Tragedy and Violence in the Gates of Europe Quiz

Kurhan is a word in Ukrainian (in Russian, it's called kurgan) meaning a stone tomb. The kurhany of Kamianka are dated to the early Iron Age.

Scythians were a people of Eastern Europe made famous chiefly by the Father of History himself, Herodotus. Herodotus traveled in their lands in modern-day Ukraine, and recorded much about their way of life, their religious beliefs, and their history. Later authors, mostly Roman, made the Scythians an umbrella term for a wide variety of peoples, and Scythia a very vague geographical concept, spanning expanses of land in both Europe and Asia.

The Cumans or Polovtsy were a steppe people of the Middle Ages. They are mentioned often as allies of one Riurikid principality against the other. Their language belonged to the Altaic family and their pagan religion was similar to Tengriism.

It is said that the stone statues they erected had a cult significance, although other hypotheses state that they were war memorials or personifications of dead warriors and heroes. They can be as tall as four meters. Most of the time, it's possible to distinguish whether a statue depicts a male or female figure. Interesting parallels and common trends have been noticed with the stone statues left on top of mounds by the Scythians in the Iron Age.

The war of Kindrat (Kondratyi) Bulavin against the Muscovite state occurred in 1707-1708, during the Great Northern War. Since it is only in 1721 that Muscovy appropriated the medieval politonym 'Rus' for herself, it's proper to still speak of Muscovites.

Bulavin was a Cossack chief in the area west of the River Don. He had been born in Staryi Saltiv, in modern-day Kharkiv Oblast. His movements against Muscovite encroachment were coordinated with associates of Ivan Mazepa, like Semen Drannyi and Kostya Hordienko.

His ultimate defeat and death occurred in Donetsk Oblast, although many battles of the uprising were fought in Luhansk Oblast. Villages and urben-type settlements like Shulhynka or Starobilsk were destroyed by Tsarist troops during Bulavin's suppression, while some cities like Rovenky or villages like Bilohorivka trace their origins to supporters of the rebel leader fleeing the Muscovites.

The Pugachev Uprising occurred in the 1770s, and it pitted many oppressed nationalities against the Tsarist authorities of the Russian Empire. It ended in defeat and disaster for the rebels, who were cruelly persecuted afterwards.

Zhuba was known to be a resident of the tax-free settlement (sloboda) of Staryi Aidar. He took part in recruiting people and in military operations from the area of Zaporizhzhia, Poltava, and Bakhmut. After his leader was defeated, Zhuba reportedly found refuge in the village of Vesela Hora, also in Luhansk Oblast. Seventeen of the village's inhabitants were arrested, charged with shielding the fugitive captain from royal punishment, and sentenced to grueling manual labor.

Gascoigne's factory was founded in late 1795, with the aim of producing cannons for the Imperial Russian Army. The ore-rich site of the Luhan River, between the villages of Kamyanyi Bird and Verhunka, seemed an ideal location for the enterprise. So, Gascoigne organized the merging of the two villages in the city of Luhansk. His business did well, and he was entrusted with the task of supervising other businesses related to the production of cannons for the tsars' armies. The factory in Luhansk remained in operation after his death, even expanding during the Napoleonic Wars.

In the late 1990s, mayor Oleksiy Danilov had a bust of Gascoigne installed in the city.

Solvay, the man behind the ammonia-soda process, was one of the investors that developed the industry of the Donets Basin. His business had a monopoly of the soda industry throughout his life, and, even after his death, operated until the turmoil and chaos of the 1917 disintegration of the Romanov Empire.

He didn't construct only the plant, however, in Lysychansk. He also sponsored the building of a gymnasium, which was unfortunately destroyed by Russian shelling in 2022, and several residential buildings.

In 2017, those buildings were given the Belgian Heritage Abroad Award.

The complex founded by Alchevsky in 1895 led into the merging of the villages Zhylivka and Vasylivka into one city, appropriately named Alchevsk.

Oleksii Alchevsky had been born in the city of Sumy, in northern Ukraine. A fervent member of the "Prosvita" ("Enlightenment") organization, he tirelessly promoted his native culture and also commissioned the oldest statue of Ukraine's national poet, Taras Shevchenko. His death in 1901 was also a mysterious one. Officially, he fell under the wheels of a train when his businesses faced major difficulties, after all, the beginning of the 20th century brought a major economic crisis in many major countries, including both the Habsburg and the Russian Empire, but he was buried in a Christian way, which was not granted to suicides at the time. There has been speculation of his death being a contract killing. After 1917, his business was taken over by the Soviet administration.

The Ukrainian People's Republic declared itself in 1917, during World War I. The division of the Republic into lands was done in early 1918. The name Polovtsian Land was chosen because, in the Middle Ages, the people known as Cumans (Polovtsy in Kyivan annals) populated the area.

The defense of the area was entrusted to Lieutenant General Volodymyr Sikevych, while many fighters joined the patriotic-cum-anarchist revolutionaries led by Nestor Makhno. When the war of Independence was lost by the Ukrainians, the Polovtsian Land ceased to be an administrative entity and became part of Soviet Ukraine.

With an independent Ukrainian state declaring itself at the ending phases of World War I, the Ukrainians of Luhansk Oblast also heeded the call to fight. From the very early stages, detachments of the organized army of the Ukrainian People's Republic fought there, as did the revolutionaries led by Nestor Makhno, who combined patriotism with a vague notion of an anarchic society.

Among those revolutionaries was Ivan Kamenyuka, whose unit was composed of 800 fighters in the beginning of its operations and soon included more than 2000. As the successive Russian armies (White and Red) advanced, Kamenyuka and his men fought against them, mostly in the northern parts of the Oblast, until the death of their leader in 1921. The dream of independence had been temporarily frustrated.

The Holodomor occurred in 1932-1933. Meaning literally "death by hunger", the Holodomor was recognized as genocide by the European Union, and called as such by the very man who coined the word "genocide", Raphael Lemkin. It constitutes the only genocide that can be compared to the Holocaust in terms of number of victims. Its cause was Stalin's desire to eliminate Ukrainian national identity and resistance to Soviet rule.

According to Robert Conquest, one fifth of Luhansk Oblast residents perished during the famine.The worst-affected areas where the northern parts, especially the villages and towns.

The city of Luhansk had been twice renamed to Voroshilovgrad (Voroshylovhrad in Ukrainian) by the Soviets. The first renaming happened in 1935, but the old name was reinstated in 1958, because Nikita Khrushchev was against the Stalin-era practice of naming places after living people. After the death of the Soviet military figure, Kliment Voroshilov, the communist name returned in 1970.

The restoration of the original names in both Luhansk and Mariupol, a city in Donetsk Oblast which the Soviets called Zhdanov, helped awaken the hopes of locals for an independent state.

The independence referendum, held at the end of 1991, signaled the end of the Soviet Union. More than 90% of Ukrainians voted in favour of independence, with the highest votes being in the western parts of the country. Yet, although the percentage in favour of independence was lower in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, it was still an overwhelming majority.

When the region became the scene of the Russo-Ukrainian War, polls conducted by major Western agencies revealed that around 84% of the residents wanted their Oblast to be part of Ukraine, 5% supported Russia, and the rest were undecided.

The Sievierodonetsk Congress was held in November 2004. It was not only attended by pro-authoritarian politicians from the Party of Regions, a pro-Russia political party, but also the Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov. The aim of the Congress was to oppose the victory and the pro-democratic and pro-Western politician Viktor Yushchenko in the upcoming presidential elections.

Prior to this, the second round of the 2004 presidential election had been rigged in favour of Yanukovych, an act that enraged the Ukrainian people and caused the Orange Revolution, which was a series of peaceful protests demanding the repetition of the second round of the elections. Ultimately, President Leonid Kuchma agreed the demands of the Orange Revolution, which was ultimately won by Yushchenko.

The separatist Siveierodonetsk Congress, which was deeply opposed to the Orange Revolution, presented a plan that included secession of the Eastern and Southern parts of Ukraine, which, although it was the course of action Russia wanted, didn't find acceptance even with Yanukovych, who balked from proceeding with the implementation of the decisions.

The Russian occupation of Luhansk Oblast began in the spring of 2014. After the Revolution of Dignity succeeded in ousting the authoritarian President Viktor Yanukovych, Russia retaliated by illegally annexing Crimea and sending dozens of armed militants into Ukraine, especially in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, who proceeded to seize administrative buildings and proclaim "people's republics".

In the case of Luhansk, the "LPR", Luhansk People's Republic, was proclaimed by a throng of people, some of whom, like Valery Bolotov and Gennadiy Tsypkalov, were not even born in Ukraine. The "LPR" chased an acting governor, Iryna Veryhina, out of office, brutalized civilians, and shut down all opposition voices. Freedom House has constantly rated the "LPR" and her sister formation in Donetsk, the "DPR", in the same scale as North Korea in terms of human rights abuses.

The shelling occurred as a violation of the ceasefire that had been agreed upon multiple times, and which Russia and her proxies kept violating. The incident resulted in half the town being left without electricity and the wounding of seven children. It received major international condemnation, which, however, fell on deaf ears.