol was largely devastated and depopulated by intense conflict between the Crimean Tatars, the Nogay Horde, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Muscovy. By the middle of the 15th century, much of the region north of the Black and Azov Seas was annexed by the Crimean Khanate and became a dependency of the Ottoman Empire. East of the Dnieper River a desolate steppe stretched to the Sea of Azov, where lack of water made early settlement precarious.LeDonne John P. The territorial reform of the Russian Empire, 1775–1796 [II. The borderlands, 1777–1796]. In: Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique. Vol. 24 No. 4. October–December 1983. p. 422. Being near the Muravsky Trail exposed it to frequent Crimean–Nogai slave raids and plundering by Tatar tribes, preventing permanent settlement and keeping it sparsely populated, or even entirely uninhabited, under Tatar rule. Hence it was known as the Wild Fields or the 'Deserted Plains' (Campi Deserti in Latin).Magocsi, Paul R. "A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples," p. 197Wilson, Andrew. "The Donbas between Ukraine and Russia: The Use of History in Political Disputes," Journal of Contemporary History 1995 30: 265 "
Cossack period In this region of Eurasian steppes, the Cossacks emerged as a distinct people in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Below the Dnieper Rapids were the Zaporozhian Cossacks, freebooters organized into small, loosely-knit, and highly mobile groups who were both livestock farmers and nomads. The Cossacks would regularly penetrate the steppe to fish and hunt, as well as for migratory farming and to herd livestock. Their independence from governmental and landowner authority attracted to join them many peasants and serfs fleeing the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Grand Duchy of Moscow.
The Treaty of Constantinople in 1700 further isolated the region, as it stipulated that there should be no settlements or fortifications on the coast of the Azov Sea to the mouth of the Mius River. In 1709, in response to a Cossack alliance with Sweden against Russia, Tsar Peter the Great ordered the liquidation of the Zaporozhian Sich, and their complete and permanent expulsion from the area.Magocsi, Paul R. "A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples," p. 197. In 1733, Russia was preparing for a new military campaign against the Ottoman Empire and therefore allowed the return of the Zaporozhians, although the territory officially belonged to Turkey.N. D. Polons’ka –Vasylenko, "The Settlement of Southern Ukraine (1750–1775)," The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., Inc., 1955, p. 16.
Under the Agreement of Lubny of 1734, the Zaporozhians regained all their former lands, and in return, were to serve in the Russian army in war. They were also permitted to build a new stockade on the Dnieper River called New Sich, though the terms prohibited them from erecting fortifications. These terms allowed only for living quarters, in Ukrainian called kureni.
Upon their return, the Zaporozhian population in these lands was extremely sparse, so effort to establish a measure of control, they introduced a structure of districts or palankas.Magocsi, Paul R. 2010. "A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its People," University of Toronto Press. Second edition. P. 283. The nearest district to modern Mariupol was the Kalmius District, but its border did not extend to the mouth of the Kalmius River,LeDonne John P. The territorial reform of the Russian Empire, 1775–1796 [II. The borderlands, 1777–1796]. In: Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique. Vol. 24 No. 4. October–December 1983. pp. 420–422. although this area had been part of its migratory territory. After 1736, the Zaporozhian Cossacks and the Don Cossacks (whose capital was at nearby Novoazovsk) came into conflict over the area, until Tsarina Elizabeth issued a decree in 1746 declaring the Kalmius River the dividing line between the two Cossack hosts.Wilson, Andrew. "The Donbas between Ukraine and Russia: The Use of History in Political Disputes," Journal of Contemporary History 1995 30: 273
Sometime after 1738,Gorbov V.N., Bozhko, R.P., Kushnir V.V. 2013. "Археологические комплексы на территории крепости Кальмиус и ее окрестностий," ("Archaeological complexes on the territory of the Kalmius fortress and its surroundings") Donetsk Archaeological Collection, No. 17, pp. 138–139, 141.Clark, George B. "Irish Soldiers in Europe: 17th – 19th Century," Mercier Press, 12 October 2010. Pp. 272, 274, 276. the treaties of Belgrade and Niš in 1739, in addition to the Russian-Turkish convention of 1741,LeDonne John P. The territorial reform of the Russian Empire, 1775–1796 [II. The borderlands, 1777–1796]. In: Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique. Vol. 24 No. 4. October–December 1983. p. 420-421 as well as the following likely concurrent land survey of 1743–1746 (resulting in the demarcation decree of 1746), the Zaporzhian Cossacks established a military outpost on "the high promontory on the right bank of the Kalmius river."Section "Kalmius and the Kalmiusskaya Palanka" , referencing A. A. Skalkowski, no citation. Though the details of its construction and history are obscure, excavations have revealed Cossack artifacts, including others, within the enclosure being approximately 120 square meters in the shape of a square.Gorbov V.N., Bozhko, R.P., Kushnir V.V. 2013. "Археологические комплексы на территории крепости Кальмиус и ее окрестностий," ("Archaeological complexes on the territory of the Kalmius fortress and its surroundings") Donetsk Archaeological Collection, No. 17, p. 133 The outpost was likely a modest structure in that it lay within the territory of the Ottoman Empire, and the erection of fortifications on the Sea of Azov was prohibited by the Treaty of Niš.
The last Tatar raid, launched in 1769, covered a vast area, overrunning the New Russian Province with a huge army in severe wintertime weather.N. D. Polons’ka –Vasylenko, "The Settlement of Southern Ukraine (1750–1775)," The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., Inc., 1955, p. 278Mikhail Kizilov. "Slave Trade in the Early Modern Crimea From the Perspective of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources". Oxford University., p. 7 with n. 11 The raid destroyed the Kalmius fortifications and burned all the Cossack winter lodgings. In 1770, the Russian government, during the war with Turkey, moved its border with the Crimean Khanate southwest by more than two hundred kilometres. This action initiated the Dnieper fortified line (running from today's Zaporizhzhia to Novopetrovka),Reenactor.ru p. 521 thereby laying claim to the region, including the site of future Mariupol, from the Ottoman Empire.
Following the victory of the Russian forces, the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca eliminated the endemic threat from Crimea.Le Donne, John P. 1983. "The Territorial Reform of the Russian Empire », Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique. Vol. 24, No. 4. Octobre-Décembre 1983. p. 419.Posun’ko, Andriy, "After the Zaporizhzhia. Dissolution, reorganization, and transformation of borderland military in 1775–1835, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, 2012, p. 35 In 1775, Zaporizhzhia was incorporated into the New Russian Governorate, and part of the land claimed behind the Dnieper fortified line including modern Mariupol was incorporated in the newly re-established Azov Governorate.
Russian Empire and Soviet Union
After the Russo-Turkish War from 1768 to 1774, the governor of the Azov Governorate, Vasily A. Chertkov, reported to Grigory Potemkin on 23 February 1776 that ruins of ancient domakhas (homes) had been found in the area, and in 1778 he planned the new town of Pavlovsk.Verenikin, V. Yet how old is our city? Vecherniy Mariupol Newspaper website. However, on 29 September 1779, the city of Marianοpol () in Kalmius County was founded on the site. For the Russian authorities the city was named after the Russian Empress Maria Feodorovna; its de facto title came from after the Greek settlement of Mariampol, a suburb of Bakhchysarai in Crimea. The name was derived from the Hodegetria icon of the Holy Theotokos and the Virgin Mary.Plotnikov, S. Mariupol icon of Theotokos "Hodegetria". Saint-Trinity Temple of Mariupol website. 9 August 2012Dzhuvaha, V. One of the first deportation of the Empire. How Crimean Greeks populated Wild Fields. Ukrainska Pravda. 17 February 2011 Subsequently, in 1780, Russian authorities forcibly relocated many Orthodox Greeks from Crimea to the Mariupol area, in what is known as the Eviction of Christians from the Crimea.Crimean Tatars (КРИМСЬКІ ТАТАРИ) . Encyclopedia of History of Ukraine.
In 1782, Mariupol was an administrative seat of its county in the Azov Governorate of the Russian Empire, with 2,948 inhabitants. In the early 19th century, a customs house, a church-parish school, a port authority building, a county religious school, and two privately founded girls' schools were built. By the 1850s the population had grown to 4,600 and the city had 120 shops and 15 wine cellars. In 1869, consuls and vice-consuls of Prussia, Sweden, Norway, Austria-Hungary, the Roman States, Italy, and France established their representative offices in Mariupol.Igor Lyman, Victoria Konstantinova. German Consuls in the Northern Azov Region (Dnipro: LIRA, 2018), 500 p.