SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS OF ETHNIC POLYMORPHISM IN SOCIETY
Authors: Barna Iryna 
Published: December 2024

The ethnic composition of a population is a characteristic of society that is constantly changing. Variables include indicators of natural and mechanical movement of ethnic groups, as well as ethnic processes caused by a whole range of complex socio-economic phenomena that affect the dynamics of the number of ethnic groups and the ethnic structure of the population of the territory. In the Ternopil region, the latter, in turn, were dictated by the peculiarities of the socio-political status of the territory, which for several centuries was in colonial dependence on the metropolitan states.
The socio-economic background, which provided certain advantages in economic life, has been an important factor in immigration to our region since the times of Kyivan Rus and the Principality of Galicia-Volhynia. Encouraged by large land allotments and tax exemptions, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians, Armenians, Czechs, and Vlachs chose to settle in the region, which only slightly changed the ethnic structure of the region's population.
The announcement of the so-called freedoms, according to which the population was exempt from taxes for several years, stimulated the colonization of Galicia during the Turkish-Tatar invasion. The intensity of such migrations increased significantly as the Tatars retreated and weakened during their offensives.
The political expansion of lands as a result of the loss of their own statehood determined the primacy of the economic interests of empires. As the imperial power advanced, so did colonization, which in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was of a Polish nature. To ensure state colonization, Polish kings distributed land.
Cities were especially actively colonized. The socio-economic conditions in the rural areas of the region were determined by the process of enslavement and increased feudal exploitation, which led to the migration of peasants, which affected not only the total population of the region, but also changed its ethnic structure and geographical location.
The period of the Ukrainian National Liberation War and new Tatar attacks not only restrained foreign colonization of the region, but also led to the outflow of artisans and merchants and the decline of settlements. The merchants who dared to come to the region in the late seventeenth century were Jews fleeing persecution in European countries.
After the capture of eastern Galicia by Austria, Polish colonization was replaced by German colonization.
The numerical growth of the foreign-speaking population in the region was not accompanied by mass emigration of the Ukrainian population until the mid-nineteenth century. Until then, the migration component was limited to the flight of peasants to the Zaporozhian Sich, Bessarabia, Zakarpattia, Bukovyna, and Podillia, and the proletarianization of a small part of them. After the abolition of serfdom in 1848 in the Habsburg monarchy and in 1861 in lands under Russian rule in the Ternopil region, impoverished segments of the population joined the ranks of economic migrants. Until the twenties of the twentieth century, the bulk of labor migrants came from European countries (Great Britain, Germany, France), but later - from overseas countries (USA, Canada, Brazil).
The formation of the national composition of the population of the Ternopil region after World War I was determined by two oppositely directed processes. The instability of the political situation in the face of growing economic decline prompted poor and destitute Ukrainian peasants to leave. In contrast to the Ukrainian emigration of this period, it was mainly Polish immigrants, the so-called Osadnyky, who immigrated to the Ternopil region.
In the early thirties of the twentieth century, collectivization, including among Russian and Polish peasants, was a significant factor in rural emigration from the USSR.
The inclusion of the region into the Ukrainian SSR and the USSR affected the ethnic composition of the population, but the factors that changed it were vocational training, encouragement of Ukrainian youth to work in new construction projects (BAM, Kuzbass, etc.), and the development of so-called virgin lands. These losses were compensated for by the migration of the population of the Soviet republics, primarily Russians, to the region to rebuild the national economy.
After the declaration of Ukraine's independence and until the end of the twentieth century, changes in the ethnic composition of the population of Ternopil Oblast were largely caused by migration, the direction and intensity of which was increasingly influenced by economic factors. The sharp decline in the standard of living and quality of life and the inability to find work have generated strong emigration movements among different ethnic groups, but most of all among Ukrainians.
In general, it can be stated that the dynamics of the ethnic composition of the population is determined by socio-economic factors, which are inextricably linked to urbanization processes. The status of urban settlements significantly depended on periods of economic growth and decline. They developed rapidly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when trade was actively developing.
Keywords: economic benefits, political status of the territory, immigration, emigration, colonization, urbanization.