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Revision as of 15:33, 10 May 2007
Russians form the second biggest ethnic group in Ukraine, forming more than 30% of the population. Ukraine is the secound country with the most significant Russian population after Russia.
Historic Background
Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians together formed the medieval East Slavic nation Rus'. They were split into differenet people when their state Kievan Rus' was mostly occupied by other people. The separation was what created the difference between the three groups, and Rus' breaking into three people.
Russian Empire period
The historical Ukraine was actually a country consisting of parts of a few of todays regions: Poltava Oblast, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and Zaporizhia Oblast. Ukrainians led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky were fighting in a war for independence against Poland. When it became obvious that Ukrainians alone can't win, they started looking for allice. In 1654 Ukraine signed Treaty of Pereyaslav, where it was agreed that Ukraine would accept the tsar's overlordship and become a part of Russia, and thats when first Russians came to live in the regions that priviously formed the historical Ukraine.
Ukrainian SSR
Since the Soviet Union was formed in 1922, Ukraine was a made constituent republic in it (the Ukrainian SSR). While being a Soviet republic, the Ukrainian SSR received regions that were historicaly not hers, and whose population was almost entierly Russian (such as Donetsk, Luhansk, Odessa, and Crimea).
Ukraine
Thought reciving independence from the Soviet Union, Ukraine kept the regions that contained Russian population.
The Ukrainian Goverment tried to "Ukrainize" the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine, but the Ukrainization didn't work.
Politics
Russians in Ukraine support those political groups who agree to give Russians in Ukraine the cultural freedom they request. The party that gets most of the support of the Russians in Ukraine is the Party of Regions, but many also support the Communist Party of Ukraine.
Ralationship with other Ethnic groups
Russians in Ukraine have an alliance with the Jews in Ukraine. Ukrainian Nationalists are known to hate Jews as "co-occupants" of the Russians, and that pushed theJews and Russians in Ukraine to Unite. Russians in Ukraine also have an alliance with the Ukrainians that live in East and South Ukraine, who are mostly Russian-speaking, and culturaly see themselves in a slavic brotherhood with russians.
Russians in Ukraine see the Tatars in Ukraine as their biggest enemies. The enmity beetween the groups goes back to the historic wars between Rus' people and the Mongolo-Tatars, when the Tatars brought chaos to the Russian lands. The Russians see in the Tatars sons of those Tatars who came to Russian, killed its people, occupied the lands and setteled there. The enmity is extremely strong in Crimea, when most of the population is Russian but there is also a group of Tatars.
Another group that Russians don't get along with is the Ukrainians and Polish people living in west-Ukraine. The Russians see in those groups historical agents of the historic Poland that tried to occupie Russian lands. Importent to notice, the Ukrainians living in east and south Ukraine, and many who live in the west of the country don't like Poles to because they see in them occupants of Ukraine who tried to turn Ukrainians into slaves. That fact is another common point, that when added to the "common culture" factor helps the Ukrainians and Russians in east Ukraine to form the alliance.
Culture
- See article: Russian language in Ukraine
Notable Russians from Ukraine
This list is incomplete, you can help by expanding it.
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
- Sergei Prokofiev
- Sergei Alekseyevich Lebedev
- Oleg Antonov
- Alexander Alexandrovich Morozov
- Nikolay Bogolyubov
- Sergey Korolyov (Russian by father, Ukrainian by mother)
- Sergei Bondarchuk
- Kliment Voroshilov
- Yevgeny Petrov
- Mikhail Bulgakov
- Nikita Khrushchev
- Eduard Limonov (Ukrainian by father)