In Odessa, the City Council should conclude a security contract on Kuyalnytskyi cemetery
Kuyalnitsky Cemetery is considered the oldest Cossack cemetery in Odessa
24tv.ua
The Odessa District Court obliged the Odessa City Council to conclude a security agreement on the Kuyalnitsky cemetery – the object of cultural heritage of local importance.
About it reported on the website of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
The Suvorov District Prosecutor’s Office of Odessa filed a lawsuit against the conclusion of a security agreement on the Kuyalnytsky Cemetery, which is located on the street of Khadzhibay’s road on the slopes of the damage mountain in Odessa.
The prosecutor’s office says that the Odesa City Council violated the current legislation, as it did not ensure the conclusion of a cemetery agreement, which has been part of the State Register of Real Estate of Ukraine since 2021.
Kuyalnitsky Cemetery is the object of cultural heritage of local importance
About the Kuyalnitsky cemetery
Kuyalnitsky Cemetery is one of the oldest burial places in Odessa. He is also called « Sotnikovsky » in honor of the Cossack Sotnichenko’s family buried here and the burial of the Cossacks of Sotnikov Sich.
The cemetery originated in about 1775. The oldest burial dates from 1791 – three years before the construction of Odessa. After the destruction of Zaporizhzhya Sich, some of the Cossacks moved to the Turkish Empire and settled near the cemetery on the slopes of the harmful mountain. So there was a settlement of Kuyalnik, which in 1809 was founded by the Ascension Church. The metric books contain information about 531 burials in those years. Most of the names – Ukrainian, 18 names of units or direct descendants of Zaporizhzhya regimental elders, are the names of the hetmans and the generals of the Osavuli, as well as the names originating from the names of Zaporozhye smokers.
Currently, this cemetery is not active, the last burial was in 1965. It has about 205 ancient tombstones cut from limestone, and 33 crosses preserved the inscriptions of the Church-Slavic and Ukrainian languages.
The unique forms of crosses are also preserved here: Four -peeled, sixkonic and octagonal. Most of the cross is expanded compared to the upper part and has the shape of a triangle, a trapezoid, a rectangle with straight rounded and stepped faces, symbolizing the cross in Calvary.
The oldest burial dates back to 1791
The first to the Kuyalnitsky cemetery as a cultural heritage was drew attention to the archaeologist and director of the Odessa Historical and Archeological Museum Mikhail Boltenko. In the 1920s, he excavated the monuments of Usat culture and began to record the cemetery.
Interest in the cemetery was restored in the 1980s and 1990s thanks to the works of local historian Roman Shuvalov. He published a brochure with a description of graves, drawings and location marks. Subsequently, Igor Sapozhnikov was engaged in this issue, who summarized his research in the work « Stone Crosses of Steppe Ukraine: (XVIII – first half of the nineteenth century) », published in 1997.
The researchers were convinced that the cemetery was initially buried by the people from Zaporizhzhya Sich, who settled here after its liquidation, and later the Black Sea Cossacks and those who did not go to Kuban in 1792.
