Alternate history challenge: Make mass immigration to USA Russian/Ukrainian not Irish

In this timeline the Irish famine never happens. Instead theres a terrible war between the Prussians, Austro-Hungarians and Russians. The war is a very bloody conflict where the Russian jews and Russians flee in record numbers to America. Instead of American harbors having lots of irish immigrants the ports of Chicago, NYC and other cities are settled by Russian/Ukrainians. How would this shape America if Russians took the place of Irish?
 
That might actually give you less Ukrainians leaving particularly Austrian Galicia, since it was basically kept poor and used as a troop factory. With more of those troops at the front, that's just more people dying, not more people leaving.

You could feasibly win these immigrants, but Ruthenians - since "Ukraine" may be butterflied - largely seemed to prefer Canada, and most of those immigrants came from Austrian Galicia, which at the time was the poorest place in Europe and critically underdeveloped - indeed, Ruthenian farmers in Galicia still used medieval technology. They seemed to prefer the Canadian prairies because Alberta and Saskatchewan have a huge belt of aspen parkland which reminded these immigrants of home - and because of the history of deprivation in Galicia, the Galician peasants coming over tended to preferentially choose forested prairie lands to homestead, because even though the soil was worse, they wouldn't have to pay a landlord for their wood like they did back in the old country. There's significantly more aspen parkland in Canada than there is in the United States.

Theoretically, if you diverted a lot of those immigrants to the United States, I would imagine that many of them would settle out west, and the bulk of them would be Greek Catholic Ruthenian farmers from Galicia and Bukovyna - the wave of immigration would, in other words, have a very agrarian character. The outflow from Orthodox Russian Ruthenia would be comparatively less. A primary settlement area for Galicians taking advantage of the Homestead Acts would almost certainly be northern Minnesota, where the Canadian aspen parkland band extends into. Northern Wisconsin and Michigan, including the top of the mitten, would also be attractive to peasants from Galicia and Bukovyna. You'd probably also get some taking advantage of opportunities to settle in Missouri and Nebraska as focus shifted out there. The result would be that Ruthenian Americans would be a significant ethnic group in the Midwest and many would eventually migrate to cities - I can see Duluth, Green Bay and Traverse City being key hubs of Ruthenian-American culture. As with Canada, their arrival would be treated with suspicion, especially since most Ruthenians who came from Galicia were not only Catholic, but Greek Catholic.

Russian peasants I can imagine preferring to go out west as well, though if more of the immigrants are educated or wealthy Russians - or Russian Jews - they're far more likely to concentrate on the coasts. (Especially Russian Jews liked to settle in coastal cities.) Their arrival will be more urban than the Ruthenians because of the nature of Russians as a ruling class, while Ruthenians tended to be poorer, less educated and more agrarian.

Basically look for a lot of Ruthenian placenames in tiny farm communities throughout the Midwest. Places with names like Halych or Ternopil or Nister or whatever.



P.S.: I don't see there ever being as many Ruthenian-Americans as there are OTL Irish-Americans. The OTL Ukrainian diaspora occurred even with constant famine in Galicia. By some accounts, 50,000 people a year died of starvation. Even OTL, a quarter of the population of Galicia left between 1911 and 1914. Some authors have suggested that the situation there was as bad as, or worse than, that in Ireland. You've got your work cut out for you, in other words, to create worse conditions than what was known as "Galician misery."
 
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In this timeline the Irish famine never happens. Instead theres a terrible war between the Prussians, Austro-Hungarians and Russians. The war is a very bloody conflict where the Russian jews and Russians flee in record numbers to America. Instead of American harbors having lots of irish immigrants the ports of Chicago, NYC and other cities are settled by Russian/Ukrainians. How would this shape America if Russians took the place of Irish?
Maybe serfdom is abolished way earlier but the conditions for the kulaks remains hard. Due to rumor of abpromised land far away in the west they begin to emigrate in higher numbers.
 

The Avenger

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In this timeline the Irish famine never happens. Instead theres a terrible war between the Prussians, Austro-Hungarians and Russians. The war is a very bloody conflict where the Russian jews and Russians flee in record numbers to America. Instead of American harbors having lots of irish immigrants the ports of Chicago, NYC and other cities are settled by Russian/Ukrainians. How would this shape America if Russians took the place of Irish?
I don't think that ethnic Russians would be willing to flee their homeland en masse even in the event of a war. If the Nazis won WWII and tried enslaving the Russians en masse, though, then things might be different.

If a lot of Russians do come to the US, though, then US religious culture would be somewhat different. Also, there might be more corruption in the US (Russia and Ukraine are notoriously corrupt countries even now in our TL). Otherwise, I'm not sure if there are any significant differences.
 
Maybe serfdom is abolished way earlier but the conditions for the kulaks remains hard. Due to rumor of abpromised land far away in the west they begin to emigrate in higher numbers.

Just a little bit of a nitpicking: at the time following abolishing of the serfdom term "kulak" applied to the "rural capitalists", businessmen who formally were peasants but had been engaged in various types of big- or small-scale trade, owned mills, etc. The meaning which you are presumably implying belongs to the early Soviet period: practically anybody who was acting as an independent farmer (and not as a part of a rural community), especially if he was employing somebody. These farmers appeared in the noticeable numbers only as a result of Stolypin reforms: emancipation of the serfs preserved the traditional communal landownership.
 
Even if the Irish famine never happens, you'd probably still see a lot of emigration, even if not quite as much as IOTL -- Ireland was pretty overpopulated by the mid-19th century, which is part of the reason why the famine was so devastating in the first place.
 
Have John Quincy Adams (who had been ambassador to Russia before becoming President) convince Russia to send the Decembrists and their families to the United States. Historically there were 3,000 revolting soldiers. Let's say each soldier has a wife and two children - that's 12,000 people. Odds are middle class supporters of the revolt follow suit.

Historically 2% of the population of Germany came to the US following the revolutions of 1848 (500,000 people) but let's say the percentage is a 10th of what Germany's was. 0.2% of Russia is 125,000 people (Decembrists + their families + middle class supporters + Poles and Jews makes this number a high bar plausibility). That figure would be around 1.3% of the US population (compared to 1848 Germans who historically made up 3% when they immigrated).


Then when the November Uprising of 1830-31 and Crimean War happen, there's precedent for moving to America when things go south and more folks in the Russian Empire do so.
 
Additionally, you could just reduce the number of people leaving Ireland to go to America. Have the British establish a policy of encouraging Irish settlement in their colonies and couple that with more humanitarian response to the famine and encouraging more Irish urbanize and move to Dublin or cities in Britain.

Maybe have the French try to encourage Irish immigration as a means of countering German population advantage.
 
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