Ukraine is flanked by Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; by Romania and Moldova to the southwest; by the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south; by Belarus to the north; and by Russia to the east and northeast. The Crimean Autonomous Republic, a peninsula to the south of the country that juts into the Black Sea, is also Ukrainian territory. The total area of the nation is 233,100 square miles. Fertile upland plains and steppes make up most of central and southern Ukraine. In the north lie the Pripet marshes; in the south lie the rolling plains of the Dneiper River basin. The Volhynian-Podolian ranges and the Caparthian Mountains lie in the west, where Mount Hoverla (6,762 feet), the country’s highest peak, is found. The Crimean Mountains are in the south, and the Donets Ridge provides uplands in the southeast. Principal rivers include the Dnieper, Dniester, Bug, and Danube; the Danube forms part of the border with Romania.
The region that would become Ukraine was once the homeland of Germanics as well as steppe peoples such as the Huns, Avars, and Khazars. The Slavs made inroads by the late fifth century C. E. Kievan Rus, an organized slavic state originally with rulers from among the Vikings, emerged in the late ninth century C. E. under Prince Oleg of the Rus. Kievan Rus declined by the 12th century, dividing into separate principalities. Mongols and Tatars soon invaded the region, only to be driven out by the Lithuanians in the 14th century Lithuania united with Poland, allowing Polish expansion into the Ukraine in 1386.
In 1569 by the Union of Lublin Ukrainian lands, except Polissia and Beresteyshchyna, were passed to Poland. By 1648 rebellions by Cossacks, assisted by Russia, ended Polish rule. Ukraine was placed under Russian protection in 1654. Although the treaty signed with Russia negotiated Ukrainian self-rule, Russia
Ukrainians: nationality time line (continued)
1930 Oleksander Dovzhenko draws on Ukrainian folkore for his film Zemlya (The Earth).
1932-33 Stalin's grain taxes result in famine.
1937 National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine (formerly Ukrainian State Symphony Orchestra) is founded.
1941-44 During World War II Nazi Germany occupies Ukraine.
1945 Soviets annex western Ukraine; Ukraine joins United Nations (UN).
1964 Serhy Paradzhanov's film Tini zabutykh predkiv (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors) is released, winning international acclaim.
1991 Soviet Union breaks up; Ukraine declares its independence.
1996 New democratic constitution is adopted.
1997 Friendship treaty is concluded with Russia.
2004 The Orange Revolution leads to a political victory for Viktor Yushchenko, a West-leaning candidate for president.
Ukrainian women with hoes farm a field in the early 20th century. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-97672])
Soon dominated the country. Poland aided Ukraine in attempts to regain autonomy, leading to the Russo-Polish War and the division of Ukraine between the two countries. Ukraine failed to gain independence under Hetman Ivan Stepanovich Mazepa in 1709, aided by Sweden.
During the Russian Revolution of 1917 Ukrainians briefly won independence. In 1918 Romania and Czechoslovakia conquered the newly formed Ukrainian state. In 1921 Ukraine was reformed as a Soviet Socialist Republic and eventually annexed by the Soviet Union (USSR). Ukraine did not regain independence until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
CULTURAL IDENTITY
A formative period of history for Ukrainian cultural identity were the 16th and 17th centuries, when Ukraine was under Polish control. During this period extensive colonization of the steppe lands took place, spearheaded by the social class called the Cossacks, the frontier settlers whose prowess in war eventually caused them to engage in a massive uprising against the Polish overlords and accept overlordship from Russia. The Cossack freedom fighters have been an important symbol of Ukrainian autonomy and freedom.
In Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet empire a debate has been conducted among intellectuals as to the nature of the Ukrainian national identity. These discussions have been largely fashioned by the heritage of Soviet imperial domination. Three main cultural orientations are prevalent in Ukraine today: European or pro-Western; nativist or “pronation”; and pro-Eastern, which most researchers and participants in the debate equate with proRussian. In addition to cultural themes the Eastern and Western factions are separated by geography—those closer to Russia and those closer to Europe—as well as by religion— Eastern Orthodox versus Roman Catholic. The debates became particularly intense in the late 1980s and early 1990s, coinciding with attempts to reclaim specific cultural symbols that had been banned by the Soviet regime. Literary life in Ukraine in the following years was injected with an extreme dynamism, and young writers, as well as those who had been banned in Ukraine by censorship, were publishing their works for the first time.
It is unclear to what extent the Ukrainian nation exists independently of the consciousness of its intellectuals. It may be that the national discourse of the Ukrainian in and of itself—the value of free expression—provides Ukrainians with a sense of community. The discourse includes such issues as the balancing of folklore and modernity, the status and role of the Ukrainian language, and the concept of “nation” as a political unit and “nation” as an ethnic and cultural entity The impact of Russia on identity in Ukraine is obvious, and it was widely discussed in the 1990s. However, scholars from outside the country have noted the absence in these discussions of the fact of Russia’s colonial dominance. Despite ideological differences, the “nativist” position, which sets aside the question of whether Ukraine should orient itself to the East—meaning Russia—or to Western Europe, and the “post-Soviet” position, which holds that the East-versus-West debate must in part shape Ukrainian identity, both ignore Ukraine’s colonial past. It remains unclear how this aspect of life in a country dominated by Russia for so many years could remain “invisible” to the Ukrainians.
The events in Ukraine in late 2004 perhaps are an indication of the nation’s longterm political future. Viktor Yushchenko, campaigning on a platform that advocated greater ties with the West, was elected president. He managed the victory after a dispute over the corruption of an earlier election, and the so-called Orange Revolution—named for the thousands of protestors wearing the adopted color of the Yushchenko campaign—resulted in a new election. Yet the narrow margin of his victory—and the passions attached to it on both sides—also may indicate continuing intellectual fervor over the issue of Ukrainian identity.
Further Reading
Michael F Hamm. Kiev (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Taras Kuzio. Ukraine: Perestroika to Independence (New York: St. Martin’s, 1998).
Anna Reid. Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2000).
Danylo Husar Struk. Encyclopedia of Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993). Orest Subtelny. Ukraine: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994).
Andrew Wilson. The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002).
Sharon L. Wolchik and Vladimir Zviglianich, eds. Ukraine: The Search for a National Identity (Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1999).
A Ukrainian woman poses on her farm in this early-20th-century photograph. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-DIC-prok-I0247])
World History
