East Ukraine

The Donctsk-Dnicpcr region comprises the main industrial centers of Ukraine, including the coal-mining area of Donbas (Donetsk and Voroshylovhrad [now Luhansk)), the manufacturing and transportation center of Kharkiv, and the Dnipropetrovsk-Zaporizhia industrial region on the Dnieper River. Although it also includes the traditionally agrarian areas of Poltava, Sumy, and Kirovohrad, the overwhelmingly urban character of the whole region is best represented by such cities as Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Dnipropetrovsk. This is the region, especially its most industrialized and urbanized parts, that in modern times has been most Russianized. Even though the inclusion of the provinces of Poltava, Sumy, and Kirovohrad in the totals for the Donetsk-Dnieper region tends to lower Russian strength where it matters most, the gains achieved by Russians between the two censuses arc impressive enough. Their share in the total population rose by 26.7 percent (more than 3 percentage points) and in absolute figures their gain there exceeded one million people (1,177,000). This was about 58 percent of the net Russian increase in the Ukrainian SSR. The number of Ukrainians added to the population of this region was lower (1,053,000), though in Ukraine as a whole Ukrainians gained over a million more people than did the Russians. In relative terms, only one-third of the net Ukrainian growth (33.7 percent) went to the Donetsk-Dnieper region, and Ukrainians there grew by 8.4 percent. Even more striking was the disparity between Russian and Ukrainian population growth in the most urban subregion

52 Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union

Of this most urban region of Ukraine. In Donbas (the oblasts of Donetsk and Voroshylovhrad combined), Russians increased by 584,000 (28.7 percent of their net gain in Ukraine) and Ukrainians by 318,000 (10.2 percent of Ukrainian gain in the whole republic). Ukrainians in Donbas dropped from 56.4 to 53.7 percent of the population, while Russians went up from 38 to 41 percent. Since in 1959 this area also included the relatively greatest number of Ukrainians whose native language was Russian, one may assume that a majority of the population in Donbas spoke Russian in 1970.