Historical Distribution of Ukrainian Ethnic Lands in the 20th Century - Official Response from the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory
Received: 22.08.2024
The response provided by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory was issued in reply to an inquiry dated August 22, 2024, concerning the state affiliation of Ukrainian ethnic lands in the 20th century.
The document presents data for two historical periods: January 1, 1932, and January 1, 1978.
The response consists of two parts: the main factual-reference content and a procedural clarification regarding the Institute’s own institutional mandate.
The reply is structured around two historical snapshots—January 1, 1932, and January 1, 1978—and outlines which territories inhabited by Ukrainians were part of various states within the present-day administrative borders of Ukraine.
The first period—1932—covers the composition of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as a union republic within the USSR.
The listed territories correspond to modern-day Ukrainian regions: Khmelnytskyi, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Kyiv, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava, and Kirovohrad regions, as well as parts of the Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Dnipropetrovsk regions and the city of Kyiv. It is additionally noted that the territory of today’s Crimea, including Sevastopol, belonged to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Meanwhile, other regions were under the jurisdiction of foreign states: Volyn, Rivne, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Lviv regions (Poland); Chernivtsi and part of the Odesa region — Southern Bessarabia (Romania); and Zakarpattia region (Czechoslovakia).
In the second period—by 1978—the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory confirms that all of the aforementioned territories were already part of the Ukrainian SSR as a union republic within the USSR.
This indicates that by that time, the territorial consolidation of Ukrainian ethnic lands within a single union republic had been formally completed, at least from the perspective of Soviet administrative structure.
The annex to the document specifies that the information was prepared based on scholarly sources, in particular the publication: Yu. I. Loza, “Ukraine, the State: Formation of Territory and History of Administrative-Territorial Structure.”
In the final section of the document, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory clarifies that, in accordance with Resolution No. 684 of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine dated November 12, 2014, it is not a scientific research institution in the classical sense, but rather an agency that implements state policy in the field of national memory.
Therefore, in the case of requiring academic interpretation or an official scholarly reference, the Institute recommends contacting the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
As such, the response of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory contains no evaluations, legal conclusions, or analysis of the legal status of the territories. It provides only reference-based, factual information.
The document records which regions inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians were part of different state entities throughout the 20th century—both before and after the final consolidation within the Ukrainian SSR.
This document holds significance as an official confirmation of the historical presence of Ukrainians in territories that, during different periods of the 20th century, were under the jurisdiction of various states—namely the USSR (within both the Ukrainian SSR and RSFSR), Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia.
It may also be used as an archival source for research on issues of state succession, borders, ethnic composition of the population, and the processes of territorial transformation of the Ukrainian state.
