Kirovohrad Oblast

Kirovohrad Oblast (), also known as Kirovohradshchyna (), is an oblast (''province'') in central Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Kropyvnytskyi. The oblast's population is It is Ukraine's second least populated oblast, ahead of Chernivtsi.

In 2019, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine approved the change of the oblast's name to Kropyvnytskyi Oblast (, unofficially ''Kropyvnychchyna'' ()). The change is not yet implemented. The largest cities of the region are Kropyvnytskyi, Oleksandriia, Znamianka and Svitlovodsk.

Geography

The area of the province is .

The city of Dobrovelychkivka is the geographical center of Ukraine.

Most of the region is located within historic Right-bank Ukraine and Zaporizhzhia, and the western outskirts are part of historic Podolia.

History

The lands of the modern Kirovohrad Oblast were first inhabited by Scythians. In the Middle Ages, during the time of Kyivan Rus', the East Slavic tribe of Ulichis lived here. After the liberation of the former Kyivan Rus' from the Tatars in the Battle of Blue Waters and the unification of the principalities of Kyiv, Pereyaslav, and Chernihiv with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, there was a need to protect the southeastern borders from attacks by the Crimean Khanate and Moscovy - states that were formed after the collapse of the Golden Horde at the end of the 15th century. For this, Dmytro Vyshnevetsky founded the first Zaporozhian Sich on the island of Khortytsia, thus the Ukrainian Cossacs appeared. On the territory of the modern Kirovohrad region the Zaporozhians founded many villages. From 1569, the territory formed of the Kingdom of Poland within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

These lands were under the rule of the Ukrainian Cossacks of Hetmanate and Zaporozhian Sich from XV to XVIII century.

As a result of the destruction of Ukrainian Cossacks and the enslavement of Ukrainians by the Russian government at the end of the 18th century, these lands came under the direct power of Russia. In 1752, the territory of New Serbia was founded with the capital in Novomyrhorod.

In the 1800s, majority of the landed was owned by the noble Skarżyński family. They played a large role in the development of the region. An emphasis was placed on the development of its agriculture and the Skarzynskis opened a school in Migeya dedicated to this.

The oblast was created as part of the Ukrainian SSR on January 10, 1939 out of the northern raions of Mykolaiv Oblast. Before establishment, its territory was part of Kherson Governorate (most of it) and Podolia Governorate (smaller portion) until 1925. Earlier before occupation of Ukraine in 1920s, in 1918 there were plans to introduce own Ukrainian administrative territorial division with territory of modern Kirovohrad Oblast being split between lands of Nyz (Lower land), Pobozhia (Boh land), and Cherkasy.

During the Soviet repressions, over 40,000 residents of the region were killed.

During World War II, the oblast was under Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1944 and was liberated as a result of Kirovograd offensive. In the Black Forest near Znamianka was the largest center of the Soviet partisan movement in the Kirovohrad oblast. Among the residents of Znamianka is a well-known Lukiya Stachenko (1879-1973) - villager from Novooleksandrivka, who supported the fight against the Nazis and local collaborators with food, and herself performed a number of heroic deeds despite her age, like hiddong children whom the Germans planned to destroy, including Jewish, or send to Germany as Ostarbeiters.

In 1954, the oblast lost some raions to the newly created Cherkasy Oblast, but later that year received its western raions from the Odesa Oblast.

Between 1939 and 2016, the oblast administrative center, Kropyvnytskyi, was called Kirovohrad and was named after the First Secretary of the Leningrad City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Sergei Kirov. Due to decommunization laws (on 14 July 2016) the name of the city was changed to Kropyvnytskyi.Goodbye, Lenin: Ukraine moves to ban communist symbols
BBC News (14 April 2015)
Verkhovna Rada renamed Kirovograd
Ukrayinska Pravda (14 July 2016) Kirovohrad Oblast was not renamed because as such it is mentioned in the Constitution of Ukraine, and the Oblast can only be renamed by a constitutional amendment by the Verkhovna Rada.

On 20 June 2018, the Committee on State Building, Regional Policy and Local Self-Government of the Ukrainian parliament backed the proposal to rename Kirovohrad Oblast to Kropyvnytskyi Oblast. In February 2019, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine declared constitutional the bill on renaming Kirovohrad Oblast to Kropyvnytskyi Oblast. The renaming was supported by the local Oblast Council in March 2021. The process then stalled in the parliament, with the oblast council asking the Verkhovna Rada to speed up the process in September 2022.

Demographics

According to the 2001 Ukrainian census