Encyclopedia
Ukraine is a country in
Eastern Europe. It borders
Russia to the north-east,
Belarus to the north,
Poland,
Slovakia and
Hungary to the west,
Romania and
Moldova to the south-west and the
Black Sea to the south. The historic city of
Kiev is the country's capital.
From at least the
ninth century the territory of present-day Ukraine was a centre of
medieval East Slavic civilization forming the state of
Kievan Rus, and for the following several centuries the territory was divided between a number of regional powers. After a
brief period of independence following the
Russian Revolution of 1917, Ukraine became one of the founding
Soviet Republics in 1922. The
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's territory was enlarged westward after the
Second World War, and again in 1954 with the
Crimea transfer. Ukraine became independent again after the
Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.
Etymology of the name
According to one theory, the
Ukrainian word
Ukrayina stems from the
Old Slavic root
kraj-, meaning ‘land’, ‘region’, ‘country’, but also ‘edge’ or ‘borderland’ . In particular, in Ukrainian
krayina means simply ‘country’. Opinions vary as to the immediate derivation, but the first known mentioning in the Kiev Chronicle of 1187 probably uses the word in the meaning of ‘region’, ‘principality’, which might be defined as ‘land cut out for a Prince’ . Over time, as the dominant self-identification paradigms were changing, the word's initial meaning ‘the land of the prince’ may have transformed to a wider meaning.
According to another theory,
kraj- in the meaning of ‘borderland’, ‘frontier’ formed the basis for the modern name of the country . The
voivodship of Kiev, which was called
Ukraina from the sixteenth century on, was on the south-eastern border of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
In
English, the country is sometimes referred to with the definite article,
the Ukraine, as in
the Netherlands,
the Gambia,
the Sudan or
the Congo. However, usage without the article is becoming more frequent, and has become established in journalism and diplomacy since the country's independence .
History
Human settlement in the territory of Ukraine has been documented into distant prehistory. The late Neolithic
Trypillian culture flourished from about 4500 BC to 3000 BC.
Early history of Ukraine
In antiquity, the southern and eastern parts of modern Ukraine were populated by
Iranian nomads called Scythians. The
Scythian Kingdom existed on this land 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
seventh century the territory of the modern Ukraine was the core of the state of the
Bulgars 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.
Golden Age of Kiev
During the
tenth and
eleventh centuries the territory of Ukraine became the centre of a powerful and prestigious state in
Europe,
Kievan Rus, laying the foundation for the national identity of Ukrainians, as well as other
East Slavic nations, through subsequent centuries. Its capital was
Kiev, the capital of modern Ukraine, wrestled from Khazars by
Askold and Dir in about 860. According to the Primary Chronicle the Kievan Rus' elite initially consisted of
Varangians from
Scandinavia. The Varangians later became assimilated into the local Slavic population and gave the Rus' its first powerful dynasty, the Rurik Dynasty.
Kievian Rus' was comprised from several principalities, ruled by the interrelated Rurikid Princes. The seat of Kiev, the most prestigious and influential of all principalities, became a subject of many rivalries between Rurikids as the most valuable prize in their quest for power, sometimes through intrigue but often through bloody conflicts. The Golden Age of Kievan Rus' falls on the years of Kiev being ruled by
Vladimir the Great who
turned Rus' towards the Byzantine Christianity and his son
Yaroslav the Wise during whose lengthy reign, Kievan Rus' reached a zenith of its cultural flowering and military power that was followed by the state's increasing fragmentation as the relative importance of regions rose again. After the one last resurgence under the rule of
Vladimir Monomakh 1113–1125 and his son Mstislav the Kievan Rus' finally disintegrated into the separate principalities following Mstislav's death. The thirteenth century Mongol invasion dealt Rus' a final blow from which it never recovered.
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
On the 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-fourteenth century it was subjugated by
Casimir IV of Poland while the heartland of Rus', including Kiev, fell under the
Gediminids of
Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Following the 1386 marriage of Lithuania's Grand Duke Jagiello to Poland's
Queen Jadwiga, most of the Ukrainian territory was controlled by the increasingly Ruthenized Lithuanian rulers as part of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania .
By the 1569
Union of Lublin that formed the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a significant part of Ukrainian territory was moved from largely Ruthenized Lithuanian rule to the Polish administration, as it was transferred to the
Polish Crown. Under the cultural pressure of polonization much of the Ruthenian upper class converted to Catholicism , for example,
King Michael of Poland, who reigned from 1669 to 1673, was of the Ruthenian Vishnevetsky
Wisniowiecki family. At the same time the common people, especially the peasants retained their old ways of especially, the allegiance to their historic
Eastern Orthodox Church, which led to the increasing social tensions, visible in such events as the 1596 Union of Brest, created by
Sigismund III Vasa, who attempted to bring the Orthodox population under the Catholicism through creation of the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. This controversial move failed to achieve its goals. Resisted even by some Ruthenian
magnates, otherwise loyal to the Polish kings , the new "intermediate" religion was unnecessary for the most of the upper class, much of whom increasingly turned directly towards Catholicism with each subsequent generation. Thus, the Ukrainian commoners, deprived of their native protectors among Ruthenian nobility, turned for protection to the militant
Cossacks who remained fiercely Orthodox at all times.
Rise of the Cossacks
In the mid of the
seventeenth century, a Cossack quasi-state, the Zaporozhian Sich, was established by the Dnieper cossacks and the Ruthenian peasants fleeing Polish
serfdom. Poland had little real control of this land in what is now central Ukraine, which became an autonomous military state, at times allied with the Commonwealth in the military campaigns. However, the en
serfment of peasantry by the
Polish nobility, overall emphasis of the Commonwealth's
agricultural economy on the fierce exploitation of the unfree workforce, and, perhaps most importantly, the suppression of the Orthodox church pushed the allegiances of Cossacks away from Poland. Their aspiration was to have a representation in Polish
Sejm, recognition of Orthodox traditions and the gradual expansion of the Cossack Registry, all being vehemently denied by the Polish kings. The cossacks turned toward Orthodox Russia, which was one reason for the later downfall of the Polish-Lithuanian state.
In 1648
Bohdan Khmelnytsky lead the
largest of the Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth and the Polish king
John II Casimir. 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, following the 1654
Treaty of Pereyaslav and the ensuing Russo-Polish War. After the
partitions of Poland in the end of the eighteenth century by
Prussia,
Habsburg Austria, and
Russia at the end of the
eighteenth century, Western Ukrainian was taken over by Austria, while the rest of Ukraine was progressively incorporated into the Russian Empire. Despite the promises of Ukrainian autonomy given by the treaty of Pereyaslav, Ukrainians never received the freedoms they were hoping for from
Imperial Russia. The Ukrainians played an important role in the frequent wars between East European monarchies and the
Ottoman Empire. As a result of Russian successes in the wars against Turkey and Crimean Khanate of 1768–74 and 1787–1792, the territories along the
Black Sea coast were annexed to the Russian Empire as well. Within the Empire Ukrainians frequently rose to the highest offices of Russian state , and dominated the
Russian Orthodox Church . At a later period, the
tsar regime was implementing a harsh policy of Russification, banning the use of the
Ukrainian language in print, and in public.
World War I and Austro-Hungarian rule
During
World War I Austro-Hungarian authorities subjected to repression 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.
Division and early Soviet years
With the Russian and Austrian empires' collapse following the
World War I and the
Russian Revolution of 1917 Ukrainian national movement for self-determination emerged again. During 1917–20 several separate Ukrainian states briefly emerged: the Central Rada, the Hetmanate, the Directorate, the
Ukrainian People's Republic and the
West Ukrainian People's Republic. However, with the defeat of the latter in the
Polish-Ukrainian War and the failure of the Polish
Kiev Offensive of the
Polish-Soviet War, the
Peace of Riga concluded in March 1921 between
Poland and Bolsheviks left Ukraine divided again. The western part of Ukraine had been incorporated into newly organized
Second Polish Republic, and the larger, central and eastern part, established as the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in March of 1919, later became a constituent republic of the
Soviet Union, when it was formed in December of 1922.
The Ukrainian national idea lived on during the early-Soviet years and the Ukrainian culture and
language even enjoyed a revival as the
Ukrainization became a local implementation of the Soviet-wide
Korenization policy whose gains were sharply reversed by the early-
1930s policy changes.
Ukraine saw its share of the
Soviet industrialization starting from the late 1920s and the republic's industrial output quadrupled in the 1930s. 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 as the state combined the peasants' lands and animals into collective farms and enforcing the policies by the regular troops and secret police. Those who resisted were arrested and deported and the increased production quotas were placed on the peasantry despite the collectivization had a devastating effect on agricultural productivity. As the members of the collective farms were not allowed to receive any grain until the unachievable quotas were met, the starvation became widespread. Millions starved to death in a famine, known as the
Holodomor .
The times also coincided with the Soviet assault on the national political and cultural elite often accused in "nationalist deviations" as the
Ukrainization policies were reversed at the turn of the decade. Two waves of purges resulted in the elimination of the four-fifth of the Ukrainian cultural elite.
World War II
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 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 killed by the
Einsatzgruppen, sometimes with the help of local collaborators. Of the estimated eleven million Soviet troops who fell in battle against the Nazis, about a quarter 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.
Reunification and independence
After the Second World War, the borders of then-Soviet Ukraine were extended to the West , uniting most Ukrainians under one political state with much of the non-Ukrainian population of the attached territories having been deported. After the war Ukraine became a member of the
United Nations Organization.
In 1954,
Crimea was transferred from the RSFSR to Ukraine. This decision of
Nikita Khrushchev led to tensions between Russia and Ukraine after the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
1986 Nuclear
reactor disaster at Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
1989 National movement for the liberation of Ukraine "Rukh" is formed.
1990 Human chain protests for Ukrainian independence.
October 1991 Referendum about independence.
1991 Ukrainian independence is proclaimed. Elections of Parliament and the President Leonid Kravchuk.
December 1991 Agreements of Brest and Alma Ata : Russia, Ukraine and Belarus form the
Commonwealth of Independent States. Dissolution of the Soviet Union.
1994 Ukraine forms partnership with
NATO.
1996 Constitution is proclaimed.
2004
Kuchma regime is removed through peaceful
Orange Revolution. The revolution brings
Yushchenko and
Tymoshenko to power, while casting
Yanukovych in opposition. Two years later,
Yanukovych becomes Prime Minister through the democratic process established by Ukraine's Orange Revolution.
2006 Verkhovna Rada elections take place in March, and three months later government is formed by the "grand coalition" among
Yushchenko,
Yanukovych and
Moroz.
Government and politics
Ukraine is a
republic under a
semi-presidential system with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The
President of Ukraine is elected by popular vote and is the head of state. The Prime Minister is appointed and dismissed by the 450-seat parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. The parliament also appoints the
Cabinet of Ministers. The heads of regional and district administrations are appointed by the President, but the Prime Minister's counter-signature is required for the appointment edicts to take force.
Laws, acts of the parliament and the Cabinet, presidential edicts, and acts of the Crimean parliament may be nullified by the
Constitutional Cou 
