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Main article: History of Kyiv
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Kyiv.
See also: Principality of Kiev and Grand Prince of Kiev
The first known humans in the region of Kyiv lived there in the late Paleolithic period (Stone Age). The population around Kyiv during the Bronze Age formed part of the so-called Trypillian culture, as evidenced by artifacts from that culture found in the area. During the early Iron Age certain tribes settled around Kyiv that practiced land cultivation, husbandry and trading with the Scythians and ancient states of the northern Black Sea coast. Findings of Roman coins of the 2nd to the 4th centuries suggest trade relations with the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire.
Origins[edit]
Main article: History of Kyiv § Origins
Scholars continue to debate when the city was founded: The traditional founding date is 482 CE, so the city celebrated its 1,500th anniversary in 1982. Archaeological data indicates a founding in the sixth or seventh centuries, with some researchers dating the founding as late as the late 9th century.
Legendary Kyi, Shchek, Khoryv and Lybid in the Radziwiłł Chronicle
There are several legendary accounts of the origin of the city. One tells of members of a Slavic tribe (Eastern Polans), brothers Kyi (the eldest, after whom the city was named), Shchek, Khoryv, and their sister Lybid, who founded the city (See the Primary Chronicle). Another legend states that Saint Andrew passed through the area in the 1st century. Where the city is now he erected a cross, where a church later was built. Since the Middle Ages an image of Saint Michael has represented the city as well as the duchy.
Hungarians at Kyiv in 830 during the times of the Rus' Khaganate; painting by Pál Vágó (1853–1928)
There is little historical evidence pertaining to the period when the city was founded. Scattered Slavic settlements existed in the area from the 6th century, but it is unclear whether any of them later developed into the city. On the Ptolemy world map there are several settlements indicated along the mid-stream of Borysthenes, among which is Azagarium, which some historians believe to be the predecessor to Kyiv.
However, according to the 1773 Dictionary of Ancient Geography of Alexander Macbean, that settlement corresponds to the modern city of Chernobyl. Just south of Azagarium, there is another settlement, Amadoca, believed to be the capital of the Amadoci people living in an area between the marshes of Amadoca in the west and the Amadoca mountains in the east.
Another name for Kyiv mentioned in history, the origin of which is not completely clear, is Sambat, which apparently has something to do with the Khazar Empire. The Primary Chronicle says the residents of Kyiv told Askold "there were three brothers Kyi, Shchek, and Khoriv. They founded this town and died, and now we are staying and paying taxes to their relatives the Khazars". In De Administrando Imperio, Constantine Porphyrogenitus mentions a caravan of small cargo boats which assembled annually, and writes, "They come down the river Dnieper and assemble at the strong-point of Kyiv (Kioava), also called Sambatas".
At least three Arabic-speaking 10th century geographers who traveled the area mention the city of Zānbat as the chief city of the Russes. Among them are ibn Rustah, Abu Sa'id Gardezi, and an author of the Hudud al-'Alam. The texts of those authors were discovered by Russian orientalist Alexander Tumansky. The etymology of Sambat has been argued by many historians, including Grigoriy Ilyinsky, Nikolay Karamzin, Jan Potocki, Nikolay Lambin, Joachim Lelewel, and Guðbrandur Vigfússon.
The Primary Chronicle states that at some point during the late 9th or early 10th century Askold and Dir, who may have been of Viking or Varangian descent, ruled in Kyiv. They were murdered by Oleg of Novgorod in 882, but some historians, such as Omeljan Pritsak and Constantine Zuckerman, dispute that, arguing that Khazar rule continued as late as the 920s, leaving historical documents such as the Kievan Letter and Schechter Letter.
Other historians suggest that Magyar tribes ruled the city between 840 and 878, before migrating with some Khazar tribes to the Carpathian Basin. The Primary Chronicle mentions Hungarians passing near Kyiv. Askold's Grave was previously known as "Uhorske urochyshche" (Hungarian place).
According to the aforementioned scholars the building of the fortress of Kyiv was finished in 840 under the leadership of Keő (Keve), Csák, and Geréb, three brothers, possibly members of the Tarján tribe. The three names appear in the Kyiv Chronicle as Kyi, Shchek, and Khoryv and may be not of Slavic origin, as Russian historians have always struggled to account for their meanings and origins. According to Hungarian historian Viktor Padányi, their names were inserted into the Kyiv Chronicle in the 12th century, and they were identified as old-Russian mythological heroes.
Kyivan Rus'[edit]
Main article: History of Kyiv § Kyivan Rus'
The Baptism of Kievans, a painting by Klavdiy Lebedev
The city of Kyiv stood on the trade route between the Varangians and the Greeks. In 968 the nomadic Pechenegs attacked and then besieged the city. By 1000 CE the city had a population of 45,000. According to Thietmar of Merseburg, who described Kyiv in his chronicle from 1017, during that time the city had over 400 churches and 8 markets. Its significance as the capital of Rus' was underlined by large-scale construction projects, such as the erection of St. Sophia Cathedral by Yaroslav the Wise.
During the period of feudal divisions in Rus', Kyiv retained its special meaning and became an object of numerous campaigns by various princes. Between 1146 and 1246 the city changed hands 47 times, being ruled by 24 princes, and in 35 cases their tenure lasted less than a year. In March 1169, Grand Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky of Vladimir-Suzdal sacked Kyiv, leaving the old town and the prince's hall in ruins. He took many pieces of religious artwork – including the Theotokos of Vladimir icon – from Vyshhorod. In 1203, Prince Rurik Rostislavich and his Kipchak allies captured and burned Kyiv. In the 1230s, the city was besieged and ravaged several times by different Rus princes. The city had not recovered from these attacks when, in 1240, the Mongol invasion of Rus', led by Batu Khan, completed the destruction of Kyiv.
Golden Horde period[edit]
Main article: Kiev in the Golden Horde period
The Mongol conquest had a profound effect on the future of the city and on the culture of Kyivan Rus'. Kyiv had had a reputation as one of the largest cities in the world, with a population of about 35,000–40,000 inhabitants "before the Mongol invasion" (according to Orest Subtelny), or 36,000–50,000 "at the end of the twelfth century" (according to Janet L. B. Martin). Deprived of its own dynasty, under the Golden Horde Kyiv was ruled according to yarlyks issued by Mongol rulers, but its princes only nominally controlled the city, barely appearing there.
In the early 1320s, a Lithuanian army led by Grand Duke Gediminas defeated a Slavic army led by Stanislav of Kyiv at the Battle on the Irpen' River and conquered the city. The Tatars, who also claimed Kyiv, retaliated in 1324–1325, so while Kyiv was ruled by a Lithuanian prince, it had to pay tribute to the Golden Horde. Finally, as a result of the Battle of Blue Waters in 1362, Algirdas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, incorporated Kyiv and surrounding areas into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Lithuanian and Polish period[edit]
Detail of Sebastian Münster's Map of Poland and Hungary, 1552, showing Kyiv labelled "Kyouia episcopatus" ("Kyiv episcopate")
At the time of the Lithuanian rule, the core of the city was located in Podil and there was a Lithuanian Kyiv Castle with 18 towers on the Zamkova Hora which served as a residence of Vladimir Olgerdovich, Grand Prince of Kyiv, and subsequently of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania (e.g. Vytautas).
In 1482, Crimean Tatars sacked and burned much of Kyiv.
With the 1569 Union of Lublin, when the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was established, the Lithuanian-controlled lands of the Kyiv region (Podolia, Volhynia, and Podlachia) were transferred from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, and Kyiv became the capital of Kyiv Voivodeship. The 1658 Treaty of Hadiach envisaged Kyiv becoming the capital of the Grand Duchy of Rus' within the Polish–Lithuanian–Ruthenian Commonwealth, but this provision of the treaty never went into operation.
During the early 17th century, the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves, founded by Anthony of Kiev in the 11th century, became a centre of an Orthodox cultural revival, leading to the foundation of a brotherhood school, later known as Mohyla Collegium. During that period administration of Cossack hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachnyi was moved to Kyiv, once again making it a political centre of Ukrainian lands.
Cossack period and Russian suzerainty[edit]
The Entrance of Bohdan Khmelnytsky to Kyiv in 1649 by Mykola Ivasyuk (1865–1937) depicts events after the Khmelnytsky Uprising against Polish domination.
The 1686 city map of Kyiv ("Kiovia"), fortified Podil with the "alten" city shown in ruins ("Rudera")
In 1649, following the success of Khmelnytsky Uprising, Kyiv was entered by the victorious Cossack army of Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Local clergy supported the rebellion and provided its ideological foundations, encouraging Khmelnytsky to depict himself as a protector of Orthodox faith and defender of Ruthenian people. Occupied by Russian troops since the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav, Kyiv became a part of the Tsardom of Russia from 1667 with the Truce of Andrusovo and enjoyed self-government inside of an autonomous Cossack Hetmanate. None of the Polish-Russian treaties concerning Kyiv have ever been ratified.
In the Russian Empire, Kyiv was a primary Christian centre, attracting pilgrims, and the cradle of many of the empire's most important religious figures, but until the 19th century, the city's commercial importance remained marginal. In 1834, the Russian government established Saint Vladimir University, now known as the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in honour of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861), who worked as a field researcher and editor for its geography department. The medical faculty of Saint Vladimir University, separated into an independent institution in 1919–1921 during the Soviet period, became the Bogomolets National Medical University in 1995.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Imperial Russian Army and ecclesiastical authorities dominated the city life;[citation needed] the Russian Orthodox Church had involvement in a significant part of Kyiv's infrastructure and commercial activity. In the late 1840s the historian, Mykola Kostomarov (Russian: Nikolai Kostomarov), founded a secret political society, the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, whose members put forward the idea of a federation of free Slavic peoples with Ukrainians as a distinct and separate group rather than a subordinate part of the Russian nation; the Russian authorities quickly suppressed the society.
Following the gradual loss of Ukraine's autonomy, Kyiv experienced growing Russification in the 19th century, by means of Russian migration, administrative actions, and social modernization. At the beginning of the 20th century the Russian-speaking part of the population dominated the city centre, while the lower classes living on the outskirts retained Ukrainian folk culture to a significant extent.[citation needed] However, enthusiasts among ethnic Ukrainian aristocrats, soldiers, and merchants made attempts to preserve the native culture in Kyiv, by clandestine book-printing, amateur theatre, folk studies, etc.
Kyiv in the late 19th century
During the Russian industrial revolution in the late 19th century, Kyiv became an important trade and transportation centre of the Russian Empire, specialising in sugar and grain export by railway and on the Dnieper river. By 1900, the city had also become a significant industrial centre, with a population of 250,000. Landmarks of that period include the railway infrastructure, the foundation of numerous educational and cultural facilities, and notable architectural monuments (mostly merchant-oriented). In 1892, the first electric tram line of the Russian Empire started running in Kyiv (the third in the world). Kyiv prospered during the late 19th century Industrial Revolution in the Russian Empire, when it became the third most important city of the Empire and the major centre of commerce in its southwest.
Soviet era[edit]
Until 1936, Kyiv was located mostly on the west bank of the Dnieper
In the turbulent period following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Kyiv became the capital of several successive Ukrainian states and was caught in the middle of several conflicts: World War I, during which German soldiers occupied it from 2 March 1918 to November 1918, the Russian Civil War of 1917 to 1922, and the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921. During the last three months of 1919, Kyiv was intermittently controlled by the White Army. Kyiv changed hands sixteen times from the end of 1918 to August 1920.
From 1921 to 1991, the city formed part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which became a founding republic of the Soviet Union in 1922. The major events that took place in Soviet Ukraine during the interwar period all affected Kyiv: the 1920s Ukrainization as well as the migration of the rural Ukrainophone population made the Russophone city Ukrainian-speaking and bolstered the development of Ukrainian cultural life in the city; the Soviet industrialization that started in the late 1920s turned the city, a former centre of commerce and religion, into a major industrial, technological and scientific centre; the 1932–1933 Great Famine devastated the part of the migrant population not registered for ration cards; and Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of 1937–1938 almost eliminated the city's intelligentsia.
In 1934, Kyiv became the capital of Soviet Ukraine. The city boomed again during the years of Soviet industrialization as its population grew rapidly and many industrial giants were established, some of which exist today.
Ruins of Kyiv during World War II
In World War II, the city again suffered significant damage, and Nazi Germany occupied it from 19 September 1941 to 6 November 1943. Axis forces killed or captured more than 600,000 Soviet soldiers in the great encircling Battle of Kyiv in 1941. Most of those captured never returned alive. Shortly after the Wehrmacht occupied the city, a team of NKVD officers who had remained hidden dynamited most of the buildings on the Khreshchatyk, the main street of the city, where German military and civil authorities had occupied most of the buildings; the buildings burned for days and 25,000 people were left homeless.
Allegedly in response to the actions of the NKVD, the Germans rounded up all the local Jews they could find, nearly 34,000, and massacred them at Babi Yar in Kyiv on 29 and 30 September 1941. In the months that followed, thousands more were taken to Babi Yar where they were shot. It is estimated that the Germans murdered more than 100,000 people of various ethnic groups, mostly civilians, at Babi Yar during World War II.
The Ukrainian national flag was raised outside Kyiv's City Hall for the first time on 24 July 1990.
Kyiv recovered economically in the post-war years, becoming once again the third-most important city of the Soviet Union. The catastrophic accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 occurred only 100 km (62 mi) north of the city. However, the prevailing south wind blew most of the radioactive debris away from Kyiv.
Independence[edit]
In the course of the collapse of the Soviet Union the Ukrainian parliament proclaimed the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine in the city on 24 August 1991. In 2004–2005, the city played host to the largest post-Soviet public demonstrations up to that time, in support of the Orange Revolution. From November 2013 until February 2014, central Kyiv became the primary location of Euromaidan. During the onset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian forces attempted to seize Kyiv but were repelled by Ukrainian forces on the outskirts of the city; Kyiv itself escaped major damage. Following the Russian retreat from the region in April 2022, Kyiv has been subject to frequent air strikes.
