“Fortress – on the Zamkova mountain”

– Our home town is 975 years old. Founded by Yaroslav the Wise, it is one of the oldest city in Ukraine and the biggest in Kyiv region. I have no doubts that all inhabitants (and there are over 200 thousand of them) are proud of majestic history which began and became firmly established on the Zamkova mountain. One, who has never been there, has lost a lot. And the one, who didn’t see how the glorious Ros flows through the center of industrial city, can hardly perceive the whole beauty of combination of grey remoteness and noisy reality. For inhabitants of Bila Tserkva (translated as White Church) they are indissoluble, they are identically dear. That is why I will not get tired of repeating: every ancient city has to have its fortress – in direct and in figurative meaning of this word. Our fortress is on the Zamkova mountain. This is that core, that fulcrum, which helps society to overcome difficulties and solve the most burning problems in the most difficult minutes.

There are not just a lot of problems in Bila Tserkva, there is even a whole complex of them. Feelings are stirred up by great problems connected with land, by big necessity to extend a break, by extremely sharp disputes about building of steelrolling factory (or its prohibition). Scandals round the future enterprise are so serious that the special local referendum, which will take place on September, 23, was needed to be declared – already after celebration of birthday of Bila Tserkva. What people will assume, so the city board will do.

We paid attention to the desire of society as well, while we were preparing to the anniversary: everything was done so that the holiday was not pompous, but solemn, sincere, warm, inspired by the songs devoted to Bila Tserkva. We have a lot of them. Among the most popular are those words and music to which were written by the known researcher of a region, the deserved worker of culture of Ukraine Anatoliy Kulchynskyi. These anniversary days everything is really so as in his song “Zamkova mountain”:

Tango of autumn goes round,

The crane is flying in the sky…

And the land of Yaroslav

Is inviting friends from nearby.

Vasyliy SAVCHYK