Slobidskyi Regiment

Slobidskyi Regiment (Slobidskyi polk). A military formation organized in the mid-18th century by the tsarist government on the frontier of New Serbia and the Zaporizhia, in southwestern Ukraine, for the purpose of checking the Zaporozhian Cossacks. Its main base was the Saint Elizabeth Fortress (now the city of Kropyvnytskyi). Like the five Cossack regiments in Slobidska Ukraine, the regiment enjoyed a measure of autonomy. In 1760 it had 6,536 men, of which 213 were officers. In 1764 its troops were reorganized into a lancer regiment.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]