city and administrative centre, central Ukraine. It lies on the high right bank of the Dnieper River, along the reservoir created by the Kremenchuk hydroelectric station. Founded in the 14th century as a fortified city in the Ukrainian lands under Lithuanian rule, Cherkasy became a part of the Polish realm in 1569. It served as a frontier outpost against Tatar raids, and its population consisted mainly of Ukrainian Cossacks. Cherkasy came under Russian control in the first partition of 1772 and received town status in 1795. It began to expand significantly in the late 19th century, when the Moscow-Odessa railway crossed the Dnieper there. Modern Cherkasy developed rapidly in the 1960s, when a chemical industry supplemented the older machine, food-processing, and furniture industries. Pop. (2001) 295,414; (2005 est.) 293,271.