Tschechen im Russischen Reich (Volkszählung 1897)

Czech migration from Austria-Hungary to Russian Empire began under Catherine II. A second, larger wave came in the second half of the 19th century. The authorities gave Czech settlers freedom of religion and exempted them for 5 years from taxes and military service.

In 1897, there were about 50,300 Czechs in the empire (0.04% of the total population). The largest share was in Dubno Uyezd (District) in Volhynia Governorate: about 10,300 people (5.3% of that district). That was more than Russians and Germans there, but less than Poles and Jews. By the 1880s, there were more than 20 Czech schools in Volhynia. In 1887, a law ordered these schools to be closed and replaced with Russian schools within three years.

During the Volhynian massacres, Czechs supported Poles when their Polish neighbors were attacked; 340 Czechs were killed. The “Volhynian massacres” refers to mass killings in Volhynia during 1943–1944 in World War II. In simple terms, fighters linked to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the underground network of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) attacked and killed many Polish civilians in villages, aiming to drive Poles out of the area.

After the Soviet–Polish War, which ended in 1921 with the Red Army’s defeat, Volhynia was divided: the west went to Poland, and the east remained in Ukraine (as part of the Soviet Union). Czech villages on the Polish side gradually recovered and modernized, while Czech villages in Ukraine became victims of the Soviet government’s forced national policies. Czech-language schooling, culture, and religion were restricted; people were stripped of property; and collective farms were created by force. Repression targeted the Czech intelligentsia first, but it affected every part of the community. In 1938, teaching the Czech language was completely banned.

From the second half of the 1930s, Czech settlers on the Polish side also started to face serious problems. In Poland, anti-Czech propaganda spread and led to demands from parts of the Polish population to shut down Czech-language schooling or to take land away from Czech farmers.

In 1947, after an agreement between the USSR and Czechoslovakia, Czechs began moving to their historical homeland. Most were settled in the Sudeten regions, where Germans had been expelled.

In the Soviet era, the biggest disaster for them was the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. By the late 1980s, about 10,000 Czechs still lived in Ukraine. In the early 1990s, Czechoslovakia invited these descendants to return to the Czech Republic. Nearly 2,000 people took this offer in 1993, and others moved to Czechia in later years.

Yes, lets orient map so east is at top. Confusing? No, how could it be

the hell is this map orientation