Ukraine history - The beginning of Ukraine

All about Ukraine in 10 squares

Overview

Economy

Language

Land
Resources
and
Climate

Click
square
for
more
info

Ukraine history articles:

Ukraine was not widely called by its present name until the 19th century. Different parts of Ukraine were invaded and occupied in the first millennium BC by the Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians and in the first millennium of the Christian by the Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Avars, Khazars, Magyars, and Pechenegs.

The most significant development of this entire period, however, was the movement of some Slavic tribes in the 5th and 6th centuries from their primordial homeland north of the Carpathian Mountains eastward into the forest and forest-steppe region of western and north-central Ukraine. From there the Slavs would eventually expand farther north into territories of the future Russian state around Moscow.

Ukraine history - Kievan Rus map

Among the Slavs' earliest settlements was that of Kiev along the Dnepr River, which was the capital of the Polianian tribe among them. The state known as Kievan Rus arose from the intermixture of the Polianians with those Varangians (Norsemen) who controlled the Dnepr River trade route connecting the Baltic Sea with Byzantium. The name Rus, which first designated the lands around Kiev, later came to include the entire Kievan domain.

Ukraine history - Kievan Rus period picture

The Kievan Rus state reached its zenith in the 10th and 11th centuries under the rulers Vladimir I (St. Vladimir) and his son Yaroslav I (Yaroslav the Wise). Vladimir I adopted Christianity as the official religion of his realm about ad 990, and a church hierarchy was formed under the auspices of the Byzantines and the patriarch at Constantinople.

Ukraine history - Kievan Rus period ships

Christianity gave the eastern Slavic peoples their first written language, called Church Slavonic. Kiev Rus reached the height of its power in the 11th century, and Kiev became eastern Europe's chief political and cultural centre.

Ukraine history - Kievan Rus period field

The 12th and 13th centuries saw the decline of Kiev owing to internal dissension, struggles with the invading Kipchak, and shifts in trade routes. The Mongol conquest in the mid-13th century decisively ended Kiev power, but the Slavic principality of Galicia-Volhynia in western Ukraine that had emerged about 1200 continued into the 14th century.

Ukraine history - Kievan Rus period warriors

In the 14th century Lithuania annexed most Ukrainian lands except for the Galician principality, which passed to the kingdom of Poland; and in the meantime southern Ukraine remained under the control of the Mongol khanate of the Golden Horde. After the Union of Lublin in 1569, rule over Ukraine was transferred from Lithuania to Poland. The negotiation of the Union of Brest-Litovsk in 1596 divided the Ukrainians into Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic faithful.

Ukraine history - Kievan Rus period boats

Religious dissent and social strife between the Ukrainians and their Polish overlords were augmented by the Zaporozhian Cossacks, nominally subjects of the Polish king but in fact a class of free warriors. From their stronghold along the lower Dnepr River, the Cossacks in 1648, led by their hetman (military leader) Bohdan Khmelnitsky, rose against the Poles and formed a quasi-independent, if short-lived, state.

Ukraine history - Kievan Rus period people

top