The territory of Ukraine is the ancestral home of the Indo-European peoples, from where came the ancestors of the peoples who settled Europe, a significant part of Asia up to India, America and some other lands. From the 2nd millennium BC. e. representatives of the Proto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian branches of the Indo-European language family of peoples remained on the territory of Ukraine. The Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Grushevsky, and after him the whole Ukrainian science, came to the conclusion that the Ukrainian people appeared during the time of the Antes union of tribes, which in the IV-VII centuries. n. e. covered most of the territory of Ukraine. Grushevsky argued that Ukrainians as an ethnic group were formed due to the interaction of Slavs and Sarmatians within the framework of this union of tribes.
The contacts of the Proto-Slavs and Indo-Iranians continued for more than three thousand years (from the millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD). These contacts fell on the earliest stages of the development of the ancient Slavs on the territory of Ukraine, and therefore hooked on the essential aspects of their origin.
The first stage of peaceful coexistence of the Proto-Slavs and the North Iranian peoples was recorded in writing during the existence of Great Scythia (VII century BC - III century BC). This connection intensified during the Antes times (IV-VII centuries AD), with the formation of permanent allied relations by the Slavs and Sarmatians. The peak of the Slavic-Sarmatian assimilation in the middle - second half of the 1st millennium AD. meant the formation of a basic Ukrainian megaethnos, consisting of a number of Slavic tribes of the southeastern area of Slavism, united by a common history within Great Scythia and the Antes of the union of tribes. This cohabitation left a large number of mutual borrowing.
On the one hand, the cultural heritage of the Scythian and Sarmatian times turned out to be extremely important for the formation of the original culture of Kievan Rus. On the other hand, it was the Slavs who assimilated, primarily in the linguistic sense, representatives of the northern Iranian peoples - the Scythians and Sarmatians. The linguistic assimilation of the Scythians and Sarmatians in Ukraine took place due to the fact that the Slavs were a younger ethnic group, with smaller differences between the languages of individual groups than those that existed between the languages of the Iranian tribes. Thanks to this, the Slavs formed a more homogeneous and, as a result, more competitive language array. A significant part of the nomadic Scythians and Sarmatians moved to a settled life, assimilated with the Slavs and became an integral part of the creation of the Ukrainian ethnos.
The location of the main mass of settlements of the early Slavs in the forests of Volhynia and Polissya saved them from numerous upheavals that regularly harmed the population of the steppe and forest-steppe zones of Ukraine. The increase in the proportion of Slavs in the Forest-Steppe and Steppe at the beginning and in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. accelerated the creation of joint Ants (Slavic-Sarmatian) tribal unions.
It was the sharp increase in the number of Slavs in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. and their settlement in most of the territory of Ukraine constituted a key part of the ethnic basis for the creation of Rus.
Numerous examples are known in history when, by mixing two or more ethnic groups, a new ethnic group was born. So it was in the case of the French (the mixing of the Celts-Gauls and the Franks-Germans, with the numerical dominance of the former, with the participation of Latins in the ethnogenesis of the French). Similar processes took place among the British (which arise as a result of the ethnic interaction of the Germans (Anglo-Saxons) with the Celts (Brit), with the quantitative dominance of the former and the later participation of the Normans). The same applies to the Slavic peoples. So, for example, modern Bulgarians appeared as a result of the interaction of the Slavs and the Turks (Bulgarians), with the quantitative dominance of the Slavs and with the earlier ethnic basis of the Thracians and Greeks. The Czechs are the result of the ethnic interaction of the numerically superior Slavs with the Celts, with little participation of the Turks-Avars and the like.
At the same time, the Normans (Varangians) played an important role in organizing the state life of Ukraine during the time of Kievan Rus. The influence of the Varangians manifested itself in the creation of the ruling dynasty of Rurikovich.
Ethnic additions to the Ukrainian ethnos, which took place after the completion of the assimilation of the Sarmatians by the Slavs, were less significant. The interaction of the Slavs with the Turks, which took place in the XI-XII centuries, was limited to the settlement of several allied Turkic clans on the southern outskirts of Kievan Rus with the aim of their struggle against the Polovtsians. The Turkic clans of black hoods, Torks, Berendeys, Uzs and Kovu, settled to protect against the Polovtsy, numbered several or several thousand people, which is insignificant compared to the 3-4 million population of Ukraine in the XI-XI centuries. Some groups of Turks began to assimilate Ukrainian as early as the end of the XII - XIII centuries, and a significant number of Turks returned from Ukraine back to Asia after the Mongol-Tatar invasion 1239-1240 pp.
In more later times no other ethnic groups massively joined the Ukrainian ethnos, although isolated cases took place. In the XX century. there was NOT so much the entry of foreign representatives into the Ukrainian ethnos, but on the contrary - the detachment of parts of the Ukrainian people as a result of their joining other ethnic groups.
The Ukrainian ethnos is the result of the interaction of the Slavic and Indo-Iranian (Scythian-Sarmatian) population groups, which took place in antiquity. For at least three millennia, the steppe zone of Ukraine was the place of settlement of the Indo-Iranian tribes, the forest zone - of the Proto-Slavic ones. In the forest-steppe zone, the most intensive interaction between the Proto-Slavs and Indo-Iranians took place. Neither the Proto-Slavs proper on the territory of Ukraine until the first half of the 1st millennium AD. That is, neither the Scythians and Sarmatians were Ukrainian in the modern sense. However, both those and others were the direct ancestors of the Ukrainian.
Source language:
"The Jew Ibrahim Ibn Yakub says: the lands of the Slavs stretch from the Syrian (i.e. Mediterranean) Sea to the ocean in the north. The peoples from the internal (northern) regions have mastered part of them and live to this day between them. They create many different tribes. In in former times they were united by a king whom they called Maha, he was from a tribe called Velinbaba, and before that the tribes were respected among them. The king has come to power...
In general, the Slavs are brave and warlike, and if they had not split into many disparate groups, then no people on earth could resist their onslaught. They inhabit those countries that are the most fertile and richest in food. They are very careful in farming and acquiring food, and in this they excel all the peoples of the north. their goods go by land and sea to Russia and Constantinople. Most of the tribes in the north speak Slavic because they mixed with the Slavs, like the tribes of Ultrshkin (Ulichi), Ankl(s), Pechenegs, Russ and Khazars. They wear loose clothing, only the cuffs of their sleeves are narrow...
There is a strange bird there, green on top and repeating all the sounds of people and animals that it hears. Sometimes they catch him, arranging a hunt for him. In Slavic, the bird is called "SBA" (starling). There is also a wild chicken, called in Slavic "tetra" (black grouse). It has delicious meat, and its sounds from the tops of the trees can be heard in farsang and even further. They have different strings and wind instruments. They have a wind instrument that is more than 2 cubits long, and a stringed instrument with 8 strings and the inside is flat and unbent. their drinks and wines are honey. The lands of the Slavs are very cold; and it is coldest in them when the nights are moonlit and the days are clear. Then it becomes very cold, and the frost becomes severe, the earth is as hard as stone, all drinks freeze, wells and springs are covered like plaster, so that they become, however, like stone. If, however, the night is dark and the day cloudy, then the ice melts and the cold subsides. At this time, ships perish, and their passengers perish, as blocks like strong mountains are released from the ice on them. Sometimes, however, a young and energetic man manages to grab hold of such an ice floe and escape on it. They don't have baths. They make only a wooden booth and plug its cracks with something that grows on their trees, similar to algae, with which ships are overgrown and which they call "flies" (moss) ".
Ibrahim Ibn Yaqub, "The Story of a Journey", 10th c.
Today, when in all post-Soviet republics the ruling class of the bourgeoisie is strenuously trying to rewrite the history of its peoples, when everything is being done so that the working people of the former Soviet republics forget about their heroic past - about how they fought for their freedom and independence, it is extremely important to know what what actually happened, because knowledge of the past can help to understand the present, and understanding of the present will show the way to the future.
But, unfortunately, it has become not so easy now to find out the truth - the truth has become dangerous for the current gentlemen. Libraries are fairly cleaned up, and those who are supposed to be the custodians of knowledge by profession - teachers, professors, scientists - do not give a damn about the truth and prefer to serve the ruling class, fulfilling all its whims, disfiguring the minds of their fellow citizens with lies.
How dangerous lies are can be seen in Ukraine, where the bourgeois class unleashed a civil war for the redistribution of property. It is not the oligarchs who die in this war, but ordinary guys - the children of workers, employees, peasants, and the working intelligentsia.
Why are they shooting at each other? Because they are fooled by their bourgeoisie, which, without total deceit, would never force them to go to death for the sake of its interests. The lie helped to turn the working people of Ukraine, Russia, Donbass into puppets, pit them against each other, and now the oligarchs, brazenly and cynically using the working people for their own purposes, are rubbing their hands with satisfaction.
How can you protect yourself from this? Knowledge, only knowledge can protect us from the influence of lies and show the way to freedom, since it is the invaluable experience of many generations of those who lived before us.
Below is a brief summary of the true history of the Ukrainian people, the history of their struggle for their own state - a free and independent Ukraine, and this story is not at all the one that is told today in Ukrainian schools, universities, and the media.
History of the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian state
The history of the Ukrainian people is the history of the centuries-old struggle of the masses against social and national oppression, for reunification in a single Ukrainian state.
This fight was not easy. The people of Ukraine had to endure a lot of grief on their shoulders until they could become free. And this struggle would not have been successful if the Ukrainian people had not been helped by their blood brothers - the Belarusian and especially the Russian people.
From time immemorial, the historical paths and destinies of the fraternal peoples have been intertwined: Ukrainian and Russian, “peoples so close both in language, and in place of residence, and in character, and in history” (Lenin). That is why the Ukrainian and Russian peoples have striven throughout history to unite, helping each other in the fight against foreign invaders. And the Ukrainian people, divided for many centuries and forced to live under foreign oppression, strove not only for national reunification, but also for unification with the fraternal, consanguineous Russian people. These two peoples - Ukrainian and Russian (as well as Belarusian) were united by a common history, a common ancestral root.
In the 9th century AD on the territory of the European part former USSR a large state of the Eastern Slavs was formed - the Kievan state.
The history of the Kievan state - Kievan Rus - was a common, initial history of three fraternal, consanguineous peoples: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian. In the second half of the 12th century, Kievan Rus broke up into a number of separate feudal principalities; the largest of them were Kiev, Galicia-Volynskoe, Vladimir-Suzdal, Chernigov, Smolensk. But even after the collapse of Kievan Rus, a close connection remained between the population of these principalities in the XII-XIII centuries.
On fig. - the territory of Kievan Rus
The bulk of the population of Kievan Rus and the principalities of the XII-XIII centuries were Eastern Slavs (Polyans, Drevlyans, Northerners, Ilmen Slavs, Krivichi, Radimichi, Ulich, Tivertsy, Polochan, Vyatichi and others). They occupied a gigantic territory - from the Baltic to the Black Sea, including the lands of present-day Galicia, Northern Bukovina, and Bessarabia.
The ancient chronicle of our peoples (began to be created in the 11th century) always considers the history of Kievan Rus as the history of one state of several East Slavic tribes, a state that the chroniclers called "Russian land".
The famous pilgrim Daniel (beginning of the 12th century) in Jerusalem puts a lampada "from all the Russian land." The author of the famous Tale of Igor's Campaign (created around 1187) calls Prince Svyatoslav of Kyiv, Prince Vsevolod of Vladimir and Suzdal, Roman Mstislavovich of Volhynia, Mstislav of Lutsk (or Peresopnitsa), Yaroslav Osmomysl of Galicia, and Przemysl Rurik the Russian princes. , and Smolensky David.
In the “Word about the destruction of the Russian land” (written around the middle of the 13th century), the boundaries of this “Russian land” are indicated to the north - to the Arctic Ocean and to the west - to the lands of the Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, Lithuanians, Germans.
In the south-west, they included the Dniester region and the mouth of the Danube (now Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina), as there is authoritative evidence in such a source as the typo "City to all Russians, far and near" (in the last edition compiled around the middle of the 15th century) . In this slip, among the Russian cities on the Danube and the Dniester, such cities as Belgorod (Akkerman), Khotyn, Gorodok on Cheremosh and others are indicated. It is not for nothing that in the Tale of Igor's Campaign we read that the Galician prince Yaroslav Osmomysl "having closed the gates of the Danube, sword burdens through the clouds, rowing judgments to the Danube." The author of the Lay says that “the maidens sing on the Danube, their voices wind across the sea to Kyiv”, that is, that there is a close, constant connection between Kyiv and the Danube.
The population of the Kievan state had a single language, as well as a single religion - first pagan, and then Christian.
The unity of the people of Kievan Rus and the principalities of the XII-XIII centuries was also manifested in legal relations. Throughout the territory of Kievan Rus and the later principalities, the legislation of the Russkaya Pravda was in force (it began to be created in the first half of the 11th century).
The culture of Kievan Rus and the later principalities was also one, which was especially reflected in the annals. The main edition of The Tale of Bygone Years, the pride of our common chronicle writing, was compiled in Kyiv at the beginning of the 12th century. But the chronicler, as established by the studies of A. Shakhmatov and M. Priselkov, used the Novgorod chronicle and the Chernigov chronicle. The same "Tale" was the basis of the Galicia-Volyn chronicle. One of the sources of the Galicia-Volyn chronicle (XIII century) was the Rostov-Suzdal chronicle.
Foreign contemporaries (Liutprand, Konstantin Porphyrogenitus, Titmar, Georgy Kedrin, Ibn al-Asir and others) spoke of the lands of Kievan Rus and later principalities as a single whole.
The unity of the people of the lands of the Kyiv state and the principalities of the XII-XIII centuries was clearly manifested in the common struggle against foreign invaders.
In 1018, the Novgorodians helped the people of Kiev drive out the Polish invaders who had invaded Kiev. In the battle near Kyiv in 1036, where the power of the Pechenegs was crushed, in the troops; Yaroslav the Wise were also Novgorodians.
In the first half of the 13th century, the lands of the Galicia-Volyn principality had to repel aggression from the knights of the German Teutonic Order, Poland and Hungary, and in this struggle we often see the mutual assistance of the two peoples to each other. In particular, the Northern Russian squads, led by Prince Mstislav Udaly from Novgorod, provided great assistance to the Galicians.
Since the 14th century, the lands of Ukraine (by the 14th century the Ukrainian nationality had already basically taken shape) became the object of aggression from foreign invaders.
On fig. The Old Russian state in 1237 on the eve of the Mongol invasion
The heavy Tatar-Mongol yoke hindered the development of our common country. The Lithuanian state, which was created in the east of Europe, began to subjugate the Belarusian lands, and then the Ukrainian ones. By the middle of the XIV century, most of the Ukrainian lands were under the rule of Lithuania. After the Union of Kreva in 1385 (this union united Poland and Lithuania under the rule of the Polish king), the Polish pans rushed to Galicia and captured it in 1387. The Ukrainian population had to experience not only heavy social oppression, but also national-religious oppression. In the captured Ukrainian cities, the Polish government planted prosperous Polish and German philistinism, handed over city self-government to them; at the same time, Ukrainian philistines were subjected to all sorts of restrictions in crafts, trade, crafts; Ukrainians were almost not allowed to participate in city self-government.
By the end of the 15th century, the Lithuanian government liquidated the specific principalities of Ukrainian lands and destroyed the remnants of Ukrainian statehood. In an effort to denationalize and catholicize the Ukrainian people and Belarusians (whose lands were also captured by Lithuania), trying to break their ties with the fraternal Russian people, the Polish and Lithuanian governments introduced a church union in 1596, subordinating the Ukrainian and Belarusian churches to the Pope.
In the XIV century, Moldova captured Northern Bukovina, and during the XIV - XV centuries - the lands of Bessarabia, and later part of these lands fell under the rule of Turkey; the greater part remained under the rule of the Moldavian rulers, who were in vassal dependence on Turkey.
By that time, the Ukrainian population of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina had increased. The Tatars and the Moldavian ruler Stefan in 1498 attacked Podolia and Galicia. Stefan captured about 100,000 Ukrainians in these parts and settled them on the lands of his state, “so until today,” says the 17th-century Moldavian chronicler Ureke, “the Russian language has spread in Moldova.”
The Ukrainian people did not submit to foreign invaders who tried to denationalize them, but fought stubbornly and stubbornly, in a variety of ways and means.
By the end of the 15th century, the Cossacks arose in the steppes of Ukraine, which later spread to other areas of the Dnieper region. In the second half of the 16th century, the Cossacks created their own center beyond the thresholds of the Dnieper - the Zaporozhian Sich, which became the center for organizing almost all uprisings against foreign invaders. In the structure of the Zaporozhian Sich, the rudimentary forms of the new Ukrainian statehood are already visible. It is no coincidence that K. Marx speaks of the emergence of the Cossacks as follows: on the Dnieper Islands “a Christian Cossack Republic».
The Cossack movement spread throughout Ukraine. Not without reason, in the first list of Cossacks that has come down to us (1581), we see residents of various localities of Ukraine, the cities of Kyiv, Cherkassy, Lyubech, Dubno, Rivne, Galich, Vinnitsa, Ostra, residents from near Lvov, etc.
In the middle of the 15th century, organizations of Ukrainian philistines - brotherhoods - began to emerge to fight against the invaders and their accomplices. The first brotherhood arose in Lvov. And then the fraternities, spreading to other lands of Ukraine, embraced not only the townspeople, but also wider circles of the population. And the unity of the Ukrainian people was reflected in this movement.
With the fact of this unity, with the fact that Galicia is Ukrainian land, and not Polish, the government of Poland was forced to reckon. In 1435, it was forced to give the voivodeship, organized in Galicia, the name "Russian Voivodeship".
That Galicia is not Poland, but "Rus", was also recognized by the scientific circles of the then Europe. So, on the map of Cardinal Mykola Kuzan (compiled around 1460, engraved in 1491), the Western Ukrainian lands with the cities of Sambir, Lvov, Belz, Galich and others are located on the territory called Rus (“Russia”). Similarly, on the map of Poland and Hungary by S. Munster (published in Basel in 1540), the territory of Galicia is called Rus (“Russia”). The same lands with the cities of Przemysl, Lvov, Galich and others are also called Rus (“Russia”) on the maps of the Italian cosmographer J. Gastaldi (1562, 1568).
Despite the fact that the Ukrainian people and the Russian people were separated by state borders, nevertheless, the ties between them did not break, but grew, taking the most diverse forms.
Ukrainians helped the Russians in the fight against foreign invaders, helped defend the borders of the Russian state. By the beginning of the 16th century, part of the lands of Ukraine - Severshchina with the cities of Chernihiv, Novgorod-Seversky and others - was freed from the rule of Lithuania and became part of the Muscovite state, which was a progressive fact for these lands.
The Polish government was not satisfied with the capture of Galicia, but captured Podolia in the first third of the 15th century. But this was not enough for the Polish gentry: they sought to subjugate the rest of the lands of Ukraine. In 1569, a Sejm was convened in Lublin, at which the question was raised that the Bratslav, Volhynia, Kiev regions with the Left-Bank Ukraine from under the rule of Lithuania passed directly under the rule of Poland. This Sejm was attended only by representatives of Ukrainian feudal lords. The Polish government tried to legally justify the seizure by referring to the fact that supposedly these lands once belonged to Poland, which, of course, never happened. Going to the point of absurdity in substantiating their "historical rights", the Polish pans argued their claims to the Kiev region by the fact that in 1018 and 1069 Kyiv was "taken and plundered" by the Polish kings. The fact that both times the rebellious people quickly expelled the invaders, the Polish pans, of course, prudently kept silent.
By force, threats and other unclean ways, the Polish government ensured that the above-mentioned Ukrainian lands were subordinated to Poland by the decision of the Lublin Seim. This so-called Union of Lublin delayed the reunification of the Ukrainian people and their unification with the Russian people for a long time. Only a part of the Ukrainian feudal lords agreed to the union. The owner of the Ukrainian land - the people themselves - did not give consent to this union and responded to it with a struggle that lasted for a number of centuries.
Union of Lublin.
After the Union of Lublin in the history of Ukraine, a period of intense national liberation struggle began against the Polish-gentry invaders, who brought heavy social and national-religious oppression to Ukrainians.
The oppressors sought to Polonize, catholicize the Ukrainian people. They subjected him to the most severe social oppression. In a number of lands of Ukraine corvée has reached 5 or even 6 days a week, not counting other types of natural and monetary duties. Ukrainian philistinism was limited in crafts, trade, participation in city self-government. To limit the growth of the Cossacks, the so-called register (list) was introduced, where only a small number of Cossacks were included; the rest of the Cossacks were forced to return under the rule of the pans. The Polish government, in the struggle against the Ukrainian people, sought to use the class contradictions between the wealthy Cossacks, on the one hand, and the poor Cossacks, on the other.
The Ukrainian people responded to the oppression of the Polish gentry with a decisive, fierce rebuff. The masses of the people sought not only to throw off the yoke of foreign invaders, but also to reunite in a single Ukrainian state, to unite with the Russian people, to annex Ukraine to Russia. These moments, closely intertwined with each other, give us a complete picture of the national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people.
The liberation movement after the Union of Lublin and before the beginning of the second half of the 17th century can be divided into two periods: the first - until the end of the 30s of the 17th century - and the second - the period of the great national liberation war of 1648-1654, which ended with the annexation of Ukraine to Russia.
The brotherhoods created by the Ukrainians, the number of which increased more and more, opened schools, printing houses, fought against the Polish-Catholic aggression and propaganda, strengthened the Ukrainian nationality and culture. At first, the center of the ideological struggle was the Western Ukrainian lands, especially the cities of Lvov and Ostrog. In the second decade of the 17th century, Kiev became such a center, where a number of active figures from Western Ukraine, in particular from Galicia (Elisei Pletenetsky, Job Boretsky, Zakharia Kolystensky and others) moved. The Ukrainian brotherhoods acted in contact with the Belarusian brotherhoods, helping each other.
Another form of struggle of the Ukrainian people was the uprisings against the Polish-gentry invaders; of these, the largest were the uprisings of 1591-1593 led by K. Kosinsky, 1594-1596 led by G. Loboda, M. Shauloi, S. Nalivaiko, the uprising of 1630 led by T. Fedorovich, 1635 led by I. Sulima, 1637-1638, headed by Pavlyuk, Ya. Ostryanin, D. Gunya.
The struggle of the Ukrainian people against the Polish-gentry invaders in most cases had a religious coloring as a struggle for their own, Orthodox faith, against Catholicism, union, against someone else's faith. This religious coloring of the national liberation struggle is quite understandable, since "the appearance of political protest under a religious veneer is a phenomenon characteristic of all peoples at a certain stage of their development." The Polish government succeeded by means of armed force (Poland of that time was militarily the strongest of the states of Europe) to suppress these uprisings, to flood the Ukrainian lands with blood streams. However, it was not possible to break the Ukrainian people, to Polish the Ukrainians: they still considered themselves the Ukrainian people in all their lands. Characteristically, Hetman P. Sahaydachny, shortly before his death (April 1622), bequeathed significant sums of money for the activities of the brotherhoods of the two largest centers of Ukraine: Kiev and Lvov.
And foreign contemporaries considered Ukraine, and not Poland, the Western Ukrainian lands and, in general, all of Ukraine.
In 1573, the French prince Henry of Valois was elected king of Poland. For him, Blaise de Viginère wrote a detailed note on Poland; in this note, the Kiev region, Podolia, Galicia, Volhynia are called Russian lands, that is, Ukrainian. So, about Galicia (Chervona Rus), Vizhiner writes: “Southern Russia, which is part of all Russia, which will be discussed in detail in a separate chapter, extends along the Sarmatian mountains, which the locals call the Tatras and which protect it from the south to the very Dniester River at outside of Wallachia. The main cities of Galicia in this note are named Przemysl, Lvov.
On the map compiled in 1634 by order of the Polish King Vladislav IV by military engineer I. Pleitner, the Western Ukrainian lands with the cities of Lvov, Galich, Kolomyia and others are called "Rus" ("Russia").
The ties of the Ukrainian people with the Russian people grew and grew stronger. Many Ukrainians, fleeing from the persecution of the invaders, moved to the borders of the Muscovite state, very often entered the military service there, and helped defend the Russian borders from the Turks and Tatars. According to the Englishman D. Fletcher, who was in Russia (1588), out of 4,300 hired infantry of the Muscovite State, 4,000 were Ukrainians; approximately the same figure is called by the Frenchman J. Margeret, who was in the service in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century. Zaporozhye hetman K. Kosinsky acted in contact with the Russian troops against the attacks of the Turks and Tatars.
K. Kosinsky
After the suppression of the uprisings, many Ukrainians moved to the Russian state, settled in Sloboda Ukraine.
The founder of book printing in Russia, Ivan Fedorov, printed in Lvov in 1574 the first printed book in Ukraine.
Especially close ties were between the Don and Ukrainian Cossacks, who concluded a defensive alliance in the 30s of the 17th century. Many Cossacks lived for a long time, sometimes for a number of years, on the Don; in turn, the Don people lived too long time in the Zaporozhian Sich. The Don and Zaporozhye Cossacks together made a number of campaigns against the Turks and Tatars, such as the campaigns of 1616, 1621, 1623, 1625. There were also Don Cossacks in the ranks of the Ukrainian rebels.
Put on the order of the day and the question of the accession of Ukraine to Russia. Already in 1593, during the uprising, hetman K. Kosinsky negotiated this with the Russian government. In 1625, this problem was again the subject of negotiations between Bishop I. Boriskovich (an envoy of the Kyiv Metropolitan I. Boretsky) and the Russian government in Moscow. During the uprisings of 1630 and 1637, the question of the accession of Ukraine to Russia was still on the order of the day.
The struggle of the Russian people in 1612 against the Polish gentry invaders, who were striving to seize Russia, ended, as you know, in the defeat and expulsion of the Poles. The defeat of the Polish interventionists in 1612 weakened Poland and thereby contributed to the strengthening of the national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people and its unification with the Russian people.
Before turning to the national liberation war of 1648-1654, let us say a few words about the so-called Poland's historical rights to Ukrainian lands.
A number of Polish nationalist historians, in particular M. Grabowski, K. Shainoha, T. Lubomirsky, A. Yablonovsky and others, argued at one time that after the devastation of Ukraine by the Tatars (in the 13th century), colonists came there from Poland and, mixing with the remnants of the local population, laid the foundation for a new tribe, closer to the Poles than to the Russians. In the 15th century, the Poles allegedly completed the settlement of Galicia, Podolia and part of Volhynia, and later the lands captured by the Union of Lublin in 1569. This is allegedly the basis of Poland's rights to Ukrainian lands. (Similar "arguments" we now periodically hear from the reactionary circles of the Polish bourgeoisie, who are looking for "historical" grounds for annexing the Ukrainian lands.)
Criticism of this non-historical theory, which has no facts, was most fully given by prof. M. Vladimirsky-Budanov. Using the works of his predecessors and numerous archival primary sources, he came to clear, convincing conclusions that overturned the false theory of Polish nationalist historians. Vladimirsky-Budanov, with facts in hand, showed that the Ukrainian people themselves, without the help of Poland, settled their lands devastated by the Tatars. When the Polish gentry moved to seize foreign, Ukrainian lands, the people responded to this, on the one hand, with a further movement to the uninhabited steppes and resettlements within the Muscovite state, on the other hand, with bloody uprisings that led to the events of 1648-1654.
Hetman Bogdan Khmelnytsky
In 1648, the national liberation war of the Ukrainian people broke out against the Polish-gentry invaders. Reflecting the historical aspirations of the Ukrainian people, its leader, Hetman Bogdan Khmelnytsky, from the very first days of the war, raised the question of overthrowing the Polish yoke, reuniting Ukrainian lands in a single Ukrainian state, and joining Ukraine to Russia.
The uprising that broke out in the Dnieper region spread to Volhynia, Galicia, and reached the Carpathian Mountains. Uprisings began in Belarus; there were uprisings against the gentry in Poland itself, and Khmelnitsky helped the Belarusian and Polish rebels. The fact is that Bohdan Khmelnitsky was not an enemy of the Polish people. He was an enemy, and an implacable enemy at that, only to that Polish gentry, which, with its reckless policy, led Poland to destruction. As for the Polish people, Bogdan Khmelnitsky helped them in the struggle against the gentry who oppressed them. So, in 1648, in the autumn, the hetman helped the Polish peasant rebels. The conspiracy of the urban poor in Warsaw against the nobility was organized then, on the instructions of Khmelnitsky. In 1651, Kostka-Naperski, the leader of the Polish peasant rebels near Krakow, acted in contact with Khmelnitsky.
The unity of the Ukrainian people in this war was also manifested in the fact that from the lands of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, the rebels went to the aid of their brothers in the Dnieper region and Galicia. A number of heavy defeats near Zhovti Vody, Korsun, Pylyavtsy, Zborov, Vinnitsa, Batog, Monastyrishche suffered Polish troops from the Ukrainians.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky, by the will of the Ukrainian people, already on June 8, 1648, began negotiations with the Russian government on the accession of Ukraine to Russia and did not stop them throughout the war. Envoys of the Russian government to Ukraine, such as G. Unkovsky (1649), A. Sukhanov (1650), G. Bogdanov (1651), A. Matveev, I. Fomin (1653), carefully collecting information about the mood of Ukrainians , made sure that all the people want this accession.
Already at the beginning of 1649, Khmelnytsky told Unkovsky that he demanded that Poland renounce the Ukrainian lands and return all the lands that were within the borders of Kievan Rus and the principalities of the XII-XIII centuries. During negotiations in February of the same year with Polish representatives, Bohdan Khmelnytsky indicated that his task was to liberate all Ukrainian lands from Polish rule and reunite them into one state. The hetman spoke about his Ukrainian state, which also includes the western Ukrainian lands with the cities of Lvov and Galich.
On January 8 (according to the old style), 1654, at the Rada in the city of Pereyaslav (now Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky), the accession of Ukraine to Russia was proclaimed - an event that played an exceptionally important role in the subsequent history of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. The war of 1648-1654 led to the reunification of only the bulk of the Ukrainian lands (Dnieper). But the close ties that now soldered the Russian and Ukrainian peoples served as a guarantee that further cooperation between these peoples would help reunite all Ukrainian lands in a single Ukrainian state.
It is characteristic that the authoritative connoisseur of Eastern Europe who lived in that era, the French engineer G. Beauplan (he spent about 20 years in Ukraine) defined Ukraine as a single country from Hungary to Russia. On Beauplan's map, Galicia as "Chervonaya Rus" ("Russia Rubra") was part of Ukraine.
After the annexation of Ukraine to Russia in 1654, Poland, and later Turkey, with Crimea under its vassals, attacked Ukraine more than once. With the help of the Russian people, the Ukrainians repelled the attempts of the aggressors and at the same time sought to free from them those of their lands that still remained under foreign yoke.
Already at the end of 1654, the Nizhyn archpriest M. Filimonovich, reflecting the aspirations of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples, said in his speech to Tsar Alexei that now the case was about the liberation of “Lviv land, Podolsk, Pokuttskaya, Podgorskaya, Polesskaya, Belorussian and their broad principalities, glorious cities." In the autumn of 1655, Bogdan Khmelnitsky declared to S. Lyubovitsky and S. Grondsky, sent by the Polish king with a proposal to end the war and subjugate Ukraine to Poland, that there could be no question of any subordination either now or in the future. Peace can be concluded only if Poland renounces all claims to Western Ukrainian lands with the cities of Vladimir, Lvov, Przemysl.
Until the very last days of his life, the great son of Ukraine, Bogdan Khmelnitsky, fought for the reunification of Ukrainian lands in a single state, sought to include "the whole of Chervona Rus along the Vistula" in its composition.
After the death of Khmelnytsky (1657), for a number of years, separate groups of Cossack officers tried to subjugate Ukraine to Poland, Turkey, and Crimea. However, the attempts of these groups of foremen (the groups of I. Vygovsky, P. Doroshenko, P. Sukhovey, M. Khanenko) ultimately failed due to the rebuff of the masses. If the aggressors (Poland, Turkey) managed to capture one or another part of the lands of Ukraine, then the Ukrainian people stubbornly fought against the foreign yoke, sought to reunite all their lands in a single Ukrainian state, which was part of Russia.
In 1660, Poland managed to capture the Right Bank. However, already in 1663, an uprising broke out in Pavoloch, which aimed at reuniting the Right Bank with the Left Bank as part of Russia. In March of the following year, an uprising broke out again on the Right Bank, and, as P. Teterya, a supporter of Poland, informed the King of Poland, “almost all of Ukraine decided to die for the name of the Tsar of Moscow,” that is, for the annexation of Ukraine to Russia.
Both peoples - Ukrainian and Russian - fought shoulder to shoulder not only against foreign invaders (only with the help of Russia did the Ukrainians manage to repel the aggression of Poland, Turkey and the Crimea), but also against the common exploiters - tsarism, landowners. Many Ukrainians fought in the troops of Stepan Razin (uprising of 1670-1671); the uprising spread to Sloboda Ukraine, where the rebels captured a number of cities, such as Sumy, Chuguev, Kharkov and others.
hetman I. Samoylovich
In 1686, against the will of the Ukrainian people, the tsarist government made peace with Poland, leaving the Right Bank (without Kyiv) and Galicia under its rule. The Ukrainian people protested against this world, which was tearing apart the living body of Ukraine. No wonder Hetman I. Samoylovich in 1685, that is, during peace negotiations, through his envoy to Moscow V. Kochubey, insisted on the need to recapture Ukrainian lands from Poland, and not only the Right Bank, but “and the whole of Chervona Rus” with the cities of Galich, Lvov, Przemysl and others. The peace of 1686 did not put an end to the struggle of the Ukrainian people for reunification into one whole and for unification with the Russian people.
Devastated by disastrous wars, the lands of the Middle Kiev region were repopulated by Ukrainian settlers from Galicia, Podolia, Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the Left Bank at the end of the 17th century. An exceptionally important role in this settlement was played by the national hero Semyon Paley. He also negotiated with the Russian government on the reunification of these lands with the Left Bank and their inclusion in Russia.
The armed struggle against the Polish-gentry invaders who rushed to these lands did not stop either; a particularly large uprising broke out in 1702-1703, and the main leader of the rebels Samus from the very beginning proclaimed his goal to reunite the Right Bank with the Left Bank and announced that he was ready to submit to the Russian government. This uprising, which began in the Kiev and Bratslav regions, spread to Volhynia, Podolia, and Galicia. Ukrainians moved from Northern Bukovina, Bessarabia, and the Left Bank to help the rebels. Although Poland managed to suppress the uprising, however, Paley defended the areas of Fastov and Belaya Tserkov, which, like a number of neighboring areas of the Right Bank, actually remained part of Russia.
Hetman Mazepa
During the Northern War between Russia and Sweden in 1708, the hetman of the Left-Bank Ukraine, Mazepa, betrayed Russia and Ukraine and entered into an alliance with the Swedish king Charles XII, seeking with his assistance to subjugate all Ukrainian lands to Poland. Charles XII, at the head of the army, then the strongest in Europe, moved to Ukraine. The Ukrainian people did not follow the traitor Mazepa, remained faithful to the alliance with the Russian people. The guerrilla war flared up in Ukraine, bleeding and undermining the forces of the Swedes. The heroic defense of Poltava, defended by Russian troops and local residents, further undermined the strength of the Swedish army. On June 27, 1709, near Poltava, the Swedes were defeated by the Russian army (it also included Ukrainian units) led by Peter I. The defeat of the army of Charles XII was extremely important for the history of Ukraine, putting an end to Poland's attempts to seize Left-Bank Ukraine.
The unsuccessful war with Turkey forced Peter I in 1711 to agree that the Middle Dnieper again fell under the rule of Poland.
But on the Right Bank and in Galicia there was a relentless struggle against Polish domination, one after another flared uprisings, of which the largest was the "Koliyivshchyna" of 1768. These uprisings, in particular Koliivshchyna, also spread to Galicia. And every time the rebels raised the question of the reunification of Ukrainian lands and their entry into Russia. In Poland at that time, both peasants and philistines endured exceptionally heavy oppression from the gentry. Therefore, in the ranks of the Ukrainian rebels (in the 18th century they were usually called haidamaks) there were many Polish poor peasants and farm laborers. We have authoritative evidence of this from Russian border officials, as well as from a contemporary Pole, Kitovich. Moreover, the proclamation (“Project of the Confederation of the Khlops”) of 1767, calling on the Polish peasants to fight together with the Ukrainian peasants oppressed by the nobility, against the pans, has been preserved.
At the end of the 18th century, Poland was brought to ruin by its ruling classes: its lands were divided among its neighbors. And from those Ukrainian lands that were under the yoke of Pan Poland, the Right Bank of Ukraine became part of Russia, while Austria captured Galicia (1772). In 1775, Austria also occupied Northern Bukovina, which had previously been subject to the Turks. It should be noted that, according to Austrian government statistics, at that time 2/3 of the population of Bukovina were Ukrainians, as established by General Erzberger, the ruler of Bukovina since 1778.
Throughout the late 17th and 18th centuries, the Ukrainian people failed to reunite in a single Ukrainian state, and a significant part of their land remained under the yoke of Poland and Turkey. However, even in that gloomy time the Ukrainian people did not lose consciousness of their unity. So, the chronicler S. Velichko in his work (begun in 1720) says that Ukraine includes the Right Bank, Volyn and Galicia. The author of the description of the Chernihiv governorship A. Shafonsky (1786) writes about the same. Galicia also acts as "Rus" on the maps of Delid of 1703 and Schenk of 1705.
The territory of Austria-Hungary before 1914.
In the first half of the 19th century, that part of the Ukrainian people, which was under the rule of Austria-Hungary, had to endure heavy oppression from the German government of Austria. The ruling German and Hungarian circles of Austria-Hungary sought, with the help of the Polish gentry, to denationalize, Germanize, Polonize, and Magyarize the Ukrainians. However, this did not break the spirit of the Ukrainian people. The national revival in Ukraine unfolded more and more, the ties between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples grew and strengthened. The Ukrainian people, preserving the idea of their unity, strove for reunification.
K. Marx and F. Engels pointed out that Galician Ukrainians gravitate towards “other Little Russian regions united with Russia”. Marx and Engels dismissed that "the Austrian Slavs are membra disjecta (disconnected members) who seek to reunite either with each other or with the main bodies of their nationalities" .
V. Bronevsky, an officer of the Russian fleet, who traveled from Trieste to St. Petersburg in 1810, writes: “When I entered Galicia, everything made me happy; the similarity of the inhabitants with our Little Russians is striking: their scrolls and hats are exactly the same as we wear in Ukraine, they speak so clearly that I, not being a Little Russian, could understand everything without difficulty; and nature itself seemed to me more charming and more abundant than I had seen it yesterday. Bronevsky points out that in Galicia "the language of the common people is still completely similar to Little Russian."
The common struggle both against foreign invaders and against tsarism united the Ukrainians even more with the Russian people. During the invasion of Napoleon in 1812, in Left-Bank Ukraine alone, 15 Cossack regiments were formed to fight against Napoleon's hordes, in addition, masses of Ukrainians fought in the ranks of all-Russian military formations.
Taras Shevchenko
The fraternal friendship of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, as a focus, was reflected in the common activities and ties that existed between Taras Shevchenko and the Russian revolutionary democrats, in particular N. Chernyshevsky and N. Dobrolyubov. A great friend of the Ukrainians, Chernyshevsky in his works spoke out against the Germanization of the Ukrainians in Galicia, against the artificial division of the Ukrainian people.
Shevchenko was associated in his activities with the leading Polish figures of that time, for example, with Zalessky.
In the second half of the 19th century, the struggle of the Ukrainian people against social and national oppression takes on an even wider scope. In those areas of the Ukraine that were part of Russia, the working class was closely connected with the Russian proletariat, whose struggle always found its echo in the Ukraine. In 1895, when V. I. Lenin created the "Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class" in St. Petersburg, similar unions of struggle also arose in Ukraine - in Kiev, Nikolaev, Yekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk). The Kyiv and Yekaterinoslav "Unions" took part in the First Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. At the II Congress of the Party in 1903, delegates from Ukrainian committees were present: Kharkov, Kiev, Odessa, Nikolaev, Yekaterinoslav.
The first social democratic circles
The events of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1905-1907 had a wide echo and development in Ukraine. So it was in the January days of 1905, and in the October days, and during the December armed uprising in Moscow, when armed demonstrations took place in a number of Ukrainian cities - Kharkov, Lugansk, Gorlovka.
The Galician Ukrainians under the rule of Austria-Hungary were in exceptionally difficult conditions. In Eastern Galicia (where the vast majority of the population were Ukrainians), large latifundia of Polish landlords dominated; wage agricultural workers was very low. High mortality and low consumption equivalent distinguished Galicia from all European countries.
Ukrainian culture was crushed. Until 1870, the Germans dominated the Lviv University, and later the Poles. One secondary Ukrainian school accounted for 820 thousand of the population, and one secondary Polish school for 30 thousand of the population; 97 children attended the lower school per thousand Poles, and only 57 children per thousand Ukrainians.
Ivan Franko
And in these lands the Ukrainian people stubbornly fought for their freedom, for their own national culture. From his midst advanced at that time such eminent figures like Ivan Franko, Osip Fedkovich, Olga Kobylyanskaya. In 1870, a workers' strike broke out in Lvov.
In 1901, several hundred Ukrainian students left Lviv University in protest against its forced Polonization and refusal to expand the rights of the Ukrainian language. Progressive circles of the Polish university youth also reacted sympathetically to this step. The peasant uprising of 1902 involved about 100 thousand people. At the end of the 19th century, an attempt by Ukrainian reactionaries to come to an agreement with the Polish landowners (the so-called “Antonovich-Badeni” agreement) failed due to the rebuff of the masses.
Despite the fact that part of the Ukrainian people was outside of Russia, a sense of unity grew stronger in the minds of the masses. This was figuratively expressed in the early 60s of the 19th century by the Ukrainian public figure P. Kulish: “Our brother will sing across the Danube or near Poltava, but in Lvov and in the Beskids the voice sounds. Galician Rus will groan under the Carpathians, and over the Dnieper, people's hearts hurt.
The most prominent Western Ukrainian figures, like Ivan Franko, saw the Russian people as their half-brother. Franco told his opponents: “We are all Russophiles, hear, I repeat once again that we are all Russophiles. We love the Great Russian people, we wish them all the best ... And we know and love Russian writers, great in the spiritual realm ... "
After the February bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1917, wide paths opened up before the Ukrainian people for the realization of their cherished aspirations: to be reunited in a single Ukrainian state. The main masses of the Ukrainian people followed the Bolshevik Party, which always stood on the point of view of self-determination of peoples up to secession, i.e. full right of peoples to arrange their own lives as they wish.
The bourgeois Provisional Government and the Ukrainian Central Rada (an organ of the Ukrainian landlords and bourgeoisie), formed shortly after the revolution, despite pseudo-democratic phraseology, obstructed the liberation struggle of the Ukrainian working people. Only the Bolsheviks, as before, remained on truly popular positions in general, on the Ukrainian question in particular. Even before the First World War, V. I. Lenin proclaimed his famous position: “With the united action of the Great Russian and Ukrainian proletarians, a free Ukraine possible, without such unity there can be no talk of it. At the same time, Lenin proclaimed the right of the Ukrainian people to create their own state.
The Great October Socialist Revolution, the formation of the Soviet government were of exceptional importance for the struggle of the Ukrainian people for their reunification. Now, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, the Ukrainian people could eliminate social and national oppression and reunite in their single state. Already at the end of December (25th new style) 1917, the Soviet government of Ukraine was organized in Kharkov, leading the struggle of the Ukrainian people against the Central Rada and against the bourgeois counter-revolution, which was striving to tear the Ukrainian working people away from their class brothers.
Over the years civil war the Ukrainian people had to expend a lot of effort, they had to shed a lot of blood in order to achieve their liberation, to preserve their Soviet statehood. Without the help of the Russian people, without the leadership of the tried and tested Bolshevik Party, the Ukrainian people would not have been able to resist.
At the beginning of 1918, the Central Rada, expelled by the insurgent people, sold their homeland to the German invaders, called their hordes to Ukraine. But, blazing with anger, the people of the Ukraine rose to a patriotic war against foreign invaders, and by the end of the year, with the help of the Russian people, Russian workers and peasants and other peoples of young Soviet Russia, under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, they drove the invaders and their accomplices out of their country.
It is characteristic that the Ukrainians, who at that time were in the Austrian troops, not only refused to fight against the Ukrainian people all the time, but even joined the Ukrainian partisans, as Austrian official circles testified to this. (But now the Ukrainian oligarchy has fooled its workers so much that they do not consider it shameful to shoot at each other. But for what? For the sake of the fullness of the pockets of Poroshenko and Kolomoisky? The comfortable life of Tymoshenko, Yatsenyuk, etc.?)
At the end of the war of 1914-1918, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers (England, the United States of America, France and others) decided that only ethnographically Polish regions should be part of Poland. Accordingly, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers then established the so-called "Curzon Line", which provided for the entry of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, populated in the overwhelming majority by Ukrainians and Belarusians, into the Soviet Union.
Later, throughout 1919, other foreign invaders also failed, trying with the help of the traitor Petlyura to seize Ukraine. In 1920, Petliura concluded an agreement with the White Poles, agreeing that a significant territory of Ukraine (including Galicia, part of Volhynia) with a population of up to 11 million people would come under the rule of Poland, and for this the Poles were obliged to help Petliura seize power in Ukraine. This treacherous adventure was also thwarted. The Red Army defeated and expelled the White Poles from the territory of Soviet Ukraine. Only Trotsky's treacherous activity then prevented the liberation of Western Ukrainian lands from Polish rule, since the adventurous “campaign against Warsaw” proposed by him in 1920 led to the retreat of the Red Army, during which it had to leave a significant part of the Ukrainian and Belarusian territories. As a result, the RSFSR was forced to sign the Riga Peace Treaty, according to which the Polish-Soviet border passed far to the east of the Curzon Line, capturing the western parts of Ukraine and Belarus.
"Curzon Line"
After the collapse of Austria, boyar Romania, which seized even earlier, in early 1918, Bessarabia, also seized the lands of Northern Bukovina.
After the end of the civil war, the Ukrainian people, having formed their own state - the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, an integral, integral part of the USSR, opened up broad prospects for comprehensive development. Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, Soviet Ukraine became a powerful industrial country, the edge of a developed Agriculture, the edge of the exceptional growth of national culture.
At the same time, in the lands of Ukraine occupied by Poland and Romania, there was a completely opposite picture. The industry of Western Ukraine decreased by 40%, sugar consumption - by 93%, salt - by 72%, coal - by 50%. More than 50% of peasant households did not have horses and only 47% had cows. Ukrainian culture, which suffered persecution by the occupiers, fell into decline. Out of 3662 Ukrainian schools, by the end of Polish rule, 135 remained, out of 61 Ukrainian gymnasiums - 5, and a percentage rate was introduced for Ukrainians at Lviv University. The number of illiterates in Western Ukraine reached 60%.
In Bessarabia, 80% of all land was cultivated with antediluvian tools, and 63,000 hectares were not cultivated at all, gardening was reduced by 5 times, tobacco growing fell by almost 80%. Forced Romanization was carried out in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. The population of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia languished under the yoke of usury and exorbitant taxes. The working day in Western Ukraine, Northern Bukovina, Bessarabia sometimes reached 16 hours!
The Ukrainians of the occupied lands never recognized the power of the occupiers, and nothing could suppress the freedom-loving aspirations of the people: not the cruel Polish "pacification" of the West. Ukraine in 1930, nor the bloody suppression by the Romanians of the Khotyn and Tatar-Bunar uprisings of 1919 and 1924. The Ukrainian people of the occupied lands have always turned their eyes to the east, to Soviet Ukraine, to the Soviet Union, from where they expected help and support.
In turn, the peoples of the Soviet Union never forgot their oppressed brothers. The Soviet Union never recognized the capture of Bessarabia by the Romanians.
In 1939-1940, the cherished dream of the Ukrainian people came true, the long-awaited reunification was realized. In the war with Nazi Germany, Poland suffered a number of defeats, since the leaders of the Polish government (in particular, Colonel Beck) in previous years only helped Hitler in his vile anti-Soviet game, and failed to organize the defense of Poland. In mid-September 1939, the Polish government fled, leaving the country to fend for itself. Hitler's troops began to penetrate into Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. The Soviet government could not, under such conditions, remain a passive spectator. On September 17, the Red Army entered the borders of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus and within a few days freed their half-brothers, Belarusians and Ukrainians, from the power of foreigners.
On October 22, 1939, elections were held on the territory of Western Ukraine in People's Assembly. All citizens of Western Ukraine who have reached the age of 18, regardless of their race, nationality, religion, education, social origin, property status and past activities, had the right to elect and be elected to this Assembly. Elections were held on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot. It was a truly nationwide, free plebiscite. The population of Western Ukraine itself had to decide its fate. The results of the plebiscite showed the will of Western Ukraine. Out of 4,776,275 voters, 4,433,997 people participated in the elections, i.e. 92.83% of voters. 90.93% of all votes (4,032,154) were cast for the candidates nominated to this Assembly by peasant committees, provisional administrations, meetings of the workers' guards, workers, and intellectuals.
On October 26-28, in the ancient Ukrainian city of Lvov, the People's Assembly took place. It unanimously proclaimed the establishment of Soviet power throughout Western Ukraine and decided to ask the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "to accept Western Ukraine into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, to include Western Ukraine into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in order to reunite the Ukrainian people in a single state, to put the end of the age-old disunity of the Ukrainian people”.
On November 1 of the same year, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR at its 5th session decided to satisfy this request and "include Western Ukraine in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with its reunification with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic."
On November 14, in the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, at the III, extraordinary session of the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR, a law was unanimously adopted on the inclusion of Western Ukraine into the Ukrainian SSR.
In 1940, the lands of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were liberated from the yoke of the Romanian invaders. On August 2, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, at its 7th session, granted the petition of the representatives of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to include Northern Bukovina and the Ukrainian-populated Khotinsky, Akkerman and Izmail counties of Bessarabia into the Ukrainian SSR.
Ukrainian SSR in 1940
These acts of 1939-1940 completed the reunification of the Ukrainian people in their single state- Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The working people of Ukraine did not want to live in isolation from their fellow workers and peasants and became part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
But the Ukrainian people did not have long to rejoice in their freedom. On June 22, 1941, Hitler threw his hordes of robbers into the Soviet Union, seeking to destroy the world's first country of socialism and enslave the entire great and free Soviet people. Hitler's plans also included the capture of Soviet Ukraine, which he wanted to annex to Germany as a colony. rich natural resources, food and skilled labor, which the Nazis in the occupied territories turned into slaves, Ukraine was a tasty morsel for the Nazi invaders.
The Republic is one of the first to take the insidious blow of the enemy. The destructive military rampart did not pass a single settlement on the territory of the republic, rolling over it twice - during the advance of the Nazis and during their retreat.
Hitler hoped that the USSR would not hold out for a long time, that a struggle would begin between the peoples of the Soviet Union, he believed that the peoples in the USSR lived together only because the communists forced them to do so. The West expected the Soviet Union to disintegrate at the first blow. However, the Ukrainian people, like other peoples of our country, remained faithful to each other and to their Soviet motherland. Voluntary Union of Peoples clearly showed the difference between multinational capitalist states, where there is always a strife between the peoples inhabiting them (since the national bourgeoisie constantly competes with each other for the right to exploit the working people living in one or another territory of the country), and a multinational socialist state, where the peoples there is nothing to share among themselves and where they are really free and really independent.
As one, all the peoples of the USSR rose up against the fascist hordes. They had to pay a terrible price for their freedom - 20 million dead. For Ukraine, this price amounted to about 8 million human lives. In fact, every sixth inhabitant of Ukraine died during the war years.
Millions of sons and daughters of Ukraine fought the enemy in the ranks of the Soviet Army and Navy. The republic gave the front more than 7 million soldiers. Every second of them died, and half of those who survived returned home disabled.
There were 150 thousand fighters in 650 destruction battalions. About 1.3 million people joined the people's militia. Over 2 million citizens of Ukraine took part in the construction of defense fortifications.
Near Kyiv alone, about 500,000 people worked. August 29, 1941 at the Kiev Drama Theater. Frank, a city-wide youth rally took place. During the rally, it became known that the enemy had broken through the defenses and was approaching the city. Those present in the hall adopted a unanimous decision - everyone to stand up to arms, and to extend the rally after the danger has been eliminated. When the youth again gathered in the theater late in the evening, many chairs were left free - more than 200 young men and women did not return from the battlefield.
During the occupation of Ukraine 1941-1944. the Nazis killed over 5 million people (3.8 million civilians and about 1.5 million prisoners of war); 2.4 million people were taken to work in Germany.
The entire powerful industrial base of the republic was liquidated: either taken deep into the USSR, or destroyed so as not to fall into the hands of the enemy. In difficult conditions from July to October 1941, more than 500 large enterprises were evacuated from Ukraine, which then continued their work in different parts of the Soviet Union.
The liberation of Ukraine lasted almost two years. Ten fronts fought fierce battles for it, the forces of the Black Sea Fleet, which accounted for almost half of the personnel and military equipment of the entire active army of the USSR.
I. Kozhedub
The contribution of the Ukrainian people to the victory over fascism is invaluable. About 2.5 million Ukrainians were awarded orders and medals, more than 2 thousand were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, one of them was I.M. Kozhedub, was awarded this high title three times. Of the 115 twice Heroes of the Soviet Union, 32 are Ukrainians or natives of Ukraine. Of the four Heroes of the Soviet Union and at the same time full holders of the Order of Glory, two are Ukrainians.
But the newly reunited Ukrainian people had to go through a lot. The policy of the Nazi fascists was aimed at destroying any national identity of the peoples of the USSR, the goal was to degrade people, turning them into dumb and stupid animals for hard work. Everything that could serve as at least some basis for striving for national independence and the liberation movement was suppressed. In Ukraine, this manifested itself, for example, in limiting the general education of Ukrainians to four grades of school, relegating the higher levels of education to narrowly specialized practical professions. In every possible way, any amateur manifestations of the cultural initiative of the Ukrainian population, including those of a purely educational, cultural nature, were suppressed. Publishing houses, scientific institutions, libraries and museums were closed, the most valuable of them was exported to Germany. The press and theaters, although they operated, were limited, their level was utterly primitive. (Approximately as now in all post-Soviet republics.)
There was no question of any social guarantees for the local population. Even vitally necessary, for example, sanitary and medical care was allowed for residents of the territories occupied by the Nazis in the most minimal amounts. In the opinion of the fascist authorities, the fate of the Soviet peoples is hunger, all kinds of restrictions, not a trace of human rights. Add to this the inhuman treatment of Ukrainian and Soviet prisoners of war taken to Germany, as well as mass executions of the local population for actual or imaginary support of any resistance or protest.
The fascist invaders created over 230 concentration camps and ghettos on the territory of Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war, women, children, the elderly, the disabled became their prisoners. More than two hundred and fifty Ukrainian villages were burned to the ground by the invaders.
This is the kind of power that was supported by Ukrainian nationalists from a whole bunch of bourgeois-nationalist organizations and military units such as the OUN, UPA, Nakhtigal, Roland (battalion), the SS division "Galicia", etc. independence of Ukraine. These "heroes" actively participated in the executions and executions of Ukrainian civilians, served in the Nazi police, were part of the punitive battalions that destroyed partisans who fought against foreign invaders.
Who entered these anti-people nationalist organizations? Patriots of Ukraine? No matter how! Most of these organizations were created by the Nazis even before the war on the territory of the capitalist countries (mostly Poland) from representatives of the bourgeoisie and kulaks who fled from the power of the working people. In words, the nationalists advocated the independence of Ukraine, but for some reason, independence under the rule of the working people, i.e. independence of Soviet Ukraine, which was part of the USSR according to voluntary agreement (as now, for example, European countries are entering the European Union), they did not suit them in any way. They wanted to have a bourgeois Ukraine, with the rule of the bourgeois class and an uncomplaining working population that could be exploited mercilessly, they longed for independence from the people- this is what all these Banderas and Stetskos, Kachinskys and others were striving for. That is why they found a common language with fascism, which is of the same capitalist-exploiting root. The fact that for some time there were some frictions between the Nazis and the Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists does not in any way indicate that they defended the interests of the Ukrainian people. This shows that the competitive struggle within the bourgeois class never stops: the Nazi fascists and Ukrainian nationalists only divided among themselves who to rob and exploit the Ukrainian working people. (The Russian, Ukrainian, and European-American monopolies that have unleashed a war in the Donbass are doing the same now).
“According to the concept of the Fuhrer, there can be no question of an independent Ukraine in the coming decades,” said Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler's minister for the occupied territories of the East.
Both the Ukrainian land and the people groaned under the forged boot of the fascist beast. Ukraine could not tolerate such abuse. The anger of the people was terrible. Both young and old were filled with hatred, joined the partisans, created underground cells. The flames of the partisan struggle engulfed the whole of Ukraine.
In Ukraine, under the leadership of the Central Committee of the party, the Ukrainian headquarters of the partisan movement was created. The underground organizations of the Bolsheviks were at the head of the partisan detachments everywhere.
In the course of the partisan war in Ukraine, remarkable commanders and organizers of the partisan movement came to the fore, such as S. Kovpak, A. Fedorov, S. Rudnev, P. Vershigora and others. For courage and heroism they were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and S. Kovpak and A. Fedorov became twice Heroes of the Soviet Union.
Under the leadership of the secretary of the Regional Committee of the CP(b)U A.F. Fedorov, the underground organizations of the Chernihiv region launched a successful military activity.
Legends still circulate about Kovpak in Ukraine. And the Germans were horrified by his name alone.
S. A. Kovpak
Before the war, S. A. Kovpak was the chairman of the local Soviet in the small Ukrainian town of Putivl. After the occupation of Putivl by the Germans, Kovpak and Rudnev organized a partisan detachment, the fame of whose exploits spread widely throughout Ukraine. In 1942, Kovpak, together with other partisan commanders, at the suggestion of the Central Committee, organized a deep partisan raid on the right-bank Ukraine in order to rouse the people to fight the Germans and strike at enemy communications. Kovpak's detachments launched a large extermination war in Carpathian Ukraine. They destroyed several oil refineries, more than 50 thousand tons of oil. To fight the partisan detachments of Kovpak, the Germans sent troops from Galicia and Hungary. However, the partisan detachments broke through the encirclement and returned to Ukraine.
The Carpathian raid of the Kovpakovites had not only great military, but also moral and political significance. He showed that the Nazis were powerless to conquer the Ukrainian people, and had a great influence on the rise of the partisan war in Western Ukraine.
The partisan struggle in Ukraine has taken on a truly nationwide character. Relying on the support of the entire people, the partisans of Ukraine over the years Patriotic War put out of action over 450 thousand enemy soldiers and officers, derailed several thousand military trains with manpower and equipment, blew up and burned 2200 railway and highway bridges, destroyed hundreds of warehouses with ammunition and equipment, recaptured from the Germans and distributed to the Soviet population a large number of echelons with grain and livestock (the Germans took away even the most necessary things from Soviet citizens, forcing them to starve, and took it all to their place in Germany).
On October 28, 1944, the last formations of the Nazis were expelled from the territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Ukraine was liberated.
But this was still part of the victory, because after the fascist invasion such devastation remained that for several more years everything had to be restored, from residential buildings and schools to power plants, factories, mines, etc.; it was necessary to clear fields and forests of mines, to revive agriculture in the republic, for which it has been famous since ancient times, so that beautiful Ukraine would bloom again and shine with happiness and freedom.
After the German occupation:
The first session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the second convocation approved the law on the five-year plan for the restoration and development of the national economy for 1946-1950.
The German invaders inflicted enormous damage on the USSR. Therefore, the Supreme Soviet demanded, as a first task, to restore the affected areas, to restore the pre-war level of industry and agriculture, and then to surpass this level on a significant scale. And this task was successfully completed - by 1950, industry and agriculture were completely restored, and became even more powerful than before, before the war.
For example, the five-year plan provided that the output of the entire industry of the USSR in 1950 should increase by 48% compared to the pre-war 1940. This level of production was not only achieved, but also significantly surpassed: in 1950, Soviet industry produced by 73% more production than in 1940 Newly built and commissioned over 6 thousand industrial enterprises, not counting the small state and cooperative enterprises!
The industry of the regions affected by the war, and in the first place in Ukraine, was not only restored, but also modernized! Now Ukrainian enterprises have been equipped with new, modern equipment.
The metallurgical industry in Ukraine has also been completely restored on a new technical base. She began to produce more metal than before the war. The entire coal industry of Donbass, completely destroyed during the war, was also completely restored and also began to produce more coal than before the war. New Donbass by 1950 became the largest and most mechanized coal basin in the country. The oil industry of Western Ukraine, destroyed during the war, has been completely restored and technically re-equipped.
The same is true in agriculture. As a result of the measures taken by the Soviet government and the selfless labor of collective farmers in 1950, the gross harvest of grain crops, cotton, sugar beet, etc., exceeded the pre-war level of 1940. Collective farm and state farm productive animal husbandry, which had suffered greatly during the war, was completely restored. By 1950, the collective farms and state farms of Ukraine achieved a significant increase in the number of pedigree cattle.
As for the standard of living of the Soviet population, including citizens of Soviet Ukraine, the monetary reform, the abolition of cards for food and industrial goods on December 14, 1947, as well as the price cuts carried out three times a year, sharply raised the well-being of the population of the Soviet republics. The real wages of workers and employees and the incomes of collective farmers increased significantly, by 1950 having exceeded the pre-war level by 27-30%.
The Soviet government had a special control over the issue of housing, which was badly damaged in the territories occupied by the enemy. In the post-war years, more than 100 million square meters were restored and built in cities. m of living space, more than 2 million residential buildings were put into operation in rural areas. Thousands of new schools, libraries, children's institutions, a large number of new hospitals, sanatoriums, rest houses, clubs, theaters and cinemas have been built.
Thanks to the care of the Soviet government, selfless work for the good of their homeland Ukrainians and the help of the peoples of all Soviet republics, Ukraine has really become more beautiful than before.
For three and a half decades, the Ukrainian people did not know grief, living freely and happily in friendship with other Soviet peoples. But the bourgeois counter-revolution, better known as Gorbachev's Perestroika, put an end to its prosperity. The bourgeoisie, which grew up in the country thanks to Gorbachev's reforms, wrested political power from the hands of the working class of the USSR. In all Soviet republics, the division of public property began. The newly-minted capitalists clashed among themselves in a competitive struggle for the right to undividedly exploit the working class of different republics and tore apart the united Soviet state. Ukraine, like Russia, became bourgeois countries, formally sovereign and independent, but in reality - primitive colonies of the major imperialist powers of the world - the USA, England, West Germany, etc. What the Soviet peoples fought against during the Great Patriotic War was accomplished through a little more than half a century - the free Soviet peoples found themselves enslaved by world capital, on behalf of and on behalf of which the local national bourgeoisie governs on the territory of their "independent" countries.
Do world capital and the national Ukrainian bourgeoisie need the prosperity of the Ukrainian people? No way! They only want profit. And the interests of profit do not coincide with the interests of the working people, for they themselves are the only source of profit for the bourgeoisie. The profit of the capitalist is formed only from the exploitation of the working class and the working masses - the economic laws of capitalism have not changed since the time they were discovered in the middle of the 19th century by K. Marx. And therefore, the result that we are now seeing in Ukraine is the deindustrialization of the country, the degradation of agriculture, the destruction of social guarantees, the sharp impoverishment of the working population, progressive unemployment, the decline of culture, science, education, the growth of crime, drug addiction, prostitution, constant increases in the state apparatus, total corruption, the militarization of the country and its involvement in a war for a new redistribution of the world - was natural and inevitable for the capitalist system. He the same as in all former Soviet republics.
The Ukrainian people were again divided not only with their blood brother, the Russian people, but even among themselves! The greed of the oligarchs, who grabbed each other's throats, led to the fact that one part of Ukraine began to fight with another.
Ukrainian Donbas today
But do the working people of Ukraine, Donbass and Russia need this imperialist war now going on in the Donbass?
Not! It is needed only by the capitalists, the oligarchs, the bourgeois class. For in this war the bourgeoisie earns huge profits, which the workers, employees and rural workers and their relatives have to pay with their lives and their health.
The Ukrainian people can, as before, get rid of all the troubles that have piled on it only by uniting and acting together with the Russian people. (And the peoples of all the other former Soviet republics!).
Only the irreconcilable class struggle against the entire class of the bourgeoisie, which turned the once mighty industrial Ukraine into a shameful raw material colony of world imperialism - the class struggle against the bourgeoisie and its national, and any foreign for the power of the working class and all the working masses can again give him freedom, true statehood and national independence.
Prepared by V. Kozhevnikov, 01/26/2016
References:
1. N. Petrovsky "Reunification of the Ukrainian people in a single Ukrainian Soviet state", "Bolshevik", 1944, No. 2, pp. 42-55.
2. http://svatovo.ws/s/war_Ukraine.html
3. A. Pankratova, History of the USSR, 1952
4. "Bolshevik", 1950, No. 4
The territory of Ukraine has been inhabited by people for at least 44 thousand years. The Pontic-Caspian steppe was the scene of important historical events bronze age. Here the migration of the Indo-European peoples took place. In the same Black Sea and Caspian steppes, people tamed the horse.
Later, Scythians and Sarmatians lived on the territory of the Crimea and the Dnieper region. Finally, these lands were inhabited by the Slavs. They founded the medieval state of Kievan Rus, which collapsed in the 12th century. By the middle of the current Ukrainian lands were ruled by three forces: the Golden Horde, and the Kingdom of Poland. Later, the territory was divided by such powers as the Crimean Khanate, the Commonwealth, the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary.
In the 20th century, an independent Ukraine appeared. The history of the emergence of the country begins with attempts to create the states of the UNR and ZUNR. Then the Ukrainian SSR was formed as part of the Soviet Union. And, finally, in 1991, the independence of Ukraine was proclaimed, confirmed at a national referendum and recognized by the international community.
Ancient history of Ukraine
Archaeological excavations indicate that Neanderthals lived in the Northern Black Sea region as early as 43-45 millennium BC. Objects belonging to the Cro-Magnols were found in the Crimea. They are dated to the 32nd millennium BC.
At the end of the Neolithic, the Trypillia culture arose on Ukrainian lands. It reached its heyday in 4500-3000 BC.
With the onset of the Iron Age, the tribes of the Dacians, the ancestors of modern Romanians, passed through the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region. Then nomadic peoples (Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians) settled the lands of Ukraine. The history of these tribes is known not only through archaeological sites, but also from written sources. Herodotus mentions the Scythians in his writings. The Greeks founded their colonies in Crimea in the 6th century BC.
Then the Goths came to the territory of Ukraine and took place in the III-V centuries AD. In the fifth century, Slavic tribes appeared here.
In the 7th century, the state of the Bulgars arose in the Ukrainian steppes. But soon it broke up and was absorbed by the Khazars. This nomadic people Central Asia founded a country that included vast territories - the Caucasus, Crimea, the Don steppes and eastern Ukraine. The history of the emergence and flourishing is closely connected with the process of the formation of the statehood of the Eastern Slavs. It is known that the title of kagan was borne by the first princes of Kyiv.
Kievan Rus
The history of Ukraine as a state, according to many researchers, begins in 882. It was then that Kyiv was conquered by Prince Oleg from the Khazars and became the center of a vast country. In a single state, the meadows, drevlyans, streets, white Croats and other Slavic tribes were united. Oleg himself, according to the dominant concept in historiography, was a Varangian.
In the 11th century, Kievan Rus became the largest state in Europe in terms of territory. In Western sources of that time, her lands were most often designated as Ruthenia. The name Ukraine is first encountered in documents of the 12th century. It means "land", "country".
In the 16th century, the first map of Ukraine appeared. On it, under this name, Kyiv, Chernigov and Pereyaslav lands are indicated.
The adoption of Christianity and the crushing of Russia
The first followers of Christ appeared in the Crimea at least in the 4th century. Christianity became the official religion of Kievan Rus in 988 on the initiative of Volodymyr the Great. The first baptized ruler of the state was his grandmother, Princess Olga.
During the reign of Yaroslav the Wise, a set of laws was adopted, called "Russian Truth". It was the time of the highest political power of the Kyiv state. After the death of Yaroslav, the era of fragmentation of Russia into separate, often warring with each other, principalities began.
Vladimir Monomakh tried to revive a single centralized state, but in the 12th century Russia finally disintegrated. Kyiv and the Galicia-Volyn principality became the territories on which Ukraine later arose. The history of the emergence of Russia begins with the rise of the city of Suzdal, which was the political and cultural center of the northeastern Russian lands. Later, Moscow became the capital of these territories. In the northwest, the Principality of Polotsk became the center around which the Belarusian nation was formed.
In 1240, Kyiv was sacked by the Mongols and for a long time lost any political influence.
Galicia-Volyn principality
The history of the emergence of the state of Ukraine, according to a number of scientists, begins in the XII century. While the northern principalities fall under the rule of the Golden Horde, two independent Russian powers remain in the west with their capitals in the cities of Galich and Lodomir (now Vladimir-Volynsky). After their unification, the Galicia-Volyn principality was formed. At the height of its power, it included Wallachia and Bessarabia and had access to the Black Sea.
In 1245, Pope Innocent IV crowned Prince Daniel of Galicia and granted him the title of King of All Russia. At this time, the principality waged a complex war against the Mongols. After the death of Daniel of Galicia in 1264, he was replaced by his son Leo, who moved the capital to the city of Lvov. Unlike his father, who adhered to a pro-Western political vector, he agreed to cooperate with the Mongols, in particular, he entered into an alliance with the Nogai Khan. Together with his Tatar allies, Leo invaded Poland. In 1280 he defeated the Hungarians and captured part of Transcarpathia.
After the death of Leo, the decline of the Galicia-Volyn principality began. In 1323, the last representatives of this branch of the Rurik dynasty died in a battle with the Mongols. After that, Volyn came under control Lithuanian princes Gedeminovich, and Galicia fell under the rule of the Polish crown.
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
After the Union of Lublin, the Ruthenian lands became part of the Kingdom of Poland. During this period, the history of Ukraine as a state is interrupted, but it was at this time that the Ukrainian nation was formed. Contradictions between Poles-Catholics and Ruthenians-Orthodox gradually resulted in inter-ethnic tension.
Cossacks
The Poles were interested in protecting their eastern borders from the Ottoman Empire and its vassals. For these purposes, the Cossacks were best suited. They not only repelled the raids of the Crimean khans, but also participated in the wars of the Commonwealth with the Moscow kingdom.
Despite the military merit of the Cossacks, it refused to grant them any significant autonomy, trying instead to turn most of the Ukrainian population into serfs. This led to conflicts and uprisings.
Ultimately, in 1648, a liberation war began under the leadership of Bogdan Khmelnitsky. The history of the creation of Ukraine has entered a new phase. The state of the Hetmanate that arose as a result of the uprising was surrounded by three forces: the Ottoman Empire, the Commonwealth and Muscovy. A period of political maneuvering began.
In 1654, the Zaporozhye Cossacks entered into an agreement with the Moscow Tsar. Poland tried to regain control over the lost territories by concluding an agreement with Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky. This was the cause of the war between the Commonwealth and Muscovy. It ended with the signing of the Andrusov Treaty, according to which the Hetmanate was ceded to Moscow.
Ruled by the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary
The subsequent history of Ukraine, whose territory was divided between two states, was characterized by an upsurge among writers and intellectuals.
During this period, the Russian Empire finally defeats the Crimean Khanate and annexes its territories. There are also three partitions of Poland. As a result, most of its lands inhabited by Ukrainians are part of Russia. Galicia goes to the Austrian emperor.
Many Russian writers, artists and statesmen of the 18th-19th centuries had Ukrainian roots. Among the most famous are Nikolai Gogol and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Unlike Russia, in Galicia almost the entire elite consisted of Austrians and Poles, and the Rusyns were mostly peasants.
national revival
In the 19th century, a process of cultural revival of the peoples under the rule of large empires - the Austrian, Russian and Ottoman ones - began in Eastern Europe. Ukraine has not remained aloof from these trends. The history of the emergence of the movement for national independence begins in 1846 with the founding of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. The poet Taras Shevchenko was also a member of this organization. Later, social-democratic and revolutionary parties appeared that advocated the autonomy of Ukrainian lands.
Around the same time, in 1848, Golovna Ruska Rada, the first political organization of Western Ukrainians, began its activity in Lvov. At that time, Russophile and pro-Russian sentiments dominated among the Galician intelligentsia.
Thus, the history of the creation of Ukraine within its modern borders begins with the birth of nationally oriented parties in the middle of the 19th century. It was they who formed the ideology of the future unified state.
World War I and the collapse of empires
The armed conflict that began in 1914 led to the fall of the largest monarchies in Europe. The peoples, who for many centuries lived under the rule of powerful empires, have a chance to determine their own future destinies.
On November 20, 1917, the Ukrainian People's Republic was created. And on January 25, 1918, she proclaimed her complete independence from Russia. A little later, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed. As a result, on November 13, 1918, the Western Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed. On January 22, 1919, the UNR and ZUNR were reunited. However, the history of the emergence of the state of Ukraine was far from over. The new power found itself at the epicenter of the civil, and then the Soviet-Polish war, and as a result lost its independence.
Ukrainian SSR
In 1922, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was created, which became part of the USSR. From the moment of the emergence and until the collapse of the Soviet Union, it ranked second among the republics in terms of economic power and political influence.
The map of Ukraine during this period changed several times. In 1939, Galicia and Volhynia were returned. In 1940 - some areas that previously belonged to Romania, and in 1945 - Transcarpathia. Finally, in 1954, Crimea was annexed to Ukraine. On the other hand, in 1924 the Shakhtinsky and Taganrog districts were transferred to Russia, and in 1940 Transnistria was ceded.
After World War II, the Ukrainian SSR became one of the founding countries of the UN. According to the results of the 1989 census, the population of the republic was almost 52 million people.
Independence
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became an independent state. This was preceded by a rise in patriotic sentiment. On January 21, 1990, three hundred thousand Ukrainians organized a human chain from Kyiv to Lvov in support of independence. Parties based on national-patriotic positions were founded. Ukraine became the legal successor of the Ukrainian SSR and the UNR. The government of the UNR in exile officially transferred its powers to the first president, Leonid Kravchuk.
As you can see, the history of Ukraine since ancient times has been filled with great victories, unsurpassed defeats, noble catastrophes, terrible and fascinating stories.
The history of Ukraine begins from the 10th century BC, with the settlement of the Cimmerians. However, we will concentrate on the birth of Kievan Rus.
Kievan Rus surpassed modern Ukraine territorially and covered the entire Great Russian Plain. It was formed as a centralized state formation in 882. Developed agriculture and the development of crafts made the Kiev state rich. The Kyiv princes pursued a policy of strengthening their prestige and expanding trade to the west. In order to achieve success, it was necessary to abandon paganism. Prince Vladimir Yaroslavovich in 988 decided to accept Christianity. In 988, the inhabitants of Kyiv were baptized in the waters of the Dnieper.
In 1051, the Kyiv Caves Monastery (Lavra) was founded in Kiev. Since that time, the period of the establishment of Christianity begins, which continued until the expulsion of the Mongol-Tatars.
In 1239-1240. Khan Batu captured most of the territory of Kievan Rus. Kyiv was destroyed in 1240 and lost its importance with the transfer of the capital to Suzdal.
In the XIV century, the Right-bank part of Ukraine came under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
In the 15th century, the Crimean Khanate was formed in the southern territories, including Crimea. The next, the 16th century, brought a change in the situation. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was conquered by the Commonwealth. The Zaporozhian Sich was formed on the Dnieper.
In 1648, the liberation war with Poland began under the leadership of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky. The war ended with the Pereyaslov Rada in 1654 and the annexation of Ukraine to the Russian Empire.
In 1667, Poland was forced to confirm the entry of the Left-bank Ukraine into the Russian Empire during the conclusion of the Andrusovo truce with Russia. In 1707, the army of the Swedish King Charles XII invaded the territory of Ukraine. In 1709 the Swedes were defeated in the Battle of Poltava. In the same year, Hetman Mazepa made an attempt to withdraw Ukraine from Russian rule.
In 1772, Russian troops liquidated the Zaporozhian Sich. After the war with Turkey, in 1783 the Crimean peninsula went to Russia. In 1793-1795. Right-bank Ukraine and Volhynia went to Russia after the liquidation of Poland as an independent state.
After the October 1917 coup in Petrograd, Ukraine declared independence and formed the government of the Central Rada. Historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky became the first president of Ukraine.
After the civil war of 1917-1920, the Western Ukrainian lands went to Poland, and in 1922 the Ukrainian SSR was formed, which became part of the USSR.
In 1939-1940. according to the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop protocol, Western Ukraine and Northern Bukovina were annexed to the USSR. In 1945, the Transcarpathian region was included in the USSR. Since 1945, there was a permanent representative of the Ukrainian USSR in the UN.
In 1954, the Crimean region was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR with the alienation of the eastern territories equal to the territory of Crimea from the latter. The act of transfer was signed by G. Malenkov and S. Voroshilov.
In April 1986, a man-made disaster occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The city of Pripyat ceased to exist.
On August 24, 1991, a referendum was held to declare the independence of Ukraine within the USSR. In December 1991, at a meeting in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, it was decided to refuse to sign a new Union Treaty. The USSR collapsed, and Ukraine gained full independence.
L.M. became the first president of the new Independent Ukraine. Kravchuk.
This book presents the history of Ukrainian lands from antiquity to the present. The authors of the book are members of the Russian part of the Joint Russian-Ukrainian Commission of Historians. Each of them is a specialist in his field of Ukrainian studies, in its separate chronological period, the history of which he wrote. Taken together, the "History of Ukraine" presented to the reader's judgment is an expression of one of the various concepts available in historiography. From recent attempts to "innovative" interpretation of the history of the Ukrainian people and Ukrainian lands of the authors this work distinguishes, first of all, commitment to the academic approach in research. The academic style implies an attentive attitude to facts, the opinions of colleagues, knowledge of the modern historiography of the issue, as well as the rejection of politicization and politicking. The history of Ukrainian lands has always been closely connected with the history of its neighbors - Russia, Poland, Turkey and those countries that existed on their territory in different historical periods. AT different periods Ukrainian lands were part of Kievan Rus, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Commonwealth, the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Soviet Union, etc. The struggle for Ukrainian identity was dramatic and difficult.
This book is not an expression of any official position, but an invitation to a group of authors for a dialogue on a very topical and difficult historical problem.
We believe that knowledge of the past, achievements and mistakes of our ancestors is extremely important for our future.
Co-Chairman of the Joint Russian-Ukrainian Commission of Historians
Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences
A. O. Chubaryan
Part 1. I. N. Danilevsky. Prehistory of Ukraine
Our conversation will have to start with a few general provisions, without which the further presentation will not be entirely clear.
Firstly, none of the currently existing states is the direct successor of those state (or pre-state) associations that existed in the distant past.
Secondly, most of the currently existing ethnic groups do not have a single progenitor tribe, ancestor people. All modern peoples arose as a result of a complex interaction of carriers of various anthropological features, languages and cultures.
Thirdly, none of the existing cultures has a single source. All of them are the result of the interaction and modification of several cultural traditions.
Finally, fourthly, the formation of the peoples that now inhabit the territory of Eastern Europe began relatively late: not earlier than the end of the 15th century. Prior to this, their ancestors did not have any ideas about the actual ethnic unity.
All this concerns both the modern Republic of Ukraine, Ukrainians and Ukrainian culture, and Russian Federation, Russians and Russian culture - or any other state, people, culture.
Nevertheless, our peoples consider themselves, so to speak, the successors of certain ethnic, state and cultural communities that existed in the past (although in most cases these are mythical ideas that only partly correspond to reality). At the same time, the beginning of our history was common: until a certain moment, our ancestors did not suspect that the nationality of their descendants would depend on the territory in which they settled. Let's try to figure out which ethnic groups, cultural traditions and state formations gave life to the modern Ukrainian people, Ukrainian culture and the state of Ukraine.
In order not to retell once again well known facts, set forth, it seems, in all more or less popular essays on the history of Ukraine, we will try to find out what underlies these ideas, how it is known about “how it really was” - and whether “it” was exactly that. At the same time, we will dwell only on the key events and phenomena that precede Ukraine's own history, which will begin much later: in the 15th-16th centuries.
Russia is legendary
Traditionally - for which there is every reason - it is believed that the common ancestor of the Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian peoples are the Eastern Slavs, who created the first state, which is conventionally called Old Russian (Kyiv or Ancient Russia). It was this association that became the common “ancestor” of subsequent state formations that continued certain traditions of the Old Russian state.
Without dwelling on the highly controversial problem of the origin and initial settlement of the Slavic tribes, let us turn to that time, the memory of which has been preserved in written sources.
The first and most important of these is The Tale of Bygone Years, which covers the period from ancient times to the second decade of the 12th century. It was preserved in the later chronicles of the XIV-XVI centuries. Back in the 30s of the XIX century. it became clear that the "Tale" itself is a continuation of earlier chronicle works. An analysis of the text of the Tale showed that it is based on earlier chronicles: the so-called “Initial Code” (1096–1099), “Nikon Code” (1073) and, finally, the “Ancient Code” (1037–1039), which preceded them, or a kind of plot narrative about the initial history that appeared at the same time (“The Tale of the Beginning of the Russian Land”, or “The Legend of the Initial Spread of Christianity in Russia”, or some other legend). It is important to note that before the Nikon Code, the text of the chronicle was not divided into annual articles. The dates of the early events were "backdated" only in the 70s. 11th century The grounds on which this work was done are not known to us (as, by the way, the time counting systems used by the first chroniclers are not exactly known). In other words, most of the dates of ancient Russian history are conditional and cannot be accepted without special verification (if at all possible).
It is also obvious that the earliest chronicle records could only be based on some kind of oral tradition, which was subsequently reworked by ancient Russian chroniclers for their own purposes. True, conjectures have been repeatedly expressed that until the 30s. 11th century some sporadic records could be kept (for example, in the margins of Easter tables). However, no sources have yet been found to support these assumptions. So, the earliest period of ancient Russian history is clearly legendary. These legends obviously include the legends about the origin and settlement of the Eastern Slavs.
Representations of the chronicler about the East Slavic tribes
After the story of the division after the Flood of the land between the sons of Noah and the settlement of the Slavs, the chronicler reports: and the friends of gray-haired between Pripet and Dvina and draped Dregovichi; Ini sedosha on the Dvina and naming the Polotsk people, for the sake of speech, even flow into the Dvina, with the name of Polot, from sowing the Polotsk people were nicknamed. Slovene same sedosha near Lake Ilmer, and called by his name, and made hail and called Novgorod. And the friends of the sedosha along the Desna, and along the Seven, along the Sula, and swaying the north.
Traditionally, this message is considered as an exact indication of where certain "tribes" of the Eastern Slavs settled. So, in the fundamental work of Ukrainian historians “History of Ukraine”, in full accordance with the chronicle text, it is indicated: “The tribe of Polyans inhabited the Kiev region and Kanev region on the Dnieper Right Bank, the Drevlyans - Eastern Volyn, the northerners - the Dnieper Left Bank. In addition to them, on the territory of modern Ukraine lived streets (southern Dnieper and Bug), Croats (Carpathian and Transcarpathian), as well as Volynians or, as they were also called, Buzhans (Western Volyn). In other words, the author of the above text believes that the immediate ancestors of the future Ukrainians were representatives of the chronicle glades, Drevlyans, northerners, streets, Croats and Volhynians (Buzhans).