Novocherkassk is a city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located on the right bank of the Tuzlov River and on the Aksay River. The population of the city composes 168,746 people.
Novocherkassk was founded by the lieutenant-general Matvei Platov, the Ataman of the Don Cossacks in 1805, as the administrative center of the Don Host Oblast, after the inhabitants of the stanitsa of Cherkassk had to leave their abodes on the banks of the Don on account of the frequent floods.
During the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922, Novocherkassk lay the heart of the Don counter-revolution and came under the command of General Alexey Kaledin. The Red Army finally ousted the Whites from Novocherkassk on January 7, 1920. During World War II the German Wehrmacht occupied Novocherkassk between July 24, 1942, and February 13, 1943. In 1962 Soviet armed functionaries brutally suppressed local food riots in the event known as the Novocherkassk massacre.
Within the framework of administrative divisions, it is incorporated as Novocherkassk Urban Okrug—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, this administrative unit also has urban okrug status.
Novocherkassk was once an archiepiscopal see of the Greek Orthodox Church and has a huge neo-Byzantine cathedral(1904), the palace of the ataman of the Cossacks, and monuments to Matvei Platov and Yermak Timofeyevich (Mikhail Mikeshin, 1904). During the bicentenary celebrations in September 2005 another monument, dedicated to the reconciliation of White and Red Cossacks, was opened in the presence of the members of the Romanov family.