Dobrogea

The name Dobrudja of Slavic origin comes from the root of “ dobra ”, as well as many other toponyms with the names “ Dobra ”, “Dobruzhka”, etc. ^[2]

Historic Dobrogea consists of Northern Dobrogea , which is currently part of Romania , and Southern Dobrogea - part of Bulgaria . Romanian Dobrudja is located between the lower Danube and the Black Sea and includes the Danube Delta and the Romanian Black Sea coast (the Bulgarian part of Dobruja includes the northernmost part of the Bulgarian Black Sea coast). On the coat of arms of Romania, Dobrogea is represented as a dolphin .

Romanian Dobrudja includes the counties ( land ) of Constance and Tulcea . The main cities are Constanta , Tulcea , Medgidia and Mangalia . The Bulgarian part includes the Dobrich region and parts of the regions of Silistra and Varna . The main cities are Dobrich and Silistra .

With the exception of the Danube Delta, a marshy region in the northeast of the region, the Dobrudja relief is hilly, with average heights of 200-300 m. The highest point is Tsutsuyatu / Grech peak (467 m) in the Machinsky mountains . The Dobrudja plateau occupies most of the Romanian part of Dobrudja, and the Ludogorye (Ludogorie) plateau is also located in the Bulgarian part. Syutgol Lake is one of the most important lakes in this region.

In ancient times, Dobrudja was known as Lesser Scythia . To the south of the bend of the Danube, in particular, the famous Scythian leader Atei reigned ^[3] .

First Bulgarian Kingdom

Dobrudja is the first Transdanubian region of the Bulgarian kingdom ( Bulgaria ). Here, in the Danube Delta, in 680 the war of the Bulgars with the Byzantine Empire began, the result of which was the expansion of the Bulgarian state beyond the Danube, according to the peace treaty concluded with the empire in 681.

In the X century, the Kiev prince Svyatoslav Igorevich attacked Bulgaria and took Preslav - the capital of the state. He entered into an alliance with Prince Boris II , who formally remained on the throne. Svyatoslav intended to transfer the capital from Kiev to Preslav, but this threatened Byzantium, and the emperor John Tzimiskes undertook a campaign against the Russians and the bonds. The main battle took place near the walls of Preslav, where he defeated the Bulgarian troops, took the city, and captured Tsar Boris II. Svyatoslav did not want to leave Dobrudja and made the Dobrudjan city of Silistra on the banks of the Danube the center of his defense. Tzimiskes long and unsuccessfully stormed Silistra, and after a long complete blockade, the Prince of Kiev was forced to withdraw his troops and return home. As a result of this invasion, Bulgaria, despite the half-century struggle of Tsar Samuel , fell under Byzantine rule for 167 years.

Second Bulgarian Kingdom

Dobrudja was liberated from Byzantine rule during the revolt of the brothers Ivan , Peter and Kaloyan in 1185 - 1186 and the power of Bulgaria was restored. During the Second Bulgarian Kingdom, ties (Oguzes), Polovtsy (Kumans), Pechenegs (all these 3 peoples are considered the ancestors of the modern Gagauzians ), Tatars , Alans , other Turkic-speaking peoples, as well as Rus , Greeks , Italians lived on the territory of Dobrudja.

Late Period

Although Dobrudja was part of the Bulgarian state, it was strongly influenced by the Tatars. It is known that in 1259 the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Paleolog supported the Seljuk Sultan Isaddin Keykabus in the resettlement of a group of Seljuk Turks from Anatolia . Subsequently, most of the Seljuks returned to Anatolia.

Dobrudjan despot

Around 1325, the northeastern part of Bulgaria got out of the control of the central government and became an independent principality of bonds ( Oguzes ) with its capital in Karvun (now Balchik ) headed by Prince Balyk. This principality, in fact, was the first state formation of the present Gagauz, which later expanded its borders and was called the Dobrudzhan despot . This name comes from the Uz pronunciation of the name of the ruler of Dobrotitsa - the son of Balyk. Despotat occupied an area along the coast from about the Balkan Mountains to the Danube Delta. Kindness (reigned 1347 - 1386 ; starting from 1357 he used the title "despot") achieved the complete independence of the principality and moved its capital to Kaliakra .

Kindness creates a small navy of 14 galleys . With his help, he conducts successful military operations against the Principality of Genoa , and also makes "raids" against Byzantine ships, which, however, are regarded by opponents as piracy ^[4] . He maintains allied relations with the Republic of Venice.

After the death of Dobrotitsa (about 1385 - 1386 ), his son Ivanko , who had to become a vassal of the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Murad I , who besieged the new capital of Dobrudja Varna, ascended the throne and sign peace with the Principality of Genoa.

However, after the defeat of the small Turkish army from the Wallachian governor Mircea the Old , referring to the fact that neither Tyrnov’s king Ivan Shishman nor Ivanko sent the army like vassals, Sultan Murad I sends a large army and the Dobrudzhan despot ceases to exist, becoming part of the Ottoman Empire. According to legend, the Kaliakra fortress on the cape of the same name fell last.

At the end of the XIX and at the beginning of the XX century, as a result of the liberation of the Balkan peoples from the Ottoman Empire, the Bulgarian and Romanian peoples with the help of Russia not only restored their statehood, but also absorbed, dividing among themselves, neighboring Dobrudja. Thus, the Gagauz people , who until the 20th century were the titular nation in the territory of historical Dobrudja, not only did not restore their statehood, but subsequently was assimilated into Romanians in Romania and into Bulgaria in Bulgaria.

The fact that a small part of the Gagauz peasants moved to the territory of Budzhak ( Bessarabia ) at the beginning of the 19th century saved from the final assimilation of the Dobrudjan Gagauz.

The emergence of Russian and Ukrainian settlements

The emergence of Russian settlements in Dobrudja during the Ottoman period represented two parallel currents: the resettlement of Russian schismatics and the movement of the inhabitants of Ukraine beyond the Danube. The first to arrive in Dobrudja in 1740-1741. former Don Cossacks , who, after the suppression of the Bulavinsky uprising led by associate Kondraty Bulavin, ataman Ignat Nekrasov, retired to the Kuban , where they became known as Ignat-Cossacks, or Nekrasovites . During the reign of Catherine II , when Gudovich took Anapa , almost all the Ignat Cossacks were forced to move to Turkey.

Porta settled part of the Nekrasovites in villages ( Dunavets and Sarikoy ), part - near Samsul and Kara-Burnu, granted them freedom from taxes and duties, their own court and reprisals, with the obligation to fight with Russia.

Soon, clashes began between Nekrasovites and Cossacks , who, after the final ruin of the Sich on the Dnieper in 1775 , in the amount of about 5,000 people resettled in the Danube Delta.

In 1785, at the invitation of the Austrian government, they moved up the Danube to the Military Border, but, after a very short time, they left and founded their kosh in Seymen, on the Danube, within Turkey, between Silistra and Girsova.

They took part in the Russian-Turkish war of 1806-1812 on the side of Turkey in 1809 in the garrison of the fortress of Ruschuk. In peacetime, they were engaged in fishing, going down to the mouths of the Danube. At the same time, there were clashes with the Nekrasovites, which ended with the Cossack campaign against the Nekrasovites, the defeat of the latter, the Cossacks taking their fortified point - Dunavts - and resettling the Zaporozhye kosh from Seimen there in 1814. The Turkish government transferred the Nekrasovites to Asia Minor, but some of them remained on the western bank of the Razin estuary and in the valley of the river. Fame.

Around this time, the Cossacks who formerly lived in Samsul and Kara-Burnu moved to Dobrudja. Also, Russian Old Believers constantly arrived in Dobrudja, but not the Cossacks, but the peasants. Nekrasovites accepted them into their society, and when it became crowded in Sarikoy , several new villages were formed. The newcomers were called Cossacks, they also did not pay taxes and were obliged to go to war, which they performed in the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829 under the leadership of their own chieftains.

The new fugitives had religious differences with Russia, but they did not harbor political hostility towards it. The agitation of the Ukrainian emigrant M.S. Tchaikovsky (Sadyk Pasha), who, with the assistance of Turkey, wanted to organize a Cossack force in Dobrudja to create a new Polish-Cossack state, could not settle this hostility. The need to fight along with the "Basurmans" against the Russians placed a heavy burden on the Nekrasovites. In 1864, they managed to free themselves from this duty, and they lost their exclusive rights.

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, the former Nekrasovites repeatedly had the opportunity to show their sympathies for the Slavic cause and for Russia ^[5] .

Ukrainians in Dobrogea

Initially, the Cossacks enjoyed the same exclusive rights and carried the same duty as the Nekrasovites. In 1817, they participated in the campaign of Turkish troops against the Serbs, in 1821 - against the uprising of Ipsilanti, but in 1828 during the Russo-Turkish war, Koshey Gladky crossed with like-minded people to Izmail and returned to Russian citizenship. After this, the Trans-Danube section was destroyed, and the remaining Cossacks merged with other paradise. But even before the release of Gladky, around the Transdanubia Sich, the same family and mainly agricultural population formed from Ukrainian immigrants as it had been grouped around the Dnieper Sich in its time.

With the annihilation of the Trans-Danube Sich, the Ukrainian colonization of Dobrudja was quiet for 2-3 years, but then resumed with even greater force. Tens of thousands of people who wandered around Bessarabia and Novorossia in the 1830s and 40s and fled from serfdom and recruitment sought after the Danube. Ukrainian settlements stretched from the sea, along the delta and along the Danube up to almost Silistra , representing islands among a diverse population.

At the beginning of the reign of Alexander II , a convention was concluded with the Turkish government on the relocation of Crimean Tatars and Circassians to Dobrudja, so that those wishing to return immigrants from the Russian Empire would be given land in the Crimea and the Kuban . Under the influence of this message and the expected abolition of serfdom, a reverse movement began to Russia, which was known as the "great vikhodka."

However, the vast majority of the colonists chose to remain in place, and many of the resettled returned.

In the last quarter of the XIX century. the movement of Ukrainian immigrants to Dobrudja was again noted.

Dobrudja after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878

In 1878, according to the San Stefano Peace Treaty and the Berlin Treaty, Dobrudja, which was part of the Bulgarian lands, moved away from Turkey to Russia, and Russia was ceded to Romania in exchange for a part of Bessarabia newly annexed to Russia. In 1880, Dobrudja was divided into two regions - Tulcea and Constanta .

Immigrants from the Russian Empire in Dobrudja at the end of the 19th century

The completely Ukrainian villages were: Murguil, both Dunavts, Telitsa, Cherkasskaya Slava, Old Kiliya, Katirlez, Satunov, Kara-Orman; Ukrainian was widely spoken in Tulce. The Rusnaks in Dobrudja preserved their nationality and language, and also adopted from the Nekrasovites the custom according to which the clergy are elected by the parishioners themselves, sometimes from people who do not have holy orders (consecration is made by the Greek or Romanian bishop). Ukrainian folk songs were preserved (without capturing the events that make up the history of the Trans-Danube Sich). The Little Russian costume underwent the most changes, of which only a black or gray hat and harem pants, lowered into high boots, were preserved.

The Cossacks who left Don with Ignat Nekras, as well as most of the later Russian settlers, were clerks . Subsequently, they adopted the Belokrinitskaya hierarchy and formed two dioceses, with bishops at the head of Tulchin and Slavs; in Glory they had two monasteries, or skete, male and female. There are more than 1300 households in total of Great Russian populists in Dobrudja.

The Russians in Dobrudja sharply separated from the Ukrainians and took part in the Lipovan ethnogenesis ( rum. Lipoveni (in the past this word was the common name for Russian schismatics in the region), while the Ukrainians took part in the ethnogenesis of the Rusnaks ( rum. Rusi ). At the end of the 19th century. the total number of Rusnaks in Dobrudja exceeded 10,000.

In people from the vicinity of the Kapidava fortress, who lived in 880–990, mitochondrial haplogroups H, U, V, R0, N9a were determined ^[6] .

• Bucharest Peace Treaty 1913
• Craiova Peace Treaty 1940

• Dobrudja // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• An Essay on the History of the Old Believers in Dobrudge \\ Slavic Collection, vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1875.
• Kondratovich F. Zadunayskaya section on local recollections and stories. Kiev, 1883.
• Lopulescu, Russian colonies in Dobrudge \\ Kiev Old, 1889, No. 1-3.
• Josef Sallanz (Hrsg.), Die Dobrudscha. Ethnische Minderheiten, Kulturlandschaft, Transformation; Ergebnisse eines Geländekurses des Instituts für Geographie der Universität Potsdam im Südosten Rumäniens. (= Praxis Kultur- und Sozialgeographie; 35). 2., durchges. Auflage, Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2005.
• Josef Sallanz, Bedeutungswandel von Ethnizität unter dem Einfluss von Globalisierung. Die rumänische Dobrudscha als Beispiel. (= Potsdamer Geographische Forschungen; 26). Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2007.