Khalupnyk

Khalupnyk. Category of peasant in territories ruled by Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later by the Austrian Empire and Russian Empire. Peasants lost their land as a result of the voloka land reform of 1557 to the Polish nobility and magnates and were left only with their own houses (khalupy, hence the name) and small land allotments. Deprived of their livelihood, khalupnyky were forced to become hired laborers on the filvarok, or artisans, or to seek work in the cities. In addition, they performed compulsory labor for the lord (25 days a year of ‘pedestrian corvée,’ ie, without the use of draft animals) and other services. In the Russian Empire of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the growth of serfdom increased the number of khalupnyky. They numbered 7.5 percent of peasant households in Right-Bank Ukraine in 1848 and 24 percent in Left-Bank Ukraine in 1859. After the abolition of serfdom in 1861 they did not receive land but remained farm laborers or were forced to migrate to the city in search of work.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989).]