Ukrainian independence

Ukraine emerged as the concept of a nation, and the Ukrainians as a nationality, with the Ukrainian National Revival which began in the late 18th and early 19th century. The first wave of national revival is traditionally connected with the publication of the first part of "Eneyida" by Ivan Kotlyarevsky (1798). Yaroslav Hrytsak.
Overview of the History of Ukraine
''. Part I. In 1846, in Moscow the " Istoriya Rusov ili Maloi Rossii" (History of Ruthenians or Little Russia) was published. During the Spring of Nations, in 1848 in Lemberg (Lviv) the Supreme Ruthenian Council was created which declared that Galician Ruthenians were part of the bigger Ukrainian nation. The council adopted the yellow and blue flag, the current Ukrainian flag.

Ukraine first declared its independence with the invasion of Bolsheviks in late 1917. Following the conclusion of World War I and with the Peace of Riga, Ukraine was partitioned once again between Poland and the Bolshevik Russia. The Bolshevik-occupied portion of the territory became the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with some boundary adjustments.

In 1922, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, together with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, became the founding members of the Soviet Union. The Soviet famine of 1932–33 or Holodomor killed an estimated 6 to 8 million people in the Soviet Union, the majority of them in Ukraine.famine of 1932–33"
, ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Quote: "The Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932–33 – a man-made demographic catastrophe unprecedented in peacetime. Of the estimated six to eight million people who died in the Soviet Union, about four to five million were Ukrainians... Its deliberate nature is underscored by the fact that no physical basis for famine existed in Ukraine... Soviet authorities set requisition quotas for Ukraine at an impossibly high level. Brigades of special agents were dispatched to Ukraine to assist in procurement, and homes were routinely searched and foodstuffs confiscated... The rural population was left with insufficient food to feed itself."

In 1941, the Soviet Union was invaded by Germany and its other allies. Many Ukrainians initially regarded the Wehrmacht soldiers as liberators from Soviet rule, while others formed an anti-German partisan movement. Some elements of the Ukrainian nationalist underground formed a Ukrainian Insurgent Army that fought both Soviet and Nazi forces. In 1945, Ukraine was made one of the founding members of the United Nations even though it was part of the Soviet Union. In 1954 the Crimean Oblast was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, Ukraine became an independent state, formalized with a referendum. With the enlargement of the European Union in 2004, Ukraine became an area of overlapping spheres of influence between the European Union and the Russian Federation. This manifested in a political division between the "pro-European" Western Ukraine and the "pro-Russian" Eastern Ukraine, which led to an ongoing series of political turmoil, including the Orange Revolution, the Euromaidan protests, and the Russian invasion.

The 19th century

Following the 17th century failed attempt to regain statehood in the form of the Cossack Hetmanate, the future Ukrainian territory again ended up divided between three empires: the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

In the second half of the 18th century, Catherine the Great instigated hysteria in the local Eastern Orthodox population by promising protection from Catholicism and support leading to an armed conflict Koliivshchyna in the neighboring right-bank Ukraine which was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and resulting in the Polish Bar Confederation, Russian military invasion of Poland and its internal affairs, and successful partitions of the last. By the end of the 18th century, most of Ukraine was completely annexed by Russia. At the same time the Russian Empire gradually gained control over the area of the Black Sea coast (northern Pontic coast) which was part of the Ottoman realm at the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish Wars of 1735–39, 1768–74, 1787–92.

The lands were generously given to the nobility, and the unfree peasantry were transferred to cultivate the Pontic steppe. Forcing the local Nogai population out and resettling the Crimean Greeks, Catherine the Great renamed all populated places and invited other European settlers to these newly conquered lands: Poles, Germans (Black Sea Germans, Crimea Germans, Volga Germans), Swiss, and others. Some Estonian Swedes were deported to southern Ukraine. Since then there exists the old Swedish village of Gammalsvenskby–Zmiivka.

Ukrainian writers and intellectuals were inspired by the nationalistic spirit stirring other European peoples existing under other imperial governments. Russia, fearing separatism, imposed strict limits on attempts to elevate the Ukrainian language and culture, even banning its use and study. The Russophile policies of Russification and Panslavism led to an exodus of a number some Ukrainian intellectuals into Western Ukraine, while others embraced a Pan-Slavic or Russian identity, with many Russian authors or composers of the 19th century being of Ukrainian origin (notably Nikolai Gogol and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky).

In the Austrian Empire most of the elite that ruled Galicia were of Austrian or Polish descent, with the Ruthenians mostly representing the peasantry. During the 19th century, Russophilia was a common occurrence among the Slavic population, but the mass exodus of Ukrainian intellectuals escaping from Russian repression in Eastern Ukraine, as well as the intervention of Austrian authorities, caused the movement to be replaced by Ukrainophilia, which would then cross-over into the Russian Empire.

First World War, the revolutions and aftermath

When World War I and series of revolutions across Europe, including the October Revolution in Russia, shattered many existing empires such as the Austrian and Russian ones, people of Ukraine were caught in the middle. Between 1917 and 1919, several separate Ukrainian republics manifested independence, the Makhnovshchina, the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Ukrainian State, the West Ukrainian People's Republic, and numerous Bolshevik revkoms.

As the area of Ukraine fell into warfare and anarchy, it was also fought over by German and Austrian forces, the Red Army of Bolshevik Russia, the White Forces of General Denikin, the Polish Army, anarchists led by Nestor Makhno. Kyiv itself was occupied by many different armies. The city was captured by the Bolsheviks on 9 February 1918, by the Germans on 2 March 1918, by the Bolsheviks a second time on 5 February 1919, by the White Army on 31 August 1919, by Bolsheviks for a third time on 15 December 1919, by the Polish Army on 6
May 1920, and finally by the Bolsheviks for the fourth time on 12 June 1920.

The defeat in the Polish-Ukrainian War and then the failure of the Piłsudski's and Petliura's '' Warsaw agreement of 1920'' to oust the Bolsheviks during the 1920 Kiev Offensive led almost to the occupation of Poland itself. This led to the Polish–Soviet War, which culminated in the signing of the Peace of Riga in March 1921. The Peace of Riga divided the disputed territories between Poland and Soviet Russia. Specifically, the part of Ukraine west of the Zbruch river was incorporated into Poland, while the eastern portion became part of the Soviet Union as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The first capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was Kharkiv