1654, the Year Kharkiv Was Born: Japan’s Jōō 3

Kharkiv’s (Харків) founding is usually dated to 1654. In Japan, that year was Jōō 3. In Edo, the Tamagawa Aqueduct, carrying water from the Tama River, reached the Torinomon gate of Edo Castle that year, and the Zen monk Yinyuan, who had come from Ming China, arrived in Nagasaki.

There was no contact between the two places. Here we line up, on a single timeline, the events in Japan of the same years as people settled at the edge of the steppe, a fort was built where two rivers meet, and it eventually became a town centered on a Cossack regiment. We also look, source by source, at what the figure “1654” actually refers to.

People Who Settled at the Edge of the Steppe

The area around today’s Kharkiv was, from the 13th through the 17th centuries, steppe crossed by Cumans (Polovtsians) and Tatars. According to the entry “Kharkiv” (updated 2006) in the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU) at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), University of Alberta, from the early 17th century this land formally belonged to the Muscovite state, and a defensive line was built against Crimean and Nogai Tatars. Those who settled there were mainly Ukrainian Cossacks, and serf-free villages (sloboda, plural slobody) were founded. The regional name “Slobidska Ukraine” (Slobozhanshchyna) comes from this.

The waves of settlers coincided with turmoil on the Ukrainian side. IEU’s entry “Slobidska Ukraine” (first appearing in volume 4 of the print encyclopedia, 1993) states that migration increased in the 1630s after Cossack uprisings failed, and that in 1638 a group of about 1,000 people led by Hetman Yakiv Ostrianyn settled near Chuhuiv. Migration increased further after the Khmelnytskyi uprising began in 1648, especially after the 1651 Treaty of Bila Tserkva, and in 1652 about 2,000 Cossacks of the Chernihiv and Nizhyn regiments founded Ostrohozk. The same entry continues that a similar flow of people “founded Kharkiv in 1654.”

The official site of the Kharkiv City Council’s “Historical Overview” likewise states that the town was founded by Cossacks and peasants who had fled ethnic, religious, and social oppression under Polish landlords, coming from the Dnipro basin and from western Ukraine. The extent of Slobidska Ukraine and the five regiments stationed there are covered in our article on Halychyna, Podillia, and Slobozhanshchyna.

A Fort on a Plateau Where Two Rivers Meet

The town was built on a plateau where the Kharkiv River and the Lopan River meet. According to IEU’s “Kharkiv” entry, Ukrainian Cossacks led by Ivan Karkach founded a fortified settlement there, and the fort was completed in 1659. Formally placed under the jurisdiction of a Muscovite military governor (voivode), the Cossacks were nonetheless allowed to govern themselves under “Cherkasy custom,” and retained the right to live and trade freely until the time of Peter I. The population in 1655 was about 2,000, of whom about 600 were Cossacks.

The entry “Kharkiv” (written by Volodymyr Masliichuk, volume 10, 2013) in the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine (hereafter, the Institute of History’s encyclopedia) published by the Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, gives a somewhat different account: the town was built by people who moved to Slobidska Ukraine in the 1650s, has been continuously inhabited since 1654, and its earliest known chief (otaman) was Ivan Kryvoshylyk. The fort was built in 1655–56, and voivode rule began in 1656, with Voyin Selifontov as the first voivode.

The city’s site states that the first fort was built to “Cherkasy (that is, Ukrainian) custom,” that Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich issued a decree in 1656 making Kharkiv an independent military district, and that the fort at the confluence of the two rivers had ten towers and walls more than a kilometer long. It also states that a 1657 report by voivode Selifontov and a 1658 register of residents show Kharkiv was already a fairly large settlement, with the register listing 578 men.

What Does “1654” Actually Count?

Even for the same town’s founding, sources differ on how they place the year and which names they give.

• IEU’s “Kharkiv” entry gives the widely accepted founding year as “1654/5,” the completion of the fort as 1659, and the leader of the group that founded the settlement as Ivan Karkach.
• IEU’s “Slobidska Ukraine” entry, however, writes simply “1654.”
• The Institute of History’s encyclopedia gives the town’s founding as “the 1650s,” with 1654 as the year it became a continuously inhabited settlement; the fort as 1655–56; and the first chief as Ivan Kryvoshylyk.
• The city’s own “Historical Overview” does not settle on a single founding year. The oldest document it names as mentioning Kharkiv is a decree dated March 28, 1656, ordering the voivode of Chuhuiv to build defenses at Kharkiv.

1654 is the year the encyclopedias give for when people settled there; the oldest date recorded on paper, according to the city’s site, is 1656. Rather than one being wrong, the difference reflects what is taken as counting as “the town’s beginning.”

“Kharkiv” Before 1654

The name “Kharkiv” itself appears in records earlier than the town. According to the city’s site, the Kharkiv River’s name first appears in the “Book of the Great Survey” (Книга Большому чертежу), compiled in 1627. According to the entry of the same name in the Institute of History’s encyclopedia, this was a geographical handbook compiled by a Muscovite military office as an explanation for two now-lost maps, containing roughly 2,000 place names.

IEU’s “Kharkiv” entry states that several settlements already existed near today’s Kharkiv by the mid-17th century. Going back further, the city’s site states that Slavic peoples built settlements in this area from the 8th century, that by the 10th century it was known as the town of Donets, and that Donets first appears in a chronicle in 1185. That campaign of 1185 is covered in our article on the Tale of Ihor’s Campaign. However, Donets is said to have been destroyed in the mid-13th century, and is not continuous with the town founded in 1654.

Where Does the Town’s Name Come From?

There are also several theories about the origin of the name.

• From the river’s name: IEU states it “probably derives from the Kharkiv River,” and the city’s site writes that most researchers hold this view.
• From the Cuman town of Sharukan: IEU attributes this to the Russian historian Aristov, and the city’s site to “some historians.”
• From a person’s name: IEU introduces, as folk tradition, a story that it comes from a Cossack named Kharko. The city’s site presents it as a theory that it comes from the name of Kharko (Kharyton), the leader of the earliest settlers in the mid-17th century.

The city’s site states that the origin of the river name Kharkiv itself “remains a mystery of place-name studies to this day.”

Timeline: Kharkiv’s Founding and Japan’s Jōō and Meireki Eras

Dates in the timeline are given exactly as recorded in each source. The Muscovite state at the time used the Julian (old-style) calendar, and Japan used a lunisolar calendar, so the same “1st month” does not necessarily indicate the same season. The Pereyaslav negotiations and the subsequent relationship with the Muscovite state are covered in our articles on the 220 years from the founding of the Sich to its destruction and on the end of Cossack self-rule.

On the Japan side, 1654 saw a run of events involving “water” and “the movement of people,” much like the town itself. According to the Yamakawa Japanese History Dictionary, work on the Tamagawa Aqueduct began in 1653 and was completed the following year. According to the revised Encyclopedia of World History (written by Takenuki Genshou), Yinyuan arrived in Japan on Jōō 3, 7th month, 5th day, at the invitation of monks of Kofukuji Temple in Nagasaki, bringing more than 20 disciples with him.

From Fort to Regimental Town

Cossack life was not centered inside the fort. According to IEU, for the rest of the 17th century and most of the 18th, Kharkiv was a frontier defensive outpost, with a Russian garrison and craftsmen and merchants living inside the fort, while most Cossacks farmed, fished, kept bees, and traded in the slobody spreading nearby. A new citadel with the voivode’s residence and a church was built in 1660–62.

The town eventually became the administrative center of a Cossack regiment of Slobidska Ukraine. According to IEU’s entry “Kharkiv regiment” (first appearing in volume 2 of the print encyclopedia, 1988), the Kharkiv regiment was formed in 1659–60 from Cossacks and peasants of both the Right- and Left-Bank Ukraine, and the Izium regiment split off from it in 1685. The Institute of History’s encyclopedia identifies Kharkiv from 1660 to 1665 as the administrative center of the Slobidska Cossack regiments. The regimental system was abolished by the Russian government in 1765, and Kharkiv became the center of the newly created Sloboda-Ukraine Governorate (IEU, Institute of History’s encyclopedia).

The town’s later history can be read in our articles on Kharkiv University, founded in 1805, on Kvitka-Osnovianenko, and on Kharkiv as the capital of Soviet Ukraine. In under two centuries, the fort at the river confluence went from being run by settling Cossacks to being an imperial provincial capital with a university, run by imperial officials and merchants.