KonstantinKryzhitsky HutorVMalorossii 1884

A khutor ( ; rus, хутор, p=ˈxutər) or khutir (, ) is a type of rural locality in some countries of

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...

; in the past the term mostly referred to a single- homestead settlement.Khutor
from the

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; , ''BSE'') is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Great Russian Enc ...

Khutor
from the

Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary The ''Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopaedic Dictionary'' (35 volumes, small; 86 volumes, large) is a comprehensive multi-volume encyclopaedia in Russian. It contains 121,240 articles, 7,800 images, and 235 maps. It was published in the Russian Em ...

The term can be translated as "

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...

". They existed in

Cossack The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic Eastern Christian people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. Cossacks played an important role in defending the southern borders of Ukraine and Rus ...

-settled lands that encompassed today's

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

Kuban Kuban ( Russian and Ukrainian: Кубань; ) is a historical and geographical region in the North Caucasus region of southern Russia surrounding the Kuban River, on the Black Sea between the Don Steppe, the Volga Delta and separated fr ...

, and the lower Don River basin while in

and Don region the word ''khutor'' was also used to describe new settlements (irrespective of the number of homesteads) which had detached themselves from

stanitsa A stanitsa or stanitza ( ; ), also spelled stanycia ( ) or stanica ( ), was a historical administrative unit of a Cossack host, a type of Cossack polity that existed in the Russian Empire. Etymology The Russian word is the diminutive of the word ...

s. In some

communities, these types of settlements were referred to as ''posyolok'' () or ''selyshche'' (). In

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

the term "" (''vyselki'', literally, "those who moved away") was also used. Khutor remains the official designation of many Russian villages in these regions. During the Stolypin reforms in the

Russian empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

, Peter Stolypin envisaged rich

peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasan ...

s "privatising" their share of the community (''

obshchina An (, ; rus, община, p=ɐpˈɕːinə) or (, ; rus, мир, p=mʲir), also officially termed as a rural community (; ) between the 19th and 20th centuries, was a peasant village community (as opposed to an individual farmstead), or a ...

'' () or ''tovarystvo'' ()) lands, leaving the obshchinas, and settling in khutors on their now individually owned land. A less radical concept was that of an ''otrub'' (отруб) or ''vidrub'': a section of formerly ''obshchina'' land, whose owner has left the ''obshchina'' but still continued to live in the village and to "commute" to his land.Otrub
from the

By 1910 the share of khutors and otrubs among all rural households in the European part of Russia was estimated at 10.5%. These were practically eliminated during the collectivisation in the USSR.

Linguistic origin

The origin of the word is not entirely clear. Assumed are borrowings from Hungarian határ ( "border"), to which the Slavs are reduced, or határ ("border, edge") — from

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...

; also from Proto-Iranic khȁtȃr ( "land belonging to the village") to Ukrainian as ''khotar''.Хутір
// Етимологічний словник української мови : в 7 т. / редкол.: О. С. Мельничук (гол. ред.) та ін. — Київ: Наукова думка, 2012. — Т. 6: У — Я. — С. 224. — ISBN 978-966-00-0197-8. According to

Max Vasmer Max Julius Friedrich Vasmer (; ; 28 February 1886 – 30 November 1962) was a Russian and German linguist. He studied problems of etymology in Indo-European, Finno-Ugric and Turkic languages and worked on the history of Slavic, Baltic, ...

, the word entered the East Slavic languages from Old

Upper German Upper German ( ) is a family of High German dialects spoken primarily in the southern German-speaking area (). History In the Old High German time, only Alemannic and Bairisch are grouped as Upper German. In the Middle High German time, East F ...

In literature

Nikolai Gogol Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; ; (; () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin. Gogol used the Grotesque#In literature, grotesque in his writings, for example, in his works "The Nose (Gogol short story), ...

's first major work is called '' Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka'', where "farm" is a translation of "khutor" (, ''Vechera na khutore bliz Dikanki'').

References

{{Reflist Economic history of Russia Economic history of Ukraine Social history of Ukraine Rural geography Human habitats Types of administrative division Russian-language designations of territorial entities

Linguistic origin

In literature

See also

References