BERDYCHIV

Russian Berdichev, or Berdicev, city, Zhytomyr oblast (province), 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 Honor de Balzac married Eveline Hanska, a wealthy Russian widow, in 1850 after an 18-year courtship. Before 1917 an important trading centre, Berdychiv is now significant for its engineering works, sugar refinery, tannery, and clothing factories and is a railway junction on the Zhytomyr-Vinnytsya and Rivne-Kozyatyn lines. Pop. (1991 est.) 93,400.