Villagers–Steppe Inhabitants and the Water Element of the Dnipro: After the Materials of Historical and Ethnographic Expeditions of the Yakiv Novytskyi Zaporizhzhia Scientific Society

Author

Bilivnenko Serhiy – a Ph.D. in History, an associate professor at the Zaporizhzhia National University’s Subdepartment of Source Criticism, Historiography and Auxiliary Sciences of History, a head of the Yakiv Novytskyi Zaporizhzhia Scientific Society’s Administrative Board

Villagers–Steppe Inhabitants and the Water Element of the Dnipro: After the Materials of Historical and Ethnographic Expeditions of the Yakiv Novytskyi Zaporizhzhia Scientific Society

Abstract

The article considers the processes of everyday life of residents of Steppe­Ukraine’s villages along the Dnipro River. The author distinguishes different aspects of their life activities, such as children’s games, fishing, hunting, animal husbandry, vegetable growing, beekeeping, and escape from hunger. The article also analyses how the Dnipro River affected the everyday life of villagers – steppe inhabitants. This analysis is grounded on the materials collected throughout 2000–2017 by members of the Yakiv Novytskyi Zaporizhzhia Scientific Society. They held a number of complex historical and ethnographic expeditions dealing with studying Steppe Ukraine. On the one hand, there were gathered the materials on oral history, on the other, there were discovered the region’s ethnographic peculiarities. Most expeditions were conducted on the territory of Over Dnipro Ukraine (Naddniprianshchyna), because a large part of the Steppe­Ukraine’s territory belongs to the basin of the most powerful river waterway of Ukraine.

The distance from the Dnipro to settlements was different from site to site, however, village dwellers felt the influence from the river many kilometers from it. For people, the Dnipro was a breadwinner, employer, and supplier. In addition, the river could have threatened property or even life. In general, the expeditions made it possible to clearly define the role of the Dnipro in the everyday life of riverside peasantry of the Over­Dnipro­Rapid Lands (Nadporizhzhia) and the Beyond­Dnipro­Rapid Lands (Zaporizhzhia). The rhythm and way of life of the population of Over­Dnipro­Land villages was closely adjusted to cyclic natural processes occurring on the river. Throughout the 20th century, the process of interconnection between peasants and the river changed, and people began to use it less and less for everyday needs. It has led to the disappearance of water meadows (plavni), the formation of water reservoirs eventually resulting in the destruction and transference of several dozens of settlements to another place. Yet, in the collective historical memory, the phenomenon of the Dnipro retains its main attributes: rapids, water meadows (plavni), fishing, and pilotage.

Keywords

everyday life, the Dnipro, river, fish, vegetable garden.

References

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