UKRAINE, FLAG OF

horizontally divided blue-yellow national flag. Its width-to-length ratio is 2 to 3. More than a thousand years ago a powerful state, Kievan Rus, was founded in an area that is now part of Ukraine. National flags did not exist at that time, but Kievan Rus used as its symbol a trident head, which was resurrected when Ukraine became independent in 1918 and in 1991. The first national flag for Ukraine was adopted in 1848 by revolutionaries who wanted its western parts to be freed from Austro-Hungarian rule. They based their flag, consisting of equal horizontal stripes of yellow over blue, on the colours of the coat of arms used by the city of Lviv. The arms showed a golden lion on a blue shield, an emblem dating back many centuries. Late in 1918 the decision was made to reverse the stripes of the 1848 flag to reflect the symbolism of blue skies over golden wheat fields. Ukraine acquired a distinctive flag in 1949 under the communist regime. The Red Banner of the Soviet Union with its golden hammer, sickle, and star was modified for use in Ukraine by having a horizontal stripe of light blue added at the bottom. After Ukraine again proclaimed its independence on August 24, 1991, many fought to maintain a communist system under that flag. Eventually, however, anticommunist forces were successful, and the flag was replaced with the nationalist blue-yellow banner on January 28, 1992. Whitney Smith History Ukraine in the interwar period In the aftermath of World War I and the revolutionary upheavals that followed, Ukrainian territories were divided among four states. Bukovina was annexed to Romania. Transcarpathia was joined to the new Czechoslovak Republic. Poland incorporated Galicia and western Volhynia, together with smaller adjacent areas in the northwest. The lands east of the Polish border constituted Soviet Ukraine. Soviet Ukraine The territories under Bolshevik control were formally organized as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Under Bolshevik tutelage, the first All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets in December 1917 had formed a Soviet government for Ukraine; the second, in March 1918, had declared Soviet Ukraine independent; and the third, in March 1919, had adopted Soviet Ukraine's first constitution. These moves, however, were essentially a tactical response to the demonstrable challenge of rising Ukrainian nationalism. With the consolidation of Bolshevik rule, Soviet Ukraine progressively ceded to Russia its rights in such areas as foreign relations and foreign trade. On Dec. 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republicsa federation of Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Transcaucasian S.F.S.R.was proclaimed. The first constitution for the new multinational federation was ratified in January 1924. Although the constituent republics retained the formal right of secession, their jurisdiction was limited to domestic affairs, while authority over foreign relations, the military, commerce, and transportation was vested in the all-union organs in Moscow. In point of fact, after the defeat of their opponents, paramount power was exercised over all levels of government, as over the military and the secret police, by the Bolsheviks and their Communist Party apparatus. The Communist Party itself brooked no concessions to the principles of independence or federalism and remained a highly centralized entity. Thus, at its founding congress in Moscow in July 1918, the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, or CP(B)U, proclaimed itself to be an integral part of a single Russian (after 1924, All-Union) Communist Party and subordinated to its congresses and central committee, despite the efforts of such national-minded Bolsheviks as Mykola Skrypnyk to declare the CP(B)U an independent organization. As well as being subordinate to Moscow, the CP(B)U was overwhelmingly non-Ukrainian in ethnic composition: at the time of its founding, the membership of fewer than 5,000 was 7 percent Ukrainian. The Ukrainian component in the CP(B)U was strengthened in 1920 with the accession of the Borotbists, members of the independist and non-Bolshevik Ukrainian Communist Party that was formed in 1919. Still, in late 1920, Ukrainians constituted less than 20 percent of the CP(B)U's membership. Largely alien in nationality and ideologically prepossessed in favour of the proletariat, the Bolsheviks enjoyed scant support in a population that was 80 percent Ukrainian, of which more than 90 percent were peasants. Two main tasks faced the Bolsheviks in the 1920sto rebuild the economy and to conciliate the non-Russian nationalities. The policy of War Communismbased on nationalization of all enterprises and the forcible requisition of foodwreaked economic havoc. Compounded by drought, it contributed to a famine in 192122 that claimed a million lives in Ukraine. In 1921 Vladimir Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP), which partially restored private enterprise in industry and trade and replaced grain requisitions with a fixed tax and the right to dispose of the surplus on the free market. By 1927 the Ukrainian economy recovered to the prewar level, and segments of the population enjoyed a measure of prosperity. In parallel with the NEP, the Bolsheviks took steps to appease, and at the same time to penetrate, the non-Russian nationalities. In 1923 a policy of indigenization was announced, including the promotion of native languages in education and publishing, at the workplace, and in government; the fostering of national cultures; and the recruitment of cadres from the indigenous populations. In Ukraine this program inaugurated a decade of rapid Ukrainization and cultural efflorescence. Within the CP(B)U itself, the proportion of Ukrainians in the rank-and-file membership exceeded 50 percent by the late 1920s. Enrollments in Ukrainian-language schools and the publication of Ukrainian books increased dramatically. Lively debates developed about the course of Ukrainian literature, in which the writer Mykola Khvylovy threw out the slogan Away from Moscow! and urged a cultural orientation toward Europe. An important factor in the national revival, despite antireligious propaganda and harassment, was the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church, which had gained a wide following among the Ukrainian peasantry since its formation in 1921. Ukrainization was vigorously promoted by the national communists, including such Ukrainian Bolsheviks as Skrypnyk and Khvylovy, and especially by the former Borotbists, most prominently the people's commissar of education, Oleksander Shumsky. The policy, however, encountered strong resistance from the non-Ukrainian leaders of the CP(B)U and party functionaries. The national revival also aroused concern in Moscow, where Joseph Stalin was strengthening his grip over the party apparatus. In 1925 Stalin dispatched his trusted lieutenant Lazar Kaganovich to head the CP(B)U. Within a year, Kaganovich engineered a split among the national communists, Khvylovy's recantation, and the expulsion of Shumsky and his followers from the party. Nevertheless, with Skrypnyk as the new commissar of education, Ukrainization continued to advance. By the end of the 1920s, Stalin had launched a new revolution from above. The introduction of the first five-year plan in 1928 marked the end of the NEP and the onset of breakneck industrialization. In Ukraine this led to rapid economic and social transformation. By the outbreak of World War II, industrial output had increased fourfold, the number of workers tripled, and the urban population grew from 19 to 34 percent of the total. Though with a sectoral bias toward heavy industry and a regional concentration in the Donbas and central Dnieper areas, Ukraine had undergone a remarkable industrial development. The cost of the accelerated industrialization was borne by the peasantry. In 1928 the regime introduced special measures against the kulaks (arbitrarily defined wealthy peasants). These progressed from escalating taxes and grain-delivery quotas to dispossession of all property and finally to the deportation, by the mid-1930s, of some 100,000 families to Siberia and Kazakstan. Wholesale collectivization began in 1929, under duress from party activists and under threat of economic sanctions. The percentage of farms collectivized rose from 9 to 65 percent from October 1929 to March 1930 and exceeded 90 percent by the end of 1935. Mass resistance to collectivizationin the form of revolts, slaughter of cattle, and destruction of machinerywas answered by the imposition of ever higher delivery quotas and confiscation of foodstuffs. The result was a famine in 193233 and a loss of lives estimated as high as five to seven milliona man-made demographic catastrophe unprecedented in peacetime. Settlers from Russia were brought in to repopulate the devastated countryside. The traditional Ukrainian village was essentially destroyed. In parallel with the industrialization and collectivization drives, the regime commenced a campaign against nationalist deviations that escalated into a virtual assault on Ukrainian culture. Repression of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church culminated in the liquidation of the church in 1930 and the arrest and exile of its hierarchy and clergy. A clandestine organization, the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, was purportedly uncovered by the secret police in 1929, and in 1930 its leaders were tried and sentenced to long terms in labour camps. Arrests, followed by imprisonment, exile, or execution, decimated the ranks of intellectuals, writers, and artists; some, like Khvylovy, committed suicide. In all, some four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite was repressed or perished in the course of the 1930s. By late 1933 Ukrainization was halted, and a policy of Russification commenced. The CP(B)U itself emerged from the Stalinist upheavals greatly altered in composition and character. Kaganovich returned in 1928 to Moscow; his place as party chief was taken by Stanislav Kosior, joined in 1933 as second secretary by Pavel Postyshev, who was sent from Moscow with a large contingent of Russian cadres. Series of purges from 1929 to 1934 largely eliminated from the party the generation of revolutionaries, supporters of Ukrainization, and those who questioned the excesses of collectivization. Mykola Skrypnyk, the most prominent Ukrainian Old Bolshevik, committed suicide in 1933. Though party ranks and leadership positions were now filled by Stalin loyalists, a new wave of purges connected with the terror of 193638 halved the CP(B)U's membership, while 99 of 102 members of the Central Committee were shot. Postyshev and Kosior were removed from their party posts and subsequently executed. In 1938 Nikita Khrushchev arrived from Moscow with a large number of Russian communists to take over the leadership of the CP(B)U. On the eve of World War II, both the Great Terror and the turmoil in the party began to subside. History Prehistory From prehistoric times, migration and settlement patterns in the territories of present-day Ukraine varied fundamentally along the lines of three geographic zones. The Black Sea coast was for centuries in the sphere of the contemporary Mediterranean maritime powers. The open steppe, funneling from the east across southern Ukraine and toward the mouth of the Danube, formed a natural gateway to Europe for successive waves of nomadic horsemen from Central Asia. And the mixed forest-steppe and forest belt of north-central and western Ukraine supported a sedentary agricultural population, linked by waterways to northern and central Europe. The marchlands of these zones were frequent areas of both military conflict and cultural transmission. Beginning in the 7th6th centuries BC, numerous Greek colonies were founded on the northern coast of the Black Sea, in the Crimea, and along the Sea of Azov; these Hellenic outposts later came under the hegemony of the Roman Empire. During the 1st millennium BC the steppe hinterland was occupied successively by the Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians. These peoples, all of Iranian stock, maintained commercial and cultural relations with the Greek colonies. A period of great migrations began with the descent of the Goths from the Baltic region into Ukraine about AD 200. They displaced the Sarmatians, but their own power was broken about 375 by the invading Huns from the east, who were followed in the 5th6th centuries by the Bulgars and Avars. Between the 7th and 9th centuries, the Ukrainian steppe formed part of the Turkic Khazar kaganate, a mercantile empire centred on the lower Volga River. Khazar control of the steppe was breached in the late 9th century by the Magyars. The Pechenegs, who followed, dominated much of southern Ukraine in the 10th and 11th centuries, and they were in turn succeeded by the Polovtsians (Cumans). Throughout this period of nomadic invasions, only a few of the Greek settlements in the Crimea, notably Chersonesus, maintained a precarious existence, relying on the support of the Byzantine Empire. In the meantime, under the impact of Germanic migrations, the movement of Slavic tribes from their primordial homeland north of the Carpathians began in the 5th and 6th centuries. While some Slavs migrated westward and others south into the Balkans, the East Slavs occupied the forest and forest-steppe regions of western and north-central Ukraine and southern Belarus; they expanded farther north and to the northeast into territories of the future Russian state centred on Moscow. The East Slavs practiced agriculture and animal husbandry, engaged in such domestic industries as cloth making and ceramics, and built fortified settlements, many of which later developed into important commercial and political centres. Among such early settlements was Kiev on the high right bank of the Dnieper River. Kievan Rus [Map: Historical regions of Ukraine]The formation of the Kievan state that began in the mid-9th century, the role in this process of the Varangians (Norsemen), and the name Rus by which this state came to be known are all matters of controversy among historians. It is clear, however, that this formation was connected with developments in international trade and the new prominence of the Dnieper route from the Baltic to Byzantium, on which Kiev was strategically sited. Trade along this route was controlled by Varangian merchant-warriors, and from their ranks came the progenitors of the Kievan princes, who were, however, soon Slavicized. In the early chronicles the Varangians were also called Rus, and this corporate name became as well a territorial designation for the Kievan regionthe basic territory of the Rus; later, by extension, it was applied to the entire territory ruled by members of the Kievan dynasty. By the end of the 10th century, the Kievan domain covered a vast area from the edge of the open steppe in Ukraine as far north as Lake Ladoga and the upper Volga basin. Like other medieval states, it did not develop central political institutions but remained a loose aggregation of principalities ruling what was a dynastic clan enterprise. Kiev reached its apogee in the reigns of Volodymyr the Great (Vladimir I) and his son Yaroslav. In 988 Volodymyr adopted Christianity as the religion of his realm and had the inhabitants of Kiev baptized. Rus entered the orbit of Byzantine (later, Orthodox) Christianity and culture. A church hierarchy was established, headed (at least since 1037) by the metropolitan of Kiev, who was usually appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople. With the new religion came new forms of architecture, art, and music, a written language (Church Slavonic), and the beginnings of a literary culture. All these were vigorously promoted by Yaroslav, who also promulgated a code of laws, the first in Slavdom. Although Byzantium and the steppe remained his main preoccupations in external policy, Yaroslav maintained friendly relations with European rulers, with whom he established marital alliances for his progeny. Following Yaroslav's death, Kiev entered a long period of decline, only briefly stemmed in the 12th century under Volodymyr II Monomakh. Shifts in trade routes undermined Kiev's economic importance, while warfare with the Polovtsians in the steppe sapped its wealth and energies. Succession struggles and princely rivalries eroded Kiev's political hegemony and strengthened separatist tendencies among the principalities. The ascendancy of new centres and the clustering of principalities around them reflected regional cleavageshistorical, economic, and tribal ethnicthat had persisted even in the period of Kiev's predominance. These differences were accentuated by the Mongol invasions that began in the 1220s and culminated in the devastating sack of Kiev in 1240. The territory that largely coincides with modern Belarus, with Polotsk as the most important centre, was one such emerging region. The land of Novgorod to its north was another. In the northeast, Vladimir-Suzdal (and later Moscow) formed the core from which developed the future Russian state. On Ukrainian territory, in the southwestern part of Rus, Galicia-Volhynia emerged as the leading principality. Volodymyr (modern Volodymyr-Volynskyy) in Volhynia had been an important princely seat throughout the Kievan period; Galicia, with its seat at Halych, on the Dniester River, became a principality in the 12th century. In 1199 the two principalities were united by Prince Roman Mstyslavych to form a powerful and rich state that at times included the domains of Kiev. Galicia-Volhynia reached its highest eminence under Roman's son Danylo (Daniel). New cities were founded, most importantly Lviv; tradeespecially with Poland and Hungary, as well as Byzantiumbrought considerable prosperity; and culture flourished, with marked new influences from the West. In 1253 Danylo accepted the royal crown from the pope and effected a short-lived church union with Rome. Danylo's reign also witnessed the rise of boyar-magnate unrest, debilitating dynastic involvements with Poland and Hungary, and the Mongol invasion of 124041. These marked the onset of Galicia-Volhynia's decline, which continued until the extinction of Roman's dynasty in 1340. The economy Ukraine's modern economy was developed as an integral part of the larger economy of the Soviet Union. Yet, while receiving a smaller share (16 percent in the 1980s) of the Soviet Union's investment funds and producing a greater proportion of goods with a lower set price, Ukraine was still able to produce a larger share of total output in the industrial (17 percent) and especially the agricultural (21 percent) sectors of the Soviet economy. In effect, a centrally directed transfer of wealth from Ukraine amounting to one-fifth of its national income helped finance economic development in other parts of the Soviet Union, notably Russia and Kazakstan. The collapse of the Soviet economy in 199091 and a subsequent period of extreme currency inflation in Ukraine brought great hardship to most of the population. Despite early hopes that Ukrainian economic independence, with the concomitant end to the transfer of funds and resources to other parts of the Soviet Union, would alleviate the declining economy and standard of living, Ukraine entered a period of severe economic decline. Daily life in Ukraine became a struggle, particularly for those living on fixed incomes, as prices rose sharply. Citizens have compensated in a number of ways: more than half grow their own food, workers often hold two or three jobs, and many acquire basic necessities through a flourishing barter economy. Extractive and industrial processes are concentrated in the Donets Basin (commonly called Donbas) and along the Dnieper River. In the far west, mining takes place in the Lviv-Volyn coal basin north of Lviv and in Subcarpathia, south of Lviv and northeast of the Carpathian Mountains. Resources Ukraine has extremely rich and complementary mineral resources in high concentrations and close proximity to each other. Rich iron ore reserves located in the vicinity of Kryvyy Rih, Kremenchuk, Bilozerka, Mariupol, and Kerch form the basis of Ukraine's large iron-and-steel industry. One of the richest areas of manganese-bearing ores in the world is located near Nikopol. Bituminous and anthracite coal used for coke are mined in the Donets Basin. Energy for thermal power stations is obtained using the large reserves of brown coal found in the Dnieper River basin (north of Kryvyy Rih) and the bituminous coal deposits of the Lviv-Volyn basin. The three major areas producing natural gas and petroleum in Ukraine are the Subcarpathian region, exploited since the late 19thearly 20th centuries, and the Dnieper-Donets and Crimean regions, both developed since World War II. Following World War II, the extraction of natural gas in Ukraine soared until it accounted in the early 1960s for one-third of the Soviet Union's total output. Natural gas production declined after 1975, however, and a similar pattern of growth and exhaustion occurred with Ukraine's petroleum, making the republic a net importer of these fuels today. Ukraine also has important deposits of titanium ore, bauxite, nepheline (a source of soda), alunite (a source of potash), and mercury (cinnabar, or mercuric sulfide) ores. A large deposit of ozokerite (a natural paraffin wax) occurs near the city of Boryslav. Subcarpathia possesses potassium salt deposits, and both Subcarpathia and the Donets Basin have very large deposits of rock salt. Some phosphorites as well as natural sulfur are found in Ukraine. In Transcarpathia and near the cities of Lviv, Vinnytsya, Zhytomyr, Bila Tserkva, Poltava, and Kharkiv are health spas noted for their mineral springs; spas near the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov specialize in mud baths. The land Relief Ukraine consists almost entirely of level plains at an average elevation of 574 feet (175 metres) above sea level. The country occupies the southwestern portion of the East European Plain. In central Ukraine is the Dnieper Lowland, which is flat in the west and gently rolling in the east. To the south another lowland extends along the shores of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov; its level surface, broken only by low rises and shallow depressions, slopes gradually toward the Black Sea. This lowland continues in the Crimean Peninsula as the North Crimean Lowland. The peninsulaa large protrusion into the Black Seais connected to the mainland by the Perekop Isthmus. Mountainous areas such as the Ukrainian Carpathians and Crimean Mountains occur only on the country's borders and account for barely 5 percent of its area. The Ukrainian landscape nevertheless has some diversity, and its plains are broken by highlandsrunning in a continuous belt from northwest to southeastas well as by lowlands. The rolling plain of the Dnieper Upland, which lies between the middle reaches of the Dnieper (Dnipro) and Southern (Pivdennyy) Buh rivers in west-central Ukraine, is the largest highland area; it is broken up by many river valleys, ravines, and gorges, some more than 1,000 feet deep. On the west the Dnieper Upland is abutted by the rugged Volyn-Podilsk Upland, which rises to 1,549 feet at its highest point, Mount Kamula. In extreme western Ukraine the parallel ranges of the Carpathian Mountainsone of the most picturesque areas in the countryextend for more than 150 miles (240 kilometres). The mountains range in height from about 2,000 to 6,500 feet, rising to 6,762 feet (2,061 metres) at Mount Hoverla, the highest point in the country. In the northern part of Ukraine lie the Pripet Marshes (Polissya), which are crossed by numerous river valleys. The northeastern and southeastern portions of Ukraine are occupied by low uplands rarely reaching an elevation of 1,000 feet. The Crimean Mountains form the southern coast of the Crimean Peninsula, the belt of land between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Mount Roman-Kosh, at 5,069 feet, is the Crimean Mountains' highest point. Except for this one mountainous coast, the shores of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov are low and are characterized by narrow, sandy spits of land that jut out into the water; one of these, the Arabat Spit, is about 75 miles long but averages less than 5 miles in width. The people Ethnic groups and languages The population of Ukraine is only slightly smaller than that of such western European countries as France, Italy, or the United Kingdom, but it is only one-third that of neighbouring Russia. When Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, a policy of Russian in-migration and Ukrainian out-migration was in effect, and ethnic Ukrainians' share of the population in Ukraine declined from 77 percent in 1959 to 73 percent in 1991. The 1991 Soviet census also revealed Russians to be the largest minority, at 22 percent. The remaining minorities, in 1991 making up about 5 percent of the population, include Jews, Belarusians, Moldovans, Bulgarians, Poles, Hungarians, and Romanians. The Crimean Tatars, who were forcibly deported to Uzbekistan and other Central Asian republics in 1944, began returning to the Crimea in large numbers in 1989 and now number about 250,000. The predominant religion in Ukraine is Eastern Orthodoxy, although in western Ukraine the Ukrainian Catholic faith prevails. During the Soviet period, Russian was the required language of government administration and public life. In 1991 Ukrainian once again became the official language, though in the Crimea, where there is a Russian-speaking majority, Russian is the official language. In addition, primary and secondary schools using Russian as the language of instruction still prevail in the Donets Basin and other areas with large Russian minorities. Ukrainianbelonging to the East Slavic language family that also includes Russian and Belarusianuses a form of the Cyrillic alphabet. It is closely related to Russian, and the two languages are mutually intelligible. Significant minorities speak Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Bulgarian, or Hungarian. Settlement patterns More than one-half of the population lives in urban areas. The highest population densities occur in southeastern and south-central Ukraine, in the highly industrialized regions of the Donets Basin and the Dnieper Bend, which together contain more than one-third of the total urban population. The major cities in Ukraine are Kiev, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Odessa, Zaporizhzhya, Lviv, and Kryvyy Rih. Of the rural population, more than half live in large villages (1,000 to 5,000 inhabitants), and most of these people are employed in a rural economy based on farming. The highest rural population densities are found in the wide belt of forest-steppe extending east-west across central Ukraine, where the extremely fertile soils and balanced climatic conditions are most favourable for agriculture.