Ukraine

Україна
Ukrayina
Ukraine
Україна; Ukrayina; Ukraine
	Flag Coat of arms
	Motto: Volya, zlahoda, dobro; 'Freedom, concord, kindness'
	Anthem: Shche ne vmerla Ukraina; 'Ukraine's Glory Has Not Perished'
Capital	Kiev1
Largest city	Kiev
Official languages	Ukrainian
Government	Parliamentary democracy
Independence
• Water (%)	negligible
Population
• 2005 estimate	47,425,336 (25th)
GDP (PPP)	2004 estimate
• Total	$312,128,000,000 (29th)
• Per capita	$6,554 (91st)
HDI (2003)	0.766; high (78th)
Currency	Hryvnia (UAH)
Time zone	UTC+2 (EET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+3 (EEST)
Calling code	380
ISO 3166 code	UA
Internet TLD	.ua
	1Also spelled Kyiv

Ukraine (Ukrainian: Україна, Ukrayina, /ukraˈjina/) is a country in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the northeast, Belarus to the north, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the southwest and the Black Sea to the south. The historic city of Kiev is the republic's capital.

From at least the ninth century the territory of present-day Ukraine was a key centre of medieval East Slavic civilization that formed the state that became known as Kievan Rus. In the following centuries the territory is divided between a number of regional powers as the Ukrainians struggled for their own state. Few months until the end of the First World War, an independent Ukrainian state is recognized by Central Powers and Soviet Russia. In 1920 almost entire territory is regained by Russia and Ukraine become one of the founding Soviet Republics in 1922. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's territory is enlarged westward after the Second World War and finally in 1954 with the Crimea transfer. Ukraine become independent again after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

Name

The etymology of the Ukrainian name Ukrayina stems from the Old Slavic root *kraj-, meaning "cut". Opinions vary as to the immediate derivation:

Borderland, frontier (cf. Russian okraina "outskirts"; a semantic parallel to -mark in Denmark, cf. Marches)
Ukrainian krajina "country" (this is also one of the meanings of Ukrainian and Russian kraj)
Ukrainian verb krajaty "to cut", indicating the land the Ukrainians carved out for themselves

In English, the country is sometimes referred to with the definite article, as "the Ukraine", but this form has fallen out of use in most professional writing, and the style guides of influential journals recommend writing simply "Ukraine".

History

Human settlement in the territory of Ukraine has been documented into distant prehistory. The late neolithic Trypillian culture flourished from ca. 4500 BC to 3000 BC.

In antiquity, the southern and eastern parts of modern Ukraine were populated by Iranian nomads called Scythians. The Scythian Kingdom existed in Ukraine between 700 BC and 200 BC. In the third century, the Goths arrived, calling their country Oium, and formed the Chernyakhov culture before moving on and defeating the Roman empire. In the 7th century Ukraine was the core of the state of the Bulgars (often referred to as Great Bulgaria) who had their capital in the city of Phanagoria.

The majority of the Bulgar tribes migrated in several directions at the end of the seventh century and the remains of their state was swept by the Khazars, a Turkic semi-nomadic people from Central Asia which later adopted Judaism. The Khazars founded the independent Khazar kingdom in the southeastern part of today's Europe, near the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus. In addition to western Kazakhstan, the Khazar kingdom also included territory in what is now eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, southern Russia, and Crimea.

During the tenth and eleventh centuries the territory of Ukraine became the center of a powerful and prestigious state in Europe, Kievan Rus, laying the foundation for national identity of Ukrainians, as well as other East Slavic nations, through subsequent centuries. Its capital was Kiev, the capital of modern Ukraine, ruled by Askold and Dir in the late 800s. According to the Primary Chronicle the Kievan Rus' elite initially consisted of Varangians, or Vikings, from present-day Scandinavia. The Varangians later became assimilated into the local population of Rus' and gave the Rus' its first powerful dynasty, the Rurik Dynasty.

For the etymology of the terms Rus and Russia, see Etymology of Rus and derivatives. Kiev and Kievian Rus' were the seat of the Grand Prince of the Rurik Dynasty. The ruler of Kiev was also in effect the ruler of all the Rus' principalities. Kievan Rus' was fragmentated after Mstislav the Great's death in 1125.

The term "Rus'" was originally applied to the inhabitants of all Rus' principalities, today comprising Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. After the fall of Kiev, and until the eighteenth century, the term "Rus" was self-applied by the members of all three East Slavic nations, but the latinized version, "Ruthenian", was used to designate inhabitants of Ukraine only; while the ancestors of modern Russians were usually referred to as Muscovites or Muscovite Russians by the name of their state that Poland called Muscovy.

Kievan Rus' became weakened by internal quarrels and was destroyed by Mongol and Tatar invasions. On Ukrainian territory, the state of Kievan Rus' was succeeded by the principalities of Halych and Volodymyr-Volynskyi, which were merged into the state of Halych-Volynia. In the mid 14th century it was subjugated by Kazimierz IV of Poland, and after the 1386 marriage of Lithuania's Grand Duke Jagiello to Poland's Queen Jadwiga, was ruled by the Lithuanians as part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was formed in 1569 Union of Lublin, significant part of Ukraine was moved under the Polish administration, as it was transferred to the Polish Crown.

Under the cultural pressure of polonization much of the Ukrainian (or rather Ruthenian) upper class converted to Catholicism as such transitions was beneficial for achieving the political influence within the state, e.g. one of the Wiśniowiecki's even became king of Poland. At the same time the common people (peasants) retained their old ways (including the Orthodox religion), which led to the increasing social tensions, visible in such events as the 1596 Union of Brest, created by Zygmunt III, who attempted to bring the Orthodox population closer to Catholicism. This move failed to achieve its goals. The new "intermediate" religion was unnecessary for the upper class, much of whom turned directly towards Catholicism. Thus, the Ukrainian commoners were deprived of their native protectors and turned for the protection to the Cossacks who remained fiercely Orthodox at all times.

In the mid of the 17th century, a Cossack state, the Zaporizhian Sich, was established by Ukrainians and others fleeing Polish serfdom which formally belonged to Poland. Located in central Ukraine, it was an autonomous military state, initially allied with the Commonwealth. However the suppression of the Ukrainian free farmers by the Polish nobility, further imposition of serfdom and the suppression of the Orthodox church pushed the allegiances of Cossacks away from Poland. Their aspiration was to have a representation in Polish Seim, recognition of Orthodox traditions, which was vehemently denied by Polish kings. They turned toward Orthodox Russia, which was one reason for the later downfall of the Polish-Lithuanian state.

In 1648 Bohdan Khmelnytsky organized the largest of the Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth and the Polish king Jan II Kazimierz. This uprising finally led to a partition of Ukraine between Poland and Russia. Left-Bank Ukraine was eventually integrated into Russia as the Cossack Hetmanate, as a consequence of the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654. After the partitions of Poland by Prussia, Austria, and Russia at the end of the eighteenth century, Western Ukraine (Galicia) was taken over by Austria, while the rest of Ukraine was progressively incorporated into the Russian Empire. The treaty of Pereyaslav was abolished and Ukrainians never received the freedoms they were hoping for from Tsarist Russia. Ukrainians played an important role in the frequent wars between East European monarchies and the Ottoman Empire. As a result of Russian wars against Turkey and Crimean Khanate of 1768-74 and 1787-1792, the territories along coast of the Black Sea were annexed to Ukraine. Ukrainians rose to the highest offices of Russian state (e.g., Aleksey Razumovsky, Alexander Bezborodko, Ivan Paskevich), and dominated the Russian Orthodox Church (e.g., Stephen Yavorsky, Feofan Prokopovich, Dimitry of Rostov).

During World War I Austro-Hungarian authorities subjected to repression of Ukrainians in Galicia that sympathized with Russia. Over twenty thousand supporters of Russia are arrested and placed in the Austrian concentration camp in Talerhof, Styria, and in a fortress at Terezín, now in the Czech Republic.

Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Ukraine was briefly independent in two states : Ukrainian People's Republic and West Ukrainian People's Republic, then united in 1920.

By 1922 Ukraine was split between Poland and the Soviet Union. Also in 1922, most of Central and Eastern Ukraine became a constituent republic of the USSR as the Ukrainian SSR.

In the 1920s, the communist leaders realized a policy of Ukrainization (коренизация), introduction of the Ukrainian language and culture in Russian-speaking Ukrainian cities.

To satisfy the state's need for increased food supplies, the Soviet industrialization program called for the collectivization of agriculture, which had a profound effect on Ukraine, the nation's breadbasket (see Collectivization in the USSR). In the late 1920s and early 1930s the state compounded the peasants' lands and animals into collective farms and state farms. Although the program was designed to affect all peasants, the plan met particularly heavy resistance from the wealthiest peasants, the kulaks, and a desperate struggle of the peasantry against the authorities ensued. The idea of collective farming was foreign to Ukrainian farmers where emphasis was always made on individual achievements. Peasants slaughtered their cows and pigs rather than turn them over to the collective farms, especially in Ukraine, with the result that livestock resources remained below the 1929 level for years afterward. The state in turn forcibly collectivized reluctant peasants and deported kulaks and active rebels to Siberia. Within the collective farms, the authorities in many instances exacted such high levels of procurements that starvation was widespread. In some places, famine was allowed to run its course; and millions of peasants in Ukraine starved to death in a famine, called the Holodomor in Ukrainian. An estimated 3-6 million people died in this horrible manmade famine ([1]) similar to the Russian famine of 1921. The disaster also has captured many regions of southern Russia; overall, Ukrainian 1932-1933 famine was a whole one third of total starvation victims in USSR at the time of 1921-1933.

During World War II, some elements of the Ukrainian nationalist underground fought both Nazi and Soviet forces, while others collaborated with them, having been ignored by all other powers. In 1941 the German invaders and their Axis allies initially advanced against desperate but unsuccessful efforts of the Red Army. In the encirclement battle of Kiev, the city was acclaimed by the Soviets as a "Hero City", for the fierce resistance of the Red Army and of the local population. More than 660,000 Soviet troops were taken captive.

Initially, the Germans were received as liberators by many Ukrainians, especially in western Ukraine which had only been occupied by the Soviets in 1939. However, German rule in the occupied territories eventually aided the Soviet cause. Nazi administrators of conquered Soviet territories made little attempt to exploit the population of Ukrainian territories' dissatisfaction with Soviet political and economic policies. Instead, the Nazis preserved the collective-farm system, systematically carried out genocidal policies against Jews, and deported others (mainly Ukrainians) to work in Germany. Under these circumstances, most people living on the occupied territory passively or actively opposed the Nazis. Total civilian losses during the war and German occupation in Ukraine are estimated between five and eight million, including over half a million Jews shot and killed by the Einsatzgruppen, sometimes with the help of Ukrainian collaborators. Of the estimated eleven million Soviet troops who fell in battle against the Nazis, about a quarter (2.7 million) were ethnic Ukrainians. Ukraine is distinguished as one of the first nations to fight the Axis powers in Carpatho-Ukraine, and one that saw some of the greatest bloodshed during the war.

After the Second World War, the borders of then-Soviet Ukraine were extended to the West (see Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Curzon line), uniting most Ukrainians under one political state with much of the non-Ukrainian population of the attached territories having been deported or killed. In 1954, Crimea was transferred from the RSFSR to Ukraine. This decision of Nikita Khrushchev, intended to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav, seen in Soviet historiography as the 'union of two fraternal peoples', led to tensions between Russia and Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Independence was achieved in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Ukraine was a founding member of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Government and Politics

Ukraine is a democracy under a semi-presidential system with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The President of Ukraine (elected by popular vote) nominates the Prime Minister, who must be confirmed by the 450-seat parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. The President (on advice and consent of the Prime Minister) appoints members of the Cabinet of Ministers, as well as heads of all central agencies and regional and district administrations.

Laws, acts of the parliament and the Cabinet, presidential edicts, and acts of the Crimean parliament (Autonomous Republic of Crimea) may be nullified by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, when they are found to violate the Constitution of Ukraine. Other normative acts are subject to judicial review. The Supreme Court of Ukraine is the main body in the system of courts of general jurisdiction.

Local self-government is officially guaranteed. Local councils and city mayors are popularly elected and exercise control over local budgets. In practice, the scope of local self-government is limited.

Ukraine has a large number of political parties, many of which have tiny memberships and are unknown to the general public. Small parties often join in multi-party coalitions (electoral blocks) for the purpose of participating in parliamentary elections.

Subdivisions

Ukraine is subdivided into twenty-four oblasts (provinces) and one autonomous republic, Crimea. Additionally, two cities, Kiev and Sevastopol, have a special legal status.

Geography

The Ukrainian landscape consists mostly of fertile plains, or steppes, and plateaus, crossed by rivers such as the Dnieper, Seversky Donets, Dniester and the Southern Buh as they flow south into the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. To the southwest the delta of the Danube forms the border with Romania. The country's only mountains are the Carpathian Mountains in the west, of which the highest is the Hora Hoverla at 2,061 metres (6,762 ft), and those in the Crimean peninsula, in the extreme south along the coast.

Ukraine has a mostly temperate continental climate, though a more mediterranean climate is found on the southern Crimean coast. Precipitation is disproportionately distributed; it is highest in the west and north and lesser in the east and southeast. Winters vary from cool along the Black Sea to cold farther inland. Summers are warm across the greater part of the country, but generally hot in the south.

Economy

Formerly an important agricultural and industrial region of the Soviet Union, Ukraine now depends on Russia for most energy supplies, especially natural gas, although lately it has been trying to diversify its sources. The lack of significant structural reform has made the Ukrainian economy vulnerable to external shocks. After 1991 the government liberalised most prices and erected a legal framework for privatisation, but widespread resistance to reform within the government soon stalled reform efforts and led to some backtracking. Output by 1999 had fallen to less than 40% of the 1991 level. Loose monetary policies pushed inflation to hyperinflationary levels in late 1993.

The current government has pledged to reduce the number of government agencies, streamline the regulatory process, create a legal environment to encourage entrepreneurs, and enact a comprehensive tax overhaul. Reforms in the more politically sensitive areas of structural reform and land privatisation are still lagging. Outside institutions—particularly the IMF—have encouraged Ukraine to quicken the pace and scope of reforms and have threatened to withdraw financial support.

The GDP in 2000 showed strong export-based growth of 6%—the first growth since independence—and industrial production grew 12.9%. The economy continued to expand in 2001, as real GDP rose 9% and industrial output grew by over 14%. Growth was undergirded by strong domestic demand and growing consumer and investor confidence. Rapid economic growth in 2002 - 2004 is largely attributed to a surge in steel exports to China.

Demographics

Ethnic Ukrainians make up 77.8% of the population. The minorities include significant groups of ethnic Russians (17.3%), Belarusians (0.6%), Moldavians (0.5%), Crimean Tatars (0.5%), Bulgarians (0.4%), Hungarians (0.3%), Romanians (0.3%), Poles (0.3%), Jews (0.2%), Armenians (0.2%), Greeks (0.2%) and Tatars (0.2%) [2].

The industrial regions in the east and south-east are the most heavily populated, and about 67.2% of the population lives in urban areas.

Ukrainian is the only official state language. Russian, which was the official language in the Soviet Union, is still used by many people, especially in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian is considered to be a native language by 67.5% of the population and Russian by 29.6% (according to the 2001 census). It is sometimes difficult to determine the extent of the two language, since many people use a mixed language (Surzhyk) containing elements of both, while thinking they speak Russian or Ukrainian. Standard literary Ukrainian is mainly spoken in western and central Ukraine. In western Ukraine, Ukrainian is also the dominant language in cities (e.g. Lviv). In central Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russian are both equally used in cities (including Kiev), while Ukrainian is the dominant language in rural communities. In eastern Ukraine mainly Russian and Surzhyk are used. In the Autonomous Republic of Crimea practically all of the population speaks Russian and Ukrainian is virtually unused. Both languages are official within the autonomous republic.

The share of students receiving their education in Russian has significantly declined from 41% in 1995 to 24% in 2004, in favour of Ukrainian-language education. Still, many urban Ukrainian schools are de facto Russian-speaking, especially in the east and south. Russian continues to be the language of international communication for many Ukrainians and is generally understood throughout the country.

Religion

File:Photo cathedral 01058 Yuzhnyj fasad cerkvi Rozhdestva Bogorodicy. 1696 g.jpg

South facade of Mary's Nativity Church, executed in the Ukrainian Baroque style.

The dominant religion in Ukraine is Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which is currently split between three Church bodies. The distant second is the Eastern Rite Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which practices similar Liturgical rite to Eastern Orthodoxy, but is in communion with the Catholic see and recognizes the primacy of the Roman Pope as head of the Church. There are also smaller Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim communities.