Outline of Ukrainian history

This is a topical guide to articles about the History of Ukraine.

Ukraine[a] is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest country in Europe by area, after Russia, which borders it to the east and northeast.[b] It also borders Belarus to the north; Poland and Slovakia to the west; Hungary, Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast.[c] Kyiv is the capital and largest city, followed by Kharkiv, Odesa and Dnipro. The official language is Ukrainian. Ukraine covers 603,628 km2 (233,062 sq mi),[2] and has an estimated population of 39 million as of 2025.[3]

Ukrainian history starts with the Kyivan Rus',[4] the medieval state centered on Kyiv,[5] which the Mongol invasion of 1240 broke apart.[6][7] Rule from outside followed for four centuries, first from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,[8] and then the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth,[9] until the Cossack uprising of 1648 created a Hetmanate that lasted under Russian suzerainty until Catherine II abolished it. By 1800 the territory was split between the Russian Empire and the Habsburg monarchy,[10] and the national movement grew differently on each side of that line.[11][12][13] As a result of World War I,[14] and its aftermath in the Russian Revolution and Civil War, both the Russian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell in 1917, and the Ukrainian People's Republic that emerged lasted only until the Bolsheviks crushed it in 1921.[15] Seven decades of Soviet rule followed,[16] which included the Holodomor,[17] and then Second World War and the Holocaust in Ukraine.[18][19] Independence came in 1991, and the period since has been shaped by disputes over Ukraine's alignment: the Orange Revolution, the Maidan of 2013–14 and the Russian invasions from 2014 to the present.[20]

Overviews

  • History of Ukraine - (c. 32,000 BCE–present) - Survey of Ukrainian history from prehistory to the present.
  • Name of Ukraine - History and etymology of the country's name.

Archaeological cultures in Ukraine

Pre-modern history

Ancient history

Medieval history

Modern pre-Soviet history

Early modern history

Crimean Khanate

Cossack Hetmanate

Zaporozhian Sich

History of Ukraine (1795–1918)

Ukraine in World War I

Russian Revolution and Soviet era

Ukrainian War of Independence

Ukrainian People's Republic

Russian Revolution in Ukraine

Ukraine in the Russian Civil War

Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic

Interwar Soviet Ukraine

Ukraine in World War II

The Holocaust and Nazi collaboration

Postwar Soviet Ukraine

Chernobyl disaster

Post-Soviet independent Ukraine

Independent Ukraine (1989–2014)

Ukraine since 2014

Russo-Ukrainian war

People

Topical

Famines in Ukraine

Chernobyl disaster

  • See section above on Chernobyl

Timelines

Historiography of Ukraine

Works about Ukrainian history

History books

Books about the Holodomor

Primary sources

See also

References

Notes

  1. ↑ /juːˈkreɪn/ ⓘ yoo-KRAYN; Ukrainian: Україна, romanised: Ukraina, pronounced [ʊkrɐˈjinɐ] ⓘ
  2. ↑ Ukraine has been and still is a contested area with territory frequently occupied and annexed from it by Russia and other eastern and central European powers.[1]
  3. ↑ Ukrainian territories on the Sea of Azov were occupied and annexed by Russia in 2014 (Crimea) and in 2022 (Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia oblasts and other areas in southern and eastern Ukraine). The United Nations General Assembly condemned both annexations as illegal.

Citations

  1. ↑ Reid, Anna (1999). Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine. Basic Books.
  2. ↑ Stebelsky, Ihor. "Ukraine". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 12 August 2026.
  3. ↑ "World Population Prospects 2024, Online Edition". United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. Retrieved 12 August 2026.
  4. ↑ Plokhy, Serhii (2006). The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Cambridge University Press.
  5. ↑ Franklin, Simon; Shepard, Jonathan (1996). The Emergence of Rus 750–1200. Longman.
  6. ↑ Halperin, Charles J. (1985). Russia and the Golden Horde: The Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History. Indiana University Press.
  7. ↑ Favereau, Marie (2021). The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World. Harvard University Press.
  8. ↑ Rowell, S. C. (1994). Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe, 1295–1345. Cambridge University Press.
  9. ↑ Frost, Robert I. (2015). The Oxford History of Poland-Lithuania, Volume I: The Making of the Polish-Lithuanian Union, 1385–1569. Oxford University Press.
  10. ↑ Judson, Pieter M. (2016). The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Belknap Press.
  11. ↑ Plokhy, Serhii (2015). The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine. Basic Books.
  12. ↑ Subtelny, Orest (2009). Ukraine: A History (4th ed.). University of Toronto Press.
  13. ↑ Magocsi, Paul Robert (2010). A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2nd ed.). University of Toronto Press.
  14. ↑ von Hagen, Mark (2007). War in a European Borderland: Occupations and Occupation Plans in Galicia and Ukraine, 1914–1918. University of Washington Press.
  15. ↑ Velychenko, Stephen (2011). State Building in Revolutionary Ukraine: A Comparative Study of Governments and Bureaucrats, 1917–1922. University of Toronto Press.
  16. ↑ Liber, George O. (2016). Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914–1954. University of Toronto Press.
  17. ↑ Applebaum, Anne (2017). Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine. Doubleday.
  18. ↑ Stahel, David (2012). Kiev 1941: Hitler's Battle for Supremacy in the East. Cambridge University Press.
  19. ↑ Lower, Wendy (2005). Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine. University of North Carolina Press.
  20. ↑ Minakov, Mykhailo; Kasianov, Georgiy; Rojansky, Matthew, eds. (2021). From "the Ukraine" to Ukraine: A Contemporary History, 1991–2021. ibidem-Verlag.
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