Sakko i Vantsetti ( uk, Са́кко і Ванце́тті; russian: link=no, Са́кко и Ванце́тти) is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

in Bakhmut Raion (

district A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions o ...

) in

Donetsk Oblast The Donetsk Oblast ( ukr, Донецька область, Donetska oblast, ), also referred to as Donechchyna ( ukr, Донеччина, links=no), is an oblast of eastern Ukraine. It is Ukraine's most populous province, with around 4.1 mill ...

, eastern

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

. It is part of

Soledar urban hromada Soledar urban hromada () is a hromada of Ukraine, located in Bakhmut Raion, Donetsk Oblast. Its administrative center is the city Soledar. It has an area of and a population of 20,581, as of 2018. It was formed on 15 September 2016 by merging ...

, one of the

hromada A hromada ( uk, територіальна громада, lit=territorial community, translit=terytorialna hromada) is a basic unit of administrative division in Ukraine, similar to a municipality. It was established by the Government of Ukra ...

s of Ukraine.

History

Sakko i Vantsetti was originally created as a commune in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

in 1923–1924. It was closely connected to nearby Vasiukivka. It was named after the Italian anarchists

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Nicola Sacco (; April 22, 1891 – August 23, 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (; June 11, 1888 – August 23, 1927) were Italian immigrant anarchists who were controversially accused of murdering Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick Parmenter, a ...

, who were controversially convicted in 1921 of murdering a paymaster and a security guard at a shoe factory in the United States, executed in 1927 and rehabilitated in 1977 by Massachusetts Governor

Michael Dukakis Michael Stanley Dukakis (; born November 3, 1933) is an American retired lawyer and politician who served as governor of Massachusetts from 1975 to 1979 and again from 1983 to 1991. He is the longest-serving governor in Massachusetts history a ...

Soviet propaganda Propaganda in the Soviet Union was the practice of state-directed communication to promote class conflict, internationalism, the goals of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the party itself. The main Soviet censorship body, Glavlit, ...

celebrated Sacco and Vanzetti as unjustly accused proletarians and revolutionaries. Amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on February 1, 2023, Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed his Wagner Group

paramilitary A paramilitary is an organization whose structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. Paramilitary units carr ...

fighters had captured Sakko i Vantsetti, posting a photograph purporting to show four of his soldiers posing in front of what they caled "the only surviving house" in the village. By the middle of May 2023, Russian forces were claimed to have retreated from the village following local Ukrainian counterattacks.

Demographics

The 1989 Census in the

Ukrainian SSR The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic ( uk, Украї́нська Радя́нська Соціалісти́чна Респу́бліка, ; russian: Украи́нская Сове́тская Социалисти́ческая Респ ...

of the

recorded a total population of 19 in Sakko i Vantsetti, 12 men and 7 women. The population declined by the time of the first independent Ukrainian Census of 2001, which recorded 3 inhabitants in the village.

References

{{Donetsk-geo-stub Villages in Bakhmut Raion Sacco and Vanzetti Soledar urban hromada