Agrarian Unrest and the Shaping of a National Identity in Ukraine at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Before the revolution and for decades after, ‘Ukrainian’ was synonymous with ‘peasant’. This was a fitting description of the Ukrainian population. According to the 1897 census, 81 per cent of the total population of the nine provinces which constituted Ukraine were classified as peasants, and 93 per cent of all Ukrainians belonged to this category. The classification of ‘peasant’ in tsarist Russia was a juridical one; it did not necessarily denote living in the countryside, or deriving one’s living from agriculture. The 1897 census provides data on both these points. Studying the census we find that 97 per cent of all Ukrainian peasants lived in rural areas. In terms of occupation, 74 percent of the population of the nine provinces derived their livelihood from agriculture. In the case of Ukrainians, 87 per cent supported themselves from agriculture.¹