Along with other territories inhabited by Ukrainians, the Donbas was incorporated into the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War. Cossacks in the region were subjected to
decossackisation during 1919–1921.
[23] Ukrainians in the Donbas were greatly affected by the 1932–33
Holodomor famine and the
Russification policy of
Joseph Stalin. As most ethnic Ukrainians were rural peasant farmers (called "
kulaks" by the
Soviet regime), they bore the brunt of the famine.
[24][25] According to the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, the population of the area that is now
Luhansk Oblast declined by 25% as a result of the famine, whereas it declined by 15–20% in the area that is now
Donetsk Oblast.
[26] According to one estimate, 81.3% of those who died during the famine in the Ukrainian SSR were ethnic Ukrainians, whilst only 4.5% were ethnic Russians.
[27]
Donbas was greatly affected by the
Second World War. In the lead-up to the war, the Donbas was racked by poverty and food shortages. War preparations resulted in an extension of the working day for factory labourers, whilst those that deviated from the heightened standards were arrested.
[28] German Reich leader
Adolf Hitler viewed the resources of the Donbas as critical to
Operation Barbarossa. As such, the Donbas suffered under Nazi occupation during 1941 and 1942.
[29] Thousands of industrial laborers were forcibly "exported" to Germany for use in factories. In what was then called Stalino Oblast, now Donetsk Oblast, 279,000 civilians were killed over the course of the occupation. In Voroshilovgrad Oblast, now Luhansk Oblast, 45,649 were killed.
[30] An
offensive by the
Red Army in 1943 resulted in the return of Donbas to Soviet control. The war had taken its toll, leaving the region both destroyed and depopulated.[
citation needed]
During the reconstruction of the Donbas after World War II, large numbers of Russian workers arrived to repopulate the region, further altering the population balance. In 1926, 639,000 ethnic Russians resided in the Donbas.
[31] By 1959, the ethnic Russian population was 2.55 million. Russification was further advanced by the 1958–59 Soviet educational reforms, which led to the near elimination of all Ukrainian-language schooling in the Donbas.
[32][33] By the time of the
Soviet Census of 1989, 45% of the population of the Donbas reported their ethnicity as Russian.
[34] In 1990, the
Interfront of the Donbass was founded as a movement against Ukrainian independence.
