Constitution Square (Kharkov)

• From the second half of the 17th century to the 19th century it was called the Fairground, because it hosted the annual August Assumption Fairs .
• Until January 1919 , from June 1919 to the end of December 1919 (under the Volunteer Army ), it was called Mykolayiv or Nikolskaya, according to the church of St. Nicholas (Nikol) standing on it, blown up in 1930 .
• From January to June 1919 and from 1920 to 1975 it was called M.S. Tevelev Square , named after the Bolshevik , a member of the underground provincial committee of the RCP (B.) , Who was killed during the German occupation in 1918 .
• From 1975 to 1996 it was called the area of Soviet Ukraine .
• Since 1996 it has been called Constitution Square.

• Length - 550 m.
• Width - from 45 m to 120 m.
• Area with square - 4 hectares.
• On November 4, 1975, at the site of the former building of the Noble Assembly, a monument was opened in honor of the proclamation of Soviet power in Ukraine - a monument to the Bolsheviks — the heroes of the civil war in Soviet Ukraine , based on a sketch by S. Svetlorusov, 18 meters high, made of pink Ural granite . The monument was popularly called "five of the pawnshop carry a refrigerator." Dismantled in 2011.
• Under the square are two metro stations - “Constitution Square” ( 1975 ) and “Historical Museum” ( 1984 ).
• The longest street of the city, Moskovsky Prospekt, begins from Constitution Square.

• Motor Transport College named. Sergo Ordzhonikidze (since 1928 ), originally the Land Bank, an architectural monument , a project of academician of architecture A.N. Beketov , 1899 .
• Puppet Theater , originally the Volga-Kama Bank , architect A.N. Beketov , 1907 .
• Central Savings Bank ( Oschadbank since 1992), originally the St. Petersburg International Bank, architect A.N. Beketov .
• House of Technology, originally the Moscow Merchant Bank , architect A.N. Beketov .
• The Knowledge Society, originally a Commercial Bank, architect K. Peshchinsky, 1900s .
• No. 18/2 - Faculty of Physical Education Pedagogical Institute. G. Frying pans , originally the Azov - Don Bank , architect Swede Johann Lidval , 1907 .
• Upstairs, on the corner of the building mentioned above, in 2003, the sculpture “Violinist on the Roof” was installed (sk. S. Gurbanov).
• Institute of National Economy, in the style of constructivism , architect P. Krupka , 1931 .
• The four-story building “ Oriental Sweets ”, the oldest surviving building of the square, 1849 .

• The City Council , originally the City Duma , was designed by architect Mikhailovsky in 1885 , reconstructed by V. K. Trotsenko and V. I. Pushkaryov in the style of post - constructivism ( 1933 ), restored by V. Kostenko and V. Kharlamov with elements of the Stalin Empire style ( 1950 ).
• The Detsky Mir store, originally New Passage , 1925 , has a glass roof. Built on the site of the editorial office of the newspaper " Southern Territory ".
• The residential building under the spire with the former Bookstore store, the largest in the city, from 7 to 10 floors, the Stalinist Empire style , architect P. I. Areshkin, 1954 , occupies the entire block between the square, Moskovsky Prospekt , Lane Armenian and Korolenko.
• Monument to Independence of Ukraine ("Nick" by sculptor A. Ridny, the second in Kharkov). Opened by President V. Yanukovych on August 22, 2012. It was opened in the center of the square after the reconstruction of 2011-2012, during which a monument was dismantled and prepared for installation in the Tractor Plant area in honor of the proclamation of Soviet power in Ukraine .
• Labor Palace, originally an apartment building of the insurance company Russia, 1900s .
• Restaurant "Central", originally the Society for Mutual Credit , architect J. Tsaune , 1900s . The historic facade of the building was disfigured by a rebuild as a store in 2005 .
• The shop of Georges Bormann , the founder of the Kharkov confectionery factory , until now the Vedmedik confectionery store, interior decoration in the style of the " Eliseevsky " Empire style .
• Thermometer, a favorite meeting place for Kharkovites, height 16 m, originally made in 1976 at the Kharkov Institute of Metrology. Reconstructed. Hanging on the "House under the thermometer" ^[4] ( Sumy , 1).

Lost Attractions

• Kalancha of the gendarme unit.
• Noble assembly .
• St. Nicholas Cathedral .
• Monument "Five of the pawnshop . " Dismantled in 2011.
• Exchange
• Hotel "Red" . Destroyed during the Great Patriotic War . In its place in 1954 built a corner from the street. Pushkin building, where the 2nd pharmacy.
• Georges Bormann's shop, after the Great Patriotic War , the Oriental Sweets cafe in the Bratsk House (another of his pastry shops in the square, now Vedmedik , has existed for more than a hundred years).
• German tank " Panther " in front of the historical museum (taken to an unknown destination in the early 1970s?).
• Monument to the GAZ-AA military “lorry” in the courtyard of a motor transport college (sold in the late 1990s, repainted in yellow, and after that it moved around the city for a while as an advertising car). .

• In the last years of the 18th century, retired staff captain Cherkesov built the first wooden “Theater of Folk Entertainment” in the city. In 1808, a permanent troupe of actors appeared in the theater.
• In the building of the Noble Assembly ( 1820 , the style of Russian classicism , architect V. Lobachevsky ), destroyed during the war, exhibitions of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions ( Wanderers ) were organized in the 1870s and 1880s .

In this building there was a magnificent hall with good acoustics, where Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky gave a concert on March 14, 1893 with the Slatina Orchestra.

• On December 24, 1917, the First All - Ukrainian Congress of Soviets opened on new steel in the building of the Noble Assembly. The congress decided to recognize in Ukraine all the decrees and resolutions of the Leninist government of the Russian Federation and proclaimed Ukraine the federal part of Soviet Russia.

From 1920 to the transfer of the capital of Soviet Ukraine to Kiev , the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee worked at the Noble Assembly building.

• On June 25 ( NST ), 1919 , on the day Dobarmia entered the city, the crew of the red armored car Austin-Putilovets “ Artyom ” (commander Yu. Stankevich) was killed near the walls of the City Council (City Council).

The building of the Noble Assembly in 1919 housed the headquarters ^{[5] of the} commander of the Volunteer Army gene. May-Mayevsky and the action took place the book of Bulgaria and Seversky Adjutant of His Excellency . In the square in front of this building in the summer of 1919 a delegation of Russian industrialists led by Ryabushinsky presented May-Mayevsky with a golden sword . ^[five]

• In the house 20, one of the most beautiful buildings of the city, was the hotel "Red" , before the revolution, called the " Metropol ". At the end of the summer of 1919, at the Metropol restaurant, the notorious white Cossack chieftain Shkuro, together with the Commander of the Dobramia V.Z. May-Mayevsky, held a banquet on the occasion of Denikin's assignment of the rank of lieutenant general . At the banquet, the singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya sang. ^[five]

• The world's first Palace of Pioneers .

September 6, 1935 , on Youth Day, at the initiative of the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Pavel Postyshev opened the first Palace of Pioneers in the Soviet Union, and hence in the world. The Palace was located in the very center of Kharkov, on Tevelev Square, in the huge building of the former Noble Assembly, which was destroyed during the Great Patriotic War . The scale of the work of the Palace of Pioneers was impressive: 232 rooms, a library of 50 thousand books, laboratories, workshops, music classes, a winter garden , a fairy tale room, a puppet theater , the Club of Young Polar Explorers , which was directed by the writer Nikolai Trublaini , its own children's power station and printing house .

• The first New Year tree in the USSR .

In the same 1935 , on December 30, the first Soviet New Year tree was held in this palace. Then the phrase appeared that the only privileged class in the Land of Soviets was children.

• Mikola Bazhan March 25, 1942 on the German occupation :

“Kharkov was gloomy. He was quiet. This silence was terrifying. The city stood above the German enemy formidable, adamant, surrendered. Soldiers in green overcoats, putting forward their machines, went into the empty shops of colossal factories. The concrete foundations of the machines stuck out in gray mounds. Machine tools were taken out. Soldiers burst into long corridors, into the bright halls of huge buildings. The wind drove the black ashes of burnt papers on the parquet. There were no people. People are gone. ” “In the early days, the Nazis shot about 14 thousand people ...” “The order expels from Kharkov all the inhabitants who settled there since 1936, and tens of thousands of people were expelled from the city to the frosty, snowstorm howling snowstorm ...”

“A majestic general came out of a large house on Tevelev Square, with his bulging chest and contemptuously protruding his lower lip. He was in a hurry to get to his car ... But he did not have time. A shot rang out. The general crashed back of his head on the sidewalk. Some young girl rushed to run without releasing the revolver from her hands. The bodyguards of the generals, screaming, chased after her. The girl was caught and killed on the spot. " (This happened in February 1942. )

• An English tank of the First World War Mk.V was installed on the square, captured by the Red Army from the Volunteer Army in December 1919 near Kharkov (or in 1920 at the Kakhovsky bridgehead ). The tank, along with four others of the same type, was part of the 4th, then the 10th (Kharkov) armored detachment of the Red Army Selyavkina until 1923 . Previously, he stood in the courtyard of the Pokrovsky monastery , in which the Kharkov Historical Museum was located .

From the end of the 1940s to the beginning of the 1960s, a German tank of the Second World War TV (PzKpfw V) Panther was exhibited there, captured by the Soviet Army in 1943 in the third battle of Kharkov, painted gray-yellow according to eyewitnesses. (incorrectly identified as a kind of " desert " colors of the Rommel African Corps ). (Two German Panther tanks and three German guns that were stored behind the historical museum. They were handed over for scrap by order of the director of the Kharkov Historical Museum dated January 9, 1957 at a price of 125 rubles each. Together with the tanks, two German anti-tank guns were 7.5 cm (presumably PaK 40) at a price of 80 rubles each, by act of September 4, 1959, the second tank was decommissioned according to inventory 7008 (the Panther tank).) Since the mid -1990s , three Soviet field vehicles were also exhibited on the square guns of the war years and the T-34 tank.

• In the demolished apartment building No. 19 on Teveleva Square, the young seller of the first in the USSR bookstore “Poetry” “ young villain ” Edik Savenko lived with his first wife, who later took the pseudonym Limonov , then moved to Moscow, and from there to France and the USA, who wrote many books, participated in the wars in Yugoslavia and Transnistria , founded the National Bolshevik Party ( NBP ) in Russia and served time in prison for extremism.

• The general view of the square has become the recognizable and third generally accepted symbol of Kharkov. ^[6]
• The building of the Kharkiv City Council on the square (Building 7) became the fourth symbol of the city. ^[6]

• List of Kharkov squares
• Tank in Kharkov on the square Constitution

• Radzishevsky A. Kharkov - hometown
• Dushechkina E. Legend of a man giving a Christmas tree to Soviet children
• Video review Constitution (2013)

• Tevelev Square in 1959
• Soviet Ukraine Square in 1982
• Constitution Square in 1998
• Google Maps: Area, pawnshop, monument and tanks from satellite

• Pechenegsky A. Unknown Kharkov
• Anton Turkul . The capture of Kharkov in 1919 in the section "Military Memoirs"] on the site " Military Literature ".