I’m preparing my lecture on Ukrainian history, and I found out that over 3,5 million Ukrainians were enslaved by Crimean Tatars in a little over a 100 years (mostly in the 16th century). In contrast, about 450,000 Africans were brought as slaves to the US during entire slave trading period. A total of 12,5 million slaves were taken from Africa to this hemisphere, with the overwhelming majority ending up in the Caribbean and Brazil.
History of Slavery
Clarissa's Blog 
Can I ask how the ending of slavery is understood in Ukrainian culture? What I mean is, there was a period in which slaver raids into the steppe were a fact of life – as I understand it, Tatars taking them to the Ottoman empire – and then eventually, that ended. History moved on to other things. How did that happen?
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Russians came and enslaved everybody who remained in place. Serfdom was abolished in the Russian Empire in 1861. My ancestors in the Russian Empire were bought and sold as slaves. This information usually really confuses my students who sincerely believe that slavery only existed in the US.
Ironically, one of the motivating factors of the military alliance between Ukraine and Russia that led us to where we are today was to protect the region from the Ottoman Empire. Clearly, that was a mistake and a half.
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Thanks for the reply. After I posted, I also found articles on Slavery and Serfdom at the “Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine”, but they say very little about the Tatar period.
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Being a distant Swedish state might not have worked out so well either.
Ask the Norwegians and the Finns how that worked out.
Second guessing history is a competitive sport. 🙂
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