Chervone is a settlement on the Horbatka River, a right tributary of the Pustokha, in Berdychiv Raion of Zhytomyr Oblast, the center of the Chervone settlement hromada. It is 18 km from the Andrushivka railway station and 43 km by road from Zhytomyr. The settlement grew around the estate of the Grocholski and Tereshchenko families and a sugar refinery; according to the 2001 census, 2,974 people lived here, and in 2024 — about 2,600.
From a small town to a settlement
Chervone was first mentioned in 1624 in the records of the Crown Tribunal of Lublin as a "newly settled" town. From the second half of the 18th century, it was owned by the Counts Grocholski, and after 1863 by the Tereshchenko sugar industrialists, who built a sugar refinery here and a narrow-gauge railway to the Kyiv–Koziatyn main line. In 1885, there were 89 households and 744 inhabitants in the town, and in 1897 there were already 2,638, including 711 Jews. Until 1923, Chervone was part of Zhytomyr Uyezd of Volhynian Governorate.
Chervone received the status of an urban-type settlement in 1938. The 1939 census recorded 4,058 residents: 3,363 Ukrainians, 411 Jews, 107 Poles, 101 Russians, and 46 Germans. The settlement suffered from the Holodomor of 1932–1933. In 1966, about 4,500 people lived here. Since January 26, 2024, Chervone belongs to the category of settlements.
What is in the settlement
The main landmark is the Neo-Gothic Grocholski-Tereshchenko Palace, a local architectural monument; about it, the aircraft workshops of Fedir Tereshchenko, and the fate of the estate, see the article “The Settlement of Chervone in Zhytomyr Oblast”. Around the palace is Chervone Park, a monument of landscape art. On the former Market Square stands St. Nicholas Church of 1877. Local history museums operate at the school and at the sugar plant.
Natives
Natives of Chervone include writer and journalist Hryhorii Krymchuk (1937–2025), actor Viktor Tsymbalist (1931–1998), actor of the Ivan Kocherha Zhytomyr Theatre Borys Borodii (1951–2012), scholar, poet, and bard Volodymyr Shynkaruk (1954–2014), and Ukrainian running champion Oleksandr Naduda.
Another Tereshchenko estate — the Berzhynskyi-Tereshchenko Palace — stands in Andrushivka, through which people travel from Chervone to the railway.
