Starobelsk
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Starobilsk Старобільськ (in Ukrainian) |
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| Starobilsk | |||
Luhansk National University building in Starobilsk
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 Starobilsk
Starobilsk
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| Coordinates: 49°16′39″N 38°55′27″E / 49.27750°N 38.92417°ECoordinates: 49°16′39″N 38°55′27″E / 49.27750°N 38.92417°E | |||
| Country |
 Ukraine
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| Oblast | Luhansk Oblast | ||
| First mentioned | 1686 | ||
| City Status | 1938 | ||
| Population (2013) | |||
| • Total | 18,297 | ||
| Area code(s) | (+380) | ||
| Vehicle registration | BB / 13 | ||
| Climate | Dfb | ||
Starobilsk (Ukrainian: Старобільськ, Russian: Старобельск) is a city near Luhansk in Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine. It serves as the administrative center of Starobilsk Raion. The settlement has been known since 1686. The city status was given in 1938. Population: 18,297 (2013 est.).
Starobilsk traces its heritage to a settlement Belska Sloboda which belonged to Muscovite voivode and okolnichiy Bogdan Belsky. Belsky arrived to banks of Siversky Donets to built a fortress at southern borders Tsare-Borisov (after Muscovite Tsar Boris Godunov) which was erected not far away in 1598-1600. In 1602 Godunov became suspicious of Belsky and order him to be arrested, stripped of any estates and exiled to Siberia. After the death of Godunov Belsky was granted amnesty in 1605 due to the fact that his sister being a wife of past away Boris Godunov, Maria Skuratova-Belskaya, became a regent. Belsky was sent as a voivode to Kazan where in 1611 was killed by mob after refusing to pledge allegiance to False Dmitriy (False Dmitry II). Sloboda gradually became abandoned, while the fortress was destroyed in 1612 in one of Tatar raids.
In 1686 the settlement was repopulated by servicemen of the Ostrohozk Sloboda Cossack Regiment who originally came from Poltava and Chernihiv regions (from a town of Bilsk in Cossack Hetmanate). Being a runaway serfs, Tsarist government allowed them to settle in military frontier with the Crimean realm to carry out border guard functions. After the place became also populated with serfs from the central regions of the today's Russia, the Tsarist government took measures to find and return those fugitives. In 1701 the Ambassadorial Prikaz decided to conduct a population census in new settlements along Aidar and Siversky Donets. Most population avoided the census. According to data of stolnik M.Pushkin who in 1703 conducted population census in 34 settlements, in Belsky was registered only 41 resident although in reality there were much more.
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Wikipedia