Folk Architecture and Dwelling of Ukrainians in Slobozhanshchyna

Author

Sushko Valentyna

a Ph.D. in History, an associate professor, a senior research fellow at the Ukrainian Ethnological Centre Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, a member of Kharkiv Union of Ethnologists and Folklorists (Kharkiv, Ukraine).

ОRCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0480-1473

Folk Architecture and Dwelling of Ukrainians in Slobozhanshchyna

Abstract

Dwelling is perhaps the most important component of any ethnic culture. The mass resettlement movement of the 17th century from the Carpathian region, Halychyna, Podillia, Volhynia, the Right-Bank Polissia and the Middle Over Dnipro Lands have influenced the formation of folk architecture of Ukrainians in Slobozhanshchyna.

Planning principles and building materials are affected by both natural conditions and socio-economic changes: in Cossack times huts have been built out of oak logs, had a floor, and were covered with shingles; the epoch of serfdom (imperial and Soviet), wars led to the transition to covering huts with reeds and straw, replacing the floor with a clay floor, using more affordable materials for building walls (cheaper wood, clay, adobe bricks), and an extreme simplification of the furniture nomenclature. The improvement of socio-economic conditions has led to the diversification of construction practices.

Basing on the collected field ethnographic materials, it can be stated that the planning principles of housing have been changed from a three-chamber «house in two halves» to housing, the internal space of which is divided by a stove, and utility rooms, a porch and a veranda are attached to the facade wall. This phenomenon is typical for the first half of the 20th century. The process of transformation is finished by a completely modern «cottage» housing with a «studio» apartment or vice versa a very complicated internal house space.

The submitted study is written after the recording of the phenomena of rural life as well as the urban realities – and not only district centers, for example, Vovchansk, Kupiansk and other cities of the Kharkiv region, Okhtyrka or Trostianets in the Sumy region and Sumy itself, but also the city with a population of over a million Kharkiv, where there are still areas of the «private sector» – rural buildings.

Keywords

Ukrainians’ folk architecture, housing of Ukrainians in Slobozhanshchyna, hut, icon corner, stove, pil (bed), mysnyk (shelf for dishes), attic, lobby, bastard, roof, Sloboda Ukraine.

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