Tatarbunary

Tatarbunary (Template:Lang-uk, Template:Lang-ro) is a small city in the Odessa Oblast (province) of south-western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Tatarbunarsky Raion (district), and is located in the historically-disputed area north of the Danube Delta known as The Dragon's Beard, approximately 100 kilometers (60 miles) south-west of the oblast capital, Odessa.

The word means "Tatar Wells" in South Slavic languages, with "bunar" borowed from Turkic "p�nar", "well".

The current estimated population is around 10,800 (as of 2001).

History

The town appears to have been founded in the 16th century, when the region was under Turkish rule, and was annexed by the Russian Empire early in the 19th Century, later becoming a tourist destination for Bulgarians and Ukrainians. In 1918 it was claimed by Romania, along with most of Bessarabia. Tatarbunary was annexed into the USSR in 1940, along with most of Bessarabia.

The Tatarbunary Uprising

On 16 September 1924 a pro-Soviet revolutionary committee led a peasants' revolt, the so-called Tatarbunary Uprising, calling for unification with the Ukrainian SSR and an end to Romanian occupation. It was suppressed after three days of fighting in which a number died and around 500 were arrested. A trial was held in Chişinău and after more than three months 86 of the insurrectionists were convicted and sentenced to between one and fifteen years in jail. This trial attracted international attention, with Louis Aragon, Theodore Dreiser, Albert Einstein and Paul Éluard among others speaking out on behalf of the defendants.