Editing Ukrainian language (section)

====Speakers in the Russian Empire====
[[File:Ukrainian in Russian Empire 1897.png|thumb|upright=1.35|Ukrainian speakers in the Russian Empire (1897)]]
In the [[Russian Empire Census]] of 1897 the following picture emerged, with Ukrainian being the second most spoken language of the Russian Empire. According to the Imperial census's terminology, the Russian language (''Русскій'') was subdivided into Ukrainian (Малорусскій, '[[Little Russian]]'), what is known as Russian today (Великорусскій, '[[Great Russian]]'), and Belarusian (Бѣлорусскій, 'White Russian').{{cn|date=June 2024}}

The following table shows the distribution of settlement by native language (''"по родному языку"'') in 1897 in [[Russian Empire]] governorates (''[[guberniya]]s'') that had more than 100,000 Ukrainian speakers.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus_lan_97.php |title=Демоскоп Weekly – Приложение. Справочник статистических показателей |publisher=Demoscope.ru |access-date=2012-05-22 |archive-date=4 February 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120204034344/http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus_lan_97.php |url-status=live }}</ref>
{{Clear}}
{| border=1 cellpadding=2 style="text-align:right; white-space:wrap; border:0 none transparent; border-collapse:collapse;" summary="Speakers of Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish languages in the entire Russian Empire, by rural/urban split, and broken down by 23 guberniyas."
|- style="border-bottom:3px double #999; vertical-align:bottom;"
!
! style="width:20%;"| Total population
! style="width:20%;"| Ukrainian speakers
! style="width:20%;"| Russian speakers
! style="width:20%;"| Polish speakers
|- style="background:#eee;"
| {{em|[[Russian Empire|Entire Russian Empire]]}}
| 125,640,021
| 22,380,551
| 55,667,469
| 7,931,307
|-
| [[Urban area|Urban]]
| 16,828,395
| 1,256,387
| 8,825,733
| 1,455,527
|-
| [[Rural]]
| 108,811,626
| 21,124,164
| 46,841,736
| 6,475,780
|- style="border-top:1px solid #999; background:#eee;"
| {{em|Regions}}
| colspan=4 |
|- style="vertical-align:bottom;"
| "[[European Russia]]" <br />incl. Ukraine & Belarus
| 93,442,864
| 20,414,866
| 48,558,721
| 1,109,934
|-
| [[Vistula Land|Vistulan guberniyas]]
| 9,402,253
| 335,337
| 267,160
| 6,755,503
|-
| [[Caucasus]]
| 9,289,364
| 1,305,463
| 1,829,793
| 25,117
|-
| [[Siberia]]
| 5,758,822
| 223,274
| 4,423,803
| 29,177
|-
| [[Central Asia]]
| 7,746,718
| 101,611
| 587,992
| 11,576
|- style="border-top:1px solid #999; background:#eee;"
| {{em|Subdivisions}}
| colspan=4 |
|-
| [[Bessarabia]]
| 1,935,412
| 379,698
| 155,774
| 11,696
|-
| [[Volhynia|Volyn]]
| 2,989,482
| 2,095,579
| 104,889
| 184,161
|-
| [[Voronezh Oblast|Voronezh]]
| 2,531,253
| 915,883
| 1,602,948
| 1,778
|-
| [[Don Host Oblast]]
| 2,564,238
| 719,655
| 1,712,898
| 3,316
|-
| [[Yekaterinoslav Governorate|Yekaterinoslav]]
| 2,113,674
| 1,456,369
| 364,974
| 12,365
|-
| [[Kyiv Governorate|Kyiv]]
| 3,559,229
| 2,819,145
| 209,427
| 68,791
|-
| [[Kursk Oblast|Kursk]]
| 2,371,012
| 527,778
| 1,832,498
| 2,862
|-
| [[Podolia]]
| 3,018,299
| 2,442,819
| 98,984
| 69,156
|-
| [[Poltava Governorate|Poltava]]
| 2,778,151
| 2,583,133
| 72,941
| 3,891
|-
| [[Taurida Governorate|Taurida]]
| 1,447,790
| 611,121
| 404,463
| 10,112
|-
| [[Kharkiv Oblast|Kharkiv]]
| 2,492,316
| 2,009,411
| 440,936
| 5,910
|-
| [[Kherson Governorate|Kherson]]
| 2,733,612
| 1,462,039
| 575,375
| 30,894
|-
| [[Odesa|City of Odesa]]
| 403,815
| 37,925
| 198,233
| 17,395
|-
| [[Chernigov Governorate|Chernihiv]]
| 2,297,854
| 1,526,072
| 495,963
| 3,302
|-
| [[Lublin Voivodeship|Lublin]]
| 1,160,662
| 196,476
| 47,912
| 729,529
|-
| [[Siedlce Voivodeship|Sedletsk]]
| 772,146
| 107,785
| 19,613
| 510,621
|-
| [[Kuban|Kuban Province]]
| 1,918,881
| 908,818
| 816,734
| 2,719
|-
| [[Stavropol Krai|Stavropol]]
| 873,301
| 319,817
| 482,495
| 961
|- style="border-bottom:3px double #999;"
| [[Brest Voblast|Brest-Litovsk district]]
| 218,432
| 140,561
| 17,759
| 8,515
|}

Although in the rural regions of the Ukrainian provinces, 80% of the inhabitants said that Ukrainian was their native language in the Census of 1897 (for which the results are given above), in the urban regions only 32.5% of the population claimed Ukrainian as their native language. For example, in [[Odesa]] (then part of the Russian Empire), at the time the largest city in the territory of current Ukraine, only 5.6% of the population said Ukrainian was their native language.<ref name=George>[https://books.google.com/books?id=2oqThmrFCfwC&dq=Nikolayev+Ukrainian+language&pg=PA12 ''Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR 1923–1934''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230406080213/https://books.google.com/books?id=2oqThmrFCfwC&dq=Nikolayev+Ukrainian+language&pg=PA12 |date=6 April 2023 }} by George O. Liber, [[Cambridge University Press]], 1992, {{ISBN|978-0-521-41391-6}} (page 12/13)</ref>

Until the 1920s the urban population in Ukraine grew faster than the number of Ukrainian speakers. This implies that there was a (relative) decline in the use of Ukrainian language. For example, in Kyiv, the number of people stating that Ukrainian was their native language declined from 30.3% in 1874 to 16.6% in 1917.<ref name=George/>