Kazakstan home to 800,000 Ukrainians (10/07/01)

Kazakstan home to 800,000 Ukrainians

Religious Information Service of Ukraine

LVIV - Pope John Paul II made a pastoral visit to Kazakstan on September 22-25, where there is a sizable community of Ukrainians who arrived there as settlers and exiles.

According to Prof. Vasyl Markus, editor of the Encyclopedia of the Ukrainian Diaspora, there are about 800,000 Ukrainians in Kazakstan. Although groups from Ukraine have been there since the 19th century, the most recent wave of immigration occurred in the 1950s and 1960s under Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who wanted these settlers to cultivate the virgin lands. Most Ukrainians live in the northern part of the republic.

The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC), Prof. Markus said, has had a presence in Kazakstan at least since the middle of the 20th century. After World War II a UGCC bishop sent into exile served Polish and German Roman Catholic faithful there. And a few exiled Ukrainian Greek-Catholic priests ministered in relative secrecy to the country's Ukrainians.

The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church currently has a bishop designated as apostolic visitator for Kazakstan and Central Asia, and Ukrainian priests have formed new parishes since independence in 1991.

Prof. Myroslav Marynovych, a former dissident and currently director of Lviv's Institute of Religion and Society, was exiled to Kazakstan during Soviet times.

He recalled his trip there: "My mother told me there was a Ukrainian-speaking village on the way to the place of my exile. Some people stood in a shop communicating in Ukrainian. It was a true shock for my mother" that there was a Ukrainian-speaking community in Central Asia.

The life of one forced into exile, however, often lacks the comfort of contact with one's countrymen. Prof. Marynovych noted: "I spent three years among an exclusively Kazak population. I was the only Slav (to say nothing of Ukrainians) in the village. The KGB was afraid of placing me among Ukrainians."

Yet he did not regret this. "I seemed to benefit," he observed. "Kazaks were very close to nature - and very far from politics. It was easier to enter into normal human relations with the Kazaks, who were not as intimidated as the Ukrainians were."

| Home Page |