History of Ukraine as a state. When Ukraine was formed as a separate state

The history of Ukraine begins in the 10th century BC, with the settlement of the Cimmerians. However, we will concentrate on the origins of Kievan Rus.

Kievan Rus was superior modern Ukraine territorially and covered the entire Great Russian Plain. It was formed as a centralized state entity in 882. Developed agriculture and the development of crafts made the Kiev state rich. The Kyiv princes pursued a policy aimed at strengthening their authority and expanding trade to the west. In order to achieve success, it was necessary to abandon paganism. Prince Vladimir Yaroslavovich decided to convert to Christianity in 988. In 988, the residents of Kyiv were baptized in the waters of the Dnieper.

In 1051, the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery (Lavra) was founded in Kyiv. From this time on, the period of the establishment of Christianity began, which continued until the expulsion of the Mongol-Tatars.

In 1239-1240 Batu Khan captured most territory of Kievan Rus. Kyiv was destroyed in 1240 and lost its importance with the transfer of the capital to Suzdal.

In the 14th century, the Right Bank part of Ukraine came under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

In the 15th century, the Crimean Khanate was formed in the southern territories, including Crimea. The next, 16th century, brought a change in the situation. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was conquered by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Zaporozhye Sich was formed on the Dnieper.
In 1648 it began liberation war with Poland under the leadership of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky. The war ended with the Pereyaslovskaya Rada in 1654 and the annexation of Ukraine to the Russian Empire.

In 1667, Poland was forced to confirm the entry of Left-Bank Ukraine into the Russian Empire during the Andrusovo truce with Russia. In 1707, the army of the Swedish king Charles XII invaded the territory of Ukraine. In 1709, the Swedes were defeated in the Battle of Poltava. In the same year, Hetman Mazepa made an attempt to remove Ukraine from Russian rule.

In 1772, Russian troops liquidated the Zaporozhye Sich. After the war with Turkey, in 1783 the Crimean Peninsula went to Russia. In 1793-1795 Right Bank Ukraine and Volyn went to Russia after the liquidation of Poland as an independent state.

After the October 1917 revolution in Petrograd, Ukraine declared independence and formed the government of the Central Rada. The first president of Ukraine was the scientist-historian Mikhail Grushevsky.

After the civil war of 1917-1920, the Western Ukrainian lands went to Poland, and in 1922 the Ukrainian SSR was formed, which became part of the USSR.

In 1939-1940 According to the Molotov-Ribbentrop secret protocol, Western Ukraine and Northern Bukovina were annexed to the USSR. In 1945, the Transcarpathian region was included in the USSR. Since 1945, the Ukrainian USSR has had a permanent representative at the UN.

In 1954, the Crimean region was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR with the alienation of eastern territories equal to the territory of Crimea from the latter. The transfer act was signed by G. Malenkov and S. Voroshilov.

In April 1986, a man-made disaster occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The city of Pripyat ceased to exist.

On August 24, 1991, a referendum was held on declaring the independence of Ukraine within the USSR. In December 1991, at a meeting in Belovezhskaya Pushcha it was decided to refuse to sign a new Union Treaty. The USSR collapsed, and Ukraine gained full independence.

The first president of the new Independent Ukraine was L.M. Kravchuk.

Inspired by statements by representatives of the Right Sector that the main enemy of Ukraine is Russia, and that Ukrainians must liberate their “ancestral lands” from Muscovites, right up to Voronezh and Rostov.

More than 1000 years ago. Ancient Rus'.

The first clearly recorded East Slavic state formation. Leading centers: Novgorod, Kyiv, Polotsk, Smolensk, Rostov, Chernigov, Ryazan, etc. Colonization in several directions. Active migration to the northern regions, away from the dangerous Steppe. Gradual division into principalities, the borders of which are in no way connected with modern borders. For example, Chernigovskoe was so extended that it was simultaneously located on the territory of the present Kyiv region and on the territory of the present Moscow region. A simple and understandable hint of how one should live and where one’s historical roots are...

Culturally, individual regions differ very little. Naturally, in Novgorod there are certain traditions and dialects that are not close to the people of Ryazan, and in Rostov you can see something that is not very characteristic of Chernigov. But these are trifles, and it is simply impossible to talk about division into some “separate nations”. This is all the same large and diverse Russian Land. All its residents consider themselves equally Russian.

Highlight: Adoption of Christianity in the late 900s. The fact that Christianity came to Rus' in the form of the Eastern tradition predetermined the development of a common national culture. If in the West, with the adoption of Christianity, the Latin unification of religion, culture and thought reigned for hundreds of years, then Orthodox Christianity fully allowed services and books in national languages. Therefore, everything cultural development went along original paths, through the synthesis of the uniquely Russian and the general Christian.

800-600 years ago. First break.

The Mongol invasion in the 13th century did not just cause enormous damage to most Russian lands. It also marked the beginning of the separation of North and South. The defeated and scattered principalities tried to rise one by one, each in their own way. In the north, Moscow and Tver are gradually gaining strength; in the South-West, the Galicia-Volyn lands have been acting as “gatherers” for some time. It is not known how the matter would have ended, but here a third player also appears - the state of Lithuania.

Lithuania is quickly rising and crushing many Russian principalities. In the 1320s, Gediminas captured Kyiv. The next century of the southern Russian lands will be marked by honorable secondary everything Russian. Namely "honorable". At least at first. Orthodoxy will be the most widespread religion for a long time, and the Russian elite will still occupy a prominent place in this largest Eastern European state for a long time. But then the situation starts to get worse...

By the way, today's nationalist publicists are very fond of inventing strange stories on the topic that “only Ukraine preserved the Slavs, and only the descendants of the Asian conquerors remained in Russia.” It’s strange to listen to such stories simply because the consequences Tatar invasions were approximately the same for everyone. And moreover, the Horde did not reach many northern Russian regions at all, not to mention any “mixing” with the indigenous population. Well, modern genetic research leaves no stone unturned from stupid ideological fantasies.

500-300 years ago. Genocide and awakening.

In 1380, the strengthened Northern Rus' gathered forces and independently clashed with the Tatar horde, taking the first serious step towards complete independence. Five years later, the Lithuanian state signed the so-called “Union of Krevo” with Poland, taking the first step towards losing its unique cultural identity. The provisions of the Krevo Agreement required the propagation of Catholicism and the introduction of the Latin alphabet. Of course, the Russian elite was not happy. But I couldn’t do anything.

Further rapprochement between Poland and Lithuania led in 1569 to the complete unification of these countries into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. By that time, the position of the Russian residents was already extremely unenviable. And every year it got worse and worse. The scale of social and cultural-religious persecution to which Russian-speaking residents of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were subjected is difficult to imagine today. Most of those who were eminent and rich tried to “polish” as quickly as possible so as not to be an object of humiliation and a target for their dashing fellow citizens. And the fate of the lower classes was completely unenviable. Killing a couple of peasants of your unloved neighbor along the way if you return home in a bad mood is practically the norm for a Polish gentleman of the 17th century.

There is no need to go far - remember how the rebellious Bogdan Khmelnitsky appeared. A Polish nobleman attacked his farm, plundered everything, killed his son and took his wife away. Bogdan went to the king to complain, but in response he received only surprise, “why didn’t he sort out the problems himself, since the saber was hanging at his side?”, and was even thrown behind bars. Obviously, the personal stories of ordinary participants in the Uprising were not much more pleasant than this... In general, in 1648 it exploded once again, and in full force. The people have really been driven to the brink - where are modern “revolutionaries” with their naive discontent...

Khmelnitsky's uprising was a success. De facto, as of the mid-17th century, we see for the first time how the territories of several former southern Russian principalities became independent from the power of foreign peoples, for the first time in recent centuries. De jure, Khmelnitsky immediately asked to become a citizen of the Moscow Tsar - under the wing of the only Russian force that existed at that time. And he successfully received this citizenship in 1654. If he had not received it, Poland would have suppressed the most successful of the Cossack uprisings, and would have completely exterminated the remnants of the Russian population. For the successes of the rebels lasted only for the first time, and the rage of the Poles grew every year...

What is especially important here?

1. Former Russian principalities united with the former Russian principalities. However, many cultural differences have already accumulated over several centuries of demarcation. By the way, this was precisely one of the reasons for Nikon’s religious reform, which led to a schism. Moscow wanted to reduce the misunderstanding between the two branches of the Russian people, and made serious efforts and sacrifices for this.

2. Residents of these territories could speak with Muscovites without translators, and in the same way considered themselves Russians (Rusyns). The Polish-Lithuanian concept of “outskirts” was used along with the book “Little Russia” to designate the territory, but people did not call themselves “Ukrainians”. This word was introduced into circulation by the ideologists of the Polonized elite after the Khmelnitsky Uprising, and for a long time did not find a response among ordinary people.

3. The composition of the new South Russian elite was very diverse. Here are the old Polished Russian nobles, here are the Cossacks, who were a complex mixture in which Russian, Tatar-Turkish, and other roots were intertwined. In the Zaporozhye Sich you could meet either a Scotsman or a Caucasian. Accordingly, everyone looked in his own direction, and nothing good could await the land that found itself under the rule of such a motley company.

4. The ordinary population of the Kiev and Chernigov regions greeted the news of reunification with the Russian Kingdom with absolute delight. This is recognized by almost all contemporaries, regardless of nationality and beliefs.

The last three hundred years. The emergence of "Ukraine".

Moscow granted the Little Russian lands broad autonomy. And as a result, the second half of the 17th century was marked by an endless fratricidal war between Cossack leaders. The hetmans fought one another, betrayed their oath, marched first to Moscow, then to Warsaw, then to Istanbul. They brought the wrath of monarchs on each other, and brought Tatar and Turkish armies against their own people. It was a fun time. True freedom, which almost no one interfered with. Of course, for the common people dying under the Tatar and Turkish sabers, such freedom of leaders I didn't like it. But which Ukrainian leader is interested in the opinions of ordinary people, even now?

Of course, sometimes you could get into trouble. For example, the famous Hetman Doroshenko cheated so many times and became the culprit of the death of so many people that they were ready to kill him in almost all the nearby capitals. And he rushed to Moscow, for the Russian Tsar was the most humane of the surrounding monarchs. Here he was exiled... as a governor to Vyatka. And they punished... with a rich estate near Moscow. By the way, the year before last I passed this estate and the mausoleum of the glorious hetman, decorated with wreaths and yellow-black ribbons.

As a result, the Russian monarchs got tired of all this. In the 18th century, autonomy was eliminated, and Ukraine became a full-fledged part of the country, without any robber intermediaries. Following this, the constant Crimean Tatar threat was eliminated. In place of the wild steppes starting south of Ukraine, new regions were created, inhabited by the Russian people.

On the map of the imperial provinces it is very clear where the conditional ends Little Russian region- these are Volyn, Podolsk, Kiev and Poltava provinces. And also, a significant part of Chernigov. And nothing more. The Kharkov province is already Slobozhanshchina, an intermediate region with a mixed population, which became part of the Moscow state much earlier. The more southern provinces are Novorossiya, settled after the victories over the Crimea, and have nothing to do with the former Hetmanate:

But no one could even imagine that some kind of “independent country of Ukraine” would be carved out along the borders of these provinces in the future. That the old Russian territories that were under Polish rule will be shoved into the same zone with the Novorossiysk steppe regions and separated from the rest of Russia. That the innocently playful “cultural Ukrainianism,” which was popular in Russia and Austria-Hungary in the nineteenth century, and most often followed a single pan-Slavic channel, would soon fall on the fertile soil of the First World War and the Civil War, and turn into radical Ukrainian nationalism.

Already by the beginning of World War II, one could safely say that “Ukraine” had finally come to fruition.
But how? Whereby?

In fact, there was a whole complex of factors:

1. For many centuries in a row, Southern Rus' was part of various states. In the process of the influence of foreign cultures and the reaction of national resistance, new features arose that did not exist in the more independent Northern Rus'. The return of the southern regions to the unified Russian state occurred gradually. Some were already part of the united Russian people, some were just getting used to their new neighbors, and some were still “foreigners.” Thanks to all this, the result is a complex layer cake in which people of markedly different cultures and beliefs are mixed.

2. At the time of the entry of Left Bank Ukraine into the Muscovite kingdom, linguistic differences did not make it difficult for contemporaries. But the territories that became part of Russia later had already experienced more significant foreign pressure (in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, after the loss of the Left Bank, a harsh campaign was launched against the remnants of Russian culture).

As a result, the conditionally averaged “Little Russian dialect” by the beginning of the twentieth century began to differ even more from Russian than two hundred years before. If in 1654 the southern Russian lands had become part of the Moscow kingdom entirely, then three hundred years later our differences would have been no higher than the differences between Burgundy and Provence. The “gradual nature of reunification” and the increasing foreign pressure on the “laggards” also played a certain role.

3. In the intellectual circles of the 19th century, for the first time, the idea was seriously raised that the “Little Russian branch” of the united Russian people could be considered practically a separate Slavic nationality. Ordinary residents of the Kiev region were of little interest in this idea. But the tsarist government did not like it at all because of its obvious hint of possible separatism - and the rights of the Ukrainian language were limited. Moreover, in Austria-Hungary (which included Galicia) during the preparation for the First World War, and during the war itself, this idea was adopted as an ideological weapon.

True, such a weapon was a double-edged sword. For the “Austrian Little Russians” showed even greater interest in separatist sentiments, since they were part of a completely alien country. But in any case, Austria-Hungary acted much more intelligently than Russia, managing to retain the glory of “an island of cultural Ukrainianness” for its Galicia. And the tsarist government strongly pressed its cultural Ukrainians. And this naturally contributed to the emergence of protest-political Ukrainians. Which fit well with the fashionable socialist-revolutionary sentiments.

4. After the revolutions of 1917, the chaos of civil war begins in the vast expanse from the Don to the Dniester. Simultaneously act different forces, various “governments” function in parallel. Reds, whites, anarchists... In this whirlwind, the Little Russian population for the first time tried a piece of “national independence”, including according to Galician recipes. This didn't last long. But there were those who liked it. Those who yesterday were still small residents of provincial provinces, and suddenly overnight became the “elite” of a self-made country.

5. Ukraine is part of the USSR in almost its modern form. With Donbass and Novorossiya, stuck together on unclear grounds. After the establishment of Soviet power, in line with the general policy of “indigenization,” the forced Ukrainization of the population began. People who have not passed the Ukrainian language exam are not allowed to work in government positions. Publishing and teaching activities in Russian are strictly limited. Even in the thoroughly Russian Odessa, children are taught in Ukrainian. Criminal liability has been introduced for negligent managers for non-compliance with new requirements.

This bacchanalia stops only in the thirties, and the opposite extreme begins: newly nurtured figures of Ukrainian culture are branded “bourgeois nationalists” and subjected to repression. And this again leads to the development of underground political Ukrainians... That's it. The events of 1991 are already predetermined. Moreover, it adds fuel to the fire German occupation in the forties. Hitler, knowing full well that Russians are strong in unity (just like the Germans), tried to convince the residents of Ukraine as much as possible of their uniqueness and difference from Muscovites. And it turned out well, fortunately some of the soil from representatives of Ukrainian nationalism was already ready.

That's all. It took very little time to transform the ancient Russian region, in which an anti-Polish rebellion broke out three centuries ago, into a huge state with a heterogeneous population...

What useful conclusions can be drawn from this whole story?

Firstly. You cannot leave parts of your people on foreign territory. They will experience foreign influence, and it will be extremely difficult to return them (culturally speaking). Moreover, they may become convinced that they have become a completely separate people, and will begin to assert their young and frail national feeling through hatred of their former brothers.

Secondly. You cannot suppress national feeling if it has already appeared and captured a significant part of the population. But there is no need to purposefully support it with your brothers, friends and neighbors. Their feelings are their business. And even more so, you cannot alternate struggle with support, as was done in the 20-30s of the 20th century. This, I apologize, is some kind of “Yanukovych tactics” - “attacked-surrendered-attacked-surrendered”. Concessions mixed with repression do not bring any good.

Thirdly. We are not to blame for anything, and we don’t owe anyone anything. We saved Southern Rus' in the 17th century from final Polishization and destruction, fulfilled its requests to become part of a single Russian state and granted it broad autonomy. In response, we received betrayals from the hetmans, rivers of blood and a sea of ​​problems. We limited the rights of the Ukrainian language for several decades in the 19th century. However, in the 20th century, vast Russian territories from Odessa to Donbass were actually “gifted” to the newly created Ukrainian republic. Moreover, they carried out targeted Ukrainization. Then there were the repressions that people were subjected to different nationalities. There is no point in apologizing for them either, because everyone took part in their organization - Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Georgians... The “Holodomor” and other politicized episodes are included here.

Fourthly. The presence of vast south-eastern territories with a Russian-speaking population within independent Ukraine is normal from a theoretical point of view. From the historical point of view, it’s not entirely fair. And taking into account modern Ukrainian politics, this is completely unfair. For twenty years in a row, several million Russian people have been deprived of their rights. Most of them cannot send their child to a Russian school, cannot watch a film in Russian in the cinema, and so on. Despite the fact that they are not some kind of migrants in a foreign country. They are on land that belonged to them even before the appearance of “Ukraine” here. They lived in home country and spoke their native language, just like their fathers and grandfathers... And suddenly - here you go! Now they have the full moral right to active resistance, to independence, or at least to full autonomy (just like the Little Russians at the end of the 19th century). And Russia has every moral right to openly support them.

Fifthly. Modern Ukrainian nationalism is a completely unhealthy phenomenon. It is based on the fact that some Russians oppose themselves to other Russians. It implies a hostile attitude towards the people closest in cultural terms, and demands the destruction of all traces of common history, including those (Lenin) that are connected precisely with state support"Ukrainianism" and its revival. At the same time, nothing like this is observed in Russia. In Moscow there is still Lesya Ukrainka Street and a monument to Taras Shevchenko. And it doesn’t occur to anyone here to break something and rename it (I’m not taking into account anonymous Internet provocateurs on both sides). We are not enemies. And they never were. Moreover, we always had common opponents who did not distinguish us much. Simply strong Eastern Slavs were a bone in their throat. And they will.

You can draw many more conclusions... But you are on your own.
I sincerely believe in the independence and power of your thinking.))

The whole truth about the creation of Ukraine...

Thanks to the inexhaustible energy of “Svidomo” ideologists and propagandists, the myth has become established in our society that the communist regime was a fierce enemy of Ukrainians and “Ukraine”. The Ukrainian conscious intelligentsia, foaming at the mouth, tirelessly broadcasts about the crimes of Lenin and Stalin against the “Ukrainian people.” And this blatant lie is perhaps the most unfair in the Svidomo arsenal. Its injustice lies in the fact that without Lenin and Stalin, without Soviet power and “ national policy“Bolsheviks would never have created either “Ukrainians” or “Ukraine” in the form in which we know them. It was the Bolshevik regime and its leaders who created “Ukraine” from the Southwestern region of Russia, and “Ukrainians” from its population. It was they who later added to this new formation territories that had never belonged to Little Rus', the Hetmanate, or the South-Western Territory.

Why did the Bolsheviks create “Ukrainians”

With all the hatred of the “Svidomo” Galicians for the “Soviet”, they would have to admit that without Stalin, Galicia at the beginning of the last century would have remained torn between Poland, Hungary and Romania, and now hardly anyone would talk about the “Ukrainians” of the Carpathian and Transcarpathian regions -I remembered, given the assimilation talents of our Western neighbors.

The strained artificiality of the Ukraine project in those years was obvious to many leaders of the communist movement. Even then, Lenin was warned that his experiments with nation-building and flirting with the half-baked operetta nationalists of the imperial outskirts would sooner or later lead to trouble. The so-called "Ukrainian question". However, Lenin ignored these warnings. And not only because of its so-called “policy of national self-determination.” The Ukrainian people did not exist at the time of the revolution. There was only the southwestern branch of the Russian ethnic group and an insignificant group of “Svidomo” Little Russian and Galician intellectuals who never expressed the interests of ordinary people. And Lenin was well informed about this. He was actively interested in the political situation in Little Russia in those years.

This is the story he told on January 30, 1917 in his letter to I. Armand, which he heard from a soldier who had escaped from German captivity: “I spent a year in German captivity... in a camp of 27,000 people. Ukrainians. The Germans are forming camps according to nations and using all their might to separate them from Russia. The Ukrainians were sent clever lecturers from Galicia. Results? Only, supposedly, 2,000 were for “independence”... The rest supposedly flew into a rage at the thought of secession from Russia and going over to the Germans or Austrians.

A significant fact! It is impossible not to believe. 27,000 is a big number. A year is a long time. The conditions for Galician propaganda are extremely favorable. And yet, closeness to the Great Russians prevailed!” .

That is, already in 1917 Lenin perfectly understood all the absurdity, artificiality and far-fetchedness of the “nation of Ukrainians”. I understood who created this “nation” and why. But, nevertheless, he deliberately continued the Polish-Austrian-German work of removing “Ukrainians” from the Russians of South-Western Rus'.

Here is what, for example, Rosa Luxemburg wrote, accusing Lenin of creating an artificial “people” and deliberately dismembering Russia: “Ukrainian nationalism in Russia was completely different from, say, Czech, Polish or Finnish, nothing more than a simple quirk, the antics of several dozen petty-bourgeois intellectuals, without any roots in the economy, politics or spiritual sphere of the country, without any historical tradition, for Ukraine has never been either a nation or a state, without any national culture, except for the reactionary-romantic poems of Shevchenko. […] And such a ridiculous thing of several university professors and students was artificially inflated by Lenin and his comrades political factor with its doctrinaire agitation for “the right to self-determination right up to”, etc.”

Luxemburg was a realist politician and understood perfectly what “Ukraine” was, but she obviously did not know that the Bolsheviks, Poles and the “Ukrainians” they raised had two common properties that put them on the same position regarding the “Ukrainian question” . These are very important properties of their mentality - fear and hatred. THEY EQUALLY FEARED AND HATED RUSSIA AND EVERYTHING RUSSIAN. In this matter they were dominated by a very powerful irrational principle. The international, let's say, elite of the RSDLP (b), in which the Russians still had to be looked for, could not afford to preserve the state-forming ethnic core of the Russian Empire. In their opinion, in a communist paradise neither the Russian people nor Russian culture should have dominated. For them, the Russian people were an oppressor people, Russian state- an enslaving state, and Russian culture - “Russian great-power chauvinism.” It was not for nothing that the non-Russian elite of the Bolsheviks consistently and totally destroyed everything Russian and all bearers of Russianness.

When in the revolutionary years we talked about “class hatred” fueled by Bolshevik agitators, what they really meant was hatred of everything Russian, since it was the highest social strata of Russia that were its bearers. To cast doubt on the existence of Russianness and, accordingly, Russia, it was necessary to simply exterminate the ruling elite, exterminate the nobility. Which is exactly what happened.

And the common people at that time in their spiritual and psychological development had not yet reached the level of a clear national and even more so cultural identity. The people understood very poorly where “us” and “stranger” were. That is why the sweet-voiced foreign commissars were closer to him than the Russian nobles, and the talk that the “gentlemen” were to blame for everything stimulated the popular enthusiasm of the Red Terror. The Bolsheviks skillfully used the underdevelopment of peasant consciousness in their propaganda. As a result, they were able to turn a significant part of the people into a rebellious boor, and set this boor against the Russian ruling elite. Naturally, the divided people could not resist. When Orthodox Church and the Orthodox faith - the last strongholds of Russianness found themselves under the repressive and terrorist blow of the new regime, the Soviet government had a real spiritual and psychological opportunity to create " Soviet man“, and the ruling “Svidomoya” top of the Ukrainian SSR had the opportunity to create a regional variety of “Soviet person” - “Ukrainian”.

As the historian Nikolai Ulyanov wrote already in exile: “Even before the October revolution, the revolutionary parties had discounted Russia, and even then a new deity was opposed to it - the revolution. After the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, Russia and the Russian name became one of the forbidden words. The ban continued, as is known, until the mid-30s. The first seventeen to eighteen years were years of merciless extermination of the Russian cultural elite, the destruction of historical monuments and art monuments, the eradication scientific disciplines, such as philosophy, psychology, Byzantine studies, the removal of Russian history from university and school teaching, replaced by the history of the revolutionary movement. Never before in our country has there been such mockery of anyone bearing a Russian name. If later, before the Second World War, he was rehabilitated, it was with the undisguised purpose of Sovietization. “National in form, socialist in content” - this was the slogan, revealing a cunning plan.

Adapting the Austro-Marxist scheme to Russia with all their might, the Bolsheviks “comprehended” all national issues with the exception of Russian. The point of view of some publicists, like P. B. Struve, who saw in the “Russians” a “nation in the making,” as the Americans called themselves, was alien and incomprehensible to them. Guided by the ethnographic principle of the formation of the USSR and having created the Ukrainian and Belarusian nations, they had no choice but to create the Great Russian one. They ignored the fact that Great Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians are not yet nations and, in any case, not cultures, they only promise to become cultures in the indefinite future. Nevertheless, with a light heart, the developed, historically established Russian culture is sacrificed to them. The picture of her death is one of the most dramatic pages of our history. This is the victory of the Polyans, Drevlyans, Vyatichi and Radimichi over Russia."

The Bolsheviks did not take Russia into account at all. They even seized power in it not in order to then make the Russians happy with communism, but in order to use it as a consumable material in inciting a world revolution. In the fall of 1917, Lenin said directly: “It’s not about Russia, good gentlemen, I don’t give a damn about it, it’s just a stage through which we are passing towards the world revolution...”. The Bolsheviks needed the material and human resources of the empire for a revolutionary campaign in Europe. For the sake of achieving their messianic goals, they were ready to sacrifice both the Russian people and the country as a whole. From their point of view, the Russians were too savage, primitive and inferior to build communism, but, using them as some kind of giant lever, it was possible to turn Europe around in order to direct its enlightened and cultural peoples to the path of building a communist society.

In order to destroy Russia and seize power from its ruins, the RSDLP(b) was ready to do anything, stopping at nothing. In 1914, its leaders, with the natural ease of Judas, entered into a conspiracy with its enemy - the Kaiser's Germany. In his memoirs, General Ludendorff wrote: “By sending Lenin to Russia, our government assumed a special responsibility. From a military point of view, his passage through Germany had its justification: Russia was about to fall into the abyss.” The Bolsheviks thought exactly the same.

In Paris, in 1922, the book “The History of Bolshevism in Russia from its emergence to the seizure of power (1883-1903-1917)” was published. It was of particular interest because it was written by the former gendarmerie general Alexander Ivanovich Spiridovich, based on those documents that were obtained by the Russian special services in the process of fighting the RSDLP (b). This is how he described the situation of collaboration between the Bolsheviks and the Germans in the destruction of Russia: “Lenin was one of those who were convinced that war was inevitable and that if Russia was defeated it would lead to great internal upheavals that could be used for the purposes of revolution, for overthrow of the monarchy. The victory of Russia was understood as the strengthening of autocracy and, consequently, the failure of all revolutionary desires. Naturally, Lenin really wanted Russia’s defeat. Considering how important it is for Germany to get at its disposal everything that will in one way or another contribute to the defeat of Russia, Lenin decided to use the favorable moment in order to obtain Money for his revolutionary work, he decided to enter into an agreement with Germany regarding a joint struggle against Russia.

He went to Berlin in June of that year and made a personal offer to the German Foreign Office to work for him in order to disintegrate the Russian army and raise unrest in the rear. For his work against Russia, Lenin demanded large sums of money. The ministry rejected Lenin's first proposal, which did not prevent him from making a second proposal, which was also rejected. Then the Social Democrat Gelfant, known as Parvus, who served Germany as a political agent, came to Lenin’s aid.

Under the direct influence of Parvus, who informed the Germans about the real essence of Bolshevism, about its leaders and their moral fitness to carry out the treasonous proposal, the German government realized the full benefits of Lenin’s plan and decided to take advantage of it. In July, Lenin was summoned to Berlin, where he, together with representatives of the German government, developed a plan of action for the rear war against Russia and France. Immediately after the declaration of war, Lenin was to be paid 70 million marks, after which further sums were to be made available to him as needed. Lenin pledged to direct the party apparatus in his hands with its central organs against Russia.

Such was the situation in which the Russian nobleman Ulyanov-Lenin, who had long been cut off from Russia, having forgotten in his internationalism what the homeland and its interests were, committed high treason. From that moment on, the RSDLP, represented by its Bolshevik organizations and its central authorities, in the person of many individual party workers, becomes an instrument of the German General Staff, brought into action by Lenin and a group of his closest friends."

Hatred of Russia, the Russian people, as well as the desire for their destruction united the “Svidomo Ukrainians” and the Bolsheviks at the beginning of the 20th century. In this sense they were twin brothers. Moreover, they were supported and directed by the same force that opposed the Russian Empire in a mortal struggle - the Kaiser's Germany. Since 1914, the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (SOU), headed by D. Dontsov, and the RSDLP(b), headed by V. Lenin, had a common foreign source of funding - the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the General Staff. They also had in common a German curator - Israel Gelfand (Parvus), teacher and inspirer of Leon Trotsky. While still in the USA, when asked how his mentor was doing there, the future creator of the Red Army answered very succinctly: “he’s making his twelfth million.”

Now it looks extremely interesting that on December 28, 1914, one of the leaders of the SOU, M. Melenevsky, wrote a letter to V. Lenin, in which he offered the latter a strong alliance in the common cause of destroying Russia and seizing power from its ruins. “Dear Vladimir Ilyich! - with amazing tenderness he addressed the leader of the Russian proletariat. - I am very glad that I can convey my best greetings to you. In these times, when such a universal, truly Russian wind blew across the Moscow provinces, your and your group’s speeches with old revolutionary slogans and your correct understanding of the events taking place made me and my comrades believe that not everything in Russia is tainted and that there are elements and groups , with whom we, the Ukrainian Social-Democrats, and revolutionary Ukrainian democrats, we can and should contact each other and, with mutual support, continue our old great revolutionary work.

The Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, which included us, the Spilchanites and other Ukrainian Social-Democrats, as an autonomous and full-fledged group. elements, is in currently a truly democratic organization, pursuing as its goal the seizure of power in Ukraine and the implementation of those reforms for which the masses of the people fought all the time in our country (confiscations in favor of the landowners in other lands, complete democratization of political and other institutions, a Constituent Assembly for Ukraine). Our Union continues to act now as the core of the future Ukrainian government, drawing all living forces to itself and fighting its own Ukrainian reaction. We are confident that our aspirations will meet with your full sympathy. And if so, then we would be very glad to enter into closer relations with the Bolsheviks. We would also be extremely happy if the Russian revolutionary forces, led by your group, set themselves similar tasks, even to the point of striving and preparing to seize power in the Russian part of Russia.

There is an extraordinary national revolutionary upsurge among the Ukrainian population, especially among Galician Ukrainians and American Ukrainians. This contributed to the receipt of large donations to our Union, it also helped us organize all kinds of equipment perfectly, etc. If you and I could come to an understanding for joint action, we would be willing to provide you with all kinds of material and other assistance. If you want to immediately enter into official negotiations, then telegraph me briefly... and I will inform your committee so that it immediately delegates a special person to you for these negotiations... How are you, how are you feeling? I will be very grateful if you send all your publications to my Sofia address. Best regards to Nadezhda Konstantinovna. I shake your hand tightly. Your Basok".

After reading this message, Vladimir Ilyich began to go hysterical. He immediately, in the presence of the courier, scribbled an angry response to his unwanted comrades. common cause destruction of Russia, in which he categorically stated that he was not going to enter into any relations with the mercenaries of imperialism, sharply rejecting any cooperation with the SOU. Of course, for M. Melenevsky and D. Dontsov (former Marxist), this reaction was unexpected, since they knew very well that the Bolsheviks received money from the Germans just like them. Lenin understood well that the slightest hint of his connection with the SOU would cast a shadow on his revolutionary reputation and reveal the fact of his collaboration with Germany. Moreover, the Georgian Social Democrats, to whom the Galician “Svidomo” approached with a similar proposal for cooperation, created a public scandal, officially declaring that the SOU proposal was rejected “as a proposal from an organization that operates with the material support and patronage of the Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs and their brothers."

From the above facts, it is not difficult to understand that both the SOU and the RSDLP(b) had an anti-Russian nature, striving to destroy Russia. The only difference between them was that, unlike the semi-virtual Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, the Bolsheviks were a strong, united organization that actually fought Russia tooth and nail. And in this fight, all means were good for them.

Thus, foreign hatred of everything Russian, as well as the fundamental internationalism of the revolution, which did not allow preserving the Russian ethnic core of the empire, forced the Bolsheviks to see in everything Russian almost the main danger to themselves. That is why the Russian ethnic monolith was cut alive into three parts and declared “three fraternal peoples.” The Russian colossus was too big and powerful. This is where the Polish ideology of “two individual peoples", a special Ukrainian language and independent culture. So it turns out that the very idea of ​​​​creating “Ukrainians” and “Ukraine”, in other words, anti-Russian Rus', was born by the creative genius of the Poles, its working prototype was constructed by the Austrians and Germans in Eastern Galicia, but Lenin and Stalin turned it into a large-scale reality.

How the Bolsheviks created “Ukrainians”

In 1921, speaking at the 10th Party Congress, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin emphasized that “if Russian elements still predominate in the cities of Ukraine, then over time these cities will inevitably be Ukrainized.” And this was a serious statement. In April 1923, the XII Congress of the RCP(b) announced “indigenization” as the party’s course on the national issue, and in the same month at the VII conference of the CP(b)U the beginning of a policy of “Ukrainization” was announced. The Ukrainian Central Election Commission and the Council of People's Commissars immediately formalized this decision with the relevant decrees.

The communists had to create out of practically nothing the Ukrainian “nation”, the Ukrainian “language”, the Ukrainian “state”, the Ukrainian “culture”, etc. The Ukrainization of Little Rus' was total. Everything was Ukrainized - state institutions, office work, schools, universities, the press, theaters, etc. Those who did not want to Ukrainize or who did not pass exams in the Ukrainian language were fired without the right to receive unemployment benefits. Anyone who was found to have a “negative attitude towards Ukrainization” was considered a counter-revolutionary and an enemy of Soviet power. The government apparatus was purged according to the criterion of “nationality and Svidomo”. The fight against illiteracy was carried out in Ukrainian. There were mandatory courses for everyone to study the Ukrainian language and culture. The process of Ukrainization was constantly controlled by a multitude of various commissions. The entire power of the party apparatus and the state machine fell upon the “nesvidome naselennya”, which was supposed to become a “Ukrainian nation” in the shortest possible time.

It is not for nothing that Grushevsky, having returned to Soviet Ukraine, enthusiastically wrote to one of his comrades that “here, despite all the shortcomings, I feel like I am in the Ukrainian Republic, which we began to build in 1917.” Still would! After all, for example, two such ardent fanatics of Ukrainization as Nikolai Khvylevoy and Nikolai Skrypnik, in the past held leadership positions in the Cheka and took direct part in punitive actions against the enemies of the revolution. It is not surprising that their methods of Ukrainization were essentially KGB-style. It’s good that at least no one was shot for not wanting to change national identity, as the Austrians did in Galicia.

A logical question arises here: how did a simple Little Russian peasant react to communist Ukrainization? After all, according to the “Svidomo” ideologists, the Little Russian people have been raving about everything Ukrainian for thousands of years. Ukrainization should have become for them almost by god's grace, implementing them cherished dream become Ukrainian, speak your native Ukrainian language fluently, enjoy Ukrainian culture. However, the reality of the 20s of the last century was different. As now, the residents of the newly-made Ukraine did not experience the joy of Ukrainization. They didn’t want to become Ukrainians. They didn’t want to speak Ukrainian. They were not interested in Ukrainian culture. Ukrainization caused them to best case scenario irritation, at worst - sharp rejection and hostility.

This is how the “Svidomo” Ukrainizer from the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of the Ukrainian SSR, People’s Commissar of Education of the Ukrainian SSR Zatonsky, described the popular mood of 1918: “The broad Ukrainian masses treated Ukraine with... contempt. Why was this so? Because then the Ukrainians [in the sense of Ukrainophiles - A.V.] were with the Germans, because Ukraine stretched from Kyiv all the way to imperialist Berlin. Not only workers, but also peasants, Ukrainian peasants did not tolerate “Ukrainians” at that time (through Rakovsky’s delegation in Kyiv we received minutes of peasant meetings, the majority of minutes had the seal of the village headman and everyone signed on them - you see what a wonderful conspiracy there was) . In these protocols, the peasants wrote to us: we all feel like Russians and hate Germans and Ukrainians and ask the RSFSR to annex us to itself.”

The Bolsheviks broke the Little Russians over the knee in the 20s, trying to use the so-called. “indigenization” to transform them from Russians into “Ukrainians”. However, the people showed stubborn, albeit passive, resistance to Ukrainization. There was outright sabotage of the decisions of the party and government. In this regard, the party leaders were simply “flattened” with anger. “A despicable, selfish type of Little Russian who... flaunts his indifferent attitude towards everything Ukrainian and is always ready to spit on him,” Shumsky angrily lamented at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in those years. Party leader Efremov spoke no less energetically in his diary: “This slave generation, which is accustomed only to “impersonating a Ukrainian” and not organically feeling like Ukrainians, must perish. Despite these wishes of the ardent Bolshevik-Leninist, the Little Russians did not “perish” and did not feel organically “Ukrainians,” even though this ethnonymic nickname was assigned to them during the years of Stalinism. As it turned out, the Russian spirit is not so easy to stifle. For this, mass terror and concentration camps according to the Austrian model.

Understanding perfectly the complexity of the task of Ukrainizing the Russian population of the former Southwestern Territory, Stalin wisely pointed out to his party comrades the mistakes they made in the process of creating “Ukrainians.” So, in April 1926, he wrote a letter to Lazar Kaganovich and other members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, which says the following: “It is true that a number of communists in Ukraine do not understand the meaning and significance of this movement and therefore do not take measures to master it . It is true that a change needs to be made in the cadres of our party and Soviet workers, who are still imbued with the spirit of irony and skepticism on the issue of Ukrainian culture and the Ukrainian public. It is true that it is necessary to carefully select and create a cadre of people capable of mastering the new movement in Ukraine. All this is true. But Comrade Shumsky allows for at least two serious mistakes.

Firstly, he confuses the Ukrainization of our party and Soviet apparatuses with the Ukrainization of the proletariat. It is possible and necessary to Ukrainize, while maintaining a certain pace, our party, state and other apparatuses serving the population. But the proletariat cannot be Ukrainized from above. It is impossible to force the Russian working masses to abandon the Russian language and Russian culture and recognize Ukrainian as their culture and their language. This contradicts the principle of free development of nationalities. This would not be national freedom, but a peculiar form of national oppression. There is no doubt that the composition of the Ukrainian proletariat will change with the industrial development of Ukraine, with the influx of Ukrainian workers into industry from the surrounding villages. There is no doubt that the composition of the Ukrainian proletariat will be Ukrainized, just as the composition of the proletariat, say, in Latvia and Hungary, which at one time had a German character, then began to become Latvianized and Magyarized. But this is a long, spontaneous, natural process. Trying to replace this spontaneous process with the forced Ukrainization of the proletariat from above means pursuing a utopian and harmful policy that can cause anti-Ukrainian chauvinism in the non-Ukrainian layers of the proletariat in Ukraine.”

It is easy to understand from this letter that the Ukrainization of Little Russia was very difficult. The common people resisted as best they could, and the local “Svidomo” party elite, desperate to achieve their goal, actively used violent forms of Ukrainization. Because of this, the people grumbled, and the authority of the party in their eyes fell. Stalin understood this very well, warning against excesses.

The Ukrainian communists had big problems with personnel who would be able to carry out the Ukrainization of the Russian population of the former Little Russia at the proper level. In Moscow, they were even forced to recommend that local party bodies recruit former political opponents from among the “Svidomo” as “specialists” in Ukrainization (similar to how officers and officials of the Russian Empire were involved in the civil war).

This recommendation was not accidental. The Little Russian Bolsheviks, who defeated the Central Rada, the Hetmanate and the Directory in the military-political confrontation, were unable to independently transform the South-Western region of Russia into “Ukraine”, and its Russian population into “Ukrainians”.

That is why Moscow allowed former Bolshevik opponents - the socialists of the Central Rada and the Directory, whose political beliefs were almost identical to the ideology of the RSDLP (b) - to join the CP(b)U and the Soviet authorities. It is today’s Ukrainian propaganda that portrays these figures as irreconcilable enemies of Bolshevism, but in fact there were no differences between them on fundamental issues; differences arose only regarding who would hold power. Both the Central Rada and the Petliura regime represented a regional variety of Bolshevism. Only more demagogic and completely incompetent. The leaders of the CR and the Directory did not perceive the Bolsheviks as an absolute evil, but the White movement in general and the Volunteer Army in particular. The communists took similar positions. For them, Ukrainian socialist-nationalists were something like half-baked Bolsheviks who had fallen under hostile influence. That is why representatives White movement they mercilessly exterminated, and with the leaders of the Central Rada and the Directory they sought a compromise from the position of the winner.

Proof of this is the fact of generous forgiveness Soviet power many leaders, as well as ordinary “Svidomo” figures and supporters of the Central Russia and the Directory, who subsequently flooded the party and state structures of the Ukrainian SSR.

Everything that the ideologists of modern political Ukraine weave regarding the supposedly irreconcilable struggle of the “Ukrainian national revolution” with the Bolsheviks is complete nonsense. Grushevsky and Vinnichenko (who personified the period of rule of the Central Rada) after the civil war safely returned to their native lands and lived out their lives under the tutelage of the Soviet government. The same applied to a number of the most prominent figures in the Directory.

In May 1921, a trial of the former leaders of the CR and the Directory took place in Kyiv. There were quite a lot of people in the dock. However, among them there was no one who would have suffered serious punishment, much less received the “capital punishment.” Some of them were even acquitted.

Of this company, only Petliura was unlucky. But he was killed in Paris not because he fought against Soviet power, but because of the mass Jewish pogroms that swept the entire Southwestern region during his leadership of the Ukrainian army. Then the Petliurists exterminated about 25 thousand Jews. Just look at the massacre in Proskurov in March 1919, during which the “Zaporozhye Brigade” of Ataman Semesenko killed about three thousand Jews, including women and children.

The facts of the extermination of the Jewish population by the Petliurists were so obvious that the French court acquitted Samuel Schwarzbart, who took revenge on Petlyura for his people in 1926.

Thus, as mentioned above, after the Communist Party (b)U, with the support of Moscow, established Soviet power throughout the entire territory of the Southwestern Territory (with the exception of Volyn), its ranks muddy stream Former figures of the left Ukrainian parties, the Central Committee and the Directory began to join.

Their first group, very numerous and active, consisted of the so-called “Ukapists” - former members of the left factions of the Ukrainian Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries. They completely stood on the Bolshevik political platform, advocating only the creation of a separate Ukrainian army, economy and the total Ukrainization of the South-Western region.

The second group, which joined the Soviet and party structures of the Ukrainian SSR, consisted of those who repented and were forgiven by the Bolsheviks former figures Central Rada and Directory.

And finally, the third group of “Svidomo”, who played an important role in the construction of the Ukrainian SSR and its total Ukrainization, were Galicians who poured in crowds from Polish Galicia and emigrated to the USSR, where, in their opinion, the construction of the Ukrainian state began. In their ranks there were about 400 officers of the Galician army, defeated by the Poles, led by G. Kossak, as well as various cultural and political figures (Lozinsky, Vitik, Rudnitsky, Tchaikovsky, Yavorsky, Krushelnytsky and many others).

Since 1925, tens of thousands of “Svidomo Galychans” moved to the central regions of Little Russia for permanent residence. They were placed in an even layer in leadership positions in Kyiv, entrusting them with brainwashing the population. The head of the People's Commissariat for Education, the fiery Bolshevik Skrypnik, was especially zealous in 1927-1933. The “Svidomo” Janissaries of Franz Joseph and the Bolsheviks also replaced Russian professors and scientists who did not want to be Ukrainized. In one of his letters, Grushevsky said that about 50 thousand people moved from Galicia, some with their wives and families, young people, men. Obviously, without the involvement of the ideological “Ukrainians” of Austria-Hungary, nurtured by Polish propaganda, the Ukrainization of Rus' would have been simply impossible.

And here’s what one of them wrote about how they were perceived in Little Russia: “My misfortune is that I am a Galician. Nobody likes Galicians here. The older Russian public treats them with hostility as a Bolshevik instrument of Ukrainization (eternal talk about the “Galician language”). Older local Ukrainians have an even worse attitude, considering Galicians “traitors” and “Bolshevik mercenaries.”

It is good form among our “Svidomo Ukrainians” to spend five minutes of hatred towards the “kat” and “famine-killer of the Ukrainian people” Joseph Stalin, but the comical situation lies in the fact that, if not for the iron will of the “father of nations”, there would be no “Ukrainians” , there would never have been a “Ukraine”.

By the way, if we talk about the traditional pantheon of enemies of Ukraine, compiled by the “Svidomo”, then it is necessary to note that if their hatred of the “Muscovites” can somehow be justified, then their hatred of the “Jews” is difficult to explain. Perhaps this is just outright ingratitude, or perhaps just stupid ignorance. The fact is that Jews made a colossal contribution to the creation of “Ukrainians”, “Ukraine”, “Ukrainian” language and literature. This is a topic for scientific research and at least deserves a separate monograph. If the “Svidomo” had even a drop of gratitude, then they would erect a giant sculpture of Joseph Stalin on the Independence Square, and they would build a monument to Lazar Kaganovich on European Square.

The fact is that the most intense and radical period of Soviet Ukrainization in the 20s of the last century took place under the direct leadership of Kaganovich. At that time there was no more ardent Ukrainizer of Russians than him. He was truly an outstanding personality. A man of sharp mind and unbending will. Compared to how he carried out Ukrainization, everything that his followers did after the proclamation of Ukrainian independence in 1991 looks like slobbering and fooling around. “Svidomo” should not wrap portraits of Taras Grigorievich in towels and hang them like an icon on the wall, but photographs of Lazar Moiseevich. Historical justice simply screams obscenities about this.

However, even such titans as Stalin and Kaganovich could not break the national and cultural backbone of the Little Russians. After raging for ten years, the process of Ukrainization quietly died out, encountering passive resistance of the people.

The curtailment of Ukrainization, apparently, was associated not only with the stubborn resistance of the inhabitants of Rus', but also with a change in the strategic plans of the communist elite. It seems that by the early 1930s Stalin had to abandon Lenin’s favorite idea of ​​world revolution. The fact is that the leader of the Russian proletariat, already deceased by that time, “stirred up” this whole game of “national self-determination” for all the “oppressed peoples” of Russia only in order to then gradually annex new states that had passed through the proletarian revolution. By the 1930s, Stalin, as a talented realist politician, realized that with the world revolution, in principle, nothing “shines” and that in the face of predatory imperialists it is necessary to turn Soviet Union into a reliable communist fortress. This was the stage of blind defense. Stalin needed a strong, monolithic state with effective, tightly centralized power. The “Ukrainian nation” had already been created, and in general, there was no longer any need for further deepening of Ukrainization, which had irritated the people quite a bit. In addition, he was pretty fed up with the persistent “bourgeois-nationalist” deviationism of some leaders of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, whom he later slightly “thinned out” for “excesses.” As a result, Ukrainization stalled. The people breathed a sigh of relief. But “Ukraine”, “Ukrainians”, “Ukrainian language” remained. Only in 1991 did former party members and Komsomol members solemnly revive Stalin’s Ukrainization with shavar-dumpling elements in its national-democratic, extremely caricatured version.

Did our country have a real opportunity to take a different path back then in 1991? Hardly. There were simply no ideological prerequisites for this. When the party and administrative nomenklatura suddenly turned out to be “independent” from senior comrades from Moscow, it was necessary to lay an appropriate ideological foundation under this “independence.” In addition to the Polish-Austrian-German separatist ideas, polished to a shine in the 20s by the Soviet government, in the 30s-40s by the “warrior thinkers” of the OUN-UPA(b) and in the 60s-70s by Ukrainophile dissidents, other ideas it just wasn't there. Neither the officials nor the people were ready for the independence that suddenly fell upon them. Nobody knew what to do with her. “Great ideas” of “Ukrainian independence” were invented on the go, while chewing food... What did all this result in... we are now witnesses to many years of work, many generations of “miners”... and, as always, it could not have happened without the USA, this country of the devil.We will soon find out how this whole Ukrainian mess will end...

Modern Ukraine as an independent state appeared on the political map of Europe at the end. 1991.

The formation of the state territory was long and complex historical process. The most ancient state formation on the lands of what is now Ukraine was the Scythian state (7th-3rd centuries BC). The first state of the ancient Slavs in this territory was the tribal association of the Apts (4th-1st centuries BC), located from the Prut valley and the upper reaches of the Southern Bug to the middle reaches of the Don, from Polesie to the Black Sea. Historian M. Grushevsky considered this entity to be the Ukrainian “great power”. In the 7th-8th centuries. the forest and forest-steppe zones were inhabited East Slavic tribes, which ancient chronicles They are called Polyans, Northerners, Drevlyans, Buzhans, Volynians, Ulichs, Tivertsy, White Croats. They became the basis for the formation of the Ukrainian ethnic group. The lands of these ancient Slavs in the 9th-10th centuries. AD were united around Kyiv as the political and economic core of the Kievan Rus state. At its peak, the territory of Kievan Rus extended from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea and from the Eastern Carpathians to the upper reaches of the Volga.

The history of Kievan Rus is divided into three periods: 1) dynamic development during the reign of Oleg and Igor (882-972); 2) the reign of Vladimir the Great - the adoption of Christianity (980-1015) and the reign of Yaroslav the Wise (1019-54), when the state achieved its greatest economic, political and cultural power; 3) the last period after the death of Yaroslav the Wise in 1054 is identified with the decline of Kievan Rus. In 1240, after the capture of Kyiv by the Mongol-Tatars, he lost his political role.

The name “Ukraine” first appeared on the pages of ancient Russian chronicles in the 12th century, denoting the Pereyaslavl, Kyiv and Chernigov lands. Later it acquired ethnic significance and spread to all lands inhabited by Ukrainians. The name "Rus" was widely used in chronicles, along with "U."

The center of the Ukrainian state is transferred to the Galicia-Volyn principality, headed by Prince Danila Galitsky. After the death of Danila (1264), this state also fell into decline around the middle. 14th century his lands were captured by his neighbors: Lithuania, Poland, Hungary.

The revival of Ukrainian statehood is associated with the emergence of the Zaporozhye Sich, the Cossacks, and the national liberation war of 1648-54 under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnytsky. State-military formations of the Cossack period contributed to the formation of national consciousness, defended political, ethnocultural, religious traditions Ukrainian people. The desire to preserve statehood forced Bohdan Khmelnitsky to enter into an agreement in 1654 in Pereyaslav (Pereyaslav Rada) with the Muscovite kingdom for joint actions against Poland. However, taking advantage of the situation, Moscow violated the treaty and concluded the Truce of Andrusovo with Poland in 1667, according to which the Left Bank Ukraine and Kiev became part of the Moscow state, and the Right Bank went to Poland. Until 2nd half. 18th century As part of Russia and Poland, there were autonomous entities where Ukrainians lived. These are Zaporozhye (in the lower reaches of the Dnieper) and the hetmanate on the Left Bank. After the destruction of the Zaporozhye Sich in 1775 and the liquidation of the hetmanate by Catherine II (the center political life) Ukraine was divided for almost 150 years between the Russian (eastern part) and the Austro-Hungarian (western part) empires. The Right Bank Ukraine and Volyn went to Russia, and Galicia and Bukovina went to Austria-Hungary.

Throughout the 19th century. the entire Ukrainian ethnic territory grew by almost a third due to colonization Russian Empire southern steppes and reached the coast of the Black and Azov Seas and the Kuban River. At the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. it reached an area of ​​at least 750 thousand km2. In the 20th century The most significant events that influenced the formation of the territory and borders of Ukraine were the geopolitical consequences of World War I (1914-18), the civil war (1918-22), and the February Revolution in Russia (1917). In 1917-18, three Ukrainian states emerged: the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR, with its capital in Kyiv), the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic(Ukrainian SSR, with its capital in Kharkov) and the Western Ukrainian People's Republic (WUNR, with its center in Lviv). At the beginning of 1919, the UPR and WUNR proclaimed the unification of their lands, but the independent Ukrainian state came to an end as a result of revolutionary events in Russia. After the fall of the UPR, Ukrainian territory was divided between four states: the USSR (central and eastern parts), Poland (western part), Romania (Bukovina) and Czechoslovakia (Transcarpathia). From December 30, 1922 to December 1991, the Ukrainian SSR was part of the USSR. In 1934, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR was moved from Kharkov to Kyiv.

The state territory of modern Ukraine was finally formed as a result of World War II. In 1939, Western Ukrainian lands became part of the Ukrainian SSR; the border with Poland was finally established in 1945. In 1940, Northern Bukovina and part of Bessarabia joined the Ukrainian SSR. In 1941-44, Ukraine was subjected to Nazi occupation, and partisan movement. By autumn 1943 Soviet army liberated the Left Bank Ukraine, and in October 1944 liberated the entire territory of the republic. In June 1945, Transcarpathian Ukraine reunited with the Ukrainian SSR. In 1954, Ukraine was transferred from Russia to Crimea, after which the state territory did not change.

On August 24, 1991, the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR declared independence by adopting the corresponding act. This fact was confirmed at an all-Ukrainian referendum on December 1, 1991. As a result of the signing of the Belovezh Agreements by the leaders of three former union republics within the USSR - Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus - on December 8, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Thus, Ukraine finally became an independent state. In 1996, the Constitution of the Republic of Ukraine was adopted.

When did Ukraine emerge as a state itself? With clear borders, its own capital and other attributes of independence. Look at the pictures and see the inexorability of history.

Maybe Ukraine arose in ancient times? 3-2 century BC:

Oops. Some kind of Roksolans. Sarmatia. Or is it them?)))

Or maybe at the very end of that era?

Oh, Scythians. It is Ukraine? Yes, probably. There is one common letter in the name - it’s I))) No, not that...

Maybe in the 600s AD?

Bulgars, go away you disgusting people. This is Ukraine! It can’t be, there must be Ukrainians somewhere here.

But, probably... Formation of the state of Rus'. Come on, Ukraine should be inside...

Not again. This mess. I will complain..

And this is about 1054-1132. When the route from the Varangians to the Greeks arose, there was a great transit and the rapid creation of a powerful state. But no, not Ukraine again) Why so unlucky...

1237 I’ll take a magnifying glass, there’s definitely Ukraine somewhere here. Where are you, the very country?

There is Kyiv, Chernigov. And the state of Ukraine - nope... Oh, what do I see here - the Principality of Galicia-Volyn? So maybe Ukraine is not Ukraine, but Galicia?

By 1252, this is how there was no Ukraine either:

And here is Galitsynskoe! state. Oh, well then yes.

Let's continue to look for Ukraine as a state, but already from 1200 to 1920, when it was formed as a republic of the USSR.

1. In the 12th century, a terrible fragmentation of Russian lands began. The infighting led to the weakening of defenses against the horde. Of course, there is no Ukraine. And even the land of Kiev, as we see on the map, IS NOT A STATE!:

2. Territory of the Horde, or Tatar-Mongol invasion or simply the enslavement of 1243-1438. Highlighted in yellow:

3. And this is the Principality of Lithuania at the beginning of the 13th century. Then it will be seen how, thanks to the fact that Rus' held back the Horde, it will crawl to the Black Sea. This is what infighting leads to. That is, what can await current Ukraine.

4. This is the entire Principality of Lithuania in the 13-15 centuries. Maybe Ukraine is Lithuania? European Union)))

5. This is in 1387 Lithuania together with Poland:

6. And in 1600 Poland already occupied Lithuania. Ay yay) But from sea to sea it didn’t work out. I couldn't:

7. Territory!, not the country of Ukraine, which passed to Rus' under the Andrusovo truce with Poland in 1667.

8. The Polish map even shows lands like Ukraine. Also 1667. By the way, part of it is in Poland, part of it is in Rus'. But the Zaporozhye Cossacks are also on it:

9. Map of 1695. There are no special changes. I mean the lands of Ukraine:

10. It’s already more interesting here. In the years 1772-1795, Russia, Prussia and Austria tore Poland apart in three stages. Under the root. In the red circle, according to the years that Russia lost:

11. And in 1807 Napoleon recreated Poland in order to pinch Prussia, the future Germany. She's having no luck. But Russia - Ukraine again returned to Kyiv, division along the Dnieper:

12. It didn't last long. In 1815 everything returned. Like children, by God. Just to kill people.

It’s hard to see on the map, look along the Dnieper River.