Kholodnyi Yar

Kholodnyi Yar [Холодний Яр; Xolodnyj Jar]. A landmark near the city of Chyhyryn and the Motronynskyi Trinity Monastery, now in Chyhyryn raion, Cherkasy oblast. The densely forested hills and gullies around Kholodnyi Yar for centuries served the local villagers as a refuge from Polish reprisals or Tatar invasions. The haidamakas gathered there to prepare their rebellions (see Haidamaka uprisings): in the 1730s under the leadership of the Zaporozhian Cossacks Matvii Hryva and I. Zhyla, in the 1740s under Hnat Holy, and in 1768 under Maksym Zalizniak. From 1918 to 1924 Kholodnyi Yar was the operations base for contending Bolshevik and pro-UNR partisan detachments. The UNR partisans were commanded by a former teacher from the village of Melnyky, Otaman V. Chuchupaka, whose headquarters were at the Motronynskyi Monastery, and operated in the Cherkasy–Chyhyryn–Znamianka–Dnipro River sector. Among the several thousand partisans there were soldiers from the Kuban (Otaman Uvarov), the Kyiv region, and Galicia, as well as local peasants. During the Second World War, Soviet partisans (see Soviet partisans in Ukraine, 1941–5) under the command of P. Dubovy were active in the vicinity.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]