Ekaterinoslav Guberniya (Ukraine)

Ekaterinoslav (Yekaterinoslav; Russian, Екатеринославская), a province (Russian, губернiя [guberniya] = governorate) of the Russian Empire, crossed by the Dnieper River, founded in 1802, named after Catherine II, and discontinued in 1925. Ekaterinoslav was bordered on the north by Poltava, on the east by Kharkov, on the south by Taurida, and on the west by Kherson. Eventually, the area became the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. In 1946 it had an area of 12,590 sq. mi. (size of all Holland) with an estimated population of 2,200,000. The capital city by the same name as the province had in 1939 a population of 500,000.

The Mennonites settled first in this province in 1789, establishing the Chortitza settlement with 18 villages. Daughter settlements which originated in this province were as follows: Bergtal (1836), 5 villages; Tchernoglas (1860), 1 village; Borozenko (1865), 7 villages; Brazol (1868), 4 villages; Yazykovo (1869), 8 villages; Nepluyevka (1870), 2 villages; Baratov (1872), 2 villages; Schlachtin (1874), 2 villages; Neu-Rosengart (1878), 2 villages; Wiesenfeld (1880), 1 village; Memrik (1885), 10 villages; Miloradovka (1889), 2 villages; Ignatyevo (1889), 7 villages; Borissovo (1892), 3 villages.

The 1897 census recorded 23,922 Mennonites in Ekaterinoslav, comprising 1.13% of the governorate's population. Before World War I the Mennonite population of the province was 30,000, distributed over 74 villages and some large estates. Including both the village settlements and the large estates, they owned a total of 761,400 acres. Next to the province of Taurida, Ekaterinoslav had the largest Mennonite population in Russia. The center of government, education, and industry for the Mennonites was Chortitza. Alexandrovsk (Zaporizhia) also became an industrial center.

Most of the Mennonites who came to Canada after World War II came from the province of Ekaterinoslav, since the Soviets did not succeed in evacuating the settlements from west of the Dnieper River to the east when the German Army invaded the Ukraine in 1941.

For information on the Mennonites of this province under the Soviets, see Chortitza, Ukraine, Russia, and the individual settlements listed above.

Bibliography

Hylkema, Tjeerd Oeds. Die Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Russland während der Kriegs- und Revolutionsjahre 1914 bis 1920. Heilbronn a. Neckar: Kommissions-Verlag der Mennon. Flüchtlingsfürsorge, 1921.

Quiring, Jacob Die Mundart von Chortitza in Süd-Russland. Munich, 1928.

Wikipedia. "Yekaterinoslav Governorate." Web. 21 August 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yekaterinoslav_Governorate.

Author(s)	Cornelius Krahn
Date Published	August 2011

Cite This Article

MLA style

Krahn, Cornelius. "Ekaterinoslav Guberniya (Ukraine)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. August 2011. Web. 22 Nov 2024. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Ekaterinoslav_Guberniya_(Ukraine)&oldid=87310.

APA style

Krahn, Cornelius. (August 2011). Ekaterinoslav Guberniya (Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 22 November 2024, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Ekaterinoslav_Guberniya_(Ukraine)&oldid=87310.

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Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, p. 174. All rights reserved.

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