Editing Donbas (section)

===Soviet period (1943–1991)===
During the reconstruction of the Donbas after the end of the Second World War, large numbers of Russian workers arrived to repopulate the region, further altering the population balance. In 1926, 639,000 ethnic Russians resided in the Donbas, and Ukrainians made up 60% of the population.<ref>{{cite journal | jstor=261051| title=The Donbas between Ukraine and Russia: The Use of History in Political Disputes | author=Andrew Wilson | journal=Journal of Contemporary History |date=April 1995 | volume=30 | issue=2 | page=275 |quote="By 1924 there were 158 Ukrainian schools in the Donbas; by 1930 44 per cent of the 'industrial apparat' was Ukrainian-speaking; while the percentage of the working class who considered themselves Ukrainian supposedly rose from 40.6 per cent in 1926 to 70 per cent in 1929 (the overall population of the Donbas was 60 per cent Ukrainian in 1926)."}}</ref> As a result of the [[Russification]] policy, the Ukrainian population of the Donbass then declined drastically as ethnic Russians settled in the region in large numbers.<ref>{{cite journal | jstor=261051| title=The Donbas between Ukraine and Russia: The Use of History in Political Disputes | author=Andrew Wilson | journal=Journal of Contemporary History |date=April 1995 | volume=30 | issue=2 | page=275 |quote="Russification was achieved first and foremost through the physical inflow of huge numbers of Russians in the years after 1945. Their numbers grew from 0.77 million in 1926 to 2.55 million in 1959 and 3.6 million in 1989. In percentage terms the number of Russians grew from 31.4 per cent in 1926 to 44 per cent in 1989."}}</ref> By 1959, the ethnic Russian population was 2.55&nbsp;million. Russification was further advanced by the 1958–59 Soviet educational reforms, which led to the near elimination of all Ukrainian-language schooling in the Donbas.<ref name="LPinS">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qaSdffgD9t4C&pg=PA57 | title=Language Policy in the Soviet Union | publisher=Springer Science & Business Media | author=L.A. Grenoble | year=2003 | isbn=1402012985}}</ref><ref name="SCandNC">{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/details/socialchangenati00kraw | title=Social change and national consciousness in twentieth-century Ukraine | publisher=Macmillan | author=Bohdan Krawchenko | year=1985 | isbn=0333361997}}</ref> By the time of the [[1989 Soviet Census|Soviet Census of 1989]], 45% of the population of the Donbas reported their ethnicity as Russian.<ref name="Sasre">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WIXV1dms-8MC&pg=PA286 | title=Secession as an International Phenomenon: From America's Civil War to Contemporary Separatist Movements | publisher=University of Georgia Press | year=2010 | pages=286–287 | isbn=978-0820330082 | editor=Don Harrison Doyle}}</ref> In 1990, the [[Interfront of the Donbass]] was founded as a movement against Ukrainian independence.