A LOOK AT THE PAST
The ancestors of today's Ukrainians were Slavic people called the Antes, who settled by the Dnipro River in the 4th century. In the 7th century, Kyiv was founded by a ruler called Kyi.

In the 9th century, Vikings from Scandinavia (Varangians) took control of the settlement at Kyiv and established a kingdom called Kievan Rus. Varangian princes ruled until the 14th century. The Varangian prince Volodymyr (St. Vladimir) converted the country to Christianity in the 10th century.

Beginning in the 14th century, part of Kievan Rus, weakened by internal struggles and Mongol invasions, fell under the control of Polish and Lithuanian rulers. The area became known as Ukraina, meaning frontier, because it bordered Russia to the east.
The Poles seized the land and forced the people to work as serfs, farm labourers, who were owned by their Polish landlords. A military brotherhood called the Cossacks formed to resist this oppression. The Cossacks defeated the Poles, only to fall under the control of the Russian czars in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Russians outlawed the Ukrainian language and re-established serfdom.

In 1917, the Russian Revolution ended the forced labour system. The revolutionaries overthrew the czar and formed a Communist state. In 1921 eastern Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union and western Ukraine became part of Poland and Romania.
The Soviets suppressed the Ukrainian language and other elements of Ukrainian identity to prevent Ukraine regaining its independence. In 1932-33, the head of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin, seized the region's stores of grain. More than five million Ukrainians starved to death. Ukraine also suffered greatly during the Second World War. After the war, western Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union.

In the 1980s, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev introduced reform with the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). These policies encouraged Ukraine to leave the union. Ukraine proclaimed independence on August 24, 1991, a move that was confirmed by a nation-wide vote on December 1, 1991. The country is now in transition to democratic government and a market economy.