Ukrainian Line (Українська лінія; Ukrainska liniia). A network of fortifications that was built at the behest of the Russian government to replace the Belgorod Line as the population of the Russian Empire expanded southward into Slobidska Ukraine. The Ukrainian Line was maintained from the 1730s to the 1760s as a defense against attacks by Crimean Tatars and Nogay Tatars. It extended for nearly 285 km from the Dnipro River along the Orel River and the tributary Berestova River, and further east along the Bereka River to its junction with the Donets River. Construction of the fortifications began in 1731, according to the design of General J.-B. von Weissbach, and proceeded intensively until 1733, but was not fully completed until well into the 1740s. Each year 20,000 Cossacks from Left-Bank Ukraine, 2,000 Cossacks from Slobidska Ukraine, and 10,000 common peasants worked on the building of the line. It consisted of 16 fortresses and 49 redoubts, connected by a large earthen rampart and deep ditches. Defensive forces included 20 regiments of land militia (14 cavalry and 6 infantry), totaling nearly 22,000 men, as well as 180 cannons and 30 mortars.

The construction, maintenance, and defense of the Ukrainian Line proved to be a heavy burden on the population of the Hetman state and Slobidska Ukraine. Unfortunately the line was unable to defend Ukraine (particularly Slobidska Ukraine) from the incessant Tatar attacks, which frequently penetrated it. In the 1760s Petr Rumiantsev set out to reorganize the system of defense, but by that time the Tatar threat had begun to subside.

The Ukrainian Line also had a policing function, in that it divided the Zaporizhia from the Hetman state. It impeded the efforts of deserters to flee to the Zaporozhian Sich and the freedom of Cossacks in Slobidska Ukraine and Left-Bank Ukraine to move from one place to another. The Ukrainian Line lost its strategic significance in the 1770s, when the border of the Russian Empire moved southward by 175–180 km, to where a new line, the Dnipro Line, was built.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bahalii, Dmytro. Zaselennia Pivdennoï Ukraïny (Zaporozhzhia i Novorosiis'koho kraiu) i pershi pochatky ïï kul'turnoho rozvytku (Kharkiv 1920)
Polons'ka-Vasylenko, Nataliia. The Settlement of the Southern Ukraine (1750–1775), vols 4–5 of Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States (1955)

Arkadii Zhukovsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]