Ethnic Conflict and Minority Refugee Flight from Post-Soviet Ukraine, 1991–2001

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Until the tumultuous events of the ‘Orange Revolution’ surrounding the presidential elections in Ukraine in late 2004, western experts almost without exception had celebrated the Ukrainian post-Soviet transition as a huge success, lauding its apparent political stability and ethnic amity. This article challenges those assumptions, and offers a new look at the first decade of Ukrainian independence. Drawing from demographic data and witness affidavits from refugees who left Ukraine and requested asylum in the United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and the European Union, the author argues that the first decade of Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union corresponded with widespread and serious harassment of Ukraine's religious and ethnic minorities. Economic crisis in post-Soviet Ukraine bred scapegoating and marginalisation of Ukraine's minorities, driving hundreds of thousands to seek sanctuary in the West.