History of Ukraine
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 (700 BC700 AD)
In antiquity, the southern and eastern parts of modern Ukraine were populated by 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 (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.
Golden Age of Kiev (8001100)
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 (Volodymyr, 9801015) who turned Rus' towards the Byzantine Christianity and his son Yaroslav the Wise (10191054) 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 11131125 and his son Mstislav (11251132) 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 (13001600)
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 (the term Ruthenia and Ruthenians as the Latinized versions of "Rus'", became widely applied to the land and its people, respectively).
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 (such transitions were beneficial for achieving political influence within the state), for example, King Michael of Poland, who reigned from 1669 to 1673, was of the Ruthenian Vishnevetsky Wis'niowiecki 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 (Ostrogskis being the most notable example), 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 Cossacks who remained fiercely Orthodox at all times.
Rise of the Cossacks (16001800)
In the mid of the seventeenth century, a Cossack 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 enserfment 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 (Galicia) 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 Ottoman Empire and Crimean Khanate of 176874 and 17871792, 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 (e.g., Aleksey Razumovsky, Alexander Bezborodko, Ivan Paskevich), and dominated the Russian Orthodox Church (e.g., Stephen Yavorsky, Feofan Prokopovich, Dimitry of Rostov). 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 Ukrainians in Galicia who sympathized with Russia to repression. Over twenty thousand supporters of Russia were arrested and placed in an Austrian concentration camp in Talerhof, Styria, and in a fortress at Terezi'n (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 191720 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 (1920) 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 ("indigenization") 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. 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. These policies were reversed at the turn of the decade. Two waves of purges (19291934 and 19361938) resulted in the elimination of four fifths 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, forming the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in 1942, while other Ukrainians initially collaborated with the Nazis, 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, deported others (mainly Ukrainians) to work in Germany, and began a systematic depopulation of Ukraine to prepare it for German colonization, which included a food blockade on Kiev. 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 (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.
Reunification and postwar development
After the Second World War, the Soviet Ukraine ended up with the borders extended West, with most of Ukrainian lands under one political state. As a result of a political compromise between the West and the Soviets, Ukraine, being a republic of USSR, became one of the founding members of the United Nations.
The republic was heavily damaged by the war, and it required significant efforts to recover. The situation was worsened by a man-made famine in 194647, when the Soviet authorities were forcibly confiscating grain crops in accordance with a preset plan, ignoring drought conditions of 1946. Collected grain was distributed to the other regions of Soviet Union, and on the top, 2.5 million tonnes were exported abroad. In Ukraine about one million people, predominantly in rural areas, died from the famine.
In the Western Ukraine, Ukrainians continued to resist Soviet rule, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, formed in World War II to fight both Soviets and Nazis, continued to fight the USSR into the 1950s. Using guerilla war tactics, the insurgents were assassinating Soviet party leaders, NKVD and military officers. In particular, due to the resistance, the 1946-47 famine was much less severe in West Ukraine than in other Ukrainian regions.
Following the death of Stalin in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev became the new leader of USSR. Being the First Secretary of Communist Party of Ukrainian SSR in 1938-49, Khrushchev played a role in Stalin's repressions, the liberation of Ukraine from the Nazis, organization of the man-made famine in 1946-47 and suppression of resistance in West Ukraine. But after taking the power, he found the best to propagandize the friendship between Ukrainian and Russian nations. In 1954, the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav was widely celebrated, and in particular, Crimea from transferred from Russian SFSR to Ukrainian SSR.
In the times of Khrushchev Thaw of 1960s, there were dissident movements in Ukraine by such prominent figures as Vyacheslav Chornovil, Vasyl Stus, Levko Lukyanenko. As in the other regions of USSR, the movements were quickly suppressed.
In the 1970s, the new Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev was gradually concentrating on power. In 1972, the First Secretary of Communist Party of Ukraine Petro Shelest lost his position, as he was seen as being "too independent" by the government in Moscow, and was replaced by Volodymyr Shcherbytsky.
The rule of Shcherbytsky was characterized by the expanded policies of Russification. At the same time he used his influence as the First Secretary of CPU, and a Politburo member for over 25 years, to advocate economic interests of Ukraine within the USSR.
Independence
The wave of Gorbachevs perestroika came to Ukraine only in 198889. It was hindered initially by Shcherbytsky and party nomenclature. Also, the economic slowdown and product shortages were initially not as severe in Ukraine as in the other regions of USSR.
In 1989, the national movement "People's Movement of Ukraine", known in short as Rukh was formed. In the elections to the parliament of republic, which were held in March of 1990, Rukh obtained overwhelming support in West Ukraine, as well as in the cities of Kiev and Kharkiv.
In January of 1990, hundreds of thousand Ukrainians organized a human chain for Ukrainian independence in memory of 1919 unification of Ukrainian People's Republic and West Ukrainian National Republic. Citizens came out to the streets and highways forming live chains by holding hands in support of unity. On July 16, 1990 the new parliament adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine. The declaration established the principles of the selfdetermination of Ukrainian nation, the democracy, the political and economic independence, and the priority of Ukrainian law on the Ukrainian territory over Soviet law. A month earlier, a similar declaration was adopted by the parliament of Russian SFSR. It opened a period of confrontation between the central Soviet, and new republican authorities.
In March of 1991, a referendum was organized by the central Soviet authorities, asking people to express the desire to live in "renewed" Soviet Union. The Ukrainian parliament added a second question, asking Ukrainian citizens the desire to live in the Soviet Union on the principals established in the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine. The citizens of Ukraine responded positively on both questions.
In August of 1991, the conservative Communist leaders of Soviet Union attempted a coup to remove Gorbachev and to restore Communist party power. In response, on August 22, 1991 the Ukrainian parliament adopted the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine in which the parliament declared Ukraine as independent democratic state.
A referendum and the first presidential elections had been scheduled on December 1, 1991. That day, more than 90% of Ukrainians expressed their support for the Act of Independence, and they elected the chairman of the parliament, Leonid Kravchuk to serve as the first president of the country.
At the meetings in Brest (8 December) and Alma Ata (21 December) the leaders of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, formally dissolved the Soviet Union, and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States.
