Kaniv

Kaniv stands on the right bank of the Dnieper, below high hills overlooking the river. A fortified town of Kyivan Rus', it guarded the southern approaches against the Cumans and lay on the water route towards the Black Sea. Its cathedral, founded in the twelfth century, recalls its early importance as a princely and religious centre.

Kaniv passed to Lithuania in the fourteenth century and to the Polish Crown in 1569. Granted Magdeburg rights in 1600, it became a centre of Cossack life and, during the Khmelnytsky uprising, the seat of a Cossack regiment. Repeated warfare brought ruin, and Ottoman forces overran the district in 1678. In 1768 Maksym Zalizniak captured Kaniv during the Koliivshchyna; many local nobles and Jews were killed. Catherine II met the Polish king Stanisław August here in 1787. Six years later the second partition of Poland brought Kaniv under Russian rule.