The concept of the national and ethnic identity of the Kuban Cossacks changed over time and was the subject of numerous disputes. According to the 1897 census, 47.3% of the population of the Kuban (including numerous non-Cossack migrants of the 19th century from Ukraine and Russia) called their native language Little Russian, and 42.6% called their native language Great Russian. Most of the cultural production in the Kuban during the period 1890-1910, such as plays, short stories, etc., was written and performed in the Little Russian/Ukrainian language, and one of the first political parties in the Kuban was the Ukrainian Revolutionary Party. .
During World War I, Austrian officials received reports from the Ukrainian organization of the Russian Empire that 700 Kuban Cossacks in eastern Galicia had been arrested by their Russian officers for refusing to fight against Ukrainians in the Austrian army. [25] For a brief time during the Russian Civil War, the Kuban Cossack Rada declared Ukrainian the official language of the Kuban Cossacks before it was suppressed by the leader of the Russian Whites, General Denikin.
After the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War, the Kuban was seen as one of the most hostile regions to the young communist state. In his 1923 speech on national and ethnic issues in party and state affairs, Joseph Stalin outlined a number of obstacles to the implementation of the party's national program nationalities and "remnants of nationalism among a number of nations bearing the heavy yoke of national oppression." [26] In the Kuban, this was met with a unique approach.
The victim/minority were non-Cossack peasants who, like their counterparts in Novorussia, were a mixed population with an ethnic Ukrainian majority. To counteract the "prevailing national chauvinism", a policy of Ukrainization/indigenization was introduced. According to the 1926 census, about a million Ukrainians (or 62% of the total population) were already registered in the Kuban District alone
In addition, 700 schools with the Ukrainian language of instruction were opened, and the Kuban Pedagogical Institute had its own Ukrainian branch. Numerous Ukrainian-language newspapers were published, such as "Chornomorets" and "Kubanskaya Zorya". Historian A. L. Pavlichko even claims that there was an attempt to hold a referendum on the accession of the Kuban to the Ukrainian SSR. [29] In 1930, the Ukrainian Minister ("People's Commissar") Nikolai Skrypnyk, who was engaged in solving national issues in the Ukrainian SSR, put forward an official proposal to Joseph Stalin to allocate the territories of the Voronezh, Kursk, Black Sea, Azov, and Kuban regions. was under the jurisdiction of the government of the Ukrainian SSR. By the end of 1932, the Ukrainization program was canceled, and by the end of the 1930s, most Kuban Ukrainians identified themselves as Russians. As a result, according to the 1939 census, Russians in the Kuban made up the majority - 2754027 or 86% In the 2nd edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the Kuban Cossacks are directly called Russians.
The modern Kuban spoken language, known as balachka, is different from modern literary Russian and is most similar to the dialect spoken in central Ukraine near Cherkasy . In some regions, the spoken language includes many North Caucasian words and accents. The influence of Russian grammatical forms is also obvious.
Like many other Cossacks, some refuse to recognize themselves as part of the standard ethnic Russian people and claim to be a separate subgroup on a par with sub-ethnic groups such as the Pomors. According to the 2002 Russian census, the Cossacks were allowed to have a separate nationality as a separate Russian sub-ethnic group. The Kuban Cossacks, who lived in the Krasnodar Territory, Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia and some areas of the Stavropol Territory and Kabardino-Balkaria, numbered 25 thousand people. However, the strict management of the census meant that only Cossacks in active service were considered Cossacks, while at the same time 300,000 families were registered by the Kuban Cossack Army. Kuban Cossacks who were not politically connected with the Kuban Cossack Army, such as the head of the Kuban Cossack Choir Viktor Zakharchenko, at various times retained a pro-Ukrainian orientation. Recently, Zakharchenko changed his position and proposes to unite Ukraine and Russia.
