Kryvyi Rih

In 1734 the Cossack Zaporizhian Sich (or Host) incorporated the area within the Inhul Palanka division of their de-facto republic. A list of villages and winter camps (zymivnyki) from that time mentions Kryvyi Rih. In 1770, Kryvyi Rih was again recorded as the camp of the Zaporizhian Sich.[10][11]

In May 1775, after the end of the Russian-Turkish War, Russian authorities established Kryvyi Rih as a staging post, in the tradition of the Mongol yam, on the roads to the Russian garrisons of Kremenchuk, Kinburn foreland and Ochakov.[12] In August 1775, on the direct order of Catherine the Great, the Sich was forcibly dissolved. The cossack lands were annexed to the Russian province of Novorossiya and distributed among the Russian and Ukrainian gentry.[13]

The early 19th century saw the construction of the first stone houses (1828), and three water mills.[14] In 1860, the village was designated a township.[15]

Alexander Pol discovered and initiated iron ore investigation and production in this area. He is credited with discovering the Kryvbas.[16][17] This stimulated the formation of a mining district.[18] In 1884, Alexander III started the Catherine Railway, first to Dnipro and then 505 km to the coal-mining region of Donbas.[19][20]

In 1880, with 5 million francs of capital, Pol founded the "French Society of Kryvyi Rih Ores". In 1882 16.4 thousand tons of ore were extracted from surface mines on the outskirts of town by 150 workers. The first underground mine of the basin began operations in 1886.[21] In 1892, the Hdantsivka ironworks was started. Ore began to be processed locally, spawning new metallurgical enterprises spurred by substantial western, and in particular Belgian,[22] investment. At the same time Kryvyi Rih ore began to feed the German metallurgical industry in Silesia. In 1902, the Catherine Railroad linked Kryvyi Rih to the coal mines of the Donbas.[20]

• 
  Kryvyi Rih's synagogue, 19th century
• 
  Alexander Pol studied iron ore in detail and proved its commercial value
• 
  An ore quarry in 1899
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  Joltaїa Rieka Iron Mining Company share, 1899
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  Poshtova Street about 1900
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  Kryvyi Rih Mutual Credit Society
• 
  A regional map in 1914
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  Minerais de Fer de Krivoї Rog share

At the end of the 19th century the tallest building was the Central Synagogue, built by a thriving Jewish community of artisans, merchants and traders.[15] In 1905, the community was subject to pogroms, in which the authorities were complicit. Many Jewish people left the area, emigrating to Germany, Austria-Hungary and the United States.[23]

The surrounding mines attracted prospectors looking to turn a quick profit.[24] The supply of mined ore soon exceeded demand. Many mines had to cut employment or temporarily suspend operations. Workers, many drawn from the Russian-speaking north (from Great Russia),[25] laboured in harsh conditions with no security. Work in the mines induced lung cancer, tuberculosis and asthma.[26] In protest, workers began to develop ideas about socialism and democracy. Labour unrest resulted in several terrorist attacks and in widespread strikes.[27]

The First World War interrupted access to the export markets, and many workers were drafted into the military. A council of soviet of Soldiers and Worker's Deputies was formed in 1917. January 1918 saw the first attempt by the Bolsheviks to establish the authority in the town of the new Soviet government in Moscow.[28][29]

In the civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, Kryvyi Rih changed hands several times. In February 1918, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, but then in March conceded the territory under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the German-controlled Ukrainian State.[30] After the Germans and their Austro-Hungarian allies withdrew in November 1918, the town was successively occupied by the nationalists of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the counter-revolutionary Volunteer Army of General Denikin (the "Whites"),[28] the anarchist Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (the Makhnovshchina)[31] and, from 17 January 1920, by the Bolshevik Red Army.[32] In 1922 the region was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR, a constituent republic of the Soviet Union.

The town, with a population of 22,571, was now designated a city. Mine operations were revived, and in 1924 a 55.3 km (34.4 mi) water-supply system was laid underground. In the summer of 1927, 10,000 people began to work on the Dnieprostroi, a huge dam on the Dnieper River in Zaporizhzhia, whose hydro-electric power drove Kryvyi Rih's industrialisation.[33] The first Mining Institute opened in 1929. The Medical and Pedagogical Institutes were founded.[34]

In line with Stalin's plans for break-neck industrialisation, in 1931 the foundation of the Kryvyi Rih Metallurgical Plant, the future Kryvorizhstal, was laid.[35] The first blast furnace of the metallurgical works produced steel three years later. The city grew rapidly.[36] In the surrounding countryside, industrialisation was accompanied by the collectivisation of agriculture. The dispossession of the peasants and the confiscation of their harvests induced the Holodomor or Great Famine of 1932–33.[37]

By 1941, at over 200,000, the population of the industrial city had increased almost tenfold.[38]

During World War II, Kryvyi Rih was occupied by the German Army from 15 August 1941 to 22 February 1944. It was administered for most of that period as part of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. In advance of the Germans, industrial plant and machine operators were evacuated to Nizhny Tagil in the Urals.[32] An initial toleration of Ukrainian cultural activity and propaganda by the pro-German Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in the town ended in January and February 1942 with the arrest and execution of the leading Ukrainian activists.[39]

In 1939, 12,745 Jews had lived in Krivoy Rog, comprising about 6 per cent of the total population. Those who did not leave the city during the organized evacuation were systematically concentrated and murdered by the Nazi occupiers. The first mass killing of two to three hundred by an Einsatzkommando occurred at the end of August 1941 at a brick works. On 14–15 October a combination of SS, German police and Ukrainian auxiliaries murdered 7,000 more at an iron ore mine. Children were thrown into the pits alive.[40]

Hitler had repeatedly stressed the crucial importance of this area: "The Nikopol manganese is of such importance, it cannot be expressed in words. Loss of Nikopol (on the Dnieper River, today's southwest of Zaporizhzhia) would mean the end of war."[41] The German bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnieper gave the German command a base in order to restore the land connection with their forces locked in the Crimea.[42] During the first half of January 1944,[43] Soviet troops made repeated attempts to eliminate the Nikopol-Krivoy Rog enemy group. The Nikopol–Krivoy Rog Offensive did not succeed in breaking into the city until the end of February. Although the greater part of city was destroyed, a special 37th Red Army detachment prevented the German demolition of the power stations in the city and the Saksahan dams.[44]

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  AEG power station built in 1930
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  Wehrmacht soldiers operating 10.5 cm leFH 18. Svobody Street, 1942
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  Soldiers arresting people, 1942
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  Miners and pioneers pose in front of the Banner of Krivoi Rog. 1952.
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  Dimitrova Street, like many in the city center, is lined with dozens of Stalinist buildings
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  City Hall was built in the year of the city's 200th jubilee.
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  Nativity of the Theotokos Church, 1886, restored in the 2000s[45]

After the war, people lived among the ruins while rebuilding the housing stock. The housing shortage was met by innovative technological solutions, and temporary barracks and houses were quickly built.

In the late 1940s, re-construction was accompanied by Stakhanovite propaganda:[46] Pre-war iron ore production was restored by 1950.[32] In 1961 this was supplemented by new mines and by the Central and, Northern Iron Ore Enrichment Works.[47] By the end of the Soviet era, Kryvbas was producing 42% of the USSR's and 80% of Ukrainian ore.[48]

At the beginning of the 1960s, the city received a signature 185m-tall, guyed tubular steel TV mast.[49] Housing stock was replaced and expanded with several large Khrushchyovkas apartment complexes. Urban planning incorporated broad tree-lined avenues with trams lines running down their center.[50]

On June 16–18, 1963, increased food prices triggered protests in the city, estimated to involve between 1,000 and 6,000 people.[51] After an ex-serviceman who had interacted with the police was severely beaten, there was rioting. Moscow sent in troops. While the authorities admitted to 4 dead and 15 wounded, witnesses report that soldiers killed at least 7, and that over 200 people were hospitalised with injuries.[52] Fifteen hundred people received prison sentences.[32]

In 1975, the city's two-hundredth anniversary was marked by the development of the Jubilee mine and adjacent residential area, and by the construction of a new city administration building and park. In September 1976, the Krivorozh wool spinning factory was commissioned.[32]

In last years of the Soviet Union, and following a sharp reduction in spending on cultural, sports and youth service, the city witnessed neighbourhood-based gang violence—the so-called "war of Runners".[53] The era of Perestrioka was also marked by the emergence of independent trade unions, and of new civic and political organisations.[54]

The former Krivoi Rog Air Base is located nearby.

In a national referendum on 1 December 1991, Ukrainian independence was approved by 90% of the votes cast in Kryvyi Rih's Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.[55] The first 25 years of independence was a period of economic dislocation and adjustment. The population of the city decreased by almost 100,000, from a peak of 780,000 in the late 1980s.[56][38]

Assisted by Metinvest, investment followed the 2005 privatization of Kryvorizhstal.[57] There was extensive redevelopment including new shopping and entertainment centers.[58] In July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, Kryvyi Rih Municipality and the Kryvyi Rih Raion came under a common city authority.[59][60] The city remains the second most important in the Dnipropetrovsk region after Dnipro. Krivyi Rih has two independent universities, and several institutes and technical schools.[32]

Until the events of Euromaidan in 2014 and their aftermath, in local and national elections Kryvyi Rih favored Russian-friendly candidates belonging first, in the 1990s, to the Communist Party of Ukraine and then, in the new century, the Party of Regions. In 2010 the city elected Party of Regions Yuriy Vilkul mayor, and helped Viktor Yanukovych to victory in the presidential election. After the Euromaidan events, which were accompanied by demonstrations and clashes in the city centre,[61] support began to ebb from the Party of Regions. Petro Poroshenko, who insisted that Russian separatists in the Donbas "don't represent anybody",[62] was supported in the presidential election of 2014. Vilkul was re-elected mayor in 2015, but amidst large-scale protests alleging electoral fraud.[63][64]

In the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election the city supported its native son Volodymyr Zelenskyy,[65] who defeated Poroshenko in the second round in April.[66][67][68] In the July 2019 elections for the Ukrainian Rada, candidates for Zelenskyy's Servant of the People Party won the city's three parliamentary seats. However, in December 2020, the Servant of the People candidate for mayor, Dmytr Shevchuk, lost to Kostantin Pavlov of the pro-Russian Opposition Platform — For Life.[69]

On 15 August 2021, Pavlov was found dead in the entrance to his home, a gun lying next to his body.[70] In September, reporting on an investigation that included a search of the home of the former, and now acting, mayor, Yyriy Vilkul,[71] the Minister of Internal Affairs Denys Monastyrsky suggested that Pavlov may have committed suicide against the backdrop of a large-scale audit of the city's budget.[72]

Beginning in 2017, Kryvyi Rih had major labour unrest. In May 2017, coordinated protest actions began at the city's main plants, Kryvyi Rih Iron Ore Plant, Evraz-Sukha Balka and AMKR. Employees stopped work, held public meetings and occupied administration offices. Conscious that they were receiving one of the lowest wages across the global industry, the metalworkers raised the demand for a monthly wage of US$1,000/Euros. The conflict stopped after an agreement was reached to gradually raise wages, on average by 50%. In 2018, protest erupted again triggered by the fatal result of underinvestment in plant and safety. On the night of 3–4 March 2018, the roof collapsed at AMKR's converter shop, killing a 25-year-old worker.[73]

In May, the ArcelorMittal steel plant ground to a halt as workers refused to guide trains along the factory's self-enclosed supply chain until they received monthly pay of 1,000 euros. Management brought in employees from state-owned railway company Ukrzaliznytsia to run the factory, breaking the strike but leaving the central dispute in place. An underlying problem, according to ArcelorMittal's chief procurement officer, is a labour shortage. Skilled workers are emigrating to Poland, Czechia, and to other countries. But the plant's upper management sees costs associated with the higher salaries that might retain workers as an unacceptable threat to an ambitious, multibillion-dollar factory modernization project.[74]

Kryvorizhstal, Ukraine's largest integrated steel company, had been privatised in 2005 in publicly televised auction. This was after the incoming government of President Viktor Yushchenko cancelled a 2004 auction that had seen the company sold at a much lower price, to a consortium that included the son-in-law of ex-President Leonid Kuchma. The Indian-owned international steel conglomerate Mittal Steel proved successful with a bid of $4.8 billion, equivalent to a fifth of Ukraine's national budget.[75] In 2006, Mittal took over its international rival, Arcelor, to form ArcelorMittal headquartered in Luxembourg City.[76] Since then the company says its has invested more than $5 billion in its Kryvyi Rih operations.[77]

On 15 October 2020, in an action that began with 393 miners occupying mine-shafts,[78] 18 iron-ore miners came to the surface after spending a total of 43 days underground to protest pay and conditions. The mine administration had introduced piecework wages for most jobs underground, linking people's daily income to the amount of ore mined. In response to this, and to above-ground worker blockades, plant management made concessions on wages, benefits and health and safety.[79][77]

On the first day of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, 24 February 2022, there were air strikes against military targets in the city, causing evacuations of residents in the district of Makulan.[80]

On 27 February, city mayor Oleksandr Vilkul was appointed the head of the military administration of Kryvyi Rih.[2] According to Vilkul, the day previously — the second day the war — the Russian military had attempted an air assault. An Ilyushin Il 76 transport had approached an abandoned Soviet-era air base just east of the city. Carrying more than 100 paratroopers with orders to capture the airfield as an “air bridge”, it was forced to abort its mission, 300 metres from landing. As soon as the city had been hit with missiles, local defenders had blocked the runway with mechanical equipment.[65][22] On the same day, Vilkul said that he had received a phone call from a former colleague who invited him to "sign an agreement of friendship, cooperation and defense with Russia"; he said that he "responded with profanity."[81]

On the third day of the war, 27 February, the Russian forces, according to Vilkul, sent a column of 300 military vehicles from their advancing position to the south, and that after ten days of intense fighting they were turned back. As an industrial center that accounted for fully 10% of Ukraine's GDP, Vilkul was convinced that Kryvyi Rih was a prime target for Russian forces.[82]

In the third week of the war, Russian troops broadened their offensive across Ukraine and were again advancing toward Kryvyi Rih from the south.[83] On 10 March, two rockets struck the Kryvyi Rih International Airport in Lozovatka.[84] On 12 March, Metinvest shuttered an open pit iron ore mine in the city, and sent the huge trucks used at the mine to block key roads to slow the Russian advance.[85] In its 15 March briefing, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence stated that the movement by "occupation troops" toward Kryvyi Rih had been stopped.[86]

According to Russian sources, the invaders faced extensive improvised fortifications and minefields.[87] On 29 March 2022, Vilkul said that the line of contact was no longer on the border with Dnipropetrovsk region, but 40-60 kilometers south in the Kherson Oblast.[88] He was confident that running 120 km north to south, the longest city in Europe could not be surrounded.[22]

A residential building in Kryvyi Rih after a Russian rocket attack on the night of 13 June 2023

On 30 March, ArcelorMittal which at the beginning of the month had idled its steelmaking operations in Kryvyi Rih citing concern for the safety and security of its 26,000 workers and for its assets,[89][90] announced that it was preparing to restart production.[91]

At the end of May, responding to Russian rocket and missile strikes, Ukrainian forces made limited counterattacks south of Kryvyi Rih.[92] The southern Inhulets and Radushne districts remain exposed to Russian shelling with civilian losses.[93] At dawn on 25 August, Kryvyi Rih was hit by cluster munitions.[94]

On 14 September 2022, the city faced rising water levels in the Inhulets River, and water shortages, as the Russian forces fired eight cruise missiles at local infrastructure.[95] The strike against President Zelenskyy's home town—an attempt, he suggested, to flood the city—came after his visit to towns in the Kharkiv region regained in Ukraine's first major counteroffensive.[96]

Kryvyi Rih has a dry warm hot-summer continental climate (Dfa) within to the Köppen climate classification system, like much of southern Ukraine. This tends to generate warm summers and cold winters with relatively low precipitation. Snowfalls are not common in the city, due to the urban warming effect. Districts that surround the city receive more snow and roads leading out of the city can be closed[121] due to snow.[122]

Alona Bondarenko, 2011

Kateryna Bondarenko, 2018

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