Ukrainians (,
Ukrayintsi, ) are an
East Slavic ethnic group primarily living in
Ukraine, or more broadly—
citizens of
Ukraine (who may or may not be ethnic Ukrainians). Some 200 years ago and times prior to that, Ukrainians were usually referred to and known as
Rusyny (, commonly translated as
Ruthenians).
A 2002 study found that 57 percent of Ukrainians base their identity upon citizenship, 34 percent by ethnicity and 13 percent on language.
Locations
Spread of Ukrainian language in the beginning of 20th century
Most ethnic Ukrainians live in
Ukraine where they make up over three-quarters of the population. The largest Ukrainian community outside of Ukraine is in
Russia, about 3 million Russian citizens consider themselves ethnic Ukrainians, while millions of others (primarily in
southern Russia and
Siberia) have some Ukrainian ancestry.
There are also almost 2.1 million of people of Ukrainian origin in North America (1.2 million in
Canada and 890,000 in the
United States). Large numbers of Ukrainians live in
Brazil (1,100,000),
Kazakhstan (about 700,000),
Moldova (450,000),
Poland (estimates from 300,000 to 400,000),
Argentina (305,000),
Belarus (estimates from 250,000 to 300,000),
Portugal (100,000),
Romania (estimates from 60.000 to 90.000) and
Slovakia (55,000). There are also Ukrainian diasporas in the
UK,
Australia,
Germany,
Latvia,
Switzerland,
Austria,
Italy,
Ireland,
Sweden and former
Yugoslavia.
Origins
thumb|Kievan Rus (11th c.)thumb|Halych-Volhynia (14th c.)thumb|Cossack Hetmanate (1649 - 1667)thumb| Population of Ukrainians in Ukraine (2001)thumb|Population of those whose mother tongue is Ukrainian in Ukraine (2001)In antiquity, numerous nomadic tribes inhabited the territory of modern
Ukraine. They included
Iranic-speaking
Scythians and
Sarmatians,
Greeks from the Black Sea
colonies,
Thracians from modern-day
Bulgaria and
Romania,
Illyrians from modern day
Albania and former
Yugoslavia, Germanic-speaking
Goths and
Varangians,
Turkic-speaking
Bulgars,
Khazars,
Pechenegs and
Cumans, and the
Crimean
Armenians in the early second millennium AD. However, Ukrainian origins are predominantly
Slavic, while non-Slavic nomads who lived in the steppes of southern Ukraine had little influence on the ancestry of modern Ukrainians.
Gothic historian
Jordanes and sixth-century
Byzantine authors named two groups that lived in the south of Europe:
Sclavins (western Slavs) and
Antes. The Antes are normally identified with proto-Ukrainians. The name
Antes is of Iranic origin and means people living on the borderland. The state of Antes existed from the end of 4th to early seventh century. In the fourth century. the Antes fought against the
Goths. In 375, the Gothic king
Vinitar, facing the Antes, at first experienced defeat but later captured the king of Antes,
Bozh, whom he executed together with his sons and 70 aristocrats. The Goths did not manage to subdue the Antes, since in the same year the Gothic union fell from the attack of the
Huns. From the sixth century the Antes fought
Byzantium and in the sixth and seventh centuries colonised the
Balkan peninsula. From the end of sixth century they fought against the
Avars. The Antes included of several
East Slavic tribes who lived on the territory of today's Ukraine, including the
Polans,
Drevlyans,
Severians,
Dulebes (which later likely became
Volhynians and
Buzhans),
Tiverians, and
Ulichs. The
Ukrainian language is an East Slavic language, and Ukrainian people belong to the same branch of the Slavs as
Rusyns,
Russians (which emerged as vernacular from
Church-Slavic) and
Belarusians.
Slavic tribes inhabited modern-day lands of Ukraine from ancient times, and were dominant by the fifth century AD, founding the city of
Kiev—later capital of a powerful state known as
Kievan Rus'.
Kniaz Volodymyr I of Kiev adopted
Christianity in 988 and proceeded to
baptise the whole Kievan Rus.
Polans played the key role in the formation of the Kievan Rus' state.
Among the native Ukrainian population of the
Carpathians, there are several distinct groups, namely the
Hutsuls,
Volhynians,
Lemkos and
Boykos, each with peculiar area of settlement, dialect, dress, anthropological type and folk traditions. There are a number of theories as for origins each of these groups, the Volhynians with
Romanians or shared a Romance-Latin culture in the 10th century AD, the Lemko with Baltic
Finno-Ugric peoples, some even connecting Boykos with the Celtic tribe of
Boii and Hutsuls with
Uz people of Turkic stock.
It is argued that the oldest known population of Ukraine -
Scythians and
Sarmatians were of Iranian stock. They inhabited Ukraine in 7 b.c. — 3 a.d. Rarity of
hard g sound (use of guttural
gh instead) and absence
f in some dialects (often rendered as
khv in the countryside) in Ukrainian along with some folk traditions (as greeting with bread and salt, houses with straw-roof, popular through history self-designations
Roxolany,
Roxolana,
Sava or
Sevae, and
Savromaty among Ukrainians) is attributed to ancient Scythian language and culture.
Several other minor non-Slavic ethnic groups undoubtedly partially contributed to formation of Central Ukrainian ethnic type. These include a row of Turkic tribes, such as
Chorni Klobuky,
Berendei and
Torks, who were settled along the river
Ros and
Rusava and eventually all being absorbed by Ukrainians. Many Turkic place names in Ukraine as
Karabachyn,
Torets,
Torky,
Berdychiv (lit. "of Berendychi", or
Berendei) remain in these areas.
In
Western Ukraine, ancient
Dacian influences can be traced. From the middle of the first century (the peak period of Dacian society) until early 3 century, the left bank of the upper
Dniester was populated by the Dacian tribe of
Costoboci Transmontani (mentioned in
Geographia of
Ptolemaeus), who were the carriers of
Lipica culture (of
Verkhnya Lypytsya,
Maydan Holohirskyy,
Remezivtsi,
Voronyaky etc.) The Dacian roots of
Lipica culture is evidenced by findings of ceramic types, burning burials, houses analogous to those of Dacians in
Romania.
Costoboci were the most northernmost branch of
Thracodacians and bordered with the carriers of
Przeworsk culture to the north-west (i.e.
Przeworsk culture settlement in
Pidberiztsi near
Lviv),
Zarubintsy culture to the north who were all succeeded by
Chernyakhov culture. It is with
Costoboci was the fight of
Romans against the
Free Dacians in the 2nd century mentioned in different written sources. In the beginning of 3rd century Dacian archeological elements in Upper
Dniester disappear.
So Roman chronicles of the 1st century report that in the
Carpathians there was a Dacian tribe of
Karpi. Karp-At meant mountains of Karpi. From possible
Dacian meaning "mountains" may derive the name of people karpi—those who live in the mountains. At any case, the area of inhabitation of
Free Dacians covered western Ukraine, and besides Costoboci, to the northern Dacians belonged are the
Anarti and
Teurisci. Ukrainian mountaineers
Hutsuls, inhabiting the areas of old land of Free Dacians are often stated as being of Dacian stock. Archeologists also discovered several
Celtic settlements in
Zakarpattia Oblast of south-western Ukraine. There were numerous cases of Jewish conversion to Eastern Orthodox or Catholic faith in Ukraine in medieval and early modern eras, whether forced (during the
Deluge or
Koliyivshchyna) or voluntary. Several Cossack surnames are traced to such converts (see
Jewish Cossacks). Though non-Slavic elements did have some impacts on the Ukrainians, as mentioned above, they are predominantly Slavs.
DNA tests of
Y chromosomes from representative sample of Ukrainians were analyzed for composition and frequencies of
haplogroups. In the Ukrainian gene, pool six haplogroups were revealed: E, F (including G and I), J, N3, P, and R1a1. The major haplogroup in the Ukrainian gene pool,
Haplogroup R1a is thought to mark the migration patterns of the early
Indo-Europeans and is associated with the distribution of the
Kurgan archaeological culture. The second major haplogroup is
haplogroup F, which is a combination of the lineages differing by the time of appearance.
Haplogroup P found represents the genetic contribution of the population originating from the ancient autochthonous population of Europe.
Haplogroup J and
Haplogroup E mark the migration patterns of the
Middle-Eastern agriculturists during the
Neolithic. The presence of the N3 lineage is likely explained by a contribution of the assimilated
Finno Ugric tribes. A recent study (Rebala et al. 2007) studied several Slavic populations with the aim of localizing the Proto-Slavic homeland. A significant finding of this study is that according to the authors most Slavic populations have similar
Y chromosome pools, and this similarity can be traced to an origin in middle
Dnieper basin of
Ukraine.
History
Ukraine had a very turbulent history, a fact explained by its geographical position. Up to the fifteenth century, Ukrainians were part of the Old East Slavic stock which according to some historians also gave rise to the
Belarusians and
Russians. However, long history of separation and foreign influences have perceptibly reshaped their ethnolinguistic identity differentiating them from the rest of East Slavs.
The history of independent statehood in Ukraine is started with the
Cossacks. The Cossacks of
Zaporizhia since the late fifteenth century controlled the lower bends of the river Dnieper, between Russia, Poland and the
Tatars of Crimea, with the fortified capital,
Zaporizhian Sich. They were formally recognized as a state, the
Zaporozhian Host, by treaty with Poland in 1649.
Modern day Ukraine encompasses the seats of six of the original twelve principalities of the ancient
Kievan Rus empire which flourished from 882 to 1245 AD. Those principalities were Halych, Volodymyr-Volhynia, Kyiv, Pereyaslavl, Chernihiv, and Novhorod-Serverskyi and comprised the major centers of power of Kyivan Rus in its heyday. The thirteenth century
Mongol invasion devastated Kievan Rus'.
Kiev was
totally destroyed in 1240. Subsequent to the fall of a united Halych-Volodymr-Volhynia in 1342 these principalities were taken over by the Lithuanians and incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later into the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and still later of the
Russian,
Ottoman and
Austro-Hungarian empires,
Poland and the
Soviet Union, finally gaining its independence on August 24, 1991.
Modern Ukrainian national identity continued to develop, especially in opposition to foreign rule in the nineteenth century. In
Imperial Russia the use of the Ukrainian language was discouraged and banned at different times in history; however, as many were illiterate, persecutions had little effect. During the
Soviet era, the Ukrainian language was at times suppressed at others tolerated or even encouraged.
From 1932-1933 millions of Ukrainians starved to death in a famine, known as the
Holodomor. 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, p.28, see also France Meslé, Gilles Pison, Jacques Vallin , Population and societies, N°413, juin 2005][Jacques Vallin, France Mesle, Serguei Adamets, Serhii Pyrozhkov, , Population Studies, Vol. 56, No. 3. (Nov., 2002), pp. 249-264] and 3-3.5 million
[Stanislav Kulchytsky, "How many of us perished in Holodomor in 1933", Zerkalo Nedeli, November 23-29, 2002. Available online and ] although much higher numbers are sometimes published in the media and cited in political debates.
[Peter Finn, , The Washington Post, April 27, 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 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 March 13, 2008, the total number of countries is given as 19 (according to Ukrainian BBC: ), 16 (according to Korrespondent, Russian edition: ), "more than 10" (according to Korrespondent, Ukrainian edition: )]Culture
Language
Ethnographic map of the Slavic peoples prepared by Czech ethnographer
Lubor Niederle showing territorial boundaries of Slavic languages in Eastern Europe in the mid 1920's, including the Ukrainian language, given in dark green.
Ukrainian (украї́нська мо́ва,
ukrayins'ka mova, ) is a language of the
East Slavic subgroup of the
Slavic languages. It is the only
official state language of
Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a
Cyrillic alphabet. The language shares some vocabulary with the languages of the neighboring
Slavic nations, most notably with
Belarusian,
Polish,
Russian and
Slovak.
The Ukrainian language traces its origins to the
Old East Slavic language of the medieval state of
Kievan Rus'. In its earlier stages it was called
Ruthenian or
Little Russian. Ukrainian, along with other East Slavic languages, is a lineal descendant of the colloquial language used in Kievan Rus' (10th–thirteenth century).
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.
Religion
Ukrainians are predominantly
Eastern Orthodox Christians. In the eastern and southern areas of Ukraine the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of the
Moscow Patriarchate is the most common. In central and western Ukraine there is support for the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchate headed by
Patriarch Filaret and also in the western areas of Ukraine and with smaller support throughout the country there is support for the
Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church headed by
Metropolitan Mefodiy. In the Western region known as
Galicia the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, one of the
Eastern Rite Catholic churches has a strong membership. Various
Protestant churches have a growing presence among the Ukrainian population. There are also ethnic minorities who practice
Judaism and
Islam.
Music
Dance
Ukrainian Welcome Dance
Pryvit.
Ukrainian dance refers to the traditional
folk dances of the peoples of Ukraine. Today, Ukrainian dance is primarily represented by what
ethnographers,
folklorists and dance historians refer to as "Ukrainian Folk-Stage Dances", which are stylized representations of traditional dances and their characteristic movements that have been choreographed for
concert dance performances. This stylized art form has so permeated the
culture of Ukraine, that very few purely traditional forms of Ukrainian dance remain today.
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 instantly recognized and highly appreciated throughout the world.
Symbols
The national symbols of the Ukrainians are the
Flag of Ukraine and the
Coat of arms of Ukraine.
The national flag of Ukraine is a blue and yellow bicolor rectangle. The color fields are of same form and equal size. The colors of the flag represent 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 colors were based on the coat-of-arms of the
Galicia-Volhynia Principality .
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
Slavic tribes that once lived in Ukraine, later adopted by
Ruthenian and
Kievan Rus rulers. Others say that the coat represents also the importance of the
Holy Trinity, although coincidently prior to
Christianity the people of today's
Ukraine believed in
Triglav, with the similar concept of three.
See also
