Barvinkove

Barvinkove began as a Cossack wintering place in the country around Izium, then gained the status of a sloboda in the eighteenth century. Cossacks built a wooden fortress on Chumatska Hill, from which they could observe the approaches to the settlement. The town experienced plague epidemics in 1680 and 1690. During the struggle around Mazepa, Tsar Peter the Great visited in 1708 and tried to persuade local people not to oppose him, but the Cossacks there supported Mazepa.

In the time of the Nova Sich, Barvinkove was the administrative centre of the Barvinkove Palanka. Its last colonel, Ivan Garadzha, became known for punishing Sloboda lords and imperial officers who intruded on Cossack land. After residents joined Pugachev’s uprising, Garadzha disarmed the punitive force and humiliated one commander in 1774. When the Zaporizhian Sich was abolished in 1775, many local people moved to the Kuban, led by a descendant of Ivan Barvinok.

The settlement later became a military settlement and trading volost whose annual fairs connected the fertile frontier district.