As a child in the 1990s, I often attended large Ukrainian church gatherings where the controversial Kent Hovind would talk about flat earth and promote the Young Earth Creationist movement. Much of the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States came from this fourth wave of immigration, to which my family belonged. People within this group, owing to the experience they had in the Soviet Union, often believed the government in their new home was trying to limit their freedom. This fourth wave, the largest wave of Ukrainian immigration to the US, tended to avoid participation in American public life, just as it did under the Soviet regime.

This fourth wave doesn’t represent the entirety of the Ukrainian diaspora in the US, but it’s an essential part. The hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who came in the 1990s continue to lack a strong role in the American political system. Their oppression within the Soviet Union made them distrust the government in their new home, leading them to tinker with conspiracy theories, a result of the conspiracy culture they endured in Soviet times. Many lacked higher education because they had refused to join the Communist party.

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