Zaporizhia benefits from its riverside location the municipality extends over both banks of the River Dnieper and includes a large mid-river island called Khortytsia. A number of dams were built in the Dnieper Valley, creating the string of reservoirs which nowadays are a dominant element in the regional landscape. Some of the former Cossack lands were flooded in the great hydro-electric projects of the late 1920s and thereafter. Were it not for the Cossacks' letter, and for its commemoration on canvas by Ilya Repin more than two centuries after it was allegedly written, most of us would probably have barely heard of the city of Zaporizhia in the Dnieper Valley in central Ukraine. The result is a wash of colour and many shades of mirth. Repin captures the moment when a scribe was composing the letter, surrounded by Cossacks gleefully suggesting insults. The Cossacks replied with an angry parody of the Sultan's own letter, delivering a tirade of invective of such force that even Malcolm Tucker might have been floored.
The Cossacks, you may remember, were none too happy with the Sultan who had written demanding that the Cossacks submit to his authority.
If you like the work of Ilya Repin, then you'll probably share our enthusiasm for the Russian artist's gutsy painting recalling the Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire. Zola's intervention in the Dreyfus Affair with his remarkable "J'accuse" letter was a splendid example of the power of words - though Zola was quickly on board a train out of Paris as he opted for voluntary exile in England rather than arrest and detention in France.Ī picture, so they say, is worth a thousand words, and perhaps the most famous letter in art is that which the Cossacks allegedly sent to the Turkish Sultan in 1676. One of our favourites is Émile Zola's celebrated open letter to the French president in defence of a French army officer falsely accused of treason. European history is awash with famous letters.