Ukrainian American Society of Texas

    Home | About Us | Calendar | Officers | Membership | Zorya | Photo Gallery | Community Board | Newsletters

History of Ukraine

A vast territory of 232,000 square miles (about the size of France), Ukraine is bordered by the Black Sea on the south, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania on the west and southwest, and by Byelorussia and Russia on the north and northeast.

The topography of Ukraine consists primarily of vast plains and plateaus. The highest elevation occurs in the Carpathian Mountain range in Western Ukraine.

While Ukraine, often called the "breadbasket of Europe", is known for its agricultural (especially wheat) production, it is also rich in other natural resources such as coal, iron, natural gas, manganese, titanium, mercury, magnesium, and other metals. 13.6% of the world's iron reserves, 25-30% of the world's manganese ore, and 8% of the world mercury are found in Ukraine.

The longest and most important river in Ukraine is the Dnipro, the third largest river in Europe. Other major rivers include the Dniester, the Prut, the Donetske, and the Boh.

According to the 1990 census, the population of Ukraine is 52 million people. About 75% of the population is ethnic Ukrainian with Russian, Jewish, and Polish minorities. In addition, there are about 7 million Ukrainians in other nations of the former Soviet Union and about 2.5 million Ukrainians living in the West primarily in the United States, Canada, and South America. 

The Kozaks still continued to struggle for an independent Ukraine and, in the early 18th century, joined with the Swedes in an ill-fated war with Russia. With the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, most of Ukraine was incorporated into the Russian Empire with the exception of Western Ukraine which was absorbed by the Austrian Empire.

During the nineteenth century, the Ukrainian national movement in the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary (Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia) stimulated a Ukrainian cultural and political revival. The idea of Ukrainian nationhood began a phenomenal revival. Under the intluence of the Romantic and Liberal ideas which were penetrating the Russian Empire, young Ukrainians began to show a great deal of interest in the history and traditions of their people. Out of their numbers emerged the intellectuals, writers, artists, and teachers who led the Ukrainian national movement throughout the 19th century. The most outstanding of these was the ex-serf, Taras Shevchenko, who became a poet, playwright, painter, social critic, and patriot, and exercised an immense intluence on his contemporaries in the development of a Ukrainian national consciousness.

With the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Ukrainians were presented with a new opportunity. In April 1917, a National Ukrainian Assembly met in Kiev, and in November, it proclaimed the establishment of the Ukrainian People's Republic to be federated with the other republics in Russia. When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia and formed a rival Ukrainian, communist government, the National Assembly, meeting in Kiev on January 22, 1918, proclaimed the independence of Ukraine.

As the Austrian Empire disintegrated, Western Ukrainians, on November 1, 1918, proclaimed the independent Republic of Western Ukraine. In January 1919, a union was established between Western and Eastern Ukraine. Immediately the new government was besieged by the Red and White Russian forces as well as Polish and German forces. By the early 1920's the communists finally took over Eastern Ukraine creating the Ukrainian S.S.R. and the Poles occupied most of Western Ukraine.

After a short period of concessions to Ukrainian sentiments, the communists persecuted Ukrainian patriots, culminating in 1933, when Stalin engineered a famine which caused the death of seven to ten million Ukrainian men, women, and children. While conditions in Western Ukraine were not as severe, Ukrainians were denied the autonomy that the Polish government had agreed to in the post-World War I settlements and were excluded from all administrative positions.

With the signing of the "Non-Aggression Pact", in September 1939, German troops invaded Poland from the west and the Red Army entered Poland from the east. In the process, Polish-occupied Ukraine fell under Soviet occupation. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Ukrainians were once again presented with an opportunity for independence. In June of that year, shortly before the German troops occupied Lviv, the capital of Western Ukraine, Ukrainian Nationalists there proclaimed the restoration of the Ukrainian state. The Germans arrested the Nationalist leaders, turned Ukraine into a German colony, and deported a million Ukrainians to work in German war industries.

As the Second World War was coming to a close, Ukraine once again found itself occupied by Soviet troops. Most of Western Ukraine was incorporated into the Ukrainian S.S.R.. Organized underground resistance to communist rule continued into the 1950's.

Despite almost seventy years of Soviet Russian domination of Ukraine, nationalistic feeling and the yearning for freedom and independence were not extinguished in Ukraine. In the sixties, again in the seventies, and most recently, many Ukrainians, especially young people, have risked imprisonment and even their lives to oppose Russian domination of Ukraine and the russification programs of the Kremlin. The Ukrainian Helsinki Monitoring Group was one of the strongest human rights organizations in the Soviet Union despite the fact that all its members have spent time in Soviet prisons, asylums, and concentration camps.

(Prepared by the Washington Office of The Ukrainia)