Karlivka

Karlivka grew beside the Orchyk River in the Ukrainian steppe. In the early eighteenth century the Russian general Johann Bernhard von Weisbach established a settlement on his estates here. In 1731 he used it as a headquarters while directing construction of the Ukrainian defensive line, a chain of fortifications intended to protect the Hetmanate and Sloboda Ukraine from raids. A separate fortification was also built at Karlivka itself.

After Weisbach's death the estate passed to Field Marshal Münnich, who called the settlement Münnichpol. In 1743 Empress Elizabeth granted it to Oleksiy Rozumovsky; after his death in 1771 it was inherited by his brother Kyrylo, the former hetman. The settlement became the centre of a large estate whose villages grew amid the cultivated lands of the Orchyk basin.