History
The Ukrainian settlement of Siryi Klyn (literally: the "grey wedge")[1] developed around the city of Omsk in western Siberia.[2] M. Bondarenko, an emigrant from Poltava province, wrote before World War I: "The city of Omsk looks like a typical Moscovite city, but the bazaar and markets speak Ukrainian".[3] Altogether, before 1914, 1,604,873 emigrants from Ukraine settled in the area.[citation needed]
Historical Grey Ukraine exists roughly within the present-day northern Kazakhstan and southern Siberia.[4][5][1] It is not contiguous with other territories inhabited by Ukrainian diaspora, in a similar situation of territorial isolation as with Green Ukraine.[6]
Most of the Ukrainian migrations to Siberia happened between the mid-18th century and early 20th century. After conquering it in the early 18th century, the Russian Empire decided to resettle the region by handing 40% of newly created settlements there to Ukrainian settlers and 30% to Russian and Belarusian settlers.[7][3] By 1897, Ukrainians made up 7.5% of the population in Akmolinsk Oblast, which contained Omsk and surrounding regions.[8] Although the Russian Empire had tolerated expressions of Ukrainian identity, and the Soviet Union had initially adopted a Ukrainization policy in the region, by the end of 1932 the Ukrainization policy was reversed and the Ukrainian identity strongly declined.[7] Migration to the region continued throughout the Soviet period, and Nikita Khrushchev's virgin lands campaign during the 1950s encouraged further migration from across the Soviet Union.[2]
