Ethnic Composition of the Population of the Grayvoron District of the Kursk Governorate: After the Statistical Materials of the 1926 Census

Author

Skliar Volodymyr

a Doctor of History, a professor, a chief research fellow at the Ukrainian Ethnological Centre Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0020-5973

Ethnic Composition of the Population of the Grayvoron District of the Kursk Governorate: After the Statistical Materials of the 1926 Census

Abstract

The study of the ethnic composition of the population using statistical materials of the censuses is of great importance in modern Ukrainian ethnological science. This is particularly true for Ukrainian ethnic lands those are outside the borders of contemporary Ukraine, including the territory of the North-Eastern Slobozhanshchyna. This issue has been a taboo in the Soviet times and the statistical materials of the 1926 census are kept in a ‘special storage’. Scholarly research on ethnic processes have been resumed only after Ukraine gains its independence. Attention to the need to study Ukrainian ethnic lands is paid at a high state level in the Decree of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy ‘On the Historically Ukrainian-Inhabited Territories of the Russian Federation’ dated on January 22, 2024, for the first time.

The analysis of the 1926 census materials has made it possible to define the ethnic composition of the population of the Grayvoron District of Kursk Governorate, its urban and rural population, as well as each of the 8 volosts. The dominance of Ukrainians in both rural and urban areas of the district has become the defining trait of the ethnic composition of the population of the Grayvoron District. The highest share of Ukrainians among the total population was in the urban-type settlement of Borysivka (93.04%), as well as in Krasna Yaruga (88.23%) and Grayvoron (86.21%) volosts bordering the Ukrainian SSR. Russians are concentrated mainly in the northern volosts of Graivoron District and in the district centre. Belarusians and Jews are dispersed throughout the Grayvoron District, and not in all the volosts.

The policy of russification, intensified in the early 1930s, has been resulted in the total linguistic and ethnic assimilation of Ukrainians in the historical Sloboda Ukraine. Ukraine does not claim the lost Ukrainian ethnic lands, but rejects the russian imperial claims to its territory within internationally recognized borders. It is promising to study the ethnic composition of the population of other territories of the Northeastern Sloboda region, as well as all Ukrainian ethnic lands that are now outside the state border of Ukraine.

Keywords

Ukrainian ethnic lands, Northeastern Slobozhanshchyna, Grayvoron District, volosts, ethnic composition of the population, Ukrainians, the 1926 census.

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