UKRAINE (Rus. Ukraina), East European republic, formerly the Ukraine S.S.R. At the close of the 16th century there were about 45,000 Jews (out of the 100,000 Jews who were then presumably in the whole of Poland) living in the eastern regions of Poland which were inhabited by Ukrainians. Before the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648–49 their numbers had increased to at least 150,000; in the census of 1764, 258,000 Jews were enumerated, though in fact their number was over 300,000. In 1847, according to official sources, there were almost 600,000 Jews in the Ukrainian regions belonging to Rusia (the provinces of southwestern Russia—Volhynia, Podolia, and Kiev; of "Little Rusia"—Chernigov and Poltava; and of "New Rusia"—Yekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk), Kherson, and Taurida), though they actually numbered up to 900,000. According to the population census of 1897 (the first general census in Rusia), there were 1,927,268 Jews in these regions, 9,2% of the total population of the Ukraine. The census of 1926 enumerated 1,574,391 Jews in the Ukraine, subsequent to the detachment of half of the province of Volhynia (the second half was then within the borders of Poland), half of the province of Taurida, and a small section of the province of Chernigov, while several districts of the Don region had been incorporated into it. The Jews then Constituted 5.43% of the total population of the Ukraine. The census of 1939 enumerated 1,532,827 Jews in the Ukraine (4.9% of the total). According to the census of 1959, which also included the Jews of the regions which had passed to Rusia after World War II (eastern Galicia, northern Bukovina, Subcarpathian Ruthenia), there were 840,319 Jews in the Ukraine (2% of the total). According to this census, which was generally regarded as underestimating their numbers, Jews were concentrated in the towns of Kiev (153,500), Odessa (106,700), Kharkov (84,000), Dnepropetrovsk (52,800), Chernovtsy (Czernowitz; 36,500), Lvov (24,700), and Donetsk (21,000). About 80% of the Jews of the Ukraine declared their mother tongue as Russian, about 17% (142,240) as Yiddish, and only about 3% as Ukrainian.
Development and Distribution of the Jewish Settlement
The Jewish settlement in the Ukraine preceded the unification of the area and the formation of the Ukrainian nation. Jewish settlements already existed on the banks of the River Dnieper and in the east and south of the Ukraine and the Crimea in the periods of the Khazar kingdom, while ancient Jewish communities were only established in the west, in Volhynia and "Red Rusia" (eastern Galicia), in the 12th century. Of these the most ancient was apparently Vladimir-Volynski. It seems that the "Rusia" mentioned in 13th-century rabbinical literature refers to "Red Rusia." These communities absorbed the Jewish migration from Alemania and Bohemia caused by the persecutions and massacres of the 14th (the Black Death) and 15th centuries; later, Jews were drawn to the Ukraine by the colonizing activities of the Polish nobility that intensified in the 16th to 17th centuries with the consolidation of the rule of Poland-Lithuania over the region. The important role taken by the Jews in the economic sphere in this colonization made the Ukraine one of the Jewish centers in Poland-Lithuania. The number of the communities there increased from 25 during the 14th century to 80 in 1764. Even the Chmielnicki massacres in 1648–49 did not halt Jewish migration to the Ukraine and they played a prominent role in its economic recovery during the second half of the 17th and the 18th centuries. After the Ukraine was annexed by Rusia, according to the census of 1764, about 15% of the Jewish population lived in provinces having communities over 1,000 Jews, while in other provinces—Volhynia, Podolia, Kiev, and Bratslav—their proportion was only 11%. The census of 1897, however, shows that 72% of the Jewish population there were living in 262 communities of more than 1,000 persons, which, taken together with the communities having more than 500 Jews, meant that 37% of the Jewish population there lived in towns and townlets in which the Jews formed an absolute majority and 22% in localities where they formed 40–50% of the total population. In contrast, in the part of the Ukraine which lay beyond the Dnieper, in the provinces of Poltava and Chernigov (where about 225,000 Jews lived and constituted a majority in about two places only and 40% of the total population in three others), 65% of the Jewish population lived in 39 communities of more than 1,000. The same situation obtained in "New Rusia" (the provinces of Kherson, Yekaterinoslav, and Taurida) where over 500,000 Jews lived: 76% of the Jewish population was concentrated in 58 communities of over 1,000, and Jews formed a majority only in their agricultural settlements. In 1897 Jews constituted 30% of the urban population of the Ukraine, 26% of them living in 20 towns, in each of which there were over 10,000 Jews.
After the abolition of the Pale of Settlement, with the October 1917 Revolution, the civil war, and the disorders which accompanied it, more than 300,000 Jews left the Ukraine for other parts of the Soviet Union. Hence they formed only 5.4% of the total population and 22% of the urban population of the Ukraine in 1926, and 4.1% and 11.7% respectively in 1939. In 1926, 44% of them lived in 20 towns, each having over 10,000 Jews; while in 1939, 39% lived in the four cities of Odessa, Kiev, Kharkov, and Dnepropetrovsk. This intensified urbanization did not, however, give them predominance in the cities, since there also was a stream of Ukrainian peasants from the villages into the towns, which assumed a pronounced Ukrainian character.