Important hromadas existed in Saint Petersburg, Kyiv, Poltava, Chernihiv, Odesa, Ternopil, Lviv, Chernivtsi and Stryi.
An important publication of the Petersburg hromada was the magazine Osnova (Basis) that was published for a short time in 1860s.
Due to student unrest and other revolutionary activity the Russian minister of internal affairs Pyotr Valuev arrested several hromada leaders (Pavlo Chubynsky, Petro Yefymenko and others) and exiled them to Siberia.
As a reaction to the hromada movement, the Russian government issued the well known Ems Ukaz in 1876 prohibiting the use of Ukrainian language.
In 1897 on initiative of Volodymyr Antonovych and Oleksandr Konysky Kyiv hosted a congress of Hromada members, which established the General Ukrainian Non-partisan Democratic Organization.