The Glorious Nizhyn Fair

This is already the twilight of the famous Nizhyn bazaar as depicted in the 1920s, a few years before the famine and the demise of the Ukrainian economy.

Today's shuttle traders, who have flooded the market in Nizhyn as everywhere else with foreign goods, are inheriting unknowingly the traditions of an old town which used to send its merchants to far-away countries and accord a hospitable welcome to foreign traders at their fairs.

From the mid-seventeenth century on, fairs were held three times a year: the Feast fair in winter, the Trinity fair in summer, and the Veil of the Holy Virgin fair in the fall. Each lasted two or three weeks. There were also twice-a-week auctions.

Nizhyn demonstrated all its splendor at such fairs. Bars and inns would be crammed with visitors. Tobacco and spices were brought from Turkey and Bulgaria, haberdashery from Germany, furs from Moscow, porcelain from Leipzig, velvet, silk, wool and cotton print from Venice and KЪnigsberg, Dutch, English, and French woolens textiles from Gdansk. Local Greeks amazed the public with sausages, peasants from Nizhyn and adjacent villages brought cherries, plums, watermelons, pears, mushrooms, and tobacco. Grapes came from the South, salt and fish from Astrakhan. Wines were mostly of Hungarian or Crimean make.

The fairs exported the works of goldsmiths and the products of local furriers. Local pickles have been famous since the eighteenth century: over 600 tons of these were stocked up every year for sale. Annual sales featured 8,000 tons of the Nizhyn tobacco (brought from Holland, it soon became popular. Its name, makhorka, derives from the corrupted phrase "from the city of Amersfort, Amophora tobacco").

Prince I. M. Dovhoruky, who visited Nizhyn in 1810, advised: "Let those who like liqueurs come here: they are good; Nizhyn takes a legitimate pride in its various vodkas; I bet there are no such varieties anywhere else!"

Nizhyn's commercial glory was very much contributed to by the Greeks who had been settled since the days of Bohdan Khmelnytsky. It was Ukraine's largest Greek community. Thanks to Khmelnytsky's Universal (Decree) of May 2, 1657, and decrees of successive Hetmans, Nizhyn Greeks had many privileges: they paid no taxes, they were automatically equated with first- and second-guild merchants; they were exempt from quartering soldiers, consigning horse-carts to the army, and from military service (i.e., they did not lose sons in wars, nor did they suffer from devastation); if they still joined the army they enjoyed the rights of the nobility. Nizhyn's Greek population had its own magistrate. In 1710 Peter the Great confirmed all the Nizhyn Greeks' privileges. It is still anyone's guess why the Greeks should have been granted so many privileges, especially in taxes, which enabled them to quickly stand on their feet and develop their business. Why did Ukrainians have no tax concessions? Is mistrust to their own people really a distinctive feature of our politicians in all times?

Out of Nizhyn's first well-known merchants, let us remember the almost forgotten names of Ivan Sheremetsov and Dmytro Tsypoyev, the latter hailing from the Nizhyn Greeks. Ivan Sheremetsov arrived in Nizhyn from his native Sievsk, Orel region, and, joining his capital with that of Tsypoyev, decided to start trade with Persia. Tsypoyev was the first to set out to the faraway land in 1747. After traveling for 8 years, he died in India. Ivan Sheremetsov learned about his partner's death only 13 years later. Trying to return his capital, he made a deal with Mykola Chelobytchykov who had the courage to go to India.

The road to Indian markets was not easy: Nizhyn - Kyiv - Jaszi - Bucharest - Istanbul - to Baghdad on the Tigris - to the Euphrates by land - to Calcutta across the Persian Gulf. It took a year to reach India and four to come back. Chelobytchykov decided to increase his capital by purchasing hitherto unknown goods in Canton (China) and Malacca.

The medieval Malacca was called the Golden Chersonesus; Columbus strove to get there in the late fifteenth century but, losing his way, he found himself in America instead. The itinerary to those unknown, almost fabulous, commercial cities proved to be more correct from Nizhyn. Today we can fully appreciate the event: Chelobytchykov became our first, and for many decades the only, compatriot to visit Malacca and Canton.

In August 1805 Canton was visited by another person hailing from Nizhyn, Yuri Lysiansy, captain of the Neva, which was making the first Russian circumnavigation of the globe. One of the goals of the voyage was to prospect for new markets. Canton, as before, sold what the Slavs had never heard of: amber, musk, ivory, sandalwood, ebony, and quicksilver.

Nizhyn provided not only merchants - bold, far-seeing and risk-taking - but also statesmen people. They understood the importance of new Eurasian markets for their country's economy. Chelobytnykov headed from China for London, Lisbon, and Paris. He finally arrived in Saint Petersburg with a most detailed report on the capacity of national commerce, and then disappeared. Nothing else is known about him and his project. The Nizhyn market never saw the unusual goods of the Golden Chersonesus.

Nizhyn's being situated on the Kyiv-Moscow trade route determined for several centuries the importance of the town as one of the Russian Empire's chief commercial centers. "Nizhyn is not only part of Chernihiv province. It is what may be called the only commercial city in Little Russia which is not inferior to many Great Russian cities, as far as trade is concerned. Not only during fairs but at any time one can find here various household and everyday-life items" (eighteenth century historian A. Shafonsky). Nizhyn traded primarily with Turkey, Poland, and Moscow, as it also does today.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, when new trade centers emerged in Ukraine, the Nizhyn fair was of a great local importance. "There were times when this dirty and now insignificant township was also brimming with life. What is left are only reminiscences of its past glory" (L.Slutsky, late nineteenth century).

There have been attempts in the past few years to restore the town's commercial status. The Veil of the Holy Virgin Fair is again held in the fall, but only for one day. Exquisite imported goods have given way to the traditional shuttle-trade consumer items. On the other hand, the town is visited by masters and traders (shall we call them merchants soon?) from Kyiv, Poltava, Kolomiya, and Myrhorod.