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My darling daughter was adopted from the Kharkiv oblast. This is the Ukrainian spelling. The Russian spelling is Kharkov.
She is from a tiny village outside of the city of Kharkiv. Yes… the oblast, district and city name are Kharkiv. Instead of oblast some people will call it a state or region.
Kharkiv is the Ukrainian spelling. It is pronounced Harkev.
Kharkov is the Russian spelling. It is pronounced Harkof.
The Kharkiv region mainly speaks Russian. However they do use Ukrainian spellings. And my daughter is from a tiny, rural village which mainly used the Ukrainian language. My daughter was adopted at 3.5 years old and she understood some Russian words too. But she knew more Ukrainian words.
According to the CIA factbook there are 47,425,336 (July 2005 est.) people in Ukraine.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/up.html#People
Kharkiv (the city) is the second largest city in Ukraine. Kyiv is the largest. From http://www.kharkov.ua/region/region-e.htm
The Kharkiv region is divided into 26 districts while there are 16 towns, 62 urban-type settlements , 1861 villages and farm-steads (khutors) on its territory. The biggest towns are Kharkiv with the population of 1,600,000 people, Izyum, and Lozova. Other important towns are Kupyansk, Chuhuyiv, Balakliya, Bohodukhiv, Zmiyiv.
The population of Kharkiv region is about 3,170,000 people. 78.8% of the population lives in towns. The average density of population is 100 people per square kilometer.
Kharkiv is one of the largest centers of Ukrainian industry. They can vegetables. They make tires. The city of Kharkiv is also an University town. In 1976 Kharkiv city had 21 higher educational institutions. I don’t know what the current number is… People come from around Ukraine, from Russia, from Korea, etc.. to attend University in Kharkiv.
Here is the offical web site for the Kharkiv oblast in English.
http://www.kharkov.ua/industry/cityadm-e.htm
The first record of the city of Kharkiv was in 1627. My taxi driver during my adoption told me that a city was there before the 1600s, but no records seemed to support this. But he didn’t care about the records. He knew that he was right.
In 1655, a census was recorded for the city of Kharkov. The most interesting fact was that 587 adults who served in the Kharkov Cossack regiment were on the census.
In 1656, the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich appointed Voin Seliphontov as leader of local administration. I pretty sure this local administration was the Cossacks.
In 1659, a fortress (basically a tall double wall made out of oaks surrounded the town) was built for Kharkov. I believe they had a moat too. It was a defense against the Tatars. Kharkov city was basically a military garrison.
I could go on for a while…. but I want to visit a couple of other interesting places/facts on Kharkiv.
Here are some picture from Kharkiv city.
http://konst.org.ua/en/photohunt/album/103
I will end with the legend of how Kharkov city was named. It is a very short legend. There was a local farmer (also a Cossack) named Khariton or Kharek or Kharkov who lived in the area. And for some reason the “city” was named after him.
Another option is the river called Kharkov. The city of Kharkiv is off 2 rivers (Kharkov and Lopan).
