Рукопись, найденная в Петербурге: труд И. Ботьянова 1850 года и предыстория города Николаева
Manuscript found in St. Petersburg: I. Botyanov’s 1850 paper and the prehistory of Nikolaev

Summary/Abstract: The article contains the publication of the Ivan Botyanov’s 1850 manuscript about the town of Nikolaev (Appendix 1), stored in one of the archives of St. Petersburg. First, the reasons are considered for the fact that in the archive of the Russian Geographical Society the name of the author of the manuscript was replaced by the name of its reviewer, the high-ranking official I. Palazhchenko, part of whose review was published (Appendix 2), while the original manuscript was not published. The following is a brief summary of the article and a conclusion that it is not a scientific study. It contains data on history, geography, geology, hydrography, statistics, trade, descriptions of gardens, religious and other buildings, educational institutions and such organizations as the Admiralty, the Black Sea Hydrographic Depot, the Nikolaev Observatory, etc. In essence, it should be classified as reference literature on populated areas, published in encyclopedias, regional reference yearbooks, address book and so on. However, this work represents not an imperial, but the so-called “Cossack approach” to the prehistory of the town. The author accompanied it with a number of facts (archaeological, archival and cartographic), which indicate that from about 1734 (and perhaps from 1711) on the site of the future Nikolaev there already existed military posts, fisher- ies, farmsteads and settlements of Zaporozhian Cossacks, who were evicted from here in 1787, immediately after the decision of the leadership of the Russian Empire to create a military shipyard at the mouth of the Ingul River.

• Details
• Contents