History of Ukraine

Ukraine portal

The territory of present-day Ukraine was a key centre of East Slavic culture in the Middle Ages, before being divided between a variety of powers. A brief period of independence (1917-1921) following the Russian Revolution of 1917 was ended by Ukraine's absorption into the Soviet Union in 1922 and the republic's present borders were only established in 1954. It became independent once more following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Prehistory

The first identifiable groups to populate what is now Ukraine were the Chalcolithic people of the Trypillian culture in the western part, and the Sredny Stog further east, succeeded by the early Bronze Age Yamna ( "Kurgan") culture of the steppes, and by the Catacomb culture in the 3rd millennium BC (see also stone stelae of the Ukraine).

During the Iron Age, these were followed by the Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, among other nomadic peoples, along with ancient Greek colonies founded from the 6th century BC on the north-eastern shore of the Black Sea, the colonies of Tyras, Olbia, Hermonassa, perpetuated by Roman and Byzantine cities until the 6th century AD.

In the 3rd century AD, the Goths arrived in Ukraine, which they called Oium, corresponding to the archaeological Chernyakhov culture. The Ostrogoths stayed in the area but came under the sway of the Huns from the 370s. North of the Ostrogothic kingdom was the Kiev culture, flourishing from the 2nd to 5th centuries, when it was overrun by the Huns. After they helped defeat the Huns at the battle of Nedao in 454, the Ostrogoths were allowed to settle in Pannonia.

With the power vacuum created with the end of Hunnic and Gothic rule in the Ukraine, Slavic tribes, possibly emerging from the remnants of the Kiev culture, began to expand over much of Ukraine during the 5th century, and beyond to the Balkans from the 6th century.

Kievan Rus’

File:Kievska rus01.png

Hypothetical extent of Askold and Dir's possessions in the 9th century.

File:Kievska rus02.png

Map of the Kievan Rus', 11th century.

In the 9th century, Kiev was conquered from the Khazars by the Varangian (Swedish Viking) Oleg. The Khazars were a Turkic semi-nomadic people from Central Asia who adopted Judaism. They founded the independent Khazar kingdom in the 7th century C.E. in the south-eastern 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 this time, several Slavic tribes were native to Ukraine, including the Polanians, the Derevlianians, the Severians, the Ulychians, and Tivertsians, and Dulebians. Situated on lucrative trade routes, Kiev among the Polanians quickly prospered as the center of the powerful Slavic state of Kievan Rus.

In the 11th century, Kievan Rus' was, geographically, the largest state in Europe, becoming known in the rest of Europe as Ruthenia (the Latin name for Rus', especially for western principalities of Rus' after the Mongol invasion ). The name "Ukraine", meaning "border-land", first appears in recorded history on maps of the period. The meaning of this term seems to have been synonymous with the land of Rus' propria--the principalities of Kiev, Chernihiv and Pereyaslav. The term, "Greater Rus' was used to apply to all the lands ruled by Kiev, including those that were not just Slavic, but also Finno-Ugric in the north-east portions of the state. Local regional subdivisions of Rus' appeared in the Slavic heartland, including, "Belarus'" (White Ruthenia), "Chorna Rus'" (Black Ruthenia) and "Cherven' Rus'" (Red Ruthenia) in north-western and western Ukraine.

Although Christianity had made inroads into Ukraine before the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea (325) (particularly along the Black Sea coast) and, in Western Ukraine during the time of empire of Great Moravia, the formal governmental acceptance of Christianity in Rus' occurred at the Baptism of Kiev in 988. The major cause of the Christianization of Ukraine was the Grand-Duke, Volodymyr the Great. His Christian interest was midwifed by his grandmother, Princess Olga. Later, an enduring part of the Ukrainian legal tradition was set down by the Kievan ruler, Yaroslav, who promulgated the Russkaya Pravda (Truth of Rus') which endured through the Lithuanian period of Rus'.

Conflict among the various principalities of Rus', in spite of the efforts of Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh, led to decline, beginning in the 12th century. In Rus' propria, the Kiev region, the nascent Ruthenian/Ukrainian principalities of Halych and Volynia extended their rule. In the north, the name of Moscow appeared in the historical record in the principality of Suzdal, which gave rise to the nation of Russia. In the north-west, the principality of Polotsk increasingly asserted the autonomy of Belarus'. Kiev was sacked by Vladimir principality (1169), Polovtzians and Mongol raiders in the 12th and 13th centuries. Subsequently, all principalities of Ukraine acknowledged dependence upon the Mongols (1239-1240). The Mongol overlordship was very cruel, and people often fled to other countries. Ukrainian settlements appeared in Poland and Hungary.

Halych-Volynia

A successor state to Kievan Rus' on part of the territory of today's Ukraine was the principality of Halych-Volynia.

Previously, Volodymyr the Great had established the cities of Halych and Volodymyr-Volynski as regional capitals for the western Ukrainian heartland. In the thirteenth century, the city of L'viv eventually became the national capital. This new, more exclusively Ukrainian state was based upon the Dulibian, Tivertsian and Bilyy Khorvaty (White Croatian) tribes. The state was ruled by the descendants of Yaroslav Mudry and Volodymyr Monomakh. For a brief period, the country was ruled by a Hungarian nobleman. Battles with the neighboring states of Poland and Lithuania also occurred, as well as internecine warfare with the independent Ukrainian principality of Chernihiv to the east. The nation reached its peak with the extension of rule to neighboring Wallachia/Bessarabia, all the way to the shores of the Black Sea.

During this period (around 1200-1400) each principality was independent of the other for a period of time. The state of Halych-Volynia eventually became a vassal to the Mongolian Empire, but efforts to gain European support for opposition to the Mongols continued. This period marked the first "King of Rus'"; previously, the rulers of Rus' were termed, "Grand Dukes" or "Princes."

14th Century

During the 14th century, Poland and Lithuania fought wars against the Mongol invaders, and eventually most of Ukraine passed to the rule of Poland and Lithuania. More particularly, the lands of Volynia in the north and north-west passed to the rule of Lithuanian princes, while the south-west passed to the control of Poland (Galicia) and Hungary (Zakarpattya).

Most of Ukraine bordered parts of Lithuania, and some say that the name, "Ukraine" comes from the local word for "border," although the name "Ukraine" was also used centuries earlier. Lithuania took control of the state of Volynia in northern and north-western Ukraine, including the region around Kyiv (Rus'), and the rulers of Lithuania then adopted the title of ruler of Rus'. Poland took control of the region of Halychyna. Following the union between Poland and Lithuania, Poles, Germans, Armenians and Jews migrated to the country.

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

File:Pol-lith commonwealth map.jpg

Outline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with its major subdivisions as of 1619 superimposed on present-day national borders

After the Union of Lublin in 1569 and the formation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Ukraine fell under Polish administration, becoming part of the Crown of the Polish Kingdom. The period immediately following the creation of the Commonwealth saw a huge revitalization in colonization efforts. Many new cities and villages were founded. New schools spread the ideas of the Renaissance; Polish peasants who arrived in great numbers were quickly ruthenized; during this time, most of Ukrainian nobles became polonized. Social tensions also grew. Ruthenian peasants (Ukrainians and some from other nations) who fled efforts to force them into serfdom came to be known as Cossacks and earned a reputation for their fierce martial spirit.

Cossack era

See also: History of Cossacks

The 1648 Ukrainian Cossack (Kozak) rebellion and war of independence (Khmelnytsky Uprising), which started an era known as the Ruin (in Polish history as The Deluge), undermined the foundations and stability of the Commonwealth. The nascent Cossack state, the Zaporozhian Host, usually viewed as precursor of Ukraine, found itself in a three-sided military and diplomatic rivalry with the Ottoman Turks, who controlled the Tatars to the south, the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania, and the rising Muscovite Russia to the East. The reconstituted Ukrainian state, having recently fought a bitter war with Poland, sought a treaty of protection with Russia in 1654. This agreement was known as the Treaty of Pereyaslav. Commonwealth authorities then sought compromise with the Ukrainian Cossack state by signing the Treaty of Hadiach in 1658, but the agreement was later superseded by 1667 Polish-Russian Treaty of Andrusovo, which divided Ukrainian territory between the Commonwealth and Russia. Under Russia, the Cossacks initially retained official autonomy in the Hetmanate. For a time, they also maintained a semi-independent republic in Zaporozhia, and a colony on the Russian frontier in Sloboda Ukraine.

Russian and Austrian rule

See also: Partitions of Poland

Tsarist rule over central Ukraine gradually replaced 'protection' over the subsequent decades. After the Partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795, the extreme west of Ukraine fell under the control of the Austrians, with the rest being taken over by the Russians. As a result of Russo-Turkish Wars the Ottoman Empire control receded from south-central Ukraine, while the rule of Hungary over the Transcarpathian region continued. Ukrainian writers and intellectuals were inspired by the nationalistic spirit stirring other European peoples existing under other imperial governments and became determined to revive the Ukrainian linguistic and cultural traditions and re-establish a Ukrainian nation-state. The Russians in particular imposed strict limits on attempts to elevate Ukrainian language and culture, even banning its use and study. However, many Ukrainians accepted their fate in the Russian Empire and some were to achieve a great success there. Many Russian writers, composers, painters and architects of the 19th century were of Ukrainian descent. Probably, the most notable was Nikolai Gogol, one of the greatest writers in the Russian literature.

The fate of the Ukrainians was far different under the Austrian Empire where Ukrainians found themselves treated as pawns in the Russian-Austrian power struggle. Some historians argue that the Austrian attempt to separate the Ruthenians from Russians caused many to change their name to Ukrainians, often referring to the massacre of Talerhof, when thousands of Ukrainian supporters of Russia died. Moreover, unlike in Russia, most of the elite that ruled Galicia were of Austrian or Polish descent with the Ruthenians being almost exclusively kept in peasantry.

First World War, the revolutions and aftermath

When World War I and the October Revolution in Russia shattered the Austrian and Russian empires, Ukrainians were caught in the middle. Between 1917 and 1918, several separate Ukrainian republics manifested independence, the Tsentral'na Rada, the Hetmanate, the Directorate, the Ukrainian People's Republic and the West Ukrainian National Republic. However, with the defeat in the Polish-Ukrainian War and then the failure of the Piłsudski's and Petliura's Kiev Operation, by the end of the Polish-Soviet War after the Peace of Riga in March 1921, the western part of Ukraine had been incorporated into Poland, and the larger, central and eastern part became part of the Soviet Union as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Ukraine between the world wars

Soviet Ukraine

Flag of Soviet Ukraine

The Ukrainian national idea lived on during the inter-war years and was even spread to a large territory with traditionally mixed population in the east and south that became part of the Ukrainian Soviet republic. The Ukrainian culture even enjoyed a revival due to Bolshevik concessions in the early Soviet years (until early-1930s) known as the policy of Korenization ("indigenization"). In these years an impressive Ukrainization program was implemented throughout the republic. The rapidly developed Ukrainian language based education system dramatically raised the literacy of the Ukrainophone rural population. Simultaneously, the newly-literate ethnic Ukrainians migrated to the cities, which became rapidly largely Ukrainianized—in both population and in education. Similarly expansive was an increase in Ukrainian language publishing and overall eruption of Ukrainian cultural life.

At the same time, the usage of Ukrainian was continuously encouraged in the workplace and in the government affairs as the recruitment of indigenous cadre was implemented as part of the korenization policies. While initially, the party and government apparatus was mostly Russian-speaking, by the end of 1920s the ethnic Ukrainians composed over one half of the membership in the Ukrainian communist party, the number strengthened by accession of Borotbists, a formerly indigenously Ukrainian "independentist" and non-Bolshevik communist party.

At the same time, despite the ongoing Soviet-wide antireligious campaign, two Ukrainian national Orthodox churches were created, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) and the Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church (See History of Christianity in Ukraine). The Bolshevik government initially saw the national churches as a tool in their goal to suppress the Russian Orthodox Church always viewed with the great suspicion by the regime for its being the cornerstone of pre-revolutionary Russian Empire and the initially strong opposition it took towards the regime change. Therefore, the government tolerated the new Ukrainian national church for some time and the UAOC gained a wide following among the Ukrainian peasantry.

File:Dneproges1934.jpg

A 1934 photo of the DnieproGES hydropower plant, a heavyweight of Soviet industrialization in Ukraine.

The change in the Soviet economic policies towards towards the fast-pace industrialization was marked by the 1928 introduction of Stalin's first piatiletka (a five-year plan). The industrialization bought about a dramatic economic and social transformation in traditionally agricultural Ukraine. In the first piatiletkas the industrial output of the Ukraine quadrupled as the republic underwent a record industrial development. The massive influx of the rural population to the industrial centers increased the urban population from 19 to 34 percent.

However, the industrialization had a heavy cost for the peasantry, demographically a backbone of the Ukrainian nation. To satisfy the state's need for increased food supplies and finance industrialization, Stalin instituted a program of collectivization of agriculture, which profoundly affected Ukraine, often referred to as the "breadbasket of the USSR". In the late 1920s and early '30s the state combined the peasants' lands and animals into collective farms. Starting in 1929 a policy of enforcement was applied, using regular troops and secret police to confiscate lands and material where necessary.

Many resisted, and a desperate struggle by the peasantry against the authorities ensued. Some slaughtered their livestock rather than turn it over to the collectives. Wealthier peasants were labeled "kulaks", enemies of the state. Tens of thousands were executed and about 100,000 families were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

File:Holodomor Famine map.jpg

Rate of population decline in Ukraine and some regions of the USSR. 1929-1932

Forced collectivization had a devastating effect on agricultural productivity. Despite this, in 1932 the Soviet government increased Ukraine's production quotas by 44%, ensuring that they could not be met. Soviet law required that the members of a collective farm would receive no grain until government quotas were satisfied. The authorities in many instances exacted such high levels of procurement from collective farms that starvation became widespread. At least four million starved to death in a famine (some estimates give a higher death tolls of five to seven million), known as the Holodomor. The Soviet Union suppressed information about the famine, and as late as the 1980s admitted only that there was some hardship because of kulak sabotage and bad weather. Today, its existence is accepted. Some historians consider the famine of 1932–33 to be the unavoidable consequence of Stalin's program of industrialization and collectivization. Others maintain that the famine was an avoidable, deliberate act of genocide.

The times of industrialization and collectivization also brought about a wide campaign against "nationalist deviation" which in Ukraine translated into an assault on the national political and cultural elite. The first wave of purges between 1929 and 1934 targeted the revolutionary generation of the party that in Ukraine included many supporters of Ukrainization. The next 1936-1938 wave of political purges (see Great Purge) eliminated much of the new political generation that replaced those that perished in the first wave and halved the membership of the Ukrainian communist party. The purged Ukrainian political leadership was largely replaced by the cadre send from Russia that was also largely "rotated" by Stalin's purges. As the policies of Ukrainization were halted (1931) and replaced by massive Russification approximately four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite, intellectuals, writers, artists and clergy, had been "eliminated", executed or imprisoned, in the following decade. Mass arrests of the hierarchy and clergy of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church culminated in the liquidation of the church in 1930.

Galicia and Volhynia under Polish rule

Bukovina under Romanian rule

Transcarpathia under Czechoslovakia and Hungary

Ukraine in World War II

Following the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, in September 1939, German and Soviet troops divided the territory of Poland, including Galicia with its Ukrainian population. Next, after France surrendered to Germany, Romania ceded Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to Soviet demands. The Ukrainian SSR incorporated northern and southern districts of Bessarabia, the northern Bukovina, and additionally the Soviet-occupied Hertsa region, but ceded the western part of the Moldavian ASSR to the newly-created Moldavian SSR. All these territorial gains were internationally recognized by the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947.

Ukrainians being deported to Nazi Germany for forced labor, 1942

When Nazi Germany with its allies invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, many Ukrainians, particularly in the west where they had experienced only two years of the harsh Soviets rule, initially regarded the Nazis as "liberators", and some hoped to establish an autonomous Ukrainian state. German policies initially gave some encouragement to such hopes through the vague promises of sovereign 'Greater Ukraine' as the Germans were trying to take advantage of anti-Soviet, anti-Polish and anti-Jewish sentiments among some Ukrainians.[1]. However, after the initial period of a limited tolerance, the German policies soon abruptly changed and the Ukrianian national movement was brutally crushed.

Most Ukrainians, however, utterly resisted the Nazi onslaught from its start and a partisan movement immediately spread over the occupied territory. Also some elements of the Ukrainian nationalist underground formed a Ukrainian Insurgent Army that fought both Soviet and Nazi forces along with being involved in driving out or murdering much of the Polish and Jewish population in the Western regions, especially in Volhynia. After 1944 the surviving Polish population was expelled. In some western regions of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army survived underground and continued the resistance against the Soviet authorities well into the 1950s, though many Ukrainian civilians were murdered in this conflict by both sides.

The Nazi administrators of conquered Soviet territories made little attempt to exploit the population's possible dissatisfaction with Soviet political and economic policies. Instead, the Nazis preserved the collective-farm system, systematically carried out genocidal policies against Jews, and deported many Ukrainians to forced labour in Germany. In their active resistance to Nazi Germany, the Ukrainians comprised a significant share of the Red Army and its leadership as well as the underground and resistance movements.

File:Ukraine massacres.gif

Locations of mass killings carried out by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen in the southern Soviet Union. Over a million Jews were killed.

Total civilian losses during the War and German occupation in Ukraine are estimated at seven million, including over a million Jews shot and killed by the Einsatzgruppen and Ukrainian collaborators. Jews were also targeted by Ukrainian nationalists in Nazi-backed pogroms, such as the ones in Lviv that killed over six thousand people.

Many of civilians fell victim to atrocities, forced labor, and even massacres of whole villages in reprisal for attacks against Nazi forces. Of the estimated eleven million Soviet troops who fell in battle against the Nazis, about a quarter (2.7 million) were ethnic Ukrainians. Moreover Ukraine saw some of the biggest battles of the war starting with the encirclement of Kiev (later acclaimed as a Hero City) where more than 660,000 Soviet troops were taken captive, to the fierce defence of Odessa, and on to the victorious storming across the Dnieper river.

Post-war

Over the next decades the Ukrainian republic not only surpassed pre-war levels of industry and production but also was the spearhead of Soviet power. Ukraine became the center of Soviet arms industry and high-tech research. The republic was also turned into a Soviet military outpost in the cold war, a territory crowded by military bases packed with the most up-to-date weapons systems.

Such an important role resulted in a major influence of the local elite. Many members of the Soviet leadership came from Ukraine, most notably Leonid Brezhnev a Soviet leader from 1962 to 1984, as well as many prominent Soviet sportsmen, scientists and artists. In 1954, the Russian-populated oblast of Crimea was transferred from the Russian to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.

However, the relatively underdeveloped industrial branches such as coal- and iron ore mining, metallurgy, chemical and energy industry dominated the republic’s economy. Once a Cossack steppe, the southern oblasts of Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia were turned into a highly industrialized area with rapidly increasing impact on environment and public health. A pursuit to energy production sufficient for growing industry led to the gigantic nature-remastering: turning the Dnieper River into a regulated system of large reservoirs.

The products of the rapidly developed high-tech industry in Ukraine were largely directed for military consumption, similarly to the much of the Soviet economy, and the supply and quality of consumer goods remained low compared even to the neighboring countries of the Eastern block. A state-regulated system of production and consumption lead to gradual decreasing of life level and growing “shadowization” of retail infrastructure as well as of corruption.

The town of Pripyat, Ukraine was the site of the Chernobyl accident, which occurred in April 26, 1986 when a nuclear plant exploded. The fallout contaminated large areas of northern Ukraine and even parts of Belarus. This spurred on a local independence movement called the Rukh that helped expedite the break-up of the Soviet Union during the late 1980s.

Independence

Ukraine declared itself an independent state on August 24, 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and was a founding member of the Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 1, 1991 Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum formalizing independence from the Soviet Union. The Union formally ceased to exist in December 25, 1991, and with this Ukraine's independence was officially recognized by the international community.

The history of Ukraine between 1991 and 2004 is marked by the presidencies of Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma. This was a time of transition for Ukraine. While it had attained an apparent independence from Russia, its presidents maintained close ties with their neighbours. Ukraine was officially a democracy but in actuality it was plagued by authoritarian rule and a number of large internally accused corruption charges.

The country adopts its constitution on June 28th, 1996.

The "Cassette Scandal" of 2000 was one of the turning points in post-independence history of the country.

In 2004, Leonid Kuchma announced that he would not run for re-election. Two major candidates emerged in the 2004 presidential election. Viktor Yanukovych, the incumbent Prime Minister, supported by both Kuchma and by the Russian Federation, wanted closer ties with Russia. The main opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, called for Ukraine to turn its attention westward and eventually join the EU. In the runoff election, Yanukovych officially won by a narrow margin, but Yushchenko and his supporters cried foul, alleging that vote rigging and intimidation cost him many votes, especially in the eastern Ukraine. A political crisis erupted after the opposition started massive street protests in Kiev and other cities (Orange Revolution), and the Supreme Court of Ukraine ordered the election results null and void. A second runoff found Viktor Yushchenko the winner. 5 days later Viktor Yanukovych resigned from office and his cabinet was dismissed on January 5, 2005.

Relations between Russia and Ukraine sometimes appear strained. In 2005, a highly-publicized dispute over natural gas prices took place, involving Russian state-owned gas supplier Gazprom, and indirectly involving many European countries which depend on natural gas supplied by Russia through the Ukrainian pipeline. A compromise was reached in January 2006.

Ukraine and Nuclear Weapons

When Ukraine gained independence, it inherited a vast arsenal of former Soviet nuclear weapons. Russia and the US soon sought to denuclearize Ukraine. While some in the Ukraine Parliament wanted to keep the weapons for deterrence, most agreed eventually that it was infeasible for Ukraine to maintain the weapons.

Ukraine was alarmed because once it started shipping its nukes back to Russia, Russia started to act more belligerent. There were disputes about the border, the fate of the Black Sea Navy, among other things. The US entered in as a third-party mediator, its interests being to see Ukraine sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Eventually Ukraine agreed to denuclearize, sending their missiles to Russia in exchange for nuclear fuel rods. Ukraine also received security assurances (not guarantees) from the US and more aid. Ukraine's case was a very successful instance of denuclearization by a state eager to join the international community and make allies, but it does not seem likely that the lessons learned can translate to totalitarian states such as North Korea.

External links

Ukrainian history overview published in Den.