® About the Author Gail Stewart is an award-winning author of more than 250 books for children, teens, and young adults. She lives in Minneapolis, MN, and is the mother of three grown sons. © 2015 ReferencePoint Press, Inc. Printed in the United States For more information, contact: ReferencePoint Press, Inc. PO Box 27779 San Diego, CA 92198 www. ReferencePointPress.com ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, web distribution, or information storage retrieval systems—without the written permission of the publisher. Picture Credits Cover: Steve Zmina; Akg-images/Newscom: 24; © Ivan Chernichkin/Reuters/Corbis: 60; © Sergey Dolzhenko/ epa/Corbis: 40, 57; © Gleb Garanich/Reuters/Corbis: 45; © Heritage Images/Corbis: 17; © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis: 37; © Sergii Kharchenko/Demotix/Corbis: 63; © Maysun/Corbis: 96; Thinkstock Images: 4, 5; © Reuters/Corbis: 29; © Fyodor Savintsev/ITAR-TASS/Corbis: 32; © Scheufler Collection/Corbis: 52; © Prokofyev Vyacheslav/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis: 8; Steve Zmina: 19; Cossacks charging into battle, Roubaud, Franz (1856–1928)/Private Collection/Photo © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images: 12; Portrait of the Ukranian Author Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko (1814-61), 1871 (oil on canvas), Kramskoy, Ivan Nikolaevich (1837–87)/Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia/Bridgeman Images: 49 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Stewart, Gail B. (Gail Barbara), 1949– Ukraine : then and now / by Gail B. Stewart. pages cm. — (The former Soviet Union: then and now series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-60152-709-7 (e-book) 1. Ukraine—Juvenile literature. I. Title. DK508.515.S74 2015 947.7—dc23 2014007770 CONTENTS Important Events in Ukraine: Then and Now 4 Introduction 6 A Nation on the Brink Chapter One 10 Th e Most Coveted Land Chapter Two 22 Th e Politics of Ukraine Chapter Three 35 Th e Economy of Ukraine Chapter Four 47 Th e Social Fabric of Ukraine Chapter Five 59 Th e Challenges Ahead Source Notes 72 Facts About Ukraine 75 For Further Research 77 Index 78 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN UKRAINE: THEN AND NOW 1924 Lenin dies; Stalin becomes leader of the Soviet Union. 1928 Stalin announces plan to collectivize farms in Ukraine. 1922 Th e Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is created; Soviet troops march into Kiev, claiming Ukraine as one of the fi rst four Soviet Republics. 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1932 1923 Stalin begins punishing farmers by Lenin begins korenizatsiya, orchestrating a famine, killing between a program to promote 6 and 8 million people. Ukrainian culture. 1941 In June Hitler’s army invades Ukraine; September 29–30, 1926 Nazi troops exterminate more than thirty-three Stalin bans all thousand Jews at Babi Yar. religious worship in Ukraine and other Soviet republics. 4 2013 1996 In November Yanukovych suspends Ukraine ratifi es plans to align with its constitution. the European Union; in December he announces that Ukraine will align with Russia. 1991 2009 On August 19 In September 1972 the Soviet Union presidential elections, Volodymyr crumbles as President Yushchenko Shcherbytsky President Mikhail loses to Yanukovich. becomes head Gorbachev is of Communist ousted; on August Party in Ukraine. 24 Ukraine declares independence. 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 1986 A reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant explodes. 2004 Th e Orange Revolution begins after Viktor Yushchenko is poisoned during presidential election; Viktor Yanukovych loses in run-off . 2014 Russia annexes the Crimean Peninsula; the European Union and the United States condemn the action. Violence between pro- Russian and pro-Ukraine adherents spreads across eastern and southern Ukraine. 5 INTRODUCTION A Nation on the Brink Ukraine is a nation on the brink of momentous change. After several tense weeks of protests and violence in Ukraine’s capital of Kiev (some- times spelled Kyiv), Russia, Ukraine’s giant neighbor to the east, inserted itself into the controversy in 2014. Defying international warnings and condemnation, Russia annexed Crimea, the autonomous Black Sea re- public of southern Ukraine. For weeks afterward countries around the world sought ways to punish Russia and support Ukraine. More than anything else, however, this event illustrates the deep divisions and ex- treme challenges faced by modern Ukraine. Signs of trouble have been building for a while. In November 2013 the Maidan, the large public square in Kiev, was the site of a protest movement. Many Ukrainians were furious about the economic and political actions of their govern- ment. At times the crowds in the Maidan numbered in the hundreds of thousands as some protesters lobbed rocks at police and set stacks of tires ablaze. Television viewers around the world watched as the violence increased between police and demonstrators. Th e following month, on December 26, hundreds of journalists and activists stood outside the Ministry of the Interior’s government offi ces. Many held candles, while others clutched grisly photographs of thirty- four-year-old Tetyana Chornovil, a respected Ukrainian journalist. As they stood in the cold, the protesters demonstrated their outrage at the violent act of the day before—a vicious physical attack on Chornovil. “Shame! Shame!”1 they yelled, aiming their angry words at the people inside the building. 6 A Silent Attack Anyone who knew Chornovil would have had trouble recognizing her from those photographs. Her face was bloodied and battered, one eye blackened, her nose broken, and her lips split and swollen. After beat- ing her, Chornovil’s assailants threw her into a ditch and left her there at the side of the road with a concussion and multiple fractures to her nose and face. According to police, Chornovil had been driving home early in the morning of December 25 when suddenly a car veered in front of her. It blocked her path and then forced her car to the side of the road. As soon as she stopped, several men got out of their car and broke the back win- dow of her car. Her assailants pulled her out of the car and began to beat her. “They were hitting Chornovil told police she was attacked me on the head, by at least two men, neither of whom uttered they were not saying a single word during the beating. “I started anything, they were running, they began pursuing me,” she said just hitting.”2 in video comments posted on Ukraine’s Prav- da news website. “Th ey were hitting me on — Journalist and activist the head, they were not saying anything, they Tetyana Chornovil after being beaten. were just hitting.”2 A Worrisome Trend Many Ukrainians are certain that the assault on Chornovil was not a random act of violence but rather the latest in a series of attacks against Ukraine’s activists and journalists. In 2013 there were reports of more than one hundred acts of violence in Ukraine against journalists who had written blogs or articles fi nding fault with the government. Journalists point out that Chornovil had recently written several arti- cles critical of Victor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president at the time. She had also questioned the sudden and unexplained wealth and lavish lifestyles of some of Yanukovych’s government ministers. In fact, the day she was attacked she had been working on a story revealing an expensive country manor being built for Ukraine’s interior minister, Vitaliy Zakharchenko. 7 Kiev’s Independence Square (or Maidan) was the site of mass antigovernment protests in February 2014 (pictured). Government forces fired on demonstrators, escalating the crisis in Ukraine—a crisis that gave Russia an opening to annex Crimea. Chornovil had sneaked onto the new property and taken photographs that she intended to publish on her website. She and other journalists believe the beating was an effort to prevent her from publishing the story and photographs. Russia’s takeover of Crimea and the physical violence against the me- dia are examples of the tensions—both internal and external—that are threatening to tear Ukraine apart. For decades this nation of 46 million people has been dealing with massive corruption by its political leaders. The country is also deeply divided about its future direction. About two- thirds of the population are ethnic Ukrainians; nearly one-third are eth- nic Russians; the remainder includes other groups such as Poles, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Jews. All of these populations have different ideas about how Ukraine should be governed and by whom. The future of Ukraine, which had once seemed very bright, is now cloaked in uncertainty. 8 In a press conference on April 17, 2014, US secretary of state John Kerry noted the challenges Ukraine is facing, declaring, “Th e Ukrainian people now deserve a right to choose their own future.”3 Ukraine in the twenty-fi rst century is struggling with a range of diffi cult problems. Some are the ghosts of tragedies that occurred when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, while others—economic issues and widespread corrup- tion, for instance—have more recent beginnings. It is the hope of many Ukraine citizens that they will have the strength to change the direction their nation is going. 9 CHAPTER ONE The Most Coveted Land Th e modern nation of Ukraine is fairly new; it was in 1991 that Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union. However, the land that is now Ukraine has a very long, violent, and diffi cult history. It has been dominated by other nations and has been infl uenced by many cultures— almost always against the will of the Ukrainian people. A Land of Plenty to a Mighty Kingdom From earliest times, tribes of nomadic people began to move into the region that is Ukraine. Th ey were drawn to the rich, fertile soil; the deep forests; and the bounty of the land. Notes journalist Anna Reid: “Leave a plough in a fi eld overnight, it was said, and the next morning you couldn’t fi nd it again for new grass. So numerous were the bison that hunters didn’t even bother to eat the meat, just taking the hides. So packed were the rivers with fi sh that a spear would stand upright, unsupported, in the water.”4 Slavic people were likely the fi rst to settle in Ukraine, but it was a Vi- king prince named Kyi and his two siblings who founded the city of Kiev in the seventh century CE. Th ey turned it into a bustling and prosperous trade center. Using their longboats, the Rus (Slavs referred to Vikings by the word “rus” meaning “to row”) moved goods down the Dnipro River to the Black Sea. Th at became an important trade route from Northern Europe south to the Byzantine Empire. Th e kingdom that developed around the busy center of Kiev became known as Kyivan Rus. Kiev re- mains Ukraine’s capital today. 10