Ukrainian Peasants

Ukrainian Peasants

ETHNONYMS: none

Orientation

Ukraine is the land of the chernozem (black soil) and the breadbasket of the former Soviet Union. Because of the Ukraine's rich agricultural resources, the peasantry was the majority (75 percent) of its population prior to the Soviet Socialist Revolution. The peasantry of the Ukraine and the population in general were greatly reduced subsequently. Stalinist collectivization policies hit the Ukraine with particular force and led to the famine of the early 1930s. The population was further eroded by German occupation during World War II. Industrialization, spurred by the Ukraine's rich mineral resources, has encouraged a population shift from rural to urban areas, especially after World War II. Nonetheless, the peasantry remains an important part of Ukrainian life and constitutes approximately 50 percent of the total population. Furthermore, rural life has remained the Ukrainian ideal, both among the inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine and Ukrainians living in the diaspora. Rural life symbolizes Ukrainian identity, in part, because, prior to the Revolution, nonrural occupations were predominantly in the hands of ethnic minorities. Also, the states that held political power over the Ukraine—the Russian Empire and, later, the Soviet Union—liked to portray it as a backward, rural area and encouraged scholarly interest in ethnography and artistic expression through bucolic themes.

Demography. Of the agricultural regions of Ukraine, the most densely populated is the central, forest-steppe region, which has the best conditions for agriculture, namely the chernozem and sufficient moisture. This has long been the most densely populated region, the highest population density being in the western part (Chernivitsi Oblast, Vinnystia, and Ternopil). The rural population is less dense in the northern belt, where conditions are swampy, and even less so in the steppe to the south (the Crimea, Kherson), where conditions are unfavorably dry.

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.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. The Ukrainian peasant economy depends primarily on agriculture, supplemented by fishing, hunting, beekeeping, and the gathering of berries, mushrooms, and other wild foodstuffs. Although most households kept cows for milk and oxen for use as draft animals and may also have kept sheep and pigs, animal husbandry was an important market activity only in the western and the steppe regions. (It is currently important in the west only.) The principal crops are wheat, rye, millet, barley, oats, and, more recently, potatoes, buckwheat, maize, beans, lentils, peas, poppy seeds, turnips, hemp, and flax. Garden vegetables include garlic, onions, beets, cabbages, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, watermelons, and radishes. Hops, tobacco, and grapes are also cultivated, as are fruit and nut trees. The normal eating routine is to have four meals a day: breakfast, dinner at noon, a small afternoon meal at 4 P.M., and supper. The diet consists of dark rye bread, various porridges, soups, and fish and fruit when these are available. Meat is holiday fare; the usual pattern is to slaughter an animal before a holiday, eat some of the meat during the festival, and preserve the rest by curing and making sausages. The fire in the hearth is considered extremely important. Once lit, it is not permitted to be extinguished. The embers are fired up each morning for the baking of bread. When this is complete, the other foods to be eaten that day are cooked.

Industrial Arts and Trade. A variety of crafts and trades were practiced. These include carpentry, coppering, tanning and harness making, pottery, weaving, and embroidery. Ukraine is widely known for its embroidery and is nearly as esteemed for its weaving, pottery, and carved and inlaid woodwork. Embroidery has long been emblematic of Ukraine. There are indications that professionalization in this field occurred early, with certain women specializing in embroidery and selling their work to their fellow villagers or letting them copy designs. Actual commercialization was begun at the end of the nineteenth century by the Poltava County self-government. After World War I, embroidery was taken on by worker cooperatives. State folk-art workshops opened in 1934. Currently, the chief centers for production are Kaimianets-Podolskyi, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Kiev, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Lwiw, Kosiv, and Chernivitsi.

Pottery has been characteristic of Ukraine since prehistory, as evidenced by the earthenware found in Trypillian excavations. Contemporary folk pottery is found in the areas of the best clays: Polilia, Poltava, Polisia, Podlachia, Chernihiv, Kiev, Kharkiv, Bukovina, and Transcarpathia. Glass painting, the production of a picture on the reverse of a sheet of glass, is experiencing a revival in western Ukraine. Ukrainian wax-resist dyed Easter eggs, pysanky, are also famous. These are decorated with geometric, floral, and animal motifs. The tradition of decorating eggs experienced a decline owing to the atheist policies of the Soviet system but is being rapidly revived now and is drawing on the Ukrainian diaspora for information on design and technique.

Division of Labor. The usual Slavic division of labor—inside (female)/outside (male)—was less characteristic of Ukrainians than of neighboring Slavic peoples. In Cossack families, this is probably because the male household head was absent for extended periods of time, leaving his wife and children to run the farmstead alone. Thus, women participated in the cultivation of field crops much more extensively than elsewhere, with the harvest especially being considered women's work. Collectivization was effective in the Ukraine: initial bitter resistance was counteracted by force and dissipated by the ensuing famine. Division of labor on the collective farm follows Russian patterns. Both contemporary anecdotes and statistics indicate that a new division of labor has arisen: jobs are assigned by gender, not according to degree of heavy physical labor involved, but by degree of technical expertise believed necessary, the technologically advanced jobs going to the men.

Kinship, Marriage, and Family

Although weddings and other life-cycle rites indicate the prior existence of extended-family patterns of social organization, the nuclear family was the norm from the time of extensive ethnographic work in the nineteenth century and has continued to be so. The reasons that Ukrainians were less dependent on large family units than their neighbors include favorable agricultural conditions, which permit the economic survival of smaller groups of workers, and the proliferation of the Cossacks and their way of life as the model for everything from clothing to family life. The importance of ancestors and the likely existence of a prior ancestor cult is indicated by the honoring of the dead in almost all yearly cycle rites, including the ritual meal eaten on family graves on the Sunday after Easter. Ancestors are treated as a general category rather than specific persons in a family's past. Godparenthood is important and bears the same incest taboos as biological relationships. Godparents are usually honored relatives of the father, but may be anyone in the village, one custom being that, in cases of difficult conception or birth, the first people encountered after the birth should be invited as godparents.

Marriage and childbearing are still extremely important markers of adulthood. Birth now usually occurs in a clinic. In the past, although protective magic was practiced during pregnancy and childbirth, the mother was not confined either before or after birth, and the actual birth did not occur in any specific place. The house was the desired location, with the welcoming of the newborn including not only his or her introduction to the family, but also an introduction to the house (by touching the infant to the roof beam and the stove). Where baptism is still practiced, the child is christened by the godparents immediately after birth because it is considered unsafe to nurse the baby otherwise. The mother was expected to work through pregnancy, so there are numerous reports of births occurring in the fields. The mother was also supposed to return to work soon after delivery, leaving the baby to be cared for by his or her grandparents or older siblings. Current practice is a mixture of tradition and Soviet policy, with work continuing through pregnancy but with more of a tendency to take permitted leave after delivery. The desire for children is attested in a number of ways, including the prevalence of fertility magic. There are remnants of a belief in conception as ingestion, and certain foods, such as eggs and powdered pussy willows, are supposed to enhance fertility. Since World War II abortion has become increasingly common and, as elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, is the primary means of birth control.

Marriage. Age of marriage was and has remained quite young—late teens or early twenties. Formal matchmaking by representatives of the prospective bride and groom (svaty ) was preceded by courtship, usually various meetings and activities arranged by the heads of the respective male (parubotski ) and female (divotski ) groups. The wedding itself is a complicated affair with a special wedding cake (korovai ), a "bachelor party" for the bride and her female friends, numerous exchanges of gifts and food between the groom's family and that of the bride, and ritual expressions of antagonism between the two sides. The wedding was supposed to last a week, with all of the village invited, and even now may last three days. The upsurge of nationalist feeling in Ukraine has found expression in attempts to revive traditional wedding customs.

Domestic Unit. The basic unit now is the nuclear family, incorporated into the community of the collective farm. There are indications that a similar arrangement existed prior to collectivization with families in a single village sharing pasturelands and having villagewide brotherhoods and sisterhoods of unmarried youths.

Inheritance. Inheritance is a moot question in a Soviet Ukrainian village. Prior to collectivization, Ukrainian inheritance was subject to the same laws as elsewhere in the Russian Empire, namely, women were permitted to inherit property as of the late nineteenth century. Traditional patterns of inheritance were that land and cattle were passed through the male line. Women owned all of their jewelry, which they passed on to daughters. They also controlled all of the cloth and other household items that they brought to the marriage.

Socialization. Respect for parents and adults in general is taught by everything from games to songs. Corporal punishment is used, although shaming and withdrawal of affection are important means of discipline. The attitude toward work is interesting, excessive industriousness being considered indicative of avarice, and thus avoided.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs and Practices. Ukraine is nominally atheist. Ukrainian Orthodoxy was traditionally the religion of the eastern portion of the country and Uniate Catholicism was the religion of the west. The current political situation has fostered a great upsurge of religious feeling. Interestingly, whereas Orthodoxy was identified with independence at the time of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Uniate Catholicism is serving that function now. Because Russia is Orthodox and the Orthodox church is the one legally sanctioned for Ukraine, expressions of nationalist feeling have centered around efforts to reestablish the legal standing of the Uniate Church.

The most important religious holiday is Easter, followed by Christmas. A rich and highly developed system of pagan belief has survived and partially blended with Christianity. Some of its most interesting manifestations are Christmastime mumming (Malanka) and fortune-telling; ceremonial treatment of sheafs of grain throughout the year; and summertime rites around Trinity Sunday (Zelene Sviata) and the feast of Saint John the Baptist (Ivan Kupalo), which include the honoring of vegetation by bringing it into the house, fire magic, and the sacrifice of a doll or decorated tree. These rites survived into the present in part because of Soviet encouragement of the pagan aspect of calendary rites as a substitute for Christian festivities and in part because of nationalist attempts to revive things considered indigenously Ukrainian. One manifestation of this revival was the celebration of the first public Malanka in Lwiw for New Year 1988.

The Ukrainian peasant believed in a whole pantheon of spirits: those of the forest, of field and stream, and of the various buildings of the farmstead (the house, the barn, the bathhouse). Often referred to as demons, these are actually helpful spirits that were relegated to the realm of the "unclean force" after the introduction of Christianity. One of the most interesting of the spirits is the mermaid, rusalka or mavka, a female being, usually the spirit of a drowned maiden, who, although dangerous, is said to bring moisture to the fields and to ensure crop fertility. The rusalka may well be a remnant of early matrifocal beliefs.

The primary religious practitioner is the village priest. In the case of the various spirits, however, safe contact is made by women, usually those in a liminal position; a man's seeing a spirit is an omen of misfortune or impending death.

Arts. Besides the rich tradition of embroidery and other tactile arts, Ukrainian culture has a highly developed tradition of oral literature. Folktales, folk songs, folk drama, proverbs, riddles, and numerous other genres have been extensively collected since the nineteenth century. Of special note is the Ukrainian epic tradition, dumy, and the professional performers who sang epic, along with other genres, the kobzari and lirnyky. These performers were blind mendicants organized into semireligious professional guilds.

Medicine. Current medical practices are a combination of the traditional and the modern. Babies are still routinely swaddled. Herbal medicine is very widely practiced, both to prevent illness and to cure ailments. Knowledge of the substances to use for common illnesses is virtually universal. More specialized knowledge of herbs is in the hands of znakhari, learned women and men.

Death and Afterlife. With remnants of the cult of ancestors being as widespread as they are, death was not viewed as a tragedy, but a natural process; the deceased was seen as leaving on a journey to the world of the dead and provided accordingly with food and coins. People who died in old age were dressed in their wedding clothes or a shroud. Those who died young, before they had a chance to marry, were dressed as for a wedding, supplied with a wedding ring, and had their funerals celebrated as wedding rites. Laments were sung over all who died by female members of the family or by professional mourners.

The dead are believed to continue to live on after death, but in a different state and a different place. There is confusion as to the location of the land of the dead. Pre-Christian beliefs had the dead living under the earth, affecting the crops. Christianity places the kingdom of the righteous dead in heaven. Certainly the realm of the dead is forty days away, both because a major commemorative service is held forty days after death and because of the importance of the number forty in both life-cycle and yearly-cycle ritual. There are indications of a belief in an assigned time on earth because those who die young, especially those who die violently (by human hands) are believed doomed to be unquiet dead, forced to remain on earth until their allotted time is expired.

See also Carpatho-Rusyns; Don Cossacks; Ukrainians

Bibliography

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NATALIE KONONENKO