The Ukrainian Diaspora

Voluntary emigration from Ukraine was also a major factor. Millions of people who self-identify as Ukrainians live in Ukrainian-cultured communities around the globe. Tactical Russian dispersals have located large Ukrainian communities in many of the post-Soviet countries: Russia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Belarus have crowds who wave the Ukrainian blue-and-yellow at sports matches.

Those who found their way to other parts of the world were able to establish cultural support for emigre Ukrainians. The World Congress of Free Ukrainians was founded in the US in 1967, to the horror of the USSR press. An Institute of Ukrainian Studies was set up at Harvard. Although Ukrainians abroad mostly worked in mining and agriculture, many leading thinkers and political figures found their way to places where they could agitate on behalf of their Rodina. Ukrainian communities provided welcome, shelter, and logistical support for advocates on behalf of a free Ukraine. Family links count for a lot in raising funds to help change the status quo in a distant motherland.

Pogroms against Jews had been a sporadic horror in Ukraine down the centuries, long before the Nazi holocaust. Ukrainian Jews fled to many places, but since 1991 with the reduction of travel restrictions, more than a quarter of a million have made their way to Israel. This is one reason for the struggles Ukraine has had with its economy. The Jews have been subjected to harassment through the centuries, and they have developed religious and economic strategies for surviving and thriving under duress. If a nation loses its Jewish population, it loses a whole sector of vital community capacity.