The Czechs Who Came to Volhynia: From 65,000 to 5,917

In the 2001 all-Ukrainian census, 5,917 Czechs were counted as living in Ukraine. According to the entry “Czechs in Ukraine” (written by S. Vidnianskyi) in volume 10 (2013) of the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine (ЕІУ) published by the Institute of History of Ukraine at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, there were about 130 Czech villages on the territory of today’s Ukraine at the start of the 20th century, and the number of Czechs reached 65,000. At the core were farmers, and their descendants, who moved to the northwestern region of Volhynia in the second half of the 19th century.

Where did they come from, what did they do, and why did their numbers fall? We trace this using ЕІУ, the entry “Czechs” (written by V. Markus, revised 2020) in the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU) at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, publications of the Czech Statistical Office, and records of the Czech parliament. Volhynia is the historical name for a region that today corresponds to Volyn Oblast, Rivne Oblast, and most of Zhytomyr Oblast (see our article on historical region names distinct from oblasts).

The 1860s: After the Abolition of Serfdom

Records of Czech people coming to what is now Ukrainian territory exist from the Middle Ages, but settlement by entire villages began in the 1860s, after serfdom was abolished in the Russian Empire. Both IEU and ЕІУ name the Volhynian village of Liudhardivka (Людгардівка, 1863) as the first major destination for the migrants.

According to ЕІУ, 946 Czech families moved to Volhynia in 1868–70 and acquired 17,500 desiatinas of land (one desiatina is about 1.09 ha). A special committee for settlement was set up in Rivne, and settlers bought landowners’ land on favorable terms. The Dubno district had the most settlers, and settlement later spread to the Lutsk, Ostroh, Zhytomyr, and Volodymyr districts, with villages also appearing further south in Kherson and Tavrida provinces.

ЕІУ writes that from 1870 the settlers were allowed to become subjects of Russia and gained the right to form their own communities and volosts (an administrative unit grouping villages), freedom of religion, and a five-year exemption from taxes and military service. IEU writes that four Czech volosts were created—Rivne, Dubno, Lutsk, and Kupychiv. From 1874, as land purchases became harder and military service began to apply to them, migration slowed (ЕІУ).

Fields and Town Trades

According to IEU, the Czech villages prospered through advanced farming methods and technology, and had their own schools, newspapers, associations, and cooperatives. The same entry writes that they brought in agricultural machinery from Bohemia (the western part of today’s Czech Republic), and that their farming methods and technology were copied by nearby Ukrainian villages.

Outside the villages, Czech craftsmen, building tradesmen, and brewers lived in towns such as Lviv, Kyiv, and Zhytomyr (ЕІУ). In Kyiv, a Czech-language school opened in 1907 through the efforts of a Czech association; by 1910 it had 86 children enrolled, and it continued until 1934. Czech-language publications had also appeared in Kyiv from 1888.

Religion Is Described Differently Between the Two Encyclopedias

The two encyclopedias disagree on the religion of the Czechs who settled.

Which is correct cannot be decided from these two entries alone. It is also possible that the picture differed by period and region.

Changes in Population

The population figures for Czechs differ in the point in time and the scope counted from one instance to the next. With that caveat that these are not directly comparable figures, here are those from the two encyclopedias and from the census.

According to ЕІУ, in 2001 the largest number lived in Zhytomyr Oblast (839), followed by Zaporizhzhia Oblast (808), the Crimean Autonomous Republic (749), and Odesa Oblast (503). Czech was given as native language by 20.1%, Ukrainian by 42.3%, and Russian by 36.2%.

Split Between Two Countries in the Interwar Period

Under the 1921 Treaty of Riga, the western part of Volhynia became Polish territory, and about 20,000 Czechs became Polish citizens (IEU, ЕІУ). On the Soviet side, according to IEU, there were 12 Czech village soviets (a village administrative unit) in the 1920s, along with Czech-language primary schools.

July 13, 1943: Ceský Malín

On July 13, 1943, the Volhynian Czech village of Ceský Malín was surrounded and burned by German forces; according to the Military History Institute of the Czech Army, 374 Czechs were killed.

1947: To Czechoslovakia

By 1944, many Volhynian Czechs had volunteered for the Czechoslovak unit formed on Soviet territory (IEU, ЕІУ). After the war, based on an agreement between the USSR and Czechoslovakia, many Czechs left Ukraine.

The Czech Statistical Office’s magazine Statistika&My, drawing on a 1948 statistical publication, writes as follows. The 1947 return of the Volhynian Czechs was made possible by an agreement with the Soviet Union signed on July 10, 1946; 33,050 people left the USSR, 63.4% of everyone who returned to Czechoslovakia that year. Ninety-one trains ran between February and June 1947, and 80% of the returnees by occupation were independent farmers. They came from places such as Dubno, Rivne, Lutsk, Shepetivka, and Zdolbuniv, Zhytomyr, and moved to areas such as around Žatec in northwestern Bohemia, around Mikulov in southern Moravia, and Silesia. The same article also cites a 1948 account stating that the purpose of the return policy at the time was to obtain laborers to fill the places left by expelled ethnic Germans.

1945 or 1946: Sources Differ on the Year of the Agreement

The year of this agreement differs between sources. IEU writes that many Czechs returned “under a 1945 treaty between Czechoslovakia and the USSR,” while ЕІУ writes that they departed based on “a 1945 Czechoslovak-Soviet agreement on the exchange of population.” The Czech Statistical Office’s article, however, dates the agreement that made the Volhynian Czechs’ return possible to a signing on July 10, 1946. According to IEU, a little over 10,000 people remained in Ukraine, many of them in Zhytomyr Oblast.

Migration After the Chornobyl Nuclear Accident

According to ЕІУ, the effects of the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear accident reached the Volhynian Czech villages too, and as a result 1,800 Czechs left Ukraine in 1992–93.

Czech parliamentary records show the migration beginning earlier than that. According to a question raised at a session of the Czech National Council (the predecessor of today’s Czech Chamber of Deputies) held April 23–May 14, 1991, the first group had already moved to Czechoslovakia from the areas affected by the accident, under Czech government decision No. 48. The same record also states that, up to that point, 950 applications had been submitted, limited to residents of the village of Malá Zubovská (Ukrainian: Мала Збиущина) and part of the town of Korosten, in the Korosten district of Zhytomyr Oblast.

As Czech associations remaining in Ukraine today, ЕІУ (as of its 2013 writing) names the “Association of Volhynian Czechs” in Zhytomyr and associations in Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Crimea, and elsewhere. The national figures for Ukraine’s ethnic minorities remain, even now, those from the 2001 census only (see our article on the history of Ukraine’s censuses).