According to one theory, the Ukrainian word Ukrayina stems from the Old Slavic root kraj-, meaning ‘land’, ‘region’, ‘country’, but also ‘edge’ or ‘borderland’ (see below). 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’ (maybe referring to the general feudal practice of a prince dividing land between his sons). 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 (cf. Russianokraina, ‘outskirts’; a semantic parallel to -mark in Denmark, cf. Marches; cf. also Krajina). The voivodship of Kiev, which was called Ukraina from the sixteenth century on, was on the south-eastern border of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Human settlement in the territory of Ukraine has been documented into distant prehistory. The late NeolithicTrypillian culture flourished from about 4500 BC to 3000 BC.
Early history of Ukraine (700 BC–700 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.
Map of the Kievan Rus', eleventh 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 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 RurikidPrinces. 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, 980–1015) who turned Rus' towards the Byzantine Christianity and his son Yaroslav the Wise (1019–1054) 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 Monomakh1113–1125 and his son Mstislav (1125–1132) 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.
In the centuries following the Mongol invasion much of Ukraine was controlled by Lithuania (from the fourteenth century on) and since the Union of Lublin (1569) by Poland as seen at this outline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as of 1619.
By the 1569Union 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 Wiśniowiecki 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 1596Union 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 militant Cossacks who remained fiercely Orthodox at all times.
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 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.
During World War IAustro-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 Terezín (now in the Czech Republic).
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.Available data is inconclusive as the Soviet government actively denied the existence of the famine. Therefore, precise calculations and estimates vary.
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 (1929–1934 and 1936–1938) resulted in the elimination of four fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite.
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 (mainly Ukrainians) 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 (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 1946–47, 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.1946–1947 Holodomor in Ukraine (Ukrainian)
In West Ukraine, Ukrainians, facing the harsh reality of Soviet order, expressed civil and military resistance, the latter known as Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Using guerilla war tactics, the insurgents were assassinating Soviet party leaders, NKVD and military officers. In particular, due to the resistance, 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 repressions, liberation of Ukraine from Germans, organization of man-made famine in 1946-47, 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 1970s, the new Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev was gradually concentrating the 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 for economic interests of Ukraine within the USSR.
In April of 1986, a nuclear reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The true scale of the Chernobyl accident was not at first revealed to the public. As people became aware of the accident, they were unsatisfied with the way authorities handled the disaster. Around 150,000 people were evacuated from the contaminated area, and 300,000–600,000 took part in the clean-up.
Independence
The wave of Gorbachev’s perestroika came to Ukraine only in 1988–89. 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 early 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.
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.
Modern history
Ukraine was initially viewed as a republic with favorable economic conditions in comparison to the other regions of the Soviet Union. However, the country experienced deeper economic slowdown than the other republics. Over the time of the recession Ukraine lost 60% of its GDP, and suffered five-digit inflation rates.
Under Kuchma, who served two terms as the President, the Ukrainian economy stabilized by the end of 1990s, and started to grow in early 2000s. A new Constitution of Ukraine was adopted in 1996, which turned Ukraine into a semi-presidential republic, and established a stable political system. Kuchma was, however, criticized by opponents for concentrating too much of power in his office, corruption, transferring public property into hands of loyal oligarchs, discouraging free speech, and vote manipulations.
In 2006Verkhovna Rada elections took place in March, and three months later the official government was formed by the "Anti-Crisis Coalition" among the Party of Regions, Communist Party, and Socialist Party of Ukraine. The latter party switched from the "Orange Coalition" with Our Ukraine, and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc. The new coalition nominated Viktor Yanukovych for the post of Prime Minister, while the leader of Socialist Party, Oleksander Moroz managed to secure the Chairman of parliament position.
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.
Local self-government is officially guaranteed. Local councils and city mayors are popularly elected and exercise control over local budgets.
Ukraine has a large number of political parties, many of which have tiny memberships and are unknown to the general public. Small parties often join in multi-party coalitions (electoral blocks) for the purpose of participating in parliamentary elections.
After the collapse of Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited a one-million-man military force on its territory, equipped with the third largest nuclear weapon arsenal in the world. In May of 1992, Ukraine signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in which the country agreed to give up all nuclear weapons, and to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapon state. Ukraine ratified the treaty in 1994, and by 1996 the country became free of nuclear weapons.
Ukraine also took consistent steps toward the reduction of conventional weapons. It signed the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which called for reduction of tanks, artillery, and armored vehicles. The army forces were reduced to 300,000 solders. The country plans to convert the current, mostly conscript, army into a professional army.
Following independence, Ukraine declared itself as a neutral country. The country had limited military partnership with Russia and other CIS countries, as well as, since 1994, it established a partnership with NATO. In 2000s Ukraine was inclining toward NATO, and a deeper cooperation with the alliance was set by NATO-Ukraine Action Plan signed in 2002. As of 2006, it's a subject of extensive debate within Ukrainian society of whether the country should join NATO. In August of 2006 the leading political parties signed the Universal of National Unity in which they agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum, a date of which has not been set.
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