Soroki

Soroki, a town of south Russia, in the government of Bessarabia, 81 m. N.N.W. of Kishinev, in a narrow ravine on the right bank of the Dnieper. Pop. (1900), 25,523, half of whom were Jews. It is an important river port for the export of corn, wool, fruit, wine and cattle. Formerly it was the old Genoese colony of Olchionia, and has still the ruins of a 13th-century Genoese castle. In the 15th century the Moldavians erected here a fort, which the Poles took in the r7th century. Peter the Great captured the place in 1711, but it was returned to the Turks, and was only definitely annexed to Russia in 1812. (M. H. S.)