Eastern Ukraine is a large industrial region in the east of Ukraine.
First of all, Eastern Ukraine is a region with a developed heavy
industry. This is mining (coal, granite, salt ...), and processing
(primarily metallurgical), and chemical and machine-building.
Like other industrial regions, Eastern Ukraine is a cluster of urban
agglomerations, the most famous being Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk.
However, the region also has climatic and balneological resort areas
concentrated in the Northern Sea of Azov and Northern Donbass.
Dnepropetrovsk oblast
Zaporozhye oblast
Luhansk oblast/ LPR
Donetsk
oblast/ DPR
Sumy oblast
Kharkiv oblast
Donetsk is the capital of Donbass, a major
industrial, scientific and cultural center
Dnipro
is the third largest city in Ukraine, the administrative center of the
Dnipropetrovsk region
Zaporozhye is the administrative center of the
Zaporozhye region, a large industrial city
Krivoy Rog is an
industrial city in the Dnipropetrovsk region
Luhansk is one of the industrial centers of Donbass
Mariupol is a large industrial center, climatic and mud resort
Kharkiv
is the second largest city in Ukraine, the former capital
First of all, Eastern Ukraine is a region with developed heavy
industry. These are mining (coal, ore, granite, salt), and processing
(primarily metallurgical), and chemical and machine-building.
Similar to other industrial regions, Eastern Ukraine is a cluster of
urban agglomerations, the most famous of which are Kharkiv, Donetsk,
Dnipropetrovsk, Kryvorizka, and Horliv-Yenakiiv.
However, there
are climatic and balneological resort zones in the region, concentrated
in Northern Azov and Northern Donbass.
In the rural areas of the South-East, Ukrainian is predominantly
spoken, in the cities - in Russian, where assimilation took place more
dynamically.
On the territory of the South-East, steppe and
Slobozhan dialects of the Ukrainian language were historically
widespread[46]. However, according to the Kiev International Institute
of Sociology (data for 1991-2003), the number of Surzhik speakers in the
southern and eastern regions significantly exceeds the proportion of the
Ukrainian-speaking population (in the South, 12.4% speak Surzhik, 5.2%
speak Ukrainian, and In the East of Ukraine, surzhik is used by 9.6%,
and Ukrainian - by 3.7%).
In addition, according to 2005 data,
Russian-language print media dominated in the Southeast. So, for
example, in the Donetsk region, 27 regional Russian-language newspapers
and 33 city Russian-language publications accounted for 3 regional and 3
city Ukrainian-language newspapers, which were also subsidized by the
state. In Western Ukraine, at that time, almost 100% of the information
space on television and radio and a significant part of the press market
were occupied by Ukrainian-language media.
In 2012, the Verkhovna
Rada and the faction of the Party of Regions, in particular, voted for
giving the Russian language the status of a regional language (within
the regions, the regional language could be used in legally established
areas on a par with the state Ukrainian language) in the South-Eastern
Ukrainian regions of Odessa, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, Lugansk, Kherson,
Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk regions and in the city of Sevastopol,
while the Ukrainian media then noted that it was becoming more and more
possible to split Ukraine along the linguistic principle.
Immediately after the end of the Euromaidan change of power in Ukraine,
on February 23, 2014, the law “On Recognizing the Law of Ukraine “On the
Fundamentals of the State Language Policy” proposed for consideration by
the deputy of the “Fatherland” Vyacheslav Kirilenko, was adopted by a
majority vote without parliamentary discussions. The repeal of the law
caused a wide international response.
The region has the most developed rail transport, buses and
fixed-route taxis. True, when traveling by rail, you can notice how the
network weakens somewhat when moving to the Luhansk region, or in the
eastern regions of the Dnipropetrovsk region.
The main railway
junctions are Kharkov, Yasinovataya, Sinelnikovo. The total length of
the tracks of the Yasinovataya railway station is one of the largest in
Europe. Kharkov and Yasinovataya generate about a dozen commuter trains
a day in each of the main directions - from Kharkov - to Kazachya Lopan,
Sumy, Lozovaya, Izyum, Grakovo, from Yasinovataya - to Donetsk-Mariupol,
Kramatorsk-Slavyansk, to Krasny Liman and to Debaltseve station
(including a transfer in Gorlovka), westward to Dnepropetrovsk and
Crimea. Agreed suburban trains run between Krasny Liman and Izyum,
however this direction is quite busy for this reason with people
traveling to markets in the nearest cities.
From Debaltsevo to
the east, traffic is much less. With the exception of the recently
electrified Debaltseve-Lugansk line, suburban trains are diesels or
trains of passenger cars with a diesel locomotive (“trains with aunts”),
running slowly, rarely (up to 4-5 per day) and often canceled. The main
base of suburban trains in the Luhansk region is Rodakovo.
The
main artery for long-distance trains is (Belgorod -) Kharkov - Lozovaya
- Konstantinovka (or - Izyum - Krasny Lyman) - Ilovaisk ( - Taganrog),
along which many passing trains to the Caucasus went in Soviet times.
Now the number of trains has decreased, but still remains the defining
direction. Other main branches are: Lozovaya - Zaporozhye - Crimea,
Lozovaya - Poltava, (Donetsk -) Krasnoarmeysk - Dnepropetrovsk,
Yasinovataya - Donetsk - Mariupol.
In the XIII-XVIII centuries, the lands of southeastern Ukraine were
called the Wild Field and were poorly developed, at that time nomadic
Turkic peoples took root here. From the 16th century, the lands of
southeastern Ukraine were inhabited by Cossacks, along the Kalmius River
until the Azov campaigns of Peter I, the border between the Don Cossacks
and the Crimean Khanate passed. In 1611, the Crimeans settled their
allies, the Cossacks, along the Kalka River and ordered them to protect
the border from the Don. However, the monolingual Cossacks in those days
often united for joint actions against the Crimeans and Turks. So, in
1637, the Don and Zaporozhye Cossacks took Azov and held it until 1642.
After the capture of Azov by Peter I, the entire Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov
became part of Russia and until 1711 was part of the Azov province.
According to the Prut peace treaty, Russia was supposed to give Azov and
a small part of the territory surrounding it to the Turks, but the
northern Sea of Azov remained with Russia and continued to be part of
the Don Cossack lands, which were included in the Yekaterinoslav
governorship. However, after the abolition of the governorship, the
lands from Kalmius to the Berda River became part of the Ekaterinoslav
province formed in 1803, together with the village of Petrovskaya and
the fortresses of Petrovskaya, Zakharyevskaya and Alekseevskaya, which
had lost their defensive significance.
The southwestern border of
the Don Cossack Region, which included parts of the modern territories
of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, ran along the Kalmius River, the
western border was within the boundaries of present-day Donetsk, and the
north of the Donetsk district along the Mius reached Olkhovatka. The
border of the current Donetsk and Luhansk regions was crossed by the
northern border of the Donetsk district near the village (then - the
village) Grabovo in the Shakhtyorsky district. Then it went along the
Antratsitovsky district north of the village of Kolpakovo, then to the
north, and in the area of the village of Mityakinskaya it curved to
the west, and, skirting Stanitsa Luganskaya, again turned east to
Titovka, where it crossed the current border of the Luhansk region and
the Russian Federation.
Lugansk region), Mykolaiv region, eastern
Odessa region, and the Crimean peninsula - together with Bessarabia were
part of the historical region known as Novorossiya. Kharkiv region and
the northern part of the Luhansk region were and are still parts of
Sloboda Ukraine.
In Novorossia, on the basis of the mixed
composition of the colonizers of the lands of the south-east of Ukraine
- the Russian Empire and the Commonwealth, a special community of people
was born, connected to each other not by ethnicity, but by belonging to
one polity, which was to a greater extent the Russian Empire.
South-Eastern Ukraine differs from Western and Central historical fate
and the nature of the development of the territory, which resulted in a
specific composition of the population and its culture. These are the
most recently developed lands, where the most intensive process of
colonization and development took place in the 18th-20th centuries. They
are least connected with the legacy of the Commonwealth and most with
the legacy of the Russian Empire and the USSR.
At the beginning
of the Civil War in Russia, in the territory of the South-East of
Ukraine, there alternately existed an independent Ukrainian People's
Republic, proclaimed as the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets in
federal relations with Soviet Russia, as well as the Odessa and
Donetsk-Kryvyi Rih Soviet Republics with the capital in Kharkov (later
in Lugansk ), in March 1918, united into a single independent Ukrainian
Soviet Republic with its capital in Kharkov, which ceased to exist in
April 1918 due to the occupation by the Austrian-German troops. With the
return of Soviet power to Ukraine in 1919, an independent Ukrainian
Socialist Soviet Republic was created on this territory, also with its
capital in Kharkov, by 1920 whose power had spread to almost the entire
territory of Ukraine.
In 1934, the capital of Ukraine was moved
from Kharkov to Kyiv.
During the existence of the Ukrainian SSR,
the village of Darino-Ermakovka and the village of Koshary of the
Krasnogvardeisky district of the Rostov region were transferred to its
southeastern regions in 1944 to the Lugansk region, in 1954 the Crimean
region was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. In 1948,
Snake Island was transferred to the Odessa region from Romania. A number
of eastern territories were transferred from the Ukrainian SSR to the
RSFSR in the first half of the 1920s: Fedorovsky, Nikolaevsky (with the
city of Taganrog), Matveyevo-Kurgan, Sovetinsky, Golodaevsky districts
and the eastern part of the Ekaterinovsky district of the Taganrog
district, Glubokinsky, Leninsky, Kamensky, Ust-Belokalitvensky,
Vladimirsky, Sulinsky, Shakhtinsky (with the city of Shakhty) districts
and parts of the territory of the Sorokinsky and Alekseevsky districts
of the Shakhtinsky district, and a number of others.
Ukrainian
political scientist Vladimir Fesenko noted in 1998 that “the
Russian-speaking belt of Ukraine has four regional centers of influence
at once - Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkov and Odessa - between which
not only there is not enough mutual understanding and interaction, but
often there is a sharp competitive struggle ... Old and new politicians
Ukraine, representing its Russian-speaking regions, have successfully
studied (or are studying) the Ukrainian language, adapting to Ukrainian
ethnic values and symbols, at the same time adapting and using them for
their own utilitarian purposes. At the same time, they do not forget to
play on the ethnic stereotypes and prejudices of their Russian-speaking
voters.”
Describing the situation in Ukraine during the Orange
Revolution of 2004, political scientist Anton Finko stated about “the
confrontation between the West and the Center of Ukraine, on the one
hand, and the East and the South, on the other. Taking into account the
predominantly industrial and Russian-speaking character of the East and
South of Ukraine and, to a greater extent, the agrarian and
Ukrainian-speaking nature of the West and the Center ... two conflict
situations - a socio-economic one, caused by a mismatch of interests
between the urban and rural population, and an ethnolinguistic one, due
to differences between the Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking
communities of Ukrainian people."
During and after the Orange
Revolution, the 1st (2004) and 2nd (2008) All-Ukrainian Congresses of
Deputies of all levels were held in Severodonetsk to defend the
interests of the inhabitants of the territory of the South-East of
Ukraine, at which issues of the federalization of Ukraine, as well as
the possibility of creating a South-Eastern Ukrainian Autonomous
Republic with its capital in Kharkov. In November 2004, the Donetsk
Regional Council decided to hold a referendum on January 9, 2005 in the
region on declaring a special status independent from Ukraine in
relation to the Donetsk region, in which the governor of the region
would be subordinate not to the state Ukrainian authorities, but to the
regional council, as well as on introducing the leadership of the
country proposals on the federalization of Ukraine, however, in December
this decision was canceled by him and the idea of creating the
South-Eastern Ukrainian Autonomous Republic, as well as the idea of the
federalization of Ukraine, did not receive practical continuation.
In general, in all south-eastern regions, the majority of votes
(from 51% to 93%) in the presidential elections in 2004 was won by
Viktor Yanukovych (in each of the three rounds), and in the
parliamentary elections of 2006, opposition at that time "anti-orange"
political forces: the Party of Regions, the Communist Party of Ukraine
(together with the opposition blocs that did not get into parliament -
“Not so!”, the Vitrenko Bloc - from 50% to 84% in each of the regions).
In the presidential elections in Ukraine in 2010, Viktor Yanukovych also
won in all the southeastern regions of Ukraine, and then for the first
time the president of Ukraine was elected by the electorate not of most
regions of the country, but only of the Southeast with its most densely
populated territories.
In addition, in Southeastern Ukraine, the
population is mainly (2005) inclined to support Ukraine's integration
with Russia and the CIS countries, while the West expresses a greater
desire for integration into the European Union and NATO.
In the
course of further protests in the southeastern regions of Ukraine, the
Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics were proclaimed, the self-defense
forces of which were declared people's armies. April 14, 2014 by decree
and. O. President of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov put into effect the
decision of the National Security and Defense Council to launch an
anti-terrorist operation (ATO) in eastern Ukraine with the participation
of the Armed Forces. Since April 2014, an armed confrontation has been
going on in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions between the Ukrainian army
and the armed formations of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR.
The total population of Zaporozhye, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Kherson,
Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkiv regions for 2018, according to the Ukrainian
state statistics service, is 12,126,082 people, which is about 30% of
the population of all Ukraine. The population of Donetsk and Lugansk
regions, as of 2014, was 4,320,821 (September) and 2,237,897 (February),
respectively.
The largest region of Ukraine in terms of
population is the Donetsk region (4.8 million people according to the
2001 census, 10.003% of Ukraine).
Urbanization
The South-East
is the most urbanized macro-region of Ukraine, everything is
concentrated in it, with the exception of Kiev, million-plus cities
(Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, Kharkiv).
The
lowest population density within the macroregion is in the Kherson
region, and the highest (in Ukraine) is in its most urbanized regions,
where the urban population exceeds 90% - Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk,
Lugansk.
In South-Eastern Ukraine, the urban population
predominates over the rural population, while in Western Ukraine, the
rural population predominates over the urban population in five out of
eight oblasts.
As the researcher Andriy Malgin points out, the South-East of Ukraine
“is distinguished both by its historical fate and the nature of the
development of the territory, which resulted in a specific composition
and culture of the population ... these are the most recently developed
lands ... they are least associated with the legacy of the Commonwealth
and to the greatest extent - with the legacy of the Russian Empire and
especially the Soviet Union. According to the book, “The southeast was
annexed and developed only at the end of the 18th century, it acquired
its cultural and economic character at the end of the 19th and 20th
centuries, which was the result of global industrialization ... The
industrial and scientific and technical type of culture dominates here
and the Russian language dominates - the language of imperial and Soviet
industrialization and technical progress of the 20th century. To a large
extent, as the researchers note, the self-consciousness of the
inhabitants of the South-East is implicated in nostalgia for the cult of
the working class and the technical intelligentsia that dominated the
USSR.
Ethnic and linguistic identity
The South-East of Ukraine
is a macro-region of the country with the largest share of the
Russian-speaking population. In the central, southern and eastern parts
of Ukraine, dialects of the southeastern dialect of the Ukrainian
language are common. The range of the Middle Dnieper dialects occupies
the territory of central Ukraine in the middle reaches of the Dnieper -
Cherkasy and Poltava regions, the southern part of the Kiev region, the
southwestern part of the Sumy region, the northern parts of the
Kirovograd and Dnepropetrovsk regions. Slobozhansky dialects are common
on the territory of Sloboda Ukraine - in the Kharkiv region, in the
southeast of the Sumy region and in the northern part of the Lugansk
region. Steppe dialects occupy significant territories of the southern
(steppe) regions of Ukraine - the southern part of the Kirovograd
region, most of the Dnipropetrovsk region (excluding its northern
regions), Donetsk region, the southern part of the Luhansk region, most
of the Nikolaev region (excluding its northwestern regions) , the
southern part of the Odessa region, Crimea, Zaporozhye and Kherson
regions.
Religious activity in the southeastern regions is lower than in the
western or central regions: here, according to 2005 data, there were 1-3
registered religious organizations for every 10 thousand people (in the
central regions - 2-5 organizations, in the western regions - 9 and
more). The lowest density of religious organizations as of January 1,
2004 was in the Luhansk region (1.6 per 10,000 population), Donetsk
(1.4), Kharkov (1.3) regions.
The most common denomination is the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, Protestantism of
various denominations is also widespread. At the same time, the UOC-MP
represents 40-60% of all religious communities in the South-East of
Ukraine; UOC (KP) - in general, less than 10%, in the Nikolaev region -
10-20%, in the Dnipropetrovsk region - 20-30%; Protestants are most
represented in the Donetsk and Zaporozhye regions (40-50% of all
religious communities).
After the start of the Russian invasion, there were suggestions that the main blow to the pro-Russian forces was dealt by the Russian authorities through active hostilities in regions loyal to it. The columnist for the Carnegie International Endowment Konstantin Skorkin saw the region's political future in the well-positioned Servant of the People and the new regional leaders.
The largest among the regions of the macroregion in terms of area, according to the Ukrainian State Statistics Service, is the Odessa region (33.3 thousand sq. km), followed by the Dnipropetrovsk region (31.9), Kharkiv region (31.4), Kherson region (28, 5), Zaporozhye (27.2), Lugansk (26.7), Donetsk (26.5), Autonomous Republic of Crimea (26.1), Mykolaiv region (24.6), Sevastopol city (0.9). The total area of the southeastern regions of the country is 257.1 thousand square meters. km.
In the southeast and Ukraine as a whole, the economic conditions of
the 1990s turned out to be relatively favorable for the Donetsk,
Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye and Lugansk regions, where the basic sectors
of the economy are developed. In 2001, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk and
Zaporozhye regions were also leaders in exporting products abroad.
There are many large enterprises in the south-east of Ukraine:
Donetskugol (the largest enterprise in the coal mining industry);
"Krivorozhstal", Donetsk Metallurgical Plant, "Azovstal", Alchevsk
Metallurgical Plant and Metallurgical Plant named after. Ilyich,
Dnepropetrovsk Metallurgical Plant (ferrous metallurgy); Plant named
after Malyshev, "Topaz" (military industry); Southern Machine-Building
Plant, Khartron, RADMIR (rocket and space industry); Kharkov Aviation
Plant and Motor Sich (aircraft industry); Lugansk plant named after the
October Revolution (locomotive building); Chernomorsky shipbuilding
plant, Okean shipbuilding plant, Kherson shipbuilding plant, Kharkov
tractor plant, oil refineries in Lisichansk, Odessa, Kherson, Berdyansk,
South Ukrainian nuclear power plant; DneproGES and Kakhovskaya GES
(hydroelectric power industry); Shchastyinskaya CHPP; seaports of
Odessa, Berdyansk, Mariupol.
The income level of the population
at the beginning of 2007 was above the national average in
Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk and Zaporozhye regions (which, together with
Kiev, are leaders in this indicator), one of the lowest incomes is among
residents of the Kherson region. The same trend was illustrated by the
data for 2001.