KIEV

Ukrainian Kyyiv, Russian Kiyev chief city and capital of Ukraine, and capital of Kiev oblast (province). It is located along the Dnieper River just below its confluence with the Desna and 591 miles (952 km) from its mouth in the Black Sea. Kiev was founded in the 8th century. By the late 9th century its princes had established their suzerainty over several other East Slavic principalities and had founded the important state called Kievan Rus. Throughout the history of Kievan Rus, the city was engaged in ceaseless warfare against the Khazars, Pechenegs, and other nomadic peoples of the steppes. In the late 12th century its power declined in the face of constant nomad attacks and warfare with other Slavic princes, and in 1240 the city was completely destroyed by the Tatars of the Golden Horde under Batu, the grandson of Genghis Khan. Thereafter the town passed to the control of Lithuania, of Poland, and then of the Cossacks. In 1793 it was incorporated into Russia, and in 1917 the Ukrainian S.S.R. was formed, with Kiev becoming its capital in 1934. Large sections of the city's central area were destroyed during World War II, but after the war the city was repopulated and fully restored, regaining its position as a major industrial and cultural centre. Kiev remained the capital of Ukraine when the latter became independent in 1991. Kiev originally occupied the high and steep right (west) bank of the Dnieper, but since World War II rapid growth has extended the city onto the wide, low, flat floodplain on the left bank. The city has moderately cold winters, with snow cover usually from mid-November to the end of March, and warm summers. As the capital of Ukraine, Kiev has major administrative functions, and its ministries employ a considerable number of workers. It is also an important industrial centre, producing a wide range of goods. Engineering industriesincluding the manufacturing of complex machinery, precision tools, and instrumentsare of primary importance. The chemical, consumer-goods, food-processing, lumber-milling, and publishing industries are also significant. The focus of the contemporary city remains its ancient Upper Town, crowning the high bluff above the Dnieper. Its central area, although for the most part of postwar construction, contains most of Kiev's surviving historical and architectural monuments. The 11th-century Cathedral of St. Sophia, one of the most beautiful examples of Russo-Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture, and the striking 18th-century Baroque Church of St. Andrew are both now state museums. Other surviving relics include the ruins of the 11th-century Golden Gate, the 18th-century Zaborovskyy Gate, and the 19th-century five-domed Desyatynna Church, built on the site of a church founded by St. Vladimir in the 10th century. The axis of the centre of the city is the tree-lined Kreshchatyk, the main shopping street. Many of the city's museums and theatres are located within and adjacent to the former Old Town. To the north of the Old Town is the former Jewish and trading quarter, Podil, containing the river port, and to the Old Town's south and along the top of the riverbank is the Percherskyy district. This area contains many administrative buildings. At the southern end of the district is the 11th-century Kyevo-Pecherska Lavra (Monastery of the Caves), where the monk Nestor wrote the earliest surviving Russian chronicle. Beneath the monastery, a system of catacombs stores the mummified bodies of monks and saints, including that of Nestor. Surrounding these central districts and extending to the west bank of the Dnieper are suburbs of factories and residential neighbourhoods. The most important centre for research and education in Ukraine, Kiev is the home of a number of universities, colleges, and research institutions, notably the Kiev T.G. Shevchenko State University (1834) and the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Russian and Ukrainian drama can be seen at the Shevchenko Theatre of Opera and Ballet, the 12,000-seat Palace of Sport, and open-air theatres. The city has several museums. Musical concerts are given regularly at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Kiev is served by a good transportation network. Trunk railways and all-weather roads link Kiev to Moscow, Kharkiv and the Donets Basin, southern and western Ukraine, and Poland. Within Kiev itself there is efficient subway, rail, and bus service. The Dnieper River is navigable about nine months of the year, and Kiev's Boryspil airport operates flights to other Ukrainian cities and to cities in Europe, Asia, and North America. Area city, 300 square miles (707 square km). Pop. (1993 est.) 2,646,000. Ukrainian Kyyiv, Russian Kiyev chief city and capital of Ukraine and capital of Kiev oblast (province). A port on the Dnieper (Dnipro) River and a large railroad junction, it is a city with an ancient and proud history. As the centre of Kievan Rus, the first eastern Slavic state, 1,000 years ago it acquired the title Mother of Rus Cities. It was severely damaged during World War II, but by the mid-1950s it was fully restored, and by the 1970s it had become a thriving, modern city with a well-developed economic and cultural life. The emergence of an independent Ukraine in the early 1990s renewed Kiev's status as a major European capital. Ukrainian Kyyiv, Russian Kiyev oblast (province), north-central Ukraine. The oblast lies astride the Dnieper River, with the greater part on the western bank. Most of the oblast thus lies on the low, flat plain of the Dnieper and lower Pripet river courses; the southern part of the west-bank area extends on to the rolling hills of the Dnieper Upland. South of the oblast capital, Kiev, the uplands approach the Dnieper to form a steep, high riverbank. The uplands are much dissected by river valleys and erosion gullies. The course of the Dnieper within the oblast began to be transformed in the 1960s into broad reservoirs created by the dams of the Kiev and Kaniv hydroelectric stations, the latter of which was completed in 1975. The natural vegetation of the oblast's low-lying northern part, known as the Kiev Polissya, is mostly reed or grass marsh or oak and pine forest; the southern upland area is in forest-steppe, with groves of oak. Much of the oblast's natural vegetation has been destroyed by forest clearance, swamp reclamation, and subsequent plowing for agriculture. On the uplands this has seriously accelerated erosion. Agriculture is well developed in the oblast. In the north, the cultivation of flax and potatoes and dairying prevail. In the south, grains and sugar beets are important, and there are many small sugar refineries. Around Kiev intensive market gardening supplies the city. Although agriculture is significant, the oblast and its economy are completely dominated by the presence of the huge capital and industries of the city of Kiev. Many workers commute into Kiev from the adjacent region. Other cities in the oblast, apart from the industrial city of Bila Tserkva, are small centres of agricultural regions and process farm produce. Hydroelectric stations are at Kiev and Trypillya. Area 11,200 square miles (28,900 square km). Pop. (1991 est.) 4,588,900. Additional reading O.K. Kasymenko (ed.), Istoriia Kieva, 2 vol. (196364), is a thorough historical study based on archaeological evidence as well as documentary sources. Michael F. Hamm, Kiev: A Portrait, 18001917 (1993), includes an extensive bibliography. A.V. Kudryts'kyi (ed.), Kiev: entsiklopedicheskii spravochnik, 3rd ed., enlarged (1986), is an encyclopaedic handbook. Leonid Daen, Pavel Poznyak, and Mark Cherp, Kiev: Travel Guide, trans. from Ukrainian (1971); and H. Levitsky, Kiev: A Short Guide, trans. from Russian (1980), are useful descriptive works. Richard Antony French The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica History The early period Origins and foundation Kiev has a long, rich, and often stormy history. Its beginnings are lost in antiquity. Archaeological findings of stone and bone implements, the remains of primitive dwellings built of wood and skins, and large accumulations of mammoths' bones indicate that the first settlements in the vicinity date from the Upper Paleolithic Period (some 15,000 to 40,000 years ago). As early as 3000 BC in the Neolithic Period and subsequently at the time of the Cucuteni-Trypillya culture at the end of the Neolithic, tribes engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry lived on the site of modern Kiev. Excavations continue to uncover many artifacts from settlements dating from the Copper, Bronze, and Iron ages. The tribes of the area traded with the nomadic peoples of the steppes to the south, Scythians, Sarmatians, and later Khazars, and also with the ancient Greek colonies that were located on the Black Sea coast. According to the 12th-century chronicle Povest vremennykh let (Tale of Bygone Years, also known as the /a>The Russian Primary Chronicle), Kiev was founded by three brothers, Kiy, Shchek, and Khoriv, leaders of the Polyane tribe of the East Slavs. Each established his own settlement on a hill, and these became the town of Kiev, named for the eldest brother, Kiy; a small stream nearby was named for their sister Lybed. Although the chronicle account is legendary, there are contemporary references to Kiev in the writings of Byzantine, German, and Arab historians and geographers. Archaeological evidence suggests that Kiev was founded in the 6th or 7th century AD. The first Rus capital Less legendary is the chronicle account of the Varangians, who seized Kiev in the mid-9th century. As in Novgorod to the north, a Slavo-Varangian ruling elite developed. Kiev, with its good defensive site on the high river bluffs and as the centre of a rich agricultural area and a group of early Slavic towns, began to gain importance. About 882 Oleg (Oleh), the ruler of Novgorod, captured Kiev and made it his capital, the centre of the first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus. The town flourished, chiefly through trade along the Dnieper going south to Byzantium and north over portages to the rivers flowing to the Baltic, the so-called road from the Varangians to the Greeks, or water road. Trade also went to the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. In 988 the introduction of Christianity to Kiev enhanced its significance as the spiritual centre of Rus. By the 12th century, according to the chronicles, the city's wealth and religious importance was attested to by its more than 400 churches. The Cathedral of St. Sophia, parts of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra (Monastery of the Caves), and the ruins of the Golden Gate remain today as witnesses to Kiev at the height of its splendour. The town was famed for its art, the mosaics and frescoes of its churches, its craftsmanship in silver, and the quality of many of its manufactures. One of Europe's major cities, Kiev established diplomatic relations with Byzantium, England, France, Sweden, and other countries. Travelers wrote of its population as numbering tens of thousands. Throughout the period of Kievan Rus, however, the city was engaged in a succession of wars against the nomadic warrior peoples who inhabited the steppes to the south, in turn the Khazars, Pechenegs, and Polovtsy (Kipchaks). These conflicts weakened the city, but even greater harm was done by the endless, complex internecine struggles of the princedoms into which Rus was divided. In 1169 Prince Andrew Bogolyubsky of Rostov-Suzdal captured and sacked Kiev. Thus by the late 12th century the power of the city had declined, and in the following century it was unable to resist the rising and formidable power of the Mongols. In 1238 a Mongol army under Batu, grandson of Genghis Khan, invaded Rus and, having sacked the towns of central Rus, in 1240 besieged and stormed Kiev. Much of the city was destroyed and most of its population killed. The Franciscan friar and traveler Giovanni da Pian del Carpini six years later reported only 200 houses surviving in Kiev.