According to the 1926 all-Soviet census 55%-67,5% (depending on definition) of the Kuban Region's (today part of russia) population identified as Ukrainians. In 2021 only 0,5% identified as such.
So what happened?
In short: What happened is that Moscow conducted another one of its ethnic cleansing and russification operations. One of its most severe.
Before 1932, the Soviets gave the people of the Kuban the right to speak in their own language and identify as Ukrainians, as long as they didn't oppose the Soviet Regime and didn't discuss the possibility of Ukraine-Kuban unification.
But in 1932 things chanced. Moscow suddenly included it into the North Caucasus Krai and started an immediate campaign of russification. Ukrainian immediately lost its status.
The State immediately demanded all Ukrainian documents to be translated to russian.
All administrations were forced to operate in russian from now on. Any form of Ukrainian Media was banned and so were all Ukrainian schools. Anyone who resisted russification was either jailed, exiled or murdered.
The 1930-33 famine in the Soviet Union affected the Kuban more than any other region in the RSFSR. That's why the Kuban famine is considered part of the Holodomor. Ukrainian villages had a higher chance of being blacklisted, meaning the death rate among Ukrainians was higher.
In the meantime russians were encouraged to settle in the emptied villages where most of its former inhabitants have perished, were deported or fled.
The Ukrainian language was from now on discouraged and stigmatized as a "peasant dialect" similarly, but more effectively than in Ukraine. The people who kept speaking Ukrainian developed a separate dialect, which resulted from poor education in their native Ukrainian language.
Ukrainians didn't disappear immediately, but as time moved on and the people were repeatedly told they're russian - not Ukrainian and the same was written in their passports (if they had any), the russification started to succeed.
Today many of the descendants of those Ukrainians are fully enveloped in the russian mindset and propaganda. They lost their connection to their ancestors. In fact many of them are currently even in Ukraine fighting the people of the nation their ancestors wanted to be part of.
Here's an interview with some of the few remaining Ukrainians in the Kuban, who remember their history (from the 1990's).
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Berezovsky’s Monster:
How the man who made Putin paid for it with his life.
A Thread🧵
Russia 1999: Russia was in crisis. President Yeltsin was unpopular and in poor health. The economy was unstable, and the nation still hadn't recovered from its defeat in the Chechen War. Oligarchs held major influence over politics, business, and the media.
Boris Berezovsky was one of the most powerful oligarchs. He held stakes in oil, cars, and media. He had close ties to the Yeltsin administration and was part of the so-called “Family,” a group of influential people with access to the president.
Here’s what Voltaire, one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment, had to say about Ukraine as a nation in 1731, in Book Four of "Histoire de Charles XII", page 85:
(Translated from the original French)
A thread 🧵
"Ukraine has always aspired to be free, but surrounded by Muscovy, the Ottoman Empire, and Poland, it was forced to seek a protector and thus, inevitably, a master."
Ukraine first sought protection from Poland, but was treated too much as a subject. So it turned to Muscovy, which ruled it harshly. At first, Ukrainians could elect their own leader, the Hetman. But even this right was later stripped by Moscow.
How a single treaty disproves 3 Kremlin myths: The Pereiaslav Agreement (1654)
❌️Muscovy was known as "Russia" even before Peter I
❌️Ukrainians wanted to "reunite" with Muscovy
❌️Ukrainian and Russian were mutually intelligible before modern Ukr. nationalism
A thread🧵
What was the Pereiaslav Agreement? In 1654, the Cossack Hetmanate, led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky, negotiated with Tsar Alexis of Muscovy. The goal was a mutual defense pact: the Hetmanate would swear allegiance to the Tsar in exchange for guarantees of Ukrainian autonomy.
How Rusyns/Ruthenians became Ukrainians, and Muscovites became Russians:
An argument for the historical continuity of Rus' through Kyiv—not Moscow.
A thread🧵
To begin with, what were the historical lands of Rus'?
Originally, Rus' centered around Kyiv. When people from other principalities like Novgorod said “I’m going to Rus',” they meant Kyiv and the lands surrounding Kyiv. Kyiv, Chernihiv, Pereiaslav— those were the core Rus' lands
These Rus' lands formed the political and cultural heart of the loose East Slavic federation known today as "Kyivan Rus'". But historically such a term didn't exist.
In 2022 Russia started heavily investing into rebuilding Mariupol and turning it into a "Russian paradise". Since then, they've been encouraging Russian businesses and citizens to move there.
A little thread🧵 on Russian settler colonialism in Mariupol:
Before the invasion, Mariupol had nearly 450,000 residents. Today only an estimated 15% of original inhabitants remain. Mostly the elderly or unable to flee. The rest were killed, deported, or displaced. This set the stage for Russia's colonization plans.
In late 2022 the Kremlin launched an extensive reconstruction campaign in Mariupol, with cities like St. Petersburg sponsoring new districts such as "Nevsky". By late 2024, over 1,700 apartment buildings had been rebuilt.
The Russian normalization of death: the story of a Mariupol supermarket.
Once a place for groceries, then a corpse dump where the dead were left to rot for months.
In 2023, it reopened festively. Balloons. Discounts. Music.
All traces of the past erased.
A thread 🧵
In 2022, during the siege of Mariupol, Russian forces turned the “Shchyryi Kum” supermarket into a makeshift morgue.
The Corpses dumped there like garbage. The walls covered in 'Z' slogans.
This continued for several month after the siege, the bodies left rotting inside.
The bodies were left exposed.
Locals reported an unbearable stench.
The corpses remained there through the summer, until they were presumably disposed of, in a manner unknown to anyone.