Berdychiv

Berdychiv, city, northwestern Ukraine. Founded in 1482 as a Lithuanian fortress, Berdychiv was Polish from 1569 until 1793. The 16th-century fortress walls survive, as does the Roman Catholic church in which the French novelist Honoré de Balzac married Eveline Hanska, a wealthy Polish widow, in 1850 after an 18-year courtship. In the 19th century Berdychiv developed into an important centre of trade and light industry; it became for a time the fourth largest city in Ukraine. During this period the city’s population was predominantly Jewish, and the Hasidic movement was prominent. Among Berdychiv’s enterprises have been engineering works, a sugar refinery, a tannery, and clothing factories; it is also a railway junction. Pop. (2001) 87,575; (2005 est.) 84,313.