Ukraine

VII

History of Ukraine

Ukraine’s geographic location between Europe and Asia was an important factor in its early history. The steppes were the domain of Asiatic nomads, the Black Sea coast was inhabited by Greek colonists, and the forests in the northwest were the homeland of the agrarian East Slavic tribes from whom, eventually, the Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian nations evolved. As the East Slavs expanded, they accepted, in the 9th century, a Varangian (Viking) elite that led them to establish a vast domain, centered in Kyiv (Kiev) and called Kievan Rus. It became one of the largest, richest, and most powerful lands in medieval Europe. In 988 Saint Volodymyr (Vladimir), grand prince of Kyiv, accepted Orthodox Christianity, and in this way brought Kievan Rus under the cultural influence of the Byzantine Empire. Inter-princely feuds, shifting trade routes, and recurrent nomadic attacks weakened Kievan Rus, however, and in 1240 it fell to the invading hordes of the Mongol Empire. The western principality of Galicia-Volhynia managed to retain its autonomy for about a century thereafter.

A

Foreign Rule

In the mid-14th century the grand duchy of Lithuania gained control of most Ukrainian lands, while the Polish kingdom ruled the western region of Galicia. In 1569 most of Ukraine was annexed into Poland when the Union of Lublin joined the Lithuanian duchy and the Polish kingdom—already linked dynastically since the late 14th century—in a constitutional union, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita).

The colonization of the vast steppes gave rise to the Cossacks, frontier settlers who, in time, became defenders of Ukrainian interests against Polish overlords. In 1648 Bohdan Khmel’nyt’skyy, the Cossack hetman, or leader, led a massive uprising against the Poles. Seeking foreign support, he accepted the overlordship of the Russian tsar in 1654 in the Treaty of Pereyaslav. This initiated steady Russian expansion into Ukraine. Hetman Ivan Mazepa attempted to throw off Russian rule in 1708 and 1709 but failed. By 1793, as a result of the first two partitions of Poland (1772 and 1793), all of the Ukrainian lands east of the Dnieper River had come under Russian rule. In 1774 the Crimean Peninsula was annexed by the Russian Empire. Meanwhile, the western regions of Galicia, Bukovina, and Transcarpathia were incorporated into the Austrian Empire beginning in 1772. As a result of these foreign conquests, about 80 percent of Ukrainians lived under the rule of Russia, while the remaining 20 percent lived under the rule of Austria (known as Austria-Hungary from 1867 to 1918).

Catherine the Great, empress of Russia, introduced serfdom in Russian-ruled Ukraine in 1795 and encouraged the colonization of the south, which soon became the leading agricultural region of the empire. As Russian imperial rule became more encompassing, the Ukrainian elite and the cities became Russified. The villages, however, remained distinctly Ukrainian. In the late 19th century, rapid and large-scale industrialization of the Donets’k and Kryvyy Rih regions began, bringing an influx of Russian workers. Sparked by Western ideas and the poetry of Taras Shevchenko, the Ukrainian national movement developed among the intelligentsia. But imperial repression, including bans on the Ukrainian language, kept it weak. In 1848 a widespread revolution in the lands ruled by the Austrian Empire, including Ukraine’s western regions, resulted in the emancipation of the serfs and a new constitution; this allowed for the growth of a strong Ukrainian national movement, which was fiercely opposed by the Poles in Galicia. In social and economic terms, however, change in the village-based society was limited and slow.

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B

The Soviet Period

The Russian monarchy was overthrown during the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Russian Empire ceased to exist. The Bolsheviks (Communists) seized power and established a new Soviet government in Russia (see Bolshevism). Ukraine, represented by the Central Rada led by Mykhailo Hrushevsky, declared independence in early 1918. However, the first modern Ukrainian government collapsed following invasions by the Soviet Red Army and German intervention. Subsequent Ukrainian governments, led by Pavlo Skoropadsky and Symon Petlyura, also failed to withstand Red Army invasions, and a Bolshevik-affiliated government was established in most of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) was a founding member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922. With the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I in 1918, an independent west Ukrainian republic was formed in Galicia. It entered into federation with the briefly independent east Ukrainian state. However, the west Ukrainians lost a bitter struggle with the Poles and were incorporated into Poland in 1923. Czechoslovakia and Romania absorbed Transcarpathia and Bukovina, respectively.

In the 1920s the USSR’s New Economic Policy (NEP), designed to rehabilitate the postwar economy, helped rejuvenate agriculture in Ukraine. Anxious to attract popular support, the Soviet regime also introduced Ukrainization, a policy that encouraged the use of Ukrainian language and the development of national culture. Beginning in the late 1920s, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin brutally reversed both trends. Peasant landholdings were forcibly collectivized and crops were extorted to support industrialization. The result was a terrible famine in 1932 and 1933 in which an estimated 5 million to 7 million Ukrainians perished. At this catastrophic cost, industrial production was pushed to record-breaking levels; in 1940 it was more than seven times as high as in 1913. In the mid-1930s Stalin initiated mass arrests and executions of his opponents, both real and imagined, resulting in the devastation of Ukraine’s intelligentsia by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, in Galicia an extreme form of nationalism, embodied in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), developed and called for independence at any cost.

During the first stage of World War II, from 1939 to 1941, western Ukraine was occupied by Soviet forces, which proceeded to impose totalitarian rule, including arrests, mass deportations, and executions. In the second stage, from 1941 to 1943, Nazi German troops occupied the entire country, and the policies of German leader Adolf Hitler to exploit Ukraine to the fullest were implemented with exceptional brutality. In the third stage, from 1943 to 1944, the Germans retreated, destroying everything possible in their wake, and the Soviet Union reimposed its control. Ukrainian nationalists, who briefly cooperated with Nazi Germany in hopes of obtaining independence, were quickly disillusioned and forced into a suicidal battle with both the German and the Soviet armies. The human and material losses in Ukraine were among the highest in Europe during the war. As a result of the Soviet victory, ethnically Ukrainian lands in the west were incorporated into the Ukrainian republic. Poland ceded the regions of Galicia and Volhynia, while Czechoslovakia ceded Transcarpathia. The southern and northern parts of Bessarabia, as well as northern Bukovina, all ceded by Romania, also were incorporated. In 1954 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev ceremoniously transferred the Crimean Peninsula from Russia to Ukraine, marking the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav.

During postwar reconstruction, Ukraine became even more industrialized and urbanized. The immigration of Russians, encouraged by Moscow, grew markedly. Because of Ukraine’s economic and political importance in the USSR, Soviet control was particularly severe and recurrent dissent was repressed quickly, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. Economic stagnation set in by the 1980s. After USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced political and economic reforms in the mid-1980s, Ukraine was slow to reform, largely because of the reactionary policies of Vladimir Shcherbitsky, head of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Meanwhile, the 1986 Chernobyl’ nuclear disaster roused popular discontent, in part because it highlighted certain failings of the Soviet system. The popular-front movement, known as Rukh, capitalized on this and raised the cry for independence.

Confused and demoralized by the failure of the abortive coup of August 1991, in which Communist hard-liners tried to take over the central government in Moscow, the Communists of Ukraine gave in and joined the nationalists in proclaiming Ukraine’s independence on August 24. The legislature’s declaration was confirmed by more than 90 percent of the electorate in a nationwide referendum in December. At the same time, Leonid Kravchuk was elected as the country’s first president.

C

Ukraine Since Independence

The euphoria over independence soon faded in the face of mounting problems. In foreign policy, the most serious problem was Ukraine’s relations with Russia. The Russian legislature raised questions about the inclusion of Crimea—where ethnic Russians are in the majority and where the Black Sea Fleet was stationed—in the new Ukrainian state. An active, vocal pro-Russian separatist movement in Crimea added to the tensions. The autonomous government there voted in February 1992 to create an independent Crimean republic, but rescinded the declaration of independence two weeks later. The United States, for its part, was uneasy about Ukraine retaining possession of the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, which it had inherited when the Soviet Union dissolved. Internally, tensions arose between the more nationalistic west and the pro-Russian east. Above all else, the rapid deterioration of the economy was the most pressing concern. The collapse of the Soviet Union accelerated the decline of an already seriously faltering economy. President Kravchuk was slow in launching market-oriented reforms, and the growing confrontation between the opposing political parties in the legislature further complicated the situation.

C

1

Kuchma Presidency

Despite the deteriorating economy, there were some political successes. The presidential elections of 1994 were conducted calmly and fairly, leading to a peaceful transfer of power to the new president, Leonid Kuchma, whose priority was economic reform. But parliamentary infighting and the lack of a post-Soviet constitution delineating the powers of the executive and legislative branches produced a political stalemate.

In January 1994 Ukraine became one of the first countries in the world to begin unilaterally eliminating its nuclear arsenal, thereby greatly improving its relationship with the United States. It also entered NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, formed in 1993 to offer former Warsaw Pact members limited associations with NATO. In October 1995 it was accepted into the Council of Europe, an advisory council that works to coordinate the activities of European nations.

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