러시아ㆍ유라시아

The Armenian population lived on the territory of modern Ukraine a long time ago, even in central regions. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union, processes started which qualitatively changed the way of life of the representatives of this national minority. Because of internal reasons within the Re-public of Armenia (the events in Nagorno Karabakh and others), the resettlement of Armenians since the end of the 1980s increased significantly. They arrived in all regions of Ukraine, a part of them settled in the rural area. The same settlement pattern applied in Central Ukraine – the Armenians settled in the local cities, towns and villages, in the latter case most of all in Poltava and Kirovograd oblast. The tempos of the settlement proved to be so significant that only in the first post Soviet decade the number of the Armenian diaspora in Ukraine almost doubled. This naturally influenced the activation of its social-political, cultural and religious-church life. In her article the author completes the analysis of one of the key processes – organizational and structural formation of Armenian communities in Central Ukraine. As this is not the first publication, dedicated to this subject, here the author concretely investigated the peculiarities of creating and functioning of the communities in Kyiv and Kirovograd oblast, while previous studies outline the creation of analogue Armenian communities in Poltava, Chernihiv and Cherkassy oblast. The research of the organizational structuring of the Armenian population of Kyiv and Kirovograd oblast was conducted using the comparative approach. It was persuasively shown the common and differences between the communities of these two oblasts. First the author highlighted the peculiarities of Kyiv oblast connected with its «capital» status. Concerning Kirovograd region, the processes of foundation of communities lasted with a slight delay. This was due to a relatively smaller amount of Armenians in this oblast, at the same time due to the difficulties experienced by the local population in connection with a sharp increase in the number of immigrants. Community formation took place thanks to the initiative of the activists. On the basis of statistical data and oral historical research (interviews) the author proved that the characteristic feature the creation of Armenian communities in Central Ukraine was regionalism, that is synchronicity to the actual administrative-territorial division. Thanks to the activists’ work during the first post-Soviet decade it was possible to gain new experience of normalization of relationships between people of different ethnic cultures and slightly different religious subcultures. In 2000s–2010s the Armenian activists will effectively use it for manpower strengthening communities, widening the sphere of their activity.