Ukraine

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Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the east, Belarus to the north, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the southwest, and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev (Kyiv) is Ukraine's capital.

From at least the 9th century, the territory of present-day Ukraine was a center of the medieval East Slavic civilization forming the state of Kievan Rus', which disintegrated in the 12th century. From the 14th century on, the territory of Ukraine was divided among a number of regional powers and by the 19th century the largest part of Ukraine was integrated into the Russian Empire with the rest under the Austro-Hungarian control. After a chaotic period of incessant warfare and several attempts at independence (1917–1921) following the Russian Revolution and the Great War, Ukraine emerged in 1922 as one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's territory was enlarged westward shortly before and after the Second World War, and again in 1954 with the Crimea transfer. In 1945, the Ukrainian SSR became one of the co-founding members of the United Nations.<ref>

</ref> Ukraine became independent again after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. This began a transition period to a market economy, in which Ukraine was stricken with eight straight years of economic decline.<ref name="Macroindicators NBU">

</ref> But since approximately the turn of the century, the economy has been experiencing a stable increase, with real GDP growth averaging approximately seven percent annually.<ref name="Macroindicators NBU"/> Ukraine is a unitary state composed of 24 oblasts (provinces), one autonomous republic (Crimea), and two cities with special status: Kiev, its capital, and Sevastopol, which houses the Russian Black Sea Fleet under a leasing agreement.<ref name="Subtelny">

</ref> Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches. At the end of 2004, the country underwent an extensive constitutional reform that has changed the balance of power among the parliament, the prime minister, and the cabinet, as well as their relationship with the president.

[edit] Name etymology

The Ukrainian word Ukrayina is from Old East Slavic ukraina "borderland", from u "by, at" and the Slavic root kraj "edge; region". <ref>Room, Adrian. Placenames of the World. London: MacFarland and Co., Inc., 1997.</ref> In the Ukrainian language krayina simply means "country". In English, the country is referred to without the definite article, conforming to the usual English grammar rules for names of countries.<ref>Andrew Gregorovich. Ukraine or "the Ukraine"?, FORUM Ukrainian Review No. 90, Spring/Summer 1994</ref> Before the country's independence in 1991, usage with the article as "The Ukraine" was of some occurrence. The term 'Ukraine' rather than 'The Ukraine' is established in diplomacy<ref>New York Times Terminology Of Nationalism Dec 3 1991</ref> and journalism. <ref>Paul Brians, PhD. Common Errors in English Usage William James & Company (March 2003)</ref><ref>National Geographic Style manual</ref> <ref>The Economist Style Guide</ref> <ref>The Guardian Manual of Style</ref> <ref>The Times Style Guide</ref> <ref>Background Note: Ukraine at Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs March 2007, at the United States Department of State</ref>.

[edit] History

[edit] Early history

Human settlement on the territory of Ukriane dates back to at least 4500 BC, when the Neolithic Tripillian culture flourished. During the Iron Age, the land was inhabited by Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians.<ref>

</ref>

Colonies of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and Byzantine Empire were founded starting from the 6th century BC on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea, and thriving well into the 6th century AD. Tyras, Olbia, and Hermonassa are examples of these settlements.

[edit] Golden Age of Kiev (800–1100)

Image:Kievan Rus en.jpg

Map of the Kievan Rus', 11th century. During the Golden Age of Kiev the lands of Rus' covered much of present day Ukraine, as well as western Russia and Belarus.

During the 10th and 11th centuries, the territory of Ukraine became the center of a European state, the Kievan Rus'. It laid the foundation for the national identity of Ukrainians, as well as other East Slavic nations, through subsequent centuries.<ref name="Columbia">

</ref> This nation's capital was Kiev, which later became the capital of modern Ukraine, wrested from Khazars by Askold and Dir in about 860 AD. 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 became part of the Rus' first dynasty, the Rurik Dynasty.<ref name="Columbia"/> 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. These were sometimes contested through intrigue, but more often through bloody conflicts. The Golden Age of Kievan Rus' began with the reign of Vladimir the Great (Volodymyr, 980–1015), who turned 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. This was followed by the state's increasing fragmentation as the relative importance of regions 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. The 13th century Mongol invasion devastated Kievan Rus'. Kiev was totally destroyed in 1240.<ref>

</ref><ref name="Columbia"/><ref>

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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.

[edit] Under foreign domination

Image:Rzeczpospolita2nar.png

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, Halych-Volhynia was subjugated by Casimir the Great of Poland, while the heartland of Rus', including Kiev, fell under the Gediminids of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Following the 1386 Union of Krevo, a dynastic union between Poland and Lithuania, most of Ukraine's territory was controlled by the local as well as increasingly Ruthenized Lithuanian nobles as part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. At this time, the term Ruthenia and Ruthenians as the Latinized versions of "Rus'", became widely applied to the land and its people, respectively.

By 1569, the Union of Lublin formed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and 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 and political pressure of Polonization much of the Ruthenian upper class converted to Catholicism and became indistinguishable from the Polish nobility.<ref>Subtelny, p. 92-93.</ref> 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 and tended to turn to violence against those they perceived as enemies, particularly the Polish state and its representatives.<ref>

</ref>

Image:Repin Cossacks.jpg

"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 quasi-state, the Zaporozhian Sich, was established by the Dnieper Cossacks and the Ruthenian peasants fleeing Polish serfdom.<ref name="zaporizhia">

</ref> 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 emphasized the Commonwealth's fierce exploitation of the workforce. Also, and perhaps most importantly, the suppression of the Orthodox Church pushed the allegiances of Cossacks away from Poland. Their aspiration was to have 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 eventually turned to Orthodox Russia, a decision, which would later lead towards the downfall of the Polish-Lithuanian state. <ref name="zaporizhia"/>

Image:History of Russia, 1682-1762.jpg

Map of the Russian Empire, 1682-1762.

In 1648, Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the largest of the Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth and the Polish king John II Casimir. <ref>Orest Subtelny:"Ukraine: A History", page 123-124, University of Toronto Press, 2000, ISBN 0802083900 </ref> This uprising finally led to a partition of Ukraine between Poland and Russia.<ref>

</ref> 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 at the end of the 18th century by Prussia, Habsburg Austria, and Russia, 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 expecting from Imperial Russia. Because of its geographic location, Ukraine 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 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 (e.g., Aleksey Razumovsky, Alexander Bezborodko, Ivan Paskevich), and the Russian Orthodox Church (e.g., Stephen Yavorsky, Feofan Prokopovich, Dimitry of Rostov). At a later period, the tsarist regime began implementing a harsh policy of Russification, suppressing the use of the Ukrainian language in print, and in public.<ref>

</ref>

[edit] World War I and revolution

During World War I, Austro-Hungarian authorities established the Ukrainian Legion, along with the Polish Legion, to fight against the Russian Empire. These legions were the foundations of the successful Polish Army and the abortive Ukrainian Galician Army that fought against the Bolsheviks and Poles in the post World War I period (1919-1923).

Image:Ukraine map provisional borders 1919.jpg

Map of the Ukrainian People's Republic with provisional borders in 1919.

Those suspected of the Russophile sentiments were treaty harshly. Up to 20,000 supporters of Russia from Galicia were detained and placed in an Austrian internment camp in Talerhof, Styria, and in a fortress at Terezín (now in the Czech Republic).<ref>

</ref>

With the collapse of the Russian and Austrian empires following World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917, a Ukrainian national movement for self-determination reemerged. During 1917–20, several separate Ukrainian states briefly emerged: the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Hetmanate and the Directorate successively established territories in the former Russian Empire, while the West Ukrainian People's Republic emerged briefly in the former Austro-Hungarian territory. However with the latter defeat in the Polish-Ukrainian War and the failure of the Polish Kiev Offensive (1920), Ukraine lost its initial independance. The Peace of Riga, was concluded in March 1921. It split up Ukraine between Poland, and the newly formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The western part of Ukraine had been incorporated into the newly organized Second Polish Republic. 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 in December 1922.

[edit] Interwar Soviet Ukraine

In the early Soviet years, the Ukrainian culture and language enjoyed a revival, as Ukrainization became a local implementation of the Soviet-wide Korenization (literally indigenization) policy.<ref>

</ref> These policies were sharply reversed by the early-1930s.

Image:Power plant Dnepr.jpg

DniproGES hydroelectric power plant. Completed in 1932.

Starting from the late 1920s, Ukraine was involved in the Soviet industrialization and the republic's industrial output quadrupled in the 1930s.<ref name=Britannica/> 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 to 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, starvation became widespread. In 1932-33, millions starved to death in a man-made famine known as Holodomor.Template:Ref label Scholars are divided as to whether this famine fits the definition of genocide, but 15 governments and the Ukrainian parliament recognize it as the genocide of the Ukrainian people.<ref>Чехия признала Голодомор в Украине, Korrespondent.net, December 1, 2007</ref>

The times of industrialization and Holodomor also coincided with the Soviet assault on the national political and cultural elite often accused in "nationalist deviations". These policies of Ukrainization were reversed at the turn of the decade. Two waves of purges (1929–1934 and 1936–1938) resulted in the elimination of four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite.<ref name=Britannica>

</ref>

[edit] World War II

Template:See Also

Image:Lviv 1939 Soviet Cavalry - no watermark.jpg

Red Army cavalry marching into Lviv, 1939.

Following the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact in September 1939, German and Soviet troops divided the territory of Poland, including Galicia with its Ukrainian population. 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 the Soviet-occupied Hertsa region. But it ceded the western part of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to the newly created Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. All these territorial gains were internationally recognized by the Paris peace treaties of 1947.

German armies invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, thereby initiating 4 straight years of incessant total war. Although the wide majority of Ukrainians fought alongside the Red Army,<ref name="worldwars">

</ref> 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 total, about 4.5 million ethnic Ukrainians fought in the ranks of the Soviet Army<ref name="worldwars"/>Template:Ref label and another 43,500 Ukrainians as pro-Soviet partisan guerrilla units at their peak in 1943.<ref>

</ref> On the other hand, due to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army's unconventional structure, estimates are much less accurate, ranging anywhere from 25,000 to 200,000 Ukrainians.<ref>

</ref> 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 600,000 Soviet soldiers (or one quarter of the Western Front) were killed or taken captive.<ref>

</ref><ref>

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Image:Dayosh Kiev.jpg

Soviet soldiers preparing rafts to cross the Dnieper (the sign reads "To Kiev!") in the 1943 Battle of the Dnieper.

Initially, the Germans were received as liberators by some Ukrainians, especially in western Ukraine, which had only joined the Soviet Union in 1939. However, brutal German rule in the occupied territories eventually turned many of its supporters against the occupation. Nazi administrators of conquered Soviet territories made little attempt to exploit the population of Ukrainian territories' dissatisfaction with Soviet political and economic policies. <ref>

</ref> 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,<ref>

</ref> which included a food blockade on Kiev. Under these circumstances, most people living in the occupied territory either passively or actively opposed the Nazis. Total civilian losses inflicted upon the Ukrainian population during the war are estimated between 5 and 8 million,<ref name="infoukesww2">

Ukraine

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Contents

[edit] Name etymology

[edit] History

[edit] Early history

[edit] Golden Age of Kiev (800–1100)

[edit] Under foreign domination

[edit] World War I and revolution

[edit] Interwar Soviet Ukraine

[edit] World War II