Historic Background Of Ukraine

Ukraine was inhabited in pre-historic times by nomadic tribes from Central Asia. `Western civilisation’ came to the country only in the 1st millennium BC, when the Greeks, the Romans and the kingdom of Byzantium set up outposts in Ukraine. East Slavic peoples arrived in about 6 AD, and set up the first Ukrainian state, governed from Kyyiv, three hundred years later. The Rus empire, as it was called, spread into neighbouring Russia and Belarus, but was wiped out, in the 13th century, by marauding Mongols. By the 14th century, Ukraine was divided, one part ruled by Poland and the other under the control of Lithuania.

Foreign rule, as was probably to be expected, was not welcomed by the freedom-loving Cossacks, who engineered an insurrection in the mid-17th century. The situation did change, but not drastically; Ukraine became a part of Russia, with the region of Galicia being annexed by Austria.

The 20th century was a tumultuous period for Ukraine. Russian attempts to suppress Ukrainian nationalism took their toll, and forcible inclusion in the USSR, followed by famines and the Second World War, and wrecked Ukraine.

By the 1970s, a nationalist movement had again started gathering force, but it remained subdued until 1991, when the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in the independence of Ukraine.

It hasn’t been smooth sailing since; economic, social and political problems have plagued the state from the very beginning, but conditions are improving.