A historical perspective of my new homeland

Ukraine – A historical perspective
So what do we really know about Ukraine? Before I left I did not know much, which was an exciting factor of this venture. Chernobyl, the Soviet purges, and Ukrainian Cossacks were about all I could tell you about. So let’s review together.

First, “The” Ukraine – Everybody says this and I’m not quite sure why. I said it before I came here, but I urge you to drop the “the”. It makes Ukraine sound more like a region of Russian rather than a sovereign nation.

The city of Kyiv is older than Moscow and the Kyivan Rus civilization, formed over 1,000 years ago, is the heart of East Slavic culture. In the ninth century, the Scandinavian Prince Oleg captured Kyiv, killings its leaders and proclaimed the region to be the land of the Rus, whose name later contributed to the moniker Russia. They built fortresses on the Dnipro River (Dnieper) to protect invasions from invading nomads. Thus, the seeds were sown for a grand civilization. Kyiv later served as a uniting center for the previously disconnecting Slavic tribes to band together to protect their land. Just before the turn of the eleventh century, Christianity was introduced to improve ties with the Byzantine Empire as well as older Western nations. Prince Vladimir heaved the pagan icons into the Dnipro and then inhabitants were baptized in the freezing river water.

Most of the developed regions of Kyiv were destroyed during the Mongol invasions of the twelfth century, led by the grandson of Genghis Khan, allowing the Tartars to rule for almost an entire century. Kyivan Rus was subsequently divided into three regions, Galicia, Volynia, and Muscovy – later Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. The Mongols assimilated with the Rus in the lands of modern Ukraine, which were tested by additional invasions by Turks, Poles, and Lithuanians in the years to come. The city of Kyiv received slight autonomy by the Lithuanian throne, lasting almost four hundred years. The 16th century found the rise of the Zaporozhyan Cossacks, a group whose origins can be traced to the escaped Ukrainian serf class who later formed the center of military and political organization of Ukraine to strike at the heart of the oppressive feudal system. Cossack is a Turkish word which means “free man” and it is one of many national symbols today.

The Cossacks developed the independent state of Zaporizhya Sich, an interesting mix of democratic ideals and militaristic influence. They were known for their unmatchable skills in horsemanship and their physical appearance, easily described as a long moustache, a shaved head with a single lock of hair, and often an earring. In attempt to receive assistance against Polish Expansionism, one of the Cossack leaders signed a treaty in the 17th Century with Russia, who instead incorporated Ukraine into its already vast empire. The Cossacks later even elicited the help of Sweden to help fight off Peter the Great, though the Swedish armies were crushed and the Cossack land soon become a voiceless province within Russia.

Anti-imperial sentiment grew in the mid 19th Century with the works of poet Taras Schevchenko, whose face can be seen in monuments in almost every school and on statues in most towns in Ukraine. The amount of pride and honor toward Schevchenko is truly unmatched and it is often said that that one can find a copy of his text Kobzar next to the Bible in every home. His words were quoted in Ukrainian by Bill Clinton during a trip to Ukraine; “Fight and you shall win.” Taras’ punishment for writing such provoking words included forced labor in Siberia and later prohibition from ever returning to Ukraine. To counter the roused Ukrainians, Tsarist Russia banned not only his writings, but also the use of the Ukrainian language, which is the official language of Ukraine today. “There is something appealing about a nation whose greatest hero is a poet and a painter,” stated Linda Hodges about the lionized Schevchenko.

Following the Bolshevik Revolution and abdication of the Russian throne by Nicholas II and later execution of the Romanov Dynasty, Ukraine failed to grasp the reigns of its own independence, switching regimes nearly eighteen times in three years. One of the most difficult concepts for Americans to understand about Ukrainian history, and Central and Eastern Europe history for that matter, is the frequent acquisition of land leading to drawing and redrawing of borders, especially in the North and West of Ukraine.

A popular joke among Ukrainians living in the Carpathians involves an old man who declares “I was born in the Hapsburg Empire, went to school in Czechoslovakia, served in the Hungarian army, and was confined to the gulag prisons in the Soviet Union, and now live in Independent Ukraine.” “Wow, you sure have traveled a lot,” says another man, to which the old man responds with, “Oh no, I have never left my village.”

After two centuries of domination, Ukraine received another brief taste of freedom in 1918 following the Great War (WWI) until 1922 when the government was forced to cede to the Soviet Union, again incorporating the Eastern Ukrainian lands while Poland annexed the West.

The purges in the Soviet Union started by Lenin were carried on with fervor in the 1930s with the rule of Stalin, and though no person was safe from condemnation as a party traitor and consequent execution or forced labor in the gulags, Ukrainians and Cossacks were ruthlessly targeted due to their rebellious history. The Cossacks cherished freedom and independence, rising from the ashes of the feudal system to obtain their own farmable land, and the grain and crops harvested were a symbol of their independence. This greatly complicated the collectivization of land in the 1930s, causing Stalin to increase the grain quota exported from Ukraine to the Soviet Union, causing a massive shortage of food. Stalin’s response was to organize mass roadblocks to punish the Cossacks for their resistance and any attempt to obtain crops for personal consumption was punishable by execution. The exact number of deaths during the Soviet constructed famine is uncertain but most historians conclude an estimated seven million people died in only fifteen months, with 25,000 dying every day and a third of the total number of casualties being children. Like many other things, discussing the famine during the reign of the Soviet Union was a crime and Ukraine did not formally acknowledge the event until 1998 with the National Day of Remembrance of the Famine Victims, which falls on the fourth Saturday of November.

After the invasion of Nazi Germany, Ukraine suffered one of the highest losses in population percentages during the war (Russia lost over twenty million and China nearly fifteen million during WWII – The Great Patriotic War). Eight million Ukrainians perished during the war, including nearly 1.5 million Jews. Initially, the Nazis were met with cheers; Ukrainians believed the Germans to be their liberators, yet they soon realized their error. Sadly, many Ukrainians served as guards in various camps including Treblinka. Sobibor, and Belzic. However, anti-fascist uprisings and guerilla attacks forced the Germans to ponder why the Ukrainians fought so voraciously to protect their dictator. “They would learn the hard way a lesson that all too many aggressors overlook: that a people will fight not for their dictators, but for their homes and families.”

The greatest atrocity took place in a ravine outside of Kyiv named Baby Yar where more than 30,000 Jews were murdered by German SS in only two days, September 29th and 30th, 1941 and the later addition of 70,000 more bodies to the mass grave turned Baby Yar into the symbol of the Jewish Holocaust in Ukraine. A famous Ukrainian film director once stated, “The fate of humankind is decided in the Ukrainian fields and villages, in fire and flame, on our misfortune. So ill-fated is our land. So miserable is our lot.” Much like the unfortunate position of Poland sandwiched between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s geography has weaved tragedy in the fabric of its history.

Mass imprisoning of Ukrainians and Ukrainian Jews came in the 1950s before the death of Stalin in 1953 and later in the following decades, which were not rectified until the release of many prisoners as late as the 1980s.

The Chernobyl disaster on April 26th, 1986 was a manifestation of the crumbling Soviet Union, officially causing the deaths of over ten thousand, with millions since suffering from the fallout, more than a million being children. Lina Kostenko, a Ukrainian poet, stated “a radiation meter was no good for measuring the devastation of the soul.” Denying the scale of the cataclysmic event, the Soviet Union faced a rebirth of Ukrainian insurgency, which led to the declaration of independence on August 24th, 1991. Scrambling to forge a new government in the newly obtained wave of freedom, the first years were plagued with crime, abuse of administrative power, and inflation.


The Orange Revolution in 2004 brought a peaceful rally of Ukrainians to Independence Square to support of Victor Yushenko, the current president of Ukraine, to oppose the rigged election that declared the then Prime Minister Yanukovych to be the winner of the presidential election. Ukraine is now a republic that blends presidential and parliamentary governments.

Additional Information
-Ukraine is comprised of twenty four oblasts, and the Autonomous Region of Crimea in the South.
-Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe after Russia.
-The population is roughly 46,490,400 people (fifth largest in Europe).
-Ukraine borders Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova.
-Orthodox Christianity is the prevailing religion with Catholics predominantly residing in the West and Muslim populations in the South.
- Ukraine is almost at a 99% literacy rate
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Ukraine is one of Europe’s largest energy consumers in Europe guzzling twice as much unrenewable energy sources as Germany, though I think it not fair to compare a teenager country to such a developed, profitable nation as Germany. In addition, eleven new nuclear power plants are currently set to be built within the next twenty years.

Cultural Observations
People would be sorely mistaken to simply lump Ukrainian culture with that of its big brother Slavic Russia and simply being east doesn’t mean the people are any less Ukrainian. I have observed an interesting dichotomy in the pride of my host family out in Lugansk Oblast that includes pride for their Russian heritage yet their dedication to their homeland Ukraine. Ukrainian is heavily spoken though I am only fifty kilometers from Russia and Serjic, a mix of the two languages can be heard just about anywhere in my town. However, I cannot begin to fathom the difference in culture and lifestyle between villages in the East and West. The East is known as being as the industrial center due to Soviet influence, and cities including Lugansk, Donetsk, and Dnipropetrovsk are influential mining centers, often referred to as the Donbas region.


I apologize if this read like a term paper, but once I started writing I got back into the swing of college history papers. I hope you enjoyed reading and learned something new. For my next updatel, which will be a while don’t worry, I’ll try to focus on where I left with culture.

For further reading:
“Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust” Dolot, Miron. 1987
“”The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation” Wilson, Andrew.
“Ukrainian’s Forbidden History” Graham Smith and Rob Perks
For Fiction-
“Everything is Illuminated” - I think I’m the only PCV here who HASN’T read this book.

If anyone has any questions or topics they’d like to hear about just send me an e-mail or respond and I will try my hardest to answer. Also, if you read the articles I sent about the former country director of Peace Corps Cameroon or the man who circumnavigated the world with only manpower, I’d love to hear your thoughts and reactions.

Best wishes and let me know how you and all your loved ones are if and when you get the chance.

“True glory consists of doing what deserves to be written and writing was deserves to be read.”-
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” – Thomas Paine
“May the fire in my eyes light the way for me.” – E.Town Concrete


Keith