Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
Although their northern neighbours disparagingly refer to Ukrainians as
'little Russians', it was Ukraine that was home to the first eastern Slavic
state. So historically Ukraine is the birthplace of Russia rather than vice
versa. Another irony is that this initial state, Kyivan Rus, was founded in the
9th century by neither Russians nor Ukrainians, but by Vikings - an indica-
tion of just how much foreigners have meddled in the region's convoluted
history.
Invaded by Mongols from the east, encroached upon by Poland and Lithuania from the
west and requisitioned by Russia from the north, Ukraine's national culture was princip-
ally forged in the wild, Cossack-held steppes in the middle. The baton of nationalism was
taken up again in the 19th century by western Ukrainians under Austro-Hungarian rule,
but it took the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union for a centuries-old dream of an inde-
pendent state to be realised.
Leading 20th-century artist Joseph Beuys was rescued by Crimean Tatars when he crash
landed on the peninsula during WWII, and his oeuvre of sleds, felt and honey recalls their
healing methods.
Cimmerians to Khazars
Before Kyivan Rus, Ukraine's prehistory is tribal. First came the Cimmerians in the 12th
century BC. Then, fierce warrior Scythians from Central Asia settled the steppe in the 7th
century BC, while Greeks from western Asia Minor established city-states around the
Black Sea. The two groups formed a symbiotic relationship. The famous gold work found
in Scythian tombs is believed to have been commissioned from Greek artisans; a fine col-
lection is found in Kyiv's Kyevo-Pecherska Lavra.
Successive waves of nomadic invaders (Sarmatians from the east, Germanic Ostrogoths
from northern Poland and Huns from Mongolia) continued to sweep into Ukraine.
However, the Slavs, thought to originate from near the borders of present-day Poland,
Belarus and northwestern Ukraine, remained untouched by these invasions. Turkic-Iranian
Khazars from the Caucasus were probably the first to bring the Slavs under subjugation, in
the 8th century AD.
