Kuban Oblast
The first Russian Empire Census, conducted in 1897, gave statistics regarding language use in the Russian Empire according to the administrative borders. Extensive use of Little Russian (and in some cases dominance) was noted in the nine south-western Governorates and the Kuban Oblast. When the future borders of the Ukrainian state were marked, the results of the census were taken into consideration. As a result, the ethnographic borders of Ukraine in the 20th century were twice as large as the Cossack Hetmanate that was incorporated into the Russian Empire in the 17th.