History of Ukraine: What You Want to Know, part 2

We have looked at the recent history of Ukraine in our first article; now we turn to these questions:

• What is the history of Ukraine over the last two centuries that got us here?
• What has been Ukraine’s relationship to other great powers of Europe, especially Russia?

How Has Ukraine Developed

Let’s step back a couple of hundred years to a time when people are familiar with the nation-building history in Europe and the West. This will give us a more familiar context for how Ukraine became what it is now.

Just as my grandfather was born in Austria-Hungary, which later became Romania, then Yugoslavia, and now Serbia — Ukraine has been split up, repartitioned, and put back together many times in recent centuries.

18th Century Ukraine

Ukraine, 1720

In the late 1700s, the United States was established following the Revolutionary War with the American Constitution. France was moving to a Republic from a monarch with its French Revolution in 1789.