Serbia’s Ukrainians Struggle to Keep Identity Alive

Hocak says that families like his migrated to Bosnia as part of a policy of the Austro-Hungarian authorities to resettle territories they had seized off the collapsing Ottoman Empire. [The Habsburg Empire occupied Bosnia in 1878 and annexed it in 1908.]

After World War II, Hocak's family moved to Vojvodina, seeing this region as more developed.

"My family settled in the town of Kula," he recalls, noting that many Ukrainians from Bosnia also moved to four other towns and cities in Vojvodina - Vrbas, Sremska Mitrovica, Indjija and Novi Sad.

"It was not an organized movement. Cousins were following cousins, friends followed friends; this is how we ended here," Hocak explains.

Miroslav Hocak. Photo: BIRN

Although their sense of identity remains strong, Ukrainians in Serbia have little connection with their homeland, which long formed part of the Soviet Union and was not accessible.

Asked how he feels Ukraine is presented in the media in Serbia, given Serbia's sympathies and ties with Russia, Hocak says there has been a lot of misinformation.

"The Russian media spread a lot of that [misinformation] here and the Serbian media republish it without making previous checks. We need more fact-checking when taking information about Ukraine," he says.

But he also says that despite the gruelling conflict between pro-Russia and government forces in eastern Ukraine, there is no tension between the old-established Ukrainian community and much newer Russian community in Serbia.

"The Russian community is young in Serbia, but we don't have any tensions between us," he says.

Today, as a small community, they face problems preserving their language and culture from assimilation.

Most of them have never been to...