Berdychiv (, ; ; ; ) is a historic city in the Zhytomyr Oblast (province) of northern Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Berdychiv Raion (district), the city itself is of direct oblast subordinance, and does not belong to the district. It is south of the oblast capital, Zhytomyr. Its population is approximately . History The territory on which the city is located was inhabited as early as the 2nd millennium BC. Bronze Age settlements and the remains of two settlements of the Chernyakhov culture were discovered here. In 1430, Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas (великий князь литовський Вітовт) granted the rights over the area to Kalinik, the procurator (намісник) of Putyvl and Zvenigorod, and it is believed that his servant named Berdich founded a khutor (remote settlement) there. However the etymology of the name Berdychiv is not known. In 1483, Crimean Tatars destroyed the settlement. During the 1546 partition between Lithuania and Poland, the region was listed as a property of Lithuanian magnate (Tyszkiewicz). According to the Union of Lublin (1569), Volhynia formed a province of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The fortified Carmelite monastery (built from 1627 to 1642 with funding from Janusz Tyszkiewicz Łohojski), captured and plundered by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1647, was dissolved in 1864. In 1764, Kazimierz Pulaski defended the city with his 700 men surrounded by royal army during Bar Confederation. The town underwent rapid development after king Stanisław August Poniatowski, under pressure from the powerful Radziwiłł family, granted it the unusual right to organize ten fairs a year. This made Berdychiv one of the most important trading and banking centers in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and later, the Russian Empire. At the time, the saying "Pisz na Berdyczów!" ('Send letters to Berdychiv!') had an idiomatic meaning; because merchants from all over Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and the rest of eastern and central Europe were sure to visit the town within two or three months of each other, it became a central poste restante (post office box) of the region. Later, because of the phrase being used in a popular poem by Juliusz Słowacki, "Pisz na Berdyczów!" acquired a second meaning as a brush-off; "send me a letter to nowhere" or "leave me alone". In 1793, after the second division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the annexation of Right-Bank Ukraine to Russia, Berdychiv became part of the Volyn Province as a town of Zhitomirsky Uyezd. In