page_title: Poles in Ukraine
section_title: Polish assimilation
hierarchical_section_title: Poles in Ukraine / History / During the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries / Within the Russian Empire / Polish assimilation
caption_attribution_description: English: The Catholic Church St John in Zhytomyr (Ukrainian: Житомир, Russian: Житомир).
context_page_description: The Polish minority in Ukraine officially numbers about 144,130, of whom 21,094 speak Polish as their first language. The history of Polish settlement in current territory of Ukraine dates back to 1030–31. In Late Middle Ages, following the extinction of the Rurikid dynasty in 1323, the Kingdom of Poland extended east in 1340 to include the lands of Przemyśl and in 1366, Kamianets-Podilskyi. The settlement of Poles became common there after the Polish–Lithuanian peace treaty signed in 1366 between Casimir III the Great of Poland, and Liubartas of Lithuania.
context_section_description: Under the Russian Empire, Polish society tended to stratify.  The Polish magnates prospered under the Russian Empire, at the expense of the serfs and of the poorer Polish nobility whom they pushed from the land. The wealthy magnates tended to oppose the Polish insurrections, identified with their Russian landlord peers, and often moved to St. Petersburg. The Polish national movement in Ukrainian lands thus tended to be led by members of the middle and poorer gentry, who formed secret societies in places with large Polish populations, such as Kiev, Zhytomir and Berdychiv.  As a result of an anti-Russian insurrection in 1830, the Polish middle and poorer nobility were stripped of their legal noble status by the Russian government. These Polish nobles, legally reduced to the status of peasants, often assimilated into the Ukrainian language and culture.  Many of the poorer Polish nobles who became Ukrainianized in language, culture and political loyalty constituted an important element of the growing Ukrainian national movement. Ukrainian-speaking Poles from the Russian empire include Ukrainian political theorist Vyacheslav Lypynsky, historian and nineteenth century leader of the Ukrainian national awakening Volodymyr Antonovych (Włodzimierz Antonowicz), and painter Kazimir Malevich.
  Due to assimilation, whereas at the time of the annexation of Ukrainian lands by Russia in 1795 10% of the population were Poles, in spite of ongoing migration of Poles from central Poland into Ukrainian lands, by the end of the nineteenth century only three percent of the total population of these territories reported that Polish was their first language.
caption: The Catholic Church of St. John in the center of Zhytomyr.  This city is the site of the third largest Polish cemetery outside Poland.
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