List of People Born in Ukraine

List Of People Born In Ukraine

This is a list of individuals who were born and lived in territories currently in Ukraine but who may not be ethnic Ukrainians. Throughout Eastern European history, Ukrainian lands were ethnically and culturally diverse. Originally under the hegemony of the Kievan Rus', a schism took place after the Mongol invasion and Ukrainian/Belarusian lands were taken from the East Slavic civilization and annexed into the growing Duchy of Lithuania, where a Ruthenian language distinct from Old East Slavic evolved, while Muscovy stayed under Mongol control for another century, absorbing much Mongol vocabulary, hence separating modern Russian from modern Belarussian and Ukrainian. Lithuania's unification with Poland into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth further added a Polonization factor to Ruthenian lands. In the 1930s, the Holodomor reduced the Ukrainian population of eastern Ukraine and led to increased Russification in the east.

Although Ukrainians have always been a major ethnic group in Ukraine, ethnic Ruthenians were frequently a rural people and often formed minorities in their own cities and towns. For example, due to the imperialistic anti-Ukrainian policies of Moscow Communists, Kyiv in the 1920s was approximately 1/3 Jewish and 1/3 Russian, with the remaining third constituting ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, and Germans. In dictator-ruled Poland between the World Wars, similar anti-Ukrainian policies were implemented. For instance, a similar demographic history existed in Lviv (then occupied by militaristic dictator-ruled Poland) with a majority Polish and Jewish population. However, during the Second World War, the Jewish population of Ukraine was virtually eliminated by the Holocaust.