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This article is about Ethnic Russians who live in Ukraine, it has nothing to do with people who have a Russian citizenship and leave in Ukraine but are not Ethnic Russians.

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Russians form the largest ethnic minority in Ukraine. In the 2001 Ukrainian census 8,334,100 identified themselves as ethnic Russians (17.3% of the total population), thereby making up the largest diaspora of the ethnic Russian population.

Geography

Most Russians, live in the East and South of Ukraine, as well as in many cities in the center of the country, as well as with minorities existing in western Ukraine. Crimea, Donbass and Taurida are considered to be home of the largest Russian diaspora.

Historic Background

After the demise of the Kievan Rus' and the centuries of separate histories, the distinct identities of the progenitors to contemporary Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians began to appear from the collective Ruthenian identity.

Growth of Ukrainian identity

Russians and Ukrainians, both Eastern Slavic peoples, shared a common ancestry until the demise of the Kievan Rus in the 13th century. Physically separated by different powers after the Mongol invasion, different identities began to develop as a result. Although the term Ruthenian continued to be used to refer to all three branches of Eastern Slavic peoples by the end of the 19th century, with the rise of the Zaporozhian Cossacks and the Liberation wars of 1648, a separate identity was formed. After their alliance with Tsardom of Russia after the Treaty of Pereyaslav and eventual incorporation of Ukraine into the Russian Empire, attempts were made to incorporate Ukrainians into the Russian nation. The territory of Ukraine was officially referred to as Little Russia and its people Little Russians. While there were successes in the assimilation drive, by and large the Ukrainian separate identity survived, transforming from Ruthenian into Ukrainian.

Other Ruthenian provinces that remained outside Russian Empire, Austrian Galicia, Transcarpathia and Bukovyna had a surge of Russophilia which lasted until the end of the 19th century. However, in the late the 19th and 20th centuries the Ukrainian national sentiment grew in all territories populated by Ukrainians. With the creation of first Ukrainian People's Republic and then the Ukrainian SSR Ukrainians achieved their statehood, albeit limited, and became the dominant ethnic group in the country.

New Russia

At the end of the 18th century, the Russian Empire captured large territories from the former Crimean Khanate. In order to keep them, a systematic colonization of land that became known as New Russia (mainly Crimea, Taurida and around Odessa) began. Migrants from many ethnic groups came to this area, a great portion came from Russia proper. At the same time the discovery of Coal in the Donets Basin also began a large industrialization and influx of workers from other parts of the Russian Empire.

Although Ukrainians made up a notable fraction of the migrants, most of the population became intermixed, and in the policy of Russification the Russian identity dominated over mixed families and communities. Ukrainian separatism was suppressed as the Russian Empire officially regarded Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusians (or Little, Great and White Russians) to be part of a single Russian nation. At the same time because they were considered members of an identical ethnic group there were no restrictions placed on them, unlike on other nationalities (notably Jews and Poles).

The first census of the Russian Empire, conducted in 1897 showed predominance of Ukrainians in the nine south-western Governorates and Kuban. When Central Rada officials were determining the borders of the new Ukrainian state they took the results of the census in regards to the language and religion as determining factors in drawing the borders of the new Ukrainian state. As a result, the ethnographic borders of Uktraine turned out to be almost twice as large as the Cossack Hetmanate incorporated into Russia in the 17 century under Bohdan Khmelnytsky

October Revolution and Ukrainian SSR

Ukraine was a battleground during the Russian Civil War (1918-1922). Although macroscopically Ukraine was fought over by several powers (Austro-Hungary, Germany, Poland); Ukrainian People's Republic, the Anarchist Black Army as well as the Red Army and the White Army. The population of New Russia by large, allied themselves only with the latter two. A large portion of men that made up the armies of Denikin and Wrangel came from New Russian volunteers . The October Revolution also found its echo amongst the extensive working class and two Soviet Republics were formed: Odessa and the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog.

Initially the Bolshevik government treated the Ukrainian People's Republic separately from the Southern and Eastern regions of the country and formed the Ukrainian Soviet People's Republic (USPR) shortly after the Revolution, claiming areas that excluded the Southern and Eastern regions . However because gaining Ukraine was crucial for the Soviet government, and to do so required support of the Ukrainian people. The issues of borders of the future Ukraine was a major one that the Bolsheviks contested with the new national states in the battle for the support of ordinary Ukrainians.

The national republics claimed their borders based on the 1897 census, which would include New Russia, Donbass and other neighbouring provinces. Although de facto few of these states were able to penetrate and rule on those areas, to appease the Ukrainians, the Bolsheviks created the Ukrainian SSR. Thus, with a notable exception of Crimea, many regions with nominally mixed, though Russian-dominated populations, such as were incorporated into Ukraine.

Early Soviet times

After the Red Army victory in 1923, Stalin identified two threats to the still weak Soviet state: Great Power Chauvinism (Russian chauvinism) and separatist nationalism. .

In Ukraine's case both threats came, respectfully, from the south and the east, and the traditional Ukrainian dominated centre and west. This began a policy of Ukrainization, to simultaneously break the remains of the Russian nationalist sentiment and to appease the Ukrainian population, thus recognizing their rights and their dominance of the republic. (See Ukrainization in the UkSSR (1923-1931)).

During this time, many mixed families, were forcibly written as Ukrainians. Many communities of the Russian Orthodox Church were closed and transferred to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Ukrainian language was mandatory for most jobs, and it teaching became compulsory in every school in the republic.

In 1933 the Soviet Union was hit by a massive famine, which became known in Ukraine as Holodomor. From this tragedy several million people died in Ukrainian SSR alone including the Eastern and Southern Urkaine. At this time the Soviet state reversed its Ukrainization policies, forced the Ukrainian SSR to cede some territories to the RSFSR (notably the Shakhty and Taganrog borderland), destroyed the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and emphasized the learning of Russian as the official language as top priority in schools.

Latter Soviet Times

Both the famine, the rapid industrialization, and the rebuilding of the WWII destruction prompted a new wave of migrants from the rest of the Soviet Union to settle in the Southern and Eastern Ukraine, thus increasing the proportion of the Russian speaking population. Near the end of WWII the entire endiginous population of Crimean Tatars was expelled from Crimea, as some of Tatars were accused of collaboration with the Germans. Almost quarter of a million people were exiled to the Central Asia areas . After the ethnic cleansing another influx of mostly Russian settlers replaced the removed Tatars and thus increased the proportion of ethnic Russian population in the Crimea from 47.7% in 1937 to 61.6% in 1993 .

In 1954, Nikita Khrushchev in a controversial and contradictory with respect to acting Soviet law, decision transferred the almost exclusively Russian populated Crimea from the RSFSR to Ukraine increasing the ethnic Russian population of Ukraine by almost a million people .

Ukraine

During the collapse of the Soviet Union Ukraine became a seperate state. Thought becoming a seperate state, Ukraine keept all the terretories she have recived during the Soviet era, and those regions featured a large Russian population.

Politics

In several elections political parties that call for closer ties with Russia received higher percentage of votes in the areas, where ethic Russians and Russian-speaking population predominate. However, according to the census, of all the oblasts, only in Crimea do Russians make up more than 50% of the total population. Such parties, as the Party of Regions, Communist Party of Ukraine and the Progressive Socialist Party are particularly popular in Crimea, Southern and South Eastern regions of Ukraine.

Culture

See article: Russian language in Ukraine

Notes and citations

1. Den - Imperia i my, by Stanislav Kulchitsky, Vol. 9, 26 Jan. 2006. Retrieved on 19 March 2007.
2. "National Factors in Party and State Affairs -- Theses for the Twelfth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Approved by the Central Committee of the Party," URL
3. KM.ru - «Украйна» — не Россия, «Украйна» — это болезнь». by Mikhail Smolin, 14 March 2006. Retrieved on 19 May, 2007.
4. The Stalinist Penal System: A Statistical History of Soviet Repression and Terror
5. Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949
6. Demographic Balance and Migration Processes in Crimea

See also

• Russian language in Ukraine

• Articles lacking sources from May 2007
• Ethnic groups in Ukraine
• Russian diaspora