For centuries, the Volga Ukrainians were deprived not only of their own statehood but also of the elementary tools of self-reproduction as a nation. Their language was reduced to household usage, their memory to family traditions, and their identity to the derogatory label “Khokhol”, which was intended to cement their state of namelessness permanently.
The only exception in this long history of systematic destruction was a few years (1929-1932), when the objective needs of revolutionary perestroika compelled the local leadership to counter the inertia of great-power chauvinism. Collectivisation in the Volga region came up against a simple and humiliating reality for the imperial centre: it was impossible to speak the “state language” with millions of peasants, because they did not understand this language. The Russian administrative language turned out to be deaf and powerless before the Ukrainian peasant masses. That is why Ukrainization appears – not as a gift from the empire, but as a step dictated by practice.
But this breakthrough was short-lived. Already after 1932, the imperial instinct took its revenge: Ukrainisation was curtailed, cadres were removed, and the language initiative was declared a “nationalist bias.”
This historical experience of Ukrainisation in the 1920s, despite its brevity, left us with an invaluable lesson: national identity is not a monolithic or unchanging “given”. It is dynamic. If, after several years of systematic work, the “Khokh” was able to feel like a part of a great modern nation, this means that the process of denationalisation in Yellow Ukraine is not irreversible. Khokhlyatsity is not a genetic diagnosis, but a historical trauma that can be cured.
To return the Volga Khokhlia back to Ukrainianness, it is necessary to change the very optics of the perception of this region and act in several strategic directions:
The main trap of Khokhlyatism is the belief that the local language is “incorrect.” The return to the Ukrainian language begins with the legitimisation of the dialect. Instead of shaming the speaker for Russian borrowings, it is necessary to show him the Ukrainian roots of his speech. The Khokhlyat dialect should be recognised not as “corrupted Russian,” but as “wounded Ukrainian,” which needs rehabilitation through contact with the modern literary language. The Ukrainian language is revived not where everyone is forced to speak “correctly,” but where people are made to feel that correctness is the path, not a sentence.
The empire has taught the Volga Ukrainian that his “Ukrainianness” is only dumplings, songs, and funny sayings that have no bearing on serious matters. The return of subjectivity is possible only when the Ukrainian language of the Volga region ceases to be a “village language” and becomes the language of intelligence, technology, and urban culture.
Khokhlyatsiya is based on isolation — “we are the Khokhlys of this village.” Ukrainianism is based on solidarity and unity — “we are the people from the Carpathians to Sakhalin.” The return of consciousness requires overcoming local isolation. This means creating informational and cultural bridges between mainland Ukraine and the diaspora centres of Yellow Ukraine. When a person in Saratov or Samara feels that his “speech” is the same instrument that is used to write laws in Kyiv and create music in Lviv, the wall of alienation will fall.
Without an organisational structure, national revival is doomed to failure. Khokhlyatstvo is a state of defenselessness. A return to Ukrainianness requires institutional protection: from Sunday schools to media projects. Even in conditions of severe pressure, the preservation of historical memory about who and where came to the Volga is the smouldering coal from which the fire of national identity can flare up again.
Russian culture in the Volga region was and remains “superior” only in terms of the material advantages granted by the empire. It was superior as the culture of the city over the countryside, as the language of the administration, the army, and the ruling class. It seemed superior even to the Ukrainian immigrant of that time, because behind it stood the apparatus of coercion. This is a general law: in a country where two national cultures collide, a new, viable culture can develop only through struggle. Even when the Ukrainian population of the Volga region is under pressure from assimilation, even when it “does not do its job” by speaking Russian in official institutions, this is only a temporary retreat from the onslaught of imperial capital.
The future of Yellow Ukraine depends not on how “pure” the language of the peasants there is today, but on whether we can once again infuse this “Khokhlatsky cocoon” with the energy of national dynamics. As soon as Ukrainian culture ceases to be merely “rural” and once again becomes the language of progress, administration, and the future, imperial supremacy will dissipate like smoke, giving way to the living right of the people to their own face.
But here we come to the most painful question: who will become the subject of this transformation? What is the force that is capable of breaking the imperial rust on the “Khokhlat cocoon” and leading its inhabitants onto the path of conscious state-building?
Any national dynamic needs its engine — the national intelligentsia. It is the enzyme that transforms the spontaneous discontent of the masses into a coherent political programme. Unfortunately, in the case of today’s Nadvolzhye, we note a tragic void. Today, the Ukrainian intelligentsia of Yellow Ukraine is practically absent as a cohesive social stratum. It is either assimilated, dissolved in the Russian educational and cultural environment, or driven into the marginal framework of “folklore ensembles”, where it is allowed to be “Khokhlatsky”, but is forbidden to be Ukrainian.
Under current objective conditions, the Ukrainians of the Volga region are not able to overthrow the Moscow government and declare their own statehood in one fell swoop. To do this, they lack a critical mass of nationally conscious cadres, they lack their own media, and most importantly, they lack a powerful political organisation.
Since the Volga Ukrainians cannot act independently today, their path lies through an alliance with those forces that seek the complete dismantling of the imperial vertical.
The Volga region is a melting pot of nationalities. Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Moksha, and Erzya live next to Ukrainians. They all suffer from the same hammer — Moscow centralism. Yellow Ukraine must become part of the broad anti-imperial front of the Volga region. When a “Khokhol” and a Tatar realise that their common enemy is not a neighbour in the village, but a Moscow official who is sucking up resources, a force arises that can shake the foundations of the state.
The first step to liberating Yellow Ukraine should be a complete break with illusions about a “democratic Moscow.” Russian liberals are just an “empire with a human face.” Their rhetoric about “human rights” ends where the question of territorial integrity and the right of nations to complete secession begins. For them, the “Khokhs” of the Volga region are simply an electorate that must speak the language of the metropolis for the sake of “civilised unity.” They will never give Ukrainians a school or power, because they fear the collapse of their sacred “federation.” The conversation with Russian nationalists is even shorter. Their ideology is a direct denial of our existence. For them, a “Khokh” is a “corrupted Russian” who must be finally “corrected” through assimilation. An alliance with them is a voluntary step into a noose.
We need those who are not afraid of the slogan “Down with the Empire!” Those who recognise that Yellow Ukraine has the right to its own political subjectivity in alliance with other oppressed peoples. This is an alliance with those who are ready to build a new community on the ruins of centralism, based on full self-government of communities.
Historical experience suggests that when a small but disciplined group of people appears at a critical moment, able to clearly formulate a common goal and organise the masses around it, then local discontent grows into a powerful movement that changes reality. Without such a core, even the most sincere desire for freedom dissipates, remaining only an emotional outburst, not a historical force.
But for this union not to fall apart into local quarrels and dissolve into general chaos, a core is needed – that part of the people who already today live in the greatest dependence on the imperial machine, who feel it most acutely every day and therefore have the greatest reason not to compromise with it. It is in the industrial centres, among those who hold the keys to real production in their own hands, that the understanding ripens most quickly that without organised, consistent leadership, the common cause will not win. They can become the vanguard around which other oppressed people will rally, because it is their position in the system that makes their consciousness the sharpest, and their organisation the most necessary for the whole cause.
Then the oppressed nationalities of the Volga region will cease to be just victims or separate communities – they will become part of a broader force that does not ask for mercy from the empire, but dictates its terms to it.
The Volga Anti-Imperial Front is not a temporary tactical alliance or an escape from one’s own identity. It is a historical corridor of opportunities. It is what creates the space in which, for the first time in a century, the Ukrainians of the Volga region can breathe without restraint, think without self-censorship, and speak without apologies. Not under the cover of the “tolerance” of the metropolis, but under the guarantees of real power from below.
In this joint struggle, the Ukrainian language ceases to be an ethnographic relic and again becomes the language of action. Schools, the press, city councils, trade unions, cooperatives, cultural institutions, political parties—all of this grows not as a gift, but as a consequence of the joint pressure of the oppressed. The anti-imperial front breaks the main weapon of the metropolis—isolation. The Volga Ukrainian ceases to be alone. He sees others nearby, just as oppressed, and understands: his struggle is part of a broader process. In this solidarity, the fear of being smaller, ridiculous, or “inferior” disappears. Dignity appears. That is why this front is not the final form, but a starting point. It does not dissolve Ukrainianness—it creates conditions for its gathering, correction, and elevation. Through joint struggle, the ability for a separate political life matures.
And when on the Volga the Ukrainian language again becomes the language of organisation, education, and resistance, when the word “Ukrainian” means not origin, but position, then Yellow Ukraine will return from the historical shadow. Not as a victim of the empire and not as its decoration, but as a living part of the Ukrainian world, which itself creates its own future.
