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A sloboda ( Russian: слобода́, IPA: [sləbɐˈda]; Ukrainian: слобода́) was a type of settlement in the history of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. The name is derived from the early Slavic word for " freedom" and may be loosely translated as "free settlement". [1]
In the history of Russia, a sloboda was a settlement or a town district of people free of the power of boyars. Often these were settlements of tradesmen and artisans, and were named according to their trade: ямская слобода ( yamshchiks' sloboda: Yamskaya sloboda ), smiths' sloboda, etc. [1]
Often a sloboda was a colonization-type settlement in sparsely populated lands, particularly by Cossacks in Cossack Hetmanate, see " Sloboda Ukraine". Initially, the settlers of such sloboda were freed from various taxes and levies for various reasons, hence the name. Freedom from taxes was an incentive for colonization. [2]
By the first half of the 18th century, this privilege was abolished, and slobodas became ordinary villages, shtetls, townlets, suburbs.
Some slobodas were suburban settlements, right behind the city wall. [1] Many of them were subsequently incorporated into cities, and the corresponding toponyms indicate their origin.
The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary relates that by the end of the 19th century a sloboda was a large village with more than one church, a marketplace, and volost administration, or a village-type settlement of industrial character, where the peasants have little involvement in agriculture. [1]
The term is preserved in names of various settlements and city quarters. Some settlements were named just thus: "Sloboda", "Slobodka" (diminutive form), "Slabodka", "Slobidka" ( Ukrainian).
Similar settlements existed in Wallachia and Moldavia, called slobozie or slobozia. The latter term is also the name of the capital city of Ialomița County, Slobozia, in modern Romania.