History of Ukrainian statehood. History of Ukraine as a state

Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Vladimir Omelyan publicly reflected that Ukraine should “regain” not only Donbass and Crimea, but also Kuban. Russian historian Oleg Nazarov and director of the Institute of Archeology of Ukraine Petr Tolochko recently discussed this topic.

Can President Poroshenko, for example, be considered a literate person? After all, he claimed that Prince Vladimir (the baptist of Rus') was the founder of Ukraine. Meanwhile, the very concept of Ukraine appeared 600 years later than the reign of Vladimir. Bogdan Khmelnytsky, who signed an agreement with Moscow in 1654, did this on behalf of the Zaporozhye army, because the inhabitants of the eastern Polish territories were considered “outskirts” (Ukrainians). Little Russia during the time of Bogdan Khmelnitsky was an autonomy within part of the modern Ukrainian regions on the left side of the Dnieper. The Poles ruled on the right bank of the Dnieper.

The Pereyaslav Rada, which approved the entry of the Zaporozhian Army into the Moscow State, served as the prologue to the next Russian-Polish war. As a result, the Russian Tsar returned to his hand Smolensk, Chernigov and Dorogobuzh, lost during the Time of Troubles. The border between the Russian and Polish states passed strictly along the Dnieper, and Kyiv was then redeemed from the Poles with gold. Little Russia was governed by hetmans, but after Mazepa's betrayal of Peter I, this form was transformed into an ordinary Russian province, then revived under Catherine II for the favorite Razumovsky. However, in 1764, autonomy was finally curtailed.

Russian monarchs looked at Little Russia in the same way as they looked at the Urals or Siberia, that is, as “indigenous” Russian land. Novorossiya was conquered from the Crimean Khanate and the Nogai Horde. It was after this that residents of modern Russian and central Ukrainian regions flocked there. It’s not for nothing that Kirovograd was previously called Elisavetgrad, and Dnepropetrovsk Ekaterinoslav. At the same time, Kherson, Odessa and Nikolaev began to develop rapidly. The project for the development of Little Russia (Southern Rus') is a project of tsarist times.

Ukraine arose only after the fall of the monarchy in Russia. In 1918, the Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed. As a result of the Bolshevik idea to distinguish Ukraine within the USSR as a separate republic, Donetsk, Krivoy Rog and the entire Novorossiya were cut off. After Lenin, Stalin added modern western regions to Ukraine, and Khrushev, having debunked the “cult of personality” of his former leader, also added Crimea to Ukraine. All this was done because Soviet Union at that time had absolutely no intention of falling apart.

Currently, Ukraine is dominated by political forces that proclaim Ukrainians to be a “special people” not related to Russians. History has already been rewritten for this matter. The meaning is in the well-known theory that says that whoever controls the past controls the present, and whoever controls the present controls the future. The future in this political project for Ukraine is serving Europe. This is despite the fact that in terms of its industrial potential, Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR was not inferior to Germany.

Kuban? This territory was never part of Ukraine. Rather, left-bank Ukraine and Novorossiya would return to a single state with the Russians. This is a question of history and the role of individuals in history. Some individuals expand the territory of the state, while other individuals reduce it. The question is not in Kuban, the question is that the situation in Ukraine is being watched with interest in Romania, Hungary and Poland. The main limiting factor is general political lack of independence. Ukrainians developed normally as a people under the tsars and later Soviets (the number of Ukrainians increased numerically).

Actually, Razumovsky, Khrushchev or Brezhnev mentioned here are Ukrainian personnel. And there have always been no few such nominees to power from Ukrainian territory. What will happen next to the Ukrainian population in the “European project” is clear. Degradation of education, degradation of industry, degradation of culture. And population decline as in the Baltic states, Bulgaria and Romania. Conventional political technologies and a focus on soft and hard violence.

Russia in the image of an enemy is traditional for the policy of the “developed West” in “underdeveloped” Eastern Europe. Such approaches are successful only as long as Moscow is weak. Globalization will try to erase both Ukrainians and Russians from history. History is now being forwarded in a way that is beneficial to those who ensure the process of globalization. In hindsight, the concepts needed at the moment appear, history is rewritten and redrawn. However, this is no longer history, but ideology.

The meaning of the quality of states is always the same - the development or degradation of their population. Key indicators: natural increase and migration; level of education and science; level of industrial development, average life expectancy and official retirement age. If the state does not develop its human resources, it means that it is developing other people's resources. It is practically for the control of human resources that modern “hybrid wars” are waged.

More than 1000 years ago. Ancient Rus'.

The first clearly recorded East Slavic state formation. Leading centers: Novgorod, Kyiv, Polotsk, Smolensk, Rostov, Chernigov, Ryazan, etc. Colonization in several directions. Active migration to the northern regions, away from the dangerous Steppe. Gradual division into principalities, the borders of which are in no way connected with modern borders. For example, Chernigovskoe was so extended that it was simultaneously located on the territory of the present Kyiv region and on the territory of the present Moscow region. A simple and understandable hint of how one should live and where one’s historical roots are...

Culturally, individual regions differ very little. Naturally, in Novgorod there are certain traditions and dialects that are not close to the people of Ryazan, and in Rostov you can see something that is not very characteristic of Chernigov. But these are trifles, and it is simply impossible to talk about division into some “separate nations”. This is all the same large and diverse Russian Land. All its residents consider themselves equally Russian.

Highlight: Adoption of Christianity in the late 900s. The fact that Christianity came to Rus' in the form of the Eastern tradition predetermined the development of a common national culture. If in the West, with the adoption of Christianity, the Latin unification of religion, culture and thought reigned for hundreds of years, then Orthodox Christianity fully allowed services and books in national languages. Consequently, all cultural development followed original paths, due to the synthesis of the uniquely Russian and the general Christian.

800-600 years ago. First break.

The Mongol invasion in the 13th century did not just cause enormous damage to most Russian lands. It also marked the beginning of the separation of North and South. The defeated and scattered principalities tried to rise one by one, each in their own way. In the north, Moscow and Tver are gradually gaining strength; in the South-West, the Galicia-Volyn lands have been acting as “gatherers” for some time. It is not known how the matter would have ended, but here a third player also appears - the state of Lithuania.

Lithuania is quickly rising and crushing many Russian principalities. In the 1320s, Gediminas captured Kyiv. The next century of the southern Russian lands will be marked by honorable secondary everything Russian. Precisely “honorable”. At least at first. Orthodoxy will be the most widespread religion for a long time, and the Russian elite will still occupy a prominent place in this largest Eastern European state for a long time. But then the situation starts to get worse...

By the way, today's nationalist publicists love to invent strange stories on the topic that “only Ukraine preserved the Slavs, and only the descendants of the Asian conquerors remained in Russia.” It’s strange to listen to such stories simply because the consequences of the Tatar invasions were approximately the same for everyone. And moreover, the Horde did not reach many northern Russian regions at all, not to mention any “mixing” with the indigenous population. Well, modern genetic research leaves no stone unturned from stupid ideological fantasies.

500-300 years ago. Genocide and awakening.

In 1380, the strengthened Northern Rus' gathered forces and independently clashed with the Tatar horde, taking the first serious step towards complete independence. Five years later, the Lithuanian state signed the so-called “Union of Krevo” with Poland, taking the first step towards losing its unique cultural identity. The provisions of the Krevo Agreement required the propagation of Catholicism and the introduction of the Latin alphabet. Of course, the Russian elite was not happy. But I couldn’t do anything.

Further rapprochement between Poland and Lithuania led in 1569 to the complete unification of these countries into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. By that time, the position of the Russian residents was already extremely unenviable. And every year it got worse and worse. The scale of social and cultural-religious persecution to which Russian-speaking residents of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were subjected is difficult to imagine today. Most of those who were eminent and rich tried to “polish” as quickly as possible so as not to be an object of humiliation and a target for their dashing fellow citizens. And the fate of the lower classes was completely unenviable. Killing a couple of peasants of your unloved neighbor along the way if you return home in a bad mood is practically the norm for a Polish gentleman of the 17th century.

There is no need to go far - remember how the rebellious Bogdan Khmelnitsky appeared. A Polish nobleman attacked his farm, plundered everything, killed his son and took his wife away. Bogdan went to the king to complain, but in response he received only surprise, “why didn’t he sort out the problems himself, since the saber was hanging at his side?”, and was even thrown behind bars. Obviously, the personal stories of ordinary participants in the Uprising were not much more pleasant than this... In general, in 1648 it exploded once again, and in full force. The people have really been driven to the brink - where are modern “revolutionaries” with their naive discontent...

Khmelnitsky's uprising was a success. De facto, as of the mid-17th century, we see for the first time how the territories of several former southern Russian principalities became independent from the power of foreign peoples, for the first time in recent centuries. De jure, Khmelnitsky immediately asked to become a citizen of the Moscow Tsar - under the wing of the only Russian force that existed at that time. And he successfully received this citizenship in 1654. If he had not received it, Poland would have suppressed the most successful of the Cossack uprisings, and would have completely exterminated the remnants of the Russian population. For the successes of the rebels lasted only for the first time, and the rage of the Poles grew every year...

What is especially important here?

1. Former Russian principalities united with the former Russian principalities. However, many cultural differences have already accumulated over several centuries of demarcation. By the way, this was precisely one of the reasons for Nikon’s religious reform, which led to a schism. Moscow wanted to reduce the misunderstanding between the two branches of the Russian people, and made serious efforts and sacrifices for this.

2. Residents of these territories could speak with Muscovites without translators, and in the same way considered themselves Russians (Rusyns). The Polish-Lithuanian concept of “outskirts” was used along with the book “Little Russia” to designate the territory, but people did not call themselves “Ukrainians”. This word was introduced into circulation by the ideologists of the Polonized elite after the Khmelnitsky Uprising, and for a long time did not find a response among ordinary people.

3. The composition of the new South Russian elite was very diverse. Here are the old Polished Russian nobles, here are the Cossacks, who were a complex mixture in which Russian, Tatar-Turkish, and other roots were intertwined. In the Zaporozhye Sich you could meet either a Scotsman or a Caucasian. Accordingly, everyone looked in his own direction, and nothing good could await the land that found itself under the rule of such a motley company.

4. The ordinary population of the Kiev and Chernigov regions greeted the news of reunification with the Russian Kingdom with absolute delight. This is recognized by almost all contemporaries, regardless of nationality and beliefs.

The last three hundred years. The emergence of "Ukraine".

Moscow granted the Little Russian lands broad autonomy. And as a result, the second half of the 17th century was marked by an endless fratricidal war between Cossack leaders. The hetmans fought one another, betrayed their oath, marched first to Moscow, then to Warsaw, then to Istanbul. They brought the wrath of monarchs on each other, and brought Tatar and Turkish armies against their own people. It was a fun time. True freedom, which almost no one interfered with. Of course, for the common people dying under the Tatar and Turkish sabers, such freedom of leaders I didn't like it. But which Ukrainian leader is interested in the opinions of ordinary people, even now?

Of course, sometimes you could get into trouble. For example, the famous Hetman Doroshenko cheated so many times and became the culprit of the death of so many people that they were ready to kill him in almost all the nearby capitals. And he rushed to Moscow, for the Russian Tsar was the most humane of the surrounding monarchs. Here he was exiled... as a governor to Vyatka. And they punished... with a rich estate near Moscow. By the way, the year before last I passed this estate and the mausoleum of the glorious hetman, decorated with wreaths and yellow-black ribbons.

As a result, the Russian monarchs got tired of all this. In the 18th century, autonomy was eliminated, and Ukraine became a full-fledged part of the country, without any robber intermediaries. Following this, the constant Crimean Tatar threat was eliminated. In place of the wild steppes starting south of Ukraine, new regions were created, inhabited by the Russian people.

On the map of the imperial provinces it is very clear where the conditional ends Little Russian region- these are Volyn, Podolsk, Kiev and Poltava provinces. And also, a significant part of Chernigov. And nothing more. The Kharkov province is already Slobozhanshchina, an intermediate region with a mixed population, which became part of the Moscow state much earlier. The more southern provinces are Novorossiya, settled after the victories over the Crimea, and have nothing to do with the former Hetmanate:

But no one could even imagine that some kind of “independent country of Ukraine” would be carved out along the borders of these provinces in the future. That the old Russian territories that were under Polish rule will be shoved into the same zone with the Novorossiysk steppe regions and separated from the rest of Russia. That the innocently playful “cultural Ukrainianism,” which was popular in Russia and Austria-Hungary in the nineteenth century, and most often followed a single pan-Slavic channel, would soon fall on the fertile soil of the First World War and the Civil War, and turn into radical Ukrainian nationalism.

Already by the beginning of World War II, one could safely say that “Ukraine” had finally come to fruition.
But how? Whereby?

In fact, there was a whole complex of factors:

1. For many centuries in a row, Southern Rus' was part of various states. In the process of the influence of foreign cultures and the reaction of national resistance, new features arose that did not exist in the more independent Northern Rus'. The return of the southern regions to the unified Russian state occurred gradually. Someone was already part of the whole Russian people, some were just getting used to their new neighbors, and others were “foreigners.” Thanks to all this, the result is a complex layer cake in which people of markedly different cultures and beliefs are mixed.

2. At the time of the entry of Left Bank Ukraine into the Muscovite kingdom, linguistic differences did not make it difficult for contemporaries. But the territories that became part of Russia later had already experienced more significant foreign pressure (in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, after the loss of the Left Bank, a harsh campaign was launched against the remnants of Russian culture).

As a result, the conditionally averaged “Little Russian dialect” by the beginning of the twentieth century began to differ even more from Russian than two hundred years before. If in 1654 the southern Russian lands had become part of the Moscow kingdom entirely, then three hundred years later our differences would have been no higher than the differences between Burgundy and Provence. The “gradual nature of reunification” and the increasing foreign pressure on the “laggards” also played a certain role.

3. In the intellectual circles of the 19th century, for the first time, the idea was seriously raised that the “Little Russian branch” of the united Russian people could be considered practically a separate Slavic nationality. Ordinary residents of the Kiev region were of little interest in this idea. But the tsarist government did not like it at all because of its obvious hint of possible separatism - and the rights of the Ukrainian language were limited. Moreover, in Austria-Hungary (which included Galicia) during the preparation for the First World War, and during the war itself, this idea was adopted as an ideological weapon.

True, such a weapon was a double-edged sword. For the “Austrian Little Russians” showed even greater interest in separatist sentiments, since they were part of a completely alien country. But in any case, Austria-Hungary acted much more intelligently than Russia, managing to retain the glory of “an island of cultural Ukrainianness” for its Galicia. And the tsarist government strongly pressed its cultural Ukrainians. And this naturally contributed to the emergence of protest-political Ukrainians. Which fit well with the fashionable socialist-revolutionary sentiments.

4. After the revolutions of 1917, chaos begins in the expanses from the Don to the Dniester civil war. Different forces are acting at the same time, different “governments” are functioning in parallel. Reds, whites, anarchists... In this whirlwind, the Little Russian population for the first time tried a piece of “national independence”, including according to Galician recipes. This didn't last long. But there were those who liked it. Those who yesterday were still small residents of provincial provinces, and suddenly overnight became the “elite” of a self-made country.

5. Ukraine is already part of the USSR almost modern form. With Donbass and Novorossiya, stuck together on unclear grounds. After the establishment of Soviet power, in line with the general policy of “indigenization,” the forced Ukrainization of the population began. People who have not passed the Ukrainian language exam are not allowed to work in government positions. Publishing and teaching activities in Russian are strictly limited. Even in the thoroughly Russian Odessa, children are taught in Ukrainian. Criminal liability has been introduced for negligent managers for non-compliance with new requirements.

This bacchanalia stops only in the thirties, and the opposite extreme begins: newly nurtured figures of Ukrainian culture are branded “bourgeois nationalists” and subjected to repression. And this again leads to the development of underground political Ukrainians... That's it. The events of 1991 are already predetermined. Moreover, the German occupation in the forties added fuel to the fire. Hitler, knowing full well that Russians are strong in unity (just like the Germans), tried to convince the residents of Ukraine as much as possible of their uniqueness and difference from Muscovites. And it turned out well, fortunately some of the soil from representatives of Ukrainian nationalism was already ready.

That's all. It took very little time to transform the ancient Russian region, in which an anti-Polish rebellion broke out three centuries ago, into a huge state with a heterogeneous population...

What useful conclusions can be drawn from this whole story?

Firstly. You cannot leave parts of your people on foreign territory. They will experience the influence of others, and it will be extremely difficult to return them (culturally speaking). Moreover, they may become convinced that they have become a completely separate people, and will begin to assert their young and frail national feeling through hatred of their former brothers.

Secondly. You cannot suppress national feeling if it has already appeared and captured a significant part of the population. But there is no need to purposefully support it with your brothers, friends and neighbors. Their feelings are their business. And even more so, you cannot alternate struggle with support, as was done in the 20-30s of the 20th century. This, I apologize, is some kind of “Yanukovych tactics” - “attacked-surrendered-attacked-surrendered”. Concessions mixed with repression do not bring any good.

Thirdly. We are not to blame for anything, and we don’t owe anyone anything. We saved Southern Rus' in the 17th century from final Polishization and destruction, fulfilled its requests to become part of a single Russian state and granted it broad autonomy. In response, we received betrayals from the hetmans, rivers of blood and a sea of ​​problems. We limited the rights of the Ukrainian language for several decades in the 19th century. However, in the 20th century, vast Russian territories from Odessa to Donbass were actually “gifted” to the newly created Ukrainian republic. Moreover, they carried out targeted Ukrainization. Then there were repressions to which people of different nationalities were subjected. There is no point in apologizing for them either, because everyone took part in their organization - Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Georgians... The “Holodomor” and other politicized episodes are included here.

Fourthly. The presence of vast south-eastern territories with a Russian-speaking population within independent Ukraine is normal from a theoretical point of view. From the historical point of view, it’s not entirely fair. And taking into account modern Ukrainian politics, this is completely unfair. For twenty years in a row, several million Russian people have been deprived of their rights. Most of them cannot send their child to a Russian school, cannot watch a film in Russian in the cinema, and so on. Despite the fact that they are not some kind of migrants in a foreign country. They are on land that belonged to them even before the appearance of “Ukraine” here. They lived in home country and spoke their native language, just like their fathers and grandfathers... And suddenly - here you go! Now they have the full moral right to active resistance, to independence, or at least to full autonomy (just like the Little Russians at the end of the 19th century). And Russia has every moral right to openly support them.

Fifthly. Modern Ukrainian nationalism is a completely unhealthy phenomenon. It is based on the fact that some Russians oppose themselves to other Russians. It implies a hostile attitude towards the people closest in cultural terms, and demands the destruction of all traces of common history, including those (Lenin) that are associated precisely with state support for “Ukrainianism” and its revival. At the same time, nothing like this is observed in Russia. In Moscow there is still Lesya Ukrainka Street and a monument to Taras Shevchenko. And it doesn’t occur to anyone here to break something and rename it (I’m not taking into account anonymous Internet provocateurs on both sides). We are not enemies. And they never were. Moreover, we always had common opponents who did not distinguish us much. Simply strong Eastern Slavs were a bone in their throat. And they will.

You can draw many more conclusions... But you are on your own.
I sincerely believe in the independence and power of your thinking.))

The history of Ukraine begins in the 10th century BC, with the settlement of the Cimmerians. However, we will concentrate on the origins of Kievan Rus.

Kievan Rus was superior to modern Ukraine territorially and covered the entire Great Russian Plain. It was formed as a centralized state entity in 882. Developed agriculture and the development of crafts made Kiev State rich. The Kyiv princes pursued a policy aimed at strengthening their authority and expanding trade to the west. In order to achieve success, it was necessary to abandon paganism. Prince Vladimir Yaroslavovich decided to convert to Christianity in 988. In 988, the residents of Kyiv were baptized in the waters of the Dnieper.

In 1051, the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery (Lavra) was founded in Kyiv. From this time on, the period of the establishment of Christianity began, which continued until the expulsion of the Mongol-Tatars.

In 1239-1240 Batu Khan 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 14th 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, 16th century, brought a change in the situation. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was conquered by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Zaporozhye Sich was formed on the Dnieper.
In 1648, the war of liberation with Poland began under the leadership of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky. The war ended with the Pereyaslovskaya Rada in 1654 and the annexation of Ukraine to Russian Empire.

In 1667, Poland was forced to confirm the entry of Left-Bank Ukraine into the Russian Empire during 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 Battle of Poltava. In the same year, Hetman Mazepa made an attempt to remove Ukraine from Russian rule.

In 1772, Russian troops liquidated the Zaporozhye Sich. After the war with Turkey, in 1783 the Crimean Peninsula went to Russia. In 1793-1795 Right Bank Ukraine and Volyn went to Russia after the liquidation of Poland as an independent state.

After the October 1917 revolution in Petrograd, Ukraine declared independence and formed the government of the Central Rada. The first president of Ukraine was the scientist-historian Mikhail Grushevsky.

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 Molotov-Ribbentrop secret protocol, Western Ukraine and Northern Bukovina were annexed to the USSR. In 1945, the Transcarpathian region was included in the USSR. Since 1945, the Ukrainian USSR has had a permanent representative at the UN.

In 1954, the Crimean region was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR with the alienation of eastern territories equal to the territory of Crimea from the latter. The transfer act 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 on declaring 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.

The first president of the new Independent Ukraine was L.M. Kravchuk.

It was clear without translation, but Tsarist Russia was considered a Polish place name to designate part of the Lesser Poland Province.

As we see, on the maps of the Russian Empire in the 19th century it is not even an administrative unit, since it is assigned to the European part of Russia, as a region of the same type Russian Novorossiya, located to the south.

Ukraine and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

It should be noted that it was not used on maps of Tsarist Russia, since it had its own - Little Russia, which designated the territory inhabited by several Rusyn nationalities. Therefore the topic is History of the formation of Ukraine- is acceptable, since it is considered as carriers of the Little Russian dialect of the Western Russian language as part of the all-Russian people.

Actually, I carried out all the reasoning just for the sake of this. to show that any ancient history of Ukraine in Russian language can only be written in line with the concept of the triune Russian people, since only then can one rely on historical categories - the Eastern Slavs, Kievan Rus, the Galician-Volyn principality, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where it took place real story today's Ukrainian people.

Ukrainian statehood

The purpose of my article is much more modest, because history of the Ukrainian state fits within the previous century. I would like to warn readers that this introductory, therefore there are no specific details of the events, but only a brief history of the emergence of the state of Ukraine- a general excursion into, undertaken to find the causes of the present. I have no doubt that Ukraine as an independent state will remain because it is not needed for economic reasons. After all, today Russia needs people, not economically unpromising territories. I would like to keep my own.

Brief history of the Ukrainian state

Article UKRAINE Wikipedia indicates TWO dates of Ukraine's independence:

• January 9 (22), 1918 as UPR from Soviet Russia;
• August 24, 1991 as Ukraine from the USSR,

which reflects a change in state ideology. According to the current Ukrainian authorities, the first declaration of independence of Ukraine happened January 9 (22), 1918 , when it was published, according to which the Ukrainian People's Republic became “independent, independent from anyone, free sovereign state Ukrainian people."

Actually, after comparison with the date of formation of the UPR itself - November 7 (20), 1917 , arises feeling of bewilderment. However, this incident is revealed simply - since independence of Ukraine is not counted from the moment of the emergence of the UPR itself, which is guilty of was autonomy as part of the Russian Republic, and exclusively with moment of rupture relations between the UPR and Soviet Russia (aka the first RSFSR).

Therefore the official history of Ukraine as a state(and the same thing in) - this is like a nationalistic version, which denies the seemingly natural option when date of independence of Ukraine was calculated from the moment of proclamation of the III Universal, in which, in fact, the creation was announced Ukrainian People's Republic(UNR) as an independent state entity while maintaining the federal connection with Russia.

However, in any case, keep a record of the history of the state Ukraine from the UPR doubtful for many reasons, since “ autonomous Ukraine“did not last long and was marked not only by the persecution of the revolutionary masses and complicity with the white movement, which by today’s Kiev standards can be passed off as a fight against Bolshevism, but the UPR concluded a separate Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the German bloc, thereby betraying the Entente countries.

“In exchange for military assistance against the Soviet troops, the UPR undertook to supply Germany and Austria-Hungary by July 31, 1918, a million tons of grain, 400 million eggs, up to 50 thousand tons of cattle meat, lard, sugar, hemp, manganese ore, etc. ."

However, the call for the occupation of Ukraine, later formalized as a military convention between the UPR, Germany and Austria-Hungary, must be recognized as a special act of “patriotism” of the Central Rada. At the end of February - beginning of March, German troops quickly occupied most of Ukraine, including Kiev, where the Central Rada returned after them, having fled from the Soviet troops to the German-Ukrainian front itself. The end of the UPR was also “glorious”, when on April 28, 1918, the Central Rada was dispersed by a German military patrol that entered the meeting hall.

So, news of the February Revolution in Petrograd reached Kyiv on March 3 (16), 1917. Power passed to provincial and district commissars appointed by the Provisional Government. If the Soviets had just begun to emerge, then the bourgeois political organizations turned out to be more active, so that on the same day, March 3 (16), 1917, a meeting of representatives of political, social, cultural and professional organizations, at which the creation of the Central Rada was announced, which, in accordance with the concept of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921, is called the pre-parliament.

"Already during the creation Central Rada Different opinions emerged regarding the future status of Ukraine. Supporters of independence (independent people), led by N. Mikhnovsky, advocated the immediate declaration of independence. The autonomists (V. Vinnychenko, D. Doroshenko and their supporters from the Partnership of Ukrainian Progressives) saw Ukraine autonomous republic in federation with Russia. Thus, two centers of national forces were formed with different views on the state-political organization of the future Ukraine.”

The next step towards becoming an all-Ukrainian authority for the UCR was its holding of the All-Ukrainian National Congress on April 6 (19) - 8 (21), 1917, which re-elected the UCR as a representative body. In May, the UCR sends the Provisional Government formulations of the principles of national-territorial autonomy of Ukraine, and in response in July, the Provisional Government recognizes the General Secretariat of the Rada (under the leadership of V. Vinnychenko) as the highest administrative body of Ukraine, and agrees to the development by the Rada of a draft national-political statute of Ukraine. “On June 13 (26), 1917, A.F. Kerensky signed a protocol recognizing the General Secretariat of the Central Rada,” which is considered recognition national autonomy Ukraine. The proclamation of formal autonomy within the framework of a unified Russian state was reflected in the first two Universals, which explained to citizens the relationship between the Central Rada and the Provisional Government of Russia on the issue of the form of government.

However, in August 1917, the Provisional Government rejected the draft Statute of the General Secretariat developed by the UCR and replaced it with the “Temporary Instructions for the General Secretariat.” The fact is that the Provisional Government considered the proposals of the UCR to be beyond its authority and decided to postpone the final response until the Constituent Assembly.

Elections to the All-Ukrainian Constituent Assembly were scheduled for December 1917, until the election of which all power belonged to the Central Rada and the General Secretariat, but on October 25-26 (November 7-8, new style) during an armed uprising, the Provisional Government was overthrown. " November 7 (25), 1917 The Ukrainian Central Rada (UCR) approved the III Universal, in which it proclaimed the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), without formally severing federal ties with Russia. The power of the Central Rada extended to 9 provinces: Kyiv, Podolsk, Volyn, Chernigov, Poltava, Kharkov, Yekaterinoslav, Kherson and Tauride (northern counties, without Crimea). The fate of some regions and provinces adjacent to Russia (Kursk, Kholm, Voronezh, etc.) was supposed to be decided in the future.”

The Rada formally recognized the power of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Republic and was forced to coexist with the Ukrainian Soviets, but actively blocked the orders of the Council of People's Commissars and disarmed the Bolshevik units, which led to hostilities between Soviet Russia and the Ukrainian People's Republic. Bolshevik hopes for a peaceful “absorption” of the Ukrainian Central Rada First The All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets on December 4 (17) in Kyiv was not justified, since about 2,000 self-proclaimed deputies who supported the Central Rada showed up at the Congress from other parties.

Therefore, about 60 Bolshevik delegates from the Kiev Congress of Soviets and some of the delegates who supported them from other left parties (Ukrainian Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Ukrainian Social Democrats) - a total of 127 people - moved to Kharkov, where there was also dual power, since a large number of people gathered there number of Red Guards, and the day before Russian troops arrived under the command of Antonov-Ovseenko, directed against Kaledin’s forces on the Don.

December 12 (25), 1917 The congress in Kharkov announced that it was taking full power in Ukraine and depriving the Central Rada and the General Secretariat of their powers. The Ukrainian People's Republic that existed at that time was declared illegal, canceling all decisions of the Central Rada and declaring Ukraine a republic of Soviets as parts federal Russian Soviet republic, its original official name was Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets of Workers', Peasants', Soldiers' and Cossacks' Deputies. And on December 19, 1917 (January 1, 1918) the Council of People's Commissars Soviet Russia(RSFSR) recognized the People's Secretariat of the UNRS as the only legitimate government of Ukraine..

“In December 1917 - January 1918, Soviet power was established in a number of industrial centers of Ukraine - Yekaterinoslav, Odessa, Nikolaev, and the Donbass. Until the end of January 1918, with the support of Russian Soviet troops and Red Guard detachments, the power of the Ukrainian Soviet government extended to the entire Left Bank, part of the right bank cities (Vinnitsa, Kamenets-Podolsky), Crimea.

At the same time, the position of the Central Rada itself in Kiev becomes precarious, since “On March 17 - 19, 1918, the 2nd All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets was held in Yekaterinoslav, which... united all Soviet formations and forces on the territory of Ukraine into a single Ukrainian Soviet Republic", which was considered an independent Soviet republic. On the night of January 25-26 (February 7-8), the Ukrainian government and the remnants of the UPR troops left Kiev along the Zhitomir highway, and on January 27 (February 9) Kyiv was taken by Soviet troops.

However, taking advantage of the unauthorized antics of Trotsky, who declared the position of “neither peace nor war” at the negotiations in Brest-Litovsk, German troops launched an offensive along the entire front, as a result of which Austrian-German troops entered Kiev on March 1. The Central Rada also returned along with the occupying forces. In fact, in the spring of 1918, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic ceased to exist, since most of the UPR was occupied by the Germans.

On April 29, 1918, the socialists of the Central Rada were replaced by General P. P. Skoropadsky, whose regime was called the Ukrainian State (Second Hetmanate), but by the fall Germany had lost all interest in Ukrainian events, which allowed the leaders of the dissolved Central Rada to organize an uprising against the Germans and the Ukrainian state. The attempt to restore the UPR ended with the formation of the dictatorship of the former military minister of the UPR Symon Petlyura. On January 22, 1919, the Directorate of the UPR signed the “Act of Union” (Ukrainian “Act of Zluki”) with the government of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic: this day is celebrated today as the Day of Unification of Ukraine. However, already in July, the WUNR army was driven out by the Poles from the territory of Western Ukraine, and at the end of 1919, dictator Petrushevich denounced the Unification Treaty with the UPR.

With the beginning of the evacuation of German-Austrian troops at the end of 1918, thanks to the support of the armed forces of Soviet Russia, the Soviet government back again to the territory of the Ukrainian People's Republic. March 10, 1919 at the III All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, held in Kharkov, which became the capital, Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, was proclaimed as an independent republic; At the same time, the first Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR was adopted.

However, in April 1920, Polish troops entered the conflict on the main territory of Ukraine, and throughout 1920-1921. Central and Right Bank Ukraine were the scene of the Soviet-Polish War. The chain of conflicts ended in 1920-1921. the establishment of Soviet power and the establishment of the Ukrainian SSR on most of the territory of modern Ukraine (except for Western Ukraine, which, in accordance with the Treaty of Riga, was divided by the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Poland) and the Czechoslovak Republic, as well as the Kingdom of Romania).

On December 30, 1922, the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Byelorussian SSR and the Transcaucasian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR, which marked the beginning of the establishment of the USSR.

So, power Ukraine arose thanks to the events associated with the revolution of 1917, therefore it should be grateful to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who was involved in the emergence of the opportunity for the Little Russian regions to become a separate republic. Moreover, it was the Bolshevik policy of Ukrainization that gave complete freedom of action to Ukrainian nationalists and provided them with the territory of Little Russia to spread their poisonous ideas.

Formation of the territory of Ukraine

In the following diagram you can see how the territory of the administrative unit grew, the center of which was Kyiv. I was not mistaken in calling this state entity an administrative unit, since the Ukrainian SSR within the USSR had only formal independence, although the Ukrainian SSR was listed among the founding members of the UN.

Galicia in Ukraine

When in the middle of the 19th century there was a rise in national self-awareness of the numerous nationalities inhabiting the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the main danger for the Austrians, who occupied a significant part of geographical Ukraine, was represented by separatism of the Poles, and in essence, a national liberation struggle for the independence of Poland. The Austrian authorities, in order to prevent the merger of the Polish revolutionary movement with the national rise of the Rusyns, began to incite ethnic hatred between the Rusyn population and the Poles, as the main nationalities of Galicia. Galician massacre

At the same time, the Austrians understood that in order to keep Galicia within Austria-Hungary, the national movement of the Rusyns posed no less of a threat, since it invariably had the goal of reunification with Russia for the simple reason that the Rusyns considered themselves ethnic Russians, direct descendants of the inhabitants of Kievan Rus. Then, at the end of the 19th century, the Austrians decided to create a new nation from the Galicians Ukrainians, in order to replace the national movement of the Rusyns with a fictitious “struggle for the freedom of the Ukrainian nation.”

Ukrainization scenario the Austrians took from the national policy of the Hungarian kings, who had previously successfully conducted an experiment to break the Orthodox Serbs And Croats by Catholicizing the latter and Latinizing their language. Actually, Serbs and Croats have one language, which, like Russian, was divided into several dialects. The Hungarians managed to pit these fraternal peoples against each other by supporting the claims of the Croatian elite to the lands occupied by Serbian settlers. The atrocities of the Croatian Ustaše Nazis, who carried out the genocide of the Serbs during the Second World War, aggravated the conflict between fraternal peoples who, like the brothers Cain and Abel, fought against each other during the collapse of Yugoslavia.

In the Russian Empire in the 19th century, some commoners considered that the name Ukrainian, as the Galicians have now begun to call themselves, can become a banner under which the struggle for the liberation of Little Russians from serfdom can be waged. Ukrainophiles thought that the inclusion of Little Russians to the Ukrainians brings the Little Russian serfs closer to acquiring the rights and freedoms supposedly available to the Austrian “Ukrainians.” At the same time, they did not take into account the truth that the Rusyns of Galicia were poorer than the last serf in Russia (). Ukrainophiles did not understand the catch of the term Ukrainian, which they perceived as a symbol of the territorial unity of all Rusyn peoples of Ukraine, whereas according to the Austrian idea, the name Ukrainian had racial meaning as a denial of any kinship with the rest of the East Slavic peoples, and especially with the Russians.

Until the revolution, the Little Russians were looked upon as urban madmen, since no one could imagine that the Little Russians could change their own identification as Russians. However, after the civil war, the Bolsheviks decided to rely on local nationalist organizations, which was reflected in the policy of indigenization, which looked like a continuation of the fight against the empire, which they called the “prison of nations.” Massive Soviet Ukrainization, at the state level, continued from the 1920s almost until the Second World War.

When did the Ukrainian language appear, who invented it?

The Soviet government declared all Little Russians Ukrainians, and in 1928 a reform of the spelling of the Little Russian dialect took place, thanks to which the Ukrainian language acquired its “graphic independence”, based again on the developments of “”, which was led by Professor Grushevsky in Lvov. This was the norm of the artificial language, which the Austro-Hungarian authorities officially approved back in 1893 for the Galician Govirka, based on the Kulish system (“Kulishovka”, former system teaching illiterate Little Russians) and “Zhelehovka” (an extremely simplified spelling system), from which the Latinized Ukrainian alphabet was completely taken.

It is interesting that perhaps the first work in the “Ukrainian” language is seriously considered to be “The Aeneid, translated into the Little Russian language by I. Kotlyarevsky,” a satirical poem on contemporary Ukrainian landowners with their riotous temper, shortcomings and chimeras, published in 1798 year. Kotlyarevsky, for the sake of emphasizing the base features of the “Ukrainian people,” forced the heroes to speak in that wild dialect of the common people, in which the word “horse” sounded like “kin”, and “cat” sounded like “whale”. However, for readers, “The Aeneid” was equipped with an extensive glossary of “Ukrainian” and invented words (more than 1000), which also contained their correct spelling according to the phonetic variant of spelling, known as “yaryzhka”, which was the first phrasebook of rural Little Russian dialects.

But the Dictionary of “ancient” Ukrainian language, which was created by the “Scientific Partnership im. Shevchenka”, formed on December 8, 1868 in Lvov under the auspices of the Austrian authorities, surpassed in volume both the works of Kotlyarevsky and the “yaryzhka” itself, since it was created by replacing all Russian words in the “Galician govirka” with generous borrowings from Polish and German, but the masterpiece was the invented words that they tried to stylize as folk.

If Kotlyarevsky used the language of the very bottom of society - the language of serfs - for satirical purposes, then the members of the partnership under the name of the great Little Russian poet - shoved into the Ukrainian language everything that came to mind, as long as it was further from Russian, so that Soviet Ukrainian philologists had to change: a gasket for a stool, a navel cutter for a midwife, a lift for an elevator, a hundred percent for a percentage, a screenshot for a gearbox, although the gasket was changed to a parasol (from the French parasol), but the runny nose remained undead. Apparently, this was greatly facilitated by the ignorance of the Little Russian language by the head of the Shevchenko Society, Professor Grushevsky, who is now known as a recognized Ukrainian language constructor.

Annexation of Crimea to Ukraine

Crimea's problem is related to its geopolitical position, which makes it Russia's unsinkable aircraft carrier on the Black Sea. The Crimean Peninsula had the significance of a Russian military base from the moment it joined the Russian Empire on April 19, 1783.

It so happened historically that Ukraine was perhaps the only region where the population settlement corresponded to Thünen’s model of agricultural standort, since the cities of Ukraine appeared as natural centers of economic life for the surrounding territories, and not military fortresses, as was the case in the rest of Rus'-Russia. Therefore, immediately after joining Russia, the territory of Ukraine began to turn into a strong economic complex with its center in Kyiv. Moreover, in the 19th century, the Odessa port became the main one for the export of grain, which made Odessa the final station of many railways that were actively being built throughout Russia. Of course, Crimea was more important as a southern outpost, since the main base of the Black Sea Fleet was located in Sevastopol, and the formation of the peninsula as a resort area created economic ties with the nearest Novorossiysk regions.

After the formation of the Ukrainian SSR, Crimea became an administrative island, separated from the state apparatus of the RSFSR, so when the Kiev elite earned the trust of the authorities in Moscow, transfer of Crimea to Ukraine, which was justified from a management point of view, since Crimea has long been part of the Ukrainian economy.

When we consider the history of Ukraine, you involuntarily come to the conclusion that Ukraine has always been an object, which is precisely confirmed by the frivolity with which the Bolsheviks changed the borders of the Ukrainian SSR and annexed Crimea.

Return of Crimea to Russia- this is the result of a coincidence of circumstances that resolved the problem of the Russian naval base on the Black Sea, but from an economic point of view - Crimea is a “black hole”, since entering the ruble zone deprives the peninsula of the prospect of becoming a resort, otherwise it is clearly a subsidized region . dated August 24, 1991.

Thus it was the elite of Ukraine that initiated the collapse of the USSR, but we don’t know whether this referendum would have played any role if Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin had not immediately recognized it, so assessments of the historical role of Yeltsin and Kravchuk will shift towards the negative.

Education is an objective process (for example, the EU) that allowed Russia to be a world power. Lacking population density, Russia is doomed to be a raw materials appendage, but due to the diversity of resources that simply could not exist on such a vast territory, a tolerable standard of living was ensured for the population.

Due to the collapse of the USSR, all republics completely lost their industrial prospects, especially those that fell away from the Russian market. The principles of Soviet industry did not allow it to integrate into the global division of labor, and the uncompetitive products of enterprises of the former republics of the former USSR could only be sold on the CIS market.

But new elite of Ukraine, like some other fragments of the USSR, decided to move to another one, which was richer. In order to make themselves more attractive to the West, many declared their adherence to anti-communist ideology, then simply anti-Russian, since it turned out that the elites of capitalist countries themselves cannot exist without cold war. It’s just that the demonization of Russia is a long-standing technique, borrowed from the Polish gentry of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which allows the West to maintain the myth of its own democracy.

The revival of nationalism in Ukraine

A feature of the Ukrainian elite was its anti-Russian attitude, which was based on the legacy of the Bolshevik national policy of Ukrainization. If under the tsar it had completely disappeared, the Bolsheviks not only recognized the racial meaning of the word Ukrainian (which had previously had a collective geographical meaning in Russia), but even declared total Ukrainization - an achievement of the “national” revival of the newly-minted Ukrainian nation. Although the successes of Ukrainization very soon “backfired”, so that Ukrainization was declared an excess even before the war, but Lenin’s mistake in the form of education separate And national Ukraine - as a fundamental root cause - could no longer be eliminated.

The motives of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who insisted on the existence of a SEPARATE and NATIONAL republic within the USSR, are understandable as a compromise with nationalist forces UPR, but the formation of THREE separate republics inhabited by one people confronted the new state entities with the task of searching and emphasizing at least some differences to justify their own existence. After all, no one has canceled the trinity of the Russian people, so the elites all the more needed to somehow explain the division of the single people by the Bolsheviks by the borders of the newly created republics.

Ukraine after the Maidan

Therefore, it is not surprising that Ukraine, having raised nationalism (and essentially anti-Soviet anti-Russian separatism) to the level of state policy, in 25 years achieved the goal that the Austro-Hungarians, Poles and Germans set when creating Ukrainian nationalism.

Basically, we are watching elite games Ukraine and Russia, which included the world elites using events in Ukraine as a reason to weaken Russia’s position in the world. Understand crisis in Ukraine is possible only from a cynical point of view, which soberly believes that the people are not the subject of history. The subject of history is the people.

Ukrainian elite considered that in Europe she would be safer from her most dangerous competitor - the Russian elite, so she decided to drag her property, in the sense of the people from whom she feeds, to the European Union, which was announced as “the choice of the Ukrainians.”

However, post-Soviet elite of Ukraine was a small-town unprofessional without broad support, so the coup was not long in coming; the oligarchs, as the real masters of Ukraine, took direct control of Ukraine into their hands, and the turbulent story new Ukraine written literally on the pages of the morning newspapers.

Analysis of the reasons for the confrontation between Western and Eastern elites in Ukraine before and after the declaration of independence.

UKRAINE. STORY
In the 1st millennium BC. The steppes of Ukraine were inhabited, successively, by Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Goths and other nomadic peoples. The ancient Greek colonists lived in several city-states on Black Sea coast in the 7th-3rd centuries. BC. In the 6th century. AD The northern part of the territory of modern Ukraine was populated by Slavic tribes displaced by nomads from the Danube. Kyiv was founded in the 6th century. glades and captured in 882 by the Slovenian prince Oleg from Novgorod. Thanks to its convenient location on important trade routes “from the Varangians to the Greeks,” Kyiv turned into the center of a powerful state. During the period of its greatest prosperity during the reign of the Grand Dukes Vladimir I (980-1015) and Yaroslav I the Wise (1019-1054), Kievan Rus was one of the largest states in Europe. In 988-989, Vladimir I renounced paganism and adopted Orthodox Christianity. Yaroslav the Wise put the laws of the state in order; his daughters married the kings of France, Hungary and Norway. Due to the blocking of the trade route along the Dnieper by nomads and internal intrigues, Kievan Rus by the middle of the 12th century. fell into disrepair. In 1169 Grand Duke Andrei Bogolyubsky moved the capital of Rus' to Vladimir. In 1240, Kyiv was destroyed to the ground by the Mongol-Tatars under the leadership of Khan Batu, and then captured by Lithuania. The Vladimir-Suzdal principality between the Oka and Volga rivers in the mid-13th century. was conquered by the Mongol-Tatars. The Carpathian Galicia-Volyn principality continued to exist independently until its annexation by Poland and Lithuania in the 14th century. National, social and religious oppression in Catholic Poland caused a mass exodus of peasants to southern Ukraine in the 15th and 16th centuries. and contributed to the emergence of the Cossacks. The Zaporozhye Sich, an independent community located beyond the rapids of the lower Dnieper, became a stronghold for the Cossacks. Poland's attempts to suppress the Cossacks led to mass uprisings, especially during the liberation war of 1648-1654. The uprising was led by the Cossack hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1595-1657). Khmelnitsky's victorious war against the Poles led to the creation of the Ukrainian Cossack state. In 1654, Khmelnitsky signed the Pereyaslav Treaty on the creation of a military and political union with Russia. As Russia's influence grew, the Cossacks began to lose autonomy and repeatedly initiated new uprisings and rebellions. In 1709, Hetman Ivan Mazepa (1687-1709) sided with Sweden against Russia in the Northern War (1700-1721), but the Cossacks and Swedes were defeated in the Battle of Poltava (1709). The Hetmanate and the Zaporozhye Sich were abolished - the first in 1764, and the second in 1775 - after Russia ousted the Turks from the Black Sea region. During the partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795, the Ukrainian lands west of the Dnieper were divided between Russia and Austria. In the first half of the 19th century. Ukrainian lands remained the agricultural outskirts of Russia and Austria. The development of the Black Sea region and Donbass, the opening of universities in Kharkov (1805), Kyiv (1834) and Odessa (1865) stimulated the growth of national self-awareness of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. The national poet Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) and the political publicist Mikhailo Drahomanov (1841-1895) gave impetus to the growth of national self-awareness. At the end of the 19th century. Nationalist and socialist parties emerged in Ukraine. Russian state responded to nationalism with persecution and restrictions on the use of the Ukrainian language. Austrian Galicia, which had much greater political freedom, became the center of national culture. First World War and the revolution in Russia destroyed the Habsburg and Romanov empires. Ukrainians got the opportunity to create their own state; On November 20, 1917, the Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed in Kyiv, on December 12, 1917 in Kharkov - the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, and on November 1, 1918 in Lviv - the Western Ukrainian People's Republic. January 22, 1919 people's republics united. However, the military situation of the new state became hopeless under the attacks of Polish troops from the west and the Red Army from the east (1920). The southeastern part of Ukraine was controlled for some time by anarchist peasants led by Nestor Makhno. The war in Ukraine continued until 1921. As a result, Galicia and Volhynia were incorporated into Poland, and eastern Ukraine became a Soviet republic. During the period between the First and Second World Wars, there was a powerful Ukrainian nationalist movement in Poland. It was headed by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian military organization. Legal Ukrainian parties, the Greek Catholic Church, the Ukrainian press and entrepreneurship found opportunities for their development in Poland. In the 1920s, in Soviet Ukraine, thanks to the policy of Ukrainization, there was a national revival in literature and art, carried out by the republican communist leadership. When the leadership of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) changed the general political course in the late 1920s, the Ukrainian Communist Party was purged for its “nationalist deviation.” As a result of the terror of the 1930s, many Ukrainian writers, artists, and intellectuals were killed; The peasantry was crushed by collectivization and the massive famine of 1932-1933. After Germany and the USSR divided Poland in August-September 1939, Galicia and Volyn were annexed to Soviet Ukraine. Northern Bukovina, which after 1917 ended up in Romania, was included in Ukraine in 1940, and the Transcarpathian region, previously part of Czechoslovakia, in 1945. The German attack on the USSR in 1941 was welcomed by many Western Ukrainians; The OUN even tried to create a Ukrainian state under the auspices of Germany. However, Nazi policies alienated most Ukrainians. The OUN created nationalist partisan units - the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA); many eastern Ukrainians joined the Soviet partisans or fought in the Red Army against the Germans. After World War II, the OUN and UPA continued the partisan struggle against Soviet power in Western Ukraine until 1953. The war devastated the country. Its entire territory was occupied. 714 cities and 28 thousand villages were destroyed, which were restored in the late 1940s - early 1950s. At the same time, political repression intensified in Western Ukraine. With the death of I.V. Stalin in 1953 the situation changed. Under N.S. Khrushchev (who headed the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1938-1949), a whole galaxy of writers, artists, intellectuals, the so-called. "generation of the sixties". After Khrushchev's removal in 1964, the Soviet regime began persecuting dissidents such as Vyacheslav Chornovil (1938-1999), editor of the underground "Ukrainian Bulletin", Valentin Moroz (b. 1936), critic of Soviet policy towards Ukraine, etc. Coming to power in the Kremlin M. S. Gorbachev in 1985 led to political changes in Ukraine. Accident at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in April 1986 caused radioactive contamination of vast areas and undermined confidence in the party leadership, which tried to hide the accident. Glasnost made it possible to fill in the “blank spots” in the history of Ukraine, and increasing political freedom made it possible to rehabilitate dissident groups and create cultural organizations with a national orientation. The turning point in public life was the formation at the end of 1989 of “Rukh” and the removal from power of V.V. Shcherbitsky. In 1990 former secretary The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine L.M. Kravchuk was appointed chairman of the presidium of the cosmetically updated Supreme Council, which included 25% of deputies from national and democratic movements elected in semi-free elections in 1990. On July 16, 1990, Ukraine declared its sovereignty. This term meant independence for nationalists, and autonomy for communists. On November 21, 1990, Ukraine and the RSFSR signed an agreement on sovereignty and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. While the Union government continued to disintegrate, Ukraine, the Russian SFSR and other republics engaged in negotiations with Gorbachev on the form of a future union. After the failed coup on August 24, 1991, Ukraine declared independence. A few days later, the Ukrainian Communist Party was banned and its property confiscated. A popular referendum on independence took place on December 1; About 90% of voters supported the Declaration of Independence. Most countries in the world recognized Ukraine within the next few months. The Ukrainian Republic became a member of the Council for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the International Monetary Fund, the NATO Advisory Council and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. On December 8, 1991, Ukraine created Russian Federation and Belarus, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). However, immediately after this, tensions arose between Ukraine and Russia. The Russian Federation took possession of virtually all the property of the Soviet state; at the same time, some Russian politicians demanded the annexation of Donbass and Crimea to Russia (the latter was conquered by Russia from Turkey in 1783 and transferred to Ukraine by N.S. Khrushchev in 1954). The Ukrainian government responded to these demands by taking steps to create its own army and navy. Despite the signing of a number of agreements, relations between the Russian Federation and Ukraine remained very tense, especially after the election of Yuri Meshkov, a supporter of the separation of Crimea from Ukraine, as president of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in 1994. After the signing of a trilateral agreement between the presidents of Ukraine, the Russian Federation and the United States (1994), Ukraine began to transfer nuclear weapons to Russia. As a result of this, Ukraine’s relations with the United States and countries Western Europe have improved. Ukraine established closer economic and political ties with Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. On December 1, 1991, L.M. Kravchuk was elected President of Ukraine (60% of the votes were cast for him). When presidential re-elections took place in June 1994, they were won by former Prime Minister L.D. Kuchma, who proposed a moderate political program (52% of the vote). Kuchma began his tenure as president with promises to introduce economic and political reforms, create a market economy and strengthen democratic institutions. Although the start of reforms was announced in the fall of 1994, progress in their implementation was insignificant due to the lack of a legislative framework and corruption at all levels of government. Elections to the new parliament in March 1998 did little to change the political situation. Of the 450 parliamentary seats, the radical left and center-left (122 communists, socialists, the Peasant Party, the Union bloc) occupied more than 200 seats, the center and center-right - about 130 (including the presidential People's Democratic Party and Rukh), the right - 6 and independent - more than 110 seats. On April 19, 1999, the composition of deputies from the main parties was as follows (indicating the number of those who left): CPU - 122 (1), NDP - 53 (39), "Rukh" (Kostenko) - 30 (18), "Rukh" (Chornovil) - 16 (0), SDPU - 27 (5), Revival of Regions - 27 (1), SPU - 24 (13), "Hromada" - 28 (17). In July 1997, Ukraine signed a charter defining a “special” relationship between Ukraine and NATO. Relations with Russia improved in 1997 thanks to new economic agreements and the achievement of an acceptable solution to the division of the Black Sea Fleet. In November 1999, L.D. Kuchma was re-elected President of Ukraine.

Collier's Encyclopedia. - Open Society. 2000 .

See what "UKRAINE. HISTORY" is in other dictionaries:

State in the east parts of Europe. The name Ukraine in the meaning of outskirts, border territory was first mentioned in the chronicle in 1187. At first it designated part of the southwest. lands Ancient Rus', mainly the Middle Dnieper region, the territory of Galicia... Geographical encyclopedia

History of the Rus or Little Russia History of the Rus or Little Russia Author: Archbishop of Belarus Georgy Konisky Genre: history Original language: Russian Original published ... Wikipedia

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Ukrainian Republic, state in Eastern Europe. In the south it is washed by the waters of the Black and Azov Seas; in the east and northeast it borders with the Russian Federation, in the north with Belarus, in the west with Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, in the south... ... Collier's Encyclopedia

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