Ukraine has a mostly temperate continental climate, although a more Mediterranean climate is found on the southern Crimean coast. Precipitation is disproportionately distributed; it is highest in the west and north and lesser in the east and southeast. Western Ukraine, receives around
The hryvnia (sometimes hryvnya; Ukrainian: гривня; IPA: [ˈɦrɪu̯nʲɑ]) has been the national currency of Ukraine since September 2, 1996. It replaced the karbovanets at the rate of 1 hryvnia = 100,000 karbovantsiv. The hryvnia is subdivided into 100 kopiyok. The ISO 4217 codes are UAH and 980.
At 603,700 kilometres² (233,074 sq mi) and with a coastline of
The Ukrainian landscape consists mostly of fertile plains (or steppes) and plateaus, crossed by rivers such as the Dnieper (Dnipro), Seversky Donets, Dniester and the Southern Buh as they flow south into the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. To the southwest, the delta of the Danube forms the border with Romania. The country's only mountains are the Carpathian Mountains in the west, of which the highest is the Hora Hoverla at
Ukraine has a mostly temperate continental climate, although a more Mediterranean climate is found on the southern Crimean coast. Precipitation is disproportionately distributed; it is highest in the west and north and lesser in the east and southeast. Western Ukraine, receives around
Early history
Human settlement on the territory of Ukraine dates back to at least 4500 BC, when the Neolithic Cucuteni culture flourished in a wide area that covered parts of modern Ukraine including Trypillia and the entire Dnieper-Dniester region. During the Iron Age, the land was inhabited by Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians. Between 700 BC and 200 BC it was part of the Scythian Kingdom, or Scythia. Later, colonies of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and Byzantine Empire, such as Tyras, Olbia, and Hermonassa, were founded starting from the 6th century BC on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea, and thrived well into the 6th century AD. In the 7th century AD the territory of eastern Ukraine was part of Old Great Bulgaria. At the end of the century the majority of Bulgar tribes migrated in different directions and the land fell into the Khazars' hands.
Golden Age of Kiev
Map of the Kievan Rus', 11th century. During the Golden Age of Kiev the lands of Rus' covered much of present day Ukraine, as well as western Russia and Belarus.During the 10th and 11th centuries, much of modern-day Ukraine was populated by the Rus' people who formed the largest and most powerful European polity, called the Kievan Rus'. This nation laid the foundation for the national identity of Ukrainians, as well as other East Slavic nations, through subsequent centuries.Kiev, the capital of modern Ukraine, became the most important city of the Rus'. According to the Primary Chronicle, the Rus' elite initially consisted of Varangians from Scandinavia. The Varangians later became assimilated into the local Slavic population and became part of the Rus' first dynasty, the Rurik Dynasty.
Kievan Rus' was composed of several principalities ruled by the interrelated Rurikid Princes. The seat of Kiev, the most prestigious and influential of all principalities, became the subject of many rivalries among Rurikids as the most valuable prize in their quest for power. These were sometimes contested through intrigue, but more often through bloody conflicts. The Golden Age of Kievan Rus' began with the reign of Vladimir the Great (Volodymyr, 980–1015), who turned Rus' toward Byzantine Christianity. During the reign of his son, Yaroslav the Wise (1019–1054), Kievan Rus' reached the zenith of its cultural development and military power. This was followed by the state's increasing fragmentation as the relative importance of regions rose again. After a final resurgence under the rule of Vladimir Monomakh (1113–1125) and his son Mstislav (1125–1132), Kievan Rus' finally disintegrated into separate principalities following Mstislav's death. The 13th century Mongol invasion devastated Kievan Rus'. Kiev was totally destroyed in 1240.
On the Ukrainian territory, the state of Kievan Rus' was succeeded by the principalities of Galich (Halych) and Volodymyr-Volynskyi, which were merged into the state of Galicia-Volhynia.
Under foreign domination
In the centuries following the Mongol invasion, much of Ukraine was controlled by Lithuania (from the 14th century on) and since the Union of Lublin (1569) by Poland, as seen at this outline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as of 1619.
Map of the Russian Empire, 1682–1762In the mid-14th century, Galicia-Volhynia was subjugated by Casimir the Great of Poland, while the heartland of Rus', including Kiev, fell under the Gediminids of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Following the 1386 Union of Krevo, a dynastic union between Poland and Lithuania, most of Ukraine's territory was controlled by the local as well as increasingly Ruthenized Lithuanian nobles as part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. At this time, the term Ruthenia and Ruthenians as the Latinized versions of "Rus'", became widely applied to the land and its people, respectively.
By 1569 the Union of Lublin formed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and a significant part of Ukrainian territory was moved from largely Ruthenized Lithuanian rule to the Polish administration, as it was transferred to the Polish Crown. Under the cultural and political pressure of Polonization much of the Ruthenian upper class converted to Catholicism and became indistinguishable from the Polish nobility. Thus, the Ukrainian commoners, deprived of their native protectors among Ruthenian nobility, turned for protection to the Cossacks, who remained fiercely orthodox at all times and tended to turn to violence against those they perceived as enemies, particularly the Polish state and its representatives.
"Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire." Painted by Ilya Repin from 1880 to 1891.In the mid-17th century, a Cossack military quasi state, the Zaporozhian Host, was established by the Dnieper Cossacks and the Ruthenian peasants fleeing Polish serfdom.Poland had little real control of this land, although at times, the cossacks allied with the Commonwealth in military campaigns. However, the continued enserfment of peasantry by the Polish nobility emphasized the Commonwealth's fierce exploitation of the workforce and, and most importantly, the suppression of the Orthodox Church pushed the allegiances of Cossacks away from Poland. Their aspiration was to have representation in Polish Sejm, recognition of Orthodox traditions and the gradual expansion of the Cossack Registry. These were all vehemently denied by the Polish kings. The Cossacks eventually turned for protection to Orthodox Russia, a decision which would later lead towards the downfall of the Polish-Lithuanian state,and the preservation of the Orthodox Church and in Ukraine.
In 1648, Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the largest of the Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth and the Polish king John II Casimir. Left-bank Ukraine was eventually integrated into Russia as the Cossack Hetmanate, following the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav and the ensuing Russo-Polish War. After the partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century by Prussia, Habsburg Austria, and Russia, Western Ukrainian Galicia was taken over by Austria, while the rest of Ukraine was progressively incorporated into the Russian Empire. Despite the promises of Ukrainian autonomy given by the treaty of Pereyaslav, the Ukrainian elite and the Cossacks never received the freedoms and the autonomy they were expecting from Imperial Russia. However, within the Empire, Ukrainians rose to the highest offices of Russian state, and the Russian Orthodox Church.
At a later period, the tsarist regime carried the policy of Russification of Ukrainian lands, suppressing the use of the Ukrainian language in print, and in public.
World War I and revolution
Ukraine entered World War I on the side of both the Central Powers, under Austria, and the Entente, under Russia.
During the war, Austro-Hungarian authorities established the Ukrainian Legion, along with the Polish Legion, to fight against the Russian Empire. These legions were the foundations of the interwar Polish Army and the Ukrainian Galician Army that fought against the Bolsheviks and Poles in the post World War I period (1919–23). Those suspected of the Russophile sentiments in Austris were treated harshly. Up to 20,000 supporters of the Russian Empire from Galicia were detained and placed in Austrian internment camps in Talerhof, Styria, and in a fortress at Terezín (now in the Czech Republic).
Soldiers of the Ukrainian People's ArmyWith the collapse of the Russian and Austrian empires following World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917, a Ukrainian national movement for self-determination reemerged. During 1917–20, several separate Ukrainian states briefly emerged: the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Hetmanate, the Directorate and the pro-Bolshevik Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (or Soviet Ukraine) successively established territories in the former Russian Empire; while the West Ukrainian People's Republic emerged briefly in the former Austro-Hungarian territory. In the midst of the civil war, a Ukrainian anarchist movement called the Black Army led by Nestor Makhno also developed.However with Western Ukraine's defeat in the Polish-Ukrainian War followed by the failure of the further Polish invasion that was repelled by the Russian and Ukrainian pro-Soviet forces, Ukraine lost its initial independence. According to the Peace of Riga concluded between Soviet Russia, Soviet Ukraine and Poland western Ukraine was split-off and incorporated into Poland while the larger central and eastern parts formed a Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in March 1919, that later became a founding republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the Soviet Union in December, 1922.
Interwar Soviet Ukraine
The revolution that brought the Soviet government to power devastated Ukraine. It left over 1.5 million people dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. Seeing the exhausted society, the Soviet government remained very flexible during the 1920s.Thus, the Ukrainian culture and language enjoyed a revival, as Ukrainization became a local implementation of the Soviet-wide Korenization (literally indigenization) policy.The Bolsheviks were also committed to introducing universal health care, education and social-security benefits, as well as the right to work and housing. Women's rights were greatly increased through new laws aimed to wipe away centuries-old inequalities. Most of these policies were sharply reversed by the early-1930s after Joseph Stalin gradually consolidated power to become the de facto communist party leader and a dictator of the Soviet Union.
DniproGES hydroelectric power plant under construction circa 1930Starting from the late 1920s, Ukraine was involved in the Soviet industrialization and the republic's industrial output quadrupled in the 1930s. However, the industrialization had a heavy cost for the peasantry, demographically a backbone of the Ukrainian nation. To satisfy the state's need for increased food supplies and to finance industrialization, Stalin instituted a program of collectivization of agriculture as the state combined the peasants' lands and animals into collective farms and enforcing the policies by the regular troops and secret police. Those who resisted were arrested and deported and the increased production quotas were placed on the peasantry. The collectivization had a devastating effect on agricultural productivity. As the members of the collective farms were not allowed to receive any grain until the unachievable quotas were met, starvation in the Soviet Union became widespread. In 1932–33, millions starved to death in a man-made famine known as Holodomor. Scholars are divided as to whether this famine fits the definition of genocide, but the Ukrainian parliament and more than a dozen other countries recognize it as the genocide of the Ukrainian people.
The times of industrialization and Holodomor also coincided with the Soviet assault on the national political and cultural elite often accused in "nationalist deviations". Two waves of Stalinist political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union (1929–34 and 1936–38) resulted in the elimination some 681,692 people; this included four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite and three quarters of all the Red Army's higher-ranking officers.
World War II
Soviet soldiers preparing rafts to cross the Dnieper (the sign reads "To Kiev!") in the 1943 Battle of the DnieperFollowing the Invasion of Poland in September 1939, German and Soviet troops divided the territory of Poland. Thus, Eastern Galicia and Volhynia with their Ukrainian population became reunited with the rest of Ukraine. This unifications of Ukraine achieved for the first time in its history was a decisive event in the history of the nation.
After France surrendered to Germany, Romania ceded Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to Soviet demands. The Ukrainian SSR incorporated northern and southern districts of Bessarabia, the northern Bukovina, and the Soviet-occupied Hertsa region. But it ceded the western part of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to the newly created Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. All these territorial gains were internationally recognized by the Paris peace treaties of 1947.
German armies invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, thereby initiating four straight years of incessant total war. The Axis allies initially advanced against desperate but unsuccessful efforts of the Red Army. In the encirclement battle of Kiev, the city was acclaimed as a "Hero City", for the fierce resistance by the Red Army and by the local population. More than 600,000 Soviet soldiers (or one quarter of the Western Front) were killed or taken captive there. Although the wide majority of Ukrainians fought alongside the Red Army and Soviet resistance, some elements of the Ukrainian nationalist underground created an anti-Soviet nationalist formation in Galicia, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (1942) that at times engaged the Nazi forces; while another nationalist movement fought alongside the Nazis. In total, the number of ethnic Ukrainians that fought in the ranks of the Soviet Army is estimated from 4.5 million to 7 million. The pro-Soviet partisan guerrilla resistance in Ukraine is estimated to number at 47,800 from the start of occupation to 500,000 at its peak in 1944; with about 48 percent of them being ethnic Ukrainians.Generally, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army's figures are very inaccurate, ranging anywhere from 15,000 to as much as 100,000 fighters.
Museum of the Great Patriotic War in KievInitially, the Germans were even received as liberators by some western Ukrainians, who had only joined the Soviet Union in 1939. However, brutal German rule in the occupied territories eventually turned its supporters against the occupation. Nazi administrators of conquered Soviet territories made little attempt to exploit the population of Ukrainian territories' dissatisfaction with Stalinist political and economic policies.Instead, the Nazis preserved the collective-farm system, systematically carried out genocidal policies against Jews, deported others to work in Germany, and began a systematic depopulation of Ukraine to prepare it for German colonization, which included a food blockade on Kiev. Under these circumstances, people that remained in the occupied territory either passively or actively opposed the Nazis.
The total losses inflicted upon the Ukrainian population during the war are estimated between five and eight million, including over half a million Jews killed by the Einsatzgruppen, sometimes with the help of local collaborators. Of the estimated 8.7 million Soviet troops who fell in battle against the Nazis,1.4 million were ethnic Ukrainians.
Postwar
Sergey Korolyov, the head Soviet rocket engineer and designer during the Space RaceThe republic was heavily damaged by the war, and it required significant efforts to recover. More than 700 cities and towns and 28,000 villages were destroyed.The situation was worsened by a famine in 1946–47 caused by the drought and the infrastructure breakdown that took away tens of thousand lives.
The nationalist anti-Soviet resistance lasted for years after the war, chiefly in Western Ukraine, but also in other regions.The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, continued to fight the USSR into the 1950s. Using guerilla war tactics, the insurgents targeted for assassination and terror of those who they perceived as the representing, or cooperating at any level with, the Soviet state.
The Chernobyl reactor #4Following the death of Stalin in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev became the new leader of the USSR. Being the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukrainian SSR in 1938-49, Khrushchev was intimately familiar with the republic and after taking power union-wide, he began to emphasize the friendship between the Ukrainian and Russian nations. In 1954, the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav was widely celebrated, and in particular, Crimea was transferred from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.
Already by the 1950s, the republic fully surpassed pre-war levels of industry and production. It also became an important center of the Soviet arms industry and high-tech research. Such an important role resulted in a major influence of the local elite. Many members of the Soviet leadership came from Ukraine, most notably Leonid Brezhnev who would later oust Khrushchev and become the Soviet leader from 1964 to 1982, as well as many prominent Soviet sportsmen, scientists and artists.
On April 26, 1986 a reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, resulting in the Chernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history.[54][55] At the time of the accident seven million people lived in the contaminated territories, including 2.2 million in Ukraine.[56] After the accident, a new city, Slavutych, was built outside the exclusion zone to house and support the employees of the plant, which was decommissioned in 2000. Around 150,000 people were evacuated from the contaminated area, and 300,000–600,000 took part in the cleanup. As of 2000, about 4,000 Ukrainian children have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer caused by radiation released by this incident.
Independence
The first launch of a Ukrainian rocket at the Sea Launch complexOn July 16, 1990, the new parliament adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine.The declaration established the principles of the self-determination of the Ukrainian nation, democracy, political and economic independence, and the priority of Ukrainian law on the Ukrainian territory over Soviet law. A month earlier, a similar declaration was adopted by the parliament of the Russian SFSR. This started a period of confrontation between the central Soviet, and new republican authorities. In August 1991, the conservative Communist leaders of the Soviet Union attempted a coup to remove Gorbachev and to restore the Communist party's power. After the attempt failed, on August 24, 1991 the Ukrainian parliament adopted the Act of Independence in which the parliament declared Ukraine as an independent democratic state. A referendum and the first presidential elections took place on December 1, 1991. That day, more than 90 percent of the Ukrainian people expressed their support for the Act of Independence, and they elected the chairman of the parliament, Leonid Kravchuk to serve as the first President of the country. At the meeting in Brest, Belarus on December 8, followed by Alma Ata meeting on December 21, the leaders of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, formally dissolved the Soviet Union and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Ukraine was initially viewed as a republic with favorable economic conditions in comparison to the other regions of the Soviet Union. However, the country experienced deeper economic slowdown than some of the other former Soviet Republics. During the recession, Ukraine lost 60 percent of its GDP from 1991 to 1999, and suffered five-digit inflation rates. Dissatisfied with the economic conditions, as well as crime and corruption, Ukrainians protested and organized strikes.
Orange-clad demonstrators gather in the Independence Square in Kiev on November 22, 2004The Ukrainian economy stabilized by the end of the 1990s. A new currency, the hryvnia, was introduced in 1996. Since 2000 the country has enjoyed steady economic growth averaging about seven percent annually, which is one of the highest growth rates in Europe and the world. A new Constitution of Ukraine was adopted in 1996, which turned Ukraine into a semi-presidential republic and established a stable political system. Kuchma was, however, criticized by opponents for concentrating too much of power in his office, corruption, transferring public property into hands of loyal oligarchs, discouraging free speech, and electoral fraud. In 2004, Viktor Yanukovych, then Prime Minister, was declared the winner of the presidential elections, which had been largely rigged, as the Supreme Court of Ukraine later ruled.The results caused a public outcry in support of the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, who challenged the results and led the peaceful Orange Revolution. The revolution brought Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko to power, while casting Viktor Yanukovych in opposition.
Since independence, Ukraine has maintained its own space agency, the National Space Agency of Ukraine (NSAU). The first astronaut of the NSAU to enter space under the Ukrainian flag was Leonid Kadenyuk on May 13, 1997. Ukraine became an active participant in scientific space exploration and remote sensing missions. Between 1991 and 2007, Ukraine has launched six self made satellites and 101 launch vehicles, and continues to design spacecraft. So to this day, Ukraine is recognized as a world leader in producing missiles and missile related technology.
The tradition of the Easter egg, known as pysanky, has long roots in Ukraine. These eggs were drawn on with wax to create a pattern; then, the dye was applied to give the eggs their pleasant colours, the dye did not affect the previously wax-coated parts of the egg. After the entire egg was dyed, the wax was removed leaving only the colourful pattern. This tradition is thousands of years old, and precedes the arrival of Christianity to Ukraine.
According to the Ukrainian Census of 2001, ethnic Ukrainians make up 77.8% of the population. Other significant ethnic groups are Russians (17.3%), Belarusians (0.6%), Moldovans (0.5%), Crimean Tatars (0.5%), Bulgarians (0.4%), Hungarians (0.3%), Romanians (0.3%), Poles (0.3%), Jews (0.2%), Armenians (0.2%), Greeks (0.2%) and Tatars (0.2%).
Ukraine is considered to be in a demographic crisis due to its high death rate and a low birth rate. In 2007, the country's population was declining at the fourth fastest rate in the world.The demographic trend is showing signs of improvement, as the birth rate has been growing for several consecutive years. Net population growth over the first nine months of 2007 was registered in five provinces of the country (out of 24), and population shrinkage was showing signs of stablising nationwide. The highest birth rates were in Western provinces. Immigrants constitute an estimated 14.7 percent of the total population, or 6.9 million people; this is the fourth largest figure in the world.
The industrial regions in the east and southeast are the most heavily populated, and about 67.2 percent of the population lives in urban areas.
Number of inhabitants in millions (1990–2007)Romanians and Moldavians are another significant minority in Ukraine, concentrated mainly in the Chernivtsi, Odessa, Zakarpattia and Vinnytsia oblasts. Gagauzians are another minority, concentrated mainly in Budjak.
Jews played a very important role in Ukrainian cultural life, especially in the 19th and first half of the 20th century. Today Yiddish, the Ukrainian Jews' traditional language, is only used by a small number of older people.
Significant migration took place in the first years of Ukrainian independence. More than one million people moved into Ukraine in 1991-1992, mostly from the other former Soviet republics. In total, between 1991 and 2004, 2.2 million immigrated to Ukraine (among them, 2.0 million came from the other former Soviet Union states), and 2.5 million emigrated from Ukraine (among them, 1.9 million moved to other former Soviet Union republics)
Capital
(and largest city) Kiev (Kyiv)
50°27′N, 30°30′E
Official languages Ukrainian
Demonym Ukrainian
Government Semi-presidential unitary state
- President Viktor Yushchenko
- Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko
- Speaker of the Parliament Arseniy Yatsenyuk
Independence from the Soviet Union
- Declared August 24, 1991
- Referendum December 1, 1991
- Finalized December 26, 1991
Area
- Total 603,628 km² (44th)
233,090 sq mi
- Water (%) 7%
Population
- 2008 estimate 46,372,700 (27th)
- 2001 census 48,457,102
- Density 77/km² (115th)
199/sq mi
GDP (PPP) 2007 estimate
- Total $399.866 billion[1] (29th)
- Per capita $8,624[1] (83rd)
GDP (nominal) 2007 estimate
- Total $140.5 billion [2] (45th)
- Per capita $3,061 (88th)
Gini (2006) 31[2]
HDI (2005) ▲ 0.788 (medium) (76th)
Currency Hryvnia (UAH)
Time zone EET (UTC+2)
- Summer (DST) EEST (UTC+3)
Internet TLD .ua
Calling code +380
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