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Donetsk Clan

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89-581: The Donetsk Clan ( Ukrainian : Донецький клан , romanized :  Donetskyi klan ; Russian : Донецкий клан , romanized :  Donetsky klan ), also called the Donetsk Mafia , the Donetsk Family , or simply "The Family" , was a group of Ukrainian oligarchs and members of the Ukrainian mafia active between the late Soviet period and the 2014 Revolution of Dignity , when

178-414: A weak yer vowel that would eventually disappear completely, for example Old East Slavic котъ /kɔtə/ > Ukrainian кіт /kit/ 'cat' (via transitional stages such as /koˑtə̆/, /kuˑt(ə̆)/, /kyˑt/ or similar) or Old East Slavic печь /pʲɛtʃʲə/ > Ukrainian піч /pitʃ/ 'oven' (via transitional stages such as /pʲeˑtʃʲə̆/, /pʲiˑtʃʲ/ or similar). This raising and other phonological developments of the time, such as

267-636: A body of national literature, institute a Ukrainian-language educational system, and form an independent state (the Ukrainian People's Republic , shortly joined by the West Ukrainian People's Republic ). During this brief independent statehood the stature and use of Ukrainian greatly improved. In the Russian Empire Census of 1897 the following picture emerged, with Ukrainian being the second most spoken language of

356-866: A decree declaring the annexation of four regions of Ukraine (Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhiya Oblasts) to Russia . The annexation was illegal under international law and was condemned by the General Assembly of the United Nations . Some of the more prestigious universities in Ukraine have their home in Luhansk. Luhansk is the location of the main campus of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Luhansk , East Ukrainian Volodymyr Dahl National University and of Luhansk State Medical University . In

445-604: A former violent criminal who was willing to forge an alliance with Akhmetov's FC Shakhtar Donetsk . Between 1994 and 2004, the Donetsk Clan consumed its opponents, assuming economic control over the Donbas. However, the clan was also focused on politics, and mobilised local residents against the Communist Party of Ukraine beginning in the late 1990s. Using government resources controlled as a result of state capture ,

534-540: A general economic slump, and the closure of unprofitable mines by the Ukrainian government, a "Ukrainian rust belt " came into being in the Donbas, and crime rose sharply. The Donetsk Clan formed shortly following the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine , as members of the former nomenklatura united with newly wealthy businessmen and members of the Ukrainian mafia in an effort to secure their own control over

623-542: A large industrial node, linked by rail to other major cities and to the Azov Sea . In 1882, the Luhansk Factory was merged with Kamianyi Brid into a new settlement named Luhansk, which received city status. In 1897, Luhansk had a population of 20,400, 68.2% of whom were Russians . In summer 1896, German industrialist Gustav Hartmann  [ de ] founded a locomotive -building company in Luhansk, which

712-591: A policy of defending Ukraine's interests within the Soviet Union. He proudly promoted the beauty of the Ukrainian language and developed plans to expand the role of Ukrainian in higher education. He was removed, however, after only a brief tenure, for being too lenient on Ukrainian nationalism. The new party boss from 1972 to 1989, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky , purged the local party, was fierce in suppressing dissent, and insisted Russian be spoken at all official functions, even at local levels. His policy of Russification

801-565: A result of close Slavic contacts with the remnants of the Scythian and Sarmatian population north of the Black Sea , lasting into the early Middle Ages , the appearance of the voiced fricative γ/г (romanized "h"), in modern Ukrainian and some southern Russian dialects is explained by the assumption that it initially emerged in Scythian and related eastern Iranian dialects, from earlier common Proto-Indo-European *g and *gʰ . During

890-644: A self-aware Ukrainian nation would threaten the unity of the empire. In 1804 Ukrainian as a subject and language of instruction was banned from schools. In 1811, by order of the Russian government, the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy was closed. In 1847 the Brotherhood of St Cyril and Methodius was terminated. The same year Taras Shevchenko was arrested, exiled for ten years, and banned for political reasons from writing and painting. In 1862 Pavlo Chubynsky

979-890: A variant name of the Little Russian language . In a private letter from 1854, Taras Shevchenko lauds "our splendid Ukrainian language". Valuyev's decree from 1863 derides the "Little Russian" language throughout, but also mentions "the so-called Ukrainian language" once. In Galicia, the earliest applications of the term Ukrainian to the language were in the hyphenated names Ukrainian-Ruthenian (1866, by Paulin Święcicki ) or Ruthenian-Ukrainian (1871, by Panteleimon Kulish and Ivan Puluj ), with non-hyphenated Ukrainian language appearing shortly thereafter (in 1878, by Mykhailo Drahomanov ). A following ban on Ukrainian books led to Alexander II 's secret Ems Ukaz , which prohibited publication and importation of most Ukrainian-language books, public performances and lectures, and even banned

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1068-463: Is a city in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine . As of 2022, the population was estimated to be 397,677 (2022 estimate), making Luhansk the 12th-largest city in Ukraine . Luhansk served as the administrative center of Luhansk Oblast , before pro-Russian separatists seized control of the city in 2014 and made it the capital of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic . The Ukrainian administration

1157-646: Is based on the character of contemporary written sources, ultimately reflecting socio-historical developments, and he further subdivides the Middle period into three phases: Ukraine annually marks the Day of Ukrainian Writing and Language on 9 November, the Eastern Orthodox feast day of Nestor the Chronicler . The era of Kievan Rus' ( c. 880–1240) is the subject of some linguistic controversy, as

1246-471: Is more mutual intelligibility with Belarusian , and a closer lexical distance to West Slavic Polish and South Slavic Bulgarian . Ukrainian is a descendant of Old East Slavic , a language spoken in the medieval state of Kievan Rus' . In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , the language developed into Ruthenian , where it became an official language, before a process of Polonization began in

1335-667: Is now Luhanskteplovoz . It became operational in 1900, and soon produced a large proportion of all locomotives in the Russian Empire. Luhansk was economically devastated by the Russian Civil War . In April 1918, Luhansk was occupied by the Central Powers during their invasion of Ukraine . Then, it was taken by Anton Denikin 's anti-communist Volunteer Army in May 1919, before changing hands several times. It

1424-800: Is one of the East Slavic languages in the Indo-European languages family, and it is spoken primarily in Ukraine . It is the first (native) language of a large majority of Ukrainians . Written Ukrainian uses the Ukrainian alphabet , a variant of the Cyrillic script . The standard language is studied by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Potebnia Institute of Linguistics . Comparisons are often made between Ukrainian and Russian , another East Slavic language, yet there

1513-645: Is referred to as "Old Ukrainian", but elsewhere, and in contemporary sources, is known as the Ruthenian language, and from the end of the 18th century to the present what in Ukraine is known as "Modern Ukrainian", but elsewhere is known as just Ukrainian. Luhansk Luhansk ( UK : / l uː ˈ h æ n s k / , US : /- ˈ h ɑː n -/ ; Ukrainian : Луганськ , IPA: [lʊˈɦɑnʲsʲk] ), also known as Lugansk ( UK : /- ˈ ɡ æ n -/ , US : /- ˈ ɡ ɑː n -/ ; Russian : Луганск , IPA: [lʊˈɡansk] ),

1602-526: The 1972 Soviet Top League . The other football team was Dynamo Luhansk . On 7 September 2006, archaeologists in Ukraine announced that an ancient structure had been discovered near Luhansk, which the press reported as a pyramid antedating those in Egypt by at least 300 years. The stone foundations of the structure were said to resemble Aztec and Mayan pyramids in Mesoamerica . It was later concluded that

1691-612: The Black Sea Fleet . Gascoigne had emigrated to Saint Petersburg years earlier, and founded factories and mines across the Russian Empire during his time there. There is a prominent bust of him in Luhansk commemorating his role in the city's founding. The factory was built in the Donets Basin (or Donbas) at the confluence of the Luhan and Vilkhivka  [ uk ] rivers. The Russian craftsmen settled upstream, at

1780-541: The Donbas region. In its early years, the Donetsk Clan was dominated by violent competition; the clan's leader, Akhat Bragin , was killed in a 1995 bombing at Shakhtar Stadium , and various other members either were killed off by other criminal groups or left to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv after taking political office. Following Bragin's death, fellow Donetsk businessman Rinat Akhmetov took over his businesses and further expanded on them. He joined forces with Viktor Yanukovych , Governor of Donetsk Oblast and himself

1869-584: The Holodomor , a manmade famine across Soviet Ukraine . The Russian proportion of the population shrank to 34.5%. Voroshilovgrad became a frontline city in World War II after the failure of Nazi Germany 's Operation Barbarossa to capture major Soviet cities. In March 1942, a grand concert featuring the work of Taras Shevchenko was held in the city to inspire Ukrainians to fight off the invading Nazis. In July 1942, Germany concentrated its forces in

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1958-563: The Ilovaisk counteroffensive , LPR forces regained Lutuhyne and other Luhansk suburbs. Ukrainian forces withdrew from the Luhansk International Airport on 1 September 2014, after heavy fighting. Human Rights Watch reported high civilian casualties in and around the city, recording over 300 civilian deaths caused by explosive weapons between May and September 2014. The temporary administration of Luhansk Oblast

2047-723: The Latin language. Much of the influence of Poland on the development of the Ukrainian language has been attributed to this period and is reflected in multiple words and constructions used in everyday Ukrainian speech that were taken from Polish or Latin. Examples of Polish words adopted from this period include zavzhdy (always; taken from old Polish word zawżdy ) and obitsiaty (to promise; taken from Polish obiecać ) and from Latin (via Polish) raptom (suddenly) and meta (aim or goal). Significant contact with Tatars and Turks resulted in many Turkic words, particularly those involving military matters and steppe industry, being adopted into

2136-569: The Novgorod Republic did not call themselves Rus ' until the 14th century; earlier Novgorodians reserved the term Rus ' for the Kiev , Pereyaslavl and Chernigov principalities. At the same time as evidenced by contemporary chronicles, the ruling princes and kings of Galicia–Volhynia and Kiev called themselves "people of Rus ' " (in foreign sources called " Ruthenians "), and Galicia–Volhynia has alternately been called

2225-626: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . By the 18th century, Ruthenian diverged into regional variants, and the modern Ukrainian language developed in the territory of present-day Ukraine. Russification saw the Ukrainian language banned as a subject from schools and as a language of instruction in the Russian Empire , and continued in various ways in the Soviet Union . Even so, the language continued to see use throughout

2314-727: The Revolution of Dignity , the clan entered into an agreement with pro-Russian gas executives, forming the Opposition Bloc . However, the clan's political influence was severely weakened after the city of Donetsk was captured by the separatist Donetsk People's Republic during the War in Donbas , and the clan, along with the Kyiv Seven , proved unable to survive. Ukrainian language Ukrainian ( українська мова , ukrainska mova , IPA: [ʊkrɐˈjinʲsʲkɐ ˈmɔʋɐ] )

2403-635: The Ukrainian Census of 2001 , 49.6% of the inhabitants declared themselves as ethnically Ukrainians and 47% as Russians. 85.3% of the population spoke Russian as their native language, while 13.7% spoke Ukrainian , 0.2% Armenian and 0.1% Belarusian . Luhansk is home to Zorya Luhansk which now plays in the Ukrainian Premier League annual football championship and plays at the Avanhard Stadium . The club won

2492-399: The law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" was approved by the parliament, formalizing rules governing the usage of the language and introducing penalties for violations. The literary Ukrainian language, which was preceded by Old East Slavic literature, may be subdivided into two stages: during the 12th to 18th centuries what in Ukraine

2581-425: The 11th–12th century, but started becoming more similar to them around the 13th–15th centuries. The modern Russian language hence developed from the fusion of this Novgorod dialect and the common dialect spoken by the other Kievan Rus', whereas the modern Ukrainian and Belarusian languages developed from dialects which did not differ from each other in a significant way. Ukrainian linguist Stepan Smal-Stotsky denies

2670-456: The 13th century, eastern parts of Rus (including Moscow) came under Tatar rule until their unification under the Tsardom of Muscovy , whereas the south-western areas (including Kyiv ) were incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania . For the following four centuries, the languages of the two regions evolved in relative isolation from each other. Direct written evidence of the existence of

2759-680: The 13th century, when German settlers were invited to Ukraine by the princes of the Kingdom of Ruthenia, German words began to appear in the language spoken in Ukraine. Their influence would continue under Poland not only through German colonists but also through the Yiddish-speaking Jews. Often such words involve trade or handicrafts. Examples of words of German or Yiddish origin spoken in Ukraine include dakh ("roof"), rura ("pipe"), rynok ("market"), kushnir ("furrier"), and majster ("master" or "craftsman"). In

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2848-542: The Cossack motherland, Ukrajina , as a self-appellation for the nation of Ukrainians, and Ukrajins'ka mova for the language. Many writers published works in the Romantic tradition of Europe demonstrating that Ukrainian was not merely a language of the village but suitable for literary pursuits. However, in the Russian Empire expressions of Ukrainian culture and especially language were repeatedly persecuted for fear that

2937-461: The Donetsk Clan dissolved, though its members remained prominent in Ukraine. Following World War II , the Donbas region, and in particular the city of Donetsk , faced wide-reaching urbanisation and immigration from throughout the Soviet Union . From 1945 to 1955, roughly 3.5 million people settled in Donetsk to work in the city's coal mines and factories. Further increasing the city's population

3026-454: The Donetsk Clan, were appointed to offices within the government, and Mykola Azarov , a member of the clan, was appointed as Prime Minister. Yanukovych's son, Oleksandr , also became a millionaire under his father's rule. The corruption of the Donetsk clan was a prime target of the 2013–2014 Euromaidan protests, and the clan's other two leaders, Firtash and Akhmetov, ultimately played a pivotal role in ousting Yanukovych from office. Following

3115-478: The Donetsk Clan. Akhmetov in particular was a victim of anti-oligarch measures, and he fled to Monaco to avoid prosecution for illegally obtaining his assets. He would later return to campaign on Yanukovych's behalf. After Yanukovych was successfully elected as president in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election , he began placing members of the Donetsk Clan in high-ranking positions. Serhiy Arbuzov , Oleksandr Klymenko , and Vitaliy Zakharchenko , all members of

3204-549: The Orthodox church spoke Ruthenian. The 1654 Pereiaslav Agreement between Cossack Hetmanate and Alexis of Russia divided Ukraine between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Tsardom of Russia. During the following century, both monarchies became increasingly intolerant of Ukrainian own cultural and political aspirations. Ukrainians found themselves in a colonial situation. The Russian centre adopted

3293-574: The Polish nobility. Many Ukrainian nobles learned the Polish language and converted to Catholicism during that period in order to maintain their lofty aristocratic position. Lower classes were less affected because literacy was common only in the upper class and clergy. The latter were also under significant Polish pressure after the Union with the Catholic Church . Most of the educational system

3382-542: The Principality or Kingdom of Ruthenia. Also according to Andrey Zaliznyak, the Novgorodian dialect differed significantly from that of other dialects of Kievan Rus during the 11th–12th century, but started becoming more similar to them around 13th–15th centuries. The modern Russian language hence developed from the fusion of this Novgorodian dialect and the common dialect spoken by the other Kievan Rus, whereas

3471-557: The Russian Empire. According to the Imperial census's terminology, the Russian language ( Русскій ) was subdivided into Ukrainian (Малорусскій, ' Little Russian '), what is known as Russian today (Великорусскій, ' Great Russian '), and Belarusian (Бѣлорусскій, 'White Russian'). The following table shows the distribution of settlement by native language ( "по родному языку" ) in 1897 in Russian Empire governorates ( guberniyas ) that had more than 100,000 Ukrainian speakers. Although in

3560-535: The Russian language gaining status of an official language alongside Ukrainian , and for the Russian language to be an official language on a regional level. The previous demographic trends reversed in independent Ukraine; by 2001, Ukrainians - who increasingly spoke Russian - were 50% of the population and Russians made up 47%. The population as a whole began to decline as the economy stagnated, dropping from 505,000 in 1992 to 424,000 in 2014. In April 2014, Russia -backed separatists seized governmental buildings in

3649-460: The Soviet Union and a special term, "a language of inter-ethnic communication", was coined to denote its status. After the death of Stalin (1953), a general policy of relaxing the language policies of the past was implemented (1958 to 1963). The Khrushchev era which followed saw a policy of relatively lenient concessions to development of the languages at the local and republic level, though its results in Ukraine did not go nearly as far as those of

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3738-519: The Soviet policy of Ukrainianization in the 1920s. Journals and encyclopedic publications advanced in the Ukrainian language during the Khrushchev era, as well as transfer of Crimea under Ukrainian SSR jurisdiction. Yet, the 1958 school reform that allowed parents to choose the language of primary instruction for their children, unpopular among the circles of the national intelligentsia in parts of

3827-551: The USSR, meant that non-Russian languages would slowly give way to Russian in light of the pressures of survival and advancement. The gains of the past, already largely reversed by the Stalin era, were offset by the liberal attitude towards the requirement to study the local languages (the requirement to study Russian remained). Parents were usually free to choose the language of study of their children (except in few areas where attending

3916-564: The Ukrainian language dates to the late 16th century. By the 16th century, a peculiar official language formed: a mixture of the liturgical standardised language of Old Church Slavonic , Ruthenian and Polish . The influence of the latter gradually increased relative to the former two, as the nobility and rural large-landowning class, known as the szlachta , was largely Polish-speaking. Documents soon took on many Polish characteristics superimposed on Ruthenian phonetics. Polish–Lithuanian rule and education also involved significant exposure to

4005-477: The Ukrainian language held the formal position of the principal local language in the Ukrainian SSR . However, practice was often a different story: Ukrainian always had to compete with Russian, and the attitudes of the Soviet leadership towards Ukrainian varied from encouragement and tolerance to de facto banishment. Officially, there was no state language in the Soviet Union until the very end when it

4094-465: The Ukrainian language. Examples include torba (bag) and tyutyun (tobacco). Because of the substantial number of loanwords from Polish, German, Czech and Latin, early modern vernacular Ukrainian ( prosta mova , " simple speech ") had more lexical similarity with West Slavic languages than with Russian or Church Slavonic. By the mid-17th century, the linguistic divergence between the Ukrainian and Russian languages had become so significant that there

4183-409: The Ukrainian school might have required a long daily commute) and they often chose Russian, which reinforced the resulting Russification. In this sense, some analysts argue that it was not the "oppression" or "persecution", but rather the lack of protection against the expansion of Russian language that contributed to the relative decline of Ukrainian in the 1970s and 1980s. According to this view, it

4272-700: The area and forced the Soviets to retreat to the Volga and the North Caucasus. On 14 July 1942, German troops captured Voroshilovgrad. Locals waged partisan warfare against the occupation. The city was eventually liberated by the Red Army on 14 February 1943. In the postwar period, the city was rebuilt. The population recovered and grew, again alongside demographic change. More Russians were brought in to rebuild and help with industrialization , again reducing

4361-407: The chancellery and gradually evolved into the Ruthenian language. Polish rule, which came later, was accompanied by a more assimilationist policy. By the 1569 Union of Lublin that formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a significant part of Ukrainian territory was moved from Lithuanian rule to Polish administration, resulting in cultural Polonization and visible attempts to colonize Ukraine by

4450-477: The city. On 17 August, Ukrainian soldiers entered the rebel-controlled Luhansk and for a time had control over a police station. A statement released on 22 August by Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Antanas Linkevičius said that the Lithuanian honorary consul in Luhansk, Mykola Zelenec, was abducted by the pro-Russian separatists and murdered. Linkevičius defined the abductors as 'terrorists'. After

4539-447: The clan collapsed. Emerging from the nomenklatura of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, the Donetsk Clan formed one of the three main groupings of oligarchs during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma , alongside Viktor Medvedchuk 's Kyiv Seven and Kuchma's own Dnipropetrovsk Mafia . In Kuchma's second term, the clan outplayed the other two groups, leading to the political rise of Viktor Yanukovych . Following Yanukovych's fall from power,

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4628-557: The clan organised the Party of Regions as an alternative to the Communist Party, resulting in the party entering the Ukrainian government in 2002. The clan also expanded eastwards into Luhansk , effectively taking over the city's underworld after the murder of Luhansk mobster Valerii Dobroslavskyi  [ uk ] in 1997. In 2002, Yanukovych was appointed as Prime Minister of Ukraine by President Leonid Kuchma . The move

4717-591: The country, and remained particularly strong in Western Ukraine . Specific developments that led to a gradual change of the Old East Slavic vowel system into the system found in modern Ukrainian began approximately in the 12th/13th century (that is, still at the time of the Kievan Rus') with a lengthening and raising of the Old East Slavic mid vowels e and o when followed by a consonant and

4806-407: The existence of a common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past. Similar points of view were shared by Yevhen Tymchenko , Vsevolod Hantsov , Olena Kurylo , Ivan Ohienko and others. According to this theory, the dialects of East Slavic tribes evolved gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermediate stages during the 6th through 9th centuries. The Ukrainian language

4895-481: The following night. Three days later the website of the separatists stated that Plotnitsky had resigned "for health reasons. Multiple war wounds, the effects of blast injuries, took their toll." The website stated that security minister Leonid Pasechnik had been named acting leader "until the next elections." On September 30, 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine , Russian President Vladimir Putin signed

4984-417: The language of much of the literature was purely or heavily Old Church Slavonic . Some theorists see an early Ukrainian stage in language development here, calling it Old Ruthenian; others term this era Old East Slavic . Russian theorists tend to amalgamate Rus' to the modern nation of Russia, and call this linguistic era Old Russian. However, according to Russian linguist Andrey Zaliznyak (2012), people from

5073-591: The late Soviet period; by 1989, Ukrainians made up 41.8% of the population and Russians had a majority of 52.4%. On 4 May 1990, a decree of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR gave the city back its original name. Ukraine gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In 1994, a consultative referendum took place in Donetsk Oblast and Luhansk Oblast , with around 90% supporting

5162-542: The merger of the Old East Slavic vowel phonemes и /i/ and ы /ɨ/ into the specifically Ukrainian phoneme /ɪ ~ e/, spelled with и (in the 13th/14th centuries), and the fricativisation of the Old East Slavic consonant г /g/, probably first to /ɣ/ (in the 13th century), with /ɦ/ as a reflex in Modern Ukrainian, did not happen in Russian. Only the fricativisation of Old East Slavic г /g/ occurred in Belarusian, where

5251-462: The modern Ukrainian and Belarusian languages developed from the dialects which did not differ from each other in a significant way. After the fall of the Kingdom of Ruthenia, Ukrainians mainly fell under the rule of Lithuania and then Poland . Local autonomy of both rule and language was a marked feature of Lithuanian rule. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Old East Slavic became the language of

5340-508: The name Little Russia for Ukraine and Little Russian for the language, an expression that originated in Byzantine Greek and may originally have meant "old, original, fundamental Russia", and had been in use since the 14th century. Ukrainian high culture went into a long period of steady decline. The Kyiv-Mohyla Academy was taken over by the Russian Empire. Most of the remaining Ukrainian schools also switched to Polish or Russian in

5429-412: The native language for the majority in the nation on the eve of Ukrainian independence, a significant share of ethnic Ukrainians were russified. In Donetsk there were no Ukrainian language schools and in Kyiv only a quarter of children went to Ukrainian language schools. The Russian language was the dominant vehicle, not just of government function, but of the media, commerce, and modernity itself. This

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5518-425: The population said Ukrainian was their native language. Until the 1920s the urban population in Ukraine grew faster than the number of Ukrainian speakers. This implies that there was a (relative) decline in the use of Ukrainian language. For example, in Kyiv, the number of people stating that Ukrainian was their native language declined from 30.3% in 1874 to 16.6% in 1917. During the seven-decade-long Soviet era ,

5607-456: The present-day reflex is /ɣ/. Ahatanhel Krymsky and Aleksey Shakhmatov assumed the existence of the common spoken language of Eastern Slavs only in prehistoric times. According to their point of view, the diversification of the Old East Slavic language took place in the 8th or early 9th century. Russian linguist Andrey Zaliznyak stated that the Old Novgorod dialect differed significantly from that of other dialects of Kievan Rus' during

5696-418: The printing of Ukrainian texts accompanying musical scores. A period of leniency after 1905 was followed by another strict ban in 1914, which also affected Russian-occupied Galicia. For much of the 19th century the Austrian authorities demonstrated some preference for Polish culture, but the Ukrainians were relatively free to partake in their own cultural pursuits in Halychyna and Bukovina , where Ukrainian

5785-440: The region, proclaiming the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), with its capital in Luhansk. An independence referendum , unconstitutional under Ukrainian law, was held on 11 May 2014. This referendum was not recognized as legitimate by any government. These events escalated into the War in Donbas . In August 2014, Ukrainian government forces completely surrounded rebel-held Luhansk. Heavy shelling caused civilian casualties in

5874-409: The rural regions of the Ukrainian provinces, 80% of the inhabitants said that Ukrainian was their native language in the Census of 1897 (for which the results are given above), in the urban regions only 32.5% of the population claimed Ukrainian as their native language. For example, in Odesa (then part of the Russian Empire), at the time the largest city in the territory of current Ukraine, only 5.6% of

5963-400: The settlement of Kamianyi Brid. The name "Luhansk" comes from the Luhan River, which flows through the city. According to folk etymology , the name is also derived to the word "Luh" (Ukrainian: Луг), which means "meadow", referring to the floodplains around the river. The factory was greatly expanded during the Napoleonic Wars , and again during the Crimean War . By 1880, the factory was

6052-465: The share of Ukrainians to a minority of 48.3% by 1959 and raising the share of Russians to 47.1%. On 5 March 1958, after Khrushchev's call to not name cities after living people, the old name of Luhansk was reinstated. Kliment Voroshilov himself opposed the restoration of the old name in 1958. In January 1970, after the death of Kliment Voroshilov on 2 December 1969, the city's name was changed again to Voroshilovgrad. Demographic shifts continued during

6141-417: The site in question was not a pyramid but was still of great interest. Luhansk has a hot summer humid continental climate ( Köppen Dfa ). Luhansk has both the highest and lowest temperature recorded in Ukraine. A record high of 42.0 °C (107.6 °F) was recorded on 12 August 2010 , which is the highest temperature to have ever been recorded in Ukraine. A record low of −41.9 °C (−43.4 °F)

6230-475: The sixteenth and first half of the 17th century, when Ukraine was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, albeit in spite of being part of the PLC, not as a result. Among many schools established in that time, the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium (the predecessor of the modern Kyiv-Mohyla Academy ), founded by the Orthodox Metropolitan Peter Mogila , was the most important. At that time languages were associated more with religions: Catholics spoke Polish, and members of

6319-462: The term native language may not necessarily associate with the language they use more frequently. The overwhelming majority of ethnic Ukrainians consider the Ukrainian language native , including those who often speak Russian. According to the official 2001 census data, 92.3% of Kyiv region population responded "Ukrainian" to the native language ( ridna mova ) census question, compared with 88.4% in 1989, and 7.2% responded "Russian". In 2019,

6408-609: The territories controlled by these respective countries, which was followed by a new wave of Polonization and Russification of the native nobility. Gradually the official language of Ukrainian provinces under Poland was changed to Polish, while the upper classes in the Russian part of Ukraine used Russian. During the 19th century, a revival of Ukrainian self-identification manifested in the literary classes of both Russian-Empire Dnieper Ukraine and Austrian Galicia . The Brotherhood of Sts Cyril and Methodius in Kyiv applied an old word for

6497-516: The use of Ukrainian. The educational system in Ukraine has been transformed over the first decade of independence from a system that is partly Ukrainian to one that is overwhelmingly so. The government has also mandated a progressively increased role for Ukrainian in the media and commerce. In the 2001 census , 67.5% of the country's population named Ukrainian as their native language (a 2.8% increase from 1989), while 29.6% named Russian (a 3.2% decrease). For many Ukrainians (of various ethnic origins),

6586-587: Was a need for translators during negotiations for the Treaty of Pereyaslav , between Bohdan Khmelnytsky , head of the Zaporozhian Host , and the Russian state. By the 18th century, Ruthenian had diverged into regional variants, developing into the modern Belarusian , Rusyn , and Ukrainian languages. The accepted chronology of Ukrainian divides the language into Old Ukrainian, Middle Ukrainian, and Modern Ukrainian. Shevelov explains that much of this

6675-408: Was established, with the city as its center. The economic recovery and development of the city was also accompanied by significant demographic change. The population grew from 72,000 to 212,000 between 1926 and 1939, and there was an influx of Ukrainians from the countryside into the city. The proportion of Ukrainians grew from 19.1% to 58.7% between 1897 and 1939, many of whom were refugees fleeing

6764-556: Was exiled for seven years to Arkhangelsk . The Ukrainian magazine Osnova was discontinued. In 1863, the tsarist interior minister Pyotr Valuyev proclaimed in his decree that "there never has been, is not, and never can be a separate Little Russian language". Although the name of Ukraine is known since 1187, it was not applied to the language until the mid-19th century. The linguonym Ukrainian language appears in Yakub Holovatsky 's book from 1849, listed there as

6853-634: Was finally taken by the Red Army in January 1920. After the end of the war, the victorious Bolsheviks created the Soviet Union on the territory of the former Russian Empire, and began restoring the city. The city grew rapidly during the interwar period . On 5 November 1935, the city was renamed Voroshilovgrad ( Russian : Ворошиловград , romanized :  Voroshilovgrad ; Ukrainian : Ворошиловград , romanized :  Voroshylovhrad ) in honour of Soviet military commander and politician Kliment Voroshilov . In 1938, Voroshilovgrad Oblast

6942-448: Was formed by convergence of tribal dialects, mostly due to an intensive migration of the population within the territory of today's Ukraine in later historical periods. This point of view was also supported by George Shevelov 's phonological studies, which argue that specific features were already recognizable in the southern dialects of Old East Slavic (seen as ancestors to Ukrainian) as far back as these varieties can be documented. As

7031-407: Was gradually Polonized. In Ruthenia, the language of administrative documents gradually shifted towards Polish. Polish has had heavy influences on Ukrainian (particularly in Western Ukraine ). The southwestern Ukrainian dialects are transitional to Polish. As the Ukrainian language developed further, some borrowings from Tatar and Turkish occurred. Ukrainian culture and language flourished in

7120-562: Was inevitable that successful careers required a good command of Russian, while knowledge of Ukrainian was not vital, so it was common for Ukrainian parents to send their children to Russian-language schools, even though Ukrainian-language schools were usually available. The number of students in Russian-language in Ukraine schools was constantly increasing, from 14 percent in 1939 to more than 30 percent in 1962. The Communist Party leader from 1963 to 1972, Petro Shelest , pursued

7209-490: Was lessened only slightly after 1985. The management of dissent by the local Ukrainian Communist Party was more fierce and thorough than in other parts of the Soviet Union. As a result, at the start of the Mikhail Gorbachev reforms perebudova and hlasnist’ (Ukrainian for perestroika and glasnost ), Ukraine under Shcherbytsky was slower to liberalize than Russia itself. Although Ukrainian still remained

7298-617: Was located in Sievierodonetsk from 2014 to 2022 during the war in Donbas , due to Ukraine not being in control of Luhansk. Sievierodonetsk was captured by Russia in 2022 and Luhansk Oblast was later annexed by Russia in late 2022. The city traces its history to 1797 when the British industrialist Charles Gascoigne , commissioned by the Imperial Russian government in 1795, founded an ammunition and cannon factory for

7387-552: Was moved to Sievierodonetsk by the government of Ukraine. On 21 November 2017, armed men in unmarked uniforms took up positions in the center of Luhansk in what appeared to be a power struggle between the head of the republic Igor Plotnitsky and the (sacked by Plotnitsky) LPR appointed interior minister Igor Kornet . Media reports stated that the Donetsk People's Republic , a parallel Russian-backed entity in neighboring Donetsk Oblast , had sent armed troops to Luhansk

7476-486: Was proclaimed in 1990 that Russian language was the all-Union state language and that the constituent republics had rights to declare additional state languages within their jurisdictions. Still it was implicitly understood in the hopes of minority nations that Ukrainian would be used in the Ukrainian SSR, Uzbek would be used in the Uzbek SSR , and so on. However, Russian was used as the lingua franca in all parts of

7565-442: Was prohibited in the rest of the USSR. Those casinos and night clubs belonged to criminal gangs that cultivated their own territory." With the large population of prisoners, Soviet prison culture was exported to the Donbas. By the time of Perestroika , this had grown to a general distrust of the law and the cultural dominance of criminal groups in the Donbas. Combined with a lack of established laws and taxes on businesses, along with

7654-400: Was substantially less the case for western Ukraine, which escaped the artificial famine , Great Purge , and most of Stalinism . And this region became the center of a hearty, if only partial, renaissance of the Ukrainian language during independence. Since 1991, Ukrainian has been the official state language in Ukraine, and the state administration implemented government policies to broaden

7743-473: Was the Gulag camps located nearby, and these individuals entered organised crime after the completion of their prison sentences. Sergey Pryjmachuk, Sloviansk chief of police from 1994 to 1998, said in 2006, "Criminals took advantage of the fact that recently released prisoners were not in a hurry to leave the Donetsk region as long as people had money. Thus, illegal night clubs and casinos were created, while that

7832-581: Was widely seen as a victory for Akhmetov, and in Yanukovych's campaign in the 2004 presidential election , Akhmetov lent his support. However, after Yanukovych turned to Russian president Vladimir Putin and electoral fraud in an effort to defeat opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko , the Orange Revolution successfully contested the election's legitimacy, and helped ensure Yushchenko's election. After Yushchenko took office, he began targeting

7921-547: Was widely used in education and official documents. The suppression by Russia hampered the literary development of the Ukrainian language in Dnipro Ukraine, but there was a constant exchange with Halychyna, and many works were published under Austria and smuggled to the east. By the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the collapse of Austro-Hungary in 1918, Ukrainians were ready to openly develop

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