UkraineUkrainian Ukrayinacountry located in eastern Europe, after Russia the second largest on the continent . It is bordered by Belarus on the north, Russia on the east, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea on the south, Moldova and Romania on the southwest, and Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland on the west; in the far southeast, Ukraine is separated from Russia by the Kerch Strait, which connects the Sea of Azov to the Black Seaafter Russia. The capital is Kiev (KyyivKyiv), located on the Dnieper River in north-central Ukraine.

An A fully independent Ukraine emerged only late in the 20th century, after long periods of successive domination by Poland-Lithuania, Russia, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . From 1922 to 1991 Ukraine formed part of the latter under the name (U.S.S.R.). Ukraine had experienced a brief period of independence in 1918–20, but portions of western Ukraine were ruled by Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia in the period between the two World Wars, and Ukraine thereafter became part of the Soviet Union as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic . With the unraveling of the Soviet Union (S.S.R.). When the Soviet Union began to unravel in 1990–91, however, the legislature of the Ukrainian S.S.R. ’s legislature declared sovereignty (July 16, 1990) and then declared outright independence (Aug. 24, 1991), a move that was confirmed by popular approval in a plebiscite soon afterward. (Dec. 1, 1991). With the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself U.S.S.R. in December 1991, Ukraine gained full independence. The country changed its official name to Ukraine, and it helped to found the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

The landRelief

Ukraine consists almost entirely of level plains at an average elevation of 574 feet (175 metres) above sea level. The country occupies the southwestern portion of the East European Plain. In central Ukraine is the Dnieper Lowland, which is flat in the west and gently rolling in the east. To the south another lowland extends along the shores of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov; its level surface, broken only by low rises and shallow depressions, slopes gradually toward the Black Sea. This lowland continues in the Crimean Peninsula as the North Crimean Lowland. The peninsula—a large protrusion into the Black Sea—is connected to the mainland by the Perekop Isthmus.

, an association of countries that were formerly republics of the Soviet Union.


Ukraine is bordered by Belarus to the north, Russia to the east, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea to the south, Moldova and Romania to the southwest, and Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland to the west. In the far southeast, Ukraine is separated from Russia by the Kerch Strait, which connects the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea.


Ukraine occupies the southwestern portion of the Russian Plain (East European Plain). The country consists almost entirely of level plains at an average elevation of 574 feet (175 metres) above sea level. Mountainous areas such as the Ukrainian Carpathians and Crimean Mountains occur only on the country’s borders and account for barely 5 percent of its area. The Ukrainian landscape nevertheless has some diversity, and : its plains are broken by highlands—running in a continuous belt from northwest to southeast—as well as by lowlands.

The rolling plain of the Dnieper Upland, which lies between the middle reaches of the Dnieper (Dnipro) and Southern Buh (Pivdennyy Buh, or the Boh) Buh rivers in west-central Ukraine, is the largest highland area; it is broken up dissected by many river valleys, ravines, and gorges, some more than 1,000 feet (300 metres) deep. On the west the Dnieper Upland is abutted by the rugged Volyn-Podilsk Upland, which rises to 1,549 545 feet (471 metres) at its highest point, Mount Kamula. In West of the Volyn-Podilsk Upland, in extreme western Ukraine, the parallel ranges of the Carpathian Mountains—one of the most picturesque areas in the country—extend for more than 150 miles (240 kilometreskm). The mountains range in height from about 2,000 feet (600 metres) to about 6,500 feet (2,000 metres), rising to 6,762 feet (2,061 metres) at Mount Hoverla, the highest point in the country. In the northern part of Ukraine lie the Pripet Marshes (Polissya), which are crossed by numerous river valleys. The northeastern and southeastern portions of Ukraine are occupied by low uplands rarely reaching an elevation of 1,000 feet . The Crimean Mountains form the southern coast of the Crimean Peninsula, the belt of land between (300 metres).

Among the country’s lowlands are the Pripet Marshes (Polissya), which lie in the northern part of Ukraine and are crossed by numerous river valleys. In east-central Ukraine is the Dnieper Lowland, which is flat in the west and gently rolling in the east. To the south, another lowland extends along the shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Mount Roman-Kosh, at 5,069 feet, is the Crimean Mountains’ highest point. Except for this one mountainous coast, the ; its level surface, broken only by low rises and shallow depressions, slopes gradually toward the Black Sea. The shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov are low and are characterized by narrow, sandy spits of land that jut out into the water; one of these, the Arabat Spit, is about 75 70 miles (113 km) long but averages less than 5 miles (8 km) in width.

The southern lowland continues in the Crimean Peninsula as the North Crimean Lowland. The peninsula—a large protrusion into the Black Sea—is connected to the mainland by the Perekop Isthmus. The Crimean Mountains form the southern coast of the peninsula. Mount Roman-Kosh, at 5,069 feet (1,545 metres), is the mountains’ highest point.


Almost all the major rivers in Ukraine flow northwest to southeast through the plains to empty into the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The Dnieper River, with its hydroelectric dams, huge reservoirs, and many tributaries, dominates the entire central part of Ukraine. Of the total course of the Dnieper, 609 miles (980 km) are in Ukraine, making it by far the longest river in the country, of which it drains more than half. Like the Dnieper, the Southern Buh, with its major tributary, the Inhul, flows into the Black Sea. To the west and southwest, partly draining Ukrainian territory, the Dniester (Dnistro) also flows into the Black Sea; among its numerous tributaries, the largest in Ukraine are the Stryy and the Zbruch. The middle course of the Donets River, a tributary of the Don, flows through southeastern Ukraine and is an important source of water for the Donets Basin (Donbas). The Danube River flows along the southwestern frontier of Ukraine. Marshland, covering almost 3 percent of Ukraine, is found primarily in the northern river valleys and in the lower reaches of the Dnieper, Danube, and other rivers.

The rivers are most important as a water supply, and for this purpose a series of canals has been built, such as the Donets–Donets Basin, the Dnieper–Kryvyy Rih, and the North Crimea. Several of the larger rivers are navigable, including the Dnieper, Danube, Dniester, Pripet, Donets, and Southern Buh (in its lower course). Dams and hydroelectric plants are situated on all the larger rivers.

Ukraine has a few natural lakes, all of them small and most of them scattered over the river floodplains. One of the largest is Lake Svityaz, 11 square miles (28 square km) in area, in the northwest. Small saltwater lakes occur in the Black Sea Lowland and in the Crimea. Larger saline lakes occur along the coast. Known as limans, these bodies of water form at the mouths of rivers or ephemeral streams and are blocked off by sandbars from the sea. Some artificial lakes have been formed, the largest of which are reservoirs at hydroelectric dams. The reservoir of the hydroelectric station dams—e.g., the reservoir on the Dnieper upstream from Kremenchuk is the largest. The Kakhovka, Dnieper, Dniprodzerzhynsk, Kaniv, and Kiev reservoirs make up the rest of the Dnieper cascade. Smaller reservoirs are located on the Dniester and Southern Buh rivers and on tributaries of the Donets River. Small reservoirs for water supply also are also found in the Donets and near Kryvyy Rih basins, near Kharkiv, and other industrial cities. Almost 3 percent of Ukraine is marshland, primarily in the northern river valleys and in the lower reaches of the Dnieper, Danube, and other rivers. Underground water is Three large artesian basins—the Volyn-Podilsk, the Dnieper, and the Black Sea—are exceptionally important for municipal needs and agriculture , especially in three large artesian basins: the Volyn-Podilsk, the Dnieper, and the Black Seaas well.


From northwest to southeast the soils of Ukraine may be divided into three major aggregations: a zone of sandy podzolized soils (a podzol soil is one having an acidic surface of forest humus, a light gray zone of leaching beneath it, and a bottom layer of accumulation), a ; a central belt consisting of the black, extremely fertile Ukrainian chernozems (black-earth soils), and in the southeast ; and a zone of chestnut and salinized soils near the Black Sea.

The podzolized soils occupy about one-fifth of the country’s area, mostly in the north and northwest. These soils were formed by the extension of postglacial forests into regions of grassy steppe; most such soils may be farmed, although they require the addition of nutrients leached by the podzolizing process to obtain good harvests.

The chernozems of central Ukraine are , among the most fertile soils in the world, occupying occupy about two-thirds of the country’s area. These soils may be divided into three broad groups: in the north a belt of the so-called deep chernozems (the most fertile; about five feet , about 5 feet (1.5 metres) thick and rich in humus); south and east of the former, a zone of prairie, or ordinary, chernozems, which are equally rich in humus but only about three 3 feet (1 metre) thick; and the southernmost belt, which is even thinner and has still less humus. Interspersed in various uplands and along the northern and western perimeters of the deep chernozems are mixed mixtures of gray forest soils and podzolized black-earth soils, which together occupy much of Ukraine’s remaining area. All these soils are very fertile when sufficient water is available. Their However, their intensive cultivation, especially on steep slopes, has led to widespread soil erosion and gullying, however.

The smallest proportion of the soil cover consists of the chestnut soils of the southern and eastern regions, which . They become increasingly salinized to the south as they approach the Black Sea.


Ukraine lies in a temperate climatic zone influenced by moderately warm, humid air from the Atlantic Ocean. Winters in the west are considerably milder than those in the east. In summer, on the other hand, the east often experiences higher temperatures than the west. Average annual temperatures range from 42°–45° F about 42–45 °F (5.5°–7° C5–7 °C) in the north to 52°–55° F (11°–13° Cabout 52–55 °F (11–13 °C) in the south. The average temperature in January, the coldest month, is 26° F (-3° Cabout 26 °F (−3 °C) in the southwest and 18° F (-8° Cabout 18 °F (−8 °C) in the northeast. The average in July, the hottest month, is 73° F (23° Cabout 73 °F (23 °C) in the southeast and 64° F (18° Cabout 64 °F (18 °C) in the northwest.

Precipitation is uneven, with two to three times as much falling in the warmer seasons as in the cold. Maximum precipitation generally occurs in June and July, while the minimum falls in February. Snow falls mainly in late November and early December, varying ; accumulation varies in depth from a few inches in the Steppe steppe region (in the south) to several feet in the Carpathians. Western Ukraine, notably the Carpathian Mountains area, receives the highest annual precipitation—more than 47 inches (1,200 millimetresmm). The lowlands along the Black Sea and in the Crimea, by contrast, receive less than 16 inches (400 mm) annually. The remaining areas of Ukraine receive 16 to 24 inches (400 to 600 mm) of precipitation.

The In contrast to the rest of Ukraine, the southern shore of the Crimea has a warm, gentle, Mediterranean-type climate. Winters are mild and rainy, with little snow, and the average January temperature is 39° F (4° C39 °F (4 °C). Summers are dry and hot, with an average July temperature of 75° F (24° C75 °F (24 °C).

Plant lifeIn northern Ukraine the abundant rainfall and moderate temperatures provide favourable conditions for forest vegetation. Woodlands alternate with areas of steppe in the central region. The total area of forested land, however, originally was only about 24 million acres (9.7 million hectares), and more than one-third of this and animal life

Though much of Ukraine’s original plant cover has been cleared for cultivation. Most of the rich forest lands are in the Carpathian region of western Ukraine, with forests of poorer quality in the poorly drained Polissya region in northern Ukraine. There is very little woodland in southern Ukraine, which mostly consists of flat, treeless plains, many of which are under cultivation.Three natural zones of vegetation are distinguishable from north to south: , three main zones of natural vegetation are still distinguishable. From north to south, they are the Polissya (woodland and marsh), the forest-steppe, and the Steppesteppe.

The Polissya zone lies in the northwest and north, with an area of about . More than one-third of its area—about 44,000 square miles , of which more than one-third is (114,000 square km)—is arable land. Nearly one-quarter of this land it is covered with mixed woodland, including oak, elm, birch, hornbeam, ash, maple, pine, linden, alder, poplar, willow, and beech. About 5 percent is peat bog, a substantial portion is marshland, and the river valleys are floodplains. The Polissya contains the southernmost portions of the Pripet Marshes, and Ukraine has undertaken major efforts to drain these swamplands and reclaim the land for agriculture. By the late 1980s some 11,600 square miles of marshland had been drained, mostly in the Polissya.

The The forest-steppe, which covers an area of about 78,000 -square-mile forest-steppe square miles (202,000 square km), extends south from the Polissya. Arable land covers about About two-thirds of this agricultural region , forests is arable land; forests take up only about one-eighth of the area.

Farther south, near the Black Sea, Sea of Azov, and Crimean Mountains, the forest-steppe joins the Steppe zone (steppe zone, which is about 89,000 square miles (231,000 square km) in area. Remnants Many of the natural vegetation of the Steppe are protected in nature reserves, the largest being the Askaniya-Nova reserve in Kherson oblast. The flat, treeless plains in this region are under cultivation, although low annual precipitation and hot , dry summers in the semiarid Steppe zone make supplemental irrigation necessary. Three other natural Remnants of the natural vegetation of the steppe, including its characteristic fescue and feather grasses, are protected in nature reserves.

Other natural regions are found near the borders of the country: the Carpathians, the Crimean Mountains, and the southern coast of the Crimean Peninsula. In the mountainous areas the lower . Most of the country’s rich forestlands are in the Carpathian region of western Ukraine. The lower mountain slopes are covered with mixed forests , and the intermediate slopes (4,000–5,000 feet) with pine forests; these give way to Alpine meadows at higher altitudes. A Along the southern coast of the Crimean Peninsula, a narrow strip of land, only six miles about 6 miles (10 km) wide, along the southern coast of the Crimea constitutes a unique natural region where both deciduous and evergreen grasses and shrubs grow. Near the city of Yalta is located the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, in which plants from almost every country in the world are found. An exceptionally beautiful environment, a warm climate, and the sea make the southern shore of the Crimea one of the finest vacation areas in the world.

Animal life

The animal life of Ukraine is diverse, with about 350 species of birds, more than 100 species of mammals, and more than 200 species of fish. The most common predators are the wolfwolves, foxfoxes, wildcatwildcats, and martenmartens, while hoofed animals include the roe deer, wild pigpigs, and sometimes elk and mouflon mouflons (a species of wild sheep). The wide variety of rodents includes gophers, hamsters, jerboas, and field mice. The major bird species are black and hazel grouse, owlowls, gullgulls, and partridgepartridges, as well as many migrating birds, such as wild goosegeese, duckducks, and storkstorks. Among the fish are pike, carp, bream, perch, sturgeonsturgeons, and sterletsterlets. Introduced and wellacclimatized well-acclimatized wildlife includes muskratmuskrats, raccoonraccoons, beaverbeavers, nutrianutrias, and silver fox.

Nature reserves

The conservation of the biological heritage of the country is given high priority, and considerable effort is expended on it. Ukraine’s foxes.

Numerous nature and game reserves reflect Ukraine’s commitment to the conservation of its biological heritage. The country’s first nature reserve, Askaniya-Nova, began as a private wildlife refuge in 1875. The Ukrainian government designated it a national park in 1919 and redesignated it a reserve in 1921. This reserve, occupying about 27,400 acres, ; today it protects a portion of virgin steppe, with characteristic fescue and feather grasses. Some 40 different mammals, including the onager and Przewalski’s horse, have been introduced there as part of a successful program of breeding endangered species; even ostriches also have been successfully introduced. Ukraine has several large game reserves.Among the other important reserves is the Black Sea Nature Reserve (established 1927; area 90,400 acres), including protected areas of the sea. It is among the most visited reserves in Ukraine, the attractions including The separate sections of the Ukrainian Steppe Reserve also preserve various types of steppe. The Black Sea Nature Reserve shelters many species of waterfowl , and is the only Ukrainian breeding ground in Ukraine of the Mediterranean gull (Larus melanocephalus. The ). Also located on the Black Sea, the Danube Water Meadows (Plavni) reserve (36,600 acres) was established in 1981 for the scientific study and protection of the Reserve protects the Danube River’s tidewater biota. The Ukrainian Steppe reserve is discontinuous, comprising three separate sections, each of which preserves a special type of steppe: the Mykhayliv (virgin meadow steppe), the Khomutovsky (chernozem, or black-earth, steppe), and the Kamyani Mohyly (a stony steppe). Other reserves in Ukraine protect preserve segments of the forest-steppe woodland, the marshes and forests of the Polissya, and sites of the mountains and the rock rocky coast in of the Crimea.

EnvironmentEnvironmental concerns




The 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has created severe environmental problems in northwestern Ukraine (see Chernobyl accident). Vast areas of land are contaminated by dangerous short- and long-lived radioactive isotopes, notably strontium-90, which can replace calcium in foods and become concentrated in bones and teeth. Contaminated agricultural lands near Chernobyl will be unsafe for thousands of years, though some of these areas continue to be occupied and farmed. Several thousand premature deaths from cancer deaths are expected over the long term.

The peopleEthnic groups and languagesThe population of Ukraine is slightly smaller than that of such western European countries as France, Italy, or the United Kingdom, but it is only one-third that of neighbouring Russia. People
Ethnic groups

When Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, a policy of Russian in-migration and Ukrainian out-migration was in effect, and ethnic Ukrainians’ share of the population in Ukraine declined from 77 percent in 1959 to 73 percent in 1991. The 1991 Soviet census also revealed Russians But that trend reversed after the country gained independence, and, by the turn of the 21st century, ethnic Ukrainians made up more than three-quarters of the population. Russians continue to be the largest minority, at 22 percent. The remaining minorities, in 1991 making up about 5 percent of the population, include Jews, though they now constitute less than one-fifth of the population. The remainder of the population includes Belarusians, Moldovans, Bulgarians, Poles, Hungarians, and RomaniansRomanians, Roma (Gypsies), and other groups. The Crimean Tatars, who were forcibly deported to Uzbekistan and other Central Asian republics in 1944, began returning to the Crimea in large numbers in 1989 and now number about 250,000. The predominant religion in Ukraine is Eastern Orthodoxy, although in western Ukraine the Ukrainian Catholic faith prevails.During the Soviet period, Russian was the required ; by the early 21st century they constituted one of the largest non-Russian minority groups.

Historically, Ukraine had large Jewish and Polish populations, particularly in the Right Bank region (west of the Dnieper River). In fact, in the late 19th century slightly more than one-quarter of the world’s Jewish population (estimated at 10 million) lived in ethnic Ukrainian territory. This predominantly Yiddish-speaking population was greatly reduced by emigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and by the devastation of the Holocaust. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, large numbers of Ukraine’s remaining Jews emigrated, mainly to Israel. At the turn of the 21st century, the several hundred thousand Jews left in Ukraine made up less than 1 percent of the Ukrainian population. Most of Ukraine’s large Polish minority was resettled in Poland after World War II as part of a Soviet plan to have ethnic settlement match territorial boundaries.


The vast majority of people in Ukraine speak Ukrainian, which is written with a form of the Cyrillic alphabet. The language—belonging with Russian and Belarusian to the East Slavic branch of the Slavic language family—is closely related to Russian but also has distinct similarities to the Polish language. Significant numbers of people in the country speak Polish, Yiddish, Rusyn, Belarusian, Romanian or Moldovan, Bulgarian, Crimean Turkish, or Hungarian. Russian is the most important minority language.

During the rule of imperial Russia and under the Soviet Union, Russian was the common language of government administration and public life in Ukraine. In 1991 1989 Ukrainian once again became the country’s official language, though . The status of Ukrainian as the sole official language was confirmed in the 1996 Ukrainian constitution. However, in the Crimea, which has an autonomous status within Ukraine and where there is a Russian-speaking majority, Russian is the official language. In addition, primary and secondary schools using Russian as the language of instruction still prevail in the Donets Basin and other areas with large Russian minorities. Ukrainian—belonging to the East Slavic language family that also includes Russian and Belarusian—uses a form of the Cyrillic alphabet. It is closely related to Russian, and the two languages are mutually intelligible. Significant minorities speak Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Bulgarian, or Hungarian.

Settlement patternsMore than one-half of Religion

The predominant religion in Ukraine, practiced by more than half the population, is Eastern Orthodoxy. Most of the adherents belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Moscow Patriarchate, though the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Kiev Patriarchate is important as well. A smaller number of Orthodox Christians belong to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. In western Ukraine the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church prevails. There are also significant numbers of Protestants, Roman Catholics, and independent Christians in the country. Minority religions include Islam—practiced primarily by the Crimean Tatars—and Judaism. More than one-tenth of Ukrainians are not religious.

Settlement patterns

More than half the population lives in urban areas. The highest High population densities occur in southeastern and south-central Ukraine, in the highly industrialized regions of the Donets Basin and the Dnieper Bend, which together contain more than one-third of the total urban population. The Portions of western Ukraine and the Kiev area are densely populated as well. Besides the capital, major cities in Ukraine are Kiev, include Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Odessa, Zaporizhzhya, Lviv, and Kryvyy Rih. Of the rural population, more than half live is found in large villages (1,000 to 5,000 inhabitants), and most of these people are employed in a rural economy based on farming. The highest rural population densities are found in the wide belt of forest-steppe extending east-west across central Ukraine, where the extremely fertile soils and balanced climatic conditions are most favourable for agriculture.

The economyEconomy

Ukraine’s modern economy was developed as an integral part of the larger economy of the Soviet Union. Yet, while receiving a smaller share (16 percent in the 1980s) of the Soviet Union’s investment funds and producing a greater proportion of goods with a lower set price, Ukraine was still able to produce a larger share of total output in the industrial (17 percent) and especially the agricultural (21 percent) sectors of the Soviet economy. In effect, a centrally directed transfer of wealth from Ukraine, amounting to one-fifth of its national income, helped to finance economic development in other parts of the Soviet Union, notably Russia and Kazakhstan.

The collapse of By the late Soviet period, however, the Ukrainian economy in 1990–91 and a subsequent was under severe strain, and it contracted sharply early in the independence era. A period of extreme currency inflation in Ukraine the early 1990s brought great hardship to most of the population. Despite early hopes that Ukrainian economic independence, with independence—with the concomitant end to the transfer of funds and resources to other parts of the Soviet Union, would Union—would alleviate the declining economy and standard of living, Ukraine entered a period of severe economic decline. Daily life in Ukraine became a struggle, particularly for those living on fixed incomes, as prices rose sharply. Citizens have compensated in a number of ways: more than half grow grew their own food, workers often hold held two or three jobs, and many acquire acquired basic necessities through a flourishing barter economy.

Extractive and industrial processes are concentrated in the Donets Basin (commonly called Donbas) and along the Dnieper River. In the far west, mining takes place in the Lviv-Volyn coal basin north of Lviv and in Subcarpathia, south of Lviv and northeast of the Carpathian Mountains.


Ukraine has extremely rich and complementary mineral resources in high concentrations and close proximity to each other. Rich iron ore reserves located in the vicinity of Kryvyy Rih, Kremenchuk, Bilozerka, Mariupol, and Kerch form the basis of Ukraine’s large iron-and-steel industry. One of the richest areas of manganese-bearing ores in the world is located near Nikopol. Bituminous and anthracite coal used for coke are mined in the Donets Basin. Energy for thermal power stations is obtained using the large reserves of brown coal found in the Dnieper River basin (north of Kryvyy Rih) and the bituminous coal deposits of the Lviv-Volyn basin.

The three major areas producing natural gas and petroleum in Ukraine are the Subcarpathian region, exploited since the late 19th–early 20th centuries, and the Dnieper-Donets and Crimean regions, both developed since World War II. Following World War II, the extraction of natural gas in Ukraine soared until it accounted in the early 1960s for one-third of the Soviet Union’s total output. Natural gas production declined after 1975, however, and a similar pattern of growth and exhaustion occurred with Ukraine’s petroleum, making the republic a net importer of these fuels today.

Ukraine also has important deposits of titanium ore, bauxite, nepheline (a source of soda), alunite (a source of potash), and mercury (cinnabar, or mercuric sulfide) ores. A large deposit of ozokerite (a natural paraffin wax) occurs near the city of Boryslav. Subcarpathia possesses potassium salt deposits, and both Subcarpathia and the Donets Basin have very large deposits of rock salt. Some phosphorites as well as natural sulfur are found in Ukraine. In Transcarpathia and near the cities of Lviv, Vinnytsya, Zhytomyr, Bila Tserkva, Poltava, and Kharkiv are health spas noted for their mineral springs; spas near the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov specialize in mud baths.

Agriculture and fishingOwing partly

By 1996, however, Ukraine had achieved a measure of economic stability. Inflation dropped to manageable levels, and the economy’s decline slowed considerably. At the turn of the 21st century the economy finally began to grow.

Agriculture and fishing

Partly due to rich soils and a favourable climate, Ukraine’s crop production is highly developed. Its grain output rivals that of Germany, its potato output of grain and potatoes is among the highest in Europe, and it is among the world’s largest producer producers of sugar beets. Ukraine’s livestock sector lags behind the crop sector, but its total output is still considerably larger than those that of most other European countries.

A considerable amount of the world’s black soils are found in Ukraine’s forest-steppe zone. These soils also are among the world’s more productive farmlands and are exceptionally well suited for the cultivation of wheat and sugar beets, an important industrial crop, and wheat. Besides wheat (almost all of it fall-sown), Ukraine produces such grains as barley (mostly for animal feed), corn (maize, for feed), leguminous grains (also feed), oats, rye, millet, buckwheat, and rice (irrigated, in the Crimea). Other food crops include potatoes, vegetables, melons, berries, other fruits, nuts, and grapes. Ukraine’s most important industrial crop, sugar beets, is concentrated in the forest-steppe zonePotatoes are a major crop in the cooler regions in the north and in the Carpathian foothills. Sunflower seeds, the principal oil crop, are most common in the Steppe steppe zone, where castor beans, mustard, rape, flax, hemp, and poppy seeds also are also grown for oil. In northwestern Ukraine some of the sown area is allotted to flax for fibre. Potatoes are major crops in the cooler regions in the north and in the Carpathian foothills. In the southern steppes, especially where irrigation is used, tomatoes, peppers, and melons are grown as well. Truck farming or market gardening is particularly notable on the outskirts of such large cities as Kiev, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhya, and the Donbas conurbation of the Donets Basin. Fruit is grown throughout Ukraine, notably in the forest-steppe, Subcarpathia, Transcarpathia (in southwestern Ukraine), and especially in the Crimea. Vineyards are common in the southern part of Ukraine, particularly in Transcarpathia and the Crimea.

Cattle and pigs are raised throughout Ukraine. Concentrations of dairy herds , however, occur primarily in the forest-steppe, especially in the vicinity of large cities, while beef cattle are more common in areas of natural pastures and hayfieldshay fields, as in the Polissya and the Carpathian foothills. Sheep and goats are more common raised in the Carpathian Mountains and parts of the southern Steppe steppe and the Crimea. Chickens, geese, and turkeys are kept throughout Ukraine for meat and egg production, but large-scale broiler and egg-laying operations are concentrated close to the large cities. Bees are kept in all parts of Ukraine for pollination and the production of honey and wax; silkworm raising occurs in Transcarpathia.

Whereas field-crop production and large-scale livestock and poultry operations were developed on collective and state farms in the Soviet period, small-scale gardening, fruit growing, and livestock raising traditionally have been carried on by private households. With the agricultural restructuring initiated by Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s, the theretofore small private plots were allowed to expand, while collective and state farms were allowed to undergo some reorganization on the basis of group or family contract farming. The After independence, the collective and state farms remain remained the purveyors of inputs and technology, while families or groups of families are becoming became the actual farming units through contractual arrangement. The declared intent of the Ukrainian government is has been to bring about a gradual privatization of farming, but the existing agricultural infrastructure, which developed around collective and state farms, makes the conversion difficult and costly. Managers of large state farms, mostly former Communists from the Soviet period, have actively obstructed reform efforts.

The Black Sea estuaries and the Sea of Azov are the Ukraine’s main fishing grounds. Among the major rivers for fishing are the Dnieper, Danube, Dniester, Southern Buh, and Donets. Fish catches have declined because of heavy pollution.

IndustryThe Donets Basin, which lies immediately north and east of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, is the industrial heartland of the country. In its vicinity are large deposits of iron ore, manganese, coal, petroleum and natural gas, and salt. These resources have helped make the Donets Basin the most densely populated and highly industrialized region of Ukraine, as well as one of the world’s major metallurgical and heavy industrial complexes. The basin has large iron- and steelworks and plants that produce mining equipment, transportation equipment
, other types of heavy machinery, and a variety of chemicalsResources and power

Ukraine has extremely rich and complementary mineral resources in high concentrations and close proximity to each other. Rich iron ore reserves located in the vicinity of Kryvyy Rih, Kremenchuk, Bilozerka, Mariupol, and Kerch form the basis of Ukraine’s large iron-and-steel industry. One of the richest areas of manganese-bearing ores in the world is located near Nikopol. Bituminous and anthracite coal used for coke are mined in the Donets Basin. Energy for thermal power stations is obtained using the large reserves of brown coal found in the Dnieper River basin (north of Kryvyy Rih) and the bituminous coal deposits of the Lviv-Volyn basin. The coal mines of Ukraine are among the deepest in Europe. Many of them are considered dangerous because their depth contributes to increased levels of methane; methane-related explosions have killed numerous Ukrainian miners.


The three major areas producing natural gas and petroleum in Ukraine are the Subcarpathian region, exploited since the late 19th–early 20th centuries, and the Dnieper-Donets and Crimean regions, both developed since World War II. Following World War II, the extraction of natural gas in Ukraine soared until it accounted for one-third of the Soviet Union’s total output in the early 1960s. Natural gas production declined after 1975, however, and a similar pattern of growth and exhaustion occurred with Ukraine’s petroleum, ultimately making the republic a net importer of these fuels.

The exploitation of petroleum and natural gas in Ukraine necessitated the creation of an extensive pipeline transport system. Natural gas from Dashava (in Subcarpathia) is piped to Lviv and then to Kiev. Natural gas from Shebelynka (in eastern Ukraine) is piped to Kharkiv; another line runs to Poltava and Kiev; a third goes to Dnipropetrovsk, Kryvyy Rih, and Odessa; and a fourth brings gas to Slov’yansk and other cities of the Donets Basin for municipal and industrial uses, including metallurgy. As a result of the Soviet Union’s commitment to major gas exporting in the late 1960s and early ’70s, two trunk pipelines were laid across Ukraine to bring gas to eastern and western Europe from Siberia and Orenburg in Russia. Petroleum from the Dolyna oil field in Subcarpathia is piped some 40 miles (65 km) to a refinery at Drohobych, and oil from fields in eastern Ukraine is piped to a refinery in Kremenchuk. Subsequently, larger petroleum trunk lines were added (some 700 miles [1,100 km]) to supply petroleum from western Siberia to refineries at Lysychansk, Kremenchuk, Kherson, and Odessa, as well as a 420-mile (675-km) segment of the Druzhba (“Friendship”) pipeline, which crosses western Ukraine to supply Siberian oil to other European countries. The pipelines connecting the Siberian oil and gas fields with Europe are a major economic asset for Ukraine, as their importance to Russia gives Ukraine leverage in negotiations over oil and gas imports. However, disputes between Ukraine and Russia have in the past led the latter to cut off its supply temporarily—negatively affecting Ukraine as well as the European Union, which depends on gas and oil from these pipelines.

Most of the energy for industrial processes in Ukraine is provided by fossil fuels and nuclear power; hydroelectricity accounts for only a tiny percentage. Although coal production is substantial, Ukraine relies on imported oil and natural gas to satisfy its energy requirements. Thermal power stations are found in all parts of the country, though the largest are in the Donets Basin and along the Dnieper. A third electric energy–producing area is in the vicinity of the Lviv-Volyn coal basin, and in the Subcarpathian region there is a group of several power stations. Nuclear power stations are located near the cities of Khmelnytskyy, Rivne, and Zaporizhzhya, as well as along the Southern Buh River. The severe nuclear accident at one of the Chernobyl reactors in 1986 triggered a powerful environmental movement in Ukraine and spurred the drive toward political independence from the Soviet Union. The last working reactor at Chernobyl was closed in 2000.


Manufacturing is an extremely important sector of the Ukrainian economy, in terms of productivity and revenue earned. Products manufactured in the country include ferrous metals, transportation equipment and other types of heavy machinery, a variety of chemicals, food products, and other goods.

Ukraine has a major ferrous metals industry , and it ranks among the top steel producers in the world. Cast iron, rolled steel, and steel pipe are produced in Ukraine, mainly in the Donets Basin. Mining is also a very important branch of the economy, the main products being coal, natural gas, and iron ore. Prominent manufactured goods include metallurgical equipment, diesel locomotives, tractors, and television sets. The Ukrainian chemical industry produces coke, mineral fertilizers, and sulfuric acid. The food industry produces granulated sugar from sugar beets; flour, pasta, and baked goods from grain; oil and margarine from sunflower seeds; and meat, vegetable, and dairy products. Diversified industry, in more than 150 fields, is the most important sector in the economy in terms of productivity and revenue earned.Railway , which is the industrial heartland of the country.

The country’s heavy industries produce trucks, other automobiles, railway locomotives and freight cars, seagoing vessels, hydroelectric and thermal steam and gas turbines, and electric generators. In addition, trucks, and automobiles are made in Ukrainian factories. Residential and residential and industrial construction demands hoisting and transportation equipment and other machinery for the building trades. After World War II about two-thirds of the Ukrainian S.S.R.’s scientific and technical infrastructure was devoted to defense. Ukraine was a major contributor to the Soviet military-industrial complex, assembling rockets and constructing Dozens of factories, found chiefly in Kharkiv, Odessa, Lviv, and Kherson, produce a wide range of agricultural equipment as well. During the Soviet period, plants in Ukraine assembled rockets and constructed naval vessels, including aircraft carriers. Efforts Subsequently, Ukraine emerged as an arms producer in its own right, although efforts have been under way made since 1991 to convert defense facilities to nonmilitary production. Trolley For instance, trolley buses are now manufactured at Pivdenmash (Yuzhmash) in what was once the world’s largest missile plant, and the tank factory at Kharkiv now produces tractors.

Plants for the production of equipment for food processing and other light industries are scattered throughout the country. Besides being one of the great agricultural regions of the world, Ukraine has dozens of factories that produce a wide range of agricultural equipment, the chief centres of production being Kharkiv, Odessa, Lviv, and Kherson. Machine-tool and instrument-manufacturing industries are being developed. The growing importance of consumer goods is reflected in the increasing share of production devoted to such items as television sets, refrigerators, and washing machines. The variety of consumer goods produced in Ukraine is sparse, however, and the entire final-product sector is inadequate for a diversified industrial economy.The Ukrainian chemical-equipment industry, accounting for one-third of former Soviet production, is mainly concentrated in Kiev, Sumy, Fastiv, and Korosten. The chemical industry includes coking and the manufacture of coke products, as well as the manufacture of mineral fertilizers, sulfuric acid, synthetic fibres, caustic soda, petrochemicals, photographic chemicals, and pesticides.

The larger divisions One of the most important products of the Ukrainian food-processing industry include sugar refining, processing of meat, fruit, and dairy products, wine making, and distilling. Of Ukraine’s approximately 2,000 products, one of the most important is sugaris sugar (from sugar beets). The production of vegetable oil, mainly from sunflower seeds, is also significant as well. Other processed foods include meat, grain, fruit, and dairy products; local fish-processing industries are found in the coastal cities, such as Odessa. Wine comes from the Transcarpathian region and the Crimea, where the vintners of the Massandra group are established near Yalta. In the coastal cities, such as Odessa, are found local industries processing fishUkraine also produces vodka, beer, and other beverages.

Some of the principal products of light industry are textiles , (both knitted and woven), ready-to-wear garments, and shoes.


Most of the energy for industrial processes in Ukraine is provided by fossil fuels and nuclear power, hydroelectricity accounting for only a tiny percentage. Although coal production is substantial, Ukraine relies on imported oil and natural gas, primarily from Russia, to satisfy its energy requirements. Thermal power stations are found in all parts of the country, though the largest are in the Donets Basin and along the Dnieper. A third electric energy-producing area is in the vicinity of the Lviv-Volyn coal basin, and in the Subcarpathian region there is a group of six power stations. There are nuclear power stations located near the cities of Khmelnytskyy, Rivne, and Zaporizhzhya, as well as along the Southern Buh River. A severe nuclear accident at one of the Chernobyl reactors in 1986 triggered a powerful environmental movement in Ukraine and spurred the drive toward political independence from the Soviet Union. The last working reactor at Chernobyl was closed in 2000. (See Chernobyl accident.)


In addition, such consumer goods as television sets, refrigerators, and washing machines are produced. Machine-tool and instrument-manufacturing industries also have been developed.


The National Bank of Ukraine serves as the country’s central bank. It works to ensure the stability of the national currency, the hryvnya, which was introduced in 1996. A number of commercial banks provide financial services to companies and individuals, and securities are traded at Ukrainian stock exchanges. Legislation passed since independence encourages foreign investment, but complex business regulations and corruption problems have kept the level of investment relatively low.


Russia remains Ukraine’s most important trade partner. Ukraine also conducts a significant volume of trade with Germany, Italy, and Poland. Other trade partners include Turkmenistan, China, Turkey, and the United States. From Russia, Ukraine imports petroleum, petroleum products, and natural gas, as well as fabrics, footwear, printed matter, and many other products. Machinery, transportation equipment, and chemicals are both imported and exported. By sea, Ukraine exports its grain, sugar, iron ore, coal, and manganese.


Service industries constitute an increasingly important portion of the economy; their value accounts for more than half of Ukraine’s gross domestic product. Among the leading service industries are those dealing with transportation and communications. Ukraine also exports certain services, particularly those related to transportation. Tourism has long been a key service industry on the southern shore of the Crimea. The beautiful environment and warm climate have attracted vacationers and health seekers for more than a century.

Labour and taxation

Services now employ the largest number of Ukrainian workers, though a significant number of labourers continue to work in agriculture and manufacturing. Nearly half the women are economically active; however, employer discrimination against women has been a problem. More than half of all workers belong to trade unions, many of which are grouped into large labour federations.

The Ukrainian government levies corporate and individual income taxes. It also collects value-added tax and excise taxes.

Transportation and telecommunications

The flat relief of most of Ukraine presents few obstacles to transportation. Although by European standards the density of the country’s hard-surface road network is low, asphalt-paved highways connect all the regions and large industrial centres. The links between Kiev and Moscow, Odessa–Kiev–St. Petersburg, Moscow–Kharkiv–Simferopol, Uzhhorod–Lviv–Rivne–Kiev, and Kiev–Kharkiv–Rostov-na-Donu (Russia) are highways of particular importance.

The heaviest concentration of railroad trackage is in the Donets Basin and near the Dnieper River, especially its right ( west ) bank; the . The largest railroad centres are Kharkiv, Kiev, Dnipropetrovsk, Bakhmach, Yasynuvata, Debaltseve, Lviv, Kovel, and Kup’yansk-Vuzlovyy.

Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov are found at Odessa, Illichivsk, Mykolayiv, Kherson, Feodosiya, Kerch, and Mariupol. River shipping is conducted primarily on the Dnieper and its tributaries (the Pripet and Desna), on the Southern Buh, and on the Danube, which is important in trade with other European countries. Ships on the Danube call at the port of Izmayil, which is accessible to oceangoing freighters and passenger liners. Through the Dnieper-Bug Canal, in Belarus, the inland waterways of Ukraine are joined to the Vistula River basin of Poland and to the Baltic Sea. Efforts to transform the Dnieper into a continuous deep waterway have been furthered by the creation of large reservoirs at hydroelectric stations. The largest ports on the Dnieper are Kiev, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson.

Kiev is connected by air with all the regional centres of the country and with major cities throughout Europe and Asia, as well as with New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Sydney (Australia)cities in North America and Australia. International airports in Ukraine include Boryspil near Kiev and those at Kharkiv, Lviv, and Odessa.

The exploitation of petroleum and natural gas in Ukraine has necessitated the creation of an extensive pipeline transport system. Natural gas from Dashava (in Subcarpathia) is piped to Lviv and then to Kiev. Natural gas from Shebelynka (in eastern Ukraine) is piped to Kharkiv; another line runs to Poltava and Kiev; a third to Dnipropetrovsk, Kryvyy Rih, and Odessa; and a fourth to Slov’yansk and other cities of the Donets Basin for municipal and industrial uses, including metallurgy. As a result of the Soviet Union’s commitment to major gas exporting in the late 1960s and early ’70s, two trunk pipelines were laid across Ukraine to bring gas to eastern and western Europe from Siberia and from Orenburg. Petroleum from the Dolyna oil field in Subcarpathia is piped some 40 miles to a refinery at Drohobych, and oil from fields in eastern Ukraine is piped to a refinery in Kremenchuk. Subsequently, larger petroleum trunk lines were added (some 700 miles) to supply petroleum from western Siberia to refineries at Lysychansk (in the Donets Basin), Kremenchuk, Kherson, and Odessa, as well as a 420-mile segment of the Druzhba (“Friendship”) pipeline, which crosses western Ukraine to supply Siberian oil to other eastern European countries. The pipelines connecting the Siberian oil and gas fields with Europe are a major economic asset for Ukraine, as their importance to Russia gives Ukraine leverage in negotiations over oil and gas imports.

The transportation system makes Ukraine’s mineral, industrial, and agricultural products available to the entire region. By this same network, Ukraine receives petroleum and petroleum products from the Volga region and Siberia, nonferrous metals from Kazakhstan and the Urals, and several types of machinery, fabrics, footwear, and printed matter from central Russia. By sea, Ukraine exports its grain, sugar, iron ore, coal, manganese, and machinery and receives such imports as coffee, tea, cocoa, tropical and subtropical fruit, jute, machinery, and industrial equipment.

Administration and social conditions
GovernmentTransition to independence

Since independence, Ukraine has worked to improve its inadequate Soviet-era telephone system. The country is now linked to international fibre-optic and satellite systems. Meanwhile, cellular telephone usage has risen dramatically, though the percentage of people who subscribe to cellular services is lower than in neighbouring countries. The rates of Internet use and personal computer ownership have also lagged behind those of neighbouring countries.

Government and society

The government of Ukraine underwent rapid change in the early 1990s. Before its declaration of independence in 1991, Ukraine was officially called the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (S.S.R.) and was part of the Soviet Union. According to the 1937 Soviet constitution as amended in 1944, Ukraine had the right to “enter into direct relations with foreign states, to conclude agreements, and to exchange diplomatic and consular representatives with them” and to maintain its own military forces. The only real expression of these constitutional prerogatives in international affairs, however, was Ukraine’s charter membership in the United Nations (UN) and consequently in some 70 other international organizations

), a distinction it shared with

. (The Ukrainian S.S.R. and the Belorussian S.S.R.


[now Belarus

) as

] were the only two UN members that were not fully sovereign countries.) The revised Soviet constitution of 1977 further limited the prerogatives of the Ukrainian S.S.R.


Within days of the failed coup

(Aug. 19, 1991)



Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Ukraine proclaimed its independence on Aug. 24, 1991, and won overwhelming popular approval for this act in a referendum on Dec. 1, 1991. Ukraine was subsequently recognized by other governments, and many international agreements were signed, notably with neighbouring countries. In addition, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia formed the Commonwealth of Independent States

on Dec. 8



which was then joined by eight other former republics of the defunct Soviet Union.

The Commonwealth’s members agreed to retain the strategic nuclear forces of the former Soviet Union under a unified command, and in 1994 the Ukrainian government agreed to begin dismantling the strategic nuclear missiles that were based on its territory. The Ukrainian government insisted, however, on the creation of Ukrainian armed forces out of the Soviet troops stationed in Ukraine. Ukraine also intended to conduct its own fiscal policy and to that end established a national bank. The Soviet-era constitution largely remains in force.Constitutional frameworkConstitutional framework

Ukraine adopted a new constitution in 1996. Until that time, the Soviet-era constitution had remained in force, albeit with numerous adjustments.

The highest legislative unit of the Ukrainian government is the unicameral Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council of Ukraine


), which succeeded the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian S.S.R.

), the members of which are elected to terms of four years. Whereas in the past these members were elected to represent various institutions and the general population from a single slate of candidates put forward by the Communist Party of Ukraine, in March 1990 the first multicandidate, multiparty elections were held. During the Soviet period the legislature met only twice a year for a few days to approve budgetary and other proposals passed by its Presidium and the Council of Ministers; the Supreme Council has now assumed an active role in debating proposed laws and in shaping the policies of the Ukrainian government. The Presidium of the Supreme Council, which is elected by the council from among its members, consists of a chairman, two vice-chairmen, a secretary, and 15 members; it acts for the council between sessions. Until recently, the Presidium exercised both executive and legislative powers, but, after the election of the president of Ukraine (Dec. 1, 1991) by the general population, the executive and legislative powers were separated.The highest executive office is that of the president, elected by direct popular vote for a five-year term. The president has the power to sign passed legislation to take immediate effect and is the commander in chief of the armed forces. The president appoints a Cabinet of Ministers, subject to approval by the Supreme Council. The Cabinet

Changes to electoral laws in 1997 stipulated that half of the legislative seats be apportioned among members of the various political parties, according to their relative share of the popular vote. The other half of the legislators are elected from single-seat constituencies by a simple majority vote.

The president, elected by direct popular vote for a five-year term, is the head of state. The president acts as the commander in chief of the armed forces, oversees executive ministries, and has the power to initiate and to veto legislation, though vetoes may be overturned. The president also chairs the National Security and Defense Council and determines its composition. The early period of Ukrainian independence was marked by a weak presidency and a strong parliament. In fact, Leonid Kravchuk, Ukraine’s first democratically elected president, almost seemed to downplay his role. After his election in 1994, President Leonid Kuchma set out to redefine the structures of power in Ukraine. In 1995 the parliament agreed to the so-called “Law on Power,” which substantially enhanced the role of the executive branch of government, and in 1996 the new constitution gave the presidency considerably more power. However, constitutional reforms that took effect in 2006 shifted some power away from the president to the prime minister.

The head of government is the prime minister, who is effectively selected by the majority in parliament. The prime minister appoints the members of the cabinet, apart from the foreign and defense ministers, who are chosen by the president. The cabinet, headed by the prime minister, coordinates the day-to-day administration of the government and may introduce legislation to the Supreme Council.

JudiciaryThe Local government

Ukraine is a unitary republic, not a federal state. The country is divided administratively into a number of provinces called oblasti; two cities—Kiev and Sevastopol—carry the same status as an oblast. The Crimea is an autonomous republic within Ukraine.


The highest court in the judicial system is the Supreme Court of Ukraine, consisting of five judges elected for five-year terms by the Supreme Council. The court’s function is to supervise judicial activities

; it does not rule on constitutional questions (this is a function of the Presidium).Political partiesUntil October

. Constitutional matters are determined by the Constitutional Court.

Political process

Citizens over age 17 have the right to vote. Until 1990 the only legal political party in Ukraine was the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), which was a branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union


. Major legislation approved by the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet originated in, or was approved by, the CPU.

Indigenous opposition

A change to the

Communist Party crystallized in an organization called the People’s Front of Ukraine for Reconstruction

Ukrainian constitution in October 1990 allowed nascent political parties to be officially recognized. Subsequently, a wide array of parties emerged. Many parties, however, have lacked strong organizational bases and coherent platforms, and individual parties have tended to join together in parliament as blocs.

The centre-right, nationalistic Popular Movement of Ukraine, or Rukh, founded in 1989

. Consisting of an array of religious, nationalist, and cultural groups, Rukh succeeded in electing one-quarter of the deputies to the Supreme Council in March 1990.

With the removal of Article 6 from the Ukrainian constitution in October 1990 (which had protected the CPU from competition), nascent political parties were officially recognized. A wide array of political parties has emerged. On the far right, neofascist and extreme nationalist parties have gained strength and are represented in the Supreme Council. Rukh is the most prominent of a large group of moderate nationalist and centrist parties. An alliance of leftist groups, led by the Ukrainian Communist Party (legalized in 1993 after being banned in 1991), remains the most powerful bloc in the Supreme Council.

Armed forcesUkraine maintains one of the strongest military forces in Europe, consisting

, was instrumental in the campaign for Ukrainian independence but afterward lost strength. The CPU—re-formed in 1993 after a 1991 ban on the Soviet-era CPU was lifted—retains support, mainly in the industrialized and Russophone reaches of eastern Ukraine and among older voters. Several other parties, such as the Socialist Party of Ukraine and the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine, have had socialist, if not Marxist-Leninist, orientations. During the Kuchma presidency (1994–2005), a number of opposition parties coalesced. These parties supported the 2004 Orange Revolution, a series of mass protests that helped to bring Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency in 2005. The most important of these pro-Western “Orange” parties were Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine (known from 2007 as Our Ukraine–People’s Self-Defense) and the eponymous bloc of Yuliya Tymoshenko, leader of the Fatherland party. Yushchenko’s rival Viktor Yanukovych—who had been Kuchma’s choice as his successor—headed the popular Party of Regions, which supported stronger ties to Russia.


In 1991, at the time of independence, approximately 750,000 members of the Soviet armed forces were stationed within Ukraine’s borders. The Ukrainian government quickly brought these forces under its command. Early in 1992 the military personnel on Ukrainian soil were required to swear an oath of allegiance to the new Ukrainian state; if they refused, they were provided with funds to leave the country. In the subsequent years, Ukraine reduced the size of its armed forces by several hundred thousand troops.

Nevertheless, Ukraine’s military—consisting of army, air force, and navy branches and a substantial reserve

force. Conscripts are required to serve two years. In 1994 Ukraine officially agreed to dismantle its nuclear arsenal, which at the time was the third largest in the world; also in that year, Ukraine joined the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons after receiving security guarantees from the United States, Russia, and Britain. By 1996 all nuclear weapons had been removed from the country.Education

In 1917 force—is still one of the largest in Europe. Its size is maintained through conscription; a period of military service is compulsory for men between the ages of 18 and 25. Ukrainian armed forces have seen active duty in a number of peacekeeping missions around the world.

Ukraine is a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. It has sought membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Health and welfare

Health care is financed through a combination of state and private funding, but money for improvement in the system remains scarce. Ukraine emerged from the Soviet period with an extensive infrastructure of health care facilities, including hospitals, workplace- and school-based medical centres, rest homes, and women’s clinics, but these facilities deteriorated badly during the postindependence economic downturn. A lack of medicine and equipment, underfunded medical schools, and low wages for health care providers also have contributed to a significant decline in the quality of health care.

Following independence, the social welfare system of the Soviet period was restructured and expanded. Benefits were partially linked to inflation, and measures were adopted to assist workers displaced by the transition to a market-oriented economy. About one-quarter of the population receives a pension; other components of the social insurance system include family allowances for households with children, birth and maternity benefits, and disability pay. The system is financed through a payroll tax.


In the 17th century an impressive degree of literacy (for the time) could be found in Ukraine. With Ukraine’s declining political fortunes, however, the rate of popular literacy dropped. By the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, more than 70 percent of Ukraine’s population was illiterate. Within the next half century, the The Soviets’ policy of compulsory education helped to wipe out illiteracy in the younger generation, and virtually the entire adult population can now read and write.

Children must attend school for eight years. About three-quarters of the teachers are women; the student-teacher ratio is low. Since independence, the curriculum has increasingly emphasized Ukrainian history and literature. Private and religious schools also have appeared since 1990. As a whole, great emphasis is placed on , virtually nonexistent in the Soviet era, began to appear in the 1990s. In addition, general and correspondence schools , as these institutions allow young industrial and agricultural workers to receive an education without interrupting their work.

An The first institution of higher learning in Ukraine, the Kievan Mohyla Academy, was established in 1615; it was an important intellectual centre for the Orthodox world until its closing in 1817. Ukraine’s educated classes were also well served by the establishment of universities in Kharkiv (1805), Kiev (1834), and Odessa (1865), as well as Lviv (1784) and Chernivtsi (1875) in western Ukraine. After Ukraine’s independence in 1991, those institutions became state universities, and the Mohyla Academy was reestablished as a university. Today the extensive system of higher education also includes the state universities at Kiev, Kharkiv, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Chernivtsi, Uzhhorod, and Donetsk.

The largest single scientific organization is the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which governs a host of research institutions and scientific workers. Founded in 1918–19 1918 (when Ukraine was briefly an independent state), the academy grew as an institution of research and learning during the Soviet period. Following Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s purges of the 1930s, the academy’s humanities and social science sections were mobilized to further the twin goals of Soviet social engineering and Russification, and they continued to follow this policy more or less until the demise of the Soviet Union. During the Soviet period, various institutes of applied research were established to help develop specific sectors of the economy, while institutes dealing with the natural sciences and mathematics continued to focus on fundamental or theoretical researchToday the academy governs a host of research institutions and scientific workers. Among the specialized scientific facilities available in Ukraine are a half-dozen number of oceanographic research vessels, based in Odessa and Sevastopol, which support research in the fields of mineral resources, marine biology, and desalinization of seawater. Elsewhere in the country can be found a large cyclotron and one of the finest experimental nuclear reactors in the world, five computer centres, four astronomical observatories, and seven major botanical gardens.

Health and welfare

Ukraine emerged from the Soviet period with an extensive infrastructure of health care facilities, including hospitals, workplace- and school-based medical centres, rest homes, and women’s clinics. These facilities have deteriorated badly, however, and, combined with a lack of medicine and equipment, there has been a significant decline in the quality of health care. Diseases such as diphtheria and cholera have reappeared in Ukraine; life expectancy declined during the early 1990s.

Health care is financed through a combination of state and private funding, but, in Ukraine’s depressed economy, money for improvement in the system remains scarce. Medical schools are seriously underfunded and are unable to replace outdated equipment or to purchase current journals and textbooks. Low wages for health care providers have led many doctors to demand extra payment before providing treatment. Patients in hospitals often must provide their own food, bed linen, and medicine.

The standard of living of the Ukrainian people has improved since the forced collectivization of the early 1930s, the devastating forced famine of 1932–33 in which about five million people died in Ukraine, the ravages of World War II, and Josef Stalin’s postwar reprisals. A total of about 700 cities and towns and 28,000 villages were devastated in Ukraine alone during World War II, and the republic’s reconstruction was a long project.

In the postwar decades, wages in Ukraine rose but remained below those in the Russian and the Belorussian S.S.R.’s. Since economic and military expenditures were covered by the U.S.S.R. budget, more than three-quarters of the republic’s budget was used for individual workers’ funds and collective benefits, such as public health, education, and pension funds. The major supplements to wages from public funds included free medical care and education, pension and stipend payments, vacation benefits, and the maintenance of kindergarten and child-care facilities.


Cultural life

Ukrainians take pride in their cultural tradition, which is part of a broader Slavic culture but retains a distinctive national flavour. In the countryside, outdoor festivals feature brightly coloured folk costumes, dance, and traditional music. Urban life is enriched by a large number of performing arts facilities and other cultural institutions created during the Soviet era.

LiteratureEarly developments

Oral literature in Ukraine can be traced to pre-Christian times. Pagan ritual songs were subsequently much modified by association with various church feasts (e.g., kolyadky with the Christmas cycle). The heroic epics (byliny) of the early medieval period may have survived in Ukraine until the 16th century, but they were then wholly superseded by historical songs (dumy) based on events in the 16th and 17th centuries in Cossack Ukraine.

Cultural life
Cultural milieu

Ukraine possesses a wealth of cultural talent and a considerable cultural legacy. Numerous writers have contributed to the country’s rich literary history. Impressive monuments of architecture and museums displaying works by generations of Ukrainian artists can be found throughout the country, and art galleries featuring contemporary Ukrainian artists have become commonplace in larger urban centres. The country’s strong tradition of folk art also continues to this day. In addition, high-calibre performing artists and ensembles appear regularly in Ukraine’s numerous theatres and concert halls.

Because of the country’s geographical location, Ukrainian culture has been influenced by the cultures of both western Europe and Russia. Although these influences are particularly evident in the western and eastern halves of the country, respectively, there is no strict geographical division. For example, Russian is spoken in the streets and in many homes and institutions throughout the country; it also is used in national publications, radio broadcasts, and popular music. The country’s other ethnic minorities contribute to a measure of cultural diversity as well.

Daily life and social customs

The social changes brought about by Ukrainian independence are most evident in the cities, particularly Kiev. The country’s capital now boasts high-end stores catering to a moneyed class, and a fashionable strip of contemporary art galleries and cafés winds its way down the historical street of Andriyivskyi Uzviz. The capital’s renovated airport stands in striking contrast to its decidedly dour appearance in Soviet times.

The cities, with their broad sidewalks and extensive greenery, are eminently suited for walking. Ukrainians generally do a considerable amount of walking, either to get around or simply for enjoyment. Parks are plentiful and popular for strolling or picnicking, a common pastime among city dwellers, most of whom live in apartments. The cities also feature numerous kiosks, which sell all manner of wares.

Cultural pursuits and entertainment are widespread. Most of Ukraine’s major cities have ornate theatres with their own opera or ballet companies. Song-and-dance ensembles, most notably the Verovka State Chorus and the Virsky Dance Ensemble, have made Ukrainian folk music and dance into an impressive stage art. Though classical music remains popular, contemporary Western-style music has expanded its audience considerably and now dominates the airwaves on numerous commercial radio stations. Street concerts and club performances are common, as are dance clubs and cabarets. Imported television soap operas have developed a dedicated following, and cinemas show American blockbusters.

The country offers a variety of restaurants that serve Chinese, Greek, Continental, or other foreign cuisine. Pizza bars and other fast-food restaurants are increasingly common as well. Many Ukrainians, however, still prefer such traditional Ukrainian foods as borscht, cabbage rolls, varenyky (dumplings), studynets (a form of headcheese), and shashlyky (kebabs). On festive occasions these dishes are accompanied by vodka or champagne and eloquent toasts. The dish known as chicken Kiev, though commonly served in Ukraine, likely originated elsewhere.

In the countryside, horse-drawn carts with rubber wheels have not quite disappeared. The khata (“house”), made of mud and thatch and typically whitewashed, is still found as well. These homes often contain such traditional handiwork as embroideries, weavings, and handmade feather duvets and oversized pillows. Their inhabitants are predominantly elderly Ukrainians.

The arts

Written Ukrainian literature began with Christianization and the introduction of Old Church Slavonic as a liturgical and literary language. The literary heritage of the Ukrainian people in the early period, from the 11th to the 13th centurycenturies, is that of Kievan Rus; their works were written in Church Slavonic and are thus the common property of the Russians and Belarusians as well. The earliest works of the Kievan period (10th century and following) were the historical annals: Povist vremennykh lit (“Tale of Bygone Years”), the Hypatian (Kievan) chronicle, and the Galician-Volhynian chronicle. The 12th-century Slovo o polku Ihorevi (“The Song of Igor’s Campaign”) is a unique historical epic written in the ornamental style. Sermons, sermons, tales, and lives of the saints were the major genres. The major authors of this period were the chronicler Nestor, the sermon writers Ilarion of Kiev and Cyril of Turov, and Prince Volodymyr (Vladimir) II Monomakh. After the Mongol destruction of Kievan Rus in the 13th century, literary activity in Ukraine declined. A revival began in the late 14th century and was spurred further in the 16th century with the introduction of printing, the Reformation ferment, and the advance of the Counter-Reformation into Polish-dominated Ukrainian lands.

The Union of Brest-Litovsk (1596), which united several million Ukrainian and Belarusian Orthodox believers with Rome, stimulated an exceedingly rich polemical literature, with the Apocrisis (1598; “Reply”) of the pseudonymous Khrystofor Filalet and the anonymous Perestoroha (1605; “Warning”) on the Orthodox side and the Antirizis (1599; “Refutation”) of Ipaty Poty in the Uniat camp. The most distinguished and prolific polemicist was the Orthodox Ivan Vyshensky, whose ornate style combines Church Slavonic with vernacular elements.

The major current in Ukrainian literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, as in all of Europe, was the Baroque, with its love of adornment and originality. Among the major figures of this age were Kasiyan Sakovych and Ivan Velychkovsky in verse, Yoaniky Galyatovsky in homiletics, and Teofan Prokopovych in drama. Historical writing is best represented by the Cossack chronicle of Samiylo Velychko (c. 1720). Of interest for their content and their literary qualities were the 18th-century writings of the philosopher Hryhory Skovoroda, styled the “Ukrainian Socrates.”

After the fall of Kievan Rus in the 13th century, the Ukrainian language’s distinctive dialectal characteristics emerged, but for many centuries thereafter the language had almost no literary expression, owing to Ukraine’s long political subordination and the consequent use of Belarusian, Polish, Russian, and Church Slavonic for official purposes. The Ukrainian vernacular gradually became more prominent in writings in the 16th century, but this process was set back in the 17th and 18th centuries, when many Ukrainian authors wrote in Russian . It was not until or Polish. At the end of the 18th century that , modern literary Ukrainian finally emerged out of the colloquial Ukrainian tongue, and an era of prolific writing began.

The 19th century

Nineteenth-century Ukrainian writers greatly contributed to the reawakening of Ukrainian national consciousness under the Russian Empire. Indeed, practically the entire development of Ukrainian literature in the 19th century occurred under official Russian disfavour; in 1863 and 1871, for instance, all publications in the Ukrainian language were prohibited. Not until 1905 did the Russian Academy of Sciences concede that Ukrainian was indeed a separate language.Ivan Kotlyarevsky, The classicist poet and playwright , inaugurated Ivan Kotlyarevsky may be considered the first modern Ukrainian literature with author. In his work Eneyida (1798), a burlesque travesty he transformed the heroes of Virgil’s Aeneid that transformed its heroes into Ukrainian Cossacks. Kotlyarevsky’s works were very popular with the common people and spawned a number of imitations. Classicist prose appeared only with Hryhory Hryhorii Kvitka Osnovyanenko’s -Osnovianenko’s novel Marusya (1834) and his short stories in the collection Malorossiiskie povesti (1834, 1837; “Little Russian Stories”).

In the 1830s the city of Kharkiv became the centre of Ukrainian Romanticism developed, and under the latter’s influence the authors Izmayil such authors as Izmail Sreznevsky, Levko Borovykovsky, Amvrosy Amvrosii Metlynsky, and Mykola Kostomarov published ethnographic materials, native interpretations of Ukrainian history, and collections of folk legends and Cossack chroniclesworks that recognized a particular Ukrainian culture and history. In western Ukraine, Romanticism was represented by the “Ruthenian Triad”: Markiyan Markiian Shashkevych, Yakiv Holovatsky, and Ivan Vahylevych . In the 1840s these two outlying areas were bridged by the development of Romanticism in Kiev; the Romantic movement reached its peak there and found its highest expression in the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius (1846). This group’s ideology was reflected in Kostomarov’s biblical Knyhy bytiya ukrayinskoho narodu (“Books of Genesis of the Ukrainian People”), which called for an end to tsarist rule and the creation of a free, democratic Ukraine within a Slavic federation.

The early poetry of Taras Shevchenko, the outstanding Ukrainian poet of the 19th century, expressed the interests of the Romantics but soon moved to a more sombre portrayal of Ukrainian history, especially in the long poem Haydamaky (1841; “The Haidamaks”), and to works satirizing Russia’s oppression of Ukraine—e.g., Son (“The Dream”), Kavkaz (“The Caucasus”), and Poslaniye (“The Epistle”). His later poetry, written after his release (1857) from exile, treats broader themes. After Shevchenko, the most important Romantic was Panteleymon Kulish, poet, prose writer (Chorna rada; “The Black Council”), translator, and historian.

Ukrainian realism, which begins with Marko Vovchok (Narodni opovidannya, constituted the so-called “Ruthenian Triad” of Ukrainian Romanticism. A markedly different approach was taken by Nikolay Gogol (Ukrainian: Mykola Hohol), who wrote Romantic works with Ukrainian themes in Russian and with a “pan-Russian” spirit.

The most important 19th-century Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, treated Ukrainian history and Russian oppression, as well as broader themes. Panteleymon Kulish was another significant poet of the period.

Marko Vovchok, who wrote Narodni opovidannia (1857; “Tales of the People”), was long confined to populist themes and the portrayal of village life. Realist poetry developed with the work of Stepan Rudansky and Leonid Hlibov. The novelist Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky’s work ranged from the portrayal of village life in Kaydasheva simya (1879; “The Kaydash Family”) to that of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in Khmary (1908; “The Clouds”). Panas Myrny (pseudonym of Panas Rudchenko) was the major representative of Ukrainian realism. His depiction of social injustice and the birth of social protest in Khiba revut voly, yak yasla povni? (1880; “Do the Oxen Low When the Manger Is Full?”) has a new psychological dimension. Ivan Franko wrote dramas, lyric poetry, short stories, and children’s verse, but his naturalistic novels chronicling contemporary Galician society and his long narrative poems Moysey (“Moses”), Panski zharty (“Nobleman’s Jests”), and Ivan Vyshensky mark the height of his literary achievement.The modernism of ushered in Ukrainian Realism. Many Realist works depicted village life and contemporary society; some touched on populist themes. Panas Myrny, with his works on social injustice, became the major representative of Ukrainian Realism, but the novelists Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky and Ivan Franko were prominent as well.

A number of competing literary movements emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries is first evident in the poetic dramas and dialogues of the finest Ukrainian woman writer, Lesya Ukrayinka, and in the prose of such writers as Mykhaylo Kotsyubynsky and Vasyl Stefanyk.

The 20th century

In the first three decades of the 20th century, Ukrainian literature experienced a renaissance, characterized by a variety of quickly succeeding and often strongly competing literary movements. Realism, with a distinctly decadent strain, was the most notable characteristic of Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s prose. Pavlo Tychyna was the leading Symbolist poet; others included Dmytro Zahul, Mykola Tereshchenko, and Oleksa Slisarenko. Neoclassicism produced outstanding poets in , though Realism, exemplified by the prose of Volodymyr Vynnychenko, remained important. Lesia Ukrainka was a leading modernist author. The poet Pavlo Tychyna followed the Symbolist movement; Mykola Bazhan, one of Ukraine’s greatest 20th-century poets, employed elements of Futurism; and Mykola Zerov, Maksym Rylsky, and Mykhaylo Dray-Khmara . Futurism was initiated by Mykhaylo Semenko and produced one of Ukraine’s greatest 20th-century poets, Mykola Bazhan.After the Russian Revolution, during a period of relative freedom between 1917 and 1932, a host of other talented writers emerged: wrote Neoclassicist poetry (see Classicism and Neoclassicism).

During the early years of Bolshevik rule, talented Ukrainian writers proliferated. Mykola Khvylovy’s prose was imbued with revolutionary and national Romanticism, Hryhory Kosynka’s prose was Impressionisticimpressionistic, while Yury Yanovsky’s stories and novels were unabashedly romantic, and Valeriyan Pidmohylny Pidmohylny’s work adhered to the principles of realism. Other writers of note include the novelist and filmmaker Oleksander Dovzhenko, as well as the novelists Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, Volodymyr Gzhytsky, Mykhaylo Ivchenko, and Oles Dosvitny, the poet Mike Yohansen, and the humorist Ostap Vyshnya. The outstanding dramatist of the period was Mykola Kulish.

In 1932 the Communist Party began enforcing Socialist Realism as the required literary style. Typical representatives of this official literature were the dramatist Oleksander Korniychuk and the novelist Mykhaylo Stelmakh. The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s great purges of 1933–38 decimated the ranks of Ukrainian writers, many of whom were imprisoned or executed.

During the post-Stalinist period there emerged a new generation that rejected Socialist Realism. Known as the “Writers of the Sixties,” they included Vasyl Stus, Lina Kostenko, Vasyl Symonenko, Vitaly Korotych, Ivan Drach, Mykola Vinhranovsky, Vasyl Holoborodko, and Ihor Kalynets. Repressive measures taken in the 1970s silenced many of them or else turned them back to Socialist Realism.

Ukraine’s attainment of independence in 1991 opened up unprecedented opportunities for indigenous literary expression, but the Soviet suppression of so much Ukrainian talent in prior decades left the task largely to the younger generation.

In 1932, however, the Communist Party began requiring writers to follow the theory of Socialist Realism. Many Ukrainian writers who did not adhere to the official style were imprisoned or executed, particularly during Stalin’s purges of the 1930s. A new generation of writers, known as the “Writers of the ’60s,” broke with Socialist Realism in the post-Stalinist period, but in the 1970s the Communist Party took new measures to repress literature that deviated from the approved style.

With Ukraine’s independence in 1991 came a rebirth of free literary expression. Many of the established literary journals continued to publish, although with far-more-open editorial policies, and a plethora of new journals appeared as well. Literary journals have provided a valuable outlet for the work of writers in Ukraine, particularly younger ones, as the postindependence economic difficulties substantially limited the publication of books, especially in the realm of belles lettres. Among the literary talents of independent Ukraine, novelist Valerii Shevchuk and poet Yury Andrukhovych stand out.

Visual arts

Over the centuries the Ukrainian people have evolved a varied folk art. Embroidery, wood carving, ceramics, and weaving are highly developed, with stylized ornamentation that represents many regional styles. Intricately


patterned Easter eggs (pysanky) have become popular in many countries that have Ukrainian immigrant populations.

With the introduction of Christianity in the 10th century, the various forms of Byzantine art (e.g., architecture, mosaics, frescoes, manuscript illumination, and icon painting) spread rapidly and remained the dominant art forms through the 16th century. The

beauty and supposed miraculous power of Ukrainian icons was recognized by the invading Poles and Russians, who removed two outstanding ones for veneration to Czestochowa and Vladimir, respectively. The

mosaics and frescoes of the churches of Kiev, notably the


cathedral of St. Sophia (11th–12th century), and the icons of the more distinctively Ukrainian school in Galicia (15th–16th century) are particularly noteworthy.

Because such buildings evoked Ukrainian nationalist feelings, a

A number of outstanding churches of this period,

such as

notably the


cathedral of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery (early 12th century), were demolished by the Soviet authorities in

1934, and

the 1930s; only international protests saved


the cathedral of St. Sophia from the same fate.

Baroque architecture had a pronounced impact in Ukraine, and a distinctive “Cossack Baroque” style developed there. Western European influences in the 17th and 18th centuries also affected iconography and stimulated portrait painting, engraving, and sculpture.

From Ukraine the

Western trends

penetrated into Russia, where many Ukrainian artists worked, especially after Ukraine lost its autonomy to Russia in

were carried to Russia by Ukrainian artists working there from the 18th century. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries the Ukrainian-born sculptor and rector of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, Ivan Martos, and the Ukrainian-born portraitists Dmytro Levytsky and Volodymyr Borovykovsky were among the leading figures of the St. Petersburg Classical school of painting.



classicism and the emergent realism of the 19th century are best exemplified by the poet-painter Taras Shevchenko. New art movements are evident in the work of such 19th-century painters as the Impressionists Ivan Trush, Mykola Burachek, and Aleksander Murashko


; the


Post-Impressionist Mykola Hlushchenko


; and the Expressionists Oleksander Novakivsky, Alexis Gritchenko (Ukrainian: Oleksa Hryshchenko), and Anatoly Petrytsky (see Impressionism; Post-Impressionism; Expressionism).

The brief renewal of Ukrainian independence in 1918 further fostered


avant-garde trends that reflected a resurgence of Ukrainian national traditions. Two schools developed: in painting, the Monumentalism of Mykhaylo Boychuk, Ivan Padalka, and Vasyl Sedliar, consisting of a blend of Ukrainian Byzantine and Early Renaissance styles; and, in the graphic arts, the


Neo-Baroque of


Heorhii Narbut. Modernist experimentation ended in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s, however, when both these schools were suppressed and Socialist Realism became the only officially permitted style.

The Ukrainian avant-garde was rejuvenated following Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaigns of the late 1950s; it consisted mostly of Expressionists who wanted to illustrate Ukraine’s tragic modern history. These artists, who included Alla Horska, Opanas Zalyvakha, and Feodosy Humenyuk, were again suppressed by the Soviet authorities in the 1970s and ’80s.

A number of Ukrainian artists have won considerable renown in the West, among them Gritchenko, who began with Cubism and then turned to a dynamic form of Expressionism, and the painter and engraver Jacques Hnizdovsky, who developed a simplified style of realism. The sculptor Alexander Archipenko (Ukrainian: Oleksander Arkhypenko), one of the pioneers of Cubism


who later experimented in Constructivism and Expressionism, was a major figure of 20th-century European art.


Folk music in Ukraine retains great vitality to this day. Ritual songs, ballads, and historical songs (dumy) were sung a cappella or accompanied by folk instruments, of which the bandura (a multistringed lutelike instrument) is the most popular. Itinerant blind musicians known as kobzars or lirnyks (depending on their instrument of choice) were a common feature of the Ukrainian countryside until the 20th century.

Church music was patterned on Byzantine and Bulgarian models with local variations evolving in Kiev in the early period. Polyphonic singing had developed by the 16th century and subsequently was transmitted in the 17th century to Russia, where Ukrainian singers and musical culture soon won a dominant position. The 17th-century composer Mykola Dyletsky introduced soprano singers to church choirs and emphasized emotional expression in his compositions. Ukrainian choral music reached its peak in the 18th and early 19th centuries in the works of Maksym Berezovsky, Dmytro Bortnyansky, and Artem Vedel.

Secular music became ascendant in the 19th century. The opera Zaporozhets za Dunayem (1863; “A Zaporozhian [Cossack] Beyond the Danube”) by Semen Hulak-Artemovsky gained great popularity, as did Kateryna by Mykola Arkas and the compositions of Petro Nishchynsky and Mykhaylo Verbytsky. At the turn of the 20th century, Ukrainian musical life was dominated by Mykola Lysenko, whose output encompassed vocal and choral settings, piano compositions, and operas, including Natalka Poltavka


, Utoplena (“The Drowned Girl”), and Taras Bulba. Other major composers of the period were Kyrylo Stetsenko, Yakiv Stepovy, and Mykola Leontovych, the latter excelling in polyphonic arrangements of ancient folk music.

In the early years of the Soviet period, several composers produced works of high artistic merit, particularly Lev Revutsky and Borys Lyatoshynsky and their contemporary in

Polish-occupied Galicia

western Ukraine, Stanyslav Lyudkevych. From the mid-1930s, however, political regimentation dampened individual expression and innovation in musical language. Typical among


composers of


Soviet Ukraine


were Kostyantyn Dankevych, Yuly Meytus, and the brothers Yury and Platon Mayboroda.

Ukraine has six opera theatres, numerous symphony orchestras, academic and folk choirs, and other performing ensembles. Amateur groups of song and dance are very popular

An innovative group of modernist musicians, known as the Kiev Avant-garde, emerged as a musical force in the 1970s and ’80s. The best-known composer of the group was Valentyn Sylvestrov, who composed in the postindependence period as well.

Popular music grew in importance during the last three decades of the 20th century. The songs of popular composer Volodymyr Ivasiuk, as performed by the chanteuse Sofiya Rotaru, received wide applause. A form of popular music known as estrada (stage entertainment) also grew in popularity. Stage ensembles generally maintained a Europop sound. In the 1980s the Braty Hadiukiny (“Snake Brothers”) band started incorporating a broader range of contemporary influences into their music. By the 1990s rock, ska, punk, and other popular musical styles were commonplace in Ukraine.

Theatre and motion pictures

The theatre originated in Ukraine under Western influence in the 17th century. Verse dialogue (intermedia) rapidly developed into a specific genre, the school theatre, whose repertoire expanded to encompass dramatization of Christian legends, historical drama, and




theatre (vertep) performed on a stage of two levels. The best example of the Cossack Baroque theatre was

Teofan Prokopovych’s

the historical play Vladimir (1705) by Feofan Prokopovich (Ukrainian: Teofan Prokopovych). After a period of decline, a Ukrainian ethnographic theatre developed in the 19th century. Folk plays and vaudeville were raised to a high level of artistry by such actors as Mykola Sadovsky and


Mariia Zankovetska in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.


A lifting of censorship in 1905 permitted a significant expansion of the repertoire to include modern dramas by

Lesya Ukrayinka

Lesia Ukrainka (


who introduced to the Ukrainian stage both ancient Greek and Shakespearian techniques), Volodymyr Vynnychenko, and Oleksander Oles (an innovator in symbolic plays), as well as translated plays.

The real flowering of the Ukrainian theatre occurred between 1917 and 1933. The Berezil Theatre (1922–33) in Kharkiv, under the artistic director Les Kurbas, was the most distinguished troupe. Preeminent among the playwrights was Mykola Kulish, whose Patetychna Sonata (“Sonata Pathétique”) combined Expressionist techniques with the forms of the Ukrainian vertep. From the mid-1930s, however, the theatre in Ukraine was dominated by Socialist Realism, the style enforced by the Communist Party. Oleksander Korniychuk was the most favoured of the playwrights writing in the approved manner.

There are about 60 professional theatres in Ukraine, notably the Ivan Franko Theatre in Kiev and the Maria Zankovetska Theatre in Lviv.

Ukrainian film has achieved some marked successes. The director and scenarist Aleksandr Dovzhenko (Ukrainian: Oleksander Dovzhenko

(d. 1956

) was an important innovator in world cinematography.

Among his works, Zvenyhora (1928), Arsenal (1929), and especially Zemlya (1930; “The Earth”)

Several of his works produced in the 1920s and ’30s are considered classics of the silent


film era. In later years, Tini zabutykh predkiv (1964;


Shadows of Forgotten

Ancestors”), directed by Serhy Paradzhanov,

Ancestors) won critical acclaim in the West. The Ukrainian motion


picture industry is centred

on the O. Dovzhenko Studio in Kiev and on the Odessa studio.

in Kiev and Odessa.

Cultural institutions

There are numerous professional theatres in Ukraine, notably the Ivan Franko Theatre in Kiev and the Mariia Zankovetska Theatre in Lviv. Ukraine also has several opera theatres, numerous symphony orchestras, academic and folk choirs, and other performing ensembles. Amateur groups of song and dance are very popular as well.

The Shevchenko Scientific Society, established in 1873, was the main Ukrainian scholarly body in western Ukraine until it was forcibly dissolved in 1940, after the Soviet Union occupied the region. It reestablished itself in western Europe and the United States in 1947, and in 1989 the society resumed operations in Ukraine. Among its many activities, the society sponsors conferences and lectures, awards research grants, and publishes scholarly works, particularly in the field of Ukrainian studies.

Sports and recreation

Ukraine benefited immensely from the Soviet emphasis on sports and physical education, which left it the country with hundreds of stadiums, swimming pools, gymnasiums, and other athletic facilities. The most popular Popular sports include track and field, football (soccer), volleyball, shooting, basketball, swimming, and gymnastics. Football (soccer), however, is by far the favourite sport, with Dynamo Kiev being the country’s preeminent team. Chess is also considered a sport.

Ukrainian athletes excelled in international competitions while representing the U.S.S.R. ; since Since independence, figure skaters Viktor Petrenko and Oksana Baiul have both won Olympic gold medals.Several national parks have been organizedUkraine has fielded its own Olympic teams, featuring such notable gold medal winners as figure skater Oksana Baiul, heavyweight boxer Wladimir Klitschko (Ukrainian: Volodymyr Klichko), weightlifter Timur Taimazov, gymnast Liliya Podkopayeva, and swimmer Yana Klochkova.

The country has several national parks, including the Carpathian National Park and the Shatskyy National Park. Forest parks, located near major cities, offer picnicking, swimming, hiking, and cross-country skiing. Some of the larger cities have urban “culture and recreation” parks, where theatres, lecture halls, reading rooms, and playgrounds are found amid gardens and wooded areas.

Press and broadcasting

The largest daily newspapers include Silski visti (“Rural News”), the former organ of the Communist Party; Holos Ukrainy (“Voice of Ukraine”) and Pravda Ukrainy (“Ukrainian Truth”), organs of the Supreme Council; and the independent Democratychna Ukraina (“Democratic Ukraine”)Near the city of Yalta is located the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, in which plants from almost every country in the world are found.

In Transcarpathia and near the cities of Lviv, Vinnytsya, Zhytomyr, Bila Tserkva, Poltava, and Kharkiv are health spas noted for their mineral springs. Spas near the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov specialize in mud baths.

Media and publishing

The demise of the Soviet Union brought fundamental changes to publishing and broadcasting in Ukraine. The Communist Party’s influence was no longer a factor, and state control—and funding—receded. As a result, many established newspapers and journals ceased publication. The print runs of those that did continue, as private ventures, were in general considerably smaller. At the same time, numerous new publications and private television and radio stations emerged during the 1990s. Although Soviet-era restrictions on content were lifted, publications that are critical of the local or national administration have been subjected to various forms of harassment—for example, tax inspections, detailed examinations of registration documents, or libel suits of dubious credibility. In addition, state broadcasters occasionally have provided slanted coverage of political events. On the whole, however, the media remain much more open and credible than they were in Soviet times.

The official news agency is the Ukrainian National Information Agency, which covers political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, and sports information. Independent news agencies include Respublika (UNIAR), the Ukrainian Press Agency, and the Rukh Press, affiliated with the Rukh political party.The State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company broadcasts in Ukrainian and Russian and also broadcasts

Official publications include the Supreme Council’s Holos Ukrainy (“Voice of Ukraine”) and the cabinet’s Uryadovy Kur’yer (“Administrative Courier”). The largest newspapers (usually publishing three to five times a week) include Silski Visti (“Rural News”), a former organ of the Communist Party; Robitnycha Hazeta (“Workers’ Gazette”); Segodnya (“Today”); Molod’ Ukrainy (“Youth of Ukraine”), formerly a Komsomol publication; Vysoky Zamok (“High Castle”) in Lviv; and Donbass (“The Donbas”) in Donetsk. Other noteworthy periodicals include Den’ (“The Day”), which publishes editions in Ukrainian, Russian, and English; the influential Zerkalo Nedeli (“Weekly Mirror”); the English-language Kyiv Post; the weekly journal Polityka i Kul’tura (“Politics and Culture”); and the high-calibre literary and cultural review Krytyka (“Critique”).

The Ukrainian government controls major television and radio broadcasting companies. These broadcast in Ukrainian and Russian; they also broadcast outside the country in English, German, and Romanian. There is a Crimean Television and Radio Company, based in Simferopol.separate state-run television and radio company in the Crimea as well. Apart from the state-run networks, a host of privately owned television channels and radio stations operate in the country. Most commercial radio stations are local or regional in nature and usually feature a contemporary music and talk format.


From prehistoric times, migration and settlement patterns in the territories of present-day Ukraine varied fundamentally along the lines of three geographic zones. The Black Sea coast was for centuries in the sphere of the contemporary Mediterranean maritime powers. The open steppe, funneling from the east across southern Ukraine and toward the mouth of the Danube River, formed a natural gateway to Europe for successive waves of nomadic horsemen from Central Asia. And the mixed forest-steppe and forest belt of north-central and western Ukraine supported a sedentary an agricultural population (most notably the Trypillya culture of the mid-5th to 3rd millennia BC), linked by waterways to northern and central Europe. The marchlands marshlands of these zones were frequent areas of both military conflict and cultural transmission.

Beginning in the 7th–6th centuries BC, numerous Greek colonies were founded on the northern coast of the Black Sea, in the Crimea, and along the Sea of Azov; these Hellenic outposts later came under the hegemony of the Roman Empire (see ancient Greek civilization; ancient Rome). During the 1st millennium BC the steppe hinterland was occupied successively by the Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians. These peoples, all of Iranian stock, maintained commercial and cultural relations with the Greek colonies.

A period of great migrations began with the descent of the Goths from the Baltic region into Ukraine about AD 200. They displaced the Sarmatians, but their own power was broken about 375 by the invading Huns from the east, who were followed in the 5th–6th centuries by the Bulgars and Avars. Between the 7th and 9th centuries, the Ukrainian steppe formed part of the Turkic Khazar kaganate, a mercantile empire, which was centred on the lower Volga River. Khazar control of the steppe was breached in the late 9th century by the Magyars (Hungarians). The Pechenegs, who followed, dominated much of southern Ukraine in the 10th and 11th centuries, and they were in turn succeeded by the Polovtsians (Cumans). Throughout this period of nomadic invasions, only a few of the Greek settlements in the Crimea, notably Chersonesus (see Tauric Chersonese), maintained a precarious existence, relying on the support of the Byzantine Empire.

In the meantime, under the impact of Germanic migrations, the movement of Slavic tribes from their primordial homeland north of the Carpathians began in the 5th and 6th centuries. While some Slavs migrated westward and others south into the Balkans, the East Slavs occupied the forest and forest-steppe regions of what are now western and north-central Ukraine and southern Belarus; they expanded farther north and to the northeast into territories of the future Russian state centred on Moscow. The East Slavs practiced agriculture and animal husbandry, engaged in such domestic industries as cloth making and ceramics, and built fortified settlements, many of which later developed into important commercial and political centres. Among such early settlements was Kiev (Kyiv), on the high right (western) bank of the Dnieper River.

Kievan Rus

[Map: Historical regions of Ukraine]The formation of the Kievan state that began in the mid-9th century, the role in this process of the Varangians (NorsemenVikings) in this process, and the name Rus by which this state came to be known are all matters of controversy among historians. It is clear, however, that this formation was connected with developments in international trade and the new prominence of the Dnieper route from the Baltic to Byzantium, on which Kiev was strategically sited. Trade along this route was controlled by Varangian merchant-warriors, and from their ranks came the progenitors of the Kievan princes, who were, however, soon Slavicized. In the early chronicles the Varangians were also called Rus, and this corporate name became as well a territorial designation for the Kievan region—the basic territory of the Rus; later, by extension, it was applied to the entire territory ruled by members of the Kievan dynasty.

By the end of the 10th century, the Kievan domain covered a vast area from the edge of the open steppe in Ukraine as far north as Lake Ladoga and the upper Volga basin. Like other medieval states, it did not develop central political institutions but remained a loose aggregation of principalities ruling what was a dynastic clan enterprise. Kiev reached its apogee in the reigns of Volodymyr the Great (Vladimir I) and his son Yaroslav I (the Wise). In 988 Volodymyr adopted Christianity as the religion of his realm and had the inhabitants of Kiev baptized. Rus entered the orbit of Byzantine (later, Orthodox) Christianity and culture. A church hierarchy was established, headed (at least since 1037) by the metropolitan of Kiev, who was usually appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople. With the new religion came new forms of architecture, art, and music, a written language (Old Church Slavonic), and the beginnings of a literary culture. All these were vigorously promoted by Yaroslav, who also promulgated a code of laws, the first in Slavdom. Although Byzantium and the steppe remained his main preoccupations in external policy, Yaroslav maintained friendly relations with European rulers, with whom he established marital alliances for his progeny.

Following Yaroslav’s death, Kiev entered a long period of decline, only briefly stemmed in the 12th century under Volodymyr II Monomakh (Vladimir II Monomakh). Shifts in trade routes undermined Kiev’s economic importance, while warfare with the Polovtsians in the steppe sapped its wealth and energies. Succession struggles and princely rivalries eroded Kiev’s political hegemony and strengthened separatist tendencies among the principalities. The ascendancy of new centres and the clustering of principalities around them reflected regional cleavages—historical, economic, and tribal ethnic—that had persisted even in the period of Kiev’s predominance. These differences were accentuated by the Mongol-Tatar invasions that began in the 1220s and culminated in the devastating sack of Kiev in 1240.

The territory that largely coincides with modern Belarus, with Polotsk as the most important centre, was one such emerging region. The land of Novgorod to its north was another. In the northeast, Vladimir-Suzdal (and later Moscow) formed the core from which developed the future Russian state (see also Grand Principality of Moscow). On Ukrainian territory, in the southwestern part of Rus, Galicia-Volhynia emerged as the leading principality.

Volodymyr (modern Volodymyr-Volynskyy) in Volhynia had been an important princely seat throughout the in Kievan periodRus; and Galicia, with its seat at Halych, on the Dniester River, became a principality in the 12th century. In 1199 the two principalities were united by Prince Roman Mstyslavych to form a powerful and rich state that at times included the domains of Kiev. Galicia-Volhynia reached its highest eminence under Roman’s son Danylo (Daniel Romanovich). New cities were founded, most importantly Lviv; trade—especially with Poland and Hungary, as well as Byzantium—brought considerable prosperity; and culture flourished, with marked new influences from the West. In 1253 Danylo (in a bid for aid from the West) even accepted the royal crown from the pope and effected a short-lived church union with RomePope Innocent IV and recognized him as head of the church, although nothing substantial came from this. Danylo’s reign also witnessed the rise of boyar-magnate unrest, debilitating dynastic involvements with Poland and Hungary, and the Mongol invasion of 1240–41. These marked the onset of Galicia-Volhynia’s decline, which continued until the extinction of Roman’s dynasty in 1340.

Lithuanian and Polish rule

[Map: Historical regions of Ukraine]By the middle of the 14th century, Ukrainian territories were under the rule of three external powers—the Golden Horde, the grand duchy of Lithuania, and the kingdom of Poland.

The steppe and the Crimea, whose coastal towns and maritime trade were now in the hands of the Venetians and Genoese, formed part of the direct domains of the Tatar Golden Horde. This was the westernmost successor of Genghis Khan’s Mongol empire, whose khan resided at Sarai on the Volga River. By the mid-15th century the Golden Horde was in a process of disintegration. One of its successor states was the Crimean khanate, which after 1475 accepted the supremacy suzerainty of the sultans of the Ottoman sultansEmpire. Both the Crimean Peninsula and large areas of the adjoining steppe continued under the khanate’s rule until its annexation to the Russian Empire in 1783.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Mongol rule was largely indirect, limited to exactions of taxes and tribute whose collection was delegated to the local princes. It was also relatively short-lived; northwestern and central Ukraine became an arena of expansion for a new power that had arisen in the 13th century, the grand duchy of Lithuania.

Having already over the course of a century incorporated all the lands of Belarus, Lithuania under Grand Duke Algirdas advanced rapidly into Ukraine. In the 1350s Chernihiv and adjacent areas—and in the 1360s the regions of Kiev and, to its south, Pereyaslav and Podolia (Podillya)—were occupied by Lithuania. Competition with Poland over the former Galician-Volhynian principality ended in the 1380s in partition, by which Lithuania gained Volhynia and Poland was confirmed in its possession of Galicia. Thus, Lithuanian control extended over virtually all the Ukrainian lands as far as the open steppe and even, briefly, to the Black Sea.

Within the grand duchy , the Ruthenian (Ukrainian and Belarusian) lands initially retained considerable autonomy. The pagan Lithuanians themselves were increasingly converting to Orthodoxy and assimilating into Ruthenian culture. The grand duchy’s administrative practices and legal system drew heavily on Slavic customs, and an official Ruthenian (Slavonic heavily infused with vernacular Ukrainian and Belarusian elements) became the official state languagestate language (also known as Rusyn) developed over time from the language used in Rus.

Direct Polish rule in Ukraine since in the 1340s and for two centuries thereafter was limited to Galicia. There, changes in such areas as administration, law, and land tenure proceeded more rapidly than in Ukrainian territories under Lithuania. However, Lithuania itself was soon drawn into the orbit of Poland following the dynastic linkage of the two states in 1385/86 and the baptism of the Lithuanians into the Latin (Roman Catholic) church. The spread of Catholicism among the Lithuanians and the attendant diffusion of the Polish language, culture, and notions of political and social order among the Lithuanian nobility eroded the position of the Orthodox Ruthenians, as had happened earlier in Galicia. In 1569, by the Union of Lublin, the dynastic link between Poland and Lithuania was transformed into a constitutional union of the two states as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At the same time, the greater part of the Ukrainian territories was detached from Lithuania and annexed directly to Poland. This act hastened the differentiation of Ukrainians and Belarusians (who the latter of whom remained within the grand duchy) and, by eliminating the political frontier between them, promoted the closer integration of Galicia and the eastern Ukrainian lands. For the next century, virtually all ethnically Ukrainian lands experienced in common the direct impact of Polish political and cultural predominance.

Social changes

Over three centuries of Lithuanian and Polish rule, Ukraine , by the middle of the 17th century , had undergone substantial social evolution. The princely and boyar families tracing their roots to Kievan Rus had largely merged and become part of the privileged noble estate of Lithuania and Poland. Long attached to the Orthodox religion and the Ruthenian language and customs, the Ruthenian nobility in the late 16th century became increasingly prone to Polonization, a process often initiated by education in Jesuit schools and conversion to Roman Catholicism.

With the growth of towns and urban trades, especially in western Ukraine, the burghers became an important social stratum. They were divided both in terms of an internal social hierarchy associated with the guild system and by religion and ethnicity. Since the 13th century many Poles, Armenians, Germans, and Jews had settled in the cities and towns, where the Ukrainians were often reduced to a minority. Although the burghers came to play an influential role within the Ukrainian community, legal disabilities imposed on non-Catholics progressively limited their participation in the municipal self-government enjoyed by many cities and towns under Magdeburg Law.

In the period of Polish rule the conditions of the peasantry steadily deteriorated. The free peasantry that had still existed into the late Lithuanian period underwent rapid enserfment, while serf obligations themselves became more onerous (see serfdom). Peasant unrest increased toward the end of the 16th century, especially in eastern Ukraine. The sparsely settled lands were opened to Polish proprietorship for the first time, and through royal grants large latifundia (agricultural estates worked by a large number of peasants) were established through royal grants to meet the demands for grain on the European markets. To attract labour to the new estates, peasants were granted temporary exemptions from serf obligations; the expiration of these exemptions and the reintroduction of servitude among a population grown accustomed to freedom led to much discontent and peasant flight into the “wild fields”—the steppe lands to the east and south. Tensions were exacerbated by the fact that, while the peasants were Ukrainian and Orthodox, the landlords were largely Polish (or Polonized) and Roman Catholic, and the estate stewards or leaseholders for absentee proprietors frequently were frequently Jewish. Thus, social discontent tended to coalesce with national and religious grievances.

Religious developments

As social conditions among the Ukrainian population in Lithuania and Poland progressively deteriorated, so did the situation of the Ruthenian church. The Roman Catholic churchChurch, steadily expanding eastward into Ukraine, enjoyed the support of the state and legal superiority over the Orthodox. External pressures and restrictions were accompanied by a serious internal decline in the Ruthenian church. From the mid-16th century, both Catholicism, newly reinvigorated by the Counter-Reformation and the arrival of Jesuits in Poland, and Protestantism (albeit temporarily) made inroads, especially among the Ruthenian nobility.

Attempts to revive the fortunes of the Ruthenian church gathered strength in the last decades of the 16th century. About 1580 Prince Konstantyn Ostrozky founded at Ostroh in Volhynia a cultural centre that included an academy and a printing press and attracted leading scholars of the day; among its major achievements was the publication of the first complete text of the Bible in Slavonic. Lay brotherhoods, established by burghers in Lviv and other cities, maintained churches, supported schools and printing presses, and promoted charitable activities. The brotherhoods , however, were frequently in conflict with the Orthodox hierarchy, however, on questions of authority over their institutions and clerical reforms.

Religious developments took a radical turn in 1596 when, at a synod in Brest, the Kievan metropolitan and the majority of bishops signed an act of union with Rome. By this act the Ruthenian church recognized papal primacy but retained the Eastern rite and the Slavonic liturgical language, as well as its administrative autonomy and traditional discipline, including a married clergy.

The This so-called Uniate church was unsuccessful in gaining the legal equality with the Latin church foreseen by the agreement. Nor was it able to stem the process of Polonization and Latinization of the nobility. At the same time, the Union of Brest-Litovsk caused a deep split in the Ruthenian church and society. This was reflected in a sizable polemical literature, struggles over the control of bishoprics and church properties that intensified after the restoration of an Orthodox hierarchy in 1620, and numerous acts of violence. Efforts to heal the breach in the 1620s and ’30s were ultimately fruitless. (See also Eastern Rite church.)

The Cossacks

[Map: Historical regions of Ukraine]In the 15th century a new martial society—the Cossacks (from the Turkic kazak, meaning “adventurer” or “free man”)—was beginning to evolve in Ukraine’s southern steppe frontier. The term was applied initially to venturesome men who entered the steppe seasonally for hunting, fishing, and the gathering of honey. Their numbers were continually augmented by peasants fleeing serfdom and adventurers from other social strata, including the nobility. Banding together for mutual protection, the Cossacks by the mid-16th century had developed a military organization of a peculiarly democratic kind, with a general assembly (rada) as the supreme authority and elected officers, including the commander in chief, or hetman. Their centre was the Sich, an armed camp in the lands of the lower Dnieper “beyond the rapids” (za porohy)—hence, Zaporozhia (modern in contemporary usage, Zaporizhzhya).

The Cossacks defended Ukraine’s frontier population from Tatar incursions, conducted their own campaigns into Crimean territory, and, in their flotillas of light craft, even raided Turkish coastal cities in Anatolia. The Polish government found the Cossacks a useful fighting force in wars with the Tatars, Turks, and Muscovites but in peacetime viewed them as a dangerously volatile element. Attempts to control them institutionally and to limit their numbers through an official register created serious discontent among the Cossacks, who increasingly perceived themselves as forming a distinct estate with inherent rights and liberties. Sporadically over a half century , starting in 1591, the Cossacks rose up in revolts that were put down only with great difficulty.

In the first half of the 17th century, the Cossacks also became involved in the raging religious conflict. In 1620 the entire Zaporozhian host joined the Kievan Orthodox brotherhood; in the same year, a new Orthodox hierarchy was consecrated in Kiev under their military protection. Thus, in the great religious divide, the Cossacks became identified with staunch support of Orthodoxy and uncompromising opposition to the Uniate church.

The Khmelnytsky Insurrection

Under the protection afforded by the Cossacks and the dynamic leadership of a new metropolitan of Kiev, Peter Mogila (Ukrainian: Petro Mohyla), Orthodoxy flourished in Ukraine; it became the driving force behind a cultural revival that included the establishment of the Kievan Mohyla Academy, the first Ukrainian institution of higher learning.

The Khmelnytsky insurrection

Tensions stemming from social discontent, religious strife, and Cossack resentment of Polish authority finally coalesced and came to a head in 1648. Beginning with a seemingly typical Cossack revolt, under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Ukraine was quickly engulfed in an unprecedented war and revolution.

Khmelnytsky was a petty nobleman and Cossack officer who, unable to obtain justice for wrongs suffered at Polish hands, fled to the Sich in late 1647 and was soon elected hetman. In early 1648 he began preparations for an insurrection, securing for this purpose Tatar military support. A Polish army sent into Ukraine to forestall the rebellion was shattered in two battles in May. This victory gave signal to a massive popular uprising. Violence spread throughout Ukraine as Cossacks and peasants vented their fury on those they associated with Polish tyranny and social oppression—landlords, officials, Latin and Uniate clergy, and Jews. The Poles in turn took bloody reprisals against the rebellious population. In September Khmelnytsky inflicted another crushing defeat on a newly raised Polish army, marched westward through Galicia, and finally besieged Zamość in Poland proper. He did not press his advantage, however, and, with the election of a new Polish king in November, he returned to central Ukraine. In January 1649 Khmelnytsky entered Kiev to triumphal acclaim as liberator.

Although initially seeking only a redress of grievances from the Polish crown, Khmelnytsky, following his arrival in Kiev, began to conceive of Ukraine as an independent Cossack state. He set about establishing a system of government and state finances, created a local administration under a new governing elite drawn from the Cossack officers, and initiated relations with foreign states. Still prepared to recognize royal sovereignty, however, he entered into negotiations with the Poles. But neither the Treaty of Zboriv (August 1649) nor a less favourable agreement two years later proved acceptable—either to the Polish nobility or to the Cossack rank and file and the radicalized masses on the Ukrainian side.

While military operations continued inconclusively, and because Tatar support proved undependable at crucial moments, Khmelnytsky began to search for other allies. In 1654 at Pereyaslav he concluded with Muscovy Moscow an agreement whose precise nature has generated enormous controversy: Russian historians have emphasized Ukraine’s acceptance of the tsar’s suzerainty, which subsequently legitimized Russian rule; , but Ukrainian historiography has stressed Moscow’s recognition of Ukraine’s autonomy (including an elective hetmancy, self-government, and the right to conduct foreign relations) that was virtually tantamount to independence (see Pereyaslav Agreement). Muscovy Moscow now entered the war against Poland. No decisive breakthrough occurred, however, despite occasional joint victories, and Khmelnytsky became increasingly disillusioned with the Muscovite alliance. There were disputes over control of conquered territory in Belarus and conflicts over Russian interference in internal Ukrainian affairs. Especially galling to the hetman was the Russo-Polish rapprochement that followed the invasion in 1655 of Poland by Sweden, Moscow’s adversary but Ukraine’s potential ally (see First Northern War). Khmelnytsky again cast about for new alliances and coalitions involving Sweden, Transylvania, Brandenburg, Moldavia, and WallachiaWalachia, and there were indications that the hetman planned to sever the Muscovite connection when he died in 1657.

The Ruin

Khmelnytsky’s successor, Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky, broke with Moscow and in 1658 concluded the new Treaty of Hadyach with Poland. By its terms, central Ukraine (attempts to include Volhynia and Galicia were unsuccessful) was to constitute—under the hetman and a ruling elite of nobles and officers—the self-governing grand duchy of Rus, joined with Poland and Lithuania as an equal member of a tripartite commonwealth. Distasteful to the Polish magnates for its concessions to the hated Cossacks, repugnant to the Cossack Cossacks and the peasant masses for its conservative social cast and Polish connection, and a provocation to MuscovyMoscow, the Treaty of Hadyach Treaty was never implemented. Faced with mounting opposition, Vyhovsky resigned the hetmancy and fled to Poland.

After Vyhovsky, Ukraine began a rapid descent into a prolonged state of chaos that contemporaries called “the Ruin.” Tensions increased between the Cossack officers, who were undergoing a transformation into a hereditary landowning class, and rank-and-file Cossacks and the peasantry, who were the expected supply of labour. From 1663, rival hetmans rose and fell in the competing Polish and Russian spheres of influence. In 1667, by the Treaty Truce of Andrusovo, Ukraine was partitioned along the Dnieper River: the western west, known as the Right Bank, reverted to Poland, while Muscovy Russia was confirmed in its possession of the eastern east, known as the Left Bank, together with Kiev ; the lands of Zaporozhia became a Polish-Muscovite condominium (changed in 1686 to solely Muscovite sovereignty). In fact, the Zaporozhian Cossacks became an authority unto themselves and, with hetmans now resident elsewhere, elected their own chieftains and followed their own impetuous policies(which actually was located west of the river); the arrangement was confirmed in 1686 by the Treaty of Eternal Peace between Poland and Russia.

The partition of Ukraine caused a patriotic reaction. The hetman of the Right Bank, Petro Doroshenko, briefly occupied the Left Bank and sought to re-create a unified Ukrainian state under the vassalage of the Ottoman Empire. A massive Turkish Ottoman military intervention in 1672 had as its primary effect the outright annexation of Podolia as an Ottoman province for a quarter century. Doroshenko’s hopes—and popularity—evaporated as further Turkish Ottoman operations failed to establish his rule and led to devastation, especially after Muscovy Russia was drawn into the war. Mass flight of the populace to the Left Bank, and even beyond, depopulated large tracts of Right Bank Ukraine. Two large-scale Ottoman campaigns followed Doroshenko’s abdication, but a truce in 1681 put an end to further direct Turkish military involvement. Ottoman power was soon on the wane in Europe, and in 1699 the province of Podolia reverted to Polish rule.

The autonomous hetman state and Sloboda Ukraine







Right Bank and western Ukraine until the partitions Partitions of Poland

The western Ukrainian lands of Galicia and Volhynia, though part of the theatre of war during the Khmelnytsky insurrection, remained in its aftermath still securely tied to Polandfirmly under Polish control. The Right Bank, after the abatement of the Ruin and the retrocession of Podolia by the Turks, also reverted to Polish sovereignty. However, only in 1714, after further dislocations connected with the Second Northern War, was control reestablished over the area by a greatly weakened Poland.

The society that reemerged in Ukrainian territories under Polish rule in the 18th century differed markedly from that in the Hetmanate. The Cossacks virtually disappeared as a significant organized force. Cities and towns experienced a serious decline, and their populations became more heavily Polish and, especially in the Right Bank, Jewish. Roman Catholicism maintained and even enhanced its earlier privileged status; the Uniate church, however, became predominant among Ukrainians, with Orthodoxy claiming a smaller number of adherents.

In the absence of strong central authority , and with the elimination of the Cossacks as a countervailing force, the Right Bank was dominated by the Polish nobility. Especially influential were a few magnate families whose huge estates formed virtually independent fiefdoms, with their own privately armed militias. The desolated lands were slowly repopulated through peasant migrations (frequently organized by the nobility) from Galicia and, especially, Volhynia. The extreme exploitation of the enserfed peasantry bred discontent that led sporadically to uprisings by bands of rebels called haydamaks (Turkish: “freebooters” or “marauders”). The most violent, known as the Koliivshchyna, occurred in 1768 and was put down only with the help of Russian troops.

Polish rule in Ukrainian territories came to an end with the extinction of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the three partitions of partitions—in 1772, 1793, and 1795 (see Partitions of Poland). In the first partition, Galicia was annexed by Habsburg Austria. In the second, Russia took the Right Bank and eastern Volhynia, absorbing ; it absorbed the rest of Volhynia in the third.

Ukraine under direct imperial Russian rule

[Map: Historical regions of Ukraine]Following the abolition of autonomy in the Hetmanate and Sloboda Ukraine and the annexation of the Right Bank and Volhynia, Ukrainian lands in the Russian Empire formally lost all traces of their national distinctiveness. The territories were reorganized into regular Russian provinces (gubernias) administered by governors appointed from St. Petersburg. The Right Bank, along with some adjoining territories, formed part of the Pale of Settlement, to which the Jewish population of the empire was residentially restricted (see pale). With the liquidation of the Sich and the annexation of the Crimean khanate in 1783, the sparsely settled southern lands (named Novorossiya, or New Russia) were colonized by migrants from other parts of Ukraine, as well as smaller numbers from Russia, the Balkans, and Germany. This colonization movement greatly expanded Ukrainian ethnic territory. The new Black Sea port of Odessa (Odesa) grew into a large and cosmopolitan metropolis.

Equally important developments occurred in the social sphere. As compensation for their lost rights as a ruling elite in the Hetmanate, the Cossack starshyna were equalized with the Russian nobility; many entered imperial service, and some achieved the highest government ranks. Through education, intermarriage, and government service, the Ukrainian nobility gradually became Russified—as the earlier Ruthenian nobility had been Polonized—though many retained a sentimental attachment to the land and its folklore. The Polish nobility in the Right Bank retained its status and continued as the dominant landowning class, although its status eroded over time, particularly after the Polish insurrections of 1830–31 and 1863–64 (see November Insurrection; January Insurrection). The large Jewish population was bound by numerous legal disabilities and, from 1881, victimized by recurrent waves of pogroms. The gradual process of enserfment of the peasantry in the Left Bank culminated in 1783 under Catherine II. The obligations there, however, were less onerous than in the Right Bank. Serfdom remained the dominant lot of the peasantry until the emancipation of 1861, and even after emancipation the peasants were still burdened by inadequate land allotments and heavy redemption payments that led to the impoverishment of many (see Emancipation Manifesto).

Nevertheless, the reforms stimulated the development of industry within the Russian Empire by releasing labour from the land. Industrial development was especially marked in eastern Ukraine, notably the Donbas , which attracted workers region (Donets Basin). However, the workers attracted to the growing metallurgical industry and other industrial concerns generally came from other parts of the empire; the Ukrainian population seeking economic improvement more commonly emigrated to agricultural lands. As a result, the emerging working class and the growing urban centres in Ukraine became highly Russified islands in a Ukrainian rural sea.

As in the political and social realms, in religious policy the tsarist regime promoted the elimination of Ukrainian peculiarities. Although the largely Polish Roman Catholic church Church was allowed to continue, Catherine launched a program of administrative conversion of Ukrainians from the Uniate church. The anti-Uniate campaign was partially reversed by her immediate successors but was renewed with vigour by Nicholas I. In 1839 the Uniate metropolitanate was abolished, the Union of Brest-Litovsk declared null and void, and the Uniates finally absorbed into the Russian Orthodox churchChurch, while the recalcitrant clergy were harshly punished. The Russian Orthodox church Church became an important vehicle for the Russification policies of the imperial regime in Ukraine.

In the 19th century the development of Ukrainian cultural life was closely connected with academic circles. The first modern university in Ukraine was established in 1805 at Kharkiv, and for 30 years Sloboda Ukraine was the major centre for Ukrainian scholarship and publishing activities. In 1834 a university was founded in Kiev , and in 1864 1865 at Odessa. Though Russian institutions, they did much to promote the study of local history and ethnography that , which in turn had a stimulative effect on the Ukrainian national movement.

Literature, however, became the primary vehicle for the 19th-century Ukrainian national revival. The most important writer—and unquestionably the most significant figure in the development of a modern Ukrainian national consciousness—was Taras Shevchenko. Born a serf, Shevchenko was bought out of servitude by a group of artists who recognized his talent for painting. Considered Though considered by many to be the father of modern Ukrainian painting, it was as a poet that Shevchenko made his unique mark as a poet. His poetry spanned themes from the fantastic in folklike ballads to epic romanticization of Cossack glory, from wrathful indictments of social and national oppression under the tsars to mystical reflections based on the biblical prophets. Apart from its seminal impact on the subsequent course of Ukrainian literature, Shevchenko’s poetry reflected a conception of Ukraine as a free and democratic society that had a profound influence on the development of Ukrainian political thought.

By the mid-19th century the cultural and literary stirrings in Ukraine aroused concern in tsarist ruling circles. In the official view, dominant also in Russian historiography, the Ukrainians were a subdivision, or “tribe,” of Russians—“Little Russians”—torn from the unity of Rus by the Mongol-Tatars and deflected from their proper historical course by the baneful influence of Poland. Thus, it was deemed essential to reintegrate Ukraine fully into the Russian body politic. Shevchenko’s patriotic verse earned him arrest and years of exile in Central Asia. In 1863 the minister of the interior, Pyotr Valuev, banned virtually all Ukrainian publicationspublications in Ukrainian, with the exception of belles lettres. The ban was reinforced by a secret imperial decree, the Ems Ukaz, of Alexander II in 1876 , the Ems Ukaz, and extended to the publication of belles lettres in Ukrainian, the importation of Ukrainian-language books, and public readings and stage performances in the language. The prohibition even extended to education, a education—a major contributing factor to the low rate of literacy among Ukrainians—only Ukrainians (only 13 percent in 1897). With such restrictions, writers from Russian-ruled Ukraine could see their works published only in Austrian Galicia, and many figures in the national movement shifted their activities there.

Tsarist repression and the still premodern, largely rural character of Ukrainian society in the Russian Empire impeded the growth of a political movement. A secret society, the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, existed briefly in 1845–47. Its program advocated social equality, an end to national oppression, and a federation of Slavic states under the leadership of Ukraine. The brotherhood was quickly uncovered and suppressed and its leaders arrested and punished. In the second half of the 19th century, clandestine societies called hromadas (“communities”) were formed in various cities to promote Ukrainian culture, education, and publishing under conditions of illegality. Originally associated with the Kiev Hromada hromada was the leading political thinker of the time, Mykhaylo Drahomanov, who advocated the transformation of the tsarist empire into a federative republic in which Ukrainian national rights would be assured. Toward the end of the century, younger, primarily student-led hromadas became involved in more overtly political activities. One such group in Kharkiv developed into the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party, which in a pamphlet published in 1900 advanced for the first time as a political goal “one, single, indivisible, free, independent Ukraine.”

The revolution that shook the Russian Empire in 1905 spawned worker strikes and peasant unrest in Ukraine as well (see Russian Revolution of 1905). The consequent transformation of the tsarist autocracy into a semiconstitutional monarchy led to some easing in Ukrainian national life. The ban on Ukrainian-language publishing lapsed, and societies to foster popular enlightenment and scholarship proliferated, as did theatrical troupes and musical ensembles. Nevertheless, the population affected by these cultural endeavours remained small, and the Ukrainian language was still excluded from schools.

In the political arena the introduction of an elected assembly, or Duma, in 1906 initially provided Ukrainians with a new forum to press their national concerns. In the short-lived First and Second Dumas, Ukrainians had a sizable representation and formed their own caucus. Changes in the electoral law to the detriment of the peasantry and national minorities, however, severely limited Ukrainian representation and effectiveness in the Third and Fourth Dumas. Until the Russian Revolution of 1917, the agenda of nationally conscious, politically active Ukrainians seldom exceeded demands for language and cultural rights and some form of local autonomy.

Western Ukraine under the Habsburg monarchy

[Map: Historical regions of Ukraine]The Habsburgs’ annexation of Galicia from Poland in 1772 was followed two years later by their acquisition of Bukovina, a partly Ukrainian (predominantly in its northern reaches) and partly Romanian territory, from Moldavia. Already under Habsburg rule, as part of the Hungarian crown, was a third ethnically Ukrainian region—Transcarpathia. Within the Habsburg realm these three territories underwent many experiences in common, but they were distinguished also by differences stemming from their specific ethnic environments and earlier histories.


Under Austria, ethnically Ukrainian Galicia was joined administratively with purely Polish areas to its west into a single province, with Lviv (German: Lemberg) as the provincial capital. This and the fact that, in the province’s Ukrainian half, the Poles constituted overwhelmingly the landlord class and dominated the major cities (though many towns were largely Jewish) made Polish-Ukrainian rivalry a crucial feature of Galician life. Although, on balance, Habsburg policies favoured the Poles, Ukrainians (Ruthenians in the contemporary terminology) in Austria enjoyed far greater opportunities for their national development and made far greater progress than did Ukrainians in tsarist Russia.

The reforms initiated by the Austrian rulers Maria Theresa and Joseph II and the introduction of the imperial bureaucracy in Galicia improved the position of Ukrainians. The peasantry benefited from the limitation of the corvée and the abolition of personal bondage to the landlord in the 1780s, as well as from new methods in agriculture promoted by the “enlightened monarchs.” Municipal reforms reversed the decline of cities and led to an improvement in the legal and social position of the Ukrainian urban population. Undertaken as early as 1775, educational reforms allowed for instruction in the native language, although in practice , until the mid-19th century, Ukrainian-language teaching was limited largely to low-level parochial schools until the mid-19th century.

The fortunes of the Uniate church also rose. Renamed the Greek Catholic church in 1774, it was, by imperial decree, equalized in status with the Roman Catholic churchChurch, and in 1807 a metropolitanate was established, with its seat in Lviv. Imperial authorities took pains to raise the educational standards of the clergy. In the early decades of the 19th century, the clergy trained at newly established institutions almost exclusively formed the educated class, and their children, beginning to enter secular professions, gave rise to a Ukrainian intelligentsia. In the course of the 19th century, the Greek Catholic church became a major national, as well as religious, institution.

The revolution of 1848 that swept the Austrian Empire politicized the Ukrainians of Galicia (see Revolutions of 1848). The Supreme Ruthenian Council, established to articulate Ukrainian concerns, proclaimed the identity of Austria’s Ruthenians with the Ukrainians under Russian rule; demanded the division of Galicia into separate Polish and Ukrainian provinces, the latter to include Bukovina and Transcarpathia; organized a national guard and other small military units; and published the first Ukrainian-language newspaper.

Although suppressed, the revolution set in motion important transformations in Galician society. The corvée was abolished in 1848. Impoverishment of the Ukrainian peasantry increased, however, owing due to lack of land reform, rural overpopulation, and a near total absence of industry to absorb the excess labour force. Large-scale emigration to the Americas (specifically the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina) began in the 1880s and continued until World War I.

Also in the aftermath of the 1848 revolution, the imperial regime reached an accommodation with the Polish nobility that in effect ceded political control of Galicia to the Poles. The local Polish hegemony was little affected by the reforms of the 1860s that gave Austria a constitution and parliament and Galicia its provincial autonomy and diet. The governors appointed by Vienna were exclusively Polish aristocrats. The civil service and Lviv University, which had been Germanized in the early years of Habsburg rule, were Polonized. Elections to the parliament and diet inevitably produced commanding Polish majorities, as voting was based on a curial system that favoured the landowning and urban classes, inevitably produced commanding Polish majorities. . (Curiae were the political groups, representing various communities and classes of people, that cast the votes.) The occasional efforts by imperial authorities to promote a Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation failed to gain more than minor concessions in the fields of culture and education. The major demands of Ukrainian parliamentary representatives—including the partition of Galicia along ethnic lines, the replacement of the curial electoral system by universal suffrage, and the creation of a Ukrainian university in Lviv—were not met.

Disappointment with the Habsburgs and concern over the new Polish ascendancy gave rise in the 1860s to pro-Russian sympathies among the older, more conservative, clerical intelligentsia. The Russophiles promoted a bookish hybrid Ukrainian-Russian language (derogatorily dubbed yazychiie by its critics) and a cultural and political orientation toward Russia. From the 1870s they consistently lost ground to the Populists narodovtsi (populists), who fostered the use of the vernacular and stressed the ethnic identity of Ukrainians in Austria-Hungary and in the Russian Empire. The Populists narodovtsi developed an extensive press and founded numerous associations that also (starting with the Prosvita society in 1868) that provided an important outlet for writers and scholars in Russian-ruled Ukraine. Self-organization in the late 19th century extended to women’s and youth groups, performing ensembles, cooperatives and credit unions, and, in the 1890s, political parties. By this time, however, the Russophiles had been largely discredited (although they retained control of many key Ukrainian institutions in Galicia), and the leading role of the narodovtsi in the emerging Ukrainian national movement in Galicia was being challenged, though never eclipsed, by a patriotically minded radical movement, whose leading figures included Ivan Franko and Mykhailo Pavlyk.

At the turn of the century, the ethnic conflict in Galicia deepened. Massive peasant strikes against the Polish landlords occurred in 1902. Ukrainian university students engaged in demonstrations and clashes with the Poles, and in 1908 a student assassinated the Galician governor. The introduction in 1907 of universal manhood suffrage in elections to the Austrian parliament strengthened Ukrainian representation in Vienna and intensified pressures for a similar reform on the provincial level. Growing tensions with Russia prompted Vienna to seek a Ukrainian-Polish compromise, but Polish opposition kept the old curial electoral system in effect to the end.

By the outbreak of World War I, Ukrainians in Austrian Galicia were still an overwhelmingly agrarian and politically disadvantaged society. Nevertheless, they had made impressive educational and cultural advances, possessed a large native intelligentsia and an extensive institutional infrastructure, and had achieved a high level of national consciousness, all of which contrasted sharply with the situation prevailing in Russian-ruled Ukraine.


A small territory between the middle Dniester River and the main range of the Carpathians, Bukovina had formed part of Kievan Rus and the Galician-Volhynian principality. In the 14th century it was incorporated into Moldavia, which in the 16th century became a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. At the time of its annexation by Austria in 1774, the population, Orthodox in religion, was binational, with Ukrainians predominating in the north and Romanians in the south.

The Habsburgs quickly proceeded to institute instituted reforms similar to those in Galicia. Bukovina was joined to Galicia as a discrete district from 1787 to 1849, when it became a separate crownland, achieving ; it achieved full autonomy in 1861. In the 19th century, sizable Jewish and German communities came into being as a result of immigration. German was the province’s official language; however, both Ukrainian and Romanian had currency in public life and, in certain disciplines, at the local university. Romanian-Ukrainian friction grew toward the end of the century over such issues as the Ukrainian attempts to gain parity in the Orthodox church administration, but it did not reach the level of hostility prevailing in Galicia.

From the late 1860s the Ukrainian national movement in Bukovina paralleled the developments in Galicia, with which there were close connections; a similar network of cultural and civic organizations and publishing enterprises was created. The provision of Ukrainian schools and educational facilities was superior to that of any other Ukrainian territory.


Lying south of the Carpathian Mountains, Transcarpathia was long isolated, both geographically and politically, from other ethnically Ukrainian lands. A domain of Kievan Rus, after 1015 Transcarpathia was absorbed by Hungary, of which it remained a part for almost a millennium. With Hungary, it came in the 16th–17th centuries under the Habsburg dynasty. After the Union of Uzhhorod in 1646, on terms similar to the Union of Brest-Litovsk, the Uniate church became dominant in the religious sphere. Overwhelmingly rural in character, Transcarpathia had a Ukrainian (Ruthenian) peasantry, a powerful Hungarian landowning nobility, and a substantial number of urban and rural Jews. Under Hungary, Transcarpathia did not constitute a single administrative unit but was divided into counties governed by officials appointed from Budapest.

Social reforms initiated by Vienna in the late 18th century soon foundered on the shoals of Hungarian nobiliary opposition, and educational levels—at the time higher than in Galicia—began to decline in the early 19th century. However, ecclesiastical and cultural ties with Galicia remained strong until mid-century.

The 1848 revolution took a sharply nationalistic turn in Hungary, alienating many among its Slav minorities. Its suppression by Russian troops in 1849 stimulated pro-Russian sentiments that among Transcarpathia’s intelligentsia and led to the emergence of Russophilism as the territory’s main cultural and political orientation among Transcarpathia’s intelligentsia. However, the political arrangement of 1867 (the Ausgleich) that created the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy ceded control over internal policies to the Hungarian oligarchy. Increasing restrictions on the Ruthenian language in schools and publishing resulted in a growing tendency to Magyarization. Not until the turn of the 20th century did a Ukrainophile Populist populist movement develop as a counterpoint to Russophilism and Magyarization. By the outbreak of World War I, Ukrainian national consciousness was still at a low level of development in Transcarpathia.

World War I and the struggle for independence

The outbreak of World War I and the onset of hostilities between Russia and Austria-Hungary on Aug. 1, 1914, had immediate repercussions for the Ukrainian subjects of both belligerent powers. In the Russian Empire, Ukrainian publications and cultural organizations were directly suppressed and prominent figures arrested or exiled. As Russian forces advanced into Galicia in September, the retreating Austrians executed thousands for suspected pro-Russian sympathies. After occupying Galicia, tsarist authorities took steps toward its total incorporation into the Russian Empire. They prohibited the Ukrainian language, closed down institutions, and prepared to liquidate the Greek Catholic church. The Russification campaign was cut short by the Austrian reconquest in spring 1915. Western Ukraine, however, continued to be a theatre of military operations and suffered great depredation.

The Russian Revolution of February 1917 brought into power the Provisional Government, which promptly introduced freedom of speech and assembly and lifted the tsarist restrictions on minorities. National life in Ukraine quickened with the revival of a Ukrainian press and the formation of numerous cultural and professional associations, as well as political parties. In March, on the initiative of these new organizations, the Central Rada (“Council”) was formed in Kiev as a Ukrainian representative body. In April the more broadly convened All-Ukrainian National Congress declared the Central Rada to be the highest national authority in Ukraine and elected the historian Mykhaylo Hrushevsky as its presidenthead. The stated goal of the Central Rada was territorial autonomy for Ukraine and the transformation of Russia into a democratic, federative republic. Although the Provisional Government recognized Ukraine’s right to autonomy and the Central Rada as a legitimate representative body, there were unresolved disputes over its territorial jurisdiction and political prerogatives. Locally, especially in the Russified cities of eastern Ukraine, the Rada also had to compete with the increasingly radical soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, whose support in the Ukrainian population, however, was quite limited.

Ukrainian-Russian relations deteriorated rapidly following the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd on November 7(formerly St. Petersburg) on Nov. 7, 1917. The Central Rada refused to accept the new regime’s authority over Ukraine and on November 20 proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian National Republic, though still in federation with the new democratic Russia that was expected to emerge from the impending Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks, in turn, at the first All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, held in Kharkiv in December, declared Ukraine to be a Soviet republic and formed a rival government. In January 1918 the Bolsheviks launched an offensive in the Left Bank and advanced on Kiev. The Central Rada, already engaged in peace negotiations with the Central Powers, from whom it hoped for military assistance, proclaimed the total independence of Ukraine on January 22; on the same day, it passed a law establishing national autonomy for Ukraine’s Jewish, Russian, and Polish minorities. Almost immediately, however, the government had to evacuate to the Right Bank, as Soviet troops occupied Kiev. On February 9 Ukraine and the Central Powers signed the peace treaty Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (see treaties of Brest-Litovsk). A German-Austrian offensive dislodged the Bolsheviks from Kiev in early March, and the Rada government returned to the capital. In April the Red Army retreated from Ukraine.

The socialist policies of the Ukrainian government, especially land nationalization, conflicted with the interest of the German high command to maximize the extraction production of foodstuffs for its own war effort. On April 29, 1918, the Rada government was overthrown in a German-supported coup by General Gen. Pavlo Skoropadsky. A collateral descendant of an 18th-century Cossack hetman, Skoropadsky assumed the title “Hetman of Ukraine,” “hetman of Ukraine” (which he intended to become hereditary), abrogated all laws passed by the Rada, and established a conservative regime that relied on the support of landowners and the largely Russian urban middle class. The new government aroused intense opposition among Ukrainian nationalists, socialists, and the peasantry. To coordinate political opposition, a the Ukrainian National Union was formed by the main parties and civic organizations, while the peasants manifested their hostility through rebellions and partisan warfare. The capitulation of Germany and Austria in November removed the main prop of Skoropadsky’s regime, and the Ukrainian National Union formed a the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic to prepare for its his overthrow. Skoropadsky’s announced intention, in In a bid for the support of the Allied supportpowers, Skoropadsky announced his intention to join in federation with a future non-Bolshevik Russia triggered , triggering an uprising. On December 14 the hetman abdicated, and the Directory assumed control of government in Kiev.

Even before the collapse of Austria-Hungary, in October 1918 an assembly of western Ukrainian political leaders in October 1918 declared the formation of a state, shortly thereafter named the Western Ukrainian National Republic, embracing Galicia, northern Bukovina, and Transcarpathia. On November 1 Ukrainian forces occupied Lviv. This act touched off a war with the Poles, who were themselves resolved to incorporate Galicia into a reconstituted Polish state. The Poles took Lviv on November 21, but most of Galicia remained under Ukrainian control, and the government, headed by Yevhen Petrushevych, transferred its seat to Stanislav Stanyslaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk). On Jan. 22, 1919, an act of union of the two Ukrainian states was proclaimed in Kiev, but actual political integration was prevented by the ongoing hostilities. These ultimately took an unfavourable turn for the Ukrainians, and by late July the Poles were in full control of Galicia. Petrushevych and his government evacuated to Right Bank Ukraine and in the autumn went into exile in Vienna, where they continued diplomatic efforts against recognition of the Polish occupation.

In Kiev the Directory that took had taken power in December 1918—initially headed by Volodymyr Vynnychenko and from February 1919 by Symon Petlyura, who was also the commander in chief—officially restored the Ukrainian National Republic and revived the legislation of the Central Rada. Its attempts to establish an effective administration and to cope with the mounting economic and social problems were stymied, however, by the increasingly chaotic domestic situation and a hostile foreign environment. As the peasants became restless and the army demoralized, partisan movements led by unruly chieftains (commonly known as otamany) escalated in scope and violence; in . In addition, a substantial irregular force emerged under the command of the charismatic anarchist leader Nestor Makhno. In many places the government’s authority was nominal or nonexistent. The Allied powers, including France, whose expeditionary force held Odessa, supported the Russian Whites, whose army was grouping around General Gen. Anton Denikin in southern Russia.

As authority broke down in Ukraine, random violence increased. In particular, a ferocious wave of pogroms against the Jewish population left tens of thousands dead. The majority of the pogroms occurred in 1919, perpetrated by virtually all regular and irregular forces fighting in Ukraine, including Directory troops, the otamany, the White forces, and the Red Army.

The Bolsheviks had already launched a new offensive in eastern Ukraine in December 1918. In February 1919 they again seized Kiev. The Directory moved to the Right Bank and continued the struggle. In May Denikin launched his campaign against the Bolsheviks in the Left Bank; his progress westward through Ukraine was marked by terror, restoration of gentry landownership, and the destruction of all manifestations of Ukrainian national life. As the Bolsheviks retreated yet again, Petlyura’s Ukrainian forces and Denikin’s White regiments both entered Kiev on August 31, though the Ukrainians soon withdrew to avoid overt hostilities. From September to December the Ukrainian army fought with Denikin but, losing ground, began a retreat northwestward into Volhynia. There, confronted by the Poles in the west, the returning Red Army in the north, and the Whites in the south, the Ukrainian forces ceased regular military operations and turned to guerrilla warfare. In December Petlyura went to Warsaw to seek outside support. At the same time, the Bolsheviks were beating back Denikin’s forces, and on December 16 they recaptured Kiev. By February 1920 the Whites had been expelled from Ukrainian territory.

Petlyura’s negotiations with the Polish government of Józef Piłsudski culminated in the Treaty of Warsaw, signed in April 1920, ; by whose the terms of the agreement, in return for Polish military aid, Petlyura surrendered Ukraine’s claim to Galicia and western Volhynia. A Polish-Ukrainian campaign opened two days later, and on May 6 the joint forces occupied Kiev. A counteroffensive mounted by the Bolsheviks brought them to the outskirts of Warsaw in August. The tides of war turned again as the Polish and Ukrainian armies drove back the Soviets and reentered the Right Bank. In October, however, Poland made a truce with the Soviets, and in March 1921 the Polish and Soviet sides signed the Treaty of Riga. Poland extended recognition to Soviet Ukraine and retained the annexed western Ukrainian lands. (See also Russian Civil War; Russo-Polish War.)

Ukraine in the interwar period

In the aftermath of World War I and the revolutionary upheavals that followed, Ukrainian territories were divided among four states. Bukovina was annexed to Romania. Transcarpathia was joined to the new Czechoslovak Republiccountry of Czechoslovakia. Poland incorporated Galicia and western Volhynia, together with smaller adjacent areas in the northwest. The lands east of the Polish border constituted Soviet Ukraine.

Soviet Ukraine

The territories under Bolshevik control were formally organized as the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic [S.S.R.] from 1937). Under Bolshevik tutelage, the first All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets in December 1917 had formed a Soviet government for Ukraine; the second, in March 1918, had declared Soviet Ukraine independent; and the third, in March 1919, had adopted Soviet Ukraine’s first constitution. These moves, however, were essentially a tactical response to the demonstrable challenge of rising Ukrainian nationalism. With the consolidation of Bolshevik rule, Soviet Ukraine progressively ceded to Russia its rights in such areas as foreign relations and foreign trade. On December Dec. 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—a Republics (U.S.S.R.)—a federation of Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (S.F.S.R.)—was proclaimed. The first constitution for the new multinational federation was ratified in January 1924. Although the constituent republics retained the formal right of secession, their jurisdiction was limited to domestic affairs, while authority over foreign relations, the military, commerce, and transportation was vested in the all-union Communist Party organs in Moscow. In point of fact, after the defeat of their the Bolsheviks’ opponents, paramount power was exercised over all levels of government, as over the military and the secret police, by the Bolsheviks and their Communist Party apparatus (see Communist Party of the Soviet Union [CPSU]).


The New Economic Policy and Ukrainization


“War Communism”—based



threw out





Industrialization and collectivization







area, Ukraine had undergone a remarkable industrial development.


result was a
in 1932–33 and a loss of lives estimated as high as five to seven million—a
of 1932–33


Settlers from



The traditional Ukrainian village was essentially destroyed.






and in 1930 its leaders were tried and sentenced to long


was halted



by Pavel Postyshev




connected with the terror of



Finally, on the eve of World War II, both the

Great Terror


Western Ukraine under Polish rule









Bukovina under Romanian rule


Transcarpathia in Czechoslovakia

On the basis of a negotiated agreement, Transcarpathia voluntarily joined the new Czechoslovak Republic country of Czechoslovakia in 1919 under the official name of Subcarpathian Ruthenia (see Czechoslovak region, history of). Its promised autonomy, however, was not implemented until 1938, and the region was administered largely by officials sent from Prague. Nevertheless, in democratic Czechoslovakia, Transcarpathia enjoyed the freest development of any Ukrainian territory in the interwar period.



World War II and its aftermath
Western Ukraine under Soviet and Nazi rule



The Nazi occupation of Soviet Ukraine



The Soviets, during their hasty retreat

the Soviets


Initially, the Germans were greeted as liberators by


some of the Ukrainian populace. In Galicia





In the occupied territories, the Nazis sought to implement their



; as many as 600,000 perished, some 70,000 executed at Baby Yar in Kiev alone.







, under centralized control,





Soviet reoccupation









5 to




5 million less than before the war.

Ten million were homeless, as

Because more than 700 cities and towns and 28,000 villages

were destroyed



constituted an estimated 40 percent of Ukraine’s national wealth.

Soviet Ukraine in the postwar period
The last years of Stalin’s rule


The prewar system of totalitarian control exercised through the Communist Party and the secret police was quickly reimposed. Khrushchev continued to head the CP(B)U as first secretary—except briefly from March to December 1947—until his promotion to secretary of the Party’s Central Committee in Moscow in December 1949; he was succeeded by Leonid Melnikov. Purges in party ranks were relatively mild. However, hundreds of thousands of real and alleged Nazi collaborators, former German prisoners of war and repatriated slave workers, Ukrainian “bourgeois nationalists,” and others suspected of disloyalty were disloyalty—essentially hundreds of thousands of people—were sent to concentration camps in the Far North far north and Siberia. A hard-line ideological campaign to stamp out Western influences went hand in hand with a renewed Russification drive. Ukrainian writers, artists, and scholars, who in the wartime years were had been permitted to develop patriotic themes and sentiments in a mobilization effort against the Germans, were now accused of Ukrainian nationalism and subjected to persecution and repression. An “anticosmopolitan” campaign destroyed the remaining vestiges of cultural institutions of a Jewish community decimated by the Holocaust.

The Sovietization of Western western Ukraine was a prolonged and violent process. The UPA, under the leadership of Roman Shukhevych (killed 1950), continued effective military operations against Soviet troops until the early 1950s. The armed resistance received covert support from the local rural population, embittered by the concurrent forced collectivization drive, reminiscent of the 1930s in eastern Ukraine. Also accused of abetting the partisans, and Ukrainian nationalism in general, was the Greek Catholic church. In April 1945 Metropolitan Yosyf Slipy and the entire hierarchy in Galicia were arrested and later sentenced to long imprisonment (only Slipy survived, to be released in 1963 and sent into exile to in Rome). After arrests and intimidation of the clergy, a synod held in Lviv in March 1946—in fact, on Stalin’s orders—proclaimed the “reunification” of the Ukrainian Greek Catholics with the Russian Orthodox churchChurch. By analogous means, the Greek Catholic church in Transcarpathia was abolished in 1949. Officially declared “self-liquidated,” the Greek Catholic church maintained a clandestine existence through subsequent decades of Soviet rule. Approximately Overall, approximately half a million people were deported from Western western Ukraine in connection with the suppression of the insurgency and nationalist activity, religious persecution, and collectivization.

The period of Khrushchev








Ukraine under Shelest


The Although the new leadership in Moscow quickly reversed many of Khrushchev’s decentralizing measures. However, the new regime it initially showed greater sensitivity toward the non-Russians. The seeming retreat in Moscow’s nationalities policy, connected with the leadership’s preoccupation with the succession struggle, facilitated the three main trends that characterize the Shelest era in Ukraine: the growing cultural revival, greater assertiveness by Kiev’s political elite, and the development of a large-scale dissident movement.


Nevertheless, the cultural achievements were unparalleled since the Ukrainization period in the 1920s. They were made possible by the support of influential segments of the party leadership, most notably Shelest himself. In addition to supporting Ukrainian culture, Shelest defended the economic interests of Ukraine, pressing for a larger Ukrainian share in the U.S.S.R.’s allocation of investment and greater republican control in economic management. These efforts were aimed , in part , at strengthening the party’s legitimacy in the eyes of the Ukrainian population. During Shelest’s tenure, Communist Party membership in Ukraine grew at a rate double the all-union average to reach 2.5 million by 1971.



Ukraine under Shcherbytsky

Shcherbytsky’s promotion marked an important step in Brezhnev’s the consolidation of power in Moscow by his patron, Brezhnev, and a turning point in Ukrainian postwar politics. Shcherbytsky survived in office 17 years until his resignation in the fall of 1989, a few weeks before his death—long after the death of his patron Brezhnev in 1982 and well into the tenure of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Personnel changes in the party and government followed gradually after Shcherbytsky’s accession to office, ; many of them involving involved the removal of Shelest’s supporters and the promotion of cadres associated with the site of Shcherbytsky’s (and Brezhnev’s) earlier career, the Dnipropetrovsk regional Communist Party organization. The most significant occurred in October 1972 with the appointment as secretary for ideology of : Valentyn Malanchuk, who had previously conducted ideological work in the nationally highly charged Lviv region, was appointed secretary for ideology. A purge in 1973–75 removed almost 5 percent of the CPU members from party rolls.

Arrests of national and human rights activists continued through 1972–73. The bulk of samizdat samvydav literature was now produced in labour camps, and much of it made its way abroad, where it was published. Following the signing of the international Helsinki Accords, with their human rights provisions, in 1975, a the Helsinki Watch Group was founded in Ukraine, headed by the poet Mykola Rudenko; by the end of the 1970s, its members were almost all in concentration camps or in exile abroad. The expirations of political prisoners’ sentences were increasingly followed by rearrest and new sentences on charges of criminal activity. Incarceration in psychiatric institutions became a new method of political repression.


Ukraine’s economic performance continued to deteriorate throughout the 1970s and ’80s. The rates of growth declined, and serious problems beset especially the important ferrous metallurgy and coal mining industries. Agricultural production was adversely affected by a series of droughts, a lack of incentives, and excessive centralization in collective farm management. Soviet energy policy increasingly emphasized nuclear power, and in April 1986 one of the nuclear power plants in Ukraine, at Chernobyl just northwest of Kiev, suffered the worst nuclear accident in history; dozens . Dozens died in the immediate aftermath, and tens of thousands were evacuated, while . Hundreds of thousands remained in contaminated areas, however, and the long-term effects on human life and health remained incalculablehealth—likely to include a steep increase in the incidence of cancer—remain incalculable (see Chernobyl accident). Nevertheless, and despite changes in the top leadership in Moscow since 1982, Shcherbytsky remained securely in office.

Ukraine on the path to independence



In the three years 1987–89, new leaders emerged. Especially prominent were many cultural activists from the “sixties generation” shestydesyatnyky of the Shelest period, as well as former dissidents. The issues that galvanized Ukrainian society at this time included such traditional ones concerns as language, culture, and history; , resurgent interests such as religion; , and new concerns over the environment and the economy.


A campaign to fill in the “blank spots” in history aimed to restore public awareness of neglected or suppressed historical events and figures , such as Hetman Ivan Mazepa, to rehabilitate historians such as Mykhaylo Hrushevsky, and to republish banned works of pre-Soviet historical scholarship. Particularly intense were efforts to introduce knowledge of the Stalin period, especially the famine Great Famine of 1932–33, which became labeled the “Ukrainian genocide.” Fresh revelations appeared in the press about mass graves of political prisoners executed in the Stalin era. To honour the victims of Stalinism and to promote investigations of the repressions and famine of the 1930s, the Ukrainian “Memorial” Society was founded in March 1989 based on the basis of already existing local groups.






Parliamentary democracy


Attempts to organize a popular front received impetus in January 1989 under the aegis of the Ukrainian Writers’ Union of Ukraine. Taking the name People’s Front Popular Movement of Ukraine for Reconstruction, or Rukh, to emphasize its congruence with the policies of Gorbachev (particularly perestroika), the front nevertheless ran into hostility from the CPU. Specifically eschewing the role of a political opposition, Rukh advocated a program of democratization and support for human, national, and minority rights. The founding congress was held in September and elected a leadership headed by the poet Ivan Drach.


The most significant development of 1990 was the beginning of parliamentary democracy. The first contested competitive elections to the Ukrainian Parliament parliament (which replaced the old-style Supreme Soviet), held on March 4, broke the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power in Ukraine. The Parliament parliament that met in mid-May had a substantial democratic bloc that, with the defection of numerous communist deputies from strict party discipline on particular issues, reduced the CPU’s core majority to 239 of the 450 members. Changes in the political leadership proceeded rapidly and culminated in the Parliament’s parliament’s election of the recent CPU secretary for ideology, Leonid Kravchuk, as its chairman. On July 16 sovereignty (though not yet independence) was claimed in the name of the “people of Ukraine”—the entirety of Ukraine’s resident population without regard to nationality or ethnicity; the declaration marked the onset of a gradual convergence of views on key issues between the communist majority and the democratic opposition, whose agenda was increasingly adopted by the pragmatic Kravchuk.


A coup d’état organized in August 1991 by hard-line members of Gorbachev’s government in Moscow collapsed within two days. In its wake the Ukrainian Parliamentparliament, in emergency session, declared the full independence of Ukraine on August 24. The declaration was made subject to popular ratification by a referendum on December 1.

Independent Ukraine

As the involvement of the Communist Party in the attempted coup became clear, high government officials quit the party. Compromised figures in the government were replaced by new appointments. The creation of Ukrainian armed forces, on the basis of Soviet military units stationed on Ukraine’s territory, became a high priority and proceeded rapidly.

The presidential election campaign produced six candidates of widely different backgrounds, including Kravchuk, two former political prisoners (Chornovil and Lukyanenko), and two ethnic Russians, all of whom were united in their support of total independence, despite Gorbachev’s desperate efforts to bring about yet another union agreement in November. The December 1 referendum reflected a remarkable level of support for independence: with an 84 percent voter turnout, over 90 percent of the electorate endorsed the declaration of independence, including the majority of Ukraine’s Russian, Jewish, and other ethnic populations. With the popular affirmation of Ukraine’s secession, Gorbachev’s attempts to preserve the union collapsed, and by the end of 1991 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics formally came to an end.

Ukraine gained rapid recognition in the international community. Relations with Russia became a major foreign policy preoccupation. On December 8, 1991, Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus announced the formation of a loose association of former Soviet republics, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The signatories affirmed their separate independence and respect for territorial integrity and inviolability of borders; they also identified areas of joint activity and cooperation, most importantly a unified control of nuclear weapons. Significant differences emerged, however, over such issues as the division of assets of the former U.S.S.R.; by the mid-1990s the CIS had proved weak and largely unable to implement agreements among member states. A complication in Ukrainian-Russian relations was the dispute over the status of the Crimea, where the largely Russian population occasionally demonstrated separatist sentiments. The issue of the disposition of the Black Sea Fleet, which had hindered relations between Ukraine and Russia, was resolved in 1995. In 1997 Ukraine and Russia signed a 10-year friendship treaty.

The early years of independence were a time of political turmoil and severe economic hardship. Leonid Kravchuk, elected to the presidency in December 1991, promised economic reforms and subsequently appointed a government of market-oriented reformers headed by prime minister Leonid Kuchma. Kuchma was given special powers to implement a reform agenda that included privatization, reductions in government spending, price liberalization, incentives for private investment, and anticorruption measures. However, by late 1993 the reform efforts had been crippled by Kravchuk’s refusal to stand behind the austerity program and by interference from the Supreme Council, dominated by former communists; less than 5 percent of production was fully privatized. Kuchma resigned, and Kravchuk took over the government, returning Ukraine’s economy to state control.

In the presidential elections of June 1994 Kuchma defeated Kravchuk and sought to implement the reform program. Agreements with international financial institutions for loans and other assistance were signed, but the communists, holding a plurality in the Supreme Council, remained a major obstacle to reform. Tensions between the nationalist west and the historically Russian-oriented east were evident. After several years of dispute between the president and the legislature, a new constitution providing extensive powers to the president was adopted in 1996.

The political battles took place against a backdrop of economic crisis. The gross national product contracted sharply during the early 1990s. A long period of hyperinflation rendered the provisional currency nearly worthless; the dramatic rise in the cost of living was catastrophic for Ukrainians on fixed incomes. Frequent strikes by coal miners protesting poor working conditions and low pay exacerbated chronic energy shortages. By the mid-1990s inflation had been brought under control and the economy appeared to be stabilizing.


Postindependence issues


State building and diplomacy










Economic difficulties


Social developments





Kuchma’s presidency









the North Atlantic Treaty Organization



over what it viewed


to be Russian expansionist designs in the Crimea.


The Orange Revolution and beyond











Jan. 23, 2005.


General works

Encyclopaedic reference sources on the country include M.P. Bazhan et al. (eds.), Soviet Ukraine (1969; originally published in Ukrainian, 1964); and the most extensive Western reference works , Volodymyr Kubijovyc available in the West: Volodymyr Kubijovyč (ed.), Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopedia, 2 vol. (1963–71; originally published in Ukrainian, 3 partsvol., 1949–52), a thematic approach, and ; and Volodymyr Kubijovyč and Danylo Husar Struk (eds.), Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 5 vol. (1984– 1984–93; originally published in Ukrainian, 10 partsvol., 1955–84), an alphabetic treatment. Zenon E. Kohut, Bohdan Y. Nebesio, and Myroslav Yurkevich, Historical Dictionary of Ukraine (2005), is another useful reference work.


English-language sources on the physical geography of Ukraine are scarce. limited. L.S. Galetskii, An Atlas of the Geology and Mineral Deposits of Ukraine (2007), is an invaluable work. Regional geography studies cited in the bibliography to the article Union of Soviet Socialist Republics can be informative. A brief survey, Geography of Ukraine (1985), prepared by the Ukrainian Information Collective in Australia, is also useful. Among non-English-language sources, details Details on all aspects of the geography of Ukraine are found in O.M. Marynych et al. (eds.), Heohrafichna entsyklopediia Ukraïny, 3 vol. (1989– 1989–93), a beautifully illustrated encyclopaedic work in Ukrainian.

Among surveys of the country’s economy are I.S. Koropeckyj (ed.), Ukrainian Economic History: Interpretive Essays (1991), and The Ukraine Within the USSR: An Economic Balance Sheet (1977); and Vsevolod Holubnychy, Soviet Regional Economics (1982). Other solid studies include I.S. Koropeckyj, Development in the Shadow: Studies in Ukrainian Economics (1990), and The Ukrainian Economy: Achievements, Problems, Challenges (1992); and King Banaian, The Ukrainian Economy Since Independence (1999).

Soviet-era issues that have influenced the political and social situation in Ukraine are dealt with in separate chapters of Lubomyr Hajda and Mark R. Beissinger (eds.), The Nationalities Factor in Soviet Politics and Society (1990). Book-length studies include Jaroslaw Bilocerkowycz, Soviet Ukrainian Dissent: A Study of Political Alienation (1988); Bohdan Krawchenko, Social Change and National Consciousness in Twentieth-Century Ukraine (1985); Peter J. Potichnyj (ed.), Ukraine in the Seventies (1975); and Bohdan Krawchenko (ed.), Ukraine After Shelest (1983); and Serhy Yekelchyk, Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination (2004).

Ukrainian cultural expression is the subject of M.P. Bazhan (ed.), Istoriia Ukraïns’koho Mystetstvaukraïns’koho mystetstva, 6 vol. in 7 (1966–70); Dmytro Čyževsky George S.N. Luckyj, Between Gogol and Sevcenko: Polarity in the Literary Ukraine: 1798–1847 (1971); Dmytro Čyževs’kyj, A History of Ukrainian Literature, from the 11th to the End of the 19th Century (1975; originally published in Ukrainian, 1956); George G. Grabowicz, Toward a History of Ukrainian Literature (1981); George S.N. Luckyj, Literary Politics in the Soviet Ukraine, 1917–1934, rev. and updated ed. (1990), and Ukrainian Literature in the Twentieth Century: A Reader’s Guide (1992); and Sviatoslav Hordynsky, The Ukrainian Icon of the XIIth to the XVIIIth centuries, trans. from Ukrainian (1973).

Religion is examined in Borys A. Gudziak, Crisis and Reform: The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Genesis of the Union of Brest (1998, reissued 2001); Piotr Wawrzeniuk, Confessional Civilising in Ukraine: The Bishop Iosyf Shumliansky and the Introduction of Reforms in the Diocese of Lviv, 1688–1708 (2005); John-Paul Himka, Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine: The Greek Catholic Church and Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia, 1867–1900 (1999); Frank E. Sysyn, The Ukrainian Orthodox Question in the USSR (1987); Bohdan Rostyslav Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State, 1939–1950 (1996); and Ivan Hvat, “The Ukrainian Catholic Church, the Vatican, and the Soviet Union During the Pontificate of Pope John Paul II,” Religion in Communist Lands, 11(3):264–294 (Winter 1983); Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, “The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church,” in Pedro Ramet (ed.), Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twentieth Century (1988), pp. 309–319; and Frank E. Sysyn, The Ukrainian Orthodox Question in the USSR (1987). Serhii Plokhy and Frank E. Sysyn, Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine (2003), addresses the role played by religion in the creation of a Ukrainian national identity.


Comprehensive historical surveys include Michael Hrushevsky (Mykhailo Hrushevskyi), A History of Ukraine, trans. from Ukrainian (1941, reissued 1970); Dmytro Doroshenko, A Survey of Ukrainian History, updated ed., rev. by Oleh W. Gerus, trans. from Ukrainian (1975); Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 2nd ed. (1994); and Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of Ukraine (1996), a large-scale work with modern and balanced syntheses. Mykhailo Hrushevsky (Mykhailo Hrushevskyi), History of Ukraine-Rus’, trans. by Marta Skorupsky, ed. by Andrzej Pope, Frank E. Sysyn, and Uliana M. Pasicznyk (1997– ; originally published in Ukrainian, 10 vol., 1898–1937), is a monumental work by the preeminent Ukrainian historian. Hrushevsky’s life and work are examined in Thomas M. Prymak, Mykhailo Hrushevsky: The Politics of National Culture (1987); and Serhii Plokhy, Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History (2005). Concise survey histories of Ukraine include Roman Szporluk, Ukraine: A Brief History, 2nd expanded ed. (1982); and Orest Subtelny Paul R. Magocsi, Ukraine: A History, An Illustrated History (2007). Ivan L. Rudnytsky, Essays in Modern Ukrainian History, ed. by Peter L. Rudnytsky (1987); and Ihor Ševčenko, Ukraine Between East and West: Essays on Cultural History to the Early Eighteenth Century (1996), are useful collections of essays by outstanding historians. Ukraine’s relations with other peoples and countries are examined in Peter J. Potichnyj, Poland and Ukraine, Past and Present (1980); Howard Aster and Peter J. Potichnyj (eds.), Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective, 2nd ed. (1994), a large-scale modern and balanced synthesis. 1990); Peter J. Potichnyj et al. (eds.), Ukraine and Russia in Their Historical Encounter (1992); and Hans-Joachim Torke and John-Paul Himka (eds.), German-Ukrainian Relations in Historical Perspective (1994). Paul Robert Magocsi and Geoffrey J. Matthews, Ukraine: A Historical Atlas (1985), offers a helpful supplement for the better understanding of interpretive discussions.

Studies of special subjects include Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200 (1996); Linda Gordon, Cossack Rebellions: Social Turmoil in the Sixteenth-Century Ukraine (1983); Frank E. Sysyn, Between Poland and the Ukraine: The Dilemma of Adam Kysil, 1600–1653 (1985); John Basarab, Pereiaslav 1654 (1982); Zenon E. Kohut, Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy: Imperial Absorption of the Hetmanate, 1760s–1830s (1988); Murray Jay Rosman, The Lords’ Jews: Magnate-Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth During the Eighteenth Century (1990); Jan Kozik, The Ukrainian National Movement in Galicia, 1815–1849, ed. by Lawrence D. Orton, trans. from Polish (1986); Andrei S. Markovits and Frank E. Sysyn (eds.), Nationbuilding and the Politics of Nationalism: Essays on Austrian Galicia (1982); and John-Paul Himka, Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Century (1988). Key works on the historic events of the 20th century are John S. Reshetar, The Ukrainian Revolution, 1917–1920: A Study in Nationalism (1952, reissued 1972); Taras Hunczak (ed.), The Ukraine, 1917–1921: A Study in Revolution (1977); Henry Abramson, A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917–1920 (1999); James E. Mace, Communism and the Dilemmas of National Liberation: National Communism in Soviet Ukraine, 1918–1933 (1983); Jurij Borys, The Russian Communist Party and the Sovietization of Ukraine: A Study in the Communist Doctrine of the Self-determination of Nations (1960, reprinted 1983); Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (1986); Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (2001); Yuri Boshyk, Roman Waschuk, and Andriy Wynnyckyj (eds.), Ukraine During World War II: History and Its Aftermath (1986); John A. Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism, 3rd ed. (1990); Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine Under Nazi Rule (2004); Yaroslav Bilinsky, The Second Soviet Republic: The Ukraine After World War II (1964); Borys Lewytzkyj, Politics and Society in Soviet Ukraine, 1953–1980 (1984); and David R. Marples, The Social Impact of the Chernobyl Disaster (1988); .

Studies of Ukraine in the late perestroika and independence periods include Alexander J. Motyl, Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine After Totalitarianism (1993); and Taras Kuzio and Andrew Wilson, Ukraine: Perestroika to Independence (1994); Andrew Wilson, Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s: A Minority Faith (1996); Taras Kuzio, Ukraine Under Kuchma: Political Reform, Economic Transformation, and Security Policy in Independent Ukraine (1997); Sherman W. Garnett, Keystone in the Arch: Ukraine in the Emerging Security Environment of Central and Eastern Europe (1997); Lubomyr A. Hajda (ed.), Ukraine in the World: Studies in the International Relations and Security Structure of a Newly Independent State (1998); Catherine Wanner, Burden of Dreams: History and Identity in Post-Soviet Ukraine (1998); Paul D’Anieri, Robert Kravchuk, and Taras Kuzio, Politics and Society in Ukraine (1999); Bohdan Nahaylo, The Ukrainian Resurgence (1999); Bohdan Harasymiw, Post-Communist Ukraine (2002); Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation, 2nd ed. (2002); J.V. Koshiw, Beheaded: The Killing of a Journalist (2003); and Sarah Whitmore, State-Building in Ukraine: The Ukrainian Parliament, 1990–2003 (2004). The revolution in the early 21st century in Ukrainian politics is discussed in Andrew Wilson, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (2005); Anders Aslund and Michael McFaul (eds.), Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine’s Democratic Breakthrough (2006); and Paul D’Anieri, Understanding Ukrainian Politics: Power, Politics, and Institutional Design (2007).

The history of Ukrainians outside Ukraine is examined in Orest Subtelny, Ukrainians in North America: An Illustrated History (1991); Ann Lencyk Pawliczko (ed.), Ukraine and Ukrainians Throughout the World (1994); Vic Satzewich, The Ukrainian Diaspora (2002); and Wsevolod W. Isajiw, Yury Boshyk, and Roman Senkus (eds.), The Refugee Experience: Ukrainian Displaced Persons After World War II (1992). An excellent guide for tracing Ukrainian ancestry is John D. Pihach, Ukrainian Genealogy (2007).