Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In 989 Kyivan prince Volodymyr decided to forge a closer alliance with Con-
stantinople, marrying the emperor's daughter and adopting Orthodox Christianity. Kyiv's
pagan idols were destroyed and its people driven into the Dnipro for a mass baptism.
Under Volodymyr's son, Yaroslav the Wise (1017-54), Kyiv became a cultural and
political centre in the Byzantine mold. St Sophia's Cathedral was built to proclaim the
glory of both God and city. However, by the 12th century, Kyiv's economic prowess had
begun to wane, with power shifting to northeast principalities (near today's Moscow).
In 1240 Mongol raiders sacked Kyiv. Citizens fled or took refuge wherever they could,
including the roof of the Desyatynna Church, which collapsed under the weight.
The city shrank to the riverside district of Podil, which remained its centre for centur-
ies. Only when Ukraine formally passed into Russian hands at the end of the 18th cen-
tury did Kyiv again grow in importance. The city went through an enormous boom at the
turn of the 20th century when it was essentially the third imperial capital after St Peters-
burg and Moscow. Many new mansions were erected at this time, including the remark-
able House of Chimeras.
During the chaos following the Bolshevik Revolution, Kyiv was the site of frequent
battles between Red and White Russian forces, Ukrainian nationalists, and German and
Polish armies. Author Mikhail Bulgakov captured the era's uncertainty in his first novel,
The White Guard.
The home in which he wrote this topic is now a museum.
In August 1941 German troops captured Kyiv and more than half a million Soviet sol-
diers were caught or killed. The entire city suffered terribly. Germans massacred about
100,000 at Babyn Yar and 80% of the city's inhabitants were homeless by the time the
Red Army retook Kyiv on 6 November 1943.
The postwar years saw rapid industrialisation and the construction of unsightly sub-
urbs. During the late 1980s nationalistic and democratic movements from western
Ukraine began to catch on in the capital. Throughout the presidency of Leonid Kuchma,
Kyiv and its young population increasingly became a base of opposition politics. During
the Orange Revolution of 2004, activists from around Ukraine poured into the capital to
demonstrate on maydan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Sq) and outside the parliament
building. In the 2010 presidential elections, two-thirds of voters in Kyiv supported
Orange Revolution leader Yulia Tymoshenko, although she still lost to Viktor Ya-
nukovych.
