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Prehistory

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 an agricultural population (most notably the Trypillya culture of the mid-5th to 3rd millennia bce), linked by waterways to northern and central Europe. The marshlands of these zones were frequent areas of both military conflict and cultural transmission.

Beginning in the 7th6th centuries bce, numerous Greek colonies were founded on the northern coast of the Black Sea, on the Crimean Peninsula, 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 bce 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 200 ce. They displaced the Sarmatians, but their own power was broken about 375 by the invading Huns from the east, who were followed in the 5th6th centuries by the Bulgars and Avars. Between the 7th and 9th centuries, the Ukrainian steppe formed part of the Turkic Khazar 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 on the Crimean Peninsula, 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.

The formation of the Kievan state that began in the mid-9th century, the role of the Varangians (Vikings) 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 a territorial designation for the Kievan regionthe 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 Yaroslavs 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 Kievs economic importance, while warfare with the Polovtsians in the steppe sapped its wealth and energies. Succession struggles and princely rivalries eroded Kievs political hegemony. The ascendancy of new centres and the clustering of principalities around them reflected regional cleavageshistorical, economic, and tribal ethnicthat had persisted even in the period of Kievs 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 in Kievan Rus; 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 Romans son Danylo (Daniel Romanovich). New cities were founded, most importantly Lviv; tradeespecially with Poland and Hungary, as well as Byzantiumbrought 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 Pope Innocent IV and recognized him as head of the church, although nothing substantial came from this. Danylos reign also witnessed the rise of boyar-magnate unrest, debilitating dynastic involvements with Poland and Hungary, and the Mongol invasion of 124041. These marked the onset of Galicia-Volhynias decline, which continued until the extinction of Romans dynasty in 1340.

By the middle of the 14th century, Ukrainian territories were under the rule of three external powersthe Golden Horde, the grand duchy of Lithuania, and the kingdom of Poland.

The steppe and 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 Khans 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 suzerainty of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire. Both the Crimean Peninsula and large areas of the adjoining steppe continued under the khanates 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 areasand 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 duchys administrative practices and legal system drew heavily on Slavic customs, and an official Ruthenian state language (also known as Rusyn) developed over time from the language used in Rus.

Direct Polish rule in Ukraine 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 (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.

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 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 fieldsthe 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 Jewish. Thus, social discontent tended to coalesce with national and religious grievances.

As social conditions among the Ukrainian population in Lithuania and Poland progressively deteriorated, so did the situation of the Ruthenian church. The Roman Catholic Church, 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 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.

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.)

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