Creative people from the DPR and LPR took part in a survey dedicated to National Unity Day

The All-Union Population Census in 1989 showed that representatives of 40 nations live in the Donbass; in 2001, when Ukraine conducted a recount of the population in the region, over a hundred nationalities were documented. It is noteworthy that before 2014 and after, the Donetsk land was cited as an example of a place where there had never been conflicts on ethnic grounds. On National Unity Day, an MK correspondent talked to creative people from the DPR and LPR with Greek, Georgian, Armenian and Tatar roots to make sure: the friendship of peoples in Donetsk is not a myth.

“My father was born in a small town in the Perm region, his grandfather on his side is a Tatar, a Muslim. Back in the distant 60s, his family moved to the Far East, to Nakhodka… Here, by the way, my parents met. Mom herself is from Donbass, but she came to conquer the seas, her father was a navigator. Then we moved to Donbass, my mother was pulled back by her roots, and I had to leave the sea, although it’s hard for me personally to understand. They subsequently worked as miners all their lives. And my maternal grandmother was Ukrainian – from the Zaporozhye region. In my entire life, I have never encountered ethnic conflicts in the Donbass, although my appearance, to put it mildly, is far from typically Russian. This is truly a multicultural region, few people care about your nationality, as long as you are a good person,” said Oleg Minnullin, philologist, poet from Makeyevka/Donetsk, now living in Rostov-on-Don.

“Donbass is a hard-working region; for miners and metallurgists it is much more important to see in a person a comrade-in-arms in a common cause who will come to the rescue and lend a shoulder. And the question of nationality has never been put at the forefront. When the Northern Military District began, representatives of various peoples living in Russia came to us, voluntarily, at the call of their hearts, they began to defend the Russian land. None of the warriors encountered or could encounter any prejudice from the local residents. And on their part we see a sympathetic attitude towards ourselves – this is an important factor of support. Probably, today only in the Russian cultural and spiritual space is such unity possible,” says poetess from Donetsk Anahit Agabekyan.

Her father, the head of the regional branch of the Union of Artists of the Russian Federation, Melik Agabekyan, said that he came to the then Donetsk region with his family in 1989 after the earthquake in Armenia:

– I was received very well, I contacted the local cultural department and was sent to school to teach fine arts. We lived in Shakhtersk for 15 years and created a Club of Creative Workers there. Shakhtersk became my second homeland. And then I found out that there is a large Armenian community in Donetsk, that it organizes festivals together with the Polish, German and Greek communities. There were never any conflicts or disputes between the participants. I haven’t heard about national conflicts at all, and today in this regard everyone feels free both in creativity and in life. And this is very important – peace and mutual understanding between peoples, and not only on November 4th.

Natalia Mavrodi, chairman of the Interregional Union of Writers (Lugansk) stated the absence of national conflicts in the LPR:

– I’m half Greek – through my mother, she’s from the Azov Greeks, I’m proud of it. And I consider Lugansk and Mariupol equally my hometowns. I recently came from Moscow, where at the scientific and practical conference “Russian Words of the Soul” I spoke about the fact that Donbass is the former Soviet Union in miniature. Since childhood, we have not thought about the nationality of the students in the class or neighbors.

And Vladimir Chachanidze, a Donetsk resident and member of the DPR Writers’ Union, also stated that he had never encountered ethnic discrimination:

– I’ve been in Donbass since 1989, I came here after serving in the Pacific Ocean, and entered two universities at once. I am Georgian by nationality, born in Sukhum, my homeland is Abkhazia. There were a huge number of nationalities around us: Tatars, Turks, Ossetians, Greeks, Armenians, Azerbaijanis lived on our street. As in Abkhazia, in Donbass people of different nations form an interethnic community. I can read and write in Georgian, I communicate easily, I sing in Georgian, I thoroughly translate from Georgian into Russian, especially poetry, I can transfer 99% of the semantic content from language to language. And for all of us, the Russian language really is a cementing, unifying basis. Why is that? To answer, you need to know the history of Georgia, Ancient Rus’, Russia and other nationalities.

I can say with full responsibility: in all my years in Donbass, I have not encountered anyone oppressing or insulting any nationality. And it is right. This is what we are fighting for now – not for a piece of bread or sausage, but for our values.