White Church. Women. Motorcycle.
“To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.”
"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;"
“It is absolutely wrong to consider a motorcycle as a means of escape from the surrounding reality. In fact, the motorcycle is a means of mental liberation.” - from a conversation between two Kyiv private entrepreneurs.
Don't even ask me where I went after arriving at the White Church town. Naturally at a despicable McDonald's.
Wherever I am and no matter how I condemn fast food, upon arrival in any city I head to McDonald's. Even moving along the Italian Autobahn, like Captain Ahab and his team, I gaze at the top of another hill to see if there will be a whale fountain and a white hump, in the sense of the familiar McDonald's tower.
As Polybius' Roman legionary in any country will find an equally equipped military camp, so I know for sure what I will find at McDonald's.
Of course, while traveling, you can explore the national characteristics of local culinary establishments, but they all pale before the automatic power of McDonald's. Nota bene, in my city Kyiv I hardly visit McDonald's, but I gladly use its services on my motorcycle trip.
Thus, devouring the usual menu (honorably mentioning "the usual suspects" from Casablanca), I began to draw up a plan to explore the city and tried to remember what I knew about it.
The city of Bila Tserkva (White Church) is one of the oldest cities of the ancient Russian state, founded in 1032 on the high rocky bank of the Ros’ River by the Grand Duke of Kyiv Yaroslav the Wise (friendly reminder: Moscow was founded in 1147). Named St. George of Ros (the chronicles include the short name of St. George), the city was one of the southern outposts to deter nomadic attacks.
As for the origin of the name of the city, historians say that in 1050 Yaroslav the Wise built an episcopal church of white stone on Castle Hill.
After the destruction of the city by the Mongol-Tatars in the thirteenth century this structure has long served as a landmark for migrants among the dense and wild forests that covered the valley of Ros’ at that time.
That is why the place where the cathedral stood, and later the city, which arose from the ruins of Prince George on a rocky shore, was named the White Church.
In 1362, Bila Tserkva, together with the Kyivan principality, was annexed to Lithuania, and after the Union of Lublin (1569) it became part of the Rzeczpospolita. The town became the center of old age (administrative unit in Poland) and became an important strategic point in the south.
In 1589, King Sigismund III of Poland approved the city's privileges at the Sejm in Warsaw, granting the White Church and its inhabitants the Magdeburg Right.
From 1660, the White Church alternately belonged to the Moscow Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, for some time the city was even a neutral territory.
It was only in 1793 that the city was annexed by Russia. For a long time (until the XX century) Bila Tserkva became the patrimony of the Branytsky family. The Branicki family made Bila Tserkva a city that had lost all administrative significance for the state.
By order of Catherine II, the castle was destroyed and the city was transferred from state ownership to private ownership.
Branicki founded a large luxury park here in 1793, which he later named after his wife Oleksandra.
The role played by the White Church in the history of Ukraine is difficult to overestimate.
In fact, no major Ukrainian uprising escaped Bila Tserkva: under it, Severin Nalyvayko fought with the Poles; it was a base for 70,000 Semyon Paliy rebels, for seven weeks Bohdan Khmelnytsky himself gathered troops here…
Bila Tserkva remembers Ivan Mazepa, the failed siege of Pylyp Orlyk. And the last Ukrainian uprising - Koliivshchyna - made the Branicki family the owners of the city, who laid the largest architecturally designed landscape park in Ukraine today - "Oleksandriya"…
It was in Bila Tserkva that an armed uprising began under the leadership of Simon Petliura and Volodymyr Vynnychenko. The formation of the main forces of the Directory took place here. Here, for the first time, a report was published on the restoration of power of the independent Ukrainian People's Republic ...
Well, I must confess that when I read "Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)" in my youth, I sometimes missed the description of cemeteries or churches. Of course, in adulthood, I re-read the entire book from beginning to end, but who knows Watson, who knows …
Perhaps it's time, after the historical and geographical description (hello to Strabo), to move on to the next part of this article, namely WOMEN.
To be continued…
UKRAINIAN MOTO ZEN AFTER 60: KYIV – GROSSGLOCKNER (VII)
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