Essay Question 2: Population growth can be defined as “the change in population over a given period of time”. Discuss how and why the population in your country has changed over the last 100 years, and what effects these changes have made on your culture. Population of the nation is very important for its culture. If there are more people who are sharing a culture, then the culture is stronger. But if population starts declining, culture starts dying together with people. It is very difficult to find the valid numbers of population for Ukraine between 17 and 20 century because Ukraine during those times was always divided between many different countries like Poland, Ottoman, Russian and Austrian empires. But today Ukraine is the biggest country by territory in Europe with population over 46 million people. In 1941 Second World War began which killed around 5 million Ukrainians. More than 2 million were departed to Germany for forced labor. Huge amount of cities and villages were destroyed by Germans. More than 10 million people were left without a home. After war Soviet government was doing everything to destroy Ukrainian cultural identity. Ukrainian literature, art and language were band. After boom an economical crisis occurred and was associated with lack of basic commodities as well as great inflation. During this times population growth decreased and cultural development slowed down. In 1991 Ukraine finally became independent and population growth stopped. Because of uncertain economical and political situation families were having maximum 2 children, which resulted in zero population growth. Between 1995 and 2009 population were declining and between those years went down from 54 million to 46 million in 2010. Globalization is affecting Ukrainian culture significantly today. Many studentsare getting education abroad. Foreign television is making huge impact on today young population. Because Ukraine was tight so close with Russia through history Russian culture integrated very much into our culture. And today its even has huge effect on political situation in Ukraine. _Medvedev U. (2007) _Ukrainian culture in XIX – XX century _Maryshak I. (2004) Ukrainian cultural development between 60-90 years of ХХ century in Ukraine and in the world. _ Muller J. (2006) English-Russian Dictionary. ss