Which territories did Russia take from Ukraine in the 20th century? Was Belgorod Ukrainian? Why is Ukrainian still spoken in southern Russia? See the material from RBC-Ukraine (news website) below.
In the second year of the full-scale war, the leadership of Russia continues to make attempts to justify its aggressive war against Ukraine using any available means. Propaganda particularly emphasizes manipulation and falsification of history, supposedly to demonstrate the incompetence of the Ukrainian state as an “artificial formation” on the map of Europe.
Starting a dangerous game of border rearrangements, Russia should not forget that it, as a state, emerged during aggressive wars. Many neighbors have long-standing territorial claims against Russia, even if they are not voiced at the state level.
Who created whom
In May 2023, Russian propaganda circulated a video in which the Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, Valery Zorkin, showed French maps from the mid-17th century to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, claiming that Ukraine was supposedly not present on those maps. After examining the map, Putin emphasized that Ukraine supposedly “never existed.”
The fake was quickly exposed. The National Library of France published a map authored by cartographer Guillaume Sanson from the 17th century, which clearly shows territories that are part of modern-day Ukraine. They are labeled as “Ukraine pays des cosaques” (Ukraine, land of the Cossacks), which at that time were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Another one of the most popular and frequently voiced stamps by Russian propaganda is: “Ukraine was invented by Vladimir Lenin when creating the Soviet Union.” Maps, to which they like to refer in Russia, will also help debunk this claim.
In 1917, after the revolution that erupted in the Russian Empire, the country began to gradually fall apart into separate national states. One of these was the Ukrainian People’s Republic. It was recognized in the world by a number of countries, one of which was Soviet Russia.
If we look at the map of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, we will see that its borders encompassed certain territories of present-day Russia. These include parts of the Bryansk, Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, and Rostov regions. Of particular interest are the lands that now stretch along the eastern border between Ukraine and Russia. Historians refer to this territory as Sloboda Ukraine and explain the claims of the Ukrainian People’s Republic to it by the fact that Ukrainians were the most numerous ethnic group there. Moreover, the newly formed republic did not forcibly annex these territories but offered the population the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they wanted to become part of the new state.
The Third Universal, which proclaimed the Ukrainian People’s Republic included a provision: “The final determination of the borders of the Ukrainian People’s Republic concerning the annexation of parts of the Kursk region, Chełm Land, Voronezh region, and neighboring provinces and regions where the majority of the population is Ukrainian, should be established with the consent of the organized bodies.”
Ukrainians settled in Sloboda Ukraine from the second half of the 17th century. The migration was associated with the Cossack uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the subsequent period of Ruin after his death. During the resettlement, several Cossack regiments were formed in these territories. The majority of the population in Sloboda Ukraine identified themselves as Ukrainians, as evidenced by population censuses.
During the struggle for their independence, the Ukrainian People’s Republic and later the Hetmanate of Pavlo Skoropadskyi, who replaced it, did not cease their attempts to gain control over the territory of Sloboda Ukraine. For example, in April 1918, the Ukrainian People’s Republic established Ukrainian authority in Belgorod. However, in December of the same year, Soviet Russia occupied the city and subsequently began to advance into the territory of the Ukrainian Republic.
See also: Ukraine after war: social dimension
Historian Oleksandr Paliy believes that neither the Ukrainian People’s Republic nor Skoropadskyi succeeded in extending and consolidating their influence over the territory of Sloboda Ukraine due to political instability and problems with the army.
“The struggle for the borders of the territories of the states was active, but there were many problems inside the country, in the rear. You need to understand that at that time there was simply no political elite in Ukraine. There was also no army, and there was a great shortage of weapons,” the historian said in a commentary to RBC-Ukraine.
Ukrainian Kuban
After the liquidation of the Zaporozhian Sich in 1775, the Russian government needed to address the issue of the Cossacks, who often rebelled and resisted the Russian Empire. A decision was made in St. Petersburg to resettle the Cossacks to the lands captured from the Turks during the ongoing war, located between the Kuban River and the Sea of Azov. Within a short period of time, approximately 25,000 Ukrainian Cossacks, along with their families, relocated to the Kuban. Ukrainians settled on a territory of 30,000 square kilometers and became part of the newly formed Black Sea Cossack Host. Its main task was to guard the borderline, as it was the edge of the empire at that time.
The tsarist government simultaneously addressed the issues of settling empty territories, protecting its borders, and subjugating the Cossacks.
Despite the efforts of the tsarist authorities to assimilate the Cossacks, they did not sever their connection with Ukraine. After the February Revolution of 1917, a movement for creating their own national state began in the Kuban region. As a significant portion of the region’s population consisted of Ukrainians, the idea of joining the Ukrainian State under Hetman Skoropadsky on federal principles gained popularity among the Cossacks. However, this unification failed to materialize. Subsequently, during the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks gained control over the Kuban and incorporated it into the rest of the territory.
The population census conducted in 1926 revealed that approximately 45.4% of the total population residing in the Kuban region were Ukrainians. During the first decades of the Soviet Union’s existence, the Soviet government implemented a policy known as “korenizatsiya” (indigenization), which aimed to promote the development of culture and language of the indigenous peoples living within the country’s territory. As a result, Ukrainian schools and press began to emerge in the Kuban region, and the cultural life of Ukrainians became more active.
However, as early as 1932, the Soviet government began to tighten its grip. Prohibitions, famine, and repression replaced the policy of Ukrainization. Despite the active promotion of Russification, the population of the Kuban region continued to speak its native language and preserve traditions for a long time. For example, one of the most famous choir ensembles in Russia, the Kuban Cossack Choir, still performs a significant portion of its repertoire in the Ukrainian language.
The Ukrainian language or its local dialect, known as “balachka,” can still be heard in the border regions with Ukraine, such as the Belgorod, Kursk, and Voronezh regions, as well as in the Kuban region.
Divide and conquer
A vivid example of how states exploit the presence of a particular ethnic group in neighboring territories for their own interests is the imperialistic war of the Third Reich. After the successful and unchallenged occupation of Austria, Germany continued its territorial expansion by provoking incidents in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, where a compact German population resided, Germany, under the guise of “protecting its own,” first occupied this region and then the entire country.
One of the justifications for the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the Russian government also claimed to be protecting its citizens and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine, who allegedly was oppressed based on its nationality and language. Following this, there were attempts to create pseudo-republics, armed aggression in the Donbas region, and a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Skillfully utilizing this tactic and understanding the danger it posed to itself, the Russian state has throughout its history sought to impede processes of national consolidation within its territory, resorting to repression, deportations, and forcible assimilation.
After the Bolsheviks gained full control over the territory of present-day Ukraine, the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR dared to raise the issue of revising the borders.
The basis for Ukrainian demands to review the borders was the data from the population census conducted in December 1926. The census revealed that in a number of districts in the Russian Federation, which were part of Sloboda Ukraine, the Ukrainian population dominated or constituted a significant portion. Overall, more than 4.5 million Ukrainians lived compactly in these territories.
All the arguments of the leadership of Soviet Ukraine were rejected by Moscow. Nevertheless, the borders were still redrawn. For example, the city of Taganrog and its surrounding territories, which were previously part of Soviet Ukraine, were decided to be transferred to Soviet Russia. Despite the 1926 population census indicating that Ukrainians constituted 71.5% of the district’s residents in these areas. The eastern Donbas was also decided to be transferred to the RSFSR.
“Russia wanted to divide the Donbas. They did not want it to be fully under the control of even Soviet Ukraine. It was a very important industrial region at that time. In fact, that’s exactly what they did,” says Oleksandr Paliy.
See also: The war for the voice: Ukraine in the awareness of the West
It is noteworthy that over the past 100 years, the ethnic composition of a number of Russian regions, in which Ukrainians held leading positions in percentage terms at the beginning of the 20th century, has changed dramatically. Below is a comparison of the statistics from the census conducted in the USSR in 1926 and the most recent census conducted in the Russian Federation in 2021.
- There were 683,000 Ukrainians in the territory of the present-day Belgorod region, in 1926, which accounted for approximately 42.14% of the total population of the region at that time. According to the 2021 census data, the total number of people identifying themselves as Ukrainians in the same territory was 15,481 individuals, which constituted 1.2% of the total population of the region (who indicated their nationality).
- There were 555,000 Ukrainians in the territory of the present-day Kursk region, according to the 1926 data, which accounted for approximately 19% of the total population of the region at that time. As of the population census in 2021, the number of Ukrainians in the region was 5,780 individuals, or 0.62% of the total population of the region (who indicated their nationality).
- According to the 1926 census, there were 1,079,000 Ukrainians in the territory of the present-day Voronezh region, which accounted for 32.6% of the total population of the region. In 2021, the number of Ukrainians in the region was 13,260 individuals, which constituted 0.61% of the total population (who indicated their nationality).
- The highest decline in the Ukrainian population is observed in the Krasnodar Krai, to which the Kuban region belongs. At the time of the 1926 population census, there were 1,419,000 Ukrainians residing in the Krai, which accounted for nearly half of the total population, specifically 47.2%. It is noteworthy that at that time, the percentage of Russian population in the Krasnodar Krai was lower, standing at 45.2%. However, by the time of the 2021 census, there were 29,317 Ukrainians living in the Krasnodar Krai, or 0.5% of the total population (who indicated their nationality).
According to Oleksandr Paliy, the decline in the number of ethnic Ukrainians in the territory of present-day Russia is associated with the period of repression and famine in the first half of the 20th century in the USSR.
“During the period of repression, there were mass deportations of Ukrainians. They were forcibly resettled from these territories. And another very important factor is the famine. The famine particularly affected the Kuban region. In some villages, thousands of people died simply because their bread was taken away,” noted the historian.
War and a new wave of migration
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as of February 24, 2022, approximately 2.8 million Ukrainians have found themselves on the territory of the Russian Federation. Some have traveled to Russia voluntarily, while others were unable to leave for the controlled territory of Ukraine. However, there are also those whom Russia is forcibly deporting, including children.
Russia’s forced deportation of children from Ukraine has been recognized at various international levels as a war crime and an act of genocide. Because of this, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova.
However, the issues of deportation and migration have not only affected children. In April 2023, Vladimir Putin signed a decree stating that residents of the occupied territories of Ukraine who have not accepted Russian citizenship will be recognized as foreigners and may be expelled from Russia. “Foreigners” will include citizens who resided in the occupied territories on the day of their annexation and expressed a desire to maintain their former citizenship.
Those who have already left for Russia as refugees also face the problem of citizenship. According to human rights organizations, Ukrainians in Russia are being “pushed” to obtain a new passport, as it allows them to receive financial assistance, find a job, and settle in a new place. Thus, the Russian leadership, like a hundred years ago, is trying to assimilate Ukrainians.
The Institute for Demography and Social Studies believes that Ukraine should try to return not only illegally deported children but also those Ukrainians who were forced to flee the war to Russia. Liudmyla Slyusar, a researcher at the Institute, is convinced that this will have a positive impact on the problem of population decline in Ukraine.
“Ukraine had a demographic problem even before the war. The war only exacerbated it. People are dying every day, many are forced to leave their homes and migrate. Therefore, the state must fight for those Ukrainians who left the country not only for Russia. First of all, it is necessary to create safe living conditions for people and improve the economic situation in the country. This way, those who were forced to emigrate will be motivated to return,” the sociologist said in a commentary to RBC-Ukraine.
History shows that Ukraine has failed to build good neighborly relations with Russia. Whether it is a tsarist or Soviet empire, or an allegedly democratic state, Russia has not given up trying to subjugate neighboring countries that strive to live their independent lives.
When starting wars of aggression, Russia always talks about the need to protect its population by destroying other nations. Constantly demanding the protection of the Russian language and culture throughout the globe, Russia bans and eradicates the culture of other peoples who inhabit its own territory or those who live in its neighborhood.
Originally posted by Ivan Kazora on RBC-Ukraine. Translated and edited by the UaPosition – Ukrainian news and analytics website
