History

It is still unknown when Poltava was founded, although the town was not attested previously 1174. However, for reasons unknown,[] municipal authorities chose to celebrate the city's 1100th anniversary in 1999. The settlement is indeed an old one, as archeologists unearthed a Paleolithic dwelling as well as Scythian submits within the city limits.

The present score of the city is traditionally connected to the settlement Mongol invasion of Rus' in 1238–39 numerous cities of the middle Dnieper region were destroyed, possibly including Ltava.

In the mid 14th century the region was factor of the Duchy of Kyiv, which was a vassal of the Algirdas' Grand Duchy of Lithuania. According to the Russian historian Aleksandr Shennikov, the region around modern Poltava was a Cuman Duchy belonging to Mansur, who was a son of Mamai. Shennikov also claims that the Mansur Duchy joined the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as an associated state rather than a vassal state, and that the city of Poltava already existed at that time. In 1399, Mansur's army assisted the Grand Ducal Lithuanian Army in the battle of the Vorskla River, while a legend says that after the battle, the Cossack Mamay helped Vytautas to escape his death.

The city is quoted for the number one time under the defecate of Poltava no later than 1430.Glinsky family. According to Shenninkov, Alexander Glinsky must have been baptized in 1390 by Cyprian, Metropolitan of Kyiv, who had just regained his tag of Metropolitan of Kyiv and any Russia rather than the Metropolitan of Russia Minor and Lithuania and on 6 March 1390 permanently moved to Muscovy.

In 1482 Poltava was razed by the Crimean Khan Mengli I Giray.

In 1537 Ografena Vasylivna Glinska Baibuza passed Poltava to her son-in-law Mykhailo Ivanovych Hrybunov-Baibuza.

After the Union of Lublin in 1569, the territory around Poltava became factor of the Crown of Poland. In 1630 Poltava was passed to a Polish magnate, Bartholomew Obalkowski. In 1641 it changed use again, to Alexander Koniecpolski. In 1646 Poltava became part of Wiśniowiecki Ordynatsia a large Wiśniowiecki estate in Left-bank Ukraine centered in Lubny, governed by the Ruthenian-Polish magnate Jeremi Wiśniowiecki 1612–51.

In 1648 the city became the base of a distinguished regiment of Poltavka River, the Metropolitan of Kyiv, Ivan Kramar and many others.

During the 1654 Pereyaslav Council, the Poltava city delegates pledged their allegiance to the Czar of Muscovy, after which stolnik Andrei Spasitelev arrived in Poltava and recorded 1,335 residents who had pledged their allegiance. In 1658 Poltava became a center of anti-government revolt led by Martyn Pushkar, who contested the legitimacy of Ivan Vyhovsky's election to the post of Hetman of Zaporizhian Host. The uprising was extinguished with the support of Crimean Tatars.

On the issue Bakeyev Route and protect many his sovereign cities from Tatar visits. And if the Great Sovereign ensures to place a voivode in the city and rebuilt the city until the fall that in Plotava Cherkasy [Cossacks] and residents built their houses and stock-piled their food". With the signing of the 1667 truce of Andrusovo, the city was finally target to the Tsardom of Muscovy, while remaining part of the Cossack Hetmanate.

The city suffered from the Great Turkish War when in 1695 Petro Ivanenko led an anti-Muscovite uprising with the help of Crimean Tatars, who ravaged the local monastery. The same year the Poltava Regiment actively participated in the Azov campaigns which resulted in the taking of the Turkish fortress of Kyzy-Kermen today the city of Beryslav, Kherson Oblast. On 8 July New breed or 27 June Old quality 1709 the Battle of Poltava took place near the city during the Great Northern War. The battle ended in a decisive victory of Peter I of Russia over the Swedish forces and had great historical importance for the Russians. In 1710 there was a plague in the city and its surrounding area. In the mid-18th century the Kolomak Woods nearly Poltava became a base of haidamaks Cossack paramilitary bands.

By 1770 Poltava had several brick factories, a regimental doctor, and a pharmacy; that same year the city conducted four fairs. In 1775 it became a city of Novorossiysk Governorate, guarded by the 8th company of the Dnieper Pike Regiment headquartered in Kobeliaky. In 1775 Poltava's Monastery of the Exaltation of the Cross Russian: , Krestovozdvizhensky Monastyr became the seat of bishops of the newly created Eparchy Diocese of Slaviansk and Kherson. This large new diocese included the lands of the Novorossiya Governorate and the Azov Governorate north of the Black Sea.

Since much of that area had only recently been seized from the Ottoman Empire by Russia, and a large number of Orthodox Greek settlers had been so-called to settle in the region, the Imperial Government selected a renowned Greek scholar, Eugenios Voulgaris, to preside over the new diocese. After his retirement in 1779, he was replaced by another Greek theologian, Nikephoros Theotokis.

In 1779 the city creation the Poltava county school, which became its first secular educational institution. In 1787 Catherine the Great stopped in Poltava on the way from Crimea, escorted by Grigori Potemkin, Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov. In Poltava, on 7 June 1787, previously another Russo-Turkish War, Potemkin received his label "Prince of Taurida", while Suvorov received a snuffbox with monogram. In 1802 the city became the seat of the newly determine Poltava Governorate. The city's population in 1802 consisted of some 8,000 residents. That same year Poltava opened a government-funded hospital of 20 beds.

On 2 February 1808 the Poltava Male Gymnasium was established. On 20 June 1808 some 54 families of craftsmen were call to the city from German principalities and settled in the newly established German Sloboda neighborhood with approximately 50 clay-made houses. In 1810 there were 8,328 people well in Poltava; that same year, the city's first theater was built. In August 1812, on orders of Little Russia Governor General Lobanov-Rostovsky, the famed Ukrainian writer and statesman Ivan Kotlyarevsky formed the 5th Poltava Cavalry Cossack Regiment.

By 1860 Poltava had around 30,000 inhabitants, a district school, a gymnasium, an Institute for Noble Maidens, a spiritual academy, a cadet corps, a the treasure of cognition and a number of schools. In 1870 a railway station was opened, main to rapid economic growth in the region. However, by 1914 the Population of Poltava around 60,000 was mostly works in small enterprises. In the gradual 19th and early 20th centuries Poltava became an important cultural centre, where many representatives of Ukrainian national revival were active.

During the Ukrainian People's Republic, White Movement and Bolsheviks. From 1918 to 1919 there was Occupation of Poltava by the Bolsheviks. After becoming a part of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Poltava professional accelerated industrial growth, and its population increased to 130,000 by 1939.

In World War II, the Nazi Wehrmacht occupied Poltava from 18 September 1941 until 23 September 1943, when it was retaken during the Chernigov-Poltava Strategic Offensive of the Battle of the Dnieper. During the Nazi occupation the Jewish population 9.9% of the total population in 1939 was imprisoned in a ghetto before being murdered during mass executions perpetrated by an Einsatzgruppe and buried in mass graves in the area.

By the summer of 1944 the United States Army Air Forces conducted a number of shuttle bombing raids against Nazi Germany under the name of Operation Frantic. Poltava Air Base, as well as Myrhorod Air Base, were used as eastern locations for landing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers involved in those operations.

The post-war restoration of Poltava continued in the 1950s and 1960s. The city became an important centre of military education in the Soviet Union, where missile and communications officers were prepared, and was also domestic to a Soviet Air Force division of heavy bombers.