To the direct question - what is a chop, there is a direct answer - this is a verb meaning an action with the use of force: cut with a blow, in a big way, chop. Hence the derivative - a clearing, a road cut through by an ax - which in Old Russian sounded like "Sich".
The emergence of one of the names of Cossack settlements
Obviously, the word "cut" implies the surgical accuracy of the work performed - to cut, nip. That is, do everything as accurately and quickly as possible. Probably, this feature gave a new shade to this word - to pinpoint in the modern sense does not at all mean to make a notch. It means - to detect someone, to notice.
The derivative word from this verb is the noun “sich”, denoting the Cossack camp. The Cossacks, who populated the islands of the Dnieper channels formed after the rapids, were mostly runaway people. Their homes, smokers, became impregnable to the best of their ability. Protection was provided by picket fences with a pointed (notched) end on one side. Obviously, the idea of using the word “slice” for the name of Cossack settlements was born then, although at that time other designations of sites — gorodets, palanka and kosh — were also used along with it. The first word is translated from Turkish as a fort or redoubt, the second denotes a settlement of Cossacks, consisting of 38 smokers and headed by the ataman-koshev. Palanca later somehow did not take root, perhaps because the name is still Turkish, which the Cossacks did not really like. Kosh meant a small settlement.
The administrative structure of the settlement
The fortified Cossack capital, the center where all the ataman of the head came together - that’s what a slaughter is. Time passed, and fortified points turned into fortresses, into bases for repelling Tatar raids, into military-administrative units built according to all the rules of fortification art. In the center there was a square for Cossack gatherings, then smokers (an administrative unit of several families with their chieftain), warehouses and arsenals, bakeries and grocery stores, gun workshops and a church. Everything was surrounded by a fortress wall and a moat and a high earthen rampart. The first mention of what a chop is in 1530.
Location of Zaporizhzhya Sich
On the lands between the Dnieper and the Southern Bug, in the region of present Dnepropetrovsk, the first settlements of the Cossacks were built. The formation of the first large settlement is associated with the name of Dmitry Vishnevetsky, who built a fortified area to attack the Crimean Khanate. The first wooden-land castle was erected on Malaya Khortitsa Island, which, together with the territory adjacent to it, became known as the Khortitsky Sich, which became the center of the Cossack state. Its capital was transferred several times, and several of its names are known, the territories occupied by it also changed. By the time of the formation of the last section of the land, the Cossack troops approached in size to the then England, located on the islands. It was already a powerful sociopolitical entity called the Zaporizhzhya Sich, whose customs and customs fully corresponded to the military-administrative, republican structure of this Cossack state. The power was elective.
