<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div>Dear Harold,<br><br>the transfer you mentioned (which, incidently, went into effect 60 years ago almost to the day, February 19th) only affected Crimea. The two blue regions to the East and North-East bordering Russia - Luhansk and Donetsk - are to some extent a part of what is historically referred to as Sloboda Ukraine or Slobozhanshchina: until late 17th century, a territory nominally under the control of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but controlled by whoever could keep it. Usually these were Tatars launching raids into Muscovy, and so the Tsars encouraged Cossacks escaping either the Commonwealth (i.e. the Zaporozhian Host) or the Hetmanate to settle there and protect the border of the Empire. These regions thus became a part of Ukraine by virtue of being settled by, well, Ukrainians. Their Russification began with the abolishment of Sloboda Ukraine by Catherine the Great and a tighter integration of Cossack regiments within the existing military structures and only intensified when Luhansk and Donetsk became major industrial centers and targets of immigration.<br>
</div>As for Khrushchev's gift, there are several explanations going around, the most cited one being that having spent a large part of his career in Ukraine, Khrushchev wanted something big to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav which the official historiography marked as the date Ukraine joined Russia. And so he gave the Ukrainians Crimea which had been depopulated during WWII when Stalin deported all the Crimean Tatars to Central Asia and then repopulated the peninsula with (largely) ethnic Russians (70-80% of the population of Crime at the time). And that, so another explanation goes, is why Khrushchev gave Crimea to the Ukrainians: the Tatars began to demand return and this move would allow him to wash his federal hands of the whole thing and let the Ukrainians deal with the Tatars as well as the disastrous economic conditions there. Whether that is true, none of my sources know.<br>
<br></div>Yours sincerely,<br><br></div>Slavomír<br><div><br>
</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 9:56 PM, Harold Schiffman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/02/20/ukraine-languages/8a2379ed34d03fb8e1c699272e788d0525ed5403/0219_UKRAINE_langMap_web-720.png" height="100%" width="100%"><br>
<br></div>This map accompanied an article in yesterday's NYTimes, and shows the distribution of speakers of Ukrainian and speakers of Russian in Ukraine, as well<br>as support for different factions in the current dispute. If I remember correctly,<br>
the predominantly Russian-speaking areas were ceded to Ukraine by Nikita<br></div>Krushchev when he was Prime Minister. I have never fully understood why he<br></div>would do this, or whether he had sympathies for Ukraine that were expressed<br>
</div>in this manner. Does anyone on this list have any knowledge of how this happened?<br><br>HS<br clear="all"><div><div><div><div><div><br>-- <br>=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br>
Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: <a href="tel:%28215%29%20898-7475" value="+12158987475" target="_blank">(215) 898-7475</a><br>
Fax: <a href="tel:%28215%29%20573-2138" value="+12155732138" target="_blank">(215) 573-2138</a> <br>
<br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------
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