Kiev Local Customs

The Greek historian Herodotus, 'the Father of History', devoted more than half a volume to them. He wrote that Hercules himself had founded this land. In 514 BC. a very important event took place in the steppe. Herodotus described this account in full details. 'Darius, the third of the Persian great Kings, decided to invade Scythia. With Darius himself in command, the Persian army of 700,000 soldiers marched across the Danube to the Russian steppes. The Scythians steadily retreated while the Persians pursuit. Darius failed the attempt to force the Scythians to confront the Persians with head-on battle. The Scythians did not abandon their tactic of withdrawal and replied to Darius when he demanded an battle action:

'There is nothing new or strange in what we do. We follow our mode of life in peaceful times. We have neither towns nor cultivated lands in these parts which might induce us, through fear of their being ravaged, to be in any hurry to fight you. But if you must needs come to blows with us speedily, look about you, and behold our fathers' tombs. Attempt to meddle with them and you shall see whether or not we will fight with you.'

It was indeed very strange war to Darius. There was nothing to be captured and held - no cities, no buildings, no plunder, nothing but the rimless steppe. He was fighting air. Darius had no alternative but to turn back. All the way to the Danube the Scythians harassed his retreat'.
He never campaigned northward through Europe again and the Scythians prevailed on the south Russian steppe and kept expanding westward for the next century.

Ukraine declared independence in 1917, taking advantage of the tsar’s political weakness. The Bolshevicks setup a rival government in Kharkov and seized complete power during the Civil War (1918 –1920). Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1922. Stalin’s regime forced famine of 1932 which claimed 7 million lives. Finally, Ukraine declared its sovereignty in July 1990 and its independence on August 24,1991, before the USSR disappeared. Today Ukraine is a nation of 52 million with the largest territory of any country in Europe.
On the picture - monument to Mikhailo Grushevski, first president of Ukraine (1918).

When the secret Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius was suppressed in 1847, Shevchenko was punished by exile and compulsory military service for writing the poems 'The Dream,' The Caucasus”, and 'The Epistle,' which satirized the oppression of Ukraine by Russia and prophesied a revolution. The great Taras became a symbol of Ukraine and Ukrainian spirit. He is a person that has the largest number of the monuments on its honour all over the world, wherever 30 million of Ukrainians outside their homeland live, including Paris, France and Washington, D.C., USA.

On the picture - my favorite monument to Schevchenko in Kharkov, Ukraine.

Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) the greatest Ukrainian poet and painter. He is most of all loved by Ukrainians and world wide famous. Shevchenkos' poetry been translated in dozens of languages (including, for example, Chineese). His most popular book, the collection of poems, 'Kobzar' (1840, The Bard) expressed the historicism and the folkloristic interests of the Ukrainian Romantics, but his poetry soon moved away from nostalgia for Cossack life to a more sombre portrayal of Ukrainian history, particularly in the long poem 'The Haidamaks' (1841).

The fiercely independent Cossack revolted in response to Polish expansion into their territory. In 1492, the Cossacks of Ukraine, the famous Zaporozhians, came into history as defenders of the Christian Church and the Ukrainian nation from Tatar, Turkish, Polish and Russian invaders.

Polish kings in the early 16th century began to organize the Zaporozhian Cossacks into military colonies to protect Poland's borders. Throughout the 16th century and the first half of the 17th, these Cossacks retained their political autonomy, briefly forming a semi-independent state under hetman (commander-in-chef) Bohdan Khmelnytsky (c. 1649). But, threatened by Polish domination, the Zaporozhian Cossacks signed a treaty with Russia in 1654, under which their autonomy was to be respected. The Russians likewise used the Cossacks first as defenders of the Russian frontier and later as advance guards for the territorial extension of the Russian Empire. Internally, the Cossacks regained a greater degree of their cherished liberties under the Russians than they had known under the Poles. The Russian throne reserved the right to approve Cossacks' negotiations with the Poles and the Turks, the peoples with whom Russian relations were the most sensitive. An agreement with Moscow helped ward off Polish domination. A treaty of 1667, however, divided Ukraine between Russia and Poland, and indigenous culture was suppressed by both powers. Under the Russian Empire, most of Ukraine was reorganized into Russian provinces. On the picture - monument to Bohdan Khmelnitsky.

By the mid-14th century, Ukraine was being ruled simultaneously by the Tartars, the grand duchy of Lithuania, and the kingdom of Poland. The Cossacks, armed troops on horseback, became the power structure. The name Cossack derives from the Turk word 'kazak', which means 'free man' or 'adventurer'. Indeed, the Cossack's life was quite an adventure: this sub-ethnic group was formed and shaped in never ending wars and conflicts. In the 15th century the term Cossack referred to self-governing warrior communities in the Dnieper and Don river regions. An outsider could join the Cossacks, if the Cossacks considered him a worthy warrior (there are parallels in other warrior cultures for example, the Iroquois and some other Indians would accept strangers, even whites, as members of the tribe, if they could prove in quite challenging tests that they were 'real men'). There is evidence that Cossacks accepted in their communities Tartars, Germans, Greeks, Turks. There was only one condition – believing in Christ.
On the picture of Ilya Repin: 'The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mahmoud IV' (1880-1891). Oil on canvas. The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

In 1169, Kyiv was sacked and pillaged by the armies of Andrei Bogolubsky of Suzdal, and the final blow to the Kievan state came with the Mongol invasion (1237–40). Viewed from the forests, the depopulated area around Kyiv was seen as “Ukraine”, meaning the borderland.
Even now, the folk memory of the Tartar’s bloody rule is an indelible scar on the national psyche. Ukrainian mothers can still be heard invoking to frighten naughty children: “Eat up your food,” they say, “Or Mamai will get you”. First encounter with these alians on horseback came in 1223, when an army was smashed at the Kalka River by a Tartar detachment which then disappeared back into the steppe. But it was only advance guard, sent by Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan to investigate the rich picking to the west. The real invasion came in 1236, under the command of Genghis Khan’s grandson Batu Khan. Following the sacking of Vladimir and Moscow in 1240 the Mongols moved south to mount a devastating attack on Kiev, sparing only St. Sophia’s Cathedral and a few houses. The country was now condemned to the Tartar yoke, cut off from all great advances of the Renaissance which were destined to take place in the western Europe over the next centuries.
All subsequent country’s history – from the frantic westernizing of Peter the Great to the uncritical capitalism in today’s Ukraine – can be read as an attempt by the state to catch up with all that missedout on during this period, to win recognition from the West for Ukraine and Russia having borne the Tartar yoke alone, for having absorbed the killer blow on behalf of all Europe.

After Yaroslav’s death the state was divided into principalities ruled by his sons; this soon led to civil strife. A last effort for unity was made by Volodymyr II (reigned 1113–25), but the perpetual princely strife and the devastating raids of the nomadic Cumans soon ended the supremacy of Kiev. Unlike the rest of Europe, Kyivan Rus went through its rise and fall at much different time periods. While the height of the Kyivan state came around 1000-1050, the rest of Europe had barely made it out of the Dark Ages. However, when Western Europe had clearly made its move out of the doldrums in the mid-13th century, Kyivan Rus was plunging into desperation. In the middle of the 12th cent. a number of local centers of power developed: Halych in the west, Novgorod in the north, Vladimir-Suzdal in the northwest, and Kyiv in the south. It was in the year 1187 that for the first time in history the historical chronicles mention the new name Ukraine for the ancient name of this land, which was Rus'.