The Southwestern region comprises 13 provinces (oblasts) of the Ukrainian SSR and has the largest population (20,689,000 in 1970). Its population was growing much more slowly than in the Donetsk-Dnieper or the Southern region and its relative proportion fell between 1959 (when 44.4 percent of Ukraine’s population lived there) and 1970 (43.9 percent). The Donetsk-Dnieper region recorded a slight increase for the same period (from 42.4 to 42.5 percent) while the South gained considerably (from 12.1 to 13.5 percent). There are only two major cities in the region: Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the West Ukrainian city of Lviv, which was the capital of the Crownland of Galicia under the Habsburgs (1772-1918) and then a provincial center in Poland (1918-1939). Historically, this is the area of greatest Western influence in Ukraine—major parts of this region never belonged to the Russian Empire and became Soviet only during or after the Second World War (Galicia, 1939; Bukovina or Chernivtsi oblast, 1940; Transcarpathia, 1945). Even those parts under Russia before 1914 were mostly relatively recent acquisitions, dating back to the second and third partitions of Poland (1793-1795). Only in Kyiv and its immediate vicinity and in Chernihiv did Russians appear as early as the second half of the seventeenth century.
Since much of the area was outside Russian control until about 30 years ago, and as a whole was densely populated and predominantly agrarian in character, there has been relatively little Russian immigration to it. The only exception in this regard was the Russian immigration wave to the “new” Soviet provinces, where there had been no Russians previously, after the Second World War. There Russians partially re-
The Nations of the USSR in 1970 53
Placed in the urban population the Poles and Jews who were either killed or expelled during and after the war. In 1959, the Southwestern region’s population was 87.82 percent Ukrainian; by 1970 Ukrainians had dropped by a fraction of 1 percent to 87.81. The increase in the Ukrainian population was slightly lower than the total population growth. The Russians grew by 22.86 percent (below their average republic growth of 28.7 percent) and their share in the region’s population rose from 5.84 to 6.6 percent. In absolute terms, however, the number of Russians involved was much lower than in the Donetsk-Dnieper region. Their net gain there (254,000) equaled one-eighth of the total Russian gain in Ukraine, less than their gain in Donbas alone. In 1959, 15.7 percent of Ukraine’s Russians lived in the Southwestern region; in 1970 the percentage had fallen to 14.9.
The growth of the Russian population in separate provinces of the Southwest varied extensively. It was highest in the city of Kyiv and in the provinces of Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Cherkasy (ranging from 23.7 percent in Ivano-Frankivsk to 46.5 percent in Kyiv City). In most cases it was higher than that of Ukrainians and in only one did the actual number of Russians decline (Temopil oblast, a drop from 27,000 to 26,000, or from 2.5 to 2.3 percent of the oblast’s population). Ukrainians recorded their highest gain in the city of Kyiv, where in 1970 they constituted 64.8 percent of the population. This was a considerable gain from the 60.2 percent recorded in 1959, and seems to mean that Kyiv has been a center of particular attraction to Ukrainians (a growth from
668,000 to 1,057,000, or of 58.2 percent)." In two oblasts of Ukraine the absolute number of Ukrainians declined between the censuses, and one of these was located in the southwestern region. In Chemihiv province Ukrainians declined by 1.5 percent and Russians increased by 17.7 percent. The other oblast was Kirovohrad in the Donetsk-Dnieper region, where the Ukrainian decrease of 0.1 percent was accompanied by a Russian gain of 12.6 percent.
World History
