History of Ukraine; The Ukrainian Path to Independence

The territory of Ukraine was inhabited from the Upper Paleolithic time by ancient Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, who were skilled hunters of mammoths and collectors. Subsequently, these lands were settled by representatives of one of the most advanced European agricultural civilizations of the time, the Tropilia culture. The development of new technologies was accompanied by the development of new methods of farming and the domestication of animals. Probably, it was in the territory of Ukraine where representatives of the Serednisty culture domesticated a horse for the first time. Subsequently, the steppes of Ukraine were inhabited by legendary Cimmerians, who were then displaced by their relatives Scythians. At this time, the Greek colonization of the southern coast of Ukraine was made. Greeks and Scythians were actively trading. It was the Grecians who gave the name to the Ukrainian lands, Scythia, which was often used until the 17th century. After this, the Scythians were replaced by the Sarmatians, whose women often participated in wars, which gave rise to legends about the Amazons. In the era of the Great Resettlement of peoples, for the first time on the historical arena appeared Slavs, the ancestral home of which, according to one theory, was the territory between Dnieper and Dniester. Over the course of several centuries, Slavic state centers were gradually established on these lands. One of the largest was Kiev. In the 9th century, Kiev was occupied by Vikings under the leadership of Oleg the Wise, which founded the state of Rus, led by the princely dynasty Rurikin, the Scandinavian descendants of which ruled the area over the next few centuries. The Vikings quickly adopted local culture and changed their names to Slavic ones. The most famous of these princes was Vladimir I the Great, who expanded the borders of the state and introduced Christianity in these territories, and his son Yaroslav the Wise, who built the Sofia Cathedral and founded the library. The latter gained fame as the father-in-law of Europe through active marriage diplomacy with many European countries. His daughters and sisters were married to the rulers of Byzantium, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Hungary, and France. It was in the times of Vladimir and Yaroslav that Rus reached the greatest power. The lands of Kievan Rus stretched from the Black Sea to the Baltic. In 1187, the name Ukraine was mentioned for the first time in the annals. That was the name of the territory of lands near and south of Kiev. Over time, feudal disputes made the Rus principalities weaker, as a result of what the Mongol troops defeated the divided Rus detachments, captured and desecrated Kiev, 50,000 of which population decreased ten times after the Batu Khan's invasion. At that time, the most influential prince of Kievan Rus was Daniel of Galicia, or Danilo Romanovich. From the pope, he received the title of king, thanks to which the kingdom of Rus has arisen. However, his attempts to liberate southern Rus from the influence of the Mongols were unsuccessful. In the next century, Danilo's line was broken up, and his state was divided between Poland and the Duchy of Lithuania. Lithuanian nobility quickly borrowed the culture and language of Rus, and the Polish aristocracy spread its system and religion to the conquered lands. In the late 14th century, the Mongol state of the Golden Horde fell into decline and lost influence in the region. In the 15th century, on the territory of the Horde lands in the northern Black Sea region, the independent state of the Crimean Khanate emerged and soon became a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. In the 16th century, Poland and Lithuania merged into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Ukrainian lands under the Treaty of Union were transferred to Poland. The increase in feudal oppression, exploitation, and indentured servitude led to the flight of peasants to the outskirts of the state. At this time, the formation and development of the Ukrainian Cossacks, a military estate, the basis of which were fugitive peasants and local petty knighthood. Cossacks had democratic traditions of governance and built the fortress Zaporizhian Zich in the Lower Dnieper. Hence, their name evolved, Army of Zaporizhian Host, the Lower. Cossack detachments actively participated in wars with the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khanate, and the Moscow Empire. The intensification of the exploitation of the unprivileged social estates, religious oppression, and the attack on the rights of the Cossacks led to a series of Cossack-peasant uprisings against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1648, the National Liberation War began. It was led by Bohdan Khmelnitsky, who was the leader of the Cossack-peasant army that defeated the army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with the help of Crimean Tatars in several battles. These victories led to the creation of the Ukrainian state, the Cossack Hetmanate. However, the Cossacks did not have enough forces to stand up to the Commonwealth and its allies. Therefore, Khmelnitsky concluded the Pereyaslav Agreement about a vassal military union under conditions of broad autonomy with the Moscow Tsar. However, the Tsar used this agreement to begin the takeover of the Cossack Hetmanate and in 1667 agreed with the Commonwealth on the division of Ukrainian lands. Ukraine was divided and exhausted. This time in Ukrainian history was called Ruins. In 1708, Hetman Ivan Mazepa tried to restore the unity and independence of the Ukrainian state. He enlisted the support of the Swedish king Charles XII and marched against the Moscow Tsar Peter I, but the allied forces were defeated. After the defeat of Mazepa, the Cossack Hetmanate gradually lost its autonomy. In 1765, the power of the Hetman was abolished. Ten years later, Russian troops destroyed the Zaporizhian Sich. Then the Russian authorities turned the local peasants and a significant part of the Cossacks into serfs who became de facto slaves. Subsequently, the Russian Empire annexed the Crimean Khanate, violating previously concluded agreements with the Tatars. After the partitions of the Commonwealth, most of the Ukrainian lands became part of the Russian Empire, while the rest became part of the Austrian Empire. The Russian imperial regime saw the development of the Ukrainian national movement as a threat, so it issued the Valuev Circular and the Mzukaze, which restricted and prohibited the distribution and publication of texts in the Ukrainian language and denied its existence. Within the Austrian Empire, the Ukrainians had more political and national rights. Here, some Ukrainian intellectuals fled from Russian oppression. Here in 1890, the first Ukrainian political party, the Ukrainian Radical Party, URP, was created, headed by the writer and scientist Ivan Franko. In the second half of the 19th century, active industrialization was evolving on Ukrainian lands. The most active development was going on in industrial centers of southeastern Ukraine. In addition, urbanization was increasing, so the population of Kyiv during the 19th century increased 10 times and the population of Odessa increased by 20. With the development of capitalism, social and property inequality grew, which contributed to the spread of socialist ideas on the territory of Ukraine. The First World War brought millions of deaths, decay and disintegration of empires and nation-states. Ukrainians proclaimed the Ukrainian People's Republic II in 1917, after the October Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The Western Ukrainian People's Republic was created in November of the following year on the Ukrainian lands, which were part of Austria-Hungary. On January 22, 1919, this state joined the rest of Ukraine. However, the offensive of Soviet Russia, the Russian White Guards and the Polish Army led to the defeat of the Ukrainian state. In addition to the offensive of the superior enemy forces, what failed the Ukrainians was the lack of national unity and the not always thoughtful leadership of the state from the side of the Ukrainian authorities. Most of the Ukrainian lands were ruled by a totalitarian regime in the Communist USSR. A puppet republic of the Ukrainian SSR was formally established. During the interwar years, the Ukrainians of the Soviet Union experienced famine, forced collectivization, forced industrialization and dispossession. In the 1930s, Ukrainians experienced a Holodomor that caused about 4 million deaths and Stalinist terror, which resulted in the destruction of a large part of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, which was recorded in history as the Executed Renaissance. In 1939, World War II came to Ukrainian lands, started by Nazi Germany together with the USSR. The war allowed the Soviet Union to seize the territories of western Ukraine and the southern Odessa region, where the Soviet system was immediately introduced, and numerous repressions were carried out. Two years later, however, German forces quickly defeated their former allies and occupied the entire territory of Ukraine. At the same time, there was a conflict between the German authorities and the Ukrainian nationalists, who created their Ukrainian Insurgent Army, UPA. The army fought against both German and Soviet invaders. The UPA's struggle with the Soviet Union continued until the 1950s, and the last rebels left the underground only after Ukraine gained independence. It was only at the cost of extraordinary losses, mobilization of its economic potential, and assistance to the US and new allies in the anti-Hitler coalition that the Soviet Union was able to recover the lost territories. Ukraine lost about 8 million people in that war, 3 million died in the fighting, and more than 1 million Ukrainian Jews died because of the Holocaust. In May 1944, more than 230,000 Crimean Tatars were deported by the Soviet regime. Around 206,000 Ukrainians were later deported and suspected of links with the UPA. In addition, after the war, the Zakarpattya region was added to the USSR. After the end of the war, the people of Ukraine had to endure another artificially provoked famine and post-war reconstruction difficulties. Along with this, the processes of Russification of Ukrainian schools and mass media increased. In 1954, to overcome the economic crisis in Crimea, the peninsula was united with mainland Soviet Ukraine. Despite certain achievements in the field of space and military technology, the economy of the USSR remained inefficient. The standard of living of citizens was low. The average Soviet salary was not enough to buy a TV, not to mention a car. In addition, as a result of chronic shortages, even banal tangerines or jeans were inaccessible to most Ukrainian SSR residents. As a result of the actions of the Soviet power, environmental problems were added to the economic and political issues of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded. This disaster has become one of the biggest man-made technogenic disasters, and its consequences have been felt by dozens of European countries. The stagnation and collapse of the inefficient Soviet economy, heavy losses during the war in Afghanistan, and the rise of the national movement increased the vulnerability of the Soviet regime. The launched restructuring process contributed to the legalization of the activities of the Ukrainian patriotic forces that spoke for the freedom of their state. On August 24, 1991, the Parliament of Ukraine proclaimed independence, and in December, 90% of citizens supported this decision. The idea of reincarnation of the USSR was finally destroyed. Since then, Ukraine has taken the way of rather difficult transformations toward building a democratic society. Oligarchic groups, low levels of economic prosperity, corruption, and presidents who chose an authoritarian style of government interfered with this process significantly. Two revolutions erupted against corruption, authoritarianism, and attempts to subjugate Ukraine to Russia, leading to the fall of Yanukovych's regime and the election of a pro-European development vector. Not accepting the loss of Ukraine as its dependent territory, Russia launched a hybrid invasion in 2014 and occupied Crimea and parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. In 2022, the Russian army launched a full-scale offensive to conquer all of Ukraine, but the Ukrainians courageously continued to repel the Russian attack, and also they inflicted many sensitive defeats on the aggressor.