Ukrainians - Settlements

The founding of most of the settlements in the Ukraine and their subsequent growth were influenced by agricultural and industrial requirements—including the relative potential of the land to be cultivated, the availability of transportation routes and water resources, the landscape, and the nature of the soil. Villages are located along rivers, lakes, or ravines or dried-up riverbeds.

The following types of village plans may be distinguished, depending on the type of construction and the arrangement of streets, squares, and houses: clusters, unplanned-dispersed, and by row and by street. The oldest settlements in the Ukraine were near rivers. A village that grew out of a single household might develop without any plan at all. Villages like this were the most common in the Ukraine. Later, buildings were constructed in a row along rivers or roads, eventually to be expanded with planned streets. Beginning with the end of the eighteenth century, state controls often stipulated that villages in the steppes be built with streets and blocks and that the streets be straight and the blocks rectangular.

The names of settlements in the Ukraine come from a variety of sources. The oldest names are of Iranian, Fracian, Illirian, Baltic, and Old Germanic origin. Most of the Old Russian and medieval names are connected with properties of the environment or the activities of an individual. The names that were introduced during the Soviet period were not indigenous. Usually they were part of Soviet propaganda and symbolism. As a result, such names as Zhovtneve, Pershotravneve, Proletarskoe, Pionerskoe, Lenino, and Lenino Pervoe appeared on the map; now they are being replaced.

Traditional Ukrainian life-styles and family structures were closely connected with the village territorial community, the gromada, which developed in ancient times. In the Middle Ages it was called kop and was the local unit of government. The spread of a commodity-money economy and serfdom contributed to the disintegration of this form of community organization, although at different rates in different regions of the Ukraine. With the gradual shift from collective to private forms of ownership and the replacement of feudalism with capitalism, the gromada's economic basis was completely undermined. By the beginning of the twentieth century most households in the Ukraine were privately owned. There were, however, residues of traditional communal patterns, which figured prominently in the organization and democratization of the peasantry and in its struggle for its rights. These included a system of legal traditions and norms, a tradition of communal use of land and mutual assistance in labor-intensive work ( toloka , supryaga ), recreation for youth connected to their labor ( vechornitsy , dosvitky ), and a system of ethics.

The most common types of dwelling consist of three parts and have four pitched roofs, either of straw or reed; these are typical in regions with well-developed agriculture. The interiors of Ukrainian household conform to a remarkably uniform plan: the stove ( pech ) faces the long wall, the table is diagonally opposite it in the corner where the icons are placed, and the flooring where the family sleeps is behind the stove. This uniformity is also found in the tradition of double-sided whitewashing of walls and bright decorative painting.