Kysyliw (Киселів), Kitsman Raion, Chernivtsi Oblast
Village of "Kisseleu", circa 1900 from Gemeindelexikon Gazette
The village of Kysyliw (or Kysyliv) is located about 45 km northwest of Chernivtsi and 23 km from the district center at Kitsman. Archaeological excavations have found traces of many earlier settlements in this location – from the Bronze Age (second millennium BC), the Chernyakhov culture (2 nd to 5th century AD) and some from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The first written mention of the village dates to the early 17th century when it appears on a map compiled by the French engineer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan and also in a legal decree from March 4, 1652 concerning the estate of Havrylash Mateiash where it is determined the village would become the property of his daughter Oleksandra. The ownership of the village would pass from one lord to another throughout the next century and the demands on the serfs increased. For the period around 1840 the village was divided between two landlords: Ivan and Konstantin Zotta. Every year the peasants were required to give Ivan 79 chickens, 79 measures of woven cloth and 79 loads of wood in addition to 125 working days. Konstantin took even more. The Zottas were not entirely unconcerned with their serfs – they funded the construction of the Church of St. Nicholas which still stands in the village.
Serfdom officially ended in 1848 but the exploitation of the peasants continued. In Kysyliw in 1867, 156 peasants and small landholdings while 39 had no land at all. The landlords also claimed ownership of the forests and pastures with the peasants having to pay for their use. The people of Kysyliw attempted to regain this land through the court system but the case they started in 1867 dragged on for most of the century and ended in a loss. Very few peasants won court cases. An Austrian gazette compiled around 1900 shows the landlords of Kysyliw owned 1188 hectares while the over two thousand villagers combined for only 1133 hectares. One way the peasants sought to escape this life was through emigration with 23 villagers leaving in 1899, 43 in 1900 and a total of more than 400 leaving by the start of the First World War. In 1914 the village was the scene of fierce fighting between the Hungarian and Russian armies and a monument in the village commemorates the fallen of the Hungarian Army.
The first three-class school in the village was established in 1897 with three teachers. There were 382 children of school age, but only 284 attended. Following the First World War when Bukovina became part of Romania the speaking of Ukrainian was banned as part of the program of forced Romanization. World War Two saw the Red Army occupy the region in 1940 with the people of Kysyliw greeting the soldiers with bread and salt. The Soviet government established free schools and committed substantial funds to the region. In the summer of 1941 the village fell under Nazi rule. The head of the village council was executed along with 46 other people on the night of June 29. Another 114 were forcibly taken to work in Romania and Germany. The village was again liberated by the Soviets on March 23, 1944 and 464 people from the village enlisted into the Red Army. 164 would not return home.
Local History (in Ukrainian) - this site compiles village histories for many of the villages in Bukovina. For each there are sections covering history, education, spirituality, sports, culture, traditions, etc. Much of the information here comes from the Google translation of those pages.
Commerce in the country : a land use and structural history of the Luzan grocery store - part of this history deals with a family that came from Kysyliw so there is some background on the village.
Kitsman Raion website (in Ukrainian) - covers most of the villages in the Kitsman raion.
Microfilms of Church Records (Births, Marriages, Deaths) - these are the films available through the Family History Library for the village covering the years 1841 to 1933.
1911 Map (1:75000 scale) - part of the "Spezialkarte der Osterreichisch" set of maps digitized and available online through the New York Public Library. "Kisseleu" is located near the bottom of this page, just right of the center.