Ukrainians

The Ukrainians are a Slavic people of central-eastern Europe.  They are the descendants of several people who inhabited the vast area extending from north of the Black Sea to the borders of Russia, Poland, Moldova, Belarus and Slovakia.  Ukraine had a very turbulent history, a fact justified by its geographical position.  It was the first Scandinavian settlers who founded the Kingdom of Kyiv (Kyivan Rus), long before Kyivan Rus leader Volodymyr accepted Christianity in 988.

The Ukrainian language, although classified among Eastern Slavic languages, has borrowed a lot of words from Polish, a West Slavic language.  In Tsarist Russia the Ukrainian language was persecuted; however, as most people were illiterate, persecutions had little effect.  During the Soviet era, on the other hand, the Ukrainian language was encouraged; still the universal education, combined with the advent of radio and television, has led to it being almost completely replaced, especially in urban centers, by Russian, the official language of the Soviet State.  Great efforts are made nowadays to use the Ukrainian throughout the country, something which seems very difficult for the time being.

From an anthropological point of view, Ukrainians are a mixture of the Alpic, Dinaric, Baltic and Nordic races.  This seems very natural, if one considers the identity of peoples like Norsemen, Slavs, Celts, Goths and Scythians, who inhabited the area from time to time.  Evidence of Asian (namely Mongoloid) traits are also found among Ukrainians, although this fact must be considered to be insignificant in comparison to the extended Turkic and Mongolian invasions in Ukraine.

Ukraine originally formed part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, later of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, finally gaining its independence only in the 1990s.

See also: Ruthenes

External links:

• Map of territories inhabited by Ukrainians before 1939 (http://harazd.net/~nadbuhom/mapy-historia/mapy_7.htm)

uk:Українці de:Ukrainer