The recent events with pogroms of Roma in Kiyv region and conflict between Roma and Bulgarian local people in the village of Loschynivka (Odessa region) once again testifies that the questions of interethnic coexistence is still being hushed up in Ukraine, that our knowledge about the topography of ‘otherness’ is scanty, that we yet don’t know nations that consider themselves Ukrainians while living on the borderline of different identities, languages, and cultures. What do we feel when we see Roma people on the street? What do we experience when we enter the mosque in Odessa, Greek Orthodox or Armenian Apostolic Church in Lviv or synagogue in Chernivtsi? Who are they, our others? Where did they come from? Or, maybe, how long have they been here before us? How do they live now? Those are the questions we are trying to answer in our journalistic research “Our Others.”
This project was initiated by the online magazine «The Ukrainians». It aims to tell more about the life of national minorities in Ukraine and diversity issues they are facing. Germans, Swedes, Poles, Czechs, Gagauzes, Jews, Albanians, Greeks – this is just a tiny part of the big picture of the Ukrainian ethnical variety. Peeking into old huts in the remotest villages, or looking in the typical windows of the big cities, one way or the other, we will try to tell about Other Ukrainians,
who has been living side by side with us for centuries?
Since August 2016, we prepared ten online stories about the life of national minorities in Ukraine: Armenians, Vlakhs and Germans in Transcarpathia, Meskhetian Turks and Roma in the Eastern part of Ukraine who lives on the front line, Jews, Gagauzes, Liptak (Slovaks), Swedes in the Kherson region. These are incredible stories which required in-depth research, a lot of time and resources. We are glad that our readers appreciated the work, spreading the ideas of understanding and tolerance in Ukraine. We will continue to work on this further.