Ukrainians (East Slavs)
Nation | Active
1540 CE to 2057 CE
Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe.
The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens.
Belarusians and Russians are considered the closest relatives of Ukrainians, while Rusyns are either considered another closely related group, or an ethnic subgroup of Ukrainians.Ethnonym Ukrainians had became widely accepted only in the 20th century, so modern Ukrainians identify their ancestry with differently named historical Slavic groups, who are often called Ukrainians too, in retrospect.
The oldest recorded ethnonyms used for Ukrainian ancestors are Rusy, Rusyny, and Rusychi (from term Rus').
From the 9th to 12th centuries, those names applied to the population of Kievan Rus', as the united state of Rusy is restrospectively called.
Similar names were adopted by the proto-Russian and proto-Belarusian inhabitants of the northern principalities of Rus', reflecting the common origin of all those East Slavic peoples.Before the medieval period, Kievan Rus was preceded in the area by the ancient Greeks, Scythians, Sarmatians, Goths,and Norsemen.
By 14th century, the Kievan Rus' state had disintegrated and the territory of modern Ukraine had been split between several states.
From that time until at least the 17th century, the ancestors of Ukrainians, Belarusians and Rusyns identified as the same people, known as Ruthenians and comprising most of the population of the region called Ruthenia.
By the Early Modern Era and the age of Cossacks, the toponym Ukraine had been accepted to denote the lands around Kiev and alongside the lower Dnieper River.
The same region was also known as Little Russia (Malorussia), as the heartland of the Kievan Rus' had been designated by the Byzantine Greeks.
The corresponding term Malorussians had been widely accepted to identify the population of the area when it was a part of the Russian Empire.
In the last few centuries, the population of Ukraine has been subjected to periods of Polonization and Russification, but has preserved common culture and a sense of common identity.In the last decades of the 19th century, many Ukrainians had moved to the Asian regions of Russia, while many of their counterpart Slavs under Austro-Hungarian rule had emigrated to the New World seeking work and better economic opportunities.
Today, a large ethnic Ukrainian minority resides in Russia, Canada, the United States, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Italy and Argentina.
Ukrainians form one of world’s largest diasporas.
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The Ottoman Empire is a world power when Suleyman dies in 1566.
Most of the great cities of Islam—Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo, Tunis, and Baghdad— are under the sultan's crescent flag.
The Porte exercises direct control over Anatolia, the sub-Danubian Balkan provinces, Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia.
Egypt, Mecca, and the North African provinces are governed under special regulations, as are satellite domains in Arabia and the Caucasus, and among the Crimean Tartars.
In addition, the native rulers of Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, and Ragusa (Dubrovnik) are vassals of the sultan.
Muscovy's southwestern expansion, particularly its incorporation of eastern Ukraine, has unintended consequences.
Most Ukrainians are Orthodox, but their close contact with the Roman Catholic Polish Counter-Reformation had also brought them Western intellectual currents.
Through Kiev, Muscovy gains links to Polish and Central European influences and to the wider Orthodox world.
Although the Ukrainian link stimulates creativity in many areas, it also undermines traditional Russian religious practices and culture.
The Russian Orthodox Church discovers that its isolation from Constantinople has caused variations to creep into its liturgical books and practices.
The Russian Orthodox patriarch, Nikon, is determined to bring the Russian texts back into conformity with the Greek originals, but Nikon encounters fierce opposition among the many Russians who view the corrections as improper foreign intrusions, or perhaps the work of the devil.
When the Orthodox Church forces Nikon's reforms, a schism results in 1667.
Those who do not accept the reforms come to be called the Old Believers (starovery); they are officially pronounced heretics and are persecuted by the church and the state.
The chief opposition figure, the archpriest Avvakum, is burned at the stake.
The split subsequently becomes permanent, and many merchants and peasants join the Old Believers.
Peter's reign raises questions about Russia's backwardness, its relationship to the West, the appropriateness of reform from above, and other fundamental problems that have confronted many of Russia's subsequent rulers.
In the nineteenth century, Russians will debate whether Peter was correct in pointing Russia toward the West or whether his reforms had been a violation of Russia's natural traditions.
Muscovy is transformed in the eighteenth century, from a static, somewhat isolated, traditional state into the more dynamic, partially Westernized, and secularized Russian Empire.
This transformation is in no small measure a result of the vision, energy, and determination of Peter the Great.
Historians disagree about the extent to which Peter himself transformed Russia, but they generally concur that he laid the foundations for empire building over the next two centuries.
The era that Peter initiates signals the advent of Russia as a major European power but, although the Russian Empire will play a leading political role in the next century, its retention of serfdom precludes economic progress of any significant degree.
As West European economic growth accelerates during the Industrial Revolution, which begins in the second half of the eighteenth century, Russia begins to lag ever farther behind, creating new problems for the empire as a great power.
Peter, as a child of the second marriage of Tsar Aleksey, was at first relegated to the background of Russian politics as various court factions struggled to control the throne.
Aleksey was succeeded by his son from his first marriage, Feodor III, a sickly boy who died in 1682.
Peter then was made co-tsar with his half brother, Ivan V, but Peter's half sister, Sofia, holds the real power.
She rules as regent while the young Peter is allowed to play war games with his friends and to roam in Moscow's foreign quarters.
These early experiences instill in him an abiding interest in Western military practice and technology, particularly in military engineering, artillery, navigation, and shipbuilding.
In 1689, using troops that he had drilled during childhood games, Peter foils a plot to have Sofia crowned.
When Ivan V dies in 1696, Peter becomes the sole tsar of Muscovy.
The tsar's court also feels the impact of Ukraine and the West.
Kiev is a major transmitter of new ideas and insight through the famed scholarly academy that Metropolitan Mogila (Mohyla) founded there in 1631.
Among the results of this infusion of ideas into Muscovy are baroque architecture, literature, and icon painting.
Other more direct channels to the West open as international trade increases and more foreigners come to Muscovy.
The tsar's court is interested in the West's more advanced technology, particularly when military applications are involved.
By the end of the seventeenth century, Ukrainian, Polish, and West European penetration have undermined the Muscovite cultural synthesis—at least among the elite—and have prepared the way for an even more radical transformation.
Peter triples the revenues of the state treasury through a variety of taxes.
He levies a capitation, or poll tax, on all males except clergy and nobles and imposes a myriad of indirect taxes on alcohol, salt, and even beards.
To provide uniforms and weapons for the military, Peter develops metallurgical and textile industries using serf labor.
War dominates much of Peter's reign.
At first Peter attempts to secure the principality's southern borders against the Tatars and the Ottoman Turks.
His campaign against a fort on the Sea of Azov fails initially, but after he creates Russia's first navy, Peter is able to take the port of Azov in 1696.
To continue the war with the Ottoman Empire, Peter travels to Europe to seek allies.
The first tsar to make such a trip, Peter visits Brandenburg, Holland, England, and the Holy Roman Empire during his so-called Grand Embassy.
Peter learns a great deal and enlists into his service hundreds of West European technical specialists.
The embassy is cut short by the attempt to place Sofia on the throne instead of Peter, a revolt that is crushed by Peter's followers.
As a result, Peter has hundreds of the participants tortured and killed, and he publicly displays their bodies as a warning to others.
Peter wants to equip Russia with modern technology, institutions, and ideas.
He requires Western-style education for all male nobles, introduces so-called cipher schools to teach the alphabet and basic arithmetic, establishes a printing house, and funds the Academy of Sciences, which is established just before his death in 1725 and becomes one of Russia's most important cultural institutions.
He demands that aristocrats acquire the dress, tastes, and social customs of the West.
The result is a deepening of the cultural rift between the nobility and the mass of Russian people.
The best illustration of Peter's drive for Westernization, his break with traditions, and his coercive methods is his construction in 1703 of a new, architecturally Western capital, St. Petersburg, situated on land newly conquered from Sweden on the Gulf of Finland.
Although St. Petersburg faces westward, its Westernization is by coercion, and it cannot arouse the individualistic spirit that is an important element in the Western ways Peter so admires.
Peter's reorganization of the government structure is no less thorough.
He replaces the prikazy with colleges or boards and creates a senate to coordinate government policy.
Peter's reform of local government is less successful, but his changes enable local governments to collect taxes and maintain order.
As part of the government reform, the Orthodox Church is partially incorporated into the country's administrative structure.
Peter abolishes the patriarchate and replaces it with a collective body, the Holy Synod, led by a lay government official.