PEREYASLAFF, a town of European Russia, in the Poltava government, 175 miles west-north-west of Poltava, at the junction of the Trubezh and the Alta, which reach the Dnieper 5 miles lower down at the town's port, the village of Andrushi. Besides the town proper there are three considerable suburbs. Though founded in 993 (by Vladimir Svyatoslavitch in memory of his signal success over the Petchenegs), Pereyaslaff has now few remains of antiquity; while the original erection of some of the churches goes back for many hundred years (that of the Assumption, e.g., to 1010), the actual buildings are not older than the 17th century. The town has trade in grain, salt, cattle, and horses, and some manufactures - tallow, wax, tobacco, dc. The population was 10,535 in 1865 and 9300 in 1870.

From 1054 Pereyaslaff was the chief town of a principality which passed from one prince to another of the Mstislavitches, Vladimirovitches, and Olgovitehes. As a southern outpost it often figures in the 1 lth, 12th, and 13th centuries ; in later times it was one of the great centres of the Cossack movement ; and in 1623 the neighbourhood of the town was the scene of the extermination of the Polish forces known as "Taras's Night." It was by the treaty of Pereyaslaff that in 1654 Bogdan KInnyelnitzkii and the Cossacks acknowledged the supremacy of Alexis. At that time the town contained from 25,000 to 30,000 inhabitants.