Ukrainians

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. Among them the most known are Hutsuls, Volhynians, Boykos and Lemkos (otherwise known as Carpatho-Rusyns – a derivative of ''Carpathian Ruthenians''), each with particular areas of settlement, dialect, dress, anthropological type, and folk traditions.

History

Early history

Ukraine has had a very turbulent history, a fact explained by its geographical position. In the 9th century the Varangians from Scandinavia conquered the proto-Slavic tribes on the territory of today's Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia and laid the groundwork for the Kyivan Rus state. The ancestors of the Ukrainian nation such as Polianians had an important role in the development and culturalization of Kyivan Rus state. The internecine wars between Rus princes, which began after the death of Yaroslav the Wise, led to the political fragmentation of the state into a number of principalities. The quarreling between the princes left Kyivan Rus vulnerable to foreign attacks, and the invasion of the Mongols in 1236. and 1240. finally destroyed the state. Another important state in the history of the Ukrainians is Kingdom of Ruthenia (1199–1349).

The third important state for Ukrainians is Cossack Hetmanate. The Cossacks of Zaporizhia since the late 15th century controlled the lower bends of the river Dnieper, between Russia, Poland and the Tatars of Crimea, with the fortified capital, Zaporizhian Sich. Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky is one of the most celebrated and at the same time most controversial political figures in Ukraine's early-modern history. A brilliant military leader, his greatest achievement in the process of national revolution was the formation of the Cossack Hetmanate state of the Zaporozhian Host (1648–1782). The period of the Ruin in the late 17th century in the history of Ukraine is characterized by the disintegration of Ukrainian statehood and general decline. During the Ruin Ukraine became divided along the Dnieper River into Left-Bank Ukraine and Right-Bank Ukraine, and the two-halves became hostile to each other. Ukrainian leaders during the period are considered to have been largely opportunists and men of little vision who could not muster broad popular support for their policies. There were roughly 4 million Ukrainians at the end of the 17th century.

At the final stages of the First World War, a powerful struggle for an independent Ukrainian state developed in the central Ukrainian territories, which, until 1917, were part of the Russian Empire. The newly established Ukrainian government, the Central Rada, headed by Mykhailo Hrushevsky, issued four universals, the Fourth of which, dated 22 January 1918, declared the independence and sovereignty of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) on 25 January 1918. The session of the Central Rada on 29 April 1918 ratified the Constitution of the UNR and elected Hrushevsky president.

Soviet period

During the 1920s, under the Ukrainisation policy pursued by the national Communist leadership of Mykola Skrypnyk, Soviet leadership encouraged a national renaissance in the Ukrainian culture and language. Ukrainisation was part of the Soviet-wide policy of Korenisation (literally indigenisation). The Bolsheviks were also committed to universal health care, education and social-security benefits, as well as the right to work and housing. Starting from the late 1920s with a centrally planned economy, Ukraine was involved in Soviet industrialisation and the republic's industrial output quadrupled during the 1930s.

During 1932–1933, millions of Ukrainians were starved to death by a Soviet regime which led to a famine, known as the Holodomor. The Soviet regime remained silent about the Holodomor and provided no aid to the victims or the survivors. But news and information about what was going on reached the West and evoked public responses in Polish-ruled Western Ukraine and in the Ukrainian diaspora. Since the 1990s the independent Ukrainian state, particularly under President Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian mass media and academic institutions, many foreign governments, most Ukrainian scholars, and many foreign scholars have viewed and written about the Holodomor as genocide and issued official declarations and publications to that effect. Modern scholarly estimates of the direct loss of human life due to the famine range between 2.6 millionFrance Meslè et Jacques Vallin avec des contributions de Vladimir Shkolnikov, Serhii Pyrozhkov et Serguei Adamets
Mortalite et cause de dècès en Ukraine au XX siècle
p.28, see also France Meslé, Gilles Pison, Jacques Valli
France-Ukraine: Demographic Twins Separated by History
''Population and societies'', N°413, juin 2005Jacques Vallin, France Mesle, Serguei Adamets, Serhii Pyrozhkov
A New Estimate of Ukrainian Population Losses during the Crises of the 1930s and 1940s
''Population Studies'', Vol. 56, No. 3. (November 2002), pp. 249–264 (3–3.5 million)
and 12 million although much higher numbers are usually published in the media and cited in political debates.Peter Finn
Aftermath of a Soviet Famine
''The Washington Post'', 27 April 2008, "There are no exact figures on how many died. Modern historians place the number between 2.5 million and 3.5 million. Yushchenko and others have said at least 10 million were killed." As of March 2008, the parliament of Ukraine and the governments of several countries, including the United States have recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide.Sources differ on interpreting various statements from different branches of different governments as to whether they amount to the official recognition of the Famine as Genocide by the country. For example, after the statement issued by the Latvian Sejm on 13 March 2008, the total number of countries is given as 19 (according to ''Ukrainian BBC
...