Zaporizhia

coat of arms

Zaporizhia (Ukrainian: Запоріжжя, before 1921 - Oleksandrivsk) is a city in southeastern Ukraine, the administrative center of the Zaporizhia region. About 760,000 people live there.

Located on the main waterway of Ukraine - the Dnieper River, at the intersection of transport and communication corridors connecting the south with the capital of Ukraine, western and central regions, Donbass with Kryvyi Rih.

Together with the surrounding settlements it forms the Zaporizhia agglomeration. It is one of the largest administrative, industrial and cultural centers of southern Ukraine with advanced engineering, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy, chemical and construction industries, a river port and an important transit railway junction.

According to the Consolidated Scheme of District Planning of Ukraine, Zaporizhia occupies an important place in the regional settlement system and performs the functions of regional, international and district centers, each of which has its own zone of inter-village service.

Thus, in the zone of influence of Zaporizhia as a regional center on the territory of 2690 thousand hectares there are 14 cities, 23 urban-type settlements, a significant number of villages and more than 2 million people live. The inter-district settlement system headed by Zaporizhia (suburban zone) is characterized by a high level of industrial and economic mastery of the territory, high value of agricultural lands and pago environment. The suburban zone covers Zaporizhia, Vilniansk, Orikhiv, Vasylivka and Kamyansko-Dniprovsky administrative districts of Zaporizhia region, the total area of ​​which is 760 thousand hectares. There are 5 cities, 6 urban-type settlements and about 300 rural settlements. The total population of the suburban area is approximately 315 thousand people. The peculiarity of the city of Zaporozhye is that it concentrates about 65% of the productive capacity of the region and 43% of the population of the region.

On June 27, 2014, the decision of the Zaporizhia City Council adopted the final report of the working group to clarify the founding date of the city and changed the official founding date. The working group concluded that the city was founded in 952 on the basis of the treatise of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus "On the management of the empire", as the first written mention of the settlement on both banks of the Dnieper and the island of Khortytsia.

Name

Until March 15, 1921, the city was called Alexandrovsk after the Alexander Fortress, founded in 1770. There is no unequivocal opinion in whose honor the fortress was named. The names of Field Marshal General Alexander Golitsyn and Prince Alexander Vyazemsky are mentioned.

On March 15, 1921, the city was renamed Zaporizhia - that is, "located beyond the thresholds."

The name reminds that before the construction of the Dnieper HPP dam in 1932 at the place where the river crosses the rocky southern edge of the Ukrainian Shield, numerous Dnieper rapids, which hinder navigation, ended.