Rozumivka

The Ascension of Cross Church (Khrestovozdvyzhenska Church) in Rozumivka is the ancestral burial ground of the ancient noble family of the Rayevsvsky family.

This is one of the most outstanding architectural monuments of mid-19th century classicism in Ukraine. It is located on a high hill above a pond in the center of the village of Rozumivka, which belonged to the Rayevsvsky family since 1805.

The stone temple of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross Church was laid in 1833 on the grave of the hero of the French-Russian War of 1812, cavalry general Mykola Rayevsky, who spent the last years of his life in his Bovtyshka estate near Rozumivka. General Rayevsky became famous in the Battle of Saltanivka and during the Battle of Borodino. The panoramas that opened from the hill in Rozumivka reminded Rayevsky of the places of his battles. He was buried here, and later his descendants built the stone Ascension of Cross church-tomb on this place, the construction of which was completed in 1855.

The white-stone temple-pantheon is made in the style of classicism. The entrance portico is supported by 12 cast-iron columns, each made of seven prefabricated blocks. There is a stone crypt in the basement. On the cast-iron plate covering the burial of Mykola Rayevsky, it is written: "He had a shield in Smolensk, and a sword of Russia in Paris." Nearby are the burial grounds of the general's descendants. Other representatives of the Rayevsky family are buried in the cemetery adjacent to the tomb.

The Ascension of Cross Church is an active church, but since 2006 it has been part of the Historical and Architectural Reserve of the Rayevsky family, which is now a branch of the Kirovohrad Regional Museum of Local Lore. Excursions are conducted by the abbot of the temple.

Historical and memorial reserve "Black Raven" was founded in 2020 in the tract "Chorny Voron" near the village of Rozumivka.

It was here that Mykola Sklyar, better known by the pseudonym Black Raven (Chorny Voron), died here, the legendary rebel leader of the times of the Kholodny Yar Republic, the commander of the shock-reconnaissance detachment of the Steppe Division of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic.

According to the chronicler of Kholodny Yar, Yuriy Horlis-Horskyi, the Black Raven detachment gave its last battle to the Red Army in October 2020, covering the withdrawal of the Steppe Division to the Kherson region. In a battle with much larger enemy forces, the chieftain himself and all 300 of his Cossacks died.

Residents of the village of Rozumivka buried the rebels at the site of the battle. This is the only precisely known burial place of one of the five insurgent chieftains of the time of the Ukrainian revolution, who had the pseudonym Black Raven (the prototype of the main character of Vasyl Shklyar's book of the same name is another Black Raven – Ivan 'Chorny Voron' Chernousov).

In 2005, a wooden cross was installed on the chieftain's grave. In 2017, a monument to Yuriy Horlis-Horskyi was opened nearby.

Since 2020, the creation of the "Black Raven" Historical Memorial Reserve, which is a branch of the Kirovohrad Regional Museum of Local Lore, has been underway. According to the project, the reserve will include a memorial composition "Crosses", a Cossack-style chapel, reconstruction of a rebel camp, training and tourist camps.

The historical and memorial reserve "Black Raven" is an object of the tourist historical and local history route "Kholodnoyarski stezhki Chornolissya".

The Rozumivka Village History Museum was founded in 1967. Initially, it was located in the premises of the Ascension of Cross Church – the burial place of the Rayevsky family, thanks to which the church was preserved.

Now the museum is located on the second floor of the Rozumivka House of Culture. The updated exposition tells about the symbolism of Rozumivka, archaeological research in the region, about the history of the village at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, about the Holodomor of 1932-1933 and Stalin's repressions in the village, about the Soviet period and the war in Afghanistan, about the participants in the Russian-Ukrainian war.

A separate exposition tells the events of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921, in particular about the leader of the Black Raven (Mykola Sklyar), who died near Rozumivka together with three hundred Cossacks (a memorial is being created). The exposition is complemented by thematic stained glass windows.

The Rozumivka Village History Museum is a branch of the Oleksandrivka Museum of Local Lore.