Zhytomyr


Zhytomyr is a city in the north of the western half of Ukraine. It is the administrative center of Zhytomyr Oblast, as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Zhytomyr urban hromada and Zhytomyr Raion. Moreover Zhytomyr consists of two urban districts: Bohunskyi District and Koroliovskyi District. Zhytomyr occupies an area of. Its population is
Zhytomyr is a major Ukrainian transport hub as the city lies on a historic route linking the city of Kyiv with the west through Brest. Today it links Warsaw with Kyiv, Minsk with Izmail, and several major cities of Ukraine. Zhytomyr was also the location of Ozerne airbase, a key Cold War strategic aircraft base southeast of the city.
Important economic activities of Zhytomyr include lumber milling, food processing, granite quarrying, metalworking, and the manufacture of musical instruments.
Zhytomyr Oblast is the main center of the Polish minority in Ukraine, and in the city itself there is a Latin Catholic cathedral and large Roman Catholic Polish cemetery, founded in 1800. It is regarded as the third biggest Polish cemetery outside Poland, after the Lychakivskiy Cemetery in Lviv and Rasos Cemetery in Vilnius.

Names

The city of Zhytomyr is also historically known by different names in other languages:
  • ;
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  • French. Jytomyr. According to legend, the town was founded in 884 by Prince Jytomyr, a Slavic tribal leader.

    History

Early history

Legend holds that Zhytomyr was established about 884 by Zhytomyr, prince of a Slavic tribe of Drevlians. This date, 884, is cut into a large stone of the ice age times, standing on the hill where Zhytomyr was founded. Zhytomyr was one of the prominent cities of Kievan Rus'. The first records of the town date from 1240, when it was sacked by the Mongol hordes of Batu Khan.
In 1320 Zhytomyr was captured by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It was granted Magdeburg city rights in 1444 by Casimir IV Jagiellon. After the Union of Lublin the city was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland and became an important center of local administration, seat of the starosta, and capital of Żytomierz County. Here, sejmiks of Kiev Voivodeship took place. In 1572, the town had 142 buildings, a manor house of the starosta and a castle. Following the privilege of King Sigismund III Vasa, Zhytomyr had the right for two fairs a year. During Khmelnytsky Uprising Zhytomyr was incorporated into Cossack Hetmanate state. In 1667, following the Treaty of Andrusovo, it became the capital of the Kiev Voivodeship. In 1724, a Jesuit school and monastery were opened here. By 1765, Zhytomyr had five churches, including 3 Roman Catholic and 2 Orthodox, and 285 houses.
In the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 it passed to Imperial Russia and became the capital of the Volhynian Governorate. In 1804 was named capital of the Volhynian Governorate. In 1808, a Polish theater was founded in the city. The Polish January Uprising of 1863 was supported by the townspeople.

20th century

During a period of Ukrainian independence in 1918, the city was the national capital of Ukrainian People's Republic for a few weeks. Ultimately, the Ukrainian fight for independence failed and Ukrainian People's Republic became occupied by Soviet Union. A new Soviet Ukraine state was formed under Soviet rule - Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. From 1920 Zhytomyr was a part of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Due to one of Stalin's 5-year plans, the city suffered from the man-made famine Holodomor of 1932-1933. In 2008, the National Museum of the Holodomor Genocide published the National Book of Memory of the Victims of the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine. Zhytomyr region – Zhytomyr. The book has 1116 pages and consists of three sections. According to historical records, more than 8015 people died during Holodomor in 1932–1933.
During World War II Zhytomyr and the surrounding territory was for two and a half years under Nazi German occupation and was Heinrich Himmler's Ukrainian headquarters. The Nazi regime in what they called the "Zhytomyr General District" became what historian Wendy Lower describes as
a laboratory for… Himmler's resettlement activists… the elimination of the Jews and German colonization of the East—transformed the landscape and devastated the population to an extent that was not experienced in other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe besides Poland. … ltimately, the exigencies of the war effort and mounting partisan warfare behind the lines prevented Nazi leaders from fully developing and realizing their colonial aims in Ukraine… In addition to the immediate destruction of all Jewish communities, Himmler insisted that the Ukrainian civilian population be brought to a 'minimum.'

During 1942-1949 Zhytomyr region was a territory of mild Ukrainian Insurgent Army activity, who fought for Independence of Ukraine against Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
After the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany, Zhytomyr fell under Soviet rule and became a part of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic again.
On 24 August 1991 Ukrainian parliament announced Declaration of Independence of Ukraine. From 1991, Zhytomyr has been part of the independent and sovereign Ukraine.

2022 Russian invasion

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Zhytomyr and the surrounding area were subjected to several Russian air and missile strikes, such as the 2 March airstrike which damaged residential buildings, a thermal electricity plant, and two hospitals, killing at least two and injuring more than a dozen.

Administrative division

The city is divided into two urban districts:
Microdistrict
The city of Zhytomyr contains the following areas :
  • Bohunia
  • Hydropark
  • Hinchanka the Second
  • Zavokzalny district
  • Railway station area
  • Korbutivka
  • Kroshnia
  • Maliovanka
  • Marianivka
  • Pavlykivka
  • Putiatynka
  • Rudnia
  • Smokivka
  • Smolianka
  • Sokolova Hora
  • Old Town
  • Eastern microdistrict
  • Khmilnyki
  • Center

    Population

Demographic history

Ethnic groups

Distribution of the population by ethnicity according to the 2001 census:

Language

Distribution of the population by native language according to the 2001 census:
LanguageNumberPercentage
Ukrainian235 24583.18%
Russian46 01516.27%
Other or undecided1 5630.55%
Total282 823100.00%

According to a survey conducted by the International Republican Institute in April–May 2023, 82% of the city's population spoke Ukrainian at home, and 14% spoke Russian.

Roman Catholics

Zhytomyr had been a Latin Catholic bishopric since 1321, until The See was suppressed in 1789 in favor of the Diocese of Lutsk and Zytomierz, until that was split up again in 1925, when it was restored as the Roman Catholic Diocese of Zhytomyr; that was formally suppressed in 1998 to establish the Diocese of Kyïv–Žytomyr, but actually the city retains the episcopal see in its Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, while Kyiv only has a co-cathedral.
The Zhytomyr cemetery was opened in 1800. At first, it served Polish nobility from Volhynia, such as the Czeczel and the Woronicz families. Later, other Catholics were buried here, including Germans, Ukrainians and Russians.
In 1840, the Chapel of St. Stanislaus was built, and the cemetery was divided into nine districts, named after different saints. In the Soviet Union, the complex was devastated, now it is under the process of renovation.
Among most famous people buried here are:
Zhytomyr apparently had few Jews at the time of the Khmelnytsky Uprising, but by the time it became part of Russia in 1778, it had a large Jewish community, and was a center of the Hasidic movement. Jews formed nearly one-third of the 1861 population ; thirty years later, they had somewhat outpaced the general growth of the city, with 24,062 Jews in a total population of 69,785. By 1891 there were three large synagogues and 46 smaller batei midrash. The proportion of Jews was much lower in the surrounding district of Zhytomyr than in the city itself; at the turn of the century there were 22,636 Jews in a total population of 281,378.
In Imperial Russia, Zhytomyr held the same status as the official Jewish center of southern part of the Pale of Settlement as Vilnius held in the north. The printing of Hebrew books was permitted only in these two cities during the monopoly of Hebrew printing from 1845 to 1862, and both were chosen as the seats of the two rabbinical schools which were established by the government in 1848 in pursuance of its plans to force secular education on the Jews of Russia in accordance with the program of the Teutonized Russian Haskalah movement. The rabbinical school of Zhytomyr was considered the more Jewish, or rather the less Russianized, of the two. Its first head master was Jacob Eichenbaum, who was succeeded by Hayyim Selig Slonimski in 1862. The latter remained at the head of the school until it was closed in 1873 because of its failure to provide rabbis with a secular education who would be acceptable to the Jewish communities. Suchastover, Gottlober, Lerner, and Zweifel were among the best-known teachers of the rabbinical school at Zhytomyr, while Abraham Goldfaden, Salomon Mandelkern, and Abraham Jacob Paperna were among the students who later became famous in the Jewish world.
The Jewish community of Zhytomyr suffered pogroms:
  1. On 7–8 May 1905, when the section of the city known as "Podol" was devastated, and 20 were killed within the city.
  2. On 7–10 January 1919, 15 young Jewish neighbors were killed when they came to defend, and the Christian student Nicholas Blinov, also attempting to defend, likewise died. Ten young Jews from nearby Chudnov were also killed while on their way to aid the Jews of Zhytomyr.
  3. Beginning on 22 March 1919, according to witnesses, the 317 deaths were fewer than might have been, due to both Christian sheltering efforts and the return of the Bolshevik troops within a few days.
The Jewish community of the region was largely destroyed in the Holocaust. In the four months beginning with Himmler's 25 July 1942 orders, "all of Ukraine's shtetls and ghettos lay in ruins; around 3,000 Jewish men, women, and children were murdered by stationary and mobile SS-police units with local Ukrainian auxiliaries."
Today, the Zhytomyr Jewish community numbers about 5,000. The community is a part of the "Union of Jewish Communities in Ukraine" and the city and district's rabbinate. Rabbi Shlomo Vilhelm, who came to the city as a Chabad emissary in 1994, serves as rabbi. Other Jewish institutions are also active in the city, including the Joint and its humanitarian branch "Chesed" and the Jewish Agency.
The community has an ancient synagogue in the city center which has a mikveh. Chabad operates in the city various educational institutions which have residence in a village next to the city.