Changes in the ethnolinguistic composition of the population of Ukraine: the second half of the 20th — the beginning of the 21st century

According to the materials of scientific report at the meeting of the Presidium of NAS of Ukraine, December 26, 2024

Abstract

The article analyzes ethnolinguistic processes in Ukraine in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Changes in the ethnolinguistic composition of the Ukrainian population during the Soviet era were not natural, but were the result of the policy of russification of Ukraine. In the conditions of statelessness, Ukrainians were in the state of a “subordinate majority” that was subjected to assimilation by the dominant Russian ethnic minority, and the total population of Ukraine grew at the expense of the Russian-speaking population rather than the Ukrainian-speaking population. Only with the acquisition of independence by Ukraine were natural ethnolinguistic processes restored. The inertial influence of ethnolinguistic processes of the Soviet era continued to persist in the urban environment of the eastern and southern regions, especially in the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions. With the beginning of Russian aggression, Ukrainians again found themselves in conditions of ethnodemographic catastrophe.