Thread by @Peter_Nimitz

Thread with excerpts from “A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples” by Paul Magocsi

Ukraine is a very flat country, with few natural defenses. Most rivers in Ukraine empty into the Black Sea, but in the west the Bug & San River flow into the Vistula & eventually the Baltic. This put western Ukraine in a different trade network.

Ukraine is a very fertile land due her black earth (chernozem). She dominated the agricultural exports of the late Russian Empire for this reason.

Greeks settled the Black Sea coast of Ukraine in the 7th to 5th centuries BC. In 480 BC the Greeks near the Straits of Kerch unified into the Bosporan Kingdom. Bosporans dominated Sea of Azov until Romans annexed them in 63 BC. They exported grain, fish, wine, & metalwork.

Third to Seventh centuries AD featured multiple invasions of Ukraine. Goths ruled much of Ukraine from 250-370 AD, prior to arrival of Huns. Cities around Sea of Azov in Gothic orbit, as well as Crimea. Crimean Goths stayed friendly with Romans & Byzantines.

Several proposals for the Slavic homeland. General agreement is that they lived in the forest & swamp regions north of the steppe.

Magocsi believes that Khazars shielded the East Slavs from other steppe nomads, allowing them to grow in wealth and population.

Vikings in 8th century created a trade route from Scandinavia through Baltic to Volga. In 9th the situation on the Volga changed, so they shifted to sailing down the Western Dvina, then carried their boats to the Dneiper, from where they could sail to the Black Sea.

Vladimir the Great originally tried establishing a polytheistic Slavic religion as the state religion of the Rus’.

The Rus’ realm fragmented over the course of 11th & 12th centuries. Kiev declined as a political & economic center, & Rus’ princes chose to focus on their own lands.

Author believes there were 7-8 million people in Kievan Rus’ prior to the Mongol invasions. 300 towns in the realm, which comprised about an eighth of the population.

Mongols were mostly concerned with control of trans-Eurasian trade routes, so ruled the Rus’ distantly. Rus’ princes paid tribute & obeisance. Orthodox Church was strengthened by Mongol policies aimed at diluting the power of the Rus’ princes, completing E Slav Christianization.

Lithuania expanded into the old Rus’s lands in 14th century, warring with the Mongols for them. Rus’ under Lithuania had broad autonomy, & Lithuanians tried to get an Orthodox metropolitan in either their core territory or restored to Lithuanian-controlled Kiev.

Rus’ political structures under Poland-Lithuania were gradually abolished from 1390s to 1440s. Catholic discrimination against Orthodox was strong in Polish controlled areas, while in Lithuania discrimination was intermittent.

Poland-Lithuania expanded serfdom in late 15th through late 16th centuries. Population density in western Poland was >4x that of eastern. Polish rule in Ukraine was more oppressive in west. 13 families owned 57% of land, many of their lands organized as latifundias.

Polish latifundias guaranteed serfs possession and inheritance of some of their lands. Amount of labor owed by serfs to lords varied from 3 days a week to 7.

Orthodox associations in western Ukraine won oversight over local church authorities in 1586, promoting Orthodox education, charity, & literature. This helped preserve Orthodoxy from Catholic pressure.

Poles sponsored 1596 Union of Brest to unify Catholic & Orthodox churches. Some Orthodox clergy in PLC joined, taking a lot of institutional wealth & power with them. One Ukrainian nobleman as well as Orthodox brotherhoods opposed church union, winning recognition in 1607.

Zaporozhian Cossacks supported Orthodoxy & resented Uniate Church taking Orthodox property & institutions. Cossacks joined Kiev Orthodox Brotherhood, denied Uniate clergy access to their offices, & in 1620 got Patriarch to ordain new Orthodox clergy. Poles were angry as result.

Cossacks won Orthodoxy more institutional recognition & rights in 1632 during negotiations with Polish king for war support. There was conflict within Orthodox institutions between Russian sympathizers & the Catholic-influenced. Cossacks had numerous Russian sympathizers.

As Poland grew repressive of Orthodoxy, Ukrainian clergy developed sympathy for Russia as fellow Orthodox, & were supported. Ukrainian refugees fled Tatar raids for safety behind Russia’s long wooden wall with the steppe that reached down to the Donets River in 1630s & 1640s.

Cossack Hetmanate ruled as vast realm in what is now central Ukraine and parts of Belarus & Russia under Hmelnitsky in 1640s & 1650s. Sloboda Ukraine in modern northeastern Ukraine & parts of Russia was administered as a Cossack region, but was ruled by Moscow.

Up to 10k people living in Cossack sich fort in mid-17th century. Registered Cossack numbers fluctuated in 16th & 17th centuries depending on Polish military needs & internal politics. As many as 40k Cossack soldiers could be raised.

Cossack Hetmanate was never fully independent of Russia & Poland. Russia gradually integrated the Hetmanate by appointing governors & establishing garrisons in various cities -including Kiev. Russia’s foreign affairs ministry handled relations with Hetmanate until 1722.

Poles were defeated in several battles by Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar alliance led by Bohdan Hmelnitsky in 1648. Peasant uprising in Ukraine against Poles ensued. Hmelnitsky wanted restoration of Cossack privileges.

By 1649 Hmelnitsky was styling himself as the Autocrat of the Rus’. 1649 truce with Poland banned Jews, Jesuits, & Polish soldiers from Hetmanate. Hmelnitsky conflicted between adding Hetmanate as third equal state within Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth & full independence.

Hmelnitsky & Cossacks struggle with Poland was going poorly by 1653, but Russia had seen Poland’s weakness & agreed to protect Cossacks after Cossack requests & lobbying by Orthodox Church. Treaty of Pereyaslav.

Even after submitting to Russia at Pereyaslav, Hmelnitsky still saw himself as free player internationally after Russian truce with Poland. He continued to try to build anti-Polish coalition, but Swedes were distracted & Hmelnitsky died before a coalition could come to fruition.

Russia played the Hetmanate off of the Zaporozhians in late 17th century. Zaporozhians liked the faraway Orthodox tsar but resented the nearby & hierarchical Cossack elites in the Hetmanate.

Hmelnitsky’s successor as Hetman was Ivan Vyhovsky, who also tried to make the Cossacks a third, equal partner in Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth at Union of Hadiach. Opposition from Zaporozhians & Hetmanate’s population killed the union in spite of Polish acceptance.

🇷🇺 saw Hadliach as act of war & invaded Hetmanate. While 🇵🇱 defeated 🇷🇺 at Konotop in 1659, pro-🇷🇺 revolts led to division of Hetmanate into 🇵🇱& 🇷🇺 spheres. 1667 Andrusovo Treaty formalized division, though pro-Ottoman Cossack Doroshenko tried reuniting the Hetmanate 1665-1676.

Ottomans controlled a third of Ukraine in late 17th century, & backed Hmelnitsky’s son as Hetman. Warfare depopulated much of Right Bank Ukraine. Russia & Ottomans made peace 1681, & Russia & Poland signed non-aggression pact 1686. Polish-Ottoman fighting continued to 1699.

Poles were expelled from Russian sphere of Ukraine in 17th century, but Orthodox Slavic nobility kept their status. They gradually gained the status they aspired to in Poland-Lithuania - hereditary lands & titles. Monasteries were wealthy & powerful.

Towns were more favorably treated under Polish rule than Cossack rule, so a burgher class never developed on Hetmanate. Greeks filled merchant class vacuum left after the Cossacks expelled the Jews to the Right Bank (Ukraine west of the Dneiper). Greeks had special privileges.

Orthodox peasants living on Polish lands became freeholders after Hmelnitsky Uprising while peasants under Orthodox nobles or clergy remained enserfed. Gradual reenserfment on Left Bank. Exports & industry collapsed under Hetmanate & remained low into 1750s.

Printing presses, religious figures, historians, & educational institutions in the Hetmanate were hugely influential in relatively rustic Moscow in late 17th & 18th centuries.

Sloboda Ukraine had population of 120k in late 17th century, & 660k by 1773. Zaporozhye had population of 184k by 1762 - peasants outnumbered Cossacks almost 5 to 1. Both regions received sizable numbers of migrants.

Zaporozhye and Sloboda (tax free) Ukraine

About 1 million people living in the Hetmanate in the 1760s, 90% living on estates of the nobility or the church.

70% of high ranking Russian Orthodox clergy 1700-1762 were from Belarus or Ukraine.

Mass emigration of Orthodox in Right Bank Ukraine to Russian controlled territory on Left Bank in late 17th century left Right Bank & Galician church institutions in the hands of the Uniates.

Orthodox bandits called haydamaks roved around Right Bank Ukraine in early-to-mid-18th century. Sometimes they could attract peasants & cause serious problems for their Polish rulers.

After Partitions of Poland at end of 19th century, about 85% of Ukrainians were under the rule of Russia and 15% under Austria.

Concept, status, duties, & rights of noblemen varied between states. In 1800, Russia acknowledged 24k Orthodox in Left Bank Ukraine, 260k Polish & 22k Ukrainian in Right Bank Ukraine, & most Crimean Tatar clan leaders & mirzas as nobles. @Irkutyanin1

Serf population in Russian-controlled Ukraine grew only by 273k 1803-1858 due to mass emigration, much of it to the Don (bottom left) & the Kuban (bottom right).

Ukrainians were only 18% of population of Ukraine’s large cities in late 19th century because agriculture was so productive. Landlords made peasants pay dues in labor as a result, tying them to the land in a way that Russian peasants who paid rent in cash weren’t.

In 1847 half of Russia’s exports left out of Port of Odessa. Exports were dominated by Greeks, Jews, & Italians. Dneiper & Bug River barges transported a lot of grain & lumber in late 19th & early 20th centuries, aided by newly built canals. Roads however were poor.

Majority of Poles in Right Bank Ukraine were nobles. They dominated courts, schools, & administration of Right Bank. They were not Russified & stayed Catholic, organizing dissident groups. Falling to 3.5% of population by 1897, they still owned 46% of private land in 1909.

Annoyed with Polish dominance of Right Bank Ukraine decades after Russian annexation of the region, Tsar’s education minister sponsored the “Little Russian” identity in Ukraine as a regional loyalty that was not exclusive to a Russian identity - unlike a Ukrainian identity.

Famous Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko preached Ukrainian identity as well as class equality. He was close to Brotherhood of Saint Cyril & Methodius, which was suppressed by Russia for promoting Ukrainian identity. They viewed Catherine the Great as the destroyer of Ukraine.

Galicia in 1849 was about half Polish & half Ukrainian, with Ukrainians more concentrated in the east & Poles in the west. Bukovina’s populated grew 5x 1775 to 1846.

Austrian rule in late 18th century Galicia identified non-Polish locals who called themselves Rusyny or Ruskyi. While “Ruskyi” was very close to Russian endonym “Russkiye”, Austrians decided to name them Ruthenians. Austrians sponsored some schools that taught in local language.

The name “Ukraine” meant “borderland”, and was used in Middle Ages to refer to Rus’ borderlands in the northwest towards the Baltic peoples and southeast towards the steppe peoples. East Slavic peoples in Ukraine didn’t give their home that definite name until 1917.

Intra-Polish class antagonisms were so extreme that Polish peasants massacred Polish nobles in Galicia in 1846 after the nobles declared a national and social revolution. The peasants had the sympathy of Austrian government.

During 1848 revolutions, Austrian governor encouraged Ukrainian peasants in Galicia to organize for their interests to counterbalance the Polish nobility. Austrians abolished serfdom, & Ukrainian representatives participated in elections. Poles denied existence of Ukrainians.

Rusyns of Transcarpathia aligned with Austria against Hungary within Hapsburg realms. Russophilia in Transcarpathia was acceptable due to Russia aiding Austria against Hungary in the 1848 revolution.

Polish nobility managed to keep Galicia administered by Hapsburg-aligned Poles from 1849-1914. Ukrainian schools were restricted, & Polish replaced German in secondary schools.

While Ukrainians in Austria-Hungary did participate in democratic structures, the Poles dominated economic & political life in Galicia. As result, Ukrainians saw their national & social struggles as the same, and as a continuation of the 17th century struggles with the Poles.

Ukrainian political leadership in Galicia in Austria-Hungary just before WWI viewed Russia as the greatest enemy of Ukraine.

Galicia & Bukovina changed hands between the Austro-Hungarians & the Russians in WWI several times. Russophile & Ukrainophile Ukrainians bitterly hated each other. 25k Russophilic Galicians fled with Russian army during its 1915 retreat & settled on the lower Don River.

Central Powers in WWI planned to carve out an independent 🇵🇱 & independent 🇺🇦 from defeated 🇷🇺 , but were not going to give up Galicia. 🇺🇦 pushed for an internal division of Galicia into 🇺🇦 & 🇵🇱 halves, & Hapsburgs tried buying them off with political appointments in 1917.

3 powers in Ukraine after Russian Revolution: Provisional Government, local soviets (worker & soldier councils), & the Central Rada. Central Rada was large, dominated by leftist groups, & sought to represent all residents of Ukraine.

During first part of Russian Revolution, Bolsheviks in Ukraine were small & divided into 3 groups based around Odessa, Kiev, & Kharkov. The Kharkov Bolshevik faction established the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic.

Unhappy with the unreliable & leftist Rada, the Central Powers installed nobleman Skoropadsky as new Hetman of Ukraine. He abolished the Rada, restored right to private property, and aligned upper classes with his rule.

Skoropadsky’s Hetmanate continued the Ukrainization policies of the Rada in education system, religion, and culture. Ukrainian language publications wouldn’t be as numerous under the USSR as they were under the Hetmanate until 1930.

West Ukrainian People’s Republic was based out of Galicia & led by Petrushevich & fought bitterly with Poland while making friends with White Russians. Relations with Petlyura’s Ukrainian People’s Republic were bad as Petlyura cooperated with the Poles.

Many Poles fled east into Ukraine during WWI. Polish nobles worked with Skoropadsky’s Hetmanate, but at a minimum 40% fled westwards to Poland after the fall of the Hetmanate due to anarchy, peasant rebellions, & communists 1919-1921.

The Germans living in Ukraine in the 1910s, many of them pacifist Mennonites, suffered the worst proportionally of all the groups living there. First they were deported by the Tsar, then massacred by anarchists.

West Ukrainian People’s Republic included Galicia, Transcarpathia, and Bukovina.

WUPR was legally united with UPR, but in practice was completely separate. Ukrainians lacked diplomatic status at Paris Peace Conference, so Poles outmanueved them on international stage. April 1919 Poles invaded WUPR with French backing & overran it by July.

Austro-Hungarian government surrendered authority in Bukovina to local Romanian & Ukrainian councils in November 1918. The Romanian council refused to share power, invited Romanian troops into Bukovina, & annexed the region.

Hungary claimed all territory of old kingdom. Minorities, including Rusyns of Transcarpathia, were unhappy about this. Rusyn diaspora in USA voted for Transcarpathia to join Czechoslovakia as autonomous region. Czechoslovaks thus conquered Transcarpathia from communist Hungary.

Soviet Ukraine was legally an ally of Soviet Russia 1920-1922, after which it became legally a federal entity under the USSR with other Soviet republics. Kharkov was made the capital as Kiev was deemed counterrevolutionary for hosting Petlyura’s dead Ukrainian People’s Republic.

3 communist parties in early 1920s Ukraine: the largely Russian Bolsheviks, the largely peasant & Ukrainian Borotbists who wanted independence & were same size as Bolsheviks, & the small Ukapists. Bolsheviks dissolved both the Borotbists & the Ukapists.

1923 USSR launched an indigenization program across the union. Ukrainians increased from 33 to 60% of Communist Party members in Ukraine by 1933. Ukrainians also became majority of urban population by 1939. Ukrainian language was used in government.

Soviet Ukraine’s education system - both for child & adult literacy - mostly used Ukrainian after 1923. In 1926 42% of ethnic Ukrainians were literate. Colleges were still mostly taught in Russian in 1920s, but use of Ukrainian language was increasing in them.

1920 Soviet Ukraine passed law that gave farmland to whoever worked it. Soviets used resultant conflicts to gain rural influence, but peasants were enraged by complex tax system & food requisitions. Starving, scores of peasant bands fought Bolshevik requisition groups into 1921.

800k to 2 million people starved to death in the famine in Ukraine 1921-23 according to Magocsi. Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine has 235k as a floor for the death toll, but says could have been more than a million. encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?li…

Collectivization was expanded dramatically in USSR in 1928. There were many protests to collectivization - peasants burned fields, slaughtered animals, & drove out bosses. 1932 internal passports were issued to deal with migration to cities.

There were only 71.5k kulaks in Soviet Ukraine. Most kulaks weren’t particularly prosperous, but widows and invalids who hired laborers for their farmland.

Memory of Wasyl Hryshko, a Communist activist sent to aid a collective farm in Ukraine, on the Holodomor. The Communists requisitioned too much food & less land was cultivated than before, so millions starved to death in early 1930s.

In 1930s the USSR reverted its Ukrainization policies & promoted the Russian language in Ukraine. Soviets derided the promoters of Ukrainization as Polish & German spies & wreckers.

Soviet 1920s indigenization program in Ukraine also gave Jews their own self-governing communities, Yiddish-language schools, and Yiddish-language cultural institutions. Most were shut down in the 1930s.

There were also Polish cultural institutions & schools in 1920s Soviet Ukraine. Poles were among the worst hit groups in Stalin’s purges, with perhaps a fifth arrested & a tenth executed (taking population growth from 1926 to 1938 into account).

Crimea was part of Soviet Russia rather than Soviet Ukraine in 1920s USSR. Tatars were only quarter of population, but used indigenization policy of USSR to retake lost land & make bureaucracy disproportionately Tatar.

Galicia was treated as a colony in interwar Poland. Industry remained undeveloped, while land was redistributed from large estates to peasants, Polish veterans were the main beneficiaries. Ukrainians remained very poor in Galicia.

Ukrainians in Galicia waged an insurgency against Poland 1919-1922. In 1923 Ukrainians realized they were beaten, & pursued 3 courses of action in Poland until WWII: cooperation, participation, & terrorism.

Interwar Poland continued to call Ukrainians “Rusyns” & promoted tribal identities & languages like Lemko.

Interwar Romania closed all Ukrainian schools in Bukovina & attempted to Romanianize all Ukrainians.

Rusyns in Transcarpathia were promised autonomy in interwar Czechoslovakia, but some of them were placed under Slovak rule & autonomy was delayed. Pro-Hungarian Catholic Rusyns & ethnic Hungarians wanted to rejoin Hungary. Rusyns participated in Czechoslovak democracy.

Czechoslovakia supported a Rusyn identity in Transcarpathia, but Ukrainian supporters became prominent. Hostility to Hungarian Catholic landholders drove some Rusyns to convert to Orthodoxy & adopt a Russian identity.

There was a bout of civil strife between Poles & Ukrainians in Galicia after the USSR took Galicia from Poland in 1939. Most of the 550k people deported from Galicia in 1940 were Poles, shifting demographics in Ukraine’s favor.

Soviets evacuated 3.8 million people in Ukraine to the east in 1941 after the German invasion, including 200k Germans on the Left Bank of the Dneiper River.

In Crimea in WWII, about as many Tatars joined the German military as served in the Red Army. Many Crimean Tatars cooperated with the German occupiers, inspiring great hatred towards them from their Russian & Ukrainian neighbors.

German district governor of Galicia in WWII was an Austrian aristocrat who ran a relatively less harsh occupation than others that kept Ukrainian institutions intact, winning the support of some Ukrainians for the Axis cause.

Ukraine lost 4.1 million civilians & 1.4 million soldiers in WWII. 2.2 million people in Ukraine had been enslaved in Germany. 19 million people were left homeless.

Russification of Ukraine continued in 1950s - 25% of schools were taught in Russian. Soviet ideology emphasized shared origins of Russians, Ukrainians, & Belarusians.

Crimean Tatars were deported from Crimea for collaborating with the Germans in WWII. At 93% Slavic, the peninsula was transferred from Soviet Russia to Soviet Ukraine in 1954.

Hrushyov Thaw in 1950s & 1960s allowed an organic revival of Ukrainian culture at the intellectual level.

Hrushyov abolished some central Soviet institutions & pushed economic decentralization. Ukraine gained control of most industry in Ukraine from USSR government. Decentralization made regional party bosses powerful. Brezhnev & Ukrainian President Kuchma came from party in Dnipro.

Brezhnev era saw Russian language promoted more across USSR. Ideas were floated to do away with the republics & amalgamate everyone into one Soviet people. Repression of nationalist thinkers was increased.

While the fraction of Ukrainians speaking Ukrainian only slightly declined from 1950s through 1980s, fewer than half of elementary schools and barely a quarter of published books were in Ukrainian in 1980s.

Gorbachyov’s openness campaign in 1980s allowed a revival of Ukrainian culture & history. In 1989 Ukrainian was declared the state language of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s post-Soviet constitution made it unitary rather than federal state, with president wielding extensive powers. Crimea voted to be autonomous republic in 1991 & called for rejoining Russia in 1994. Ukraine abolished Crimea’s parliament & placed parts under direct control.

The Rusyns in Transcarpathia voted for autonomy within Ukraine in 1991. More ominously, some groups in the Donbass called for autonomy as well, though at the time of this books’s publication they were considered irrelevant.

Russian language media became even more dominant in Ukraine in the 1990s, while education system became mostly Ukrainian.