Kiev Oblast

Kiev Oblast, also written as Kyiv Oblast (, translit. Kyivs’ka oblast’; also referred to as Kyivshchyna - ) is an oblast (province) in central Ukraine.

The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Kiev (, or Kyiv), also the capital of Ukraine. Despite being located in the center of the Kiev Oblast, and hosting the governing bodies of the oblast, Kiev itself is not a part of the the oblast's territory, but is one of 2 Ukraine's national-level municipalities (along with Sevastopol).

The current Head of the Kiev Oblast State Administration is Vira Ulianchenko.

History

The oblast was created as part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on February 27, 1932.

The current borders of the oblast were last set following the Chernobyl accident. Administrative oversight of the new city of Slavutych, which was constructed as part of the Chernihiv Oblast, was then transferred to the Kiev Oblast (see Chornobyl zone below).

Historical administrative units that later became the territory of the Oblast included the Kijow Voivodship under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Kiev Guberniya under the Russian Empire. The northern part of the oblast belongs to the historical region of Polesia (, translit. Polissia).

Geography

The oblast is equally located on both banks of Dnieper River north and south of Kiev. Other significant rivers in the oblast are Dnieper's tributaries: Prypiat (R), Desna (L), Teteriv (R), Irpin' (R), Ros' (R) and Trubizh (L).

Subdivisions

The oblast is subdivided into 25 raions (administrative districts). It consists of 25 cities, 30 towns, and more than 1000 villages.

The area of the oblast is 28,100 km² (approximately 35 times the area of Kiev city). The current estimated population (excluding Kiev) is around 1.8 millions (as of 2006).

The "exclaves"

The municipality of Slavutych is located within the borders of the neighboring Chernihiv Oblast on the eastern bank of the Dnieper river, but officially belongs to Kiev Oblast (without bordering it, being a kind of administrative exclave).

Similarly, the town of Kotsiubynske, which is located within the borders of the Kiev city (which is itself surrounded by the Kiev Oblast), officially belongs to the Kiev Oblast.

Chornobyl zone

The north-western end of the oblast is a part of the Zone of alienation due to the radioactive contamination caused by the Chernobyl (Chornobyl) nuclear reactor accident. The largest cities within zone are Chornobyl and Prypyat, which are now abandoned (see ghost towns). The city of Slavutych was built outside of the zone to host evacuated residents of Prypyat and personnel of the zone installations.

Important cities

Bila Tserkva
Brovary
Boryspil
Fastiv
Irpin'-Bucha-Vorzel (these neighboring settlements are practically merged into a conurbation)
Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi
Slavutych
Tarashcha
Vasylkiv
Vyshhorod

Nomenclature

Most of Ukraine's oblasts are named after their capital cities, officially referred to as "oblast centers" (, translit. oblasnyi tsentr). The name of each oblast is a relative adjective, formed by adding a feminine suffix to the name of respective center city: Kyiv is the center of the Kyivs'ka oblast' (Kiev Oblast). Most oblasts are also sometimes referred to in a feminine noun form, following the convention of traditional regional place names, ending with the suffix "-shchyna", as is the case with the Kiev Oblast, Kyivshchyna.

Kiev is the traditional English name for the administrative center of the Kiev Oblast, but the Ukrainianized version (transliterated from the Ukrainian language) Kyiv is gaining usage. The earliest known English-language reference is to Kiovia, in English traveller Joseph Marshall's book Travels (London, 1772).

The name Kiev was used in print as early as 1823 in the English travelogue New Russia: Journey from Riga to the Crimea by way of Kiev, by Mary Holderness. By 1883, the Oxford English Dictionary included Kiev in a quotation. This name was established on the basis of Russian orthography and pronunciation , during a time when Kiev was a city in a governorate of the Russian Empire. Ukrainian was considered a language of the village, and attempts to introduce it as a literary language were suppressed (see Ems Ukaz).

The spelling Kyiv, romanized version of the Ukrainian name for the city , has been used in English-language publications of the Ukrainian diaspora and in some academic publications concerning Ukraine during much of the twentieth century. Newly-independent Ukraine declared Ukrainian its official language after 1991, and introduced a national Latin-alphabet standard for geographic names in 1995, establishing the use of the spelling Kyiv in official documents since October 1995. The spelling is used by the United Nations, NATO, some foreign diplomatic missions and a number of media organizations, notably in Canada. The alternate romanizations Kyyiv (BGN/PCGN transliteration) and Kyjiv (scholarly) are also in use alongside Kiev in English-language atlases.

Incidentally, Kyiv and Kiev reflect the divergence of the Ukrainian and Russian languages from the single Old East Slavic form *Kijevъ (spelled Києвъ or Кієвъ). According to the account in the Primary Chronicle, the city is named after Kyi (Кий), who is said to have founded the city with his brothers Shchek and Khoryv, and their sister Lybid'.

Some proponents of the spelling Kyiv take exception with the use of Kiev as reflecting imposed Russification in Ukraine, and consider it inappropriate since the country's independence in 1991.

External links

Official website of Kiev Oblast Administration
/ Wormwood Forest - a commercial site, however, containing free-access Chernobyl-related maps and photogallery

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