Tatar Outpost in Western Ukraine Gradually Dying

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 1 – Not only are the countries and republics of the post-Soviet space less homogeneous than many imagine, but their titular nationalities have representatives not just immediately over their borders but far removed from them. Overtime, the numbers of both are declining; but there are still many enters of national life far from their core areas.

            One of these is the Tatar settlement in the village of Yukovets, in Ukraine’s Khmelnitsky Oblast. There for almost 500 years, Tatar Muslims have been living. There are only about 50 of them left,  and their only real surviving monument is a cemetery as the mosque was destroyed by the Soviets (facebook.com/groups/1203633093138075/permalink/1576291292538918/).

                The forests are encroaching on the cemetery, and it is now being used not only by Muslims but by Christians. But the patronymics of many in the older generation who no longer identify as Tatars – Mustafayevich, Suleymanovich, Yusofovich and so on – call attention to a once vibrant community that was founded by Tatars taken prisoner in a 1512 battle.

            In 1886, there were 233 Muslims in the village. By 1909, there number had risen to an estimated 300; and archives suggest that by 1911, there were 340.  Many of them became famous far beyond the village: Mustafa Kozakevich, for example, is known as the first scholar already in Soviet times to use the term “Ukrainian Polesye” to distinguish it from the Belarusian.

            Some of the graves in the cemetery date to the end of the 18^th century, but the first with years that can still be read date only to 1820. There are approximately 550 graves from before 1918, and about 150 since that time. The earliest ones follow the Arabic practice; the later ones the Turkish.

            In reporting this, Ukrainian journalist Mikhaylo Yakubovich says that he would “like to believe that in the near future, Ukrainian Muslims will put this ancient and unique place in order just as they have done in neighboring Ostrog where unfortunately are preserved only eight graves (of the Leveds and Bayrashevskys) of the first half of the 19^th century.”