Kirovohrad Oblast (Ukrainian: Кіровоградська область, romanized: Kirovohradska oblast), also known as Kirovohradshchyna (Ukrainian: Кіровоградщина), is an oblast (region) in central Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Kropyvnytskyi. Its population is 903,712 (2022 estimate).[2] It is Ukraine's second least populated oblast, behind Chernivtsi.
The area of the province is 24,600 square kilometres (9,500 sq mi).
The city of Dobrovelychkivka is the geographical center of Ukraine.
History
In the 1800s, majority of the landed was owned by the noble Skarzynski family.[5] They played a large role in the development of the region. An emphasis was placed on the development of its agriculture and the Skarzynskis opened a school in Migeya dedicated to this.[6]
The oblast was created as part of the Ukrainian SSR on January 10, 1939 out of the northern raions of Mykolaiv Oblast. In 1954, the oblast lost some raions to the newly created Cherkasy Oblast, but later that year received its western raions from the Odesa Oblast.
On 20 June 2018, the Committee on State Building, Regional Policy and Local Self-Government of the Ukrainian parliament backed the proposal to rename Kirovohrad Oblast to Kropyvnytskyi Oblast.[9] In February 2019, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine declared constitutional the bill on renaming Kirovohrad Oblast to Kropyvnytskyi Oblast.[10][11] The renaming was supported by the local Oblast Council in March 2021.[12][13] The process then stalled in the parliament, with the oblast council asking the Verkhovna Rada to speed up the process in September 2022.[14]
Note: Asterisks (*) Though the administrative center of the rayon was housed in the city/town that it was named after, cities do not answer to the rayon authorities only towns do; instead they were directly subordinated to the oblast government and therefore were not counted as part of rayon statistics.
Demographics
Language
According to the 2001 Ukrainian census, Ukrainian was the mother tongue of 88.9% of the population, for 10.0% it was Russian, and for 1.1% it was another language.
According to a survey "Is the language (ir)relevant?" (Ukrainian: "Мова (не) на часі?"), which took place in Kirovohrad Oblast from 12 to 22 October 2023, 96.7% of respondents named Ukrainian as their mother tongue, while 2.6% named Russian as their mother tongue. In everyday life, 66.4% of respondents spoke Ukrainian, 29.4% spoke Surzhyk, and 3.4% spoke Russian.[16]
Age structure
0-14 years: 14.3% (male 72,646/female 68,970)
15-64 years: 68.7% (male 324,698/female 355,058)
65 years and over: 17.0% (male 55,718/female 111,666) (2013 official)
Median age
total: 41.2 years
male: 37.7 years
female: 44.5 years (2013 official)
Nomenclature
Most of Ukraine's oblasts are named after their capital cities, officially referred to as "oblast centers" (Ukrainian: обласний центр, translit.oblasnyi tsentr). The name of each oblast is a relativeadjective, formed by adding a feminine suffix to the name of the respective center city: Kirovohrad was the former name of the center of the Kirovohrads’ka oblast’ (Kirovohrad 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 Kirovohrad Oblast, Kirovohradshchyna.
"Main". Official web-site of the Kirovohrad Oblast State Administration (in Ukrainian). Archived from the original on 13 August 2006. Retrieved 7 April 2014.
Ukraine
903,712
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