The Sloboda Ukraine region was indeed large and images of typically Ukrainian mud huts “surface” far beyond the borders of the Kharkiv province. Statistical data from population censuses only confirm this. According to the 1897 census, 21% of Ukrainians lived in the territory of the Belgorod district of the Kursk province. So villages and settlements with mud huts were a typical picture for the southern districts of the Kursk province in the 19th century, an imprint of this era was left by the talented artist Nikolay Sergeev in the painting “Under Belgorod” in 1890.