Khutor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Khutor or hutor (Russian: ху́тор, khutor; Ukrainian: ху́тiр, khutir) is usually taken to refer to a single-homestead rural settlement (farmstead) of Eastern Europe. The word originated in Ukraine, but later came to be applied to farmsteads in Russia and Kazakhstan.

Khutors were originally founded as a result of exploration of new lands by Cossacks. In the Cossack-settled regions of Ukraine, Don and Kuban the word khutor was used to describe new settlements (notwithstanding the actual number of homesteads therein) which had detached themselves from bigger villages or stanitsas. These new settlements were alternatively known as vyselki (literally, "those who moved away from their village").

In Russia, where serfdom and obshchina were maintained well into the nineteenth century, the khutors were unheard-of until the rise of capitalism. The emancipation of the serfs and the decay of the obshchina were accompanied by introduction of khutors as isolated farmsteads with household structures and a plot of land for individual use.

During his attempt to resolve the agrarian crisis in Russia, Peter Stolypin envisaged rich peasants leaving their obshchinas and settling in khutors to organize their individual households. By 1910 relative density of khutors (also known as otrubs) among countryside facilities in the European part of Russia was estimated at 10.5%. These were practically eliminated during the collectivisation in the USSR.

Individual estates and dachas in Estonia and Ingria have been traditionally known as myza (мыза), from the Finnic word for "estate". In the late nineteenth century, similar estates in the Baltic provinces came to be Russified as khutors.