Russia - Ukraine : A Brief Discussion on Shared History

Russia - Ukraine : A Brief Discussion on Shared History

Russian invasion of Ukraine started on 24 February 2022, is the biggest confrontation between the two sides since 2014 when Crimea was annexed by Russia. Europe have not witnessed any conflict of this scale since World War II.

Russia and Ukraine share a common history which dates back to 9^th or 10^th century AD. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union for over seven decades. Although the two share the same historical and cultural roots, both the countries have developed different taste in geo-politics and culture over the course of time.

9th-19th century

Kyivan- Rus:

Russia, Ukraine and Belarus share a common ancestry of Kyivan- Rus. This kingdom was founded in the 800s by a group of Vikings, the Varangians. These where Slavic people who came from Northern Europe. The Kyivan- Rus Kingdom spanned the area where modern day Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are situated with Kyiv as the capital of the kingdom.

Fig: Kyivan-Rus Kingdom

In 1240 the Kyivan- Rus Kingdom was conquered by Mongol armies and the Kingdom split up. Moscow became the capital of the principality of Muscovy and latter of the Russian Empire.

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth:

In the year 1569 Kiev became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The commonwealth was composed of two states that is the kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with Kiev as the capital city of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This commonwealth acted as a buffer zone between two major kingdoms: Kingdom of Sweden and Tsardom of Russia.

Fig: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Imperial Russia the annexation of Ukraine:

Empress Catherine the great of Russia annexed Ukraine into the Imperial Russia in the year 1783. This event was largely a bloodless event as there were very little resistance from the ethnic Ukrainians. With this annexation Russian Empire expanded to the Balkans and the Black Sea region.

 

20^th Century

Change in Demography of Ukraine:

In order to make the Ukrainian region more loyal to the Russian Empire, the Russian Empire began populating the region with ethnic Russians. This process continued in the Soviet period, as a result the Russian population in the Ukrainian region increased from 3.5 million in 1917 to approximately 34 million in the year 1989.

Ukrainian People's Republic:

With the vision of establishing an independent Ukrainian state, the Ukrainian Central Rada in the year of 1917 -1918 adopted four edicts. On November 2, 1917 the Central Rada issued the "Declaration of Independence of Ukraine" and few months later on January 6, 1918 established the Ukrainian People's Republic, a sovereign Ukrainian state.

 

Soviet Era

Creation of Soviet Union:

In the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks dethroned Czar Nicholas II, which ended the centuries of Romanov rule. The Bolsheviks then established a socialist state. During same period the Bolsheviks of Ukraine defeated the government in Kyiv in the Soviet-Ukrainian war (1917-1921) and founded Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR).

In the year 1922, Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) was created by a treaty between Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Transcaucasia (modern Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia).In the later days more countries joined USSR and at its peak USSR contained 15 countries.

Fig: Map of USSR

Holodomor Famine:

Under Soviet Union, Ukraine SSR became heavily industrialised. Large number of factories were built and the agricultural sector became modernised. This rapid industrialisation came at a great price. The agrarian society of Ukraine was destroyed. A man-made famine in the years 1932- 1933 claimed about 3.5 million lives.

Crimean Peninsula Transferred to Ukraine:

Historically neither Russians nor Ukrainian were in majority in Crimea. Crimea became an autonomous republic within Russia in 1921. During WW II, Crimea was captured by Nazi Germany in 1941. The Red Army took back Crimea in 1944 and Stalin ordered deportation of the Crimean Tatars. As a result, Crimea became Russian ethnicity major region.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visioned for politically unified Soviet Union. To fulfill the vision of unified Soviet Union and to end the decade old dispute between Russia and Ukraine over the claim of Crimea, he handed over Crimea to Ukraine SSR.

 

Dissolution of USSR:

The dissolution of USSR started in the late 1980s when agitation started growing in various constituent republics. Communist influence over the Eastern Europe started declining significantly in early 1990s following the fall of Berlin Wall in November, 1989. As a result Soviet President Gorbachev started losing control over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, the Russian and Ukrainian democratic activists started working together to establish democratic values, such as freedom of speech and free election etc. Russian President Boris Yeltsin also sought for an independent Russia. From the beginning of 1990s massive protests started  taking place in support of Ukrainian independence. In January, 1990, in support of Ukrainian independence nearly 300,000 people formed a human chain which stretched over 600 km from Lviv to Kyiv. On August, 1991, the hard-liner Communist Party members placed Gorbachev under house arrest and the coup leaders declared a state of emergency. The military, which was going to support the coup, was met by a human chain of protestors in Moscow. They were unwilling to fire their own people, as a result the coup failed.

Gorbachev then travelled to Minsk to meet with the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine and decided the terms to break away from USSR.

     

The Baltic States of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia were the first states to declare their Independence. On December, 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the USSR disintegrated.