A khutir is a small, remote settlement in the Ukrainian countryside consisting of one or a few households where people live and work independently off their land, both to meet their own needs and for trade. Khutirs are usually located between villages, but unlike them, have been home to both peasants and the Ukrainian intelligentsia alike.
Many place names in Ukrainian still incorporate the word khutir, such as Khutir Mykhailivskyi, Yahidnyi Khutir, Chervonyi Khutir, and so on. Over the centuries, these enduring names have highlighted the importance of khutirs in Ukrainian history and society. However, not much is known about the peculiarities of this way of life, so let us learn about them here.
Some scholars claim that the khutir first appeared during the early medieval period. However, it is widely understood thatkhutirs have been in the lands of today's Ukraine since the XVI century at least.
In those times, these settlements sprouted up organically, mostly founded by rich townspeople, cossacks, and free or runaway peasants who were working on their newly cultivated lands.
One of the oldest khutirs in Ukraine is called Subotiv, located in Cherkasy Oblast. It was owned by the father of legendary Ukrainian hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, the leader of the Zaporizhzhian Cossacks.
First mentioned in 17th-century documents as a khutir, it later became Khmelnytskyi's residence after he inherited the land and built a palace there. The settlement flourished under his rule and later evolved into a city. Now it is a village that still bears the name Subotiv.
Another old khutir widely written about by scholars is Lukavytsya, later renamed Obukhiv, which continues to exist today as a suburb of Kyiv. According to the Obukhiv City Administration, the first mention of Lukavytsya as a settlement dates back to 1362. However, the Cossack Obukh, who gave the place its name and established a khutir there, settled in around 1580.
Some very old khutirs also became parts of Ukraine's capital, Kyiv. For instance, Bratska Borschahivka, now a historical district of Kyiv, was described as a khutir in 1864 by local historian Lavrentiy Pokhylevych.
"In the summer, students of the Kyiv Theological Academy are sent to the Borshchahivskiy Khutir, especially during vacation time, to relax in the fresh air. There is a pond for swimming, and below the farm, there is a small lake and meadow belonging to the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. During the reign of Catherine II, several Bulgarian families who came from Turkey settled in Bratska Borshchahivka. The current descendants of their fourth generation, now mixed with the indigenous inhabitants, have almost forgotten their native language; only some physical features and spiritual qualities remind them of their southern origin," Pokhylevych writes in his Tales of the Settlements of the Kyiv Province.
Other sources indicate that the settlement has been known since around 1630, though its name has changed over time.
Thus, the history of many centuries-old khutirs in Ukraine is still traceable due to them having evolved into larger villages and towns that we know today.
Khutirs illustrate how small, localized traditions depend on the cultural and legal practices of the regions in which they develop. When khutirs began to sprout up in the 16th century, Ukrainian lands were divided between the Polish--Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Tsardom of Muscovy. This led to distinctions in how they appeared and functioned depending upon which polity they were located in.
Those located under Polish-Lithuanian lands were known as filvarky.
A filvarok was a small landlord's villa-oriented household, overseen by the nobility or church hierarchy, aimed at producing food and other essential goods to sustain society. Initially, this entity emerged in Galicia in the 15th century in response to the growing demand for agricultural production.
Ukrainian scholar Iryna Rybachok gives us a vivid picture of filvarky [plural of filvarok] in Volyn, where they have been since the 17th century:
"The entrance to the premises of theSulzhyn filvarok was through a sturdy wooden gate. Notable was the surrounding of the suburban Kostyantyniv filvarok, fortified by an oak fence. Within the yard were both residential and commercial premises. Managers, custodians, and filvarok servants resided in the living quarters.
Typically, filvarky in Southeastern Volyn had two residential buildings each, alongside various utility rooms such as kitchens, bakeries, larders, pantries, carriage houses, cheese houses, dovecotes, malt houses, breweries, beer halls, coops, and stables for livestock. Most farm buildings were constructed from woven brushwood, while residential structures were made from wood, plastered with clay, and whitewashed.
Some courtyards featured gardens with fruit trees, such as the newly planted garden in the suburban filvarok of Kostyantyniv in 1615. Additionally, filvarky commonly included mills, ponds, and apiaries as integral parts of their complexes. Flour milling and fish farming were prevalent in nearly all Southeastern Volyn filvarky, while beekeeping flourished in villages with suitable conditions, and suburban filvarky (other than Kuzmyn) maintained apiaries."
Although it seemed like a peaceful atmosphere, it was not for peasants.
Unlike occasional private households where villagers worked on their lord's or sometimes even their own lands, filvarok households enslaved peasants by taking away their land or buying it from them for pittances and making it impossible for them to leave.
Despite such hardships for peasants, some scholars emphasize that this work on detached nobles' estates protected them from poverty amidst harsh realities and an irreversible system of market relations. However, this is debatable.
In contrast to the filvarok's slave-like conditions, the Cossacks' freedom-ruled zymivnyk emerged in the early 16th century. Serfdom never existed in these places.
As Ukrainian history has it, this term was initially referred to as a place for keeping livestock during winter. However, it later evolved to include larger khutirs where Cossacks practiced agriculture, cultivated plowed steppes, raised livestock and bees, and fished.
As Cossacks discovered and mastered the Dyke Pole [the "Wild Field" which referred to the undefined and unpopulated Black Sea steppes], khutirs* were simply the only thing they were able to build there with no other infrastructure of civilization around.
Since the Zaporizhzhian Sich had no rulers but at times accepted protection from different powers, it mostly evolved as an independent polity
, which was reflected in the nature of its households. Although Cossack hetmans would maintain well-developed zymivnyky which employed peasants, these employees were always compensated with food or money and were in free association.
Petro Kalnyshevsky, the last hetman of the Zaporizhzhian Sich, had a zymivnyk to remember:
"The zymivnyk of Petro Kalnyshevsky was located on the Kamyanka River, 50 km from Nova Sich [the last Sich, founded under the protection of the Russian Empire, which later ordered its dissolution]. It consisted of numerous buildings, including three huts, two barns, two stables, an aviary, workshops, a forge, a windmill, two cellars, etc. Thirty laborers worked constantly there. They worked the fields and took care of livestock, including two horses, as many cattle, and thousands of sheep," recounts the book Archeology of the Age of the Ukrainian Cossacks of the 16th-18th Centuries.
Poorer zymivnyky could be found right next to the rich ones due to the Cossacks' position in the military less authoritative.
Cossacks continued to live in their zymivnyky, following their traditions, even after Russia's ignoble liquidation of Nova Sich in 1775 and incorporation of it into their empire. However, fearing potential rebellion, various Russian officials sought an excuse to dissolve the settlements, as well.
Russian General Pyotr Tekeliy wrote to Prince Grigory Potyomkin, "Establishing villages in the most convenient locations where the Zaporozhzhians have dispersed in zymivnyky, as they have familyless settlements in locations that are all invented and convenient for themselves."
Thus, zymivnyky were erased and consolidated into larger regions called slobody under the Russian rule.
In an effort to boost the Russian Empire's agricultural productivity, Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin introduced his agrarian reform. However, what could a nobleman like him truly understand about the lives of peasants?
The Stolypin reform of 1905 gave tens of thousands of Ukrainian villagers the opportunity to leave state-owned lands and establish their own khutirs on new lands. Some villagers created vidruby, which were land plots solely for working, carved out of the same state lands to which they previously belonged.
Consequently, common state lands were artificially divided, resulting in the creation of numerous khutirs that had never existed before. This, of course, caused many rearrangements.
At first glance, the reform introduced positive changes: it allowed peasants, who had long been denied the right to own land, to establish their own households and other types of enterprises. However, its harsh implementation meant that peasants already in difficult situations remained trapped, while those who were wealthy before the reform became even richer by buying, selling, and renting out land.
The rich quickly bought up the land from poor peasants, who often sought their fortunes in cheaper lands offered as part of government initiatives for settlement in Siberia, the Urals, the Far East, and other regions. This was part of the government's endeavor to prevent an oversaturation of agricultural labor in particular areas. Enticed by the promise of cheap land and assistance with relocation and adaptation, many agreed, only to discover that the soil in these areas was barren.
Poor and devastated, Ukrainian villagers returned to Ukraine with nothing, while some wealthy khutir owners either retained their status or had already become townspeople, collecting income from the working class.
There were still others who did not trade their communal lands for private lots, forming a separate class. Communal households disappeared almost entirely only on the right bank of the Dnipro and in Poltava Oblast.
Ukrainian writer, scholar, and folklorist Panteleimon Kulish was the main popularizer of the khutir as a romantic, idyllic place of freedom that could never be found in any city. His influence was so widespread that Ukrainian scholars still discuss his vision of the khutir, just as his contemporaries did.
As a member of the intelligentsia, he popularized the khutir not only as an alternative to city living, but as a place that was not just for peasants. He helped break the understanding that only backward, uneducated would maintain such a lifestyle, and instead made the khutir into a place one might actually choose to live.
Kulish's disdain for the life and people of big cities made itself quite evident on the pages of his Letters From a Khutir:
"Our khutir brother in some stone Moscow or that bottomless city vortex, gazes, oh God, with great pity upon those well-dressed and sweet people and thinks to himself, "My God, how these gentlemen suffer from all this narrowness! They all shine with gold, and they ride in their carriages, but what air they do breathe! Are these their luxuries? Is this why we are lured from the quiet, singing villages to this meager civilization? The townspeople change into their weekly new fashions, feast on their delicacies, and sell the Motherland for expensive toys, having lost their youth to the crazy crowd and now are inviting our khutir brother to join them as a mercy. It is better for us all to die one by one than to turn away from our righteous faith and become the city's slaves!"
He shared the same thoughts in letters to his friends written from a khutir called Zarig, where he worked the land by himself while also remaining productive as an author.
Kulish is considered a founder of the Ukrainian khutir philosophy
, which evolved as part of the wave of pastoralism sparked by Jean-Jacques Rousseau with his 'free man in chains.' Of course, their views and lives were very different at the core as Kulish indeed lived on nature himself.
As khutirs were rather popular when Ukraine's classic literary canon was being written, many other Ukrainian authors contributed to depicting them as a very important element of Ukrainian national memory. They included Mykola Hohol with his Vechir Proty Ivana Kupala, Dmytro Markovych with his Na Vovchomu Khutori, and Mykola Kostomarov with Skotskyi Bunt.
It has been well-documented that the Nazis burned tens of thousands of khutirs to the ground -- frequently along with their occupants -- during their invasion of Ukrainian lands. According to the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory,
the Nazi occupiers destroyed and burned more than 28 thousand villages, burned and destroyed more than 2 million residential buildings, more than 540 thousand auxiliary buildings, left about 10 million people homeless.
Because khutirs could consist of one or many buildings, it is not possible to calculate how many of them were destroyed. However, many which were known to exist were simply wiped off the face of the Earth by the Nazis. Moreover, khutirs were included as a separate category in some or their orders:
"In all villages and khutirs where partisans find shelter or receive food, confiscate all food supplies, burn the houses, and shoot or hang all helpers, unless the population actively opposes the partisans and contributes to their destruction," read an order from the commanding general of the Nazis' 6th Army in describing punitive measures to combat partisans.
Of the khutirs that survived the Nazi horror, many were finished off by the Soviet authorities after the war. Khutirs which were located nearby Soviet collective farms were forcibly merged into them, and more remote ones were simply eliminated labeled unpromising.
As a result, out of 58,500 *khutirs in Ukraine which existed before World War II, only 8,400 remained
by the mid-1960s, writes scholar Liudmyla Kovpak in her Unpromising Villages.
The golden age of Ukrainian khutirs has long passed thanks to numerous attempts to wipe them out and the influence of urbanization. However, khutirs have not entirely disappeared, caught between two contrasting situations: they either serve as places where city dwellers seek to return to the land and old Ukrainian traditions, while others lie as symbols of the deterioration of Ukrainian village life.
Many old villages, especially those distant from big cities, have turned into khutirs, as all that remains of them are isolated households without infrastructure, simply because people leave and the settlements gradually lose the features that made them villages.
Local media outlets highlight stories of settlements like Vilka Falemytska in Volyn Oblast, where the population dwindled from 150 in the 20th century to just two people, as well as the village of Teklivkain Ternopil Oblast, whose population has collapsed from over 100 residents 70 years ago to just a single man now. The reason is simple: it is far more convenient to live in a bigger place.
"I like it when summer residents come. They bring more people to the village. Now it's scary to go outside in the evening. It's dark, and the windows are unlit. Without the summer residents, the village would have turned into a deserted khutir," says Maria Shpak, who lives in Klochkiv, a decaying village 30 km from Chernihiv.
It is said that khutirs and villages can be easily told apart,as khutirs have no churches
. Sadly, the churches in decaying villages have also fallen into disuse, as nobody comes to pray at them anymore.
On the other side of this are Ukrainian town and city dwellers who are re-discovering the khutir life of centuries past.
There are not a great many Ukrainians now choosing khutirs over the cities, but there certainly are some. We recently featured a story about Yulia, who left one of Ukraine's largest cities, Lviv, and her career to embrace farming, nature, and other aspects of pastoral, rural life. She is not the only one.
Moreover, there are initiatives in Ukraine that support those with a knack for farming. For example, the recent Family Dairy Farms initiative gave birth to numerous artisan dairy operations appearing, in some cases, right in people's yards, in the best khutir traditions.
Ukraine's government and universities also offer many other initiatives to teach and encourage people to start their own agricultural businesses. One such program from Zhytomyr's Polisky National University, supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, is helping to bring more women into farming.
Many art khutirs have a positive impact on the overall image of the lifestyle. One example is Khutir Hoich, organized by Kyiv journalist Kateryna Mizina, who had enough of city life and decided to move to an uninhabited khutir 120 km from the capital.
There is also Khutir Obyrok, which served as Kateryna's initial inspiration. It is a place where people paint, watch movies, learn about different herbs, grow flowers, and more. These modern reimaginings of traditional khutirs not only attract young people but inspire older residents who have households there to stay, as these initiatives are bringing life back to the land.
