Ukrainian Peasants - Settlements



Approximately half of the rural population lives in villages of 1,000 to 5,000 people. Smaller villages characterize the forest belt and the mountain regions. On the left bank of the Dnieper River and also in the Kuban and the steppe, village size may be up to 10,000 inhabitants. In the forest-steppe regions settlements tend to be near rivers and in slight depressions to protect them from the wind. In the Carpathians and Podilia settlements are usually in valleys. In Polissia dwellings are located further from rivers, on higher, drier ground. The most common type is the irregular clustered village found in the forest-steppe and the steppe. It may have a central square or street from which side streets extend in an irregular fashion. The next most common is the ribbon village with houses side by side down one street and fields in long belts, usually at right angles to the road. The chain village is an irregular version of the ribbon village. Houses are also arranged down one street, but the spaces between them are variable. The regular or grid village is characteristic of southern Ukraine and of settlements established since the nineteenth century. It is arranged in a square or rectangle with regular spacing between the streets. Khutir is the term for an isolated, one-family settlement. Both World War II and collectivization have had little effect on village layout. Villages destroyed during the war were rebuilt according to old patterns; as for collectivization, the usual approach was to have one village become one collective farm, although some consolidation of smaller villages did occur. The most noticeable effects of collectivization in terms of village layout are that buildings such as tractor sheds, processing or storage facilities, and other communal-use structures were added on to the village outskirts.


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