Why the Far East Was Called Zelenyi Klyn, Green Ukraine, New Ukraine, and Zakytayshchyna
For more than a century of Ukrainian settlement in the Far East, the territory we know today as Zelenyi Klyn has gone by several different names. “Green Ukraine,” “New Ukraine,” “Far Eastern Ukraine,” and “Zakytayshchyna” are not different regions, but different names for the same phenomenon: the mass migration of Ukrainians to the southern Far East and the formation there of a stable national community that, at a certain point in history, numbered hundreds of thousands of people and had its own self-government bodies [1][3].
Why the Far East Was Called Zelenyi Klyn
Why was the Far East called Zelenyi Klyn? The word “klyn” originally had nothing to do with geography — in the Ukrainian language, it referred to a parcel of land, a plot allocated to a settler [1]. By the end of the 19th century, when the number of Ukrainian settlers in the Far East had grown into the tens of thousands, the word came to refer not to an individual plot, but to the entire area settled by Ukrainians east of historic Ukraine. The klyn was called “green” because of the lush vegetation of the local taiga, unusually abundant compared with the steppe landscapes of Ukraine [3].
The Scale of the Migration: From the First Steamships to Hundreds of Thousands of People
The active settlement of the region by Ukrainians began in 1883, when maritime service connected Odesa with Vladivostok. The first two steamships brought around 1,500 peasants from Chernihiv Governorate to Vladivostok, who founded a number of villages — Ivanovka, Zharikovo, Hryhorivka, Pavlivka, Borisovka, and Vozdvizhenka [4]. The migration process continued for several decades: by 1901, more than 55,000 people had moved to the Far East by sea, and by 1917, according to various estimates, Ukrainians made up between 40% and two-thirds of the population of the southern part of the region [2][4][8]. In the 1917 agricultural census, 421,000 residents of Zelenyi Klyn identified themselves as Ukrainians [7]. In some areas of southern Primorye, Ukrainian remained the native language of 90% of the population [2].
“Green Ukraine” and “New Ukraine”
Alongside “Zelenyi Klyn,” the names “Green Ukraine” and “New Ukraine” were also used in the Ukrainian press and public discourse of the early 20th century [3][4]. Both names emphasized the same idea: the settlers did not consider themselves people cut off from their homeland, but viewed the lands they had settled as an extension of Ukraine — only “new” and “green” in a new place. Significantly, contemporary sources sometimes referred to the region as “Far Eastern Ukraine,” emphasizing it as a distinct, self-sufficient Ukrainian cultural area thousands of kilometers from the historical homeland [4][9].
Zakytayshchyna — A Lesser-Known Name
The least familiar name today is “Zakytayshchyna” (from “za Kitayem,” meaning “beyond China” — that is, lands located beyond Chinese territory when viewed from the west). It is documented in pre-revolutionary and émigré sources as another name for the same settlement area [1][5][9]. The existence of several parallel names for the same region itself demonstrates how active and prominent Ukrainian settlement in the Far East was — the region needed its own name, both in the everyday language of the settlers and in the scholarly discourse of the time.
Organized Ukrainian Community Life: From Clubs to the Regional Council
The Ukrainian community in the Far East was not limited to speaking Ukrainian in everyday life — it had already built its own institutional life. In 1911, the “Ukrainian Club” was founded in Blagoveshchensk — at that time, the only legal Ukrainian organization in the region [3]. A real explosion of civic activity came after the February Revolution of 1917: by the spring of that year, “Ukrainian Hromadas” had appeared in virtually all major cities — Khabarovsk, Blagoveshchensk, Nikolsk-Ussuriysky, Iman, Svobodny, Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Chita, and even Harbin [6][8]. The Hromadas opened Ukrainian schools, libraries, and cultural groups, while the Khabarovsk Hromada explicitly demanded instruction in Ukrainian [6][9].
Between 1917 and 1922, numerous Ukrainian-language newspapers were published in Zelenyi Klyn: Ukrayinets na Zelenomu Klyni in Vladivostok, Ukrayinska Amurska Sprava in Blagoveshchensk, Khvyli Ukrayiny in Khabarovsk, Visty Ukrayinskoho Klubu in Harbin, as well as Shchyre Slovo, Ukrayinska Dumka, and other publications [6][9]. The highest representative body of the region’s Ukrainian population became the Ukrainian Far Eastern Regional Council, whose status was established by the Constitution of the National-Cultural Autonomy of Ukrainians in the Far East, adopted in Vladivostok on May 30, 1919 [6].
The Attempt at Autonomy and Its Defeat
On June 10, 1917, the Central Rada in Kyiv proclaimed Ukraine’s autonomy within Russia — this news gave a powerful impetus to the Ukrainian movement in the Far East as well [3]. In April 1918, the Third Ukrainian Far Eastern Congress was held in Khabarovsk under the chairmanship of Yurii Hlushko-Mova [3]. For a time, some district Radas were even recognized as de facto consulates of an independent Ukraine, while after the Civil War, the Blagoveshchensk and Khabarovsk District Radas were granted the status of national-cultural autonomy bodies within the pro-Soviet buffer Far Eastern Republic [9]. However, this autonomy proved short-lived: in November 1922, the Bolsheviks dissolved the Ukrainian Hromadas and refused to recognize the “Ukrainian passports” they had issued [9].
Repressions and Oblivion
The destruction of the Ukrainian movement was not limited to the dissolution of its organizations. Historian Viacheslav Chornomaz, who defended his dissertation on the Ukrainian national movement in the Far East in 1917–1922, notes that around 200 leaders and activists of the region’s Ukrainian movement were among the first to be arrested [3][4]. According to his observations, following the subsequent repressions and show trials, Ukrainians of Zelenyi Klyn began to hide their origins on a mass scale [3][11] — and by the 1926–1927 census, significantly fewer Ukrainians were recorded in the region than had actually lived there just a decade earlier [4]. At the same time, the Soviet authorities did not abandon the idea of settling the Far East with people from Ukraine: in 1926, a ten-year plan was adopted for the resettlement of Ukrainian peasants to the Far East — but this time without any form of national autonomy or self-government [4].
Why This Matters Today
The return and popularization of all the region’s historical names — “Zelenyi Klyn,” “Green Ukraine,” “New Ukraine,” and “Zakytayshchyna” — are part of the work of restoring historical memory about the fate of Ukrainians and other peoples of the Far East. Given the scale demonstrated by census figures and archival records documenting hundreds of Ukrainian hromadas, schools, and newspapers, the history of Zelenyi Klyn remains one of the least-known chapters of 20th-century Ukrainian history — far less studied than, for example, the history of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada or Argentina, even though in terms of scale, Ukrainian settlement in the Far East was one of the largest in history.
Sources:
Zelenyi Klyn — Wikipedia. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Зелёный_Клин
The Far East — How Ukrainians Fought for Autonomy 100 Years Ago, NV. https://nv.ua/ukraine/events/dalniy-vostok-kak-100-let-nazad-ukraincy-borolis-za-avtonomiyu-istoriya-rossii-2514497.html
Zelenyi Klyn: How Ukrainians Settled the Wild Lands of the Far East, Current Time. https://www.currenttime.tv/a/zeleny-klyn-kak-ukraincy-osvaivali-dalnii-vostok/32788310.html
Green Ukraine Existed on the Territory of Russia, Channel 24. https://24tv.ua/trends24/ru/zelenaja-ukraina-na-dalnem-vostoke-kak-ukraincy-sozdali-svoj-kraj-v-rossii_n3073234
Zelenyi Klyn — Academic (dictionary entry). https://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/ruwiki/587431
Ukrainian Far Eastern Movement — Wikipedia. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Украинское_дальневосточное_движение
A Little-Known Page of History: How Residents of the Far East Demanded Autonomy and Accession to the Ukrainian People's Republic, 2plus2.ua. https://2plus2.ua/ru/spravzhnya-istoriya/novyny/malovidoma-storinka-istorii-yak-meshkantsi-dalekoho-skhodu-vymahaly-avtonomii-i-pryiednannia-do-unr
Ukrainians in the Far East — Wikipedia. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Украинцы_на_Дальнем_Востоке
“Zakytayshchyna”: How Ukrainians Settled the Far East, Lenta.ru. https://lenta.ru/articles/2022/10/16/ukrainzi_na_dalnem_vostoke/
“Zelenyi Klyn”: Ukraine in the Russian Far East, Argument. https://argumentua.com/stati/zelenyi-klin-ukraina-na-dalnem-vostoke-rossii
Two Colors of Zelenyi Klyn, NV. https://nv.ua/project/dva-tsveta-zelenoho-klina-2495399.html
Chornomaz, V. A. The Ukrainian National Movement in the Far East (1917–1922): Dissertation for the Degree of Candidate of Historical Sciences. Vladivostok, 2005 (referenced in academic reference sources, including Academic). https://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/ruwiki/587431
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