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Can anyone see a plausible way for Kuban to be included in the Ukrainian SSR? Both the 1897 Imperial and the 1926 Soviet census show Ukrainian-speakers outnumbering Russian-speakers there. For the 1897 figures see http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/emp_lan_97_uezd.php… with 908,818 people speaking "Malorusskii" (Little Russian) to only 816,734 speaking "Velikorusskii" (Great Russian).

"In the census for 1926 it was noted that there was a total population in the Kuban region of 3,343,893 of which 1,644.518 (49.2%) stated that they were Ukrainian, and 1,428,587 (42.7%) stated they were Russian. Other figures from the same census state that Ukrainian speakers made up 55% of the population of the area. In the 2002 Russian census it states that only 2% of the population speak Ukrainian and only 0.9% have been marked as being ethnically Ukrainian." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainians_in_Kuban…

Presumably, for this to be plausible, it would have to happen before the Russification that started in the early 1930's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainians_in_Kuban#Forced_Russification_of_Kuban_Ukrainians

"In 1929 the collectivization of agriculture began, bringing great suffering and hardship. Thousands of ‘kulaks’ were deported, as well as entire stanytsias of Cossacks (as many as 200,000 people in total). Although some people managed to escape to Asia, Transcaucasia, or the north, hundreds of thousands of people died from the resulting famine. They were replaced in part by Russian immigrants, who began flooding into the area. In 1934, the teaching of Ukrainian was abolished (over 700 Ukrainian primary schools were Russified), and all Ukrainian-language newspapers were closed down. Ukrainian activists were repressed, particularly the faculty and students of the Katerynodar Pedagogical Institute. Since then, the Ukrainian population of Kuban has not been granted any national or cultural rights and has been exposed to constant official Russification." http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages\K\U\Kuban.htm

"...by the end of the decade [the 1920's] there were over 2,000 Ukrainian-language schools with just under 300,000 pupils.. However, the Kuban was one of the first regions to suffer from Moscow's crackdown on Ukrainian activism, beginning with the uncovering in 1929 of a supposed organization for the "Union of Kuban with Ukraine." A decree of December 1932 ordered the wholesale conversion of local schools and media to Russian, and the population suffered particularly in the 1932-33 famine. Only 196,000 Ukrainians were recorded in the 1989 Soviet census in Krasnodar krai.

"The Ukrainian version of history is that the Kuban was singled out for harsh treatment precisely because of the strong local Ukrainian movement. The Russian version argues that ukrainophilism was only one identity option among many and that its decline was due to the natural victory of the Russian/Soviet option. The early "diasporizing project" of Skrypnyk and others in the 1920s was therefore, on this view, more artificial than its termination in the 1930s. In the 1990s, activists from Ukraine helped set up a ukrainophile movement and publish a newspaper, Kozats'kyi krai (Cossack Land). Significantly, however, as in the 1917-21 period, the ukrainophiles must compete with a rival russophile Cossack movement with its own myths and symbols." Andrew Wilson, "The Ukrainians: Handling the 'Eastern Diaspora'" in Charles King and Neil Melvin (editors), Nations Abroad: Diaspora Politics And International Relations In The Former Soviet Union https://books.google.com/books?id=ItJMDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT151
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