Bolhrad is a city on the shores of the picturesque Lake Yalpug which is the largest in Ukraine. This is how all guides about our village usually begin. We want to move forward from the patterns and talk about it, resorting to this kind of metaphor as personification.

 Bolhrad is a small town, though it has a huge heart and soul. For 200 years of its history, it has experienced many ups and downs, tragedies, and periods of incredible rise.

We will tell you everything in order, and you will understand why everyone who once lived in Bolgrad or just visited it definitely wants to come back here and those, who have never been here, want to come.

Its story started more than two hundred years ago, was a rescue for thousands of Transdanubian Bulgarians from Macedonia, Northeastern, and Southeastern Bulgaria. People, whole families, were leaving their homes, to escape from Turkish slavery which according to the Bulgarian historian J. Titorov is known as the worst one in the history of mankind.

People who were used to working hard not only built a new beautiful city but also turned the soulless steppe into a flourishing land with gardens, vineyards, and fertile fields.

The first settlers brought with them to the new land not only traditions, customs, and household items, but also a part of the spirit of their homeland.

The light of this spirit warms many generations of Bessarabian Bulgarians to this day.

HOW BOLHRAD WAS BORN AND DEVELOPED

According to historical data, about 25 thousand Bulgarians arrived in Bessarabia. In 1818 there was established a board of trustees for foreign immigrants from Southern Russian to resettle the colonists and provide control, headed by General Ivan Inzov. He became a real patron for the colonists and his actions earned national love and glory.

It was Inzov who initiated and managed the construction of the city of Bolhrad in 1821. From the very beginning, Inzov's goal was to build a city that should become a worthy administrative, economic, and, most importantly, a spiritual center of all the colonists of Bessarabia.

 He believed in himself and convinced the colonists that there was no better place to live. According to archived information, Inzov came up with the name of the new city on his own. People built houses, lived, and all together planted steppe vineyards, cultivated fields, planted trees, and flowers thanks to the benefits that their trustee knocked out for them.

MEMORY OF INZOV LIVING IN THE HEARTS OF PEOPLE

It is simply impossible to list all the merits of the founder of the city of Bolhrad, Ivan Mykytovych Inzov. He gave the settlers a new dignified life, did everything so that they could settle in a new place, took care of preserving their faith and education. He taught them a lot, protected them and opened a lot of new opportunities. Grateful descendants erected a monument to their "guardian father" in Bolhrad near the Svyato-Preobrozhenskiy Cathedral. Money, as they say, was collected from all over the world.

During World War II, the bronze bust was taken by the occupiers to Romania and disappeared.

In 2017, the exact copy of it was inaugurated at the main entrance to the cathedral. In the same year, another bust of General Ivan Inzov, the trustee of the Balkan settlers, was erected on a pedestal in the city at the entrance to the market.

Earlier, in the late 80's of XX century near  in honor of the general was installed a memorial sign, near which annually on the birthday and day of death rallies are held in memory of the founder of Bolhrad.