Balta (Ukrainian: Балта, Romanian: Balta) is a small city in the Odessa Oblast (province) of south-western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Baltsky Raion (district), and located approximately 200 kilometers from the oblast capital, Odessa. The town was founded in the 16th century.
The current estimated population is around 20,000.
According to the archaeological findings, the first settlements on this territory existed 5-6 thousand years ago.
In the 17th and 18th century, there were two separate towns located on the opposite banks of Kodyma River. The first one was an Ottoman frontier settlement and fortress named Balta. The second one was Polish town of Józefgród (other variants of transliteration are Yuzefgrod and Yusefgrod) named after prince Józef Lubomirski, the founder of the local fortress. The burning of the city by the Russian general Mikhail Krechetnikov in pursuit of the Polish confederalists in March 1768 and the murdering of the mainly local Jewish population by the Cossack Haidamakas, formed one of the reasons for the start of the Russo–Turkish War, 1768–1774. Józefgród and Balta were joined in 1797, when this land became the territory of the Russian Empire.
In the 19th and early 20th century, the population of the town consisted of Jews (55-82%, nowadays about 0.5-1%), Eastern Orthodox believers (15-25%, now 85-90%, including such ethnic groups as Russians, Ukrainians, and Moldavians), Roman Catholics (Poles, 4-9%), and Russian Old believers (4-12%). Representatives of some of Protestant churches are also here. The town was well known as a market town. The junctions of the main roads from the South to the North and from the West to the East of Russia and Ukraine were here.
In 1924–1929 it was the capital of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic that was the part of Ukrainian SSR and the Soviet Union. After the formation of Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1940 Balta became a district center in Ukraine. For a short time between 1941 and 1944, Balta was the capital of Transnistria (the land between Dnister and Bug, under Romanian administration).
Nowadays, the city has furniture, brick, clothing factories, and food industry. Balta Teachers’ Training College and Vocational School are leading educational institutions. The city has a Museum of Local History and a Ukrainian Ethnographic Museum.
- Yuly Aikhenvald (1872 - 1928), a Jewish Russian literary critic, born here into a rabbi's family
- Sholom (aka Shulem Shmil Isaakovich) Schwartzbard (Shvartsburd) (1886, Izmail - 1938), a Bessarabian Jewish anarchist and Yiddish writer who assassinated Symon Petlyura, lived here
- Zellig (Shabbethai) Harris (1909 - 1992), a Jewish American linguist, born here
