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Ukrainians (, ) are an East Slavs ethnic group native to Ukraine. Their native tongue is Ukrainian, and the majority adhere to Eastern Orthodoxy, forming the second largest ethno-linguistic community. At around 46 million worldwide, Ukrainians are the second largest Slavs ethnic group after Russians.
Ukrainians have been given various names by foreign rulers, which have included Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Habsburg monarchy, the Austrian Empire, and then Austria-Hungary. The East Slavic population inhabiting the territories of modern-day Ukraine were known as Ruthenians, referring to the territory of Ruthenia; the Ukrainians living under the Russian Empire were known as Little Russians, named after the territory of Little Russia.
The ethnonym Ukrainian, which was associated with the Cossack Hetmanate, was adopted following the Ukrainian national revival of the late 18th century. The Cossacks are frequently emphasised in modern Ukrainian identity and symbolism, such as in the Ukrainian national anthem. Citizens of Ukraine are also called Ukrainians regardless of ethnicity, and many identify themselves as a civic nation.
The Ukrainian language is, like modern Russian and Belarusian, a descendent of Old East Slavic.Yermolenko S. Y. (2000). History of the Ukrainian literary language // Potebnia Institute of Linguistics (NASU). In UkrainianRusanivsky V. M. (2000). History of the Ukrainian language // Potebnia Institute of Linguistics (NASU). In Ukrainian In Western and Central Europe it was known by the exonym "Ruthenian". In the 16th and 17th centuries, with the establishment of the Zaporozhian Sich, names of Ukraine and Ukrainian began to be used in Sloboda Ukraine.Wilson, Andrew. Ukrainian nationalism in the 1990s: a minority faith. Cambridge University Press, 1997. After the decline of the Zaporozhian Sich and the establishment of Russian Empire hegemony in Left Bank Ukraine, Ukrainians became more widely known by Russians as " Little Russians", with the majority of Ukrainian elites 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 Zaporozhian Sich, with the Hetmanate and with their struggle against Poles, Russians, Turks and Crimean Tatars) and to themselves and their language as Rusyns/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 not until the 1930s, and in the Prešov Region not until the late 1940s. "A historic name for Ukrainians corresponding to the Ukrainian rusyny"
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 being the homeland as in " nash rodnoi kraj" (our homeland), and the other being "edge, border"—and originally had the sense of "periphery", "borderland" or "frontier region".; Russian translation: According to another theory, the term ukraina should be distinguished from the term okraina: whereas the latter term means "borderland", the former 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.
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 also live in Brazil (600,000); 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 120 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.
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 Austria-Hungary rule emigrated to the New World in search of work and better economic opportunities. According to some sources in the first decade of the 2000s, around 20 million people outside Ukraine identify as having Ukrainian ethnicity; however, the official data of the respective countries calculated together does not show more than 10 million. In any event, Ukrainians have one of the largest in the world.
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 Kiev, 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 Norsemen 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 the Ukrainian language began with the Ukrainian National Revival in the early 19th century in times when Ruthenians (Русини) changed their name because of the regional name. In the Soviet Union (1917–1991), official historiography emphasised "the cultural unity of 'proto-Ukrainians' and 'proto-Russians' in the fifth and sixth centuries".
A poll conducted in April 2022 by the polling organisation Rating found that the vast majority (91%) of Ukrainians (excluding the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine) do not support the thesis that "Russians and Ukrainians are one people".
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 were 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 European populations on one side, and Western European populations on the other.[6] 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-, in order from the most prevalent:Kushniarevich A, Utevska O (2015) "Genetic Heritage of the Balto-Slavic Speaking Populations: A Synthesis of Autosomal, Mitochondrial and Y-Chromosomal Data"
Roughly all R1a Ukrainians carry R1a-Z282; it 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 neighbours, Ukrainians have a similar percentage of Haplogroup R1a-Z280 (43%) in their population—compare Belarusians, Russians and Lithuanians (55%, 46%, and 42% respectively). Populations in Eastern Europe that 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 Finno-Ugric, 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 Finno-Ugric tribes.
The period of the Ruin in the late 17th century is characterised 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. The Ukrainian leaders during this period are considered largely opportunists and men of little vision who could not muster broad popular support for their policies. At the end of the century, there were roughly 4 million Ukrainians.Ukraine, Orest Subtelny, page 152, 2000
In 1932–1933, millions of Ukrainians were starved to death by the Soviet regime, which led to a famine known as the Holodomor." Ukraine remembers famine horror ". BBC News. 24 November 2007. 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 million,France 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 Vallin 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,Rosefielde, Steven. "Excess Mortality in the Soviet Union: A Reconsideration of the Demographic Consequences of Forced Industrialization, 1929–1949." Soviet Studies 35 (July 1983): 385–409 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 Verkhovna Rada and the governments of several countries, including the United States, have recognised the Holodomor as an act of genocide.
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 (Ukrainian Realm Commissariat). 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 have numbered 47,800 from the start of occupation to 500,000 at its peak in 1944, with about 50% being ethnic Ukrainian. Of the estimated 8.6 million Soviet troop losses, 1.4 million were ethnic Ukrainians.
In 1943, under the command of Roman Shukhevych, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army ( Ukrayins'ka Povstans'ka Armiia, or UPA) began ethnic cleansing. Shukhevych was one of the perpetrators of the Galicia-Volhynia massacres of tens of thousands of Polish civilians. It is unclear to what extent Shuchevych was responsible for the massacres of Poles in Volhynia, but he certainly condoned them after some time and also directed the massacres of Poles in Eastern Galicia. Historian Per Anders Rudling has accused the Ukrainian diaspora and Ukrainian academics of "ignoring, glossing over, or outright denying" Shuchevych's role in this and other war crimes.
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.
Biculturalism is especially present in southeastern Ukraine, where there is a significant Russian minority. Historical colonisation of Ukraine is one reason that creates confusion about national identity to this day. Many citizens of Ukraine have adopted 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."
Comparisons are often made between Ukrainian and Russian, yet there is more mutual intelligibility with Belarusian and a very close lexical distance between the two. Historically, state-enforced Russification saw the Ukrainian language banned as a subject from schools and as a language of instruction in the Russian Empire. The linguistic oppression continued in various ways while Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union; however, the language continued to be used throughout the country, especially in western Ukraine.
However, it was only by the 10th century that the emerging state, the Kievan 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. This began a long history of the dominance of the Eastern Orthodoxy in Ruthenia (Ukraine).
Ukrainians are majority Eastern Orthodox Christians, forming the second largest ethno-linguistic group among Eastern Orthodox in the world. The autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine, headed by Metropolitan Epiphanius, is the most common church; whereas in the small areas of the country, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, who were under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, is more common. The Russian invasion of Ukraine had an impact on the religious identity of some Ukrainians. In the Western region known as Halychyna, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, one of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, has a strong membership. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, there has also been a growth of Protestantism churches (Baptists, Evangelism, Pentecostalism).Adrian Ivakhiv. In Search of Deeper Identities: Neopaganism and Native Faith in Contemporary Ukraine. Nova Religio, 2005. Some Ukrainians are members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and Jehovah's Witnesses. In addition, there are ethnic minorities practising other religions: Crimean Tatars (Islam), and Jews and Karaite Judaism (Judaism).
A 2020 survey conducted by the Razumkov Centre found that majority of Ukrainian populations was adhering to Christianity (81.9%). Of these Christians, 75.4% are Eastern Orthodox (34% of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and 13.8% of the Moscow Patriarchate, and 27.6% are simply Orthodox); 8.2% are Greek Catholics; 7.1% are simply Christians; and a further 1.9% are Protestants and 0.4% are Latin Catholics. As of 2016, 16.3% of the population claims no religious affiliation, and 1.7% adheres to other religions. According to the same survey, 70% of the people of Ukraine declare themselves believers but do not belong to any church; 8.8% identifies with none of the denominations; and another 5.6% identify themselves as non-believers.
Ukraine is often called the "Breadbasket of Europe", and its plentiful grain and cereal resources such as rye and wheat play an important part in its cuisine; essential in making various kinds of bread. Chernozem, the country's black-coloured highly fertile soil, produces some of the world's most flavourful crops.
Popular traditional dishes varenyky (dumpling), nalysnyky (crêpe), Cabbage soup (cabbage soup), nudli (dumpling stew), borscht (sour soup) and holubtsi (cabbage roll). Among traditional baked goods are decorated korovai and paska (Easter bread). Ukrainian specialties also include chicken Kiev and Kyiv cake. Popular drinks include uzvar (kompot), Ryazhenka and horilka. Liquor (spirits) is the most consumed type of alcoholic beverage. Alcohol consumption has seen a stark decrease, although per capita it remains among the highest the world.
Ukrainian folk oral literature, poetry and songs (such as the dumas) are among the most distinctive ethnocultural features of Ukrainians as a people. Religious music existed in Ukraine before the official adoption of Christianity, in the form of plainsong obychnyi spiv or musica practica. Traditional Ukrainian music is easily recognised by its somewhat melancholy tone. It first became known outside of Ukraine during the 15th century as musicians from Ukraine would perform before the royal courts in Poland (later in Russia).
A large number of famous musicians around the world was educated or born in Ukraine, among them famous names like Dmitry Bortniansky, Sergei Prokofiev and Myroslav Skoryk. Ukraine is also the rarely acknowledged musical heartland of the former Russian Empire, home to its first professional music academy, which opened in the mid-18th century and produced numerous early musicians and composers.
Ukrainian dance is often described as energetic, fast-paced and entertaining, and along with traditional Easter eggs ( pysanky), it is a characteristic example of Ukrainian culture recognised and appreciated throughout the world.
Ukraine's national symbols include its flag and its coat of arms.
The national flag of Ukraine is a blue and yellow bicolour rectangle, with the colour fields of the same form and equal size and the colours representing a blue sky above yellow fields of wheat. The flag was designed for the convention of the Supreme Ruthenian Council, meeting in Lviv in October 1848. Its colours were based on the coat-of-arms of the Kingdom of Ruthenia.
The coat of arms of Ukraine features the same colours found on the Ukrainian flag: a blue shield with yellow trident—the symbol of ancient East Slavic tribes that once lived in Ukraine and later adopted by Ruthenians and Kievan Rus rulers.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Linguistic Divisions of Europe in 1914
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