City Council Building (Kremenchug)

Period of the Russian Empire

In 1785, Catherine II approved the " Certificate of Rights and Benefits to the Cities of the Russian Empire ", which regulated the activities of the city authorities. The diploma provided for the creation in the cities of local self-government bodies - the six - digit city council and the magistrate. The urban population was divided into six categories: the real urban inhabitants (homeowners); merchants of three guilds; members of craft workshops; nonresident and foreign; eminent citizens ; Posadsky - old-timers of the city, not included in other groups. Each row selected one representative — a “vowel” from among themselves. Voters jointly voted for the mayor who heads the city duma. The meeting of the Duma was held every three years. Between meetings of the Duma, the current issues were decided by the magistrate, whose members were elected by the townspeople at city meetings.

Local governments were in charge of urban finance, property, land improvement, sanitation, public education, firefighting, charitable institutions. The City Council had the right to levy a tax on real estate (not more than 1% of its value), as well as tax on the place of trade and industry. The city was actively developing, industrial growth led to an increase in the city budget. The budget of Kremenchug was the highest among all the cities of the Poltava region.

In 1797, the Kremenchug Duma appealed to the Little Russian Governor Bakurinsky for permission to demolish the dilapidated building of one of the institutions of the provincial presence, and in its place, on Torgovaya Square along Catherine Street, to build a new building for all self-government bodies. Permission has been obtained. In 1799, a draft and estimate for a total of 39,985 rubles 40 kopecks were sent to Kremenchug from Chernigov . The author of the project was probably the Chernigov provincial architect Anton Ivanovich Kartashevsky. Construction was carried out from 1801 to 1803 in a contract by the merchant T. Ryzhkov and eminent citizen F. Privalov.

A two-story stone building was crowned with a belvedere with an observation deck. Moscow writer Ivan Dolgoruky , who visited Kremenchug in 1810, wrote:

The building of the City Council was the main element of the ensemble of the Trade Square. Symmetrically, two one-story wooden hotel courtyards with arched galleries were erected from it, which echoed the motif of the galleries in the first floor of the magistrate. The rest of the square was built up with wooden and stone benches.

The Duma, the magistrate, the election hall, and the verbal and orphan courts were located on the second floor of the building; on the ground floor there were trading shops ^[1] .

There were clocks on the building that beat time ^[2] . Initially, they were located on only one side. In 1912, a new watch with four dials and electric backlight from the side of Catherine Street ^[3] , which were visible from anywhere in the city center ^[4] , was manufactured and installed.

June 22, 1865 on the first floor of the building opened a public bank - the first bank of Kremenchug, by 1889 becoming one of the largest banks in the Russian Empire ^[5] .

On January 31, 1893, the city public public library with a reading room was opened in the duma building ^[6] . During the floods, telegrams were posted near the building about the height of the water in the cities lying above the Kremenchug along the Dnieper and its main tributaries.

In 1899, the Kremenchug tram was launched, two lines of which intersected near the Duma. In the same year, by special order of the head of the city, Izyumov Andrei Yakovlevich, the hall, as well as the premises of the mutual fire insurance company, located in the city council building, were provided for meetings of the Kremenchug branch of the Imperial Russian Technical Society ^[7] . By 1900 (or earlier) the building was telephoned ^[8] .

In 1913, the building was renovated with the reconstruction of the main entrance. For repair, “T-beams, concrete platforms, stairs, berengeymsk tiles” were ordered ^[9] .

Civil War and the Soviet Pre-War Period

After the February Revolution , from May 1917, in parallel with the Duma, the Council of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies acted in the city; the city council was in its actual subordination. After the October Revolution , during the Civil War (1917-1921), power in the city changed many times. In October 1917, Soviet power was proclaimed in the city council building at an enlarged meeting of the Council in Kremenchug. The district executive committee, the district party committee, the city Council of workers and Red Army deputies moved to the building of the Duma.

Upon entering the city of the Volunteer Army , a decree was issued “to immediately assemble the City Duma and the City Council of the last pre-Bolshevik composition with the expulsion of all Bolsheviks and, in the form of reassuring the population, all Jews” ^[10] .

In 1918, the city issued Kremenchug city credit bonds in denominations of 1, 5 and 10 rubles. On the reverse side was a building of the Duma ^[11] .

In 1926, a number of buildings near the City Council, where before the revolution there was a female gymnasium, a manufactory-gallery passage, a printing house, were combined into one complex under administrative authorities. On June 16, 1927, the institutions of the district executive committee, district party committee, and city council moved to a new building. The building of the Duma housed the House of the Red Army ^[1] .

In the 1930s, an executive committee building was built next to the Duma building.

German occupation and the postwar period

During the Second World War , in 1941, the city was occupied by German troops. According to the memoirs of V.K. Konstantinovich, the acting head physician of the First City Hospital, for the first month two flags hung over the Duma building: "red with a swastika - fascist and yellow-blue with a trident - Ukrainian nationalists." The second flag was soon removed ^[12] . The building of the Duma housed the German administration. The second floor housed the headquarters of the officers, as well as a hotel for higher echelons ^[13] . In 1943, when retreating from the city, German troops blew up the former city council building (more than 95% of the city was destroyed during the war).

The building could not be restored, the ruins were demolished. After the war, active development of the city began. In 1961, at the site of the Duma building, the Trade House was built in the style of Soviet classicism (Soborna Street, 16/9). A marble memorial plaque was installed on the building, dedicated to the adoption in the building of the city council of a decision on the establishment of Soviet power (dismantled in 2016 as part of decommunization ) ^[14] . For self-government bodies, a new building was built nearby on Victory Square .