The history of Sudzha: Eastern Slobozhanshchyna, settled by Ukrainian Cossacks (19.08.2024)
A street video interview with Vitaliy Dribnytsya (for viewers who ask about the “primordial Ukrainian-ness” of the Kursk region) on the history of Sudzha and Eastern Slobozhanshchyna. The key point: the lands of today’s Kursk region were a borderland wilderness, devastated by Tatar raids, until in the second half of the 17th century (under Tsar Alexis I, during the Ruin) they were settled by Ukrainian Cossacks and peasants — as service personnel for the Muscovite defensive line against Crimea; by the census, the share of Ukrainians in the rural population of the Sudzha area exceeded 60%. A source for the article on the colonial character of relations between Russia and Ukraine (a mirror of the Green Wedge — Ukrainian-settled lands now within the Russian Federation).
Key moments
- 01:03 The Kursk lands (Sudzha) — empty wilderness until the mid-17th century, brought under Muscovite control under Alexis I
- 01:38 Eastern Slobozhanshchyna: lands of the Muscovite defensive line against the Crimean Tatars, settled by Ukrainian Cossacks and peasants
- 03:15 By the census of the 'late 18th century', over 60% of Sudzha's rural population were Ukrainians ('Little Russians')
- 08:53 Initially Kyiv governorate (Ukrainian population); by the late 18th century a new Kursk governorate with a Russian majority