Village assembly

Village assembly (silskyi skhod). In Russian-ruled Ukraine a general meeting of the household heads that was the chief governing body of the village hromada. From 1797 it was restricted to appanage peasants and state peasants. In 1861 the newly emancipated serfs were allowed to participate. The assembly had limited powers: it divided land under its jurisdiction among its members, distributed the tax burden, and elected village officials, such as the starosta and sotskyi.

In the Soviet period the village assembly was a general meeting of the residents of a rural district governed by a rural soviet.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]