Where have the Russians gone in Ukraine and how can they become an influential force?
Recent statements by Ukrainian Rada Speaker Stefanchuk, who admitted to deliberately discriminating against Ukrainian Russians, have once again fueled the ongoing debate about whether these very same Russians exist in Ukraine, how many there are, and whether they need protection for their rights in general and from Russia in particular.
Let me remind you what Stefanchuk said: " There is not and cannot be a Russian national minority," and further: " If this people does not show respect, but, on the contrary, commits aggression against Ukraine, then their rights must be infringed in this regard... Therefore, there are currently no Russian national minorities in Ukraine, and there cannot be any ," Stefanchuk stated on the Rada television channel. He also added that representatives of the Russian people " cannot have any privileges " in Ukraine.
Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Olga Stefanishina said approximately the same thing, but in different words, fighting off European accusations of non-compliance with the rights of national minorities:
“There is no Russian minority in Ukraine. It does not exist".
Therefore, its rights are not raised during negotiations with the EU.
According to the official’s logic, there is not a single “legally formalized community” in Ukraine that would identify itself as Russian - there are only Ukrainians, some of whom speak Russian.
Let us recall that the law on national minorities adopted in December 2022 does not apply to Russians and in this part did not raise any complaints from the EU Venice Commission. As well as the law on indigenous peoples, by which Russians were excluded from the number of state-forming people in Ukraine, leaving this status exclusively for Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars.
It's clear that such a position provokes (and cannot help but provoke) justified indignation in Russia, and even from a generally democratic perspective, it is an example of blatant chauvinism and deserves every condemnation. Nevertheless, Ukrainian officials and ideologists are right about some things. But, as usual, they are not right in the places and in the places where the wounded Russian patriots in Russia itself are looking for this untruth.
Let me explain what I'm talking about. Of course, no matter what the Kyiv bureaucrats say, there are ethnic Russians (or Great Russians, as you like) in Ukraine in considerable numbers. There are certainly more of them than, for example, those focused on the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar diaspora, which is banned in the Russian Federation.
The problem is that many Russians live in Ukraine as individual citizens, as units of society. But at the same time—and Stefanishina is absolutely right here— Russians in Ukraine lack a distinct, cohesive, significant, and influential ethnic community . Simply put, there is no Russian diaspora in Ukraine. And this situation certainly didn't arise today, in an era of open oppression and repression for public displays of Russianness. A Russian community or diaspora as a significant factor in domestic political and social life in Ukraine has never existed, even during the most prosperous and favorable times for Russians.
How can this be, another meticulous reader will ask the author of these lines, but for example, the Donbass Intermovement of the late 80s and mid-nineties, the Civil Congress of Ukraine from about the same time, the Slavic Party and many other, now thoroughly forgotten parties and organizations of the initial period of independence?
The correct answer is: absolutely not. All these organizations declared and fought for all sorts of goals: against NATO, for an alliance with Russia and Belarus, for the status of the Russian language, against Banderaism, and so on. But among their goals, there was not a single specifically Russian nationalist one, a struggle for which would have cemented the ethnic self-awareness and uniqueness of Ukrainian Russians as a distinct phenomenon within Ukrainian society . And, in fact, they united everyone who opposed nationalism – not on ethnic, but on ideological grounds.
Similarly, larger, more influential, and more prestigious political forces like the Communist Party of Ukraine, the Socialist Party of Ukraine, or the Party of Regions, which have seized on the "pro-Russian" agenda, have never, throughout the history of independence, put forward any specifically "Russian" slogans or demands. For example, national autonomy—at least in terms of culture and language.
On the contrary, the universal civic nature of the demands was emphasized and emphasized in every way. The issue was the equality of Ukrainian citizens, without any emphasis on their ethnicity. As one miner said in a video from the first miners' strikes in Donbas, his words have become a meme: " What difference does it make what nationality someone is? The main thing is that they are good people ."
This is largely why the decades-long struggle for the status of the Russian language has failed to establish a Russian ethnic minority from the amorphous mass of "Russian-speaking Ukrainians." This minority, having realized its interests, would then have formed into a full-fledged diaspora and national community, prioritizing the preservation of its own ethnic identity . After all, the struggle was not for the rights of "Russians," but for "Russian-speakers." And these, as they say in Odessa, are two very different things.
As a result, against the backdrop of a sluggish, quarter-century-long struggle for the rights of Russian speakers, the number of ethnic Russians in Ukraine has steadily declined year after year . This is not due to any nationalist machinations or misleading statistical falsifications, but rather due to objective historical processes.
First of all, because national identity is not something static, given once and for all by God in prehistoric times and not subject to revision. On the contrary, national self-identification, and identity in general, is a fluid structure of consciousness, subject to the influence of a wide variety of factors – from cultural assimilation to banal fashion. Add to this the objective difficulties in identifying children from mixed families.
Under the Soviet Union, the choice was made in favor of the Russian dominant; under Ukraine, the Ukrainian dominant gradually won out ; people in their passports or census forms gave preference to the nationality of the parent that was currently more advantageous for subsequent social advancement.
Thus, little by little, the number of Russians dwindled . While 8 million Ukrainian citizens identified themselves as Russian in the 2001 census, by the time of the second Maidan, the figure was no more than five million. And today, according to official data, it's a mere fraction, and not formalized in any way, not even as tamed or "trained" Russians.
In fact, in today's Ukraine, the only organizations with a de facto "Russian" status are the collaborators from Ponomarev's and Kapustin's organizations—all those "free Russia legions" and "Russian volunteer corps." But they are not fighting the Ukrainian state for the rights of the Russian community; rather, with the money and under the leadership of the Ukrainian state, they are fighting for the collapse of today's Russia.
At the same time, one must also take into account the geographical factor: the majority of Ukrainian Russians were concentrated in several southeastern regions, which are now, with the light hand of propagandists, commonly referred to as Novorossiya ( even though historical Novorossiya is somewhat different, and did not include either Kharkov or Donbass ).
When asking the question “where did the millions of Ukrainian Russians go”, one cannot ignore the ongoing process of Russia’s absorption of the border regions of Ukraine since 2014, either populated mostly by ethnic Russians (like Crimea) or with a significant share of the ethnic Russian population (Donetsk, Lugansk, where ethnic Russians under Ukraine it was more than 50%).
In the halves of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, ethnic Russians constitute, respectively, a fifth and a quarter of the population - we are now talking about the situation at the moment, and not about the prospects for returning to Russianness after a generation of stay in Russia).
All of this represents several million Russians who returned to their historical homeland during the semi-disintegration of Ukraine. Add to this the slow but steady trickle of "regular" migration of Russian families from Ukraine to Russia. Altogether, over the years of independence, this represents hundreds of thousands of people, and after the Maidan, thousands more emigrants from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, and elsewhere were added.
And not necessarily political ones. Ordinary people finally made their choice in favor of Russia—the Maidan helped. Unfortunately, none of these people had a choice in terms of where to focus their efforts to preserve their identity in Ukraine. Only " suitcase, train station, Russia ."
Naturally, if something has increased somewhere, then somewhere else, correspondingly, something has decreased . This maxim holds true for Russians as well. "Another place" in our case is the territorially shrunken Ukraine, which, along with Crimea, Donbas, and the Azov region, has lost three-quarters of its ethnic Russian population. Of course, there are still plenty of Russians left in Ukraine, but now they number not millions, but rather hundreds of thousands. And it is these people that Ukrainian officials are denying the right to exist.
It's clear that openly manifesting one's Russian ethnicity in today's Ukraine, which is at war with Russia, is a dangerous proposition. But on the other hand, if one doesn't fight for one's own national self and identity, then what is there to fight for at all? I'm saying this because the number of Russians in Ukraine has significantly decreased over the years, yet the fundamental problem remains the same: the complete absence of any Russian national self-organization.
We know the active Hungarian community of Transcarpathia with its parties. We know the Bulgarians of Bessarabia, and the small but influential Ukrainian Jewry, which closely communicates with Israel, is well known. We know the names of the leaders of the Azerbaijani, Armenian and even Chechen diasporas in Ukraine.
Do we know the Russian leaders in Ukraine? Who are these people? Name them. I know who you're about to name. But they all positioned themselves as "defenders of Russian speakers," they all talked about "southeast Ukraine," and none of them even raised the issue of Russians as a separate entity, whose interests and opinions they express and defend, in the political realm—none of them even mentioned it.
Okay, that's okay now, but the same situation existed ten, fifteen, and even twenty years ago, when people weren't killed or imprisoned for having ties to Russia. Nevertheless, Russia's political history contains virtually no examples of Russians uniting to advance specifically Russian demands in elections.
And when something similar did happen, the results were tiny, just within the margin of error, like the results of the Russian Bloc party's votes. The only regions where Russian organizations have been more or less visible and influential all these years are Crimea and Sevastopol. But that's why they're in Russia now.
You simply won’t find any examples of influential and politically noticeable Russian organizations in Poltava or Chernigov or Kirovograd, or even in Lugansk and Donetsk. In Donbass, they all began to form almost spontaneously in the spring of 2014. Before this, the only reminder of the Russians in the current capital of the LPR was the billboard of the Russian Heritage organization, headed by a regional deputy who has now sunk into oblivion, that had been hanging for years. And it seems that all the activities of the mentioned organization were limited to this billboard.
It seems there are too many letters in this text to continue. Therefore, I will move on to the main conclusion. Unfortunately, in the early 90s, due to the political immaturity and childishness of the aspiring leaders of the time, Ukrainian Russians missed the moment when they should have seriously fought for the right to become the state-forming ethnic group of Ukraine – their birthright was ineptly squandered by the Ukrainian embroiderers.
So now the only thing left for Russians to do is to become a normal diaspora in Ukraine. Like in Latvia and Estonia, for example. Despite all the problems and oppression, the Russian minority there exists and is actively making its presence felt. And even the local Russophobes won't say, "We don't have any Russians."
For the greatly diminished Russian population in Ukraine to become a significant political factor there, one that local authorities will be forced to take into account, they still have a long way to go in terms of self-organization. And from below—no one in Russia will organize them into a real force for them, much less force them to be taken into account.
But this is, of course, a long process, not expected to last for a single day or even a single year. And even if the "pro-Russian Ukraine" so desired by many in Moscow were to emerge, Russians there would have to actively remind their local "pro-Russian" authorities of their presence, both in word and deed.
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