The History and Present of Emigration from Ukraine: a New Approach to Periodization

Relevance. The new wave of mass emigration from Ukraine as a result of the full-scale phase of the current genocidal russian-Ukrainian war that began on February 24, 2024, has noticeably updated the issue of further periodization of large flows of historically long-term Ukrainian emigration and determining the location of its final stage. The purpose of the article is to prove that the existing four-wave model of periodization of mass emigration from Ukraine is outdated, imposed during the ussr and does not correspond to the real origins of the Ukrainian people to foreign historical and geographical space from ancient times to the present day, when russia’s current aggressive war against Ukraine has led to the emergence of eight million Ukrainian emigration to more than 140 countries around the world, located on all continents. Methods. The interdisciplinary nature of the research topic necessitates adherence to the principles of historicism, objectivity, a systemic approach, and contextualization. In the research process, general scientific and specific historical methods were applied: analysis and synthesis, typology, reconstruction, as well as interdisciplinary, synchronous, statistical, and chronological. The result of the study was a new innovative perspective on the periodization of mass waves of emigration from Ukraine, taking into account its duration from a historical point of view, abandoning the scheme imposed by soviet historiography about the existence of four waves of mass departures of Ukrainians from their country, starting only from the end of the 19th century. The conclusion is made about the need to introduce a new algorithm for periodization of the history and modernity of mass emigration from Ukraine, which includes eight clearly defined stages from a historical, geographical and chronological point of view and corresponds to the principle of objectivity in the presentation of national history.