Why do 20 million Ukrainians live in 46 different countries of the world?
Every nation has its diaspora. But if you take into account that there are only 37 million native Ukrainians living in Ukraine, some sort of conclusion has to be made: We are dealing with an unusual phenomenon here. And like all unusual phenomena, the reasons for Ukraine's large diaspora are multiple and complex. Therefore, I would like to start off with some simple anecdotal evidence.
In the city of Surgut in inhospitable Siberia, Russians and Ukrainians have erected a unique sculpture - a memorial to Ukrainian Varenyky. So what are Varenyky and why have they been given such an honor?
Ukrainian Varenyky is a simple culinary product made from a round piece of dough stuffed with any number of fillings, which is boiled in water before serving. One popular recipe is Varenyky stuffed with fresh cherries with honey poured over the top - a dessert that could tempt the most selective of gourmets.
Ukrainian Varenyky and the legendary Borsch are probably responsible for the fact that a third of Russia's elite and famous in Moscow is married to Ukrainians. The oil city of Surgut is half populated with Ukrainians. For them, the monument to Varenyky is explained by nostalgia on the part of Ukrainian citizens and gratitude on behalf of the Russian ones.
Of course, Ukrainians deserve gratitude for more than just their culinary contributions - they should be thanked for the fact that they survived. Their enemies and ill-wishers have been wiping them out for more than 700 years, beginning with the Tatar-Mongol invasion in the early 13th century. All of Ukraine's neighbors have always thought that this country has too many Ukrainians in it. In the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, agrarian reform robbed many a peasant of his land, but for some reason Ukrainian peasants suffered the most - especially in western and to a lesser extent central Ukraine. Therefore, of all the European nations, only Ukraine underwent such a large-scale emigration of workers, which lasted several decades into the 20th century.
Ukrainian peasants in the USA, Canada, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Australia uncomplainingly set themselves to the most difficult of jobs: growing grain, including for export. Their children, having received a higher education, went on to build plants and factories. They whitewashed their homes with lime, planted flower gardens and, finally, cooked Varenyky - using local fruits of course. Now some of their children no longer know how to cook Varenyky and only the most stubborn still know the Ukrainian language. Here we have a typical example of economic emigrants.
Some Ukrainians who settled in the West eventually achieved high public notoriety.
However, Ukrainian economic emigration to Russia stands out in sharp contrast to another reason why so many Ukrainians left their homeland: forced emigration. Economic emigration has significantly Ukrainianized many regions of Siberia. For example, without Ukrainian workers and specialists in oil and gas in the Tumen Territory (where Surgut is located), production would drop by 50%. Almost 600,000 ethnic Ukrainians live in Tumen.
Unfortunately, almost all other Ukrainian immigrants in the former Soviet Union were branded as forced laborers - or the slightly softer variant - forced migrants. At the second half of the 18th century, Russian empress Catherine the Second forced former Dnipro Cossacks to resettle to the foothills north of the Caucasus on the Kuban River, after having destroyed their Zaporizhian Sich fortress. Thus, Ukrainian Cossacks became the front line of attack against the rebellious Chechens and other Caucasian tribes. Today, the Kuban Cossacks comprise a peaceful Ukrainian diaspora in the Krasnodar Territory.
At the beginning of the 20th century, under Czar Nicholas the Second, the far east was also tamed by mostly Ukrainian peasants, who like the Kuban Cossacks had been forced to resettle. This huge stretch of land, including the Maritime Territory, Khabarovsk, Kamchatka Peninsula, Sakhalin Island and Amur Region comprised 2 million square kilometers of rugged territory. Forced off their land, the Ukrainian peasants made their way to their next "permanent residence" on their own horses and wagons over the course of several years.
During the Stalinist period, the technique of forced migration was improved upon with the unexpected evacuations of entire nations. In 1944, the Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians met such a fate. The latter, who were labeled fascist traders (primarily western Ukrainians, who had never been part of the Russian empire) or Kulaks (private and usually successful landowners) were rooted from their lands over several years. Their children and grandchildren ended up creating a Ukrainian diaspora from the White Sea and Kola Peninsula (in the north west of Russia) to Kolyma in the far east.
Even after Stalin, the communist Kremlin saw Ukraine as a land of regular planned recruitment. During the intensive industrialization of the Asiatic part of the Soviet Union, the Soviet authorities employed so called "Komsomol trips", by which millions of Ukrainian young people were sent to man the new plants being built in the east. They also built railroads and canals. As a rule, these forced volunteers ended up getting stuck there permanently. They formed large Ukrainian diasporas in Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Now that these former Soviet republics are independent states, the number of countries with Ukrainian diasporas has increased.
At the same time that Ukrainians were being sent to Northern and Eastern Russia, ethnic Russians were moving into Ukraine. This started in imperial times and continued until just recently. One after the other, favorites of the Czar's family arrived in the sparsely populated areas of southern Ukraine accompanied by serfs from their former holdings in central Russia. During Soviet times, Ukraine was a popular place for former military personnel, who had greater mobility than the average citizen, to settle down and start families. Finally, the tragic famine in central Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 together with the industrial boom in the eastern part of the country - as unrelated as they seem at first - succeeded in further changing the population balance in favor of the new Russian immigrants.
Today, we know that about eight million ethnic Russian live in Ukraine. They all consider themselves native inhabitants of the country. Exactly how many Ukrainians live in Russia is still not known - quotes of anywhere from 6to 20 million have been heard. The statistical blank can be explained by years of repression during forced migration and the resulting aversion of Ukrainians to non-Russian identity for the sake of their own safety. However, in Siberia and Central Asia, the otherness of the Ukrainian village perseveres in its foreign environment: The whitewashed walls, the flower gardens and the Ukrainian dishes. Apparently, this is the way the sturdiness of the Ukrainian spirit manifests itself.
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