These Brazilians learn Ukrainian at school. Why?

Last week, Guto Pasko, a documentary filmmaker, invited relatives in Ukraine who are suffering from Russia’s invasion to seek shelter in his home.

The relatives are distant – both in the sense that Mr. Pasko lives more than 6,500 miles away in Brazil, and in that his great-grandparents were the last in his immediate family to have lived in Ukraine, emigrating in the late 1890s.

But Mr. Pasko isn’t the only Brazilian witnessing the attack on Ukraine from afar who is stepping up to help. With 600,000 citizens of Ukrainian descent, Brazil is home to the third-largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world outside Russia, behind Canada and the United States.

The heart of “Ukrainian Brazil” is in the municipality of Prudentópolis. There, vibrant pysanky eggs are painted at Easter, parades take over the streets on religious holidays, a folk-dance troupe houses a vast collection of traditionally embroidered garments, and Ukrainian is an official language, even taught in public schools.

It is these cultural activities – dance, art, language, and religion – that have helped Ukrainian Brazilians hold on tight to their roots. And the fortitude that has surprised the international community as Ukrainians face Russian air and ground attacks is in the blood of Ukrainians everywhere, Mr. Pasko says.

“[President Vladimir] Putin may be kicking us off of our land and trying to kill us, but you only have to look at our history to see you can’t kill the Ukrainian spirit,” he says.

“Yes, I’m Brazilian; we’re in Brazil. But we have the heart and soul and blood of Ukraine.”

You don’t have to be Ukrainian

Ukrainians came to Brazil in three waves, says Henrique Schlumberger Vitchmichen, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Ukrainian Brazilian communities.

The first immigrants, at the turn of the last century, came in response to advertisements seeking farmers to work the land and enjoy Brazil’s riches. Instead they found hunger and disease, but they settled nonetheless, building simple wooden homes reminiscent of structures still common in western Ukraine.

Today, the mostly rural municipality of Prudentópolis is dotted with the rounded domes of some three dozen Byzantine-style churches, where congregants still gather wearing traditionally embroidered clothes.  

More Ukrainians made the journey following World Wars I and II, fleeing oppression, violence, and the confiscation of their land by outside governments.

The Ukrainian spoken in Prudentópolis is a relic. Locals who have traveled to Ukraine are told they speak like people’s great-grandparents.

“They could understand me, but my Ukrainian was from another time,” recalls Mr. Pasko, who will release his fifth documentary film about Ukraine and Brazil this year. 

An estimated 75% of Prudentópolis’ 52,000 inhabitants are of Ukrainian ancestry, and their culture has seduced even their non-Ukrainian neighbors. The head of the Vesselka folkloric dance group, for example, Fernando Demenech, has no Ukrainian blood, but he presides each August over a sit-down dinner for 1,000 guests when troupe members sing and dance, the women wearing traditional skirts and intricate flower wreaths in their hair, and the men clad in embroidered vests.

Most of Vesselka’s dancers are under age 30, an unusual crowd in a small town that is accustomed to seeing its youth fleeing to bigger cities. And many of them “are here because their parents or grandparents were part of the group,” says Mr. Demenech. “This is passed from generation to generation. It’s what keeps the group alive.”

Mr. Demenech was returning from rehearsal when he heard the news of Russia’s invasion. “It was a day when we were paralyzed here, only watching the news.”

But it wasn’t long before the Ukrainian Brazilian community jumped into action.

Reaching out

Organizations like Frente BrazUcra sent volunteers to help refugees in Poland; it has raised more than $31,000 so far to fund such work and gained over 1,000 new members since the war began. Churches are organizing fundraisers, and many individuals are offering their homes to refugees. Mr. Pasko’s relatives have not confirmed if they’ll take him up on his offer.

The attack on Ukraine triggered an enormous response in Brazil, says Nadir Vozivoda, the Prudentópolis culture secretary and representative in the national Humanitas Brazil-Ukraine committee, which was formed last week to bring aid to Ukrainians in Europe and receive refugees in Brazil.

The Brazilian government has announced it will grant humanitarian visas to Ukrainians. State governments in São Paulo and Paraná, home to Prudentópolis, are preparing to welcome a possible fourth wave of Ukrainian immigrants.

“It’s in our culture to preserve traditions and to feel connected,” says Vitorio Sorotiuk, president of the national Ukrainian-Brazilian Central Representation. “If you look at our festivals and celebrations, [Ukrainians] dedicate so much to our ancestors.”

That rings true for Vanessa Jerba, whose grandparents left Ukraine after World War I. She joined a Ukrainian dance group as a teen, and “automatically connected to the part ... that worked with the embroidery of costumes,” she says. She started researching the history and taking craft tutorials online. Now she owns a Ukrainian crafts business.

Recently, she joined artists of Ukrainian descent worldwide to make motanky rag dolls incorporating aesthetics from each artist’s country. She used the green and gold colors of the Brazilian flag and embroidered native birds on her doll’s apron.

Last year, the dolls were exhibited in a number of Ukrainian cities. Today they are in the port of Mykolaiv, but not on show: The town has come under heavy attack by Russian troops, and “I received news that all the dolls are boxed up in a basement,” says Ms. Jerba.

Like the Ukrainian diaspora in Brazil, these dolls from the Americas, Europe, and Asia, she says, are preserving tradition. They’re united with Ukraine, and “waiting in solidarity” for peace.