The Great Meadow () was an extensive Black Sea lowland area on the Dnipro and the Kinska Rivers to the south of Khortytsia Island that consisted of a system of rivers, reed beds, swamps, flooded forests, and meadows. The Great Meadow landscape embodies the concept of Motherland for Ukrainians. Surrounded by the Pontic–Caspian steppe, it was around wide and long.

The area that emcompassed the Great Meadow has been inhabited since the Bronze Age. The Scythians, who flourished during the 4th century BC, were followed by the nomadic tribes of the Sarmatians, Iazyges, Roxolani, and Yamnaya. In 16th–18th centuries, it was inhabited by the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who were protected from external threats by the dense forests and intricate waterways. Six of their eight Sichs were located on its northern border.

The Ukrainian academic Stephen Rudnitsky recognized the Great Meadow ("Veliki Luh") as the hunting grounds for the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and considered its landscape to be "a labyrinth of flat forest and reed-covered alluvial islands, river branches, old river beds, lakes and swamps." Minerals from the Dnieper Lowland flowed through the Great Meadow and accumulated on the shores of the Dnieper-Bug estuary. The Zaporozhian Sich depended on the Great Meadow for sustenance.

After the Zaporizhzhian Sich was destroyed in 1775 by the order of Catherine the Great, the Great Meadow was divided up between her closest nobles, and became fully integrated into the Russian Empire. From that period until the end of the First World War, farmers and landowners extracted as much profit as possible from the area. From the 1920s much of the Great Meadow became collective farmland; only 20% of the area remained as forest by the 1950s. The creation of the Kakhovka Reservoir in 1956 caused irreversible damage to what remained of the original landscape. The reservoir was destroyed in June 2023 during the Russo-Ukrainian War, after which tributaries of the Dnipro, as well as islands and Cossack tracks reappeared. Hydrologists and engineers support the future reconstruction of the reservoir, but ecologists, historians, and archaeologists do not.

The original Great Meadow was the most prominent natural forest in the steppes of Ukraine. It was an important feeding area for migrating birds, and was inhabited by wild pigs, martens, and wolves. The creation of the reservoir in the 1950s led to the local loss or near-extinction of plants, and fundamentally changed the hydrology of the lower Dnipro. Since the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, a vast new ecosystem has reappeared. Similar to the Great Meadow's original landscape of alternating strips of woodland with meadows and swamps, it is a phenomenon that provides an opportunity for the development of forest ecosystems in river valleys to be studied in depth.

Geography and ecology The Great Meadow as it appears on Schubert's 19th-century maps:

The Great Meadow was located on the Black Sea Lowland and surrounded by the Pontic–Caspian steppe. It was around wide and long. It originally consisted of a system of interconnected rivers and tributaries of the Dnipro, reed-covered lakes and swamps, meadows, shrubs, and, in some places, high sandbanks.

The Ukrainian Shield formed the bedrock of the Great Meadow 1.9–2 billion years Before Present (BP). Volodymyr Kubijovyč indicated the Great Meadow formed within depressions in the shield, and on crystalline massif slopes. Both the banks of the Dnipro were forested. The Great Meadow was covered with floodplains and forests containing aspen, alder, willow, and oak. Ancient oak trees grew on those islands that rarely flooded. As the eastern steppes had little or no water, and a lack of shelter for animals, the Great Meadow was abundantly inhabited by hares, foxes, deer, wild pigs, martens, and wolves. Tarpans (free-ranging horses) lived on . The Great Meadow was the most prominent natural forest in the steppes of Ukraine, that was an important feeding area for migrating birds. The trees provided shelter for birds, who were preyed upon by falcons, kites, and eagles.

The Greek historian Herodotus wrote of the Dnipro in the 5th century BC:

In the 5th4th centuries BC, the area experienced regular droughts. Rivers levels reduced, and the tributaries of the Dnipro became very shallow. A thousand years later, frequent precipitation acted to raise river levels again, and peat bogs and humus were created.

Etymology The Russian word is equivalent to the Ukrainian (feminine, plural – ), or . The word describes an area of grassland along a river that is periodically flooded. A separate word——was used in Ukrainian, distinct from the concept of , to describe a regularly-flooded forest. The term came to mean an ancient floodplain forest that surrounded a Cossack stronghold (sich).

History The Great Meadow has been inhabited since ancient times, with archaeological finds dating back to the Bronze Age, the Scythian period, and the Kievan Rus'. It is a landscape that embodies the concept of Motherland for Ukrainians. The landscape is particularly notable due to its historical association with the Cossacks. The Ukrainian scientist has written that the steppes, the Wild Fields, and the Great Meadow—"lowlands covered with grassy and woody vegetation, intersected by rivers flowing in different directions, bays, estuaries, channels, numerous major and minor lakes, overgrown with tall impassable reeds."—all featured predominately in the lives of the Zaporizhian Cossacks, observing that the wetlands provided them with both game, timber, and fodder for their animals.

Early settlers

The peoples of the Yamnaya and Kemi Oba cultures occupied the region around the Great Meadow from about 3700 BC to 2200BC. The metropolis of Scythia, which flourished during the 6th to 4th centuries BC, was located in what is now modern Kamianka-Dniprovska. The Scythians controlled the Dnipro trade route, and taxed the goods that passed through lands they controlled. According to Herodotus, they flourished during the 4th century BC. The kurgans (tumuli) of Scythian rulers such as at , , and in Dnipro's lowlands are dated from this period. In the 3rd to 1st century BC, the nomadic Sarmatians, Iazyges, and Roxolani ousted the Scythians.

The 14th-century Kuchuhurske settlement, the largest known settlement of the Golden Horde on the Dnipro, and generally identified as , was located in the Great Meadow. In 1374, after a drought led to famine throughout the region, Mamai's forces left the Great Meadow and resettled in Crimea.

Zaporozhian Cossacks

In 16th–18th centuries, the Great Meadow was one of the most important areas of the Zaporozhian Sich. It is nowadays considered to be "an inclusive part of the formation of the modern Ukrainian ethnos". The historian Serhii Plokhy has written that it was Cossack lands that provided modern Ukraine with its language and its name.

In contrast to the surrounding dry steppe, the Great Meadow was permanently inhabited by the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who called it ('Father'). The southern part of the Great Meadow was called by the Cossacks, probably because of the Bazavluk River. According to Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan, the French-Polish cartographer who produced the 1648 General Map of Ukraine, the Zaporozhian Cossacks recruited from peasants escaping their overlords:

The Great Meadow provided more favourable conditions for settlers than the steppe, and by 1774, over 100,000 Cossacks lived in the Great Meadow. The area was used for agriculture, raising livestock, and as a source of wood, and the dense forest served to protect the Cossacks from external threats. Honey was abundant, and a lot of honey and beeswax was exported.

The Cossacks were the first Europeans to plant forests, which they planted as a means of defence. Their territory was a militarily sensitive zone that bordered the Crimean Khanate—from the 1650s until up to the beginning of the reign of Peter the Great (1682), their light cavalry supported the Russian army. Remaining in their own lands, they were better suited to fight the Tatars, who campaigned on horseback, and so shunned the rivers, lakes and swamps of the Great Meadow, to avoid becoming lost. Beauplan described how the Zaporozhian Cossacks were able to use an alternative river route to enter the Sea of Azov when the Dnipro estuary was blocked by the Ottomans. A long track along the entire length of the Great Meadow was probably only used when the rivers were ice-covered—in summer, deep rivers were a much more convenient as a means of transport.

Six of the eight Sichs were located on the banks of the Dnipro, which former the northern border of the Great Meadow:

Tomakivka Sich, established during the late 16th century. Bazavluk Sich (15931638), a large base situated on Bazavluk Island. It was destroyed by troops led by the Polish Hetman Mikołaj Potocki. Mykytyn Sich, where the 17th-century commander Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the Cossacks to attack the Poles.

Chortomlyk Sich (1652–1709), became prominent during the time of Ivan Sirko, who resided here from 1663. Peter the Great ordered that the sich be destroyed, following the Cossacks' alignment with Ivan Mazepa. In 1654 they recognized Alexis of Russia as their military protector and their hetman pledged his full allegiance to the tsar, in exchange for recognition of certain rights. Kamianka Sich (1709–1711 and 1728–1734), the only Sich whose features, including the council square, the treasury, workshops, houses, shops, and a tavern, have surviving remains. After the Chortomlyk Sich was destroyed, the Cossacks fled to the , where the khan Devlet II Giray allowed them to build the Kamianka Sich. The Cossacks became a client society of the Crimean Khanate, but their loyalty towards Russian Orthodoxy repelled them from serving as vassals of the Khanate. The Oleshky Sich (1711–1728) was built outside the Great Meadow by Cossacks fleeing from the Kamianka Sich, razed by Muscovite troops in May 1711. Oleshky was within the territory of the Crimean Khanate, and Devlet II Giray initially welcomed them and treated them mildly. However, his successor imposed more burdens and restrictions on the Cossacks. Eventually, pro-Muscovite Samara Cossacks plundered and razed the Oleshky Sich in May 1728. The Chortomlyk Sich was briefly resettled until spring 1730, when Cossacks moved back to the Kamianka Sich. Nova Sich (1734–1775), built with the permission from the prominent Cossack . At one time it was fortified with an tall earth rampart. In 1733 the khan ordered the Cossacks into Poland to support the newly-elected Polish king Stanisław I Leszczyński, but they instead reached an agreement with the Russians, and built a new base at Nova Sich. At this time their territory stretched on both sides of the Dnipro, bordered by the rivers Southern Bug, Kalmius, and Konka. It was divided into five palankas, with military administrators being elected by the representatives of about 15,000 men. The Russians avoided interfering within Cossack lands, preferring to monitor the Cossacks from fortified outposts. They treated them as reserves in the event of another Ottoman war, and a frontline defence against Tatar raids. After 1775, when Peter Tekeli destroyed the Zaporizhzhia Sich by the order of Catherine the Great, the Great Meadow slowly became integrated into the Russian Empire.

19th century and early 20th century After the abolition of the Zaporozhian Sich, the area was divided between the nobles closest to the Russian court, and German farmers were brought in to work on the land. The historian Adrian Kashchenko, writing in 1917, noted that: