In the rapid flow of historical time, kaleidoscopic changes of events and occurrences Ukraine now appeared on the political maps of Europe, now temporally disappeared from them and reappeared under changed names, with the modified territory and borders. Its centuries-ancient history is very complicated: it possesses heroic and dramatic pages, epochs of critical changes and relative stability, periods of the upsurge of the state-making and ages of a stateless society, heroes and antiheroes.
The creation of civilization on Ukrainian lands was also intricate. Today comprehensive reconstruction is only possible, if we treat the process as a unity of the objective and subjective, social and ethnic, the collective and individual notions.
The Ukrainian people have a millennial history. The process of the nation’s formation and development was rather lengthy and complicated. There was a chain of archaeological cultures, ancient and nomadic protocivilizations, and Slavic state formations. Archaeological findings show the first local autochthonic groups within the historical borders of Ukraine in the Stone Age. The Paleolithic produced first cultural and historical provinces in the future ethnic Ukrainian habitat, which were destined to dominate in the domestic ethno-genetic history for quite a time.
The great waves of migration in Europe in Paleolithic (Mesolithic, Neolithic, Eneolithic) and Bronze Age substantially influenced the ethnogenesis in historical regions of Polissia, Volyn’ (Volhinia), Podillia (Podolia), Prykarpattia (Forecarpathians), the middle flow of the Dnipro River and Nadporizhzhia (the area upstream of the rapids) and brought forth specific archaeological cultures of the Right-bank and Left-bank Ukraine (the Dnieper divides the country into right-bank and left-bank regions), north-west of the Black Sea littoral region and the lands along the Dnister River.
The transition to the early Iron Age (1st millennium B.C.) was marked by serious climatic changes, which reduced autochthonic population in the entire natural habitat of future Ukrainian ethnos’ settling lands, and transformed its economy and everyday life. In their ethnogenesis Proto-Ukrainians fell under the powerful influence of Greek colonists on the northern coast of the Black Sea, also great was the impact of contacts with the bearers of Scythian-Sarmatian, Thracian, German, and Baltic proto-cultures. Due to the influence of Greek and Roman civilizations the autochthons of ethnic Ukrainian lands could aspire to join the European civilization.
At the turn of the 1st millennium B.C. and the 1st millennium AD the first Slavic ethno-cultural groups started forming in the South-East Europe; on the territory of Ukraine they were represented by Zarubyntsi, Cherniakhiv and Kyivan cultures. At the turn of the 4th and the 5th c. there emerged the tribal union of Venedy (Veneti), which gradually assimilated non-Slavic peoples and then split into two separate groups: Sclavinae and Antes. That led to the formation of new archaeological cultures. The first centuries of the new era were characterized by the transition from the prehistoric period of social development to the emergence of the first historic tribes on the south and south-west of Ukrainian lands, the formation of the Late Scythian states in the Crimean steppe and the lower reaches of the Danube.
The settlement of Slavs in Ukrainian forest-steppe in the middle and in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium created the areas of original Slavic ethnocultural symbiosis or genetic core of the future Ukrainian nationality.
The evolution of Slavic tribal unions stipulated the creation of economic patterns, political and social institutions. In the last third of the 1st millennium a powerful Ancient Rus state formed with the political center in Kyiv, which was at the peak of its might under Saint Volodymyr and Yaroslav the Wise. Due to its military capacity, strong princely power, dynastic marriages, economic development, centralized administration of domestic and foreign affairs, the flowering of culture, induced Christianization of spiritual and ideological space, Kyivan Rus in the late 10th and 11th c. was at the top of state political hierarchy in Eastern Europe. However, the period of political advance and civilization came to an end in the 12th and the 13th c., when the centrifugal processes programmed by the previous making of multiethnic state (earlier the empire of the Rurik Dynasty consolidated different Slavic tribal unions-princedoms and non-Slavic tribal groups) split the state into fifteen independent principalities. Under such political fragmentation the Halych-Volyn’ (Galicia-Volhinia) Principality went on with the making of a national state.
The follow-up stages of Ukrainian ethnos’ formation took place on large territories of Kyivan, Pereiaslav, Chernihiv Sivers’kyi, Halych-Volyn’ principalities, Halychyna (Galicia), Bukovyna, and Zakarpattia (Transcarpathia). In the course of the 15th–17th c. Ukrainians spread farther east, colonizing Sloboda, and from the 2nd half of the 18th c. the coasts of the Black and the Azov Seas. Ethno-social processes went on under severe conditions of Ukrainian lands partition. The existence of political borders provoked local separatism and particularism.
However, various spheres of Ukrainian nation’s life continued to progress. Ukrainian medieval community, having gained the experience of national liberation struggle, emerged as a modern nation with its own self-awareness, original spirituality and culture. Later these traits underwent further transformations. They included the community of economy, intensive internal trade, which brought together separate regions, and migratory processes.
The development of the Ukrainian nation in the period of Polish and Lithuanian rule was rather specific: the status of a part of the Great Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish Kingdom, later Rzeczpospolita, enriched Ukrainians with progressive contemporary West European ideas, facilitated the experience accumulation in regard to protection of their national identity and faith. The main events on this stage were the emergence of a new social group – that of Cossacks (Kozaks) – and such an original state-like formation as Zaporizhzhia Host, as well as such outstanding political and religious phenomena as the Treaty of Lublin (1569) and the Union of Brest (1596).
The short (a bit more than 200 years) period of the so-called Age of Cossacks was historically very important. Those were the dramatic days when the flow of Ukrainian life was disrupted and a stormy epoch set in. Different economic, political, strategic military, and social factors influenced the formation of Cossacks as a historical phenomenon. For some time the Cossackdom reflected general trends of Ukrainians’ development as a separate ethnic unity; the participation of Cossacks in liberation and social movements was of critical importance for Ukrainian people. For a long time they remained the only real force capable of fighting for Ukrainians’ right for existence, promoting their economic and spiritual development.
In political sphere Cossacks initiated a new stage of state-making and radical reforms. The emergence of such brainchild of Cossacks as the new historical formation of Zaporizhzhia Sich implied a deviation from the basics of the late mediaeval society. Republican rule and the participation of the widest circles of Cossacks in tackling of economic and public issues made Zaporizhzhia Sich a consistent political organism with a wide spectrum of political activities. Never during its existence was Zaporizhzhia Sich a “republic in itself”; it always extended its political sovereignty to other Ukrainian lands.
The events of the late 1740s changed social and political life of Ukraine and the pace of Ukrainian history dramatically, defining ways of future development. The 1740s–1770s national liberation epic by its scale and effects had no rivals in Europe. The revolutionary outburst in Cossack Ukraine of that period would echo in many spheres of Ukrainian life for many decades to come. The major political outcome of the National Revolution of the 17th c. was the formation of the Ukrainian Cossack State with a democratic form of government, peculiar bodies of legislative and executive power with an overtly national character. Formal establishment of government bodies took place during the years of continuous military operations and the mounting threat of forces hostile to Ukraine. The viability and great potential of the new state stemmed from the fact that it was the creation of the people.
The Khmelnychchyna Period was not only the time of the emerging independent state, a change of Ukraine’s political status and its role on the European continent. It was the time of social shocks, which amended the set-up of the national life. The period was crucial for the development of national culture despite military hardships, the split of Ukrainian lands and foreign interference barring Ukraine’s access to European culture.
Territorial disunity of Ukraine in the last third of the 17th c. caused further differentiation in social, political and economic development of Ukraine’s regions: the Left-bank and Sloboda Ukraine versus the Right-bank and Western Ukraine. Following the partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th c. and the unification of the left-bank and right-bank regions of former Het’manshchyna, such regions as Eastern Halychyna, Northern Bukovyna and Zakarpattia remained outside the core ethnic territory of Ukraine; Ukrainians began populating the Northern Black Sea littoral area intensively.
The 19th c. was eventful; it was ambiguous from the point of view of Ukraine’s evolution. Despite of Ukrainian lands being partitioned by the empires of Habsburg and Romanov dynasties, their population still reached a high cultural level. This phenomenon is known now as the Cultural and National Revival of the mid-19th c.; this renaissance promoted national movements at the end of 19th and the beginning of the 20th c. The intelligentsia included the descendants of Cossack Starshyna (military command) and Ukrainian Szlachta (nobility); they did their best to preserve the historical memory of their people, collect historical documents, antiquities and manuscripts of the Cossack Age, as well as samples of folklore. The practice of national liberation movements was enriched with such forms as “the search for Cossackdom”, New Haidamachchyna movement (from Haidamakas – paramilitary troops) led by Ustym Karmaliuk, Rus’ka Triitsia (Rus Trinity) society in Halychyna and the Society of Cyril and Methodius, khlopomany (Ukrainian peasant-oriented movement) and Hromada Society in the Dnipro region of Ukraine. National and cultural renaissance and the development of social and political thought were connected with the names of Ivan Kotliarevs’kyi and Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Lysenko and Lesia Ukraiinka, Mykhailo Drahomanov and Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi, Ivan Franko and Ol’ha Kobylians’ka. Political processes, social and economic spheres were also modernized. Real masterpieces had been created in artistic and cultural fields. Typically, all regions of Ukraine with their local diversity had been involved in the process of modernization, despite the destructive influence of state and political structures of other ethnoses.
The 20th c. brought new hardships to Ukrainians: wars, revolutions, famines, and deportations; at the same time there was an upsurge in national revival and state making initiatives. The 1st Decree of Tsentral’na Rada (the Central Council) had already declared the right of Ukraine for the state autonomy. The next steps on the way toward the making of the national state consisted in proclamation of the independent Ukrainian People’s Republic, the establishment of Ukrainian Het’manate by P. Skoropads’kyi in the Dnipro region and of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic in Halychyna.
The years in composition of the USSR were marked by new complicated and ambiguous processes. The Soviet government declared and wrote down in constitutions social, spiritual, economic and political priorities, which nobody intended to put into practice. National values were depreciated. The modernization of national economy and the growth of republican economic potential were achieved at the expense of natural and human resources depletion. Considerable urbanization and industrialization hampered agricultural development. At the same time tens of millions of Ukrainians perished during the world wars, mass repressions and persecutions organized by the totalitarian regime. The Chornobyl’ Disaster also had negative impact on demography. The territory of modern Ukraine was formed in the mid-20th c. The peace treaties signed after the WWII determined its political boundaries that included almost all ethnic lands, which earlier had been in composition of Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. The last action in this process was the placing of the Crimea under the authority of Ukraine in 1954. At the same time Ukrainians went on populating new areas: from mid-19th c. they migrated not only eastward, southward or northward but began moving to Europe as well. They also established their settlements on the American and Australian continents.
Ukraine avoided bloody conflicts, which after 1991 used to burst out on the territory of the NIS. Today the state making is under way, the modern model of socio-economic relations is evolving; Ukrainian becomes firmly established in the world community.
While studying Ukrainian history researchers time and again lose track of the universal historical context. However it is known that Ukrainians never existed (and do not exist) as an isolated nation. This old European people often found itself in the epicenter of continental evolutions, and events in Ukraine weren’t of small importance for Central and East Europe and the entire continent. Ukraine is located at the crossroads of trade routes connecting the East, West, South, and North; since olden times it was a target object for militant tribes and nations defending thereby European countries from devastating ruination. Later it became a hostage of the neighbouring states’ conflicting geopolitical interests.
Nonetheless those are wrong, who think that under permanent external pressure Ukraine’s role was always passive. Quite the contrary, Ukraine not only resisted (sometimes very efficiently) this pressure, but during certain periods in the past it became an active factor of European life. Located in the force field of European civilization, it not only experienced political, economic, social and cultural influences, but also contributed to the East European geopolitical situation enriching the theoretical arsenal of European political culture and the continental political practice.
The multidimensional historical process generates multiple simulations. Now the creation of historical narration is supported with the resources of cartography. This issue became topical for Ukraine in the early 1960s, when acute debate was held in professional periodicals about the creation of the Historical Atlas of Ukraine. However, the newest Ukrainian historiography needed time for the final shaping and implementation of the idea in the framework of the multiple-aspect National Atlas of Ukraine.
A comparatively small volume of the section determined the principles of mapping themes choice. Nevertheless the authors aspired to optimally reproduce the historical process within the contemporary boundaries of Ukraine, its chronological sequence, common for the whole of Ukraine consistent pattern and regional specificity. With that end in view we chose the most important and critical events, which took place in political, economic, social, cultural and spiritual spheres.V.A. Smoliy
