History of Ukraine
Ukraine (i/juːˈkreɪn/ yew-krayn;
Ukrainian: Україна,
transliterated: Ukrayina, [ukrɑˈjinɑ]) is a country in Eastern Europe. Ukraine
borders the Russian Federation to the east and northeast, Belarus to the
northwest, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the
southwest, and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south and southeast,
respectively. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the largest country entirely
within Europe.
According to a popular and well established
theory, the medieval state of Kievan Rus was established by the Varangians in
the 9th century as the first historically recorded East Slavic state. It
emerged as a powerful nation in the Middle Ages but disintegrated in the 12th
century. By the middle of the 14th century, Ukrainian territories were under
the rule of three external powers—the Golden Horde, the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania, and the Kingdom of Poland. After the Great Northern War (1700–1721),
Ukraine was divided among a number of regional powers. By the 19th century, the
largest part of Ukraine was integrated into the Russian Empire, with the rest
under Austro-Hungarian control.
A chaotic period of incessant
warfare ensued, with internationally recognized establishment of independent
Ukrainian People's Republic. Independent Ukraine emerged from its own civil
war. Then Soviet aggression and Ukrainian–Soviet War followed, which resulted
in Soviet victory. Ukrainian People's Republic was occupied and puppet state
called Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was created. On December 30, 1922 it
became one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union. Soviet government was
hostile to Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture, there were mass
repressions of Ukrainian poets, historians and linguists. Then there was a
genocide of Ukrainians: millions of people starved to death in 1932 and 1933 in
the Holodomor. After 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and Soviet Union,
the Ukrainian SSR's territory was enlarged westward. During World War II the Ukrainian
Insurgent Army tried to reestablish Ukrainian independence and fought against
both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. But in 1941 Ukraine was occupied by
Nazi Germany, being liberated in 1944. In 1954 it expanded to the south with
the transfer of Crimea. In 1945, the Ukrainian SSR became one of the founding
members of the United Nations.
Ukraine became independent again
when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. This dissolution started a period of
transition to a market economy, in which Ukraine suffered an eight-year
recession. Since then, however, the economy has experienced a high increase in
GDP growth. Ukraine was caught up in the worldwide economic crisis in 2008 and
the economy plunged. GDP fell 20% from spring 2008 to spring 2009, then leveled
off as analysts compared the magnitude of the downturn to the worst years of
economic depression during the early 1990s.The country remains a globally
important market and, as of 2011, is the world's third-largest grain exporter.
Ukraine is a unitary state composed
of 24 oblasts (provinces), one autonomous republic (Crimea), and two cities
with special status: Kiev, its capital and largest city, and Sevastopol, which
houses the Russian Black Sea Fleet under a leasing agreement. Ukraine is a
republic under a semi-presidential system with separate legislative, executive,
and judicial branches. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine
continues to maintain the second-largest military in Europe, after that of
Russia. The country is home to 46 million people, 77.8 percent of whom are
ethnic Ukrainians, with sizable minorities of Russians (17%), Belarusians and
Romanians. Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine. Russian is also
widely spoken. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodox
Christianity, which has strongly influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature
and music.
History
Early history
Human settlement in Ukraine and its vicinity dates back to 32,000 BCE, with
evidence of the Gravettian culture in the Crimean Mountains.[25][28] By 4,500 BCE, theNeolithic Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture flourished in a wide area that included parts of modern Ukraine
including Trypillia and the entire Dnieper-Dniester region.
During theIron Age, the land was
inhabited by Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians.[29] Between 700 BC and
200 BC it was part of the Scythian Kingdom, or Scythia.
Later, colonies of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and the Byzantine Empire, such as Tyras, Olbia, and Hermonassa, were founded, beginning in the 6th century BC, on the northeastern
shore of the Black Sea, and thrived well
into the 6th century AD. The Goths stayed in the area but came under the sway of
the Huns from the 370s AD. In the 7th century AD,
the territory of eastern Ukraine was the center of Old Great Bulgaria. At the end of the century, the majority of Bulgar tribes migrated in
different directions, and the Khazars took over much of the land.
Golden Age of Kiev
Main
article: Kievan Rus'
The Baptism of Grand Prince Vladimir, led to the
adoption of Christianity in Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus' was founded by the Rus' people, Varangians who first settled around Ladoga and Novgorod, then gradually moved
southward eventually reaching Kiev about 880. Kievan Rus' included the western
part of modern Ukraine, Belarus, with larger part of it situated on the
territory of modern Russia. According to the Primary Chronicle the Rus'
elite initially consisted of Varangians fromScandinavia.
During the 10th and 11th centuries, it became the largest and most
powerful state in Europe.[30] In the following
centuries, it laid the foundation for the national identity of Ukrainians and
Russians.[31] Kiev, the capital of modern Ukraine, became the most
important city of the Rus'.
Map of the Kievan
Rus' in the 11th century. During the Golden Age of Kiev, the lands
of Rus' covered modern western, central and northern Ukraine, Belarus, and
western Russia. Modern eastern and southern Ukraine were inhabited by nomads
and had a different history.
The Varangians later assimilated into the local Slavic population and
became part of the Rus' first dynasty, the Rurik Dynasty.[31] Kievan Rus' was composed
of several principalities ruled by the interrelated Rurikid Princes. The seat of Kiev, the most prestigious and
influential of all principalities, became the subject of many rivalries among
Rurikids as the most valuable prize in their quest for power.
The Golden Age of Kievan Rus' began with the reign of Vladimir the Great (980–1015), whoturned Rus'
toward Byzantine Christianity. During the reign
of his son, Yaroslav the Wise(1019–1054),
Kievan Rus' reached the zenith of its cultural development and military power.[31] This was followed by the
state's increasing fragmentation as the relative importance of regional powers
rose again. After a final resurgence under the rule of Vladimir Monomakh (1113–1125)
and his son Mstislav (1125–1132),
Kievan Rus' finally disintegrated into separate principalities following
Mstislav's death.
In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Pechenegs and the Kipchaks, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested
regions of the north.[32] The
13th century Mongol invasion devastated Kievan Rus'. Kiev was totally destroyed in 1240.[33] On today's Ukrainian
territory, the state of Kievan Rus' was succeeded by the principalities
of Halych and Volodymyr-Volynskyi, which were merged into the state of Galicia-Volhynia.
Foreign domination
See also: Grand Duchy of
Lithuania, Crown of the
Kingdom of Poland, Polish–Lithuanian
Commonwealth, and Russian Empire
In the centuries
following the Mongol invasion, much of Ukraine was controlled by Lithuania (from the 14th century
on) and since the Union of Lublin (1569) by
Poland, as seen at this outline of the Polish–Lithuanian
Commonwealth as of 1619
In the mid-14th century, Casimir III of Poland gained control of Galicia-Volhynia, while the heartland of Rus',
including Kiev, became the territory of the Gediminas, of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, after the Battle on the
Irpen' River. Following the 1386Union of Krewo, a dynastic union between
Poland and Lithuania, much of what became northern Ukraine was ruled by the
increasingly Slavicised local Lithuanian nobles as part of the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania.
By 1569, the Union of Lublin formed the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and a significant part of Ukrainian territory
was moved from Lithuanian rule to the Crown of the
Kingdom of Poland, thus becoming Polish
territory. Under the cultural and political pressure of Polonisation, many upper-class people of Polish Ruthenia (another term for the land of
Rus) converted to Catholicism and became indistinguishable from the Polish nobility.[34] Thus, the commoners,
deprived of their native protectors among Rus nobility, turned for protection
to the Cossacks, who remained
fiercely Orthodox. The Cossacks tended to turn to violence against those they perceived as
enemies, particularly the Polish state and its representatives.[35]
"Reply of the
Zaporozhian Cossacks to
Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire."Painted by Ilya Repin from 1880 to 1891
In the mid-17th century, a Cossack military quasi-state, the Zaporozhian Host, was established by the Dnieper Cossacks and the
Ruthenian peasants fleeing Polishserfdom.[36] Poland had little real
control of this land, yet they found the Cossacks to be a useful fighting force
against the Turks and Tatars,[37] and at times the two
allied in military
campaigns.[38] However, the
continued enserfment of peasantry by the Polish nobility, emphasized by the Commonwealth's
fierce exploitation of the workforce, and most importantly, the suppression of
the Orthodox Church pushed the allegiances of Cossacks away from Poland.[37]
The Cossacks aspired to have representation in Polish Sejm, recognition of Orthodox traditions and the gradual expansion of the Cossack Registry. These were all vehemently rejected by the Polish nobility, who had power
in the Sejm. The Cossacks eventually turned for protection to Orthodox Russia, a decision which would later lead towards the
downfall of the Polish–Lithuanian state,[36] and the preservation of
the Orthodox Church and in Ukraine.[39]
Bohdan Khmelnytsky, "Hetmanof Ukraine", established an independent Ukraine after theuprising in 1648 against Poland
In 1648, Bohdan Khmelnytsky led
the largest of the
Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth
and the Polish king John II Casimir.[40] Left-bank Ukraine was
eventually integrated into Muscovite Russia as Rada faced the alternatives of
subjection to Poland, allegiance to Turkey, or allegiance to Muscovy and chose
the latter as the Cossack Hetmanate as recorded
in the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav. There followed the Russo-Polish War which ended in 1667. After the partitions of
Poland at the end of the 18th century byPrussia, Habsburg Austria, and Russia,
Western Ukrainian Galicia was taken over by Austria.
The Khanate of Crimea was one of
the strongest powers in Eastern Europe until the end of the 17th century
The Crimean Khanate was one of the strongest powers in Eastern Europe until the 18th
century; at one point it even succeeded, under the Crimean khan Devlet I Giray, to devastate Moscow. The Russian
population of the borderlands suffered annual Tatar invasions and tens of
thousands of soldiers were required to protect the southern boundaries. From
the beginning of the 16th century until the end of 17th century the Crimean
Tatar raider bands made almost annual forays into agricultural Slavic lands
searching for captives to sell asslaves.[41] According to Orest Subtelny, "from 1450 to 1586, eighty-six Tatar raids were recorded, and from
1600 to 1647, seventy."[42] In 1688, Tatars captured
a record number of 60,000 Ukrainians.[43] This was a heavy burden
for the state, and slowed its social and economic development. Since Crimean
Tatars did not permit settlement of Russians to southern regions where the soil
is better and the season is long enough, Muscovy had to depend on poorer
regions and labour-intensive agriculture. Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia andWallachia were also subjected to
extensive slave raiding. The Crimean Khanate was conquered by the Russian
Empire in 1778, bringing an end to the last Tatar state.
The Ruin
In 1657–1686 came "The Ruin," a devastating 30-year war amongst Russia, Poland, Turks and
Cossacks for control of Ukraine, which occurred at about the same time as
the Deluge of Poland. For three years, Khmelnytsky's armies controlled
present-day western and central Ukraine, but, deserted by his Tatar allies, he
suffered a crushingdefeat at
Berestechko, and turned to the Russian tsar for help.
In 1654, Khmelnytsky signed the Treaty of Pereiaslav, forming a military
and political alliance with Russia that acknowledged loyalty to the Czar. The
wars escalated in intensity with hundreds of thousands of deaths. Defeat came
in 1686 as the "Eternal Peace" between Russia and Poland gave Kiev and the Cossack lands east of
the Dnieper over to Russian rule and the Ukrainian lands west of the Dnieper to
Poland.
In 1709 Cossack
Hetman Ivan Mazepa (1687–1709) sided with Sweden against Russia in the Great Northern War (1700–1721). Mazepa, a member of the Cossack nobility, received an
excellent education abroad and proved to be a brilliant political and military
leader enjoying good relations with the Romanov dynasty. After Peter the Great became czar,
Mazepa as hetman gave him more than twenty years of loyal military and
diplomatic service and was well rewarded.
Kirill Razumovsky, the last Hetman of left and right-bank Ukraine 1750–1764, was, in May
1763, the first person to ever declare Ukraine to be a sovereign state
Eventually Peter recognized that in order to consolidate and modernize
Russia's political and economic power it was necessary to do away with
the hetmanate and
Ukrainian and Cossack aspirations to autonomy. Mazepa accepted Polish
invitations to join the Poles and Swedes against Russia. The move was disastrous
for the hetmanate, Ukrainian autonomy, and Mazepa. He died in exile after
fleeing from the Battle of Poltava (1709),
where the Swedes and their Cossack allies suffered a catastrophic defeat at the
hands of Peter's Russian forces.
The hetmanate was abolished in 1764; the Zaporizhska Sich abolished in 1775, as Russia centralized control over its lands. As
part of the partitioning of
Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795, the Ukrainian lands
west of the Dnieper were divided between Russia and Austria. From 1737 to 1834,
expansion into the northern Black Sea littoral and the eastern Danube valley
was a cornerstone of Russian foreign policy.
Lithuanians and Poles controlled vast estates in Ukraine, and were a law
unto themselves. Judicial rulings from Cracow were routinely flouted, while
peasants were heavily taxed and practically tied to the land as serfs.
Occasionally the landowners battled each other using armies of Ukrainian
peasants. The Poles and Lithuanians were Roman Catholics and tried with some
success to convert the Orthodox lesser nobility. In 1596 they set up the
"Greek-Catholic" or Uniate Church, under the authority of the Pope but using Eastern rituals; it dominates
western Ukraine to this day. Tensions between the Uniates and the Orthodox were
never resolved, and the religious differentiation left the Ukrainian Orthodox
peasants leaderless, as they were reluctant to follow the Ukrainian nobles.[44]
Cossacks led an uprising, called Koliivshchyna, starting in the Ukrainian borderlands of the Polish–Lithuanian
Commonwealth in 1768. Ethnicity as one root cause of this revolt, which
included Ukrainian violence that killed tens of
thousands of Poles and Jews. Religious warfare also broke out between Ukrainian
groups. Increasing conflict between Uniate and Orthodox parishes along the
newly reinforced Polish-Russian border on the Dnepr River in the time of Catherine II set the stage for the uprising. As Uniate religious practices had
become more Latinized, Orthodoxy in this region drew even closer into
dependence on the Russian Orthodox Church. Confessional tensions also reflected
opposing Polish and Russian political allegiances.[45]
After the Russians annexed the Crimean Khanate in 1783, the region was
settled by Ukrainian and Russian migrants.[46] Despite the promises of
Ukrainian autonomy given by the Treaty of Pereyaslav, the Ukrainian elite and
the Cossacks never received the freedoms and the autonomy they were expecting
from Imperial Russia. However, within the Empire, Ukrainians rose to the
highest Russian state and church offices. [a] At a later period, tsarists established a policy
of Russification of Ukrainian lands, suppressing the use of the Ukrainian language in
print, and in public.[47]
19th century, World War I and revolution
_cropped.jpg)
Symon Petliura led
Ukraine's struggle for independence following the Russian
Revolution of 1917; he is now
recognised as having been the third President of
independent Ukraine
In the 19th century, Ukraine was a rural area largely ignored by Russia and
Austria. With growing urbanization and modernization, and a cultural trend
toward romantic
nationalism, a Ukrainian intelligentsia committed to national
rebirth and social justice emerged. The serf-turned-national-poet Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861) and the political theorist Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841–1895)
led the growing nationalist movement.
After Ukraine and Crimea became aligned with the Russian Empire Russo-Turkish
War (1768–1774), significant German
immigration occurred after it was encouraged by Catherine the Great and her
immediate successors. Immigration was encouraged into Ukraine and especially
the Crimea by Catherine in her proclamation of open migration to the Russian
Empire. Immigration was encouraged forGermans and other Europeans to thin the previously
dominant Turk population and encourage more complete use of farmland.
Beginning in the 19th century, there was a continuous migration from
Ukraine to settle the distant areas of the Russian Empire. According to the
1897 census, there were 223,000 ethnic Ukrainians in Siberia and 102,000 in Central Asia.[48] Between 1896 and 1906,
after the construction of the trans-Siberian railway, a total of 1.6 million
Ukrainians migrated eastward.[49]
Mykhailo
Hrushevskyi - one of the most important figures of the
Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century. President of Ukrainian
People's Republic
Nationalist and socialist parties developed in the late 19th century.
Austrian Galicia, which enjoyed substantial political freedom under the relatively lenient
rule of the Habsburgs, became the
center of the nationalist movement.
Ukrainians entered World War I on the side of both
the Central Powers, under Austria, and the Triple Entente, under Russia.
3.5 million Ukrainians fought with the Imperial Russian
Army, while 250,000 fought for the Austro-Hungarian
Army.[50] During the war, Austro-Hungarian authorities
established the Ukrainian Legion to fight against the Russian Empire. This
legion was the foundation of the Ukrainian
Galician Army that fought against the
Bolsheviks and Poles in the post World War I period (1919–23). Those suspected
of Russophile sentiments in Austria were treated harshly. Up to 5,000
supporters of the Russian Empire from Galicia were detained and placed in
Austrian internment camps in Talerhof, Styria, and in a fortress atTerezín (now in the Czech Republic).[51]
When World War I ended, several empires collapsed; among them were the
Russian and Austrian empires. The Russian
Revolution of 1917 ensued, and
a Ukrainian national movement for self-determination reemerged, with heavy
Communist/Socialist influence. During 1917–20, several separate Ukrainian
states briefly emerged: the Ukrainian
People's Republic, the Hetmanate, the Directorate and the pro-Bolshevik Ukrainian Soviet
Socialist Republic (or Soviet
Ukraine) successively established territories in the former Russian Empire;
while the West Ukrainian
People's Republic and the Hutsul Republic emerged briefly in the former Austro-Hungarian territory. This led to
civil war, and an anarchist movement called theBlack Army led by Nestor Makhno developed in Southern
Ukraine during that war.[52]
However, Poland defeated Western Ukraine in the Polish-Ukrainian
War, but failed against the Bolsheviks in an offensive
against Kiev. According to the Peace of Riga concluded between the
Soviets and Poland, western Ukraine was officially incorporated into Poland, who in turn
recognised the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in March 1919. Ukraine
became a founding member of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics or the
Soviet Union in December 1922.[53]
Inter-war Polish Ukraine
The war in Ukraine continued for another two years; by 1921, however, most
of Ukraine had been taken over by the Soviet Union, while Galicia and Volhynia
were incorporated into independent Poland.
A powerful underground Ukrainian nationalist movement rose in Poland in the
1920s and 1930s, led by the Ukrainian Military Organization and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The movement attracted a militant following among students and harassed
the Polish authorities. Legal Ukrainian parties, the Ukrainian Catholic Church,
an active press, and a business sector also flourished in Poland. Economic
conditions improved in the 1920s, but the region suffered from the Great
Depression in the 1930s.
Inter-war Soviet Ukraine
The civil war that eventually brought the Soviet government to power
devastated Ukraine. It left over 1.5 million people dead and hundreds of
thousands homeless. In addition, Soviet Ukraine had to face the famine of 1921.[54] Seeing an exhausted
Ukraine, the Soviet government remained very flexible during the 1920s.[55] Thus, under the aegis of
the Ukrainization policy pursued by the national Communist leadership of Mykola Skrypnyk, Soviet leadership encouraged a national renaissance in literature and the
arts. The Ukrainian culture and language enjoyed a revival, as Ukrainisation became a local implementation of the Soviet-wide policy of Korenisation (literally indigenisation) policy.[53] The Bolsheviks were also
committed to introducing universal health
care, education and social-security benefits, as well as
the right to work and housing.[56] Women's rights were greatly
increased through new laws designed to wipe away centuries-old inequalities.[57] Most of these policies
were sharply reversed by the early 1930s after Joseph Stalin gradually consolidated
power to become the de facto communist party leader.
