Ukraine

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Ukraine (Ukrainian: Україна, Ukrayina, Template:IPA) is a country in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the northeast, Belarus to the north, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the southwest and the Black Sea to the south. The historic city of Kiev (Kyiv) is the republic's capital.

From at least the ninth century the territory of present-day Ukraine was a key centre of medieval East Slavic civilization that formed the state that became known as Kievan Rus and for the following several centuries the territory was divided between a number of regional powers. After a brief period of independence (1917-1921) following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Ukraine became one of the founding Soviet Republics in 1922. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's territory was enlarged westward after the Second World War and finally in 1954 with the Crimea transfer. Ukraine became independent again after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

Etymology of the name

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The etymology of the Ukrainian name Ukrayina stems from the Old Slavic root *kraj-, meaning "cut". Opinions vary as to the immediate derivation, but the first known mentioning in the chronicle of 1187 uses the word synonymously with principality, literally "land cut out for a Prince" (probably referring to the general feudal practice of a king 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" ("the Princedom", "our Princedom") transformed to a wider meaning "the land of the people", "our land" (cf. the contemporary Ukrainian word krajina - "country").

Another interpretation of the word Ukrayina is borderland, frontier (cf. Russian okraina "outskirts"; a semantic parallel to -mark in Denmark, cf. Marches); cf. also Krajina.

In English, the country is sometimes referred to with the definite article, as the Ukraine, as in the Netherlands, the Gambia, the Sudan or the Congo. However, usage without the article is becoming more frequent, and has become established in journalism and diplomacy since the country's independence (for example, within the style guides of The Economist, The Guardian and The Times). Additionally, the usage of the Ukraine in English is sometimes discouraged because of the inference that it regards Ukraine as merely a region rather than an independent nation-state.

History

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Human settlement in the territory of Ukraine has been documented into distant prehistory. The late neolithic Trypillian culture flourished from ca. 4500 BC to 3000 BC.

In antiquity, the southern and eastern parts of modern Ukraine were populated by Iranian nomads called Scythians. The Scythian Kingdom existed in Ukraine 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 7th century 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.

The majority of the Bulgar tribes migrated in several directions at the end of the seventh century and the remains of their state was swept by the Khazars, a Turkic semi-nomadic people from Central Asia which later adopted Judaism. The Khazars founded the independent Khazar kingdom in the southeastern part of today's Europe, near the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus. In addition to western Kazakhstan, the Khazar kingdom also included territory in what is now eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, southern Russia, and Crimea.

Image:Kievan Rus en.jpg During the tenth and eleventh centuries the territory of Ukraine became the center 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 the late 800s. According to the Primary Chronicle the Kievan Rus' elite initially consisted of Varangians from present-day 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 Rurikid Princes. The seat of Kiev, the most prestigious and influential of all principalities, became a subject of many rivarlies 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 Monomakh 1113—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.

On the Ukrainian territory, the state of Kievan Rus' was succeeded by the principalities of Halych and Volodymyr-Volynskyi, which were merged into the state of Halych-Volynia. In the mid 14th century it was subjugated by Casimir IV of Poland while the heartland of Rus', including Kiev, fell under the Gedimid Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Following the 1386 marriage of Lithuania's Grand Duke Jagiello to Poland's Queen Jadwiga, most of the Ukrainian territory was cotrolled by the increasingly Ruthenized Lithuanian rulers as part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the term Ruthenia and Ruthenians as the Latinized versions of "Rus'", became widely applied to the land and its people, respectively).

Image:Pol-lith commonwealth map.jpg By the 1569 Union of Lublin that formed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a significant part of Ukraine 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 as such transitions were beneficial for achieving the political influence within the state, e.g. King Michael of Poland who reigned in 1640—1673 was of the originally 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 1596 Union of Brest, created by Zygmunt III, 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 17th 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 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 emphasize 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.

In 1648 Bohdan Khmelnytsky lead the largest of the Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth and the Polish king John II Casimir. This uprising finally led to a partition of Ukraine between Poland and Russia. Left-Bank Ukraine was eventually integrated into Russia as the Cossack Hetmanate, following the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav. After the partitions of Poland in the end of the eighteenth century by Prussia, Habsburg Austria, and Russia at the end of the eighteenth century, Western Ukrainian (Galicia) was taken over by Austria, while the rest of Ukraine was progressively incorporated into the Russian Empire. Despite the promises of Ukrainian autonomy given by the treaty of Pereyaslav, Ukrainians never received the freedoms they were hoping for from Imperial Russia. The Ukrainians played an important role in the frequent wars between East European monarchies and the Ottoman Empire. As a result of Russian successes in the wars against Turkey and Crimean Khanate of 1768-74 and 1787-1792, the territories along the Black Sea coast were annexed to the Russian Empire as well. Within the Empire Ukrainians frequently rose to the highest offices of Russian state (e.g., Aleksey Razumovsky, Alexander Bezborodko, Ivan Paskevich), and dominated the Russian Orthodox Church (e.g., Stephen Yavorsky, Feofan Prokopovich, Dimitry of Rostov). In the same time, the tsar regime was implementing a harsh policy of Russification, banning the use of the Ukrainian language in print, and in public.

During World War I Austro-Hungarian authorities subjected to repression Ukrainians in Galicia that sympathized with Russia. Over twenty thousand supporters of Russia are arrested and placed in the Austrian concentration camp in Talerhof, Styria, and in a fortress at Terezín, now in the Czech Republic.

Image:West ukraine.png With the Russian and Austrian empires' collapse following the World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917 Ukrainian national movement for self-determination reemerged. During 1917-20 several separate Ukrainian states briefly emerged: the Central Rada, the Hetmanate, the Directorate, the Ukrainian People's Republic and the West Ukrainian People's Republic. However, with the defeat of the latter in the Polish-Ukrainian War and the failure of the Polish Kiev Offensive (1920) of the Polish-Soviet War, the Peace of Riga concluded in March 1921 between Poland and Bolsheviks left Ukraine divided again. The western part of Ukraine had been incorporated into newly organized Second Polish Republic, and the larger, central and eastern part, established as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in March of 1919, later became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, when it was formed in December of 1922.

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 quadrupoled 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 despite 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. At least four million starved to death in a famine (some estimates give a higher death tolls of five to seven million), known as the Holodomor.

The times also coincided with the Soviet assault on the national political and cultural elite often accused in "nationalist deviations" as the Ukrainization policies were reversed at the turn of the decade. Two waves of purges (1929-1934 and 1936-1938) resulted in the elimination of the four-fifth 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 shot and killed by the Einsatzgruppen, sometimes with the help of Ukrainian 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.

After the Second World War, the borders of then-Soviet Ukraine were extended to the West (see Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Curzon line), uniting most Ukrainians under one political state with much of the non-Ukrainian population of the attached territories having been deported. After the war Ukraine became a member of the United Nations Organization. In 1954, Crimea was transferred from the RSFSR to Ukraine. This decision of Nikita Khrushchev, intended to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav, seen in Soviet historiography as the 'union of two fraternal peoples', led to tensions between Russia and Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Independence was achieved in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Ukraine was a founding member of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Government and Politics

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Ukraine is a democracy under a semi-presidential system with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The President of Ukraine is elected by countrywide popular vote and is the head of the executive branch. The Prime Minister is appointed by the 450-seat parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. The parliament also approves the Cabinet of Ministers, proposed by the Prime Minister and the President. The heads of all central agencies and regional and district administrations are appointed by the President.

Laws, acts of the parliament and the Cabinet, presidential edicts, and acts of the Crimean parliament (Autonomous Republic of Crimea) may be nullified by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, when they are found to violate the Constitution of Ukraine. Other normative acts are subject to judicial review. The Supreme Court of Ukraine is the main body in the system of courts of general jurisdiction.

Local government is officially guaranteed. Local councils and city mayors are popularly elected and exercise control over local budgets. In practice, the scope of local self-government is limited.

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.

See also:

• Ukrainian parliamentary election, 2006
• Ukrainian presidential election, 2004
• Foreign relations of Ukraine

Subdivisions

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Ukraine is subdivided into twenty-four oblasts (provinces) and one autonomous republic, Crimea. Additionally, two cities, Kiev and Sevastopol, have a special legal status.

See also regions of Ukraine.

Geography

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The Ukrainian landscape consists mostly of fertile plains, or steppes, and plateaus, crossed by rivers such as the Dnieper, Seversky Donets, Dniester and the Southern Buh as they flow south into the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. To the southwest the delta of the Danube forms the border with Romania. The country's only mountains are the Carpathian Mountains in the west, of which the highest is the Hora Hoverla at 2,061 metres (6,762 ft), and those in the Crimean peninsula, in the extreme south along the coast.

Ukraine has a mostly temperate continental climate, though a more mediterranean climate is found on the southern Crimean coast. Precipitation is disproportionately distributed; it is highest in the west and north and lesser in the east and southeast. Winters vary from cool along the Black Sea to cold farther inland. Summers are warm across the greater part of the country, but generally hot in the south.

Economy

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Formerly an important industrial and agricultural region of the Soviet Union, Ukraine now depends on Russia for most energy supplies, especially natural gas, although lately it has been trying to diversify its sources. The lack of significant structural reform has made the Ukrainian economy vulnerable to external shocks. After 1991 the government liberalised most prices and erected a legal framework for privatisation, but widespread resistance to reform within the government soon stalled reform efforts and led to some backtracking. Output by 1999 had fallen to less than 40% of the 1991 level. Loose monetary policies pushed inflation to hyperinflationary levels in late 1993.

The current government has pledged to reduce the number of government agencies, streamline the regulatory process, create a legal environment to encourage entrepreneurs, and enact a comprehensive tax overhaul. Reforms in the more politically sensitive areas of structural reform and land privatisation are still lagging. Outside institutions—particularly the IMF—have encouraged Ukraine to quicken the pace and scope of reforms and have threatened to withdraw financial support.

The GDP in 2000 showed strong export-based growth of 6%—the first growth since independence—and industrial production grew 12.9%. The economy continued to expand in 2001, as real GDP rose 9% and industrial output grew by over 14%. Growth was undergirded by strong domestic demand and growing consumer and investor confidence. Rapid economic growth in 2002 - 2004 is largely attributed to a surge in steel exports to China.

Demographics

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According to 2001 Ukrainian Census ethnic Ukrainians make up 77.8% of the population. The minorities include significant groups of ethnic Russians (17.3%), Belarusians (0.6%), Moldavians (0.5%), Crimean Tatars (0.5%), Bulgarians (0.4%), Hungarians (0.3%), Romanians (0.3%), Poles (0.3%), Jews (0.2%), Armenians (0.2%), Greeks (0.2%) and Tatars (0.2%).

The industrial regions in the east and south-east are the most heavily populated, and about 67.2% of the population lives in urban areas.

Ukrainian is the only official state language. Russian, which was a de facto official language in the Soviet Union, is largely used by many people, especially in eastern and southern Ukraine. According to the census, 67.5% of the population declared Ukrainian as their native language and 29.6% declared Russian. It is sometimes difficult to determine the extent of the two languages , since many people use a Surzhyk, a Ukrainian-Russian mix where the mixed vocabulary is often combined with Ukrainian grammar and pronunciation, while claiming in surveys that they speak Russian or Ukrainian (most of them are able to speak both literary languages though). Besides, some ethnic Ukrainians while calling Ukrainian as their "native" language are using Russian more frequently in their daily lives. These details result in a significant difference across different survey results, as even a small restating of a question switches responses of a significant group of people.[2],[3]

Standard literary Ukrainian is mainly spoken in western and central Ukraine. In western Ukraine, Ukrainian is also the dominant language in cities (e.g. Lviv). In central Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russian are both equally used in cities (Kiev remains somewhat more Russian speaking[4]), while Ukrainian is the dominant language in rural communities. In eastern and southern Ukraine mainly Russian is used in cities and Surzhyk is used in rural areas.

According to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea constitution, Ukrainian is the only state language of the republic.[5] However, the republic's constitution specifically recognizes Russian as the language of the majority of its population and guarantees its usage "in all spheres of public life". Similarly, the Crimean Tatar language (the language of a sizeable 12% minority of the republic[6]) is guaranteed a special state protection as well as the "languages of other nationalities". Russian speakers constitute an overwhelming majority of the Crimean population (77%) with Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar speakers comprise 10.1% and 11.4%, respectively.[7]

Romanians and Moldavians are another significant minority in Ukraine concentrated mainly in Chernivtsi Oblast.

After the independence a significant change in the language of instructions in educational institutions took place. According to the Razumkov centre, while in 1991/92 49% of high school students were receiving their education in Ukrainian, and 50% in Russian, in 2000/01 70% of students attended the Ukrainian schools (schools where Ukrainian is the primary language of instructions) while 29% were studying in Russian schools (both languages are studied in all schools in Ukraine as part of the curricula).This trend is opposite to the changes in 70s and 80s when the number of Russian schools had constantly being increased. The transition toward Ukrainian language usage is taking a long time, and in some schools, that were switched to Ukrainian from Russian a part or most of the instruction is still given in Russian.

In general, most of the country population is bilingual at least to some degree. Most of the Ukrainophone population are also fluent in Russian and many Russian native speakers in Ukraine are fluent in Ukrainian as well. An overwhelming majority has at least a reasonable command in Ukrainian even in primarily Russophone southern and eastern parts of the country.

In the context of low salaries and unemployment within Ukraine, labor emigration became a mass phenomenon at the end of the 1990s. Although estimates vary, approximately two to three million Ukrainian citizens are currently working abroad, most of them illegally, in construction, service, housekeeping, and agriculture industries. Moreover, many Ukrainian women has been dragged into prostitution in foreign lands, mainly Western Europe and Turkey.

Ukrainian embassies report that 300,000 Ukrainian citizens are working in Poland, 200,000 in Italy, approximately 200,000 in the Czech Republic, 150,000 in Portugal, 100,000 in Spain, 35,000 in Turkey, and 20,000 in the US. The largest number of Ukrainian workers abroad, about one million, are in the Russian Federation. [8], [9] (see Demographics of Ukraine for more information)

Religion

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The dominant religion in Ukraine is Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which is currently split between three Church bodies. The distant second is the Eastern Rite Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which practices similar Liturgical rite to Eastern Orthodoxy, but is in communion with the Catholic see and recognizes the primacy of the Roman Pope as head of the Church. There are also smaller Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim communities.

Culture

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References

• CIA World Factbook - Ukraine
• Country profile: Ukraine, BBC's Country Profile on Ukraine.
• Country Briefings: Ukraine, by The Economist
• Executive Briefing: Ukraine, by Economist Intelligence Unit.
• Special Report: Ukraine, ongoing coverage by Guardian Unlimited
• Background Note: Ukraine, the U.S. Department of State website
• Ukraine, Portals to the World, Internet resources selected by Library of Congress subject experts
• "Ukraine: Briefly about Her Past and Present", in Welcome to Ukraine, 2003, 1]
• Gregorovich, Andrew, PhD. "Ukraine or 'the Ukraine"

External links

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• The President of Ukraine—Official site
• Verkhovna Rada: the parliamend of Ukraine—Official site (in Ukrainian)
• Government Portal of Ukraine—Official governmental portal
• Archives of Ukraine
• Infoukes—General info on Ukraine's History and Politics
• My Ukraine—General info on Ukraine's culture and geography.
• Ukrainian Language, Culture and Travel Page
• Kiev and Ukraine Travel Guide
• Information about Independent Ukraine
• Web cam shots for selected cities across Ukraine

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