Lesson 5
Development of independent Ukraine
(1994-2010).
Plan
1. Presidency of Leonid Kuchma and the
problems of socio-economic development of Ukraine.
2. “Orange revolution” and its
consequences.
3.
Presidency of Viktor Yushchenko.
Domestic and foreign policy of Ukraine.
1. Presidency of Leonid
Kuchma and the problems of socio-economic development of Ukraine.
Parliamentary and presidential
elections were held in Ukraine in 1994. In the first contest, candidates
affiliated with the revived Communist Party emerged as the largest single
group, winning approximately one-fifth of the seats; factoring in the deputies
of the Socialist and Agrarian parties, the left now constituted a
strong—although not united—bloc in the new parliament. In the presidential
election the incumbent president, Kravchuk, was narrowly defeated by former
prime minister Kuchma, who promised economic reform and better relations with
Russia.
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Leonid Kravchuk .files/image004.jpg)
Leonid Kuchma
The two contests seemed to reveal a
political polarization between eastern and western Ukraine. Kuchma and the left
received their greatest support from the more heavily industrialized and
Russophone regions of eastern Ukraine, while Kravchuk did particularly well in
western Ukraine, where Ukrainian speakers and national democrats predominated.
Nevertheless, the minimal number of irregularities in the elections and the
peaceful replacement of the president were widely interpreted as signs that
democracy was taking root in Ukraine.
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Once in office, Kuchma maintained
many of his predecessor’s policies. Significantly, while seeking more cordial
relations with Moscow, he did not reorient Ukraine’s foreign policy northward.
Ukraine continued to participate in the CIS but in much the same manner as it
had previously. Moreover, Kuchma maintained Ukraine’s pro-Western policies and
aspirations. In 1994 Ukraine joined the Partnership
for Peace Programme run by the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); the
country also established a “special partnership” with the organization in 1996.
In 1995 Ukraine joined the Council of Europe.
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Leonid
Kuchma with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kuchma faced a major challenge in
dealing with a strong parliamentary opposition, particularly in respect to
economic reform. Ukraine managed to achieve macroeconomic stabilization by
1996, the year in which it introduced its long-awaited currency, the hryvnya. However, the economy continued to perform poorly
through the end of the decade. Cumbersome bureaucratic procedures and
unenforced economic legislation led business to be both overregulated and rife
with corruption. In addition, the country was able to attract only a limited
amount of foreign investment. The Russian economic crisis of 1998 negatively
affected Ukraine’s economy as well. But in 1999 the introduction of tax-reform
measures saw a growth in the number of small private businesses established or
emerging from the country’s significant shadow economy. At the turn of the 21st
century the legitimate economy began to grow.
In the 1998 parliamentary elections
the Communist Party actually improved its showing. In the 1999 presidential
election, however, Kuchma defeated Communist Party leader Petro
Symonenko by a resounding margin. Politically, Kuchma had benefited from the
splintering of the left among several candidates. He also had campaigned
vigorously, using all the means available to him, particularly the media.
Indeed, a strong bias in favour of Kuchma became evident in the television
coverage of the election. International observers were critical of Kuchma’s
handling of the media and some obvious electoral irregularities. His margin of
victory, however, indicated that these factors alone had not determined the
outcome of the vote.
The result of the 1999 election was
significant in two respects. First, it represented a rejection of the communist
past. Some observers remarked that it even constituted a second referendum on
independence. Second, the vote did not split neatly along geographical lines,
indicating that the east-west divide seen in the 1994 elections was not as
important a factor in Ukrainian politics as many analysts had suggested.
During Kuchma’s second term,
conflicts between right- and left-wing forces sometimes threatened political
stability. Nevertheless, newly appointed prime minister Viktor Yushchenko
shepherded economic reforms through the legislature. The economy grew steadily
in the first years of the 21st century, but the political situation remained
tense in Ukraine as it sought membership in NATO and the European Union
(EU) while also pursuing closer relations with Russia—a delicate balancing act.
In 2003 Ukraine accepted in principle a proposal to establish a “joint economic
space” with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan; however, Ukrainian-Russian
relations were strained by Russian accusations of deteriorating conditions for
the Russian minority in Ukraine, along with Ukrainian concerns over what it
viewed to be Russian expansionist designs in the Crimea.
Yushchenko became an opposition
leader following his dismissal as prime minister in 2001. The following year,
audio tapes allegedly revealed Kuchma’s approval of the sale of a radar system
to Iraq, in violation of a United
Nations Security Council resolution, and implicated
him in the assassination of a dissident journalist in 2000. Opposition groups
called for the impeachment of Kuchma, who denied the allegations.
Kuchma resigned from this position in
September 1993 to successfully run for the presidency in 1994 on a
platform to boost the economy by restoring economic relations with Russia and
faster pro-market reforms. He was
re-elected in 1999 to his second term. During Kuchma's Presidency opposition
papers were closed and several journalists died in mysterious circumstances.
In
October 1994, Kuchma announced comprehensive economic reforms, including
reduced subsidies, lifting of
price controls, lower taxes, privatization of industry and agriculture, and reforms
in currency regulation
and banking. The
parliament approved the plan's main points. The International Monetary Fund
promised a $360 million loan to initiate reforms.
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The Verkhovna
Rada building sits adjacent to the Mariyinsky Palace, the
official residence of the President of
Ukraine.
He was re-elected in 1999 to his
second term. Opponents accused him of involvement in the killing in 2000 of
journalist Georgiy Gongadze, which he
has always denied. Critics also blamed Kuchma for restrictions on press
freedom. Kuchma is believed to have played a key role in sacking the Cabinet
of Viktor Yushchenko by Verkhovna Rada on April 26, 2001.
Kuchma's Prime
Minister from 2002 until early January 2005 was Viktor Yanukovych, after
Kuchma dismissed Anatoliy Kinakh, his
previous appointee.
Kuchma signed a "Treaty of
Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership" with Russia, and endorsed a
round of talks with the CIS.
Additionally, he referred to Russian
as "an official language". He signed a special partnership agreement
with NATO and even raised the
possibility of membership of the alliance.
After Kuchma's popularity at home and
abroad sank as he became mired in corruption scandals, he turned to Russia as his new ally, saying
Ukraine needed a "multivector" foreign policy that balanced eastern
and western interests.
In
September 2000 journalist Georgiy R.
Gongadze disappeared and his headless corpse was found on
3 November 2000. On 28 November, opposition politician Oleksandr Moroz publicised
secret tape recordings implicating Kuchma in Gongadze's murder.
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Oleksandr Moroz
In 2005 the Ukrainian Prosecutor
General’s office instigated criminal proceedings against Kuchma and members of
his former administration in connection with the murder of Gongadze. It is rumored,
however, that Kuchma had been unofficially granted immunity from prosecution in
return for his graceful departure from office in 2005.
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Georgiy
Gongadze
Kuchma's role
in the election's crisis of 2004
is not entirely clear. After the second round on November 22, 2004, it appeared
that Yanukovych had won the election by fraud, which caused the opposition and
independent observers to dispute the results, leading to the Orange Revolution.
Kuchma was urged by Yanukovych and Viktor Medvedchuk (the head of
the presidential office) to declare a state of emergency
and hold the inauguration of Yanukovych. He denied the request by admittedly
stating in a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin that he
refused to pass the government into the hands of an alleged Donetsk criminal.
Later, Yanukovych publicly accused Kuchma of a betrayal.
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Vladimir Putin
Nevertheless, Kuchma refused to
officially dismiss Prime Minister Yanukovych after the parliament passed a motion of no
confidence against the Cabinet on December 1, 2004.
Soon after, Kuchma left the country.
He returned to Ukraine in March 2005.
2.“Orange revolution” and its consequences.
The Orange Revolution was a
series of protests and
political events that took place in Ukraine from late
November 2004 to January 2005, in the immediate aftermath of the run-off vote
of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election
which was claimed to be marred by massive corruption, voter intimidation and
direct electoral fraud. Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, was
the focal point of the movement with thousands of protesters demonstrating
daily. Nationwide, the democratic revolution was highlighted by a series of
acts of civil disobedience, sit-ins, and general strikes organized by
the opposition movement.
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Viktor Yushchenko Viktor Yanukovych
The protests were prompted by reports
from several domestic and foreign election monitors as well as the widespread
public perception that the results of the run-off vote of November 21, 2004 between
leading candidates Viktor Yushchenko
and Viktor Yanukovych were rigged
by the authorities in favor of the latter. The nationwide protests succeeded
when the results of the original run-off were annulled, and a revote was
ordered by Ukraine's
Supreme Court for December 26, 2004.
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Official results of the November 21 vote for
each territory. Although the results have been heavily manipulated, the map
still shows a political divide between eastern and western Ukraine.
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Change in claimed turnout between the 1st and
2nd rounds of the election according to the Central Election Commission.
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Results of the December 26, 2004 repeated
run-off presidential election. Orange denotes provinces where Yushchenko won
the popular vote. Blue represents provinces where Yanukovych led in the popular
vote.
Under intense scrutiny by domestic
and international observers, the second run-off was declared to be "fair
and free". The final results showed a clear victory for Yushchenko, who
received about 52 percent of the vote, compared to Yanukovych's 44 percent.
Yushchenko was declared the official winner and with his inauguration on January 23, 2005 in Kiev, the
Orange Revolution ended.
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Viktor Yanukovych
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Orange-clad demonstrators gather in the Independence
Square in Kiev on 22
November, 2004. On some days, the number of protesters in the center of Kiev
reached hundreds of thousands (one million by some estimates)
The 2004 presidential election in Ukraine
featured two main candidates. One was sitting Prime
Minister Viktor Yanukovych,
largely supported by Leonid Kuchma (the
outgoing President of
Ukraine who already served two terms in the office and
was precluded from running himself due to the constitutional term limits). The opposition
candidate was Viktor Yushchenko, leader of
the Our Ukraine faction in
the Ukrainian
parliament, also a former Prime Minister
(1999–2001).
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Viktor Yushchenko,
the main opposition candidate
The election was held in a highly
charged atmosphere, with the Yanukovych team and the outgoing president's
administration using their control of the government and state apparatus for
intimidation of Yushchenko and his supporters. In September 2004, Yushchenko
suffered dioxin
poisoning under mysterious circumstances. While he survived and returned to the
campaign trail, the poisoning undermined his health and altered his appearance
dramatically (his face remains disfigured by the consequences to this day).
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Protesters at Independence
Square on the first day of the Orange Revolution.
The two main candidates were neck and
neck in the first-round vote held on October 31, 2004, collecting
39.32% (Yanukovych) and 39.87% (Yushchenko) of the vote cast. The candidates
that came third and fourth collected much less: Oleksandr Moroz of the Socialist
Party of Ukraine and Petro Symonenko of the Communist
Party of Ukraine received 5.82% and 4.97%,
respectively. Since no candidate carried more than 50% of the cast ballots, a run-off vote between two
leading candidates was mandated by Ukrainian law. Soon after the run-off was
announced, Oleksandr Moroz threw his
support behind Viktor Yushchenko. Another
Ukrainian opposition leader, the charismatic populist Yulia Tymoshenko, chose not
to run herself. Promised the position of Prime Minister if Yushchenko were to
win the presidency, Tymoshenko enthusiastically supported his presidential bid
from the onset of the campaign.
In the wake of the first round of the
election many complaints regarding voting irregularities in favor of the
government supported Yanukovych were raised. However, as it was clear that
neither nominee was close enough to collecting an outright majority in the
first round, challenging the initial result would not have affected the final
outcome of the election. As such the complaints were not actively pursued and
both candidates concentrated on the upcoming run-off scheduled for November 21.
Orange
was originally adopted by the Yushchenko's camp as the signifying color of his
election campaign. Later the color gave name to an entire series of political
terms, such as the Oranges (Pomaranchevi in Ukrainian) for his
political camp and supporters. At the time when the mass protests grew, and
especially when they brought about political change in the country, the term Orange
Revolution came to represent the entire series of events.
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An orange ribbon,
a symbol of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution. Ribbons are common symbols of
non-violent protest.
In view of the success of using color
as a symbol to mobilize supporters, the Yanukovych camp chose blue for themselves.
Protests began on the eve of the
second round of voting, as the official count differed markedly from exit poll results
which gave Yushchenko up to an 11% lead, while official results gave the
election win to Yanukovych by 3%. While Yanukovych supporters have claimed that
Yushchenko's connections to the Ukrainian media explain this
disparity, the Yushchenko team publicized evidence of many incidents of electoral fraud in favor of
the government-backed Yanukovych, witnessed by many local and foreign
observers. These accusations were reinforced by similar allegations, though at
a lesser scale, during the first presidential run of October 31.
The Yushchenko campaign publicly called
for protest on the dawn of election day, November 21, 2004, when
allegations of fraud began to spread. Beginning on November 22, 2004, massive
protests started in cities across Ukraine: the largest, in Kiev's Maidan
Nezalezhnosti (Independence
Square), attracted an estimated 500,000 participants, who on November 23, 2004, peacefully
marched in front of the headquarters of the Verkhovna Rada, the
Ukrainian parliament, many
wearing orange or carrying orange flags, the color of Yushchenko's campaign
coalition.
The local councils in Kiev, Lviv, and several other cities
passed, with the wide popular support of their constituency, a largely symbolic
refusal to accept the legitimacy of the official election results, and
Yushchenko took a symbolic presidential oath.
This "oath" taken by Yushchenko in half-empty parliament chambers,
lacking the quorum as only the Yushchenko-leaning
factions were
present, could not have any legal effect. But it was an important symbolic
gesture meant to demonstrate the resolve of the Yushchenko campaign not to
accept the compromised election results. In response, Yushchenko's opponents
denounced him for taking an illegitimate oath, and even some of his moderate
supporters were ambivalent about this act, while a more radical side of the
Yushchenko camp demanded him to act even more decisively. Some observers argued
that this symbolic presidential oath might have been useful to the Yushchenko
camp should events have taken a more confrontational route. In such a scenario,
this "presidential oath" Yushchenko took could be used to lend
legitimacy to the claim that he, rather than his rival who tried to gain the
presidency through alleged fraud, was a true commander-in-chief
authorized to give orders to the military and security agencies.
At the same time, local officials in
Eastern and Southern Ukraine, the stronghold of Viktor Yanukovych, started a
series of actions alluding to the possibility of the breakup of Ukraine or an
extra-constitutional federalization
of the country, should their candidate's claimed victory not be recognized.
Demonstrations of public support for Yanukovych were held throughout Eastern
Ukraine and some of his supporters arrived in Kiev. However, in Kiev the
pro-Yanukovych demonstrators were far outnumbered by Yushchenko supporters,
whose ranks were continuously swelled by new arrivals from many regions of
Ukraine. The scale of the demonstrations in Kiev was unprecedented. By many
estimates, on some days they drew up to one million people to the streets, in
freezing weather
Although Yushchenko entered into
negotiations with outgoing President Leonid Kuchma
in an effort to peacefully resolve the situation, the negotiations broke up on November 24, 2004. Yanukovych
was officially certified as the victor by the Central Election Commission,
which itself was allegedly involved in falsification of electoral results by
withholding the information it was receiving from local districts and running a
parallel illegal computer server to manipulate the results. The next morning
after the certification took place, Yushchenko spoke to supporters in Kiev,
urging them to begin a series of mass protests, general strikes and sit-ins
with the intent of crippling the government and forcing it to concede defeat.
In view of the threat of illegitimate
government acceding to power, Yushchenko's camp announced the creation of the Committee
of National Salvation which declared a nationwide political strike.
On December 1, 2004, the Verkhovna Rada passed a
resolution that strongly condemned pro-separatist
and federalization actions, and
passed a non-confidence
vote in the Cabinet of
Ministers of Ukraine, a decision Prime
Minister Yanukovych
refused to recognize. By the Constitution
of Ukraine, the non-confidence vote mandated
the government's resignation, but the parliament had no means to enforce a
resignation without the co-operation of Prime Minister Yanukovych and outgoing
President Kuchma.
On December 3, 2004, Ukraine's
Supreme Court finally broke the political
deadlock. The court decided that due to the scale of the electoral fraud it
became impossible to establish the election results. Therefore, it invalidated
the official results that would have given Yanukovych the presidency. As a
resolution, the court ordered a revote of the run-off to be held on December 26, 2004. This
decision was seen as a victory for the Yushchenko camp while Yanukovych and his
supporters favored a rerun of the entire election rather than just the run-off,
as a second-best option if Yanukovych was not awarded the presidency. On December 8, 2004 the
parliament amended laws to provide a legal framework for the new round of
elections. The parliament also approved the changes to the Constitution,
implementing a political reform backed by
outgoing President Kuchma as a part of a political compromise between the
acting authorities and opposition.
The December 26 revote was held under
intense scrutiny of local and international observers. The preliminary results,
announced by the Central Election Commission
on December 28, gave Yushchenko and Yanukovych 51.99% and 44.20% of the total
vote, respectively. The Yanukovych team attempted to mount a fierce legal
challenge to the election results using both the Ukrainian courts and the
Election Commission complaint procedures. However, all their complaints were
dismissed as without merit by both the Supreme Court
of Ukraine and the Central Election Commission.
On January 10, 2005 the Election
Commission officially declared Yushchenko as the winner of the presidential
election with the final results falling within 0.01% of the preliminary ones.
This Election Commission announcement cleared the way for Yushchenko's inauguration as the President of
Ukraine. The official ceremony took place in the Verkhovna
Rada building on January 23, 2005 and was
followed by the "public inauguration" of the newly sworn President at
Maidan
Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in
front of hundreds of thousands of his supporters. This event brought the
Ukrainian Orange Revolution to its peaceful conclusion.
According to one version of events
recounted by The New York Times,
Ukrainian security agencies played an unusual role in the Orange Revolution, with
a KGB successor agency in the
former Soviet state providing qualified support to the political opposition. As
per the paper report, on November 28, 2004 over 10,000 MVS (Internal
Ministry) troops were mobilized to put down the protests in Independence Square
in Kiev by the order of their commander, Lt. Gen. Sergei Popkov. The SBU (Security
Service of Ukraine, a successor to the KGB in Ukraine)
warned opposition leaders of the crackdown. Oleksander Galaka, head of GRU
(military intelligence) made calls to "prevent bloodshed". Col. Gen. Ihor Smeshko
(SBU chief) and Maj. Gen. Vitaly Romanchenko (military
counter-intelligence chief) both claimed to have warned Popkov to pull back his
troops, which he did, preventing bloodshed.
In addition to the desire to avoid
bloodshed, the New York Times article suggests that siloviki, as the
security officers are often called in the countries of the former Soviet
Union, were motivated by personal aversion to the
possibility of having to serve president Yanukovych,
who was in his youth convicted of robbery and assault and had
alleged connection with corrupt
businessmen, especially if he were to ascend to the presidency by fraud. The
personal feelings of Gen. Smeshko towards Yanukovych may also have played a
role. Additional evidence of Yushchenko's popularity and at least partial
support among the SBU officers is shown by the fact that several embarrassing
proofs of electoral fraud, including incriminating wiretap recordings
of conversations among the Yanukovych campaign and government officials
discussing how to rig the election, were provided to the Yushchenko camp. These
conversations were likely recorded and provided to the opposition by
sympathizers in the Ukrainian Security Services.
Many analysts believe the Orange
Revolution was built on a pattern first developed in the ousting of Slobodan
Milošević in Serbia four years earlier, and
continuing with the Rose Revolution
in Georgia.
Each of these victories, though apparently spontaneous, was the result of
extensive grassroots campaigning and coalition-building among the opposition.
Each included election victories followed up by public demonstrations, after
attempts by the incumbent to hold onto power through electoral fraud.
Each of these social movements
included extensive work by student activists.
The most famous of these was Otpor, the youth
movement that helped bring in Vojislav
Koštunica. In Georgia the movement was called Kmara. In Ukraine the movement has
worked under the succinct slogan Pora ("It's
Time"). Chair of Georgian Parliamentary Committee on Defense and Security Givi Targamadze, former
member of the Georgian Liberty
Institute, as well as some members of Kmara, were
consulted by Ukrainian opposition leaders on techniques of nonviolent struggle.
Georgian rock bands Zumba, Soft Eject and Green
Room, which earlier had supported the Rose Revolution, organized a solidarity
concert in central Kiev to support Yushchenko’s cause in November 2004.
Activists in each of these movements
were funded and trained in tactics of political organization and nonviolent
resistance by a coalition of Western pollsters
and professional consultants funded by a range of Western government and
non-government agencies. According to The Guardian,
these include the U.S. State
Department and USAID along with the National Democratic Institute for International
Affairs, the International
Republican Institute, the Bilderberg Group, the NGO Freedom House and George Soros's Open Society
Institute. The National
Endowment for Democracy, a foundation supported by
the U.S. government, has
supported non-governmental democracy-building efforts in Ukraine since 1988.[15] Writings on nonviolent
struggle by Gene Sharp
formed the strategic basis of the student campaigns.
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Round table talks with Ukrainian and foreign
representatives during the Orange Revolution
on December 1 in Kiev.
Former president Leonid Kravchuk
accused Russian oligarch, Boris Berezovsky, of
financing Yushchenko's campaign, and provided copies of documents showing money
transfers from companies he said are controlled by Berezovsky to companies
controlled by Yuschenko's official backers. Berezovsky has confirmed that he
met Yushchenko's representatives in London before the election, and that the
money was transferred from his companies, but he refused to confirm or deny
that the companies that received the money were used in Yushchenko's campaign.
Financing of election campaigns by foreign citizens is illegal in Ukraine.
According to BBC's The Russian Godfathers,
Berezovsky poured millions of dollars into sustaining the spontaneous demonstrations
and was in daily contact with the key opposition leaders.
On the other hand, Russia's
involvement in the election was more direct and heavily
on the side of Prime Minister Yanukovych. The extent of this involvement is
still contested but some facts are indisputable such as multiple meetings
between Russian
president Vladimir Putin, Kuchma and Yanukovych before and
during the elections. Putin repeatedly congratulated Yanukovych while the
results were still contested, which was soon to embarrass both parties.
Yanukovych received a much more preferential treatment in Russian media, and
was surrounded by Russian consultants known to be close to the Kremlin
throughout the election cycle. During the protests Russian media portrayed
the Ukrainian protesters as irresponsible, led astray by Western agents.
3.Presidency of Viktor
Yushchenko. Domestic and foreign policy of Ukraine.
Political turmoil occupied the first
few years of Yushchenko’s presidency. His first cabinet served only until
September 2005, when he dismissed all his ministers, including Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko,
a fellow leader of the Orange Revolution.
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Yulia Tymoshenko
The next prime minister, Yury
Yekhanurov, stayed in office only until January 2006.
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Yuriy
Yekhanurov
Parliamentary elections early that year saw
Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine
party finish third, behind Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and the Yuliya
Tymoshenko Bloc. When a proposed coalition of the so-called Orange parties in
parliament fell apart, Yushchenko was forced to accept his rival Yanukovych as
prime minister. The ensuing power struggle between the president and the prime
minister, whose political role had been enhanced by constitutional reforms that
took effect in 2006, led Yushchenko to call for another round of parliamentary
elections in 2007. Once again the president’s party finished behind both
Yanukovych’s and Tymoshenko’s parties. This time, however, a coalition with the
Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc held together, allowing the pro-Western Orange parties to
form a government with Tymoshenko as prime minister (December 2007). As the
government continued to balance the often conflicting goals of maintaining
positive relations with Russia and gaining membership in the EU, dissent
between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko contributed to the collapse of their
coalition in September 2008. In October the president dissolved parliament.
Parliamentary elections, at first scheduled for December, later were canceled,
and Yushchenko’s and Tymoshenko’s parties agreed to form a new coalition,
together with the smaller Lytvyn Bloc, headed by Volodymyr Lytvyn.
The first 100 days of Yushchenko's
term, January 23, 2005 through May 1, 2005, were marked by numerous dismissals
and appointments at all levels of the executive branch. He appointed Yulia Tymoshenko as Prime
Minister and the appointment was ratified by parliament. Oleksandr
Zinchenko was appointed the head of the presidential secretariat
with a nominal title of Secretary of State. Petro Poroshenko, a cutthroat
competitor of Tymoshenko for the post of Prime Minister, was appointed
Secretary of the Security and Defense Council.
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Presidential Administration building in
central Kiev.
In August 2005, Yushchenko joined
with Georgian
President Mikheil
Saakashvili in signing the Borjomi Declaration, which
called for the creation of an institution of international cooperation, the Community of
Democratic Choice, to bring together the democracies
and incipient democracies in the region around the Baltic, Black, and Caspian
Seas. The first meeting of presidents and leaders to discuss the CDC took place
on December 1-2, 2005 in Kiev.
On September 8, 2005, Yushchenko
fired his government,
led by Yulia Tymoshenko, after
resignations and claims of corruption.
On September 9, acting Prime
Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov
tried to form a new government. His first attempt, on September 20, fell short
by 3 votes of the necessary 226, but on September 22 the parliament ratified
his government with 289 votes.
Also in September 2005, former
president Leonid Kravchuk accused
exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky
of financing Yushchenko's presidential election campaign, and provided copies
of documents showing money transfers from companies he said were controlled by
Berezovsky to companies controlled by Yushchenko's official backers. Berezovsky
confirmed that he met Yushchenko's representatives in London before the
election, and that the money was transferred from his companies, but he refused
to confirm or deny that the money was used in Yushchenko's campaign. Financing
of election campaigns by foreign citizens is illegal in Ukraine.
In August 2006, Yushchenko appointed
his onetime opponent in the presidential race, Viktor Yanukovych, to be the
new Prime Minister. This was generally regarded as indicating a rapprochement
with Russia.
On April 2, 2007, Yushchenko signed
an order to dissolve the parliament
and call early elections. Some consider the dissolution order illegal because
none of the conditions spelled out under Article 90
of the Constitution
of Ukraine for the president to dissolve the
legislature had been met. Yushchenko's detractors argued that he was attempting
to usurp the functions of the Constitutional
Court by claiming constitutional violations by the
parliament as a pretext for his action; the parliament appealed the
Constitutional Court itself and promised to abide by its ruling. In the
meantime, the parliament continued to meet and banned the financing of any new election pending the
Constitutional Court's decision. Competing protests took place and the crisis
escalated. In May 2007 Yushchenko illegally dismissed three members of
Ukraine's constitutional Court preventing the Court from ruling on the
Constitutionality of his decree dismissing Ukraine's parliament.
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Viktor Yanukovych Yulia Tymoshenko Vyacheslav
Kyrylenko
Party of Regions Yulia
Tymoshenko Bloc Our Ukraine Bloc
Yushchenko again tried to dissolved
the parliament on October 9, 2008 by announcing parliamentary elections to be
held on December 7. Yushchenko's decree was suspended and has since lapsed.
Yushchenko in defense of his actions said, "I am deeply convinced that the
democratic coalition was ruined by one thing alone -- human ambition. The
ambition of one person." Political groups including members of his own Our Ukraine party
contested the election decree and politicians vowed to challenge it in the
courts.
In December [[2008],
following a back room revolt from members of our Ukraine-Peoples' Self Defense
Party a revised coalition was formed between members of Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc
(OU-PSD), the Bloc of Yulia
Tymoshenko (BYuT), and the Lytvyn Bloc (LB),
increasing the size of the governing coalition by an additional 20 members.
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Volodymyr Lytvyn
Yushchenko in responding to
journalists questions claimed "The fact is that the so-called coalition
was formed on basis of political corruption, this coalition will be able to
work only if the Communist
Party will join it. Speaking about such a type of
coalition, it is even more shameful." Victor Yushchenko also stated that
Yulia Tymoshenko’s desire to keep her job as Prime
Minister was the main motive for creating the coalition
and that he wanted to expel the OU-PSD lawmakers who supported the creation of
the coalition from the list of members of parliament.
Yuschenko claimed (March 19, 2009)
that his conflicts with Tymoshenko are not due to personal differences, but to
the incompleteness of the constitutional reforms of 2004.
On July 23, 2009 under the
terms of Ukraine's Constitution
the president can not dismiss the parliament within six months from the
expiration of his five-year term of authority which ends on January 23, 2010.
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Yushchenko meeting former United States President George W. Bush at an April
2005 press conference.
Victor Yushchenko's support in
Ukraine according to recent public opinion polls has plummeted, from a high of
52% following his election in 2004 to below 4%, with most commentators writing
off his chances of being reelected to a second term of office.
On March 31, 2009, in his address to
the nation before Parliament, Yushchenko proposed sweeping government reform
changes and an economic and social plan to ameliorate current economic
conditions in Ukraine and apparently to respond to standing structural problems
in Ukraine's political system.
The proposal, which Yushchenko called
a 'next big step forward for fairness and prosperity in Ukraine' included the
following proposals:
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Yushchenko's approval rating stood at 6% as of
May, 2009 according to FOM-Ukraine polling
results
- Restore
financial stability in the country by implementing the IMF reforms
and a balanced budget
- Abolish parliamentary immunity
- Fair
pension system based on the number of years of work and salary received
- Pass a
realistic state budget for 2009 that reduces inflation and stabilizes the hryvna
.files/image060.jpg)
.files/image062.jpg)
100 hryven' (ãðèâåíü) 1 hryvnia (ãðèâíÿ)
- Have the
state assume responsibility for struggling banks
- Rejuvenate
rural areas by eliminating state interference in agriculture production
- Promote
Ukrainian products abroad to increase sales for our producers
- European Union membership and increased trade while simultaneously improving
relations and trade with Russia
- Allow
voters to elect members of parliament from the areas where they live
- Open up party lists for
both parliamentary and local elections
- Create bicameral
parliament to bring stability to our legislative
branch
- Reduce
the number of members
of parliament
Government
and politics
Ukraine is a republic under a
mixed semi-parliamentary semi-presidential
system with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
The President
is elected by popular vote for a five-year term and is the formal head of state.[81]
Ukraine's legislative branch includes
the 450-seat unicameral parliament,
the Verkhovna Rada.[82] The
parliament is primarily responsible for the formation of the executive branch
and the Cabinet of
Ministers, which is headed by the Prime
Minister.[83]
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Verkhovna Rada, the Parliament of
Ukraine
Laws, acts of the parliament and the
cabinet, presidential decrees, and acts of the Crimean
parliament may be abrogated by the Constitutional
Court, should they be found to violate the Constitution
of Ukraine. Other normative acts are subject to
judicial review. The Supreme Court
is the main body in the system of courts of general jurisdiction. Local self-government
is officially guaranteed. Local councils and city mayors are popularly elected
and exercise control over local budgets. The heads of regional and district
administrations are appointed by the president.
Ukraine has a large number of
political parties, many of which have tiny memberships and are unknown to the
general public. Small parties often join in multi-party coalitions (electoral
blocs) for the purpose of participating in parliamentary elections.
Administrative
divisions
The system of Ukrainian
subdivisions reflects the country's status as a unitary state (as stated
in the country's
constitution) with unified legal and administrative regimes for
each unit.
Ukraine is subdivided into
twenty-four oblasts (provinces) and one autonomous
republic (avtonomna respublika), Crimea. Additionally, the cities of Kiev, the capital, and Sevastopol, both have a
special legal status. The 24 oblasts and Crimea
are subdivided into 490 raions (districts), or
second-level administrative units. The average area of a Ukrainian raion is
1,200 square kilometres (460 sq mi); the average population of a
raion is 52,000 people.[91]
Urban areas (cities) can either be
subordinated to the state (as in the case of Kiev and Sevastopol), the oblast
or raion administrations, depending on their population and
socio-economic importance. Lower administrative units include urban-type
settlements, which are similar to rural
communities, but are more urbanized, including industrial enterprises,
educational facilities, and transport connections, and villages.
In total, Ukraine has 457 cities, 176
of them are labeled oblast-class, 279 smaller raion-class cities, and
two special legal status cities. These are followed by 886 urban-type
settlements and 28,552 villages.[91]
Geography
At 603,700 square kilometres
(233,100 sq mi) and with a coastline of 2,782 square kilometres
(1,074 sq mi), Ukraine is the world's 44th-largest country (after the Central African
Republic, before Madagascar).
It is the largest whole-Europe country and the second largest country
in Europe (after the European part of Russia, before metropolitan
France).[3]
The Ukrainian landscape consists
mostly of fertile plains (or steppes) and
plateaus, crossed by rivers such as the Dnieper (Dnipro),
Seversky Donets, Dniester and the Southern Buh as they flow
south into the Black Sea and the
smaller Sea of Azov. To the
southwest, the delta of the Danube forms the border with
Romania. The country's only mountains are the Carpathian
Mountains in the west, of which the highest is the Hora Hoverla at
2,061 metres (6,760 ft), and those on the Crimean peninsula,
in the extreme south along the coast.[92]
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The Ai-Petri 1200 m above mean
sea level
Ukraine has a mostly temperate continental
climate, although a more Mediterranean
climate is found on the southern Crimean coast. Precipitation
is disproportionately distributed; it is highest in the west and north and
lowest in the east and southeast. Western Ukraine, receives around
1,200 millimetres (47.2 in) of precipitation annually, while Crimea receives around
400 millimetres (15.7 in). Winters vary from cool along the Black Sea to cold
farther inland. Average annual temperatures range from 5.5 °C
(41.9 °F)–7 °C (44.6 °F) in the north, to 11 °C
(51.8 °F)–13 °C (55.4 °F) in the south.[93]
Religion
The dominant religion in Ukraine is Eastern Orthodox Christianity,
which is currently split between three Church bodies: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchate,
the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autonomous
church body under the Patriarch of
Moscow, and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.[114]
A distant second by the number of the
followers is the Eastern Rite Ukrainian
Greek Catholic Church, which practices a similar liturgical and spiritual tradition as Eastern
Orthodoxy, but is in communion
with the Holy See of the Roman
Catholic Church and recognises the primacy of the Pope as head of the Church.[153]
Additionally, there are 863 Roman
Catholic communities, and 474 clergy members serving some one
million Roman Catholics in Ukraine.[114] The group
forms some 2.19 percent of the population and consists mainly of ethnic Poles and Hungarians, who live
predominantly in the western regions of the country.
Protestant Christians
also form around 2.19 percent of the population. Protestant numbers have
grown greatly since Ukrainian independence. The Evangelical
Baptist Union of Ukraine is the largest group, with more
than 150,000 members and about 3000 clergy. The second largest Protestant
church is the Ukrainian Church of Evangelical faith (Pentecostals) with 110000
members and over 1500 local churches and over 2000 clergy, but there also exist
other Pentecostal groups and unions and together all Pentecostals are over
300,000, with over 3000 local churches. Also there are many Pentecostal high
education schools such as the Lviv Theological Seminary and the Kiev Bible
Institute. Other groups include Calvinists, Jehovah's
Witnesses, Lutherans, Methodists and Seventh-day
Adventists. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) is also present.[114]
There are an estimated 500,000 Muslims in Ukraine,
and about 300,000 of them are Crimean Tatars.[citation
needed] There are
487 registered Muslim communities, 368 of them on the Crimean peninsula. In
addition, some 50,000 Muslims live in Kiev;
mostly foreign-born.[154] The Jewish
community is a tiny fraction of what it was before World War II. The cities
with the largest populations of Jews in 1926 were Odessa, 154,000 or 36.5% of the
total population; and Kiev, 140,500 or 27.3%.[155] The 2001
census indicated that there are 103,600 Jews in Ukraine, although community
leaders claimed that the population could be as large as 300,000. There are no
statistics on what share of the Ukrainian Jews are observant, but Orthodox Judaism has the
strongest presence in Ukraine. Smaller Reform
and Conservative
Jewish (Masorti) communities
exist as well.[114]
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"What religious group do you
belong to?". Sociology poll by Razumkov Centre about the religious situation in
Ukraine (2006) Atheist or do not
belong to any church UOC
- Kiev Patriarchate UOC
(Moscow Patriarchate) UAOC Ukrainian
Greek Catholic Church Roman
Catholic Church
Demographics
According to the Ukrainian
Census of 2001, ethnic Ukrainians make up
77.8% of the population. Other significant ethnic groups are Russians (17.3%), Belarusians (0.6%), Moldovans (0.5%), Crimean Tatars (0.5%), Bulgarians (0.4%), Hungarians (0.3%), Romanians (0.3%), Poles (0.3%), Jews (0.2%), Armenians (0.2%), Greeks (0.2%) and Tatars (0.2%).[134] The
industrial regions in the east and southeast are the most heavily populated,
and about 67.2 percent of the population lives in urban areas[135][136].
.files/image070.jpg)
Ethnic Ukrainians in Ukraine
(2001)
Language
According to the Constitution,
the state language of Ukraine
is Ukrainian. Russian, which was
the de facto official
language of the Soviet Union, is widely spoken,
especially in eastern and southern Ukraine. According to the 2001 census,
67.5 percent of the population declared Ukrainian as their native language
and 29.6 percent declared Russian.[120] Most native
Ukrainian speakers know Russian as a second language.
These details result in a significant
difference across different survey results, as even a small restating of a
question switches responses of a significant group of people.[f] Ukrainian is
mainly spoken in western and central Ukraine. In western Ukraine, Ukrainian is
also the dominant language in cities (such as Lviv). In central Ukraine,
Ukrainian and Russian are both equally used in cities, with Russian being more
common in Kiev,[f] while
Ukrainian is the dominant language in rural communities. In eastern and
southern Ukraine, Russian is primarily used in cities, and Ukrainian is used in
rural areas.
.files/image072.jpg)
Percentage of native Ukrainian
speakers by subdivision.
For a large part of the Soviet era,
the number of Ukrainian speakers declined from generation to generation, and by
the mid-1980s, the usage of the Ukrainian language in public life had decreased
significantly.[121] Following
independence, the government of Ukraine began following a policy of Ukrainisation,[122] to increase
the use of Ukrainian, while discouraging Russian, which has supposedly been
banned or restricted in the media and films.[123][124] This would,
in principle, mean that Russian-language programmes need a Ukrainian
translation or subtitles.
.files/image074.jpg)
Percentage of native Russian
speakers by subdivision.
According to the Constitution of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea,
Ukrainian is the only state language of the republic. However, the republic's
constitution specifically recognises Russian as the language of the majority of
its population and guarantees its usage 'in all spheres of public life'. Similarly,
the Crimean Tatar
language (the language of 12 percent of population
of Crimea[125]) is
guaranteed a special state protection as well as the 'languages of other
ethnicities'. Russian speakers constitute an overwhelming majority of the
Crimean population (77 percent), with Ukrainian speakers comprising just
10.1 percent, and Crimean Tatar speakers 11.4 percent.[126] But in
everyday life the majority of Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians in Crimea use
Russian.[127]
.files/image075.jpg)
Percentage of people with Ukrainian as their native language according
to 2001 census (in regions).
.files/image077.jpg)
Ukraine produces the fourth largest number of post-secondary graduates in
Europe, while being ranked seventh in population.
.files/image079.jpg)
Ethnic Ukrainians in Ukraine
(2001)
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Ukrainian administrative
divisions by monthly salary
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About number and composition
population of UKRAINE
by data All-Ukrainian population census'2001 data
The
peculiarity of the national structure of the population of Ukraine is
its multinational composition. According to All-Ukrainian population census
data, the representatives of more than 130 nationalities and ethnic groups live
on the territory of the country.
The culture of
When President Leonid Kravchuk was elected by the
Ukrainian parliament in 1990, he vowed to seek Ukrainian sovereignty.
In June 1996, the last strategic nuclear warhead
was removed to
In 1989 statistics showed Ukrainian spoken as a
native language by 87 percent of the population, with 12 percent of Ukrainians
claiming Russian as their native language. The use of native languages among
ethnic groups showed Russians, Hungarians, and Crimean Tatars at 94 to 98
percent and Germans, Greeks, and Poles at 25 percent, 19 percent and 13
percent, respectively. Assimilation through Ukrainian language is 67 percent
for Poles, 45 percent for Czechs, and 33 percent for Slovaks. As a second
language Ukrainian is used by 85 percent of Czechs, 54 percent of Poles, 47
percent of Jews, 43 percent of Slovaks, and 33 percent of Russians.
Formerly repressed, Ukrainian and other ethnic
languages in
Symbolism. The traditional Ukrainian
symbols—trident and blue-and-yellow flag—were officially adopted during
Ukrainian independence in 1917–1920 and again after the declaration of
independence in 1991. The trident dates back to the Kyivan Rus as a
pre-heraldic symbol of Volodymyr the Great. The national flag colors are
commonly believed to represent blue skies above yellow wheat fields.
Heraldically, they derive from the Azure, the lion rampant or coat of arms of
the Galician Volynian Prince Lev I. The 1863 patriotic song "Ukraine Has
Not Perished," composed by Myxaylo Verbyts'kyi from a poem of Pavlo
Chubyns'kyi, became the Ukrainian national anthem in 1917 and was reaffirmed in
1991. These symbols were prohibited as subversive under the Soviets, but
secretly were cherished by all Ukrainian patriots.
The popular symbol of Mother Ukraine appeared
first in Ukrainian baroque poetry of the seventeenth century as a typical
allegory representing homelands as women. When
National identity arises from personal
self-determination shared with others on the basis of a common language,
cultural and family traditions, religion, and historical and mythical
heritages. There is a lively reassessment of these elements in contemporary
The 988 baptism of the Rus melded Christian
beliefs with existing customs, leading to a Rus identity connected to both
homeland and religion. In the seventeenth century Ukrainian identity held its
own against Polish identity and the Roman Catholic Church. In the Russian
empire Ukrainians preserved their identity through culture and language because
religion by itself integrated them with Russians.
Historical facts and myths as bases of national
identity were first reflected in the literature of the Ukrainian baroque. In
later times, the proto-Slavic origins of the Ukrainian people were ascribed to
the settled branch of Scythians (500 B.C.E. –100 B.C.E. ) mentioned by ancient
Greek and Roman historians. Recent theories connecting origins of Ukrainian
culture with the first Indo-European tribes of the
Ethnic Relations.
Boats and
barges line the
Gagauz in southern Ukraine; and Russians in
eastern and northern Ukraine. The Russian Empire settled Germans, Swedes,
Bulgarians, Greeks, Christian Albanians, and Serbs in southern steppes. Russian
landlords brought ethnic Russian serfs to the steppes, and Russian Old
Believers also settled there fleeing persecution. In 1830 and 1863 the Russian
government exiled Polish insurgents to southern
Historically, ethnic conflicts emerged in
In contemporary
Pro-Russian elements identify Russophones with
Russian ethnicity. However, statistics show a large number of Russophones who
do not consider themselves Russian. In 1989, 90.7 percent of Jews, 79.1 percent
of Greeks, and 48.9 percent of Armenians and other ethnic groups in
URBANISM , ARCHITECTURE, AND THE USE OF SPACE
A prototypical architectural tradition was found
by archeologists studying ancient civilizations in
Ukrainian architecture readily adopted the
Renaissance style exemplified by the Khotyn and Kamyanets'-Podil'skyi castles,
built in the fourteenth century, Oles'ko and Ostroh castles of the fifteenth
century, and most buildings in Lviv's
Ukrainian baroque architecture was representative
of the lifestyle of the kozak aristocracy. At that time most medieval churches
were redesigned to include a richer exterior and interior ornamentation and
multilevel domes. The most impressive exponents of this period are the bell
tower of the Pechersk Monastery and the
Ukrainian folk architecture of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries shows a considerable influence of baroque ornamentation
and neoclassic orders while preserving traditional materials like wood and
wattled clay. Village planning remained traditional, centered around a church,
community buildings, and marketplace. The streets followed property lines and
land contours. Village neighborhoods were named for extended families, clans,
or diverse trades and crafts. This toponymy, dating from medieval times,
reappeared spontaneously in southern and eastern Ukrainian towns and cities,
such as
Throughout the nineteenth century and into the
beginning of the twentieth century, the empire architectural style came to
Soviet architecture initially favored
constructivism as shown in the administrative center of Kharkiv and then
adopted a heavy neoclassicism pejoratively called totalitarian style for major
urban centers. Post-World War II architecture focused on monobloc projects
reflecting a collectivist ideology. However, contemporary Ukrainians prefer
single houses to apartment blocs. The traditional Ukrainian house has a private
space between the street and the house, usually with a garden. Striving for
more private space people in apartment buildings partition original long
hallways into smaller spaces. Dachas (summer cottages) are a vital part of
contemporary Ukrainian life. Laid out on a grid, dacha cooperatives provide
summer rural communities for city dwellers.
Support for the Arts. The former
Literature. Ukrainian literature begins with the
chronicles of Kyivan Rus and the twelfth century epic The Tale of Ihor's
Campaign. Principal authors in
A Western Orthodox church in the Carpathian
Mountains. Crosses and domes are common on Ukrainian churches.
the baroque period were Lazar Baranovych
(1620–1693), Ioannykii Galyatovs'kyi (d. 1688), Ivan Velychkovs'kyi (d. 1707),
and Dymitrii Tuptalo (1651–1709), who wrote didactic poetry and drama. Kozak
chronicles of the early eighteenth century include The Chronicle of the
Eyewitness, The Chronicle of Hryhorii Hrabyanka , and The Chronicle of Samijlo
Velychko .
Ivan Kotlyarevskyi (1769–1838) first used the
proto-modern Ukrainian literary language in his 1798 poem Eneida (Aeneid). He
travestied Virgil, remaking the original Trojans into Ukrainian kozaks and the
destruction of
In 1837 three Galician writers known as the
Rus'ka Trijtsia (Ruthenian Trinity)—Markiian Shashkevych (1811–1843), Ivan
Vahylevych (1811–1866) and Yakiv Holovats'kyi (1814–1888)—published a literary
collection under the title Rusalka Dnistrovaya (The Nymph of Dnister). This
endeavor focused on folklore and history and began to unify the Ukrainian
literary language. The literary genius of Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861)
completed the development of romantic literature and its national spirit. His
1840 collection of poems Kobzar and other poetic works became symbols of
Ukrainian national identity for all Ukrainians from gentry to peasants. In his
poetry he appears as the son of the downtrodden Mother-Ukraine. Later, his own
image was identified with an archetypal Great Father, embodying the nation's
spirit. This process completed the creation of a system of symbolic
representations in Ukrainian national identity.
In the second half of the nineteenth century,
Ukrainian writers under the Russian Empire—Panteleimon Kulish (1819–1897),
Marko Vovchok (1834–1907), Ivan Nechuj-Levyts'kyj (1838–1918), Panas Myrnyj
(1849–1920), and Borys Hrinchenko (1863–1910)—developed a realistic style in
their novels and short stories. Osyp-Yurij Fed'kovych (1834–1888) pioneered
Ukrainian literature in the westernmost Bukovyna under Austrian rule. Ivan
Franko (1856–1916) is a landmark figure in Ukrainian literature comparable to
Shevchenko. His poetry ranged from the most intimate introspection to epic
grandeur. His prose was attuned to contemporary European styles, especially
naturalism, and his poetry ranged from introspective to philosophical.
Mykhailo Kotsubynskyi (1864–1913); Vasyl Stefanyk
(1871–1936), a master of short psychological stories in dialect; and Olha
Kobylianska (1865–1942) all wrote in a psychologically true style. Lesya
Ukrainka (1871–1913) saw Ukrainian history and society within a universal and
emotionally heightened context in her neo-romantic poems like Davnya Kazka (
The Ancient Tale, 1894) or Vila-Posestra ( Sister Vila, 1911) and such dramas
as U Pushchi ( In the Wilderness, 1910), Boiarynia ( The Noblewoman, 1910) and
Lisova Pisnya ( Song of the Forest, 1910). Popularly, Shevchenko, Franko, and
Lesia Ukrainka are known in Ukrainian culture as the Prophet or Bard, the
Stonecutter, and the Daughter of Prometheus, images based on their respective
works.
After the Soviet takeover of
Ukrainian literature showed achievements within a
wide stylistic spectrum in the brief period of Ukrainization under the Soviets.
Modernism, avant-garde, and neoclassicism, flourished in opposition to the
so-called proletarian literature. Futurism was represented by Mykhailo Semenko
(1892–1939). Mykola Zerov (1890–1941), Maksym Rylskyj (1895–1964), and Mykhailo
Draj-Khmara (1889–1938) were neoclassicists. The group VAPLITE (Vil'na Academia
Proletars'koi Literatury [Free Academy of Proletarian Literature], 1925–1928)
included the poets Pavlo Tychyna (1891–1967) and Mike Johansen (1895–1937), the
novelists Yurij Yanovs'kyi (1902–1954) and Valerian Pidmohyl'nyi (1901–1937?),
and the dramatist Mykola Kulish (1892–1937). The VAPLITE leader Mykola
Khvyliovyi (1893–1933) advocated a cultural and political orientation towards
Europe and away from
From the 1930s to the 1960s, the so-called social
realistic style was officially mandated in Ukrainian Soviet literature. In 1960
to
Writers of 1980s and the 1990s sought new
directions either in a philosophical rethinking of past and present
Graphic Arts. Ancient Greek and Roman paintings
and Byzantine art modified by local taste were preserved in colonies in the
Medieval manuscript illumination reached a high
level of artistry and the first printed books retained these illuminations.
Printing presses were established in Lviv and Ostrih in 1573, where the
Ostrih Bible was published in
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
several Ukrainian artists worked in
Mykola Pymonenko (1862–1912) organized a painting
school in Kyiv favoring a post-romantic style. National elements pervaded
paintings of Serhii Vasylkyvs'kyi (1854–1917). Impressionism characterized the
works of Vasyl (1872–1935) and Fedir Krychevs'ky (1879–1947). The highly
individualistic and expressive post-romantics Ivan Trush (1869–1941) and Oleksa
Novakivs'kyi (1872–1935) ushered western Ukrainian art into the twentieth
century.
Yurii Narbut's graphics (1886–1920) combined
Ukrainian baroque traditions with principles of modernism. Mykhailo Boichuk
(1882–1939) and his disciples Ivan Padalka (1897–1938) and Vasyk Sedlyar
(1889–1938) combined elements of Byzantine art with modern monumentalism.
Anatol' Petryts'kyi (1895–1964), an individualistic expressionist, survived
Stalinist persecution to remain a champion of creative freedom to the end of
his life.
In Lviv of the 1930s Ukrainian artists worked in
different modernist styles: Pavlo Kovzhun (1896–1939) was a symbolist and a
constructivist. Several western Ukrainian artists between the two world
wars—Sviatoslav Hordynsky, Volodymyr Lasovsky, Mykhailo Moroz, and Olena
Kulchytska—studied in
After World War II many Ukrainian artists
immigrated into the
After Stalin's genocide of the 1930s, social
realism (a didactic kind of cliched naturalism applied to all literary and
artistic media) became the only style allowed in the
Performance Arts. Ukrainian folk music is highly
idiosyncratic despite sharing significant formal elements with the music of
neighboring cultures. Epic dumas —ancient melodies, especially those of
seasonal rituals—are tonally related to medieval modes, Greek tetrachords, and
Turkic embellishments. The major/minor tonal system appeared in the baroque
period. Typical genres in Ukrainian folk music are solo singing; part singing
groups; epic dumas sung by (frequently blind) bards who accompanied themselves
on the bandura (a lute shaped psaltery); and dance music by troisty muzyky, an
ensemble of fiddle, wind, and percussion including a hammered dulcimer.
Traditional dances— kozachok, hopak, metelytsia, kolomyika, hutsulka, and arkan
—differ by rhythmic figures, choreography, region, and sometimes by gender, but
share a duple meter. Traditional folk instruments include the bandura, a
variety of flutes, various fiddles and basses, drums and rattles, the bagpipe,
the hurdy-gurdy, the Jew's harp, and the hammered dulcimer.
The medieval beginnings of professional music are
both secular and sacred. The former was created by court bards and by
skomorokhy (jongleurs). The latter was created by Greek and Bulgarian church
musicians. Ukrainian medieval and Renaissance sacred a capella music was
codified and notated in several Irmologions. The baroque composer and
theoretician Mykola Dylets'kyi developed a polyphonic style that composers
Maksym Berezovs'kyi (1745–1777), Dmytro Bortnians'kyi (1751–1825), and Artem
Vedel (1767–1808) combined with eighteenth-century classicism. The first
Ukrainian opera Zaporozhets za Dunayem (Zaporozhian beyond the
A scion of ancient kozak aristocracy, Mykola
Lysenko (1842–1912) is known as the Father of Ukrainian Music. A graduate of
the Leipzig Conservatory, a pianist, and a musical ethnographer, Lysenko
created a national school of composition that seamlessly integrated elements of
Ukrainian folk music into a mainstream Western style. His works include a
cyclic setting of Shevchenko's poetry; operas, including Taras Bulba; art songs
and choral works; cantatas; piano pieces; and chamber music. His immediate
disciples were Kyrylo Stetsenko (1883–1922) and Mykola Leontovych (1877–1919).
Twentieth-century Ukrainian music is represented by the post-Romantics Borys
Liatoshyns'kyi (1895–1968), Lev Revuts'kyi (1899–1977), Vasyl Barvins'kyi
(1888–1963), Stanyslav Liudkevych (1879–1980), and Mykola Kolessa (1904–).
Contemporary composers include Myroslav Skoryk, Lesia Dychko, and Volodymyr
Huba.
Many Ukrainian performers have attained
international stature: the soprano Solomia Krushelnyts'ka (1973–1952), the
tenor Anatoliy Solovianenko (1931–1999), and the Ukrainian-American bass Paul
Plishka (1941–).
The theater in
From 1917 to 1922 numerous new theaters appeared
in both Eastern and western
Berezil's leading dramatist Mykola Kulish
(1892–1937) reflected in his plays the social and national conflicts in Soviet
Ukraine and the appearance of a class that used revolution for personal
purposes. In 1933–1934 Kurbas, Kulish, and many of their actors were arrested
and later killed in Stalin's prisons. As in every other art, social realism
became the only drama style, exemplified by the plays of the party hack
Oleksander Korniichuk. In 1956 former members of The Young Theatre and Berezil
formed The Ivan Franko Theatre in Kyiv, but without the innovative character of
the former ensembles.
Some Berezil members who escaped from the Soviet
Union during World War II brought Kurbas's style to western
New ideas appeared in Ukrainian cinema of the
1960s. Director Kira Muratova's work showed existentialist concepts. The
impressionistic and ethnographically authentic Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
(1964) by Sergij Paradzhanov and Jurii Ilienko was a prize-winner at
THE STATE OF THE PHYSICAL AND SOCIALS CIENCES
The present National Academy of Sciences of
The data about the most numerous nationalities of
Ukraine are mentioned below:
|
|
Total |
as %
to the result |
2001 |
|
|
2001 |
1989 |
|||
|
Ukrainians |
37541.7 |
77.8 |
72.7 |
100.3 |
|
Russians |
8334.1 |
17.3 |
22.1 |
73.4 |
|
Belarussians |
275.8 |
0.6 |
0.9 |
62.7 |
|
Moldavians |
258.6 |
0.5 |
0.6 |
79.7 |
|
Crimean Tatars |
248.2 |
0.5 |
0.0 |
in 5.3
times more |
|
Bulgarians |
204.6 |
0.4 |
0.5 |
87.5 |
|
Hungarians |
156.6 |
0.3 |
0.4 |
96.0 |
|
Romanians |
151.0 |
0.3 |
0.3 |
112.0 |
|
Poles |
144.1 |
0.3 |
0.4 |
65.8 |
|
Jews |
103.6 |
0.2 |
0.9 |
21.3 |
|
Armenians |
99.9 |
0.2 |
0.1 |
in 1.8
times more |
|
Greeks |
91.5 |
0.2 |
0.2 |
92.9 |
|
Tatars |
73.3 |
0.2 |
0.2 |
84.4 |
|
Gipsies |
47.6 |
0.1 |
0.1 |
99.3 |
|
Azerbaijanians |
45.2 |
0.1 |
0.0 |
122.2 |
|
Georgians |
34.2 |
0.1 |
0.0 |
145.3 |
|
Germans |
33.3 |
0.1 |
0.1 |
88.0 |
|
Gagausians |
31.9 |
0.1 |
0.1 |
99.9 |
|
Other |
177.1 |
0.4 |
0.4 |
83.9 |
The
part of Ukrainians in the national structure of population of region is the
largest. it accounts for 3.754.700 people. or 77.8% of the population. During
the years that have passed since the census of the population ‘1989. the number
of Ukrainians has increased by 0.3% and their part among other citizens of
Ukraine has increased by 5.1 percentage points.
Russians are the second numerous nation of Ukraine. Since 1989 their number has
decreased by 26.6% and at the date of the census it accounted for 8.334.100
people. The part of Russians in total population has decreased by 4.8
percentage points and accounted for 17.3%.
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Ukrainian
History: Chronological Table
|
Year/Century |
Event |
More info |
|
839 |
Mention of Rus' in the
Bertynsky chronicles associated with the mission to Ludwig I of the Frankish
kingdom. |
|
|
840 |
Magyars and khazars
attacking Kyiv. |
|
|
853 |
Askold becomes Kyiv's Prince. |
|
|
877 |
Novgorod's Prince Oleh
annexes Kyiv, kills Askold and brings the capital of Rus' from Novgorod to
Kyiv. |
|
|
890 |
Pechenegs advancing to Black
Sea steppe. Ugrians (Hungarians) move to Danube. |
|
|
907-911 |
Prince Oleh travels to
Byzantine's capital Constantinopol (Ukrainian "Czarhorod") with a
big army and demands an annuity to Kyiv. |
|
|
945 |
Prince Ihor signs a treaty
with Byzantine Empire - ready to accept Orthodox Christianity. |
|
|
957 |
Princess Olha (Ihor's wife)
becomes a ruler of Kyiv. |
|
|
960-972 |
Svyatoslav (Olha's son)
becomes a Prince of Kyiv. He confrontates with Khazars, then attacks Bulgaria
and fights with Byzantine Empire. At the time Svjatoslav is in the offensive
on Bulgaria, Khazars attack Kyiv. He returns but gets killed in a skirmish
with Pechenegs. |
|
|
980 |
Volodymyr The Great becomes
a Prince. |
|
|
988 |
Official Christianization of
Kyiv Rus'. Volodymyr accepts Orthodoxy and marries Byzantine Princess Anna. |
|
|
1015 |
Death of Volodymyr The
Great. Sons are struggling to rule the country until 1019. |
|
|
1019 |
Yaroslav The Wise - one of
Volodymyr's sons becomes a Prince. |
|
|
1027 |
Construction of Svyata Sofia
(St. Sophia) Cathedral. |
|
|
1054 |
Death of Prince Yaroslav. |
|
|
1068 |
Polovtsi army attack Kyiv
state for the first time. |
|
|
1098 - 1099 |
Magyars attack Halychyna. |
|
|
1111 |
Kyiv Princes conquer Polovtsi. |
|
|
1113 |
Volodymyr Monomakh - the
last of great princes of Kyiv. |
|
|
1152 |
Yaroslav Osmomysl becomes a
Prince of Halychyna. |
|
|
1155 - 1157 |
Suzdal (Russian) Prince Yuriy
Dovgoruky (founder of Moscow) attacks Kyiv and becomes a prince for a short
period of time. |
|
|
1155 - 1169 |
Destruction of Kyiv by
Andrey Bogoliubsky, the Vldimir-Suzdal prince |
|
|
1187 |
The word Ukraine (Ukrayina)
first used to describe Kyiv and Halychyna lands. |
|
|
1223 |
Ukrainians first battle
Tatars in a battle near Kalko River in treaty with Polovetz - Tatars win. |
|
|
1238 |
Danylo Halytsky becomes a
Prince of Halychyna. Next year he unites Halychyna with Kyiv. |
|
|
1240 |
Tatars capture Kyiv. |
MAP: |
|
1256 |
Lviv is founded by King Lev. |
|
|
1320 |
Yuriy becomes a King of
Halychyna. |
|
|
1330 |
Yuriy marries Lithuanian
Princess, daughter of Gedymin. |
|
|
1360s |
Lithuanian Prince Olgerd
frees Kyivschyna and Podillya from Tatars. They fell under Lithuanian control. |
|
|
1378 |
Last Halychyna King
Volodyslav dies. |
|
|
1387 - XVIII century |
Poland rules Halychyna. |
|
|
1414 |
Prince Fedir Koryatovych of
Mukachevo. |
|
|
1475 - 1774 |
Crimea (Krym) under Turkish (Osman) Empire's
rule. |
MAP: |
|
1490 |
First mentioning of cossacks
(kozaks). |
|
|
1550 |
Dmytro Vyshnyvetsky establishes
a fortress of Zaporizhzhya (Zaporizhia). |
|
|
1569 |
Lyublinska Uniya (Lublin
Union) - All Ukrainian territory under Lithuanian rule (except Polissia and
Beresteyshchyna) transfers to Poland. |
|
|
1576 |
Foundation of Ostroh Academy
- first University-like school in Eastern Europe. |
|
|
1590 |
First Kozak uprisings
(Kostynsky, Mazyvako). |
|
|
1596 |
Union of Brest (Beresti) -
beginning of religious struggles. |
|
|
1608 |
Fall of Ostroh Academy. |
|
|
1610 - 1622 |
Het'man Sahaydachny is a
het'man (the arch) of Zaporizka Sich. |
MAP: |
|
1630 |
Kozak uprising against Poland. |
|
|
1637 |
Petro Mohyla establishes a
Collegium in Kyiv. |
|
|
1648 |
Beginning of liberation of
Ukraine from Polish rule headed by kozak het'man Bohdan Khmelnytsky |
|
|
1654 |
Bohdan Khmel'nytsky signs
Pereyaslav treaty with Muscovy |
(more) |
|
1657 |
Swedish-Ukrainian coalition
against Russia. |
|
|
1663 |
Two het'mans in Ukraine. Het'man
of the Left bank of Dnipro - in coalition with Russia; het'man from right
bank - against Russia. |
|
|
1665 - 1676 |
Het'man Petro Doroshenko. |
|
|
1670 |
Establishment of Russian
control under the right-bank kozaks. |
|
|
1685 |
Kyiv Orthodox Church
Metropolitan (Patriarkhat) becomes a division of Muscovite Metropolitan. |
|
|
1687 - 1709 |
Het'man Ivan Mazepa - period
of palingenecy of Kozak state. |
|
|
1708 |
Treaty had been signed
between Ukraine and Sweden. |
|
|
1709 |
Battle in Poltava (Ukraine).
Russians defeat Swedish-Ukrainian army and execute Kozak troops after the
surrender of Swede army |
|
|
1709 |
Death of Ivan Mazepa. |
|
|
1710 |
Pylyp Orlyk becomes a
het'man. |
|
|
1720 |
Russians prohibit the use of
Ukrainian language - still preferred by Ukrainians. |
|
|
1722 - 1727 |
First het'man of Ukraine
appointed by Russian Czar. |
|
|
1734 |
Het'man Danylo Apostol's
uprising on the Right Bank (Haydamaky). |
|
|
1744 |
Construction of St. George
Cathedral in Lviv. |
|
|
1745 |
Oleksa Dovbush - legendary
Ukrainian hero. |
|
|
1764 |
Abolition of Zaporizhzhya
Het'manate (Zapiriz'ka Sich). |
|
|
1765 |
Slobodzhanschyna falls under
Russian control. |
|
|
1772 |
Russian, German and Austrian
empires divide parts of Poland among themselves.(First division) Halychyna
falls under Austrian control. |
|
|
1775 |
Second division of Poland.
Austria annexes Bukovyna |
|
|
1775 |
Zaporizka Sich destroyed by
Russians. |
|
|
1787 |
Russians rebuild a village
of Kodak into a city and name it after queen Ekaterina II (Katerynoslav).
During Ukrainian Republic of 1917 - 1920 the city was renamed into Sicheslav
("In Honour of Sich"). In 1924 communists gave it a present name -
Dnipropetrovsk (Combination of words "Dnipro" (main Ukrainian
river) and "Petrovskij" (The last name of major of city, a
Stalinist)). |
|
|
1789 |
Establishment of Mykolayiv (Nikolayev) |
|
|
1780 |
End of Het'manate. |
|
|
1794 |
Establishment of Odesa (Odessa). |
|
|
1793 |
Transfer of lands on the
Right Bank to Russia from Poland excluding Halychyna, Bukovyna, Volyn and a
part of Polissya, already annexed by Austria. |
|
|
1798 |
Ivan Kotlyarevsky publishes "Eneyida". |
|
|
1831 |
Repnev attempts to renew kozak
army. |
MAP: |
|
1834 |
Establishment of The University of Kyiv. |
|
|
1840 |
Taras Shevchenko's first
publication of "Kobzar", probably the most popular book in
Ukrainian. |
|
|
1861 |
First railroad on Ukrainian
territory (Peremyshl - Lviv). |
|
|
1861 |
Abolition of slavery in
Russia. |
|
|
1863 |
Ukrainian language is
officially prohibited to use by Russian government. |
|
|
1890 |
First Ukrainian Political
Party (Halytska) |
|
|
1905 |
Annulment of restrictions on
the usage of Ukrainian language in Russian empire. |
|
|
1917 |
Revolution in Russia.
Ukrainian writer and historian Mykhaylo Hrushevsky becomes the president of
newly proclaimed Ukrainian state (Ukrayinska Narodna Respublika). The power
of the new government is very weak, Russian czarists, communists and Germans
try to conquer Ukraine again. Symon Petlyura becomes a commanders of
Ukrainian armed forces. President signs a treaty with Germans, but it was
annulled in 1919 in Brest, Belorussia, where Germany signed a treaty with
Communist Russia. Ukrainian lands are united after Western Ukrainian Republic
and Ukrainian republic unite. |
|
|
1918 |
Austrian empire breaks up.
Newly established West-Ukrainian Republic is annexed by Czechoslovakia and
Romania. |
|
|
1921 |
Formation of Soviet
Socialist Republic of Ukraine. |
|
|
1929 |
Collectivization starts. All
lands that belonged to Ukrainian farmers are taken away and put into a large
"kolhosps" (co-operative farms.) People, who didn't want to give
their land away are arrested and murdered. |
MAP: (more) |
|
1933-1934 |
Artificial Famine in
Ukraine, caused by Stalin's policy. At least three million people die in
result. |
(more) |
|
1939-1940 |
Annexation of Western
Ukraine by Soviet Union according to a secret treaty with Nazi Germany. |
|
|
1941-1944 |
German occupation of
Ukraine. Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). SS Division "Galizien". |
MAP: |
|
1943-1944 |
Russians return. Massive
immigration to the west (England, France, Canada, USA.) |
|
|
1945-1947 |
Discrimination and murders of
Ukrainian population in Poland by Polish army and police. |
|
|
1945-1955 |
Continued fight for
liberation of Ukraine in the western regions. |
|
|
1950's |
Illegal anti-communist
literature begins to appear. |
|
|
1986 |
Nuclear reactor explosion in
Chernobyl, Ukraine. |
(picture) |
|
1980's |
National movement for the
liberation of Ukraine "Rukh" is formed. |
|
|
1990 |
Human chain protests for
Ukrainian independence. |
(more) |
|
1990 |
Ukrainian sovereignty is proclaimed. |
|
|
1991 |
Ukrainian independence is
proclaimed. Elections of Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) and the President Leonid
Kravchuk. |
|
|
1994 |
Ukraine signs an treaty with
NATO |
|
|
1996 |
Constitution is proclaimed. |
References:
1. Äåêëàðàö³ÿ ïðî äåðæàâíèé
ñóâåðåí³òåò Óêðà¿íè. Ïðèéíÿòà Âåðõîâíîþ Ðàäîþ
Óêðà¿íñüêî¿ ÐÑÐ 16 ëèïíÿ 1990 ðîêó. - Ê. 1991.
2. Àêò ïðîãîëîøåííÿ íåçàëåæíîñò³
Óêðà¿íè, ïðèéíÿòèé Âåðõîâíîþ Ðàäîþ
Óêðà¿íè 24 ñåðïíÿ 1991 ðîêó. - Ê. 1991.
3. Êîíñòèòóö³ÿ
Óêðà¿íè. Ïðèéíÿòà íà ï'ÿò³é ñåñ³¿ Âåðõîâíî¿ Ðàäè Óêðà¿íè 28
÷åðâíÿ 1996 ðîêó. - Ê. 1996.
4. Êðèï'ÿêåâè÷ ². Ï. ²ñòîð³ÿ Óêðà¿íè. - Ëüâ³â, 1990.
5. Ïîëîíñüêà-Âàñèëåíêî Í. ²ñòîð³ÿ Óêðà¿íè. Ò. 1-2.-Ê. 1992.
6. Andrew Wilson. The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation. Yale University Press; 2nd edition (2002).
7. Anna Reid. Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine. London,
Orion Books; 4th impression (1998, preface 2003).
8. Mykhailo Hrushevsky. History of Ukraine-Rus’ in 9 volumes.
9. Orest
Subtelny. Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (1988).
10. Paul Robert Magocsi. A History of Ukraine. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press (1996).