Pink Ukraine

Pink Ukraine, known in Ukrainian as Malynovyi Klyn and meaning the Raspberry Wedge, is a region in Kuban with a significant Ukrainian population. Ukrainians began settling there at the end of the eighteenth century after the dissolution of the Cossack Hetmanate, mostly Zaporizhzhian Cossacks and peasants. General Grigory Potemkin helped re-create Cossack hosts, notably the Black Sea Cossack Host, whose soldiers later founded at least 40 towns in Kuban. After the February Revolution of 1917 the Kuban Rada declared the Kuban People's Republic on 28 January 1918, centred on Yekaterinodar and dissolved by 1920. Settlers long called themselves Little Russians and kept their language and customs, but Russification followed: censuses of the 1930s showed about 62 percent of Krasnodar Territory identifying as Ukrainian, a share that dropped sharply after the Holodomor, and today about 82 percent of Krasnodar Krai identify as Russian, although the local dialect Balachka still resembles dialects around the Dnipro river. It is one of several Ukrainian-populated areas in Russia, alongside Yellow Ukraine in the Volga basin, Grey Ukraine in Central Asia and Green Ukraine in the Russian Far East.