Ukrainians (other)

Ukrainians ( uk, Українці, Ukraintsi, ) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine. They are the seventh-largest nation in Europe. The native language of the Ukrainians is Ukrainian. The majority of Ukrainians are Eastern Orthodox Christians.

While under the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, and then Austria-Hungary, the East Slavic population who lived in the territories of modern-day Ukraine were historically known as Ruthenians, referring to the territory of Ruthenia, and to distinguish them with the Ukrainians living under the Russian Empire, who were known as Little Russians, named after the territory of Little Russia. Cossack heritage is especially emphasized, for example in the Ukrainian national anthem.

Ethnonym

The ethnonym ''Ukrainians'' came into wide use only in the 20th century after the territory of Ukraine obtained distinctive statehood in 1917. From the 14th to the 16th centuries the western portions of the European part of what is now known as Russia, plus the territories of northern Ukraine and Belarus ( Western Rus) were largely known as ''Rus'', continuing the tradition of Kievan Rus. People of these territories were usually called ''Rus'' or ''Rusyns'' (known as Ruthenians in Western and Central Europe). The period of Old Ukrainian (mid-11th to late 14th century) dates from the same time as the oldest extant Rus' texts and coincides with the rise and fall of Kievan Rus'.

The Ukrainian language is, like modern Russian and Belarusian, a descendent of Old East Slavic. In Western and Central Europe it was known by the exonym "Ruthenian". In the 16th and 17th centuries, with the establishment of the Zaporizhian Sich, names of Ukraine and Ukrainian began to be used in Sloboda Ukraine. After the decline of the Zaporizhian Sich and the establishment of Imperial Russian hegemony in Left Bank Ukraine, Ukrainians became more widely known by Russians as "''Little Russians"'' (''Malorossy''), with the majority of Ukrainian élites espousing Little Russian identity and adopting the Russian language (as Ukrainian was outlawed in almost all contexts). This exonym (regarded now as a humiliating imperialist imposition) did not spread widely among the peasantry which constituted the majority of the population. Ukrainian peasants still referred to their country as "Ukraine" (a name associated with the Zaporizhian Sich, with the Hetmanate and with their struggle against Poles, Russians, Turks and Crimean Tatars) and to themselves and their language as Ruthenians/ Ruthenian.

With the publication of Ivan Kotliarevsky's ''Eneyida'' (Aeneid) in 1798, which established the modern Ukrainian language, and with the subsequent Romantic revival of national traditions and culture, the ethnonym ''Ukrainians'' and the notion of a Ukrainian language came into more prominence at the beginning of the 19th century and gradually replaced the words "Rusyns" and "Ruthenian(s)". In areas outside the control of the Russian/Soviet state until the mid-20th century (Western Ukraine), Ukrainians were known by their pre-existing names for much longer. The appellation ''Ukrainians'' initially came into common usage in Central Ukraine and did not take hold in Galicia and Bukovina until the latter part of the 19th century, in Transcarpathia until the 1930s, and in the Prešov Region until the late 1940s.

The modern name ''Ukraintsi'' (Ukrainians) derives from ''Ukraina'' (Ukraine), a name first documented in 1187. Several scientific theories attempt to explain the etymology of the term. According to the traditional theory, it derives from the Proto-Slavic root *kraj-, which has two meanings, one meaning the homeland as in "''nash rodnoi kraj''" (our homeland), and the other "edge, border", and originally had the sense of "periphery", "borderland" or "frontier region". According to another theory, the term ''ukraina'' should be distinguished from the term ''okraina'': whereas the latter term means "borderland", the former one has the meaning of "cut-off piece of land", thus acquiring the connotation of "our land", "land allotted to us".

In the last three centuries the population of Ukraine experienced periods of Polonization and Russification, but preserved a common culture and a sense of common identity.

Geographic distribution

Most ethnic Ukrainians live in Ukraine, where they make up over three-quarters of the population. The largest population of Ukrainians outside of Ukraine lives in Russia where about 1.9 million Russian citizens identify as Ukrainian, while millions of others (primarily in southern Russia and Siberia) have some Ukrainian ancestry.Ethnic composition of the population of the Russian Federation


The inhabitants of the Kuban, for example, have vacillated among three identities: Ukrainian, Russian (an identity supported by the Soviet regime), and "Cossack". in: Roman Senkus et al. (eds.), ''The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine'', revised and updated content based on the five-volume Encyclopedia of Ukraine (University of Toronto Press, 1984–93) edited by Volodymyr Kubijovyc (vols. 1–2) and Danylo Husar Struk (vols. 3–5). Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) (University of Alberta/University of Toronto). Approximately 800,000 people of Ukrainian ancestry live in the Russian Far East in an area known historically as " Green Ukraine".

In a 2011 national poll of Ukraine, 49% of Ukrainians said they had relatives living in Russia.

According to some previous assumptions, an estimated number of almost 2.4 million people of Ukrainian origin live in North America (1,359,655 in Canada and 1,028,492 in the United States). Large numbers of Ukrainians live in Brazil (600,000),See also Prudentópolis, Brazil. Kazakhstan (338,022), Moldova (325,235), Argentina (305,000), (Germany) (272,000), Italy (234,354), Belarus (225,734), Uzbekistan (124,602), the Czech Republic (110,245), Spain (90,530–100,000) and Romania (51,703–200,000). There are also large Ukrainian communities in such countries as Latvia, Portugal, France, Australia, Paraguay, the UK, Israel, Slovakia, Kyrgyzstan, Austria, Uruguay and the former Yugoslavia. Generally, the Ukrainian diaspora is present in more than one hundred and twenty countries of the world.

The number of Ukrainians in Poland amounted to some 51,000 people in 2011 (according to the Polish Census). Since 2014, the country has experienced a large increase in immigration from Ukraine. More recent data put the number of Ukrainian migrant workers at 1.2 – 1.3 million in 2016.Ukrainian citizens may take up employment in Poland without obtaining a work permit for a maximum period of 6 months within a year on the basis of a declaration of intention to entrust a job to a foreigner. In 2016, over 1.262 million such declarations were issued for Ukrainian national

http://www.bankier.pl/wiadomosc/Milion-Ukraincow-zasililo-polski-rynek-pracy-w-2016-roku-7503408.html]

In the last decades of the 19th century, many Ukrainians were forced by the Tsarist autocracy to move to the Asian regions of Russia, while many of their counterpart Slavs under Austro-Hungarian rule emigrated to the New World seeking work and better economic opportunities. Today, large ethnic Ukrainian minorities reside in Russia, Canada, the United States, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Italy and Argentina. According to some sources, around 20 million people outside Ukraine identify as having Ukrainian ethnicity, however the official data of the respective countries calculated together doesn't show more than 10 million. Ukrainians have one of the largest diasporas in the world.

Origin

The East Slavs emerged from the undifferentiated early Slavs in the Slavic migrations of the 6th and 7th centuries CE. The state of Kievan Rus united the East Slavs during the 9th to 13th centuries. East Slavic tribes cited as "proto-Ukrainian" include the Volhynians, Derevlianians, Polianians, and Siverianians and the less significant Ulychians, Tivertsians, and White Croats.
The Gothic historian Jordanes and 6th-century Byzantine authors named two groups that lived in the south-east of Europe: ''Sclavins'' (western Slavs) and Antes. Polianians are identified as the founders of the city of Kyiv and as playing the key role in the formation of the Kievan Rus state. At the beginning of the 9th century, Varangians used the waterways of Eastern Europe for military raids and trade, particularly the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks. Until the 11th century these Varangians also served as key mercenary troops for a number of princes in medieval Kyiv, as well as for some of the Byzantine emperors, while others occupied key administrative positions in Kievan Rus society, and eventually became slavicized. Besides other cultural traces, several Ukrainian names show traces of Norse origins as a result of influences from that period.

Differentiation between separate East Slavic groups began to emerge in the later medieval period, and an East Slavic dialect continuum developed within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, with the Ruthenian language emerging as a written standard. The active development of a concept of a Ukrainian nation and a Ukrainian language began with the Ukrainian National Revival in the early 19th century. In the Soviet era (1917–1991), official historiography emphasized "the cultural unity of 'proto-Ukrainians' and 'proto-Russians' in the fifth and sixth centuries".

Genetics and genomics

In a survey of 97 genomes for diversity in full genome sequences among self-identified Ukrainians from Ukraine, a study identified more than 13 million genetic variants, representing about a quarter of the total genetic diversity discovered in Europe. Among these nearly 500,000 are previously undocumented and likely to be unique for this population. Medically relevant mutations whose prevalence in the Ukrainian genomes differed significantly compared to other European genome sequences, particularly from Western Europe and Russia. Ukrainian genomes form a single cluster positioned between the Northern on one side, and Western European populations on the other. There was a significant overlap with Central European populations as well as with people from the Balkans. In addition to the close geographic distance between these populations, this may also reflect the insufficient representation of samples from the surrounding populations.

The Ukrainian gene-pool includes the following Y-haplogroups, in order from the most prevalent:

* R1a (43%)
* I2a (23%)
* R1b (8%)
* E1b1b (7%)
* I1 (5%)
* N1 (5%)
* J2 (4%)
* G (3%)
* T (1%)

Roughly all R1a Ukrainians carry R1a-Z282; R1a-Z282 has been found significantly only in Eastern Europe. Chernivtsi Oblast is the only region in Ukraine where Haplogroup I2a occurs more frequently than R1a, much less frequent even in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. In comparison to their northern and eastern neighbors, Ukrainians have a similar percentage of Haplogroup R1a-Z280 (43%) in their population—compare Belarusians, Russians, and Lithuanians and (55%, 46%, and 42% respectively). Populations in Eastern Europe which have never been Slavic do as well. Ukrainians in Chernivtsi Oblast (near the Romanian border) have a higher percentage of I2a as opposed to R1a, which is typical of the Balkan region, but a smaller percentage than Russians of the N1c1 lineage found among Finnic, Baltic, and Siberian populations, and also less R1b than West Slavs.Alexander Varzari, "Population History of the Dniester-Carpathians: Evidence from Alu Insertion and Y-Chromosome Polymorphisms" (2006)
Marijana Peričić et al. 2005
High-Resolution Phylogenetic Analysis of Southeastern Europe Traces Major Episodes of Paternal Gene Flow Among Slavic Populations.

In terms of haplogroup distribution, the genetic pattern of Ukrainians most closely resembles that of Belarusians. The presence of the N1c lineage is explained by a contribution of the assimilated Finnic tribes.

Related ethnic groups

Within Ukraine and adjacent areas, there are several other distinct ethnic sub-groups, especially in western Ukraine: places like Zakarpattia and Halychyna''
"Латвія визнала Голодомор ґеноцидом"
, 16 (according to ''Korrespondent'', Russian edition
"После продолжительных дебатов Сейм Латвии признал Голодомор геноцидом украинцев"
, "more than 10" (according to ''Korrespondent'', Ukrainian edition
"Латвія визнала Голодомор 1932–33 рр. геноцидом українців"

Following the Invasion of Poland in September 1939, German and Soviet troops divided the territory of Poland. Thus, Eastern Galicia and Volhynia with their Ukrainian population became part of Soviet Ukraine. When the German armies invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, those regions temporarily became part of the Nazi-controlled Reichskommissariat Ukraine. In total, the number of ethnic Ukrainians who fought in the ranks of the Soviet Army is estimated from 4.5 million to 7 million. The pro-Soviet partisan guerrilla resistance in Ukraine is estimated to number at 47,800 from the start of occupation to 500,000 at its peak in 1944, with about 50% being ethnic Ukrainians. Of the estimated 8.6 million Soviet troop losses, 1.4 million were ethnic Ukrainians. Victory Day is celebrated as one of ten Ukrainian national holidays.

Historical maps of Ukraine

The Ukrainian state has occupied a number of territories since its initial foundation. Most of these territories have been located within Eastern Europe, however, as depicted in the maps in the gallery below, has also at times extended well into Eurasia and South-Eastern Europe. At times there has also been a distinct lack of a Ukrainian state, as its territories were on a number of occasions, annexed by its more powerful neighbours.

Ethnic/national identity

The watershed period in the development of modern Ukrainian national consciousness was the struggle for independence during the creation of the Ukrainian People's Republic from 1917 to 1921. A concerted effort to reverse the growth of Ukrainian national consciousness was begun by the regime of Joseph Stalin in the late 1920s, and continued with minor interruptions until the most recent times. The man-made Famine of 1932–33, the deportations of the so-called kulaks, the physical annihilation of the nationally conscious intelligentsia, and terror in general were used to destroy and subdue the Ukrainian nation. Even after Joseph Stalin's death the concept of a Russified though multiethnic Soviet people was officially promoted, according to which the non-Russian nations were relegated to second-class status. Despite this, many Ukrainians played prominent roles in the Soviet Union, including such public figures as Semen Tymoshenko.

The creation of a sovereign and independent Ukraine in 1991, however, pointed to the failure of the policy of the "merging of nations" and to the enduring strength of the Ukrainian national consciousness. Today, one of the consequences of these acts is Ukrainophobia.

Biculturalism is especially present in southeastern Ukraine where there is a significant Russian minority. Historical colonization of Ukraine is one reason that creates confusion about national identity to this day. Many citizens of Ukraine have adopted the Ukrainian national identity in the past 20 years. According to the concept of nationality dominant in Eastern Europe the Ukrainians are people whose native language is Ukrainian (an objective criterion) whether or not they are nationally conscious, and all those who identify themselves as Ukrainian (a subjective criterion) whether or not they speak Ukrainian.

Attempts to introduce a territorial-political concept of Ukrainian nationality on the Western European model (presented by political philosopher Vyacheslav Lypynsky) were unsuccessful until the 1990s. Territorial loyalty has also been manifested by the historical national minorities living in Ukraine. The official declaration of Ukrainian sovereignty of 16 July 1990 stated that "citizens of the Republic of all nationalities constitute the people of Ukraine."

Culture

Due to Ukraine's geographical location, its culture primarily exhibits Eastern European influence as well as Central European to an extent (primarily in the western region). Over the years it has been influenced by movements such as those brought about during the Byzantine Empire and the Renaissance. Today, the country is somewhat culturally divided with the western regions bearing a stronger Central European influence and the eastern regions showing a significant Russian influence. A strong Christian culture was predominant for many centuries, although Ukraine was also the center of conflict between the Catholic, Orthodox and Islamic spheres of influence.

Languages

Ukrainian (, ''ukraі́nska móva'') is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the only official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses the Ukrainian alphabet, one of many based on the Cyrillic alphabet.

The Ukrainian language traces its origins to the Old East Slavic language of the medieval state of Kyivan Rus. In its earlier stages it was called Ruthenian in Latin. Ukrainian, along with all other East Slavic languages, is a lineal descendant of the colloquial language used in Kyivan Rus (10th–13th century).

While the Golden Horde placed officials in key Kyivan Rus areas, practised forced resettlement, and even renamed urban centers to suit their own language, the Mongols did not attempt to annihilate Kyivan Rus society and culture. The second onslaught began with the destruction of Kyiv by the Golden Horde in 1240. This khanate formed the western part of a great Mongol Empire that had been founded by Genghis Khan in the early 13th century. After the Mongol destruction of Kyivan Rus in the 13th century, literary activity in Ukraine declined. A revival began in the late 18th century in eastern Ukraine with overlapping literary and academic phases at a time when nostalgia for the Cossack past and resentment at the loss of autonomy still lingered on.

The language has persisted despite several periods of bans and/or discouragement throughout centuries as it has always nevertheless maintained a sufficient base among the people of Ukraine, its folklore songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors.

A large portion of citizens of Ukraine speaks Russian. According to the 2001 Ukrainian census, 67.5% of Ukrainians (citizens of Ukraine) and 85.2% of ethnic Ukrainians named Ukrainian as their mother-tongue, and 14.8% named Russian as their mother-tongue. This census does not cover Ukrainians living in other countries.

Religions

Ukraine was inhabited by pagan tribes until Byzantine rite Christianity was introduced by the turn of the first millennium. It was imagined by later writers who sought to put Kyivan Christianity on the same level of primacy as Byzantine Christianity that Apostle Andrew himself had visited the site where the city of Kyiv would be later built.

However, it was only by the 10th century that the emerging state, the Kyivan Rus, became influenced by the Byzantine Empire; the first known conversion was by the Princess Saint Olga who came to Constantinople in 945 or 957. Several years later, her grandson, Prince Vladimir baptised his people in the Dnieper River. This began a long history of the dominance of the Eastern Orthodoxy in Ruthenia (Ukraine).

Ukrainians are predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christians, and they form the second largest ethno-linguistic group among Eastern Orthodox in the world. Ukrainians have their own autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine headed by Metropolitan Epiphanius and in the eastern and southern areas of Ukraine the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate is the most common.

In the Western region known as Halychyna