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==History==

==History==

The first identifiable groups to populate what is now Ukraine were Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, and Goths, among other nomadic peoples who arrived throughout the first millennium B.C. These peoples were well known to colonists and traders in the ancient world, including Greeks and Romans, who established trading outposts that eventually became city-states. Slavic tribes occupied central and eastern Ukraine in the sixth century A.D. and played an important role in the establishment of Kyiv. Kievan Rus Prince Volodymyr converted the Kievan nobility and most of the population to Christianity in 988. Situated on lucrative trade routes, Kyiv quickly prospered as the center of the powerful state of Kievan Rus. In the 11th century, Kievan Rus was, geographically, the largest state in Europe. Conflict among the feudal lords led to decline in the 12th century. Mongol raiders razed Kyiv in the 13th century.  

Beginning in the first millennium B.C., the territory of what is now Ukraine was populated by Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Goths, and other nomadic peoples. Ancient Greek colonists set up city-states in southern Ukraine. Eastern Slavic tribes settled in Ukraine in the sixth century A.D. [[Kiev]] was established in the sixth or seventh century and was taken by the Varangian prince Oleg of Novgorod in 882 A.D.. Well located at the intersection of major trade routes, Kiev soon developed into the center of a mighty state, Rus'. At its height under grand princes [[Vladimir I]] (980-1015) and [[Yaroslav I the Wise]] (1019-1054), Kievan Rus' was the largest state in Europe in terms of area. Vladimir I adopted Christianity in 988; Yaroslav the Wise codified the laws; he married his daughters advantageously to the kings of France, Hungary, and Norway.

Most of the territory of what is modern Ukraine was annexed by [[History of Poland|Poland]] and Lithuania in the 14th century, but during that time, Ukrainians began to conceive of themselves as a distinct people, a feeling that survived subsequent partitioning by greater powers over the next centuries. Ukrainian peasants who fled the Polish effort to force them into servitude came to be known as Cossacks and earned a reputation for their fierce martial spirit and love of freedom. In 1667, Ukraine was partitioned between Poland and Russia. In 1793, when Poland was partitioned, much of modern-day Ukraine was integrated into the Russian Empire.  

Although Russian historians identify Rus' as the progenitor of modern Russia, it was also the progenitor of Ukraine and Byelarus. Ukrainian scholars are divided whether the Rus' comprised a loosely organized conglomerate of diverse peoples, or whether it was a more homogeneous nation of Ukrainians. Following the Communist collapse in 1992, two schools of historiography regarding Kievan (Kyivan) Rus' have competed, the Ukrainophile and the East Slavic. The Ukrainophile school promotes an identity that is "mutually exclusive" of Russia. It has come to dominate the nation's educational system, security forces, and national symbols and monuments, although it has been dismissed as nationalist by Western historians. The East Slavic school, an eclectic compromise between Ukrainophiles and Russophilism, has a weaker ideological and symbolic base, although it is preferred by Ukraine's centrist former elites.<ref> Taras Kuzio, "Nation Building, History Writing and Competition over the Legacy of Kyiv Rus in Ukraine." ''Nationalities Papers'' 2005 33(1): 29-58. Issn: 0090-5992  Fulltext: in [[Ebsco]]</ref>

The 19th century found the region largely agricultural, with a few cities and centers of trade and learning. The region was under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the extreme west and the Russian Empire elsewhere. Ukrainian writers and intellectuals were inspired by the nationalistic spirit stirring other European peoples existing under other imperial governments and were determined to revive Ukrainian linguistic and cultural traditions and reestablish a Ukrainian state. Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), national hero of Ukraine, presented the intellectual maturity of the Ukrainian language and culture through his work as a poet and artist. Imperial Russia, however, imposed strict limits on attempts to elevate Ukrainian culture, even banning the use and study of the Ukrainian language.  

Feudal fragmentation caused the decline of Kievan Rus' in the 12th century. In 1169 Kiev was sacked by Prince Andrei Bogoliubsky of Vladimir; in 1240 it was virtually destroyed by the [[Mongols]] under Batu Khan. The Principality of Galicia-Volhynia continued as the successor state of Kievan Rus' in what is now Ukraine until the 14th century, when it was annexed by [[Poland]] and [[Lithuania]]. In the 13th and 14th centuries the Ukrainian people developed a distinct culture.

When World War I and the Russian revolution shattered the Habsburg and Russian empires, Ukrainians declared independent statehood. In 1917 the Central Rada proclaimed Ukrainian autonomy and in 1918, following the Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd, the Ukrainian National Republic declared independence under President Mykhaylo Hrushevsky. After three years of conflict and civil war, however, the western part of Ukrainian territory was incorporated into Poland, while the larger, central and eastern regions were incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1922 as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.  

Peasant refugees from Polish landlord rule escaped to the steppes of Ukraine in the 15th and 16th centuries, where they became frontiersmen called [[Cossacks]]. Their main center was Zaporizhska Sich, a wild town on the lower [[Dnieper]] River. Outlaws and frontiersmen, fighters and pioneers, the Cossacks seized the Ukrainian imagination. They ranged the steppe in covered wagons, pulling them into tight squares to face a Tatar attack.  Urged on by Polish subsidies, they launched lucrative raids on the ports of Poland's enemy Turkey, using sixty-foot‐long double-ruddered galleys.  The men boasted splendid moustaches, red boots and wide baggy trousers as they danced, sang and drank horilka in heroic quantities.<ref> Reid (2000) p. 30 </ref>  Some Cossacks aligned with Poland; others led rebellions against the Poles in 1591, 1595, 1625, 1635 and 1637.

The Ukrainian national idea persevered during the twenties, but with Stalin’s rise to power and the campaign of forced collectivization, the Soviet leadership imposed a campaign of terror that ravaged the intellectual class. The Soviet government under Stalin also created an artificial famine (called the Holodomor in Ukrainian) as part of his forced collectivization policies, which killed millions of previously independent peasants and others throughout the country. Estimates of deaths from the 1932-33 famine alone range from 3 million to 7 million.  

The rebellions climaxed in 1648-1654 in a popular uprising, accompanied by widespread pogroms against Jews, led by the Cossack hetman (general) [[Bohdan Khmelnytsky]] (1595-1657). He is called Bogdan Khmelnitsky in Russian and Bogdan Chmielnicki in Polish.</ref> Khmelnytsky's victory over Poland led to a Cossack "state," the hetmanate.<ref> The Cossaks formed a military regime but most historians say the hetmanate was not a fully formed state, as it lacked borders, stable laws, an administrative apparatus or an ethnic population base. Apart from Russia it did not seek diplomatic recognition through the exchange of ambassadors. As the creator of the first quasi-independent Cossack state in the 16th century, Khmelnitsky became immortalized in Ukrainian national sentiment. In the Communist era Moscow bolstered his status.  The exploits of Khmelnitsky and the Cossacks became the focus of numerous ceremonial acts, exhibitions and dedications.  Since 1991, however, Ukrainian scholars are more divided over the issue of whether he sold out the national interest to Russia.<ref> Serhii Plokhy, "The Ghosts of Pereyaslav: Russo-Ukrainian Historical Debates in the Post-soviet Era." ''Europe-Asia Studies'' 2001 53(3): 489-505. Fulltext: [http://www.jstor.org.proxy.cc.uic.edu/view/09668136/ap030066/03a00050/0 in Jstor]

Zenon E. Kohut, "In Search of Early Modern Ukrainian Statehood: Post-Soviet Studies of the Cossack Hetmanate." ''Journal of Ukrainian Studies'' 1999 24(2): 101-112. Issn: 0228-1635 not online</ref>

When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, some Ukrainians, particularly in the west, welcomed what they saw as liberation from Communist rule, but this did not last as they quickly came to understand the nature of Nazi rule. Nazi brutality was directed principally against Ukraine's Jews (of whom an estimated 1 million were killed), but also against many other Ukrainians. Babyn Yar in Kyiv was the site of one of the most horrific Nazi massacres of Ukrainian Jews, ethnic Ukrainians, and many others. Kyiv and other parts of the country were heavily damaged.

In 1657-1686  came "The Ruin," a devastating 30-year war between Russia, Poland, Turks and Cossacks for control of Ukraine.  For three years Khmelnytsky's armies controlled present-day western and central Ukraine, but deserted by his Tatar allies, he suffered a crushing defeat at Berestechko, and turned to the Russian Czar for help.  In 1654, Khmelnytsky signed the Treaty of Pereiaslav, forming a military and political alliance with Russia that acknowledged loyalty to the Czar.  The wars escalated in intensity with hundreds of thousands of deaths. Defeat came in 1686 as the "Eternal Peace" between Russia and Poland gave Kiev and the Cossack lands east of the Dnieper over to Russian rule and the Ukrainian lands west of the Dnieper to Poland. In 1709 Cossack  Hetman Ivan Mazepa (1687-1709) sided with Sweden against Russia in the [[Great Northern War]] (1700-1721).  Mazepa, a member of the Cossack nobility, received an excellent education abroad and proved to be a brilliant political and military leader enjoying good relations with the Romanov dynasty. After [[Peter the Great]] became czar, Mazepa as hetman gave him more than twenty years of loyal military and diplomatic service and was well rewarded. Eventually Peter recognized that in order to consolidate and modernize Russia's political and economic power it was necessary to do away with the hetmanate and Ukrainian and Cossack aspirations to autonomy. Peter refused to assist Cossack forces in protecting Ukraine from imminent attack by Sweden, thus abrogating treaty obligations between Russia and Ukraine. Mazepa accepted Polish invitations to join the Poles and Swedes against Russia. The move was disastrous for the hetmanate, Ukrainian autonomy, and Mazepa. He died in exile after fleeing from the [[Battle of Poltava]] (1709), where the Swedes and their Cossack allies suffered a catastrophic defeat at the hands of Peter's Russian forces

After the Nazi and Soviet invasions of Poland in 1939, the western Ukrainian regions were incorporated into the Soviet Union. Armed resistance against Soviet authority continued as late as the 1950s. During periods of relative liberalization--as under Nikita Khrushchev from 1955 to 1964 and during the period of "perestroika" under Mikhail Gorbachev--Ukrainian communists pursued nationalist objectives. The 1986 explosion at the Chornobyl (Chernobyl in Russian) nuclear power plant, located in the Ukrainian SSR, and the Soviet Government’s initial efforts to conceal the extent of the catastrophe from its own people and the world, was a watershed for many Ukrainians in exposing the severe problems of the Soviet system. Ukraine became an independent state on August 24, 1991, and was a co-founder of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, although it has not officially joined the organization.  

The hetmanate was abolished in 1764; the Zaporizhska Sich abolished in 1775, as centralized Russian control became the norm. With the partitioning of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795, the Ukrainian lands west of the Dnieper were divided between Russia and Austria.  From 1737 to 1834 expansion into the northern Black Sea littoral and the eastern Danube valley was a cornerstone of Russian foreign policy.

{{Famine of 1933}}

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With [[Stalin]]'s change of course in the late 1920s, however, Moscow's toleration of Ukrainian national identity came to an end. Systematic state terror of the 1930s destroyed Ukraine's writers, artists, and intellectuals; the Communist Party of Ukraine was purged of its "nationalist deviationists"; and the peasantry was crushed by means of collectivization, resulting in the [[Great Famine]] or "Holodomor" (Голодомор) of 1932-1933, which claimed some 3-7 million lives as crops failed and remaining food wtocks were forcibly removed by the government. Stalin had full knowledge of the destructive force of the famine. It was a by-product of his war on the peasantry that began with collectivization and dekulakization and as an attempt to eradicate peasant culture in its entirety.  Ellman explains the causes for the excess deaths in rural areas of Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan during 1931-34 by dividing the causes into three groups: objective nonpolicy-related factors, like the drought of 1931 and poor weather in 1932; inadvertent result of policies with other objectives, like rapid industrialization, socialization of livestock, and neglected crop rotation patterns; and deaths caused intentionally by a starvation policy. The Communist leadership perceived famine not as a humanitarian catastrophe but as a means of class struggle and used starvation as a punishment tool to teach peasants to work well in the collective farms.<ref>Michael Ellman, "The Role of Leadership Perceptions and of Intent in the Soviet Famine of 1931-1934." ''Europe-Asia Studies'' 2005 57(6): 823-841. Issn: 0966-8136 Fulltext in [[Ebsco]]</ref>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

==See also==

==See also==