Taurida Governorate

Administrative divisions

The governorate was divided into eight counties (uyezds) and two city municipalities (gradonachalstvo),
three of them on the mainland:

and five in Crimea:

Before 1820 the governorate consisted of seven counties that included Tmutarakan county on the Taman peninsula across the Strait of Kerch. Later were created Yalta and Berdyansk counties. In 1804-29 there also existed the separate city of Theodosia and in 1914 Yalta county became the autonomous city of Yalta.

In 1917 the governorate was split, with most of its peninsular part forming the Crimean People's Republic, less the city of Sevastopol which remained the main naval base of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Republic, while the rest became part of Ukrainian People's Republic.

The territory of the Ukrainian Republic was proclaimed by the Third Universal on November 20, 1917 (November 7 by Old Style) of the Tsentralna Rada encompassing the Volyn Governorate, Kiev Governorate, Podolie Governorate, Chernigov Governorate, Poltava Governorate, Kharkov Governorate, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Kherson Governorate and Taurida Governorate (not including Crimea).

Geography

The governorate bordered Yekaterinoslav Governorate and Kherson Governorate to its north. The Strait of Kerch bordered the Free lands of the Don Cossacks. It has natural borders, being surrounded by the waters of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

The mainland and the peninsular parts of the region differ significantly. The total area of the governorate was 63,538km² of which the mainland portion consisted of 38,405km² and is largely black earth steppe land. The population of the whole region was 1,634,700 in 1906. At that time, the mainland part of the governorate was mostly populated by Ukrainians and Russians but had significant ethnic minorities of Germans, Bulgarians, Armenians and Jews, while major ethnic groups of the Crimean peninsula were Crimean Tatars and Russians with German, Greek, Poles, Armenian, and Karaim minorities. Major urban centres were Simferopol, Sevastopol, Theodosia, Bakhchisaray, and Yalta in Crimea, and Aleshki, Berdyansk, and Melitopol on the mainland.

Language

In 1897 289,316 people lived in the cities, constituting 19.98% of the total population. The ethnicities of the urban population were Russians (49.1%), Tatars (17.16%), and Jews (11.84%), with only 31 people living in cities who chose not to disclose their identity.

Religion

History

In 1783, the Khanate of Crimea was annexed by Catherine the Great’s Russia. Soon after this the Taurida Oblast was established. During the reign of Paul I the oblast was abolished, but soon (in 1802) re-established as a governorate (guberniya). It was a part of the Russian Empire until the Russian Revolution of 1918.

Following the 1917 October Revolution, the ethnic Tatar government proclaimed the Crimean People's Republic on December 13, 1917, which was the first Muslim Democratic state. The Tatar republic covered the peninsular portion of the former governorate, while its northern counties ended up temporarily under jurisdiction of the Yekaterinoslav Governorate. However neither Ukraine nor the Crimea managed to hold on to their territories and were overrun by Bolshevik Red Guards in the winter of 1917-18. Briefly in early 1918 the bolsheviks split the governorate territories between the Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic and the Donetsk-Krivoi Rog Soviet Republic before being overrun by the forces of the Ukrainian People's Republic with military assistance from the German Empire.