page_title: Historical background of the Russo-Ukrainian War
section_title: Kharkiv Oblast
hierarchical_section_title: Historical background of the Russo-Ukrainian War / Kharkiv Oblast
caption_attribution_description: From 1935 publication 'Muss Russland Hungern?' [Must Russia Starve?], published by Wilhelm Braumüller, Wien [Vienna] depicted 1933 Kharkov German:"Die Anteilnahme schwindet." English "The sympathy shrinks!" Українська: Репродукція з Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, 1932-1933: Western Archives, Testimonies and New Research / Edited by Wsevolod W. Isajiw. - Toronto: Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre, Toronto, 2003. Фото з Колекції Кардинала Теодора Інніцира, (Архів Віденської Дієцезії). Центральний державний кінофотофоноархів України імені Г. С. Пшеничного, од. обл. 0-000002
context_page_description: A variety of social, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic factors contributed to the sparking of unrest in eastern and southern Ukraine, and the subsequent eruption of the Russo-Ukrainian War, in the aftermath of the early 2014 Ukrainian revolution. Following Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, resurfacing historical and cultural divisions and a weak state structure hampered the development of a unified Ukrainian national identity. In eastern and southern Ukraine, Russification and ethnic Russian settlement during centuries of Russian rule caused the Russian language to attain primacy, even amongst ethnic Ukrainians. In Crimea, ethnic Russians have comprised the majority of the population since the deportation of the indigenous Crimean Tatars by Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin following the Second World War. This contrasts with western and central Ukraine, which were historically ruled by a variety of powers, such as the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Austrian Empire. In these areas, the Ukrainian ethnic, national, and linguistic identity remained intact.
context_section_description: Previously a sparsely populated region, large amounts of ethnic Ukrainian settlers first came to the land that is now Kharkiv Oblast around the time of the 1648–57 Khmelnytsky uprising. These settlers had fled fighting between Ukrainian Cossacks and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth near the Dnieper River. The area that they settled in was named "Sloboda Ukraine" (Ukrainian: Слобiдська Україна, Slobodskaya Ukraina). Over the following centuries, multiple waves of immigration to Sloboda Ukraine brought both ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians. Prior to the 19th century, only smalls amounts of Russians settled in the area. They tended to live in cities, whilst rural areas were dominated by ethnic Ukrainians. The region had an autonomous Cossack government until it was abolished by Catherine the Great in 1765. By 1832, the urban-rural divide became firmly entrenched: 50% of merchants were ethnic Russians, as were 45% of factory owners. In line with this increasing Russification, the name Sloboda Ukraine was replaced by Kharkov Governorate in 1835. Ethnic Russians in agriculture-dominated Kharkiv were never as numerous as in the industrial Donbass, and the region always retained a distinct Ukrainian culture. This is illustrated by the Imperial Census of 1897, which recorded the native language of 80.6% of the population of Kharkov Governorate as Ukrainian, whereas Russian was recorded as the native language of only 17.7% of the population.
  The city of Kharkiv became the capital of the Ukrainian SSR in 1922. During the 1932–33 Holodomor famine, the ethnic Ukrainian-populated countryside of Kharkiv Oblast was devastated. At the same time, the city of Kharkiv became heavily industrialised, and its ethnic Russian population boomed. By the time of the Soviet Census of 1989, 33.2% of the population of Kharkiv Oblast identified as ethnic Russian, and 48.1%  of the population reported that their native language was Russian.
caption: Corpse on pavement in Kharkiv during the Holodomor
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