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 17th 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 .