Russian ethnics that were put there by Soviets after WWII, and the Ukraine is 78% Ukrainian stock (there are also Muslim Tatars in the Crimea who don’t want to be part of the Russian Federation).
Yes, josie L. There was also forced Russian resettlement into Ukraine even before WW2. The 1926 Soviet census showed there were 31 million Ukrainians in the USSR. The 1937 census (hidden by Stalin to hide the incredible decimation of Ukrainians during the genocidal Holodomor Famine and anti-Ukrainian purges and only recently declasified), showed only 26 million Ukrainians. Thus a direct loss of five million Ukrainian souls at the very least, a third of them starving children, over these 11 years (1926-1937). During the exact same 11 years, the ethnic Russians in in the USSR increased by 23%.
No wonder Stalin had the 1937 census banned; I don’t even know if he shot the census takers. After the Holodomor Famine (1932-33), Soviet Ukraine was covered by empty villages, death by starvation all around. As Robert Conquest made clear in his pioneering Harvest of Sorrow, these areas were repopulated by settlers from Soviet Russia.
It also marked the end of any pretense of Kremlin internationalism, and the Kremlin embarked upon a vigorous (and at times lethal, literally) campaign to Russify Ukraine and make the Ukrainian language and culture be marginalized if not put down. Ukraine’s Autocephalous Orthodox Church and later Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church were all forced to join the Russian Orthodox basically at the point of a gun. Many of the Russian re-settlers took pride in never having to utter a single word in Ukrainian which they looked down upon, even though they were living in the land. It’s a tragic story.
I know wikipedia is not perfect but “Russification in Ukraine” does some of the explaining:
*In the Tsarist Russian Empire, in 1862, all Ukrainian Sunday schools, numbering over 100 at the time, were abolished and proscribed. In 1863, minister of internal affairs Petr Valuyev issued the so-called Valuev Circular, in which he stated that *
the Ukrainian language never existed, doesn’t exist, and cannot exist. **
In Soviet times, Russification policy was more intense in Ukraine than in other parts of the Soviet Union
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification_of_Ukraine
p.s. last week Lviv in western Ukraine, which is always portrayed as the hotbed of Ukrainian nationalism, a full day was declared Russian Language Day, news, papers (even nationalist ones), all in the Russian language. Unfortunately, proclaiming a full day of Ukrainian language in Russophone Donetsk let’s say on the other hand would be more hard. One language has historically been repressed, the other, Russian, is not under any threat of vanishing in Ukraine, believe me. One can just look at the numbers of periodicals in Russian in Ukraine.
In any event this whole issue is not Ukrainian vs Russian speaking; it’s predominantly: do you wish to live in a rule of law state, or under a corrupt regime supported by the Kremlin like Yanukovych’s. This division crosses linguistic and generational lines, and probably is best understood as people with a Sovietized mindset versus Ukrainians without one. Homo Sovieticus (i.e. protect Lenin statues, listen to the Kremlin) remains a big problem in Ukraine. And Yanukovych is Homo Sovieticus, and Putin’s background and makeup is Homo Sovieticus (laws curbing freedom of assembly, press, a strong secret police body modeled on Soviet secret police leaders, blaming everything on the West).