From Sloboda province to Kharkov governorate: the reform of administrative-territorial structure of Sloboda Ukraine in 1780

The present article investigates the implementation of the 1775 provincial reform on the territory of the Kharkiv namestnichestvo (viceroyalty). The provincial reform entailed a restructuring of the entire system of local government. These issues are of particular interest in contact zones, territories with heterogeneous populations, where social structures and administrative units of diff erent historical origins coexisted. One of these is the territory of Sloboda Ukraine, where until the opening of the Kharkiv namestnichestvo in 1780, the uezd division, characteristic of territories occupied by Russian colonization, was combined with the Ukrainian regimental structure that dated back to the second half of the 17th century. On the basis of maps and lists of settlements dating from the 1770s-1780s, the author reconstructed the maps of the administrative division of the territory of Kharkiv namestnichestvo before and after the reform. Before the reform the lands were organized in four regiments ( polks ) and seven districts ( uezds ), all with clearly defi ned boundaries. At the opening of the namestnichestvo , 15 uezds were created; the boundaries changed greatly, but each of the uezd centers preserved a signifi cant part of the land that had been associated with it earlier. The article demonstrates that after the reform, 13 of the 15 uezd towns were former regimental towns and villages. This seems to refl ect the gradual increase in infl uence of the Sloboda Cossack elite, which by this time was seeking recognition of its noble status and becoming the dominant social force in the region.