A year ago, even many Ukrainians did not know about this tiny city on the banks of the Dnieper. But today, fame about him spread throughout Ukraine and even beyond its borders. And all this thanks to the new name of the city - Horishnye Smavni. We invite you to take a short trip to this famous village.
Burning Fins - what does it mean?
When the city was called Komsomolsk, it was just a point on the map of Ukraine. The geographical position of this settlement is peculiar, because it is located far from important highways and railways. Therefore, strangers came here very, very rarely. But that all changed in 2016.
In 2015, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a package of laws on decommunization, a policy aimed at dismantling the Soviet heritage in Ukraine. According to the adopted laws, a number of settlements of the country should be renamed. So, the city of Dnepropetrovsk became the Dnieper, Kirovograd - Kropyvnytskyi, Dneprodzerzhinsk - Kamensky, etc. But the small and inconspicuous Komsomolsk turned into Horishnyi Plavni.
The translation into Russian of this toponym can be as follows: “upper floodplains” (floodplains are the flooded part of the floodplain or river delta). It should be noted that most of the city residents strongly opposed such renaming. The Komsomol city council did try to preserve the former name for the city. In the end, Kiev had to decide the fate of the name of the settlement. A new name for Komsomolsk was proposed by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory. It was approved by the decision of the Verkhovna Rada.
The newly minted Horish Fins immediately became the subject of intense debate and debate throughout the country. And the name itself became the foundation for the creation of numerous Internet memes. Soon, interest in the small city grew so much that they even began to take excursions from Kiev there.
The modest city of Komsomolsk: how it all began
In the early 60s, on the left bank of the Dnieper began the grandiose construction of another giant of ferrous metallurgy. “There is Komsomolsk-on-Amur, there will be Komsomolsk-on-Dnieper!” - such headlines were full of all Soviet newspapers in 1961. On a large-scale construction site in the Poltava region gathered people from different parts of the former USSR.
Soon, the Poltava GOK began to operate here, which worked on iron ore from two local deposits. And nearby the compact, cozy and green city of Komsomolsk grew up on the Dnieper sands. Today, over 50 thousand people live in it. By the way, earlier on the site of Komsomolsk there was a village Horishni Plavni. He and several other villages were demolished during the construction of the plant.
A bit about life in the Horish Fins
The city on the banks of the Dnieper is surrounded by floodplains of the mighty river, magnificent pine forests and picturesque quarries and sedimentation tanks. Here is such an ambiguous neighborhood. The surface of the city is flat, like a table, because it is located on the sands and alluvial soils.
By Ukrainian standards, Horish Fins live quite prosperously. The average salary here is about 5600 hryvnia (as of 2016). For several decades, the main city-forming enterprise has been OJSC “Poltava GOK”. Its main products are iron ore pellets, which are exported.
In addition to pellets, granite is extracted in the Horish Plavni and crushed stone is produced. The city has a garment factory and a tire recycling plant.
What is interesting in the city?
Of the attractions for tourists in Horishni Plavni worth visiting are 5 objects:
- St. Nicholas Cathedral, built in the 90s of the last century;
- Ukraine’s largest iron ore quarry (its length is 7 kilometers);
- City Museum of History and Local Lore;
- Barbara Bay Lake with beaches and a yacht club;
- Forest Lakes landscape reserve on the outskirts of the city.
Separately, it is worth mentioning the monuments of the former Komsomolsk. There are an incredible amount of them. On the streets of the city you can see both serious and comic sculptures. The greatest interest among visiting tourists is caused by the figures: “Grandmother with seeds”, “Plumber with a puppy”, “Baby in cabbage” and others.
A lot of interesting places and objects are located in the immediate vicinity of the city. So, 10 kilometers to the east is the village of Komendantovka, which preserved the unique crypt of the Bilevich family, decorated in the form of an Egyptian pyramid. Arriving in Horishni Plavni, tourists usually visit the neighboring old Cossack village of Celebird. It is located on a small cape, which deeply extends into the waters of the Dnieper-Slavutich.