UKRAINE 2001
Introduction
The nation-state of Ukraine is located in the heart of eastern Europe, between Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to its west, Belarus and the other Russian successor states to its north and east, and the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to its south. Ukraine's central geography places the country squarely in the middle of historic Eurasian trade and invasion routes, thus ensuring that the Ukrainian people have both prospered and suffered for their geography.
Although Ukraine has been populated since the end of the Ice Age, only in the 9th century did Ukrainians -- a Slavic people, produced by the same migrations that caused the Slavic colonization of most northeastern Europe -- enter history with the formation of the thriving state of Kyyivan Rus'. After Kyyiv was converted to Orthodox Christianity in 989 CE, the fractious Ukrainian principalities prospered until the devastating 13th century invasions of the Mongols. These invasions destroyed any chance of Ukrainian unification and allowed Poland and Lithuania to expand their empires into Ukrainian territory. Poland, however, could not subjugate the southern Ukrainian Cossacks, who eventually allied themselves for reasons of religion and ideology with Russia. Eventually, all Ukraine save for Austrian Galicia was absorbed into the Russian Empire following the partitions of Poland.
In the late 19th century, Galician Ukrainians began to develop the modern ideology of Ukrainian nationalism in reaction to oppression by non-Ukrainian landlords; by the end of the 19th century, Ukrainian nationalism had become popular in Russian Ukraine. In the 1905 Russian Revolution, Ukrainian nationalists organized a series of workers' strikes that nearly destroyed Tsarism but post-revolutionary reaction forced many Ukrainians to flee. After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Ukraine proclaimed its independence as the Ukrainian People's Republic and claimed both the Austrian and the Russian segments of Ukraine. Subsequently, the Ukrainian government led by Simon Petlyura declared war on Poland, while a counter-government was set up in Kharkov by Communists who declared Ukraine a Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1920 the advance of the Russian Bolshevik armies caused the Petlyura government to ally with Poland.
Under the terms of the Peace of Versailles Ukraine became an autonomous unit of the Polish Federation, but nonetheless Poland made drastic efforts to suppress Ukrainian nationalism and Ukrainian autonomy. Finally, in 1933 Ukrainians began a war of independence from Poland and finally gained their national freedom in 1937. However, independent Ukraine's extreme instability prevented Ukraine from gaining official recognition from the League of Nations. In 1940, in keeping with the Soviet-Greater German alliance Ukraine was invaded; despite ferocious armed resistance by Ukrainian peasants and the Ukrainian army, Ukraine was annexed as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. More than a million Ukrainians died in the subsequent Stalinist terror. Worse came when the Germans invaded Ukraine in 1941 during the Second World War as hostile conquerors. Ukrainian nationalist forces consequently began a resistance movement against both the occupying Germans and the Soviet forces operating in Ukraine. Unhappily, in 1943 and 1944 all Ukraine was reconquered by the Soviet Union after the deaths of almost seven million Ukrainians. Although Ukrainian partisans continued to resist for another decade, Ukraine was to remain Soviet for the next generation.
From 1944 to the late 1950's, the Berianist Soviet government repressed the Ukrainians. A total of three million Ukrainians (out of a 1950 population of 53 million) were eventually deported to Siberian labour camps, while another million Ukrainians died as a direct result of political terror. Despite these extraordinarily high losses, Ukrainian nationalism remained a thriving force, almost as popular among Ukraine's indigenous Communists as among the Ukrainian peasantry. When the Soviet Civil War began in 1961, the Ukrainian republic was able to remain neutral and, under a reformist government, gained near-complete independence. In the following two decades, the Ukrainian Associated Soviet Socialist Republic was a member-state of the Soviet Union in the name only, and became known to the entire world as a liberal state with a functioning democratic system of government and a prosperous social-democratic economy driven by exports of wheat to the wider world and exports of manufactured goods to the European Confederation. Ukrainian culture's simultaneous revival produced a remarkable cultural fluorescence.
Ukraine's golden age ended in September of 1982, when -- despite a hasty declaration of independence issued after the nuclear destruction of Moscow -- Ukraine was attacked with numerous nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction with the express intent of destroying the wheat fields of central Ukraine. In the aftermath of this terrible attack, a quarter of Ukraine's pre-War population died, and a thriving nation-state was prostrated. In 1985, Ukraine joined the European Confederation along with the Federated Russian Republics. Since then, Ukrainians have been slowly rebuilding their country.
Modern Ukraine is a country that, despite the ravages of the past century, still has much to attract the visitor: the quaint villages of western Ukraine, the ancient churches of Kyyiv, the scenic beauty of the Black Sea and its shoreline, the majesty of the Carpathian Mountains, and the legendary hospitality of the Ukrainian people. In recent years, the numbers of tourists in Ukraine has exploded; it is best to visit Ukraine now before Ukraine risks becoming overcommercialized.
Visiting Ukraine
As a full member-state of the European Confederation, the Republic of Ukraine is bound by Confederation treaties and statutes to allow unhindered movement across its borders by citizens of all member-states of the European Confederation and the Mediterranean Accords, as well as by legitimate foreign passport holders. Consequently, the liberal passport regime of the European Confederation is fully applied in Ukraine. Growing immigration above and beyond Ukraine's quota in the Migration Pact from Third and Fourth World countries has created de facto racist policies towards non-whites at border checkpoints, but possession of appropriate passports is usually sufficient.
Money
Ukraine's official currency is the écu. The strongest currency on Tripartite Alliance Earth, the écu trades at a relatively high exchange rate for the ITA pound, the Confed dollar, and the Communautaire Occidental franc. Prices in Ukraine, however, are far lower -- in 1998-9, by an average of 60% -- than elsewhere in the European Confederation owing to Ukraine's relative poverty.
Natural Environment
Climate
The Ukrainian climate is temperate continental, with a subtropical Mediterranean climate prevailing in the southern Crimea and below-average temperatures in eastern Ukraine owing to cold winds from the direction of Siberia. In winter, temperatures range from -8° to 2° C; in summer, temperatures average 17° to 25° C. Despite this relative warmth, Ukraine's Black Sea coast is subject to freezing; Sochi, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, is the only Ukrainian port that remains permanently ice-free.
Precipitation decreases from north to south, being greatest in the Carpathians, where it exceeds more than 1 500 mm per year, and least in the coastal lowlands of the Black Sea, where it averages less than 300 mm per year.
Geography
With a total land area of 938 400 square kilometers, Ukraine is Europe's largest country apart from the Russian states. Surprisingly, despite Ukraine's vast size almost all Ukraine is a vast flat plain, with elevations generally below 300 metres. A belt of highlands stretches from the northwest to the southeast near the central Dnipro valley, but the only major mountain ranges in Ukraine are the Carpathian Mountains in the extreme west, the Crimean Mountains on the southern coast of the Crimean Peninsula, and the Caucasus Mountains on the North Caucasian border. The highest point in Ukraine is Mount Hoverla in the Carpathians, with an elevation of 2061 metres. The Most of Ukraine's major rivers flow into the Black Sea; these rivers are the Don river in the far east, the Donets in the east, the Dnepr in the centre, and the Southern Bug and Dnestr rivers in the west, the Donets in the east, and the Danube in the far south. The Western Bug, however, flows northward through the western part of the country and joins the Vistula, which empties into the Baltic Sea through Poland.
Ukraine has extremely fertile black-earth soils in the central and southern portions, totaling nearly two-thirds of the territory. This soil, known as the chornozem, is deep and rich in humus. Prior to human intrusion, the original vegetation of the Ukrainian plans was divided into three broad belts that crossed the territory of Ukraine latitudinally: mixed forest vegetation occupied the northern third of the country, forest-steppe the middle portion, and steppe the southern third of the country. Now, however, most of the original vegetation has been cleared and replaced by cultivated crops, with a corresponding decline in biodiversity, particularly among animals. Extensive tracts of wilderness exist only in the Carpathians and parts of far eastern Ukraine. Past industrialization and the radiological effects of the Third World War have caused extensive damage to the Ukrainian ecology.
The People
Demography
With an estimated population of 46.5 million people in 2001, Ukraine is home to easily the single largest national population to emerge from the wreckage of the Soviet Union, and Ukraine is one of the European Confederation's most populous countries. Ukraine's 20th century demographic past has been marred by innumerable catastrophes. Only now is the Ukrainian population is beginning to recover to its pre-War levels.
The first census in Ukraine conducted after the Second World War, in 1959, showed a population whose ethnic composition had changed dramatically as a result of that war. Out of a total population of 49.3 million people, Ukrainians comprised 85% of the population, while Russians increased to 11%, and other nationalities dropped to 4%. (Most remaining Jews and Poles had emigrated from Ukraine after 1944, while many ethnic Russians immigrated to Ukrainian industrial areas.)
Between 1959 and 1979, the Ukrainian population grew only moderately, as a declining fertility rate -- dropping below replacement levels in the mid-1970's -- caused natural increase to slowly decelerate. After the Russian Soviet Federative Republic was devastated in the Soviet Civil War, large numbers of Russians (as well as Georgians and North Caucasians) immigrated to Ukraine. This immigration was counterbalanced by the gradual Ukrainianization of Ukrainian society and consequent large-scale assimilation of Russians. In 1959-1969, the Ukrainian population grew at an average rate of 1.3% per annum; in 1969-1979 this rate slowed to 1.0% per annum. In 1979, the Ukrainian Associated Soviet Socialist Republic was home to 60.9 million people, of which 83% were ethnic Ukrainians. The relatively low Ukrainian birth rate and declining mortality rates among people under 60 years of age produced a rapidly aging population. If these trends had continued uninterrupted, it is estimated that Ukrainian birth rates would be equalled or surpassed by Ukrainian death rates in 1990, and that even after immigration the Ukrainian population would begin to decline from a peak of 63.1 million people in 1998.
These demographic predictions were changed utterly by the Third World War, in particular by the targeting of central Ukraine by the United States. Current figures from the Ukrainian Statistical Bureau suggest that between September of 1982 and August of 1983 13.8 million Ukrainians (out of an estimated pre-War population of 61.3 million) died, whether of the direct effects of the nuclear attack, radiation-induced illness or epidemic disease, famine, or extreme cold. The Ukrainian population continued to decline after the Third World War, as death rates soared, birth rates collapsed far below replacement levels, and millions of Ukrainians emigrated. Towards the beginning of the 1990's, Ukraine's net population decline slowed somewhat as death rates declined and Ukraine attracted some immigrants from the North Caucasus and the Russian states, but the Ukrainian population as a whole continued to decline. In 1998, Ukraine was home to an estimated 40.9 million people.
Although Ukraine was one of the major battlefields in the Holy Alliance invasion of Eurasia in July of 1998, few Ukrainians died. Following first contact with the ITA, the Ukrainian government has embarked upon an ambitious program of immigrant recruitment, appealing to ethnic Ukrainian refugees from Empires-Earth and Deccan Traps Earth as a suitable destination. Between August of 1999 and the present, Ukraine absorbed an estimated eight million immigrants from those two worlds, with three million more expected to arrive from Deccan Traps Earth over the next year. Although many of these immigrants emigrated to points elsewhere in the European Confederation, most remain within Ukraine's territorial boundaries, living on the outskirts of Ukraine's major cities or in the rehabilitated central and far eastern provinces.
Ukrainian demography is in a state of flux. The importation of offworld Ukrainians who are (as a group) younger than the native Ukrainian population and have a higher birth rate than the native Ukrainian population has pushed Ukrainian fertility rates above replacement levels and reversed Ukrainian population aging. Moreover, Ukraine's gradual economic recovery has contributed to a rising birth rate among native Ukrainians even as the death rate has continued to decline. Conservative projections suggest that by 2010, Ukraine will be home to almost 52 million people. Yet, it is important to remember that living standards and environmental conditions in Ukraine remain poor, and can conceivably produce natural decline, mass emigration, or both.
As of 2001, 88% of Ukraine's 46.5 million people are ethnic Ukrainians, while a further 7% are ethnic Russians. The remaining 2.4 million Ukrainian citizens come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including Bulgarians, Belarusians, Tatars, Georgians, and North Caucasians. The once-numerous Polish, Jewish, and Pontic Greek communities have largely vanished, as a result of emigration and mass murder, though small Israeli and Armenian immigrant communities have emerged since the Third World War.
Migration
Since the 18th century, Ukrainian demography has been intimately shaped by migration. For instance, in the late 18th century and the 19th century the underpopulated steppes of southern Ukraine were populated by the Tsarist government, which attracted large numbers of Ukrainian, Russian, Jewish, German, Bulgarian, and other immigrants to new farmlands or major cities such as Odesa and Simferopol'. (During this period Russian immigration to the long-populated areas of northern Ukraine was limited to the environs of Kyyiv; Polish immigrants were confined to the major cities of northwestern Ukraine.) In northeastern Ukraine, Russian immigrants from the north built and manned fortifications and new industrial areas, meeting and mixing with Ukrainian immigrants from the west. At the end of the late 19th century, the rapid development of Ukrainian industry attracted a wave of immigrants from central Russia to Ukraine's major cities, while in Austrian Galicia rural overpopulation propelled the emigration of a half-million Ukrainians from 1890 to 1914.
One major theme in the interwar period was urbanization. Up until the 1920's, the Ukrainian population was overwhelmingly rural. Ukrainians were outnumbered by Russians in most of the major cities of central and eastern Ukraine, while Poles formed the majority population in L'viv. In central and eastern Ukraine, a large Russophone proletariat existed that was unsympathetic to Ukrainian nationalism and anti-Communism; indeed, if it was not for Polish military intervention this region might well have fallen to the Soviet Union. From 1920 to 1933, rural overpopulation and poverty accelerated the urbanization of ethnic Ukrainians. By the early 1930's, ethnic Ukrainians were the majority populations in Kyyiv, Odesa, and Dnipropetrovsk, and pluralities elsewhere in Ukraine.
After the War of Ukrainian Independence, two million Ukrainians -- including 1.5 million ethnic Polish and Jewish refugees -- emigrated to Poland. Three years later, the 1940 Soviet invasion of Ukraine provoked an exodus of almost one million ethnic Ukrainians to Romania and Czechoslovakia before the Ukrainian border was closed, while in the 15 years after the Second World War another half-million Ukrainians emigrated, most to Brazil and Romania. Between 1945 and 1959, a further four million Ukrainians left Ukraine permanently, including two million deportees to Siberian gulags. In the same time period, though, three million immigrants (almost all Russians) settled in Ukraine.
Owing to its superior industrial development and neutrality during the Soviet Civil War, the quasi-independent Ukrainian Associated Soviet Socialist Republic quickly emerged as the richest component of the Soviet Union. The prosperous Ukrainian economy's growing demand for labour attracted a further four million immigrants between 1964 and 1981, including two million Russians and a half-million ethnic Ukrainians along with substantial Georgian and North Caucasian components. These immigrants settled mainly in Kyyiv and the industrial cities of central and eastern Ukraine, and helped bolster the declining Russian minority in Ukraine.
Ukraine's devastation in the Third World War precipitated mass emigration. Between 1982 and 2000, 5.3 million Ukrainian citizens permanently emigrated, the major receiving countries being Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the German Bundesrepublik, and Austria. Though many Ukrainian emigrants were highly skilled, most saw no way to support themselves or their families in post-War Ukraine's Third World economy, while Ukraine's full membership in the European Confederation conveniently allowed them to emigrate to prosperous European countries. Net emigration declined in the early 1990's as the Ukrainian economy finally began to recover and some immigrants arrived. After first contact with the ITA in July of 1998, net immigration (mainly of offworld ethnic Ukrainian) to Ukraine increased spectacularly and was almost solely responsible for Ukraine's rapid population growth. The establishment of an agricultural colony on Terre-6 had little effect, as many offworld ethnic Ukrainian immigrants were simply redirected to that world.
The long-term future of Ukrainian migration depends on the future of Ukraine's economic development. If the Ukrainian economy continues its recovery and Ukrainian living standards begin to converge with those of its western and central European associates, then Ukraine will likely remain -- as it has been since 1999 -- a country of net immigration as it attracts both offworld ethnic Ukrainians and other residents of Tripartite Alliance Earth. Conversely, if the Ukrainian economy experiences a slump, net emigration might well resume. Further, despite the likelihood of substantial immigration by non-Slavs and non-Christians -- the neighbouring countries of Iran and Turkey have large and growing populations -- Ukrainians simply have not discussed this subject or the policies required to deal with these immigrants. The creation of a future Ukrainian immigration policy remains a challenge for the future.
Ukrainians and Russians
Over centuries, Ukrainians and Russians have existed in symbiosis and share in common many fundamental traits. Ukrainians and Russians share (Uniate and atheist minorities aside) a common Eastern Orthodox Christianity, while the Russian and Ukrainian languages are similar to the point of intercomprehensibility and many specific cultural traits are held in common by both peoples.
Ironically, then, the modern relationship between Ukrainians and Russians is quite tense, hampered by Ukrainian resentment at their past mistreatment by Russian-dominated states. In the 19th century and the early 20th century, for instance, the Tsarist Russian Empire repressed the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian nationalism, while the Soviet conquests of Ukraine in 1940 and 1945 and subsequent ill-treatment of the general Ukrainian population have inspired general anti-Russian sentiments. Further, since roughly 1960 Ukraine's greater prosperity encouraged many Ukrainians to denigrate Russians as backwards, fit only for unskilled labour. Over the 20th century Ukrainians have gone to great lengths to clearly separate themselves from the Russians, through means as various as the support lent to Ukraine's indigenous Christian churches and the enforcement of the Ukrainian language laws across Ukraine's territory. Russians, for their part, resent the hostile attitude of Ukrainians towards them and Russian immigrants in Ukraine, as well as Ukraine's post-War confiscation of many ex-Russian territories.
Language
The Ukrainian language is one of the three East Slavic languages, the other two being Russian and Belarusian. It is the first language of 81% of the Ukrainian population, the main language spoken by 94% of the total Ukrainian population, and also spoken by some eight million Ukrainian immigrants and descendants in central Europe and South America. Distinctive Ukrainian linguistic traits first appear in 12th-century manuscripts and become notably more pronounced in writings after the fall of Kyyiv in the 13th century. The modern literary Ukrainian language developed from the colloquial language of the 17th and 18th centuries, and is the basis of the modern spoken Ukrainian language, which has largely replaced the dialects once spoken by the rural peasantry. In Article 6 of the Ukrainian Constitution, Ukrainian is designated as the sole language of government and all other state functions, although minority linguistic communities are free to organize their own community institutions including private schools.
The other major language spoken by Ukrainians is Russian, the first language of 11% of the population). Most older Ukrainians retain at least passive fluency in Russian but few speak the language owing to Soviet-era anti-Russian sentiments, while most younger Ukrainians have not learned the language. Other minority languages include Georgian, Tatar, and Belarusian. A large and growing number of Ukrainians are moderately fluent in French or German as second languages.
Culture
Until the mid-20th century, almost everyone living outside Ukraine was unaware that a distinctive Ukrainian culture existed, never mind thrived. Many distinctive elements of Ukrainian culture -- everything from Cossack dances to painted Easter eggs -- were mistakenly defined as purely Russian. Though Ukrainian culture has gained a higher international profile since Ukraine's emergence as a semi-sovereign state in 1965, knowledge of the facets of Ukrainian culture is by and large limited to Ukraine proper and to Ukrainian immigrant communities elsewhere.
Ukrainians have emphasized Ukrainian peasant traditions -- music, dance, literature -- as the source of authentically Ukrainian culture. Most modern Ukrainian popular music, for instance, traces its ancestry directly to ancient eastern European folk melodies. As in southeastern Europe, for Ukrainians music was not only entertainment in itself but was accompaniment to lengthy epic narrative poems telling the courageous deeds of Ukrainian heroes, whether in the age of Kyyivan Rus' or the Cossacks. Other songs, like carols and agricultural songs, also played a prominent role in the lives of Ukrainian musicians. In the 18th century, Ukrainian folk music was transformed by the adoption of the bandera, a lute-like instrument with up to 65 strings and which was commonly played in a choir as musical accompaniment to folk dances, weddings, and other community endeavours; this, in addition to traditional elements like the accordion, the mandolin, the fiddle, and the balalaika, ensures a distinct sound. 20th century Ukrainian popular music has largely developed out of this folk music, though towards the end of the century many Ukrainian musicians began to introduce Western instruments into their performances while shifting towards pop music-style lyrics. The recordings of the late Russian Vladimir Vossotski have proven influential in injecting the simple rhythms and pessimistic lyrics of Russian blatnye pesny ("delinquent songs") into Ukrainian popular music. The modern Ukrainian music scene is divided between Westernized, fusion, and traditional performances, each scene having its own adherents and a large share of the popular music market if only a limited international presence.
Ukraine also possesses a thriving modern literature. While many Ukrainian writers write in the style of their popular counterparts elsewhere in Europe, producing historical novels, romances, mysteries, and uchronias for domestic consumption, there also exists a strong academic literature. The writings of the poet Taras Shevchenko play a crucial role in the modern Ukrainian literary canon, with Shevchenko's deft combination of an authentically Ukrainian literary language with populist and democratic subject matter in his poems and ballads. 20th and early 21st century Ukrainian writers of note include the polymath Ivan Franko, the Ukranian émigré writer Olena Teliha, the poet Mykola Ponedilok, and the dozen members of the postmodern L'viv Literary Collective.
Ukraine has a brilliant tradition of visual arts, stretching as far back as the first millennium of the Common Era with the introduction of Greek Byzantine religious art. Many murals, mosaics, frescoes, manuscript illuminations, and icons developed throughout the medieval and early modern periods. In the 17th century under the Cossacks a secular and romantic trends of folk painting developed, while in the 19th century the Ukrainian national literary revival and prevailing international trends encouraged a sort of rural realism. Modern Ukrainian art is profoundly marked by the works of M. Boichuk, a European-educated artists who achieved renown before 1940 for his mural-style paintings which blended Modernism with ancient Kyyivan and Italian Renaissance imagery. Though Boichuk fled Ukraine ahead of the Soviet invasion for Paris, Boichuk's Ukrainian Modernism remains the dominant style of Ukrainian graphic artists. Ukraine has a small film industry, centred in Kyyiv and geared mainly towards the production of documentaries and television dramas, although in the 1990's the gifted Serhii Paradzhanev has achieved European renown for his documentaries of post-War Ukraine.
Ukrainians place a high priority upon the preservation of Ukrainian cultural traditions -- music, dance, graphic arts, historic buildings, and so on. To this end, the Ukrainian and European governments have createdsystems of subsidies, which provide funding and other assistance for practitioners of these Ukrainian traditions. Some Ukrainians complain that these programs neglect recent innovations and risk ossifying Ukrainian traditions, but these complaints are those of a minority
Religion
Since 989, the inhabitants of Ukraine have professed Orthodox Christianity, and until the 14th century Kyyiv was the seat of the Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus'. When this metropolitan moved to Moscow in the fourteenth century, Ukrainian Orthodox believers were left without an indigenous ecclesiastical leader, and until the late 17th century the see of Kyyiv was under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. In 1686, however, Russian on Constantinople led to a transfer of the metropolitan see of Kyyiv to the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Moscow. In 1596, many Ukrainian Orthodox in the far west of the country renounced their Orthodox allegiances under Polish pressure. These Orthodox believers joined the Uniate Catholic Church, which acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope of Rome and was brought into communion with the Roman Catholic Church while retaining most Orthodox structures and beliefs.
In the 19th century, pressures built up among Ukrainian Orthodox Christians for a separate national church, but it was only in 1919 that the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was separated from the Russian Orthodox Church. Against resistance from ethnic Russians, in 1923 the Polish Federation reached an agreement with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople which established the sole jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church from the See of Kyyiv over all Orthodox Christians within Ukrainian borders. In the east and south, some ethnic Russian parishes refused to recognize this agreement and organized the Russian Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Elsewhere, though, the See of Kyyiv was recognized as the supreme Orthodox Christian authority in Ukraine by more than four-fifths of Ukrainian Orthodox Christians. The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Uniate Catholic Church in western Ukraine led nationalist resistance to Polish rule and played important roles in the War of Ukrainian Independence.
After the Soviet invasion of Ukraine, both Ukrainian national churches were persecuted by Soviet authorities. After 1945, both churches were declared illegal and all Orthodox and Uniate Catholic parishes on Ukrainian territory were placed under the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, despite protests from the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, and many church leaders and believers were persecuted. Nevertheless, both churches continued to function outside the borders of the Soviet Union, and they were officially restored to their former property and status by the Ukrainian government. (All Russian Orthodox Church property in Ukraine was confiscated and the Russian Orthodox Church forbidden to maintain a formal presence in Ukrainian territory, in retaliation for the previous Russification of Ukrainian religion.)
In 2001, an estimated 40 million Ukrainian residents were practising religious believers. Of these, some 30 million belong to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, while five million are Uniate Catholics. Most of the remaining five million people belong to various Orthodox sects and splinter groups, to the Roman Catholic Church, and to various Protestant Christian and Islamic sects. (Judaism, in 1930 practiced by some 1.5 million Ukrainians, is now extinct owing to emigration and the Holocaust.) Thus, Ukraine is easily the most religious country in Europe. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church's very large number of believers makes it the single largest national church in all Eastern Orthodoxy, while Ukrainian religious attitudes and philosophies are becoming increasingly important in wider Christian circles.
Cities
Despite Ukraine's reputation as a rural country, modern 21st century Ukraine is quite urbanized; 80% of its population lives in cities and towns. Kyyiv, the capital, is also Ukraine's largest city, with an estimated 2001 population of 4.3 million people. Other large cities include Kharkiv, Donets'k, Odesa, L'viv, Mariupol', Sevastopil', and Rostov-na-Donu.
Kyyiv -- the capital of Ukraine and of Kyyiv oblast, and the largest city of Ukraine with 4.3 million residents -- is by far Ukraine's dominant economic, political, and cultural center. Kyyiv was founded on the hills overlooking the Dnepr by the 4th century AD and soon developed into an important commercial center located on a major trade route. In 882 the city was captured by Varangians led by Oleg, who made it the capital of Kyyivan Rus'. In 988, during the reign of Vladimir I, the inhabitants of Kyyiv adopted the Greek Orthodox faith, and the city became the initial center of Christianity in eastern Europe. Its exposed position near the Russian frontier made Kyyiv a constant prey to attack, and the city was sacked and destroyed in 1240. After successive periods of Mongol, Lithuanian, and Polish rule, in 1686 the city was annexed by Russia. Rapid urbanization in the late 19th and early 20th century helped make Kyyiv Ukraine's leading city. From 1937 to 1940 Kyyiv was capital of the independent Ukrainian republic, and again from 1945 it was the Ukrainian capital. Modern Kyyiv has evolved into the largest and most important city in eastern Europe east of Warsaw, and is the leading centre of Ukrainian culture life. The older parts of the city are located on hills on the right bank of the river, includes hills surmounted by churches and the remains of ancient castles and fortifications, while the newer quarters built in the 20th century are mostly located on the left bank. Served by efficient and modern transportation and communications networks and home to the Ukrainian Academy of Science and numerous universities, research institutes, museums, and art galleries, Kyyiv is home to many noteworthy old buildings. Not least of these is the Cathedral of Saint Sophia and the sacred Perchersky Monastery (known for its catacombs), both of which were built in the 11th century. Residents of Kyyiv oblast possesses the highest living standards in all of Ukraine, and work in a thriving and diversified economy based largely on the production of consumer goods for export elsewhere in the European Confederation.
Odesa is a city in south-central Ukraine and the second-largest in Ukraine with 1.9 million people resident. Located on the Black Sea, the city is Ukraine's chief trade and fishing port of the country, although in winter its harbor must be kept open by icebreakers. Founded in 1794 on the site of an abandoned colony of ancient Greece, over the 19th century Odesa evolved into a prosperous grain-exporting port that attracted immigrants from throughout central and eastern Ukraine. Heavily damaged in the Second World War, in the 1960's and 1970's Odesa became the second-largest port in the Soviet Union behind only Leningrad. The city remains a major grain exporter, but it is also is a major manufacturing, education, railroad, and cultural center and, with its mild climate, a popular resort. Points of interest include: the beautiful harbourfront; museums of archeology, literature, and the Black Sea; the Black Sea beaches; and, the Odesa Philharmonia.
Kharkiv is Ukraine's third-largest city, home to 1.5 million people. Founded as a fortress in what is now northeastern Ukraine at the junction of the Kharkiv, Lopan, and Udy rivers in 1656, Kharkiv is located near the rich coal mines of the Donets Basin and is linked by railroad to the iron ore deposits of Kryvyy Rih and to other major industrial cities in eastern Ukraine. Kharkiv's economy is based upon coal mining and heavy industry, with major products including farm and mining machinery, electric and railroad equipment, machine tools, and processed food. Recently, Kharkiv's industrial economy has suffered decline; only now, after painful restructuring, are Kharkiv industries regaining their competitiveness. A city of broad avenues and large buildings, points of interest include the elegant restaurants, cafés, theatres, and shops on Vulitsya Universytetsa and Sumska, the late 17th century Pokrovsky Cathedral and the late 18th century Uspensky Church, and the Kharkiv Regional Historic Museum.
L'viv is the largest city in western Ukraine. Although L'viv's 1.6 million residents make it only the fourth-largest city in Ukraine, its strong historical links with Poland and the Ukrainian national renaissance ensure L'viv a prominent place in Ukrainian national life. L'viv is the seat of Roman Catholic, Uniate Catholic, Ukrainian Orthodox, and Armenian Orthodox archbishops, as well as a number of theatres and historical museums. Unlike much of the rest of Ukraine, L'viv was closely integrated with the rest of Europe as early as the 16th century as the city's Polish nobility imported architects and merchants from the rest of Europe. Though the city's Polish population fled in the aftermath of the fierce battles of the War of Ukrainian Independence, to this day L'viv retains a decidedly "European" environment with its beautiful and untouched historical core of Gothic, Renaissance, baroque, rococo, and neoclassical buildings centres around the old market square of Ploshcha Ryno and Prospekt Svobody. Major industries in the city include tourism, the manufacture of consumer electronics and motor vehicles, and various cultural institutions that include the Ivan Franko Opera and Ballet Theatre and the University of Galicia.
Donetc'k is a city in southeastern Ukraine on the Kal'mius River that is home to 1.3 million people. Donetc'k is located squarely in the centre of the great mining and industrial belt known as the Donets Basin, and possesses an economy based upon heavy industry and coal mining. Founded in 1870 when the British manufacturer John Hughes received a concession from the Russian government to manufacture iron rails, Donetc'k grew rapidly in the 1920's and the 1960's. From the 1970's, however, the industrial economy of Donetc'k has steadily declined, with the Third World War precipitating a full-scale economic depression that may have ruined the city's future prospects.
Mariupol' is a city in southeastern Ukraine found at the mouth of the Kal'mius River on the Sea of Azov. Founded in 1779 by Crimean Greeks, in the following two centuries Mariupol' evolved into a major seaport and industrial centre, with shipyards, steel mills, and chemical plants. Home to 1.1 million people, Mariupol' is often disparaged by other Ukrainians as a city without a personality.
Sevastopil' is the largest city in southern Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and the only major Ukrainian city (population of 650 thousand) that is still mostly Russophone in population. The city of Sevastopil' was first occupied in the late 5th century by a Greek colony of Chersonesus. This outpost of Mediterranean civilization later fell under Roman, Byzantine, Genoese, and Crimean Tatar rule before falling to Russia with the rest of the Crimean Peninsula in 1783. Until the First World War, Sevastopil' was maintained by the Tsarist Empire as Russia's major naval base on the Black Sea and suffered heavy damage during the Crimean War. Along with the rest of the Crimean Peninsula, Sevastopil' fell first to the Polish Federation then to independent Ukraine despite its large Russian population. Heavily damaged in the Second World War, in the Soviet Union the historic role of Sevastopil' as a naval base was replaced by a new role as a major destination for tourists from across Ukraine and the Soviet Union. Beginning in the 1970's, though, Crimea's local Russian community began to organize in favour of Crimean autonomy within Ukraine or even unification with Russia; to date, this movement has only secured recognition of Russian as a language of education and local administration from the Ukrainian central government. Since the Third World War, Sevastopil' has managed to position itself as eastern Europe's leading resort city and a growing competitor of seaside resorts elsewhere in the European Confederation. Sevastopil's modern population is quite heterogenous, including an assortment of Russians, Ukrainians, Greeks, Romanians, Georgians, and even some Tatars.
Rostov-na-Donu is a city in southeastern Ukraine, home to 350 thousand people and located before the War in the Russian federation. Situated on a high bank of the Don River near its mouth on the Sea of Azov, the city is an important transportation center; not only is it located at the centre of the eastern Ukrainian railway network, but it is connected by canals with the the Sea of Azov and the Caspian, Baltic, and White seas. The city's location on the western fringe of the new eastern Ukrainian colonies ensures the city's manufacturing plants of a stable market for their agricultural machinery, while Rostov-na-Donu is a major transshipment centre for 'Kuban grains. Rostov-na-Donu was founded in 1749 when a customs office was established on its current site, and over the following century it became one of the Tsarist Empire's major Black Sea trading ports. Annexed to the Soviet Union after the First World War, the city was later occupied by Greater German forces for two years in the Second World War and was damaged considerably. Most of the city's pre-Third World War population was killed by chemical weapons; it has since been repopulated by Ukrainian, Georgian, and offworld immigrants.
Ukraine's first post-Berianist constitution was adopted in 1963, and later subjected to a series of amendments through brought it in conformance with the post-Soviet Civil War peace settlement, defining Ukraine as a "socialist people's democracy." Although the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) was the only legally-recognized political party in Ukraine until 1972, the 1963 constitution did guarantee basic civil and political rights to all residents of Ukraine, and introduced many elements of European criminal and civil legal systems to Ukraine. A series of amendments in the early 1970's changed the cosntitution radically by allowing non-Communist political parties and explicitly multi-party elections; by 1975, Ukraine was a democracy.
After Ukraine joined the European Confederation, the Ukrainian government was pressured to devise a new constitution, one that explicitly embraced multi-party democracy and European legal and administrative principles. Such a constitution was adopted by majority vote in the two houses of the Ukrainian Parliament in September of 1987. The 1987 constitution formally established Ukraine as a multi-party republican democracy, reiterating the full civil and political rights of all Ukrainian citizens and Ukraine's acceptance of the Confederation's structures and treaties as binding upon Ukraine.
Structure
Executive authority in Ukraine is vested in the president, the prime minister, and the Cabinet of Ministers. The president and prime minister are elected by direct vote for a five-year term, while the prime minister appoints the Cabinet of Ministers with the approval of the lower house of the Ukrainian Parliament, which can veto any appointee if a 50% plus one majority of parliamentarians object. The Cabinet of Ministers -- numbering, in August of 2001, 29 members -- is composed of elected officials who serve as the administrative chiefs of each of Ukraine's major ministries and otehr state agencies.
Members of both houses of the Ukrainian Parliament are elected, with elections since 1988 occurring every five years although the President has the option of calling a new national election at his discretion and with the approval of a majority of parliamentarians. The lower house -- the National Assembly -- comprises 500 elected Members of the National Assembly and proposes legislation, while the 200-member National Senate approves legislation. In order for legislation to be legally valid, this legislation must be passed by both houses of Parliament and signed by the President, who can veto this legislation only if in his opinion it violates the principles of the Ukrainian Constitution.
The highest court in Ukraine is the Supreme Court, which ajudicates both criminal and civil matters and is at the top of a hierarchy of regional, provincial, and district courts integrated at all levels with law enforcement. Constitutional matters are automatically brought up before the Constitutional Court, based like the Supreme Court in Kyyiv.
After the monopoly of the Communist Party was abolished in 1972, literally dozens of political parties formed in Ukraine, with 21 political parties being registered in the parliamentary elections of 1997. The Communist Party of Ukraine has disappeared as a political party as a result of its rapid fragmentation into ideological factions over the 1970's, of which some of the more successful include the Ukrainian Workers' Party (11% of the 1997 vote) and the People's Party of Ukraine (9%). Most major political parties in modern-day Ukraine are post-1972 entities, and the most successful include the Christian Democratic Party (29%), the Communalist Party (21%), and the New Ukraine Party (18%). Since 1988, Ukraine has been governed by centre-right coalition governments that include the Christian Democrats and the New Ukraine Party; the Communalist Party refuses to cooperate with the various post-Communist parties, and by general consent of the established political parties factions of the far right and the far left are excluded from coalitions.
Provincial Governments
Ukraine is divided into 28 provinces (singular oblast'). Although Ukraine is very much a centralized republic, in recent years the search for European Confederation development funding has allowed Ukraine's many and diverse provincial governments to acquire some autonomy in order to qualify for such funding. In many places -- for instance, Volyn, L'viv, and Poltava -- these provinces reflect the boundaries of historical regions, and are more popular than other regions (Dnepropetrovc'k, Luhanc'k) which are relatively artificial creations. These provinces are:
The Ukrainian Military
The modern Ukrainian National Armed Forces traces its ancestry to 1960 and the beginning of the Soviet Civil War. After Berianist shock troops tried to seize Kyyiv and were turned back by Ukrainian republican militia, the Ukrainian government successfully fused the Ukrainian republican militia with pro-Ukrainian elements of the Soviet armed forces (including large shares of the Soviet Black Sea fleet) in Ukraine to constitute the Ukrainian Republican Armed Forces (URAF). By the end of the Soviet Civil War in 1963, the Ukrainian National Army had gained a reputation as a military force effective in both offensive and defensive modes. Under the terms of the Soviet Constitution of 1965, Kyyiv retained operational command of the Ukrainian military and most Soviet military bases on Ukrainian territory.
Following 1965, the Ukrainian government intentionally starved the URAF of funding in order to deprive the military of political power, reducing the URAF from a force capable of force projection deep into Russia to one more suited for national defense. This trend continued after the Third World War, as conscription was abolished and military expenditures cut to a mere 1.5% of GDP in order to provide the Ukrainian economy with a larger labour force and more capital. The Holy Alliance invasion of Ukraine in 1998 and the Deccan Traps Soviet invasion of Russia in 2000 created some sentiment for the reconstruction of the Ukrainian military but this sentiment has not as yet been translated into action.
The Ukrainian National Armed Forces have a total numerical strength of 210 000. Of these, 150 000 serve in the army, 40 thousand in the navy, and 20 thousand in the air force. Most of Ukraine's military matériel is composed of outdated Soviet-era systems; government spending priorities have limited the modernization of the UNAF. Although Ukraine possesses the technological ability to manufacture long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction, Confederation regulations and the proclaimed desires of successive Ukrainian governments prevent Ukraine from manufacturing either.
Ukraine's armed forces are oriented towards the defense of Ukraine's national territory, with secondary orientations towards the defense of the wider European Confederation and peacemaking missions under the aegis of the League of Nations. Ukraine's membership in the European Confederation are an integral element of Ukrainian military doctrine, as the previous incidences of alterworld invasions of Eurasia have demonstrated that Ukraine cannot hope to fight a war without extensive foreign aid.
Ukrainian Foreign Relations
As a relatively young nation-state, Ukraine is still in the process of establishing its own unique pattern of foreign relations. So far, however, several trends can be identified not least of which are efforts to improve Ukraine's relations with its European Confederation partners and the Confederation itself and efforts to keep the turmoil in Ukraine's unruly Eurasian and Middle Eastern hinterlands from affecting Ukraine proper.
Regional
Armenia: Some Ukrainian analysts have held up Armenia -- a large country hampered by an inherent poor landscape that has nonetheless managed to evolve into a model First World social democracy -- as a model for Ukrainians to imitate. Armenian bilateral aid programs have contributed to the formation of stable cooperatives in much of western and northern Ukraine, while many Armenian trading firms are investing in Ukraine as Armenia's main point of entry to Europe and offworld destinations. Ukrainians are generally sympathetic towards Armenians and vice versa, in part because of the terrible losses of both nations in 20th century genocides. Ukraine maintains an embassy in Erevan, while Armenia maintains an embassy to Kyyiv and consulates in Odesa and Sevastopil'.
Czechoslovakia: Until the Third World War, Czechoslovaks were vary of Ukraine for fear of potential irredentism towards Czechoslovakia's province of Ruthenia; after the War, Ukraine's manifest weakness and the distinctly non-Ukrainian identification of Ruthenians made this fear seem negligible. Czechoslovakia is a major source of foreign investment for Ukraine, while the roughly 700 thousand Ukrainian immigrants in Czechoslovakia alleviate Czechoslovakian labour shortages. The two countries maintain close diplomatic relations, with embassies in each other's cities and consulates in most of the other's major cities.
European Confederation: Ukraine's economic recovery since the Third World War depended substantially upon the role played by the European Confederation in providing development funding, an outlet for Ukrainian emigrants, and far easier access to capital and technology. On the whole, Ukrainians are exceptionally Europhile, with only a few political factions on the far left and far right denouncing the Confederation (alternatively "a vehicle for rapacious international capitalism" or "a cosmopolitan anti-Ukrainian empire"). Inter-governmental relations are quite friendly.
Georgia: Although Georgia is popular among middle-class Ukrainians as an inexpensive destination for beach vacationers, Ukraine's many Georgian immigrants and Ukrainian anti-Georgian racism have created a condescending attitude towards Georgians on the part of Ukrainians. Georgians naturally resent this condescension, and respond by stereotyping Ukrainians as aggressive and greedy people prone to drunkenness and petty vandalism on their vacation trips. This mutual nationalist invective has had a major impact on Georgian-Ukrainian relations, limiting diplomatic exchanges (outside of the medium of the European Confederation) to the Ukrainian embassy in T'bilisi and the Georgian embassy in Kyyiv.
Hungary: The rapid growth of Hungary's Ukrainian minority has created some anti-Ukrainian sentiments among Magyars, but the effects of this immigration have been more than balanced by the highly positive economic effects of the booming Hungarian-Ukrainian trade. Many Ukrainians (and Magyars) even describe Hungary -- a once-agricultural country that has entered the top ranks of the First World -- as a model for Ukraine's future economic development. Hungarian-Ukrainian relations are quite good, and Hungary maintains an embassy in Kyyiv and consulates in L'viv and Ivano-Frankivc'k while Ukraine maintains an embassy in Budapest.
North Caucasus: Although anti-Muslim sentiments have been present among Ukrainians for centuries, most modern Ukrainian condescension towards North Caucasians stems from the spectacular instability of the North Caucasian federation and the origins of many international crime syndicates in the regions' complicated clan and tribal structures. As Ukraine's recovery has continued, the Ukrainian government has expressed some interest in funding development projects in the North Caucasus in the hope that potential North Caucasian immigrants might stay at home given local economic opportunities. Relations between Kyyiv and Groznyy are polite if not especially close.
Poland: The close and broad-ranging relationship between Poland and Ukraine is one of the most surprising elements in post-War European history. Despite centuries of Polish-Ukrainian emnity and the catastrophic aftermath of the War of Ukrainian Independence (including mutual population expulsions and hostile Communist-era stereotyping) Poles responded generously to the plight of their eastern neighbours. Today, the two countries are united by Polish capital in Ukraine and Ukrainian immigrants in Poland and the gradual reconstruction of an eastern European economy built around Polish and Ukrainian resources. Poland's role in opening doors for Ukraine in European and League institutions is also appreciated by many Ukrainians. Ukraine maintains an embassy in Warsaw and consulates in Kraków, Gdansk, and Katowice; Poland maintains its embassy in Kyyiv and consulates in L'viv, Odesa, and Sevastopil'.
Romania: Ukraine's relations with its southwestern neighbour have historically been marked by Romanian fears of Ukrainian designs over the Romanian province of Bessarabia and Romania's two million Ukrainians. In the post-War era, Romanian nationalists have been concerned by the flow of Ukrainian labourers to Romania as well as by the threat posed to Romanian industries by their cheaper Ukrainian counterparts. Romanian-Ukrainian relations are limited these Romanian fears and consequent Ukrainian resentment, and although each country maintains a fully-accredited embassy in the capital of the other country the Romanian-Ukrainian relationship is not particularly close.
Russian Successor States: Though Ukrainian-Russian relations obviously need to be normalized, the long-standing tensions between Ukrainians and Russians and the extreme fragmentation of Russia has prevented any durable reconciliation. Given the immense political, economic, and military advantages that Ukraine enjoys over the Russian successor states, a fairly significant power gap is exists between Ukraine on the one hand and the Russias on the other; this gap might even contribute to the collapse of one or more of the successor states and subsequent merger into Ukraine. So far, Ukraine's internal economic and political troubles have made it difficult for Kyyiv to use its influence productively, but long-term Ukrainian incapacity is neither likely nor a stable basis for normalized Ukrainian-Russian relations. Only because of the framework of the European Confederation are Ukrainian-Russian relations reasonably polite, with Ukraine being friendliest with Leningrad and Kalmykia and most tense with the Russian Imperial State.
Trebizond: One-third of Trebizond's population is composed either of Ukrainian immigrants or of descendants of Ukrainian immigrants. This particular demographic history ensures fairly friendly relations between Ukraine and Trebizond, and through Trebizond, with Greece and the Greek diaspora. Though Ukraine's ancient Pontic Greek community is no more, many Treibzonders continue to prefer Ukraine -- in particular, the Crimea -- as a destination for vacations and family privileges. To this end, Trebizond maintains (in addition to its embassy in Kyyiv) consulates in Odesa, Sevastopil', and Mykolayiv, while Ukraine maintains a well-appointed embassy in Trebizond.
Turkey: Turkey's poverty and instability and Ukrainian anti-Islamic sentiments have made the development of a coherent Ukrainian policy towards Turkey very difficult. Inthe past decade, Ukraine has oscillated between open support for modernizing political factions in Turkey and efforts at "containing" Turkey and Turkish illegal immigrants. Relations between Izmit and Kyyiv are strained and not particularly close.
Non-Regional
American Successor States: Until the Third World War, most Ukrainians knew little of the United States. After the slaughter of one-quarter of Ukraine's population in an unprovoked American attack anti-Americanism became immensely popular. To this day, Ukraine has not established diplomatic relations with any American successor state, nor has it authorized Ukrainian diplomatic personnel to deal in any way with their American counterparts. Anti-Americanism is a very potent force in Ukrainian society; few if any Ukrainians object to the stereotypes of Americans as genocidal racists.
Argentina: The Ukrainian immigrant community of Argentina -- established during the belle époque -- played a vital role in mobilizing Argentine financial and material aid for post-War Ukraine. This experience has contributed strongly to the positive view of Argentina held by most Ukrainians. Bilateral Argentine-Ukrainian relations are friendly, and the Ukrainian embassy in Buenos Aires is the largest in South America.
Brazil: Though Brazil's Ukrainian immigrant community is smaller than Argentina's, it was also able to mobilize Brazilian aid to Ukraine. Ukrainians are quite grateful for Brazil's vital post-War help; the Brazilian government and major corporations, for their part, see in Ukraine a potential point of entry into the European Confederation's markets.
Egypt: The Ukrainian government sees in Egypt a strong potential ally against Turkey, but the Egyptian government does not see Ukraine as anything but another impoverished Soviet successor state. Ukrainian-Egyptian relations are friendly, if distant; Ukraine maintains consulates in Cairo and Alexandria, while the Egyptian embassy in Warsaw is accredited to the Ukrainian government.
France: Franco-Ukrainian relations are distant, owing to the simple fact that French and Ukrainians have rarely interacted. Though French political classes recognize the strategic importance of Ukraine, to the dismay of Ukrainians their country is simply not a high priority for modern France. France maintains an embassy in Kyyiv and cultural institutes in L'viv and Odesa while Ukraine maintains an embassy in Paris and a consulate in Marseilles.
German States: Ever since the Nazi genocide of the Second World War, Ukrainian relations with the German states have been burdened by the legacies of Greater Germany's numerous war crimes. Though there are more than 1.5 million Ukrainian immigrants in the German state and the Bundesrepublik is the third-largest foreign investor in Ukraine, German-Ukrainian relations are merely formal, not friendly.
Indian States: The south Indian states and the mandates of North India and Bengal depend heavily upon Ukrainian grain exports in order to feed their combined population of 400 million people. The recent introduction of cheaper and higher-quality offworld grain imports to South Asia has cut heavily into Ukraine's grain exports, however, and Ukraine's agricultural corporations are desperately trying to recoup their losses. All of the south Indian states maintain embassies in Kyyiv and trade missions in Odesa, but Ukraine maintains an embassy only in Maharashtra's capital of Mumbai.
Iran: In recent years, the Iranian government has come to see Ukraine as a useful economic partner inside the European Confederation, particularly as a useful transit corridor for Iranian oil and gas pipelines and as well as a vital source of food. The Ukrainian government has responded cautiously to these Iranian initiatives, fearing that excessive dependence upon Iran might place Ukraine's fate in the hands of the Islamic Republic, but bilateral relations are generally good.
Japan: Most informed Japanese recognize Ukraine as by far the most viable of the myriad successor states to have emerged from the Soviet Union, and as a potentially important export market and source of most Japanese food imports. Recent Japanese-Ukrainian collaboration in the colonization of the world of Terre-6 has given substance to these ambitions, and Japanese investment in Ukraine's industrial economy has been rising steadily. Ukraine maintains consulates in Tôkyô and Osaka, while Japanese maintains a large embassy in Kyyiv and trade missions in Donetc'k and Odesa.
Korea: Only in the last five years has Korea entered the minds of Ukrainian foreign-policy experts. Recent Ukrainian-Korean cooperation in the colonization of Terre-6 and plans for the resurrection of the Trans-Siberian Railway (Kyyiv and Pusan being this railway's western and eastern terminuses) has given Korea a much higher profile. These two countries have closely and friendly relations, and maintain embassies in the other's capital and trade missions in the other's major industrial cities.
League of Nations: Ukrainian entry into the League of Nations in 1984 symbolized Ukraine's belated development into a sovereign nation-state. As with the European Confederation, most Ukrainians are too grateful for the benefits accruing to them because of their membership to question the point of membership; just as with the Confederation, the League is appreciated as a source of aid and defense against invaders.
Economy
Historically, Ukraine has been less developed than central Europe but substantially richer than Russia. Indeed, the 1940 Soviet invasion of Ukraine was motivated, at least in part, by Stalin's desire to seize Ukraine's wealth to fund his programs of militarization and industrialization. After the Second World War, it was Soviet policy to develop Ukraine as one of the Soviet Union's most industrialized republics (after only Russia) as well as the main domestic source of food for the wider Soviet population. Though by the late 1950's Ukraine had emerged as a major industrial power, living standards for most Ukrainians outside of a small elite remained poor. Only from the mid-1960's, after Ukraine's successful defense of its independence from both Russia and Siberia, could Ukraine enjoy more substantial economic progress.
Even during the Soviet Civil War, the Ukrainian government engaged in limited economic reforms -- market incentives were introduced in the operation of state firms, while the agricultural collectives were broken up into privately-managed plots and small-scale capitalist industrial production allowed. After that conflict's end and the adoption of the 1965 Soviet constitution, Ukraine was free to adopt almost any domestic economic policies that it wanted so long as it conformed to the broad Pan-Soviet Ten Years Plan which made Ukraine the major producer of consumer goods and light industrial machinery for the Soviet Union. With alacrity, the Ukrainian economy was transformed in the space of two years into a near social-democratic economy. In rural areas, peasants were immediately given ownership of the land that they farmed; in urban areas, some manufacturing industries were transformed into autonomous parapublic firms on the Swedish model while other plants were transformed into fully private firms, with shares given to their workers or to foreign investors and still others were bought outright by foreign investors from Europe. In order to facilitate Ukraine's foreign trade, a convertible coupon system was introduced; by the end of the 1960's, the Ukrainian kupon had evolved into a de facto Ukrainian currency, and entered into growing use elsewhere in the Soviet Union as a relatively hard currency.
Between 1965 and 1968, the Ukrainian economy suffered a recession as it sought a new capitalist equilibrium, but after 1968 the Ukrainian economy grew rapidly. Between 1968 and 1981, in fact, the Ukrainian economy is estimated to have expanded at an average rate of 7.3% per annum, producing in 1981 a Ukrainian economy two and a half times more productive than in 1968 and a GDP per capita half of the European Confederation's average. Ukrainian agriculture thrived, as individual peasant farmers formed cooperatives to market their grains internationally or sold their lands to agricultural corporations and migrated to Ukraine's cities. In urban Ukraine, all manner of manufacturing industries thrived, catering to the new Ukrainian middle class as well as to European and Soviet export markets, while Ukraine's service sector grew rapidly. A decidedly entrepreneurial outlook began to prevail among Ukrainians, who by the early 1980's had virtually taken over most of the Soviet Union's foreign trade and producing a rapidly climbing proportion of the Soviet Union's total economy output -- with only 29% of the Soviet population, in 1980 the Ukrainian Associated Soviet Socialist Republic produced an estimated 45% of the Soviet Union's GDP. Had these trends continued to the present, Ukrainian living standards and per capita output might well have converged with First World levels.
In 1982, however, the Third World War intervened. The collapse of Ukraine's export markets elsewhere in the Soviet Union and in the European Confederation in itself would have beggared any economy. Far worse were the nuclear strikes upon the major industrial cities of central Ukraine; these attacks, coupled with the use of low-yield nuclear warheads and chemical depopulants against Ukraine's major grain-exporting areas, destroyed virtually all the economic progress made over the previous generation. By 1985, Ukraine's GDP per capita had declined almost two-thirds from 1981 levels, and the Third World living standards of most Ukrainians were mitigated only by remittances sent by Ukrainian emigrants in Europe.
Ukraine's post-War economic recovery was slow and halting, and was driven as much by the needs of the wider world as by Ukraine's own domestic concerns. Perhaps the most pressing of these foreign needs was the necessity to restore Ukraine's export agriculture in order to prevent a recurrence of the worldwide famine of 1982-1983. The War killed most of central Ukraine's peasant landowners; when Ukraine joined the European Confederation in 1985, European agricultural corporations took over Ukraine's most fertile lands, in the south and centre of the country, and transformed these lands into a monoculture of mechanized corporate farms. Ukrainian industry took a long while to recover, as the cost advantages that accrued to Ukrainian manufacturing before the War either disappeared or were made irrelevant; only in the early 1990's did Ukraine's industrial economy show any signs of improvement. The European Confederation's regional development funding to Ukraine was essential in aiding Ukraine's integration into the wider European family; in particular, Confederation infrastructure funds played an invaluable role in providing Ukraine with modern telecommunications and rail transport networks. Gradually, over the 1990's, Ukraine's post-War economic depression came to an end and was replaced by modest growth.
As of May 2001, Ukraine's GDP amounted to almost 1100 thousand million écus, with a GDP per capita of some 23 800 écus, an 80% of Ukraine's pre-War GDP per capita. This GDP per capita places Ukraine in the middle of the Second World group, with a GDP per capita in the same range as those of Canada, Mexico, and Peru. However, Ukraine possesses a far higher level of social development than GDP per capita indicates, with near-universal literacy and effective if stressed public services, and with levels of consumption boosted by European subsidies and emigrant remittances. Though this high level of social development is counterbalanced somewhat by an unequal distribution of wealth along regional and class lines, figures suggest that most Ukrainians enjoy living standards that at least approach First World levels.
The future development of the Ukrainian economy is uncertain. While the full convergence over the next generation of Ukrainian per capita output and living standards with the First World is theoretically not impossible, in practice rattrapage might be delayed by the inefficiency of Ukrainian labour (high wages and relatively low productivity) relative to other national economies elsewhere on Tripartite Alliance Earth and in the wider multiverse. It remains open to question whether Ukraine's economic potential will be fulfilled.
Agriculture and Fishing
Agriculture employs 15% of the Ukrainian workforce and produces 25% of Ukraine's total economic output. Ukraine ranks as the second-largest exporter of wheat and corn in the world, behind only Argentina, the black-earth belt of southern and central Ukraine and the northern Caucasus region being by far the most important agricultural regions. In the Crimean peninsula, grapes are a major crop; other crops grown in Ukraine include sugar beets, potatoes, vegetables, fruit, sunflowers, and flax, while livestock raising is also important.
Ukrainian agriculture has traditionally been dominated by peasants, often organized in voluntary cooperatives. After the Third World War and Ukraine's entry into the European Confederation, however, the pressing need to maximize Ukraine's food exports prompted foreign agricultural corporations and parapublic agencies to flood into Ukraine, purchasing plots of land in the black-earth belt from impoverished peasants using their far superior capital resources and then transforming the agricultural economy of southern and central Ukraine into a vast complex of vast mechanized corporate farms, geared solely towards mass production of inexpensive foodstuffs. The net result was to transform Ukraine's agricultural workforce into itinerant labourers, dependent upon foreign-owned businesses for their subsistence, and to remove Ukrainian agriculture from local control. Only in parts of western Ukraine could peasant farmers hold their own, through the formation of agricultural cooperatives and limited land consolidation. Producing a broader array of foodstuffs than grains and often catering to Europe's organic-foods market, these farmers managed to resist the corporatization of agriculture that occurred in Ukraine's agricultural heartland.
In the late 1970's and early 1980's, Ukrainian fishermen operating from fishing ports on the coasts of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov annually caught a half-million tons of fish. After the Third World War, ecological collapse and the imposition of conservation measures cut this catch by more than nine-tenths. Only recently have limited fisheries been authorized.
Manufacturing and Services
During the quarantes glorieuses, Ukraine rapidly evolved into the leading industrial power inside the Soviet Union. Even before the Soviet conquest of 1940, Ukraine had a large number of electric-power facilities and coal and other mineral resources; after the Second World War, these resources were used to fund the construction of heavy industry in eastern Ukraine's Donets Basin and in Kyyiv. This prosperous heavy industry came to be accompanied in the 1970's by a wide and diverse range of light industrial plants specializing in the manufacture of consumer goods for domestic consumption and for export. Despite post-War economic collapse, Ukraine remains highly industrialized, with industry employing 35% of the Ukrainian workforce and producing 45% of Ukraine's total economic output. Ukraine's principal manufactures include iron and steel, chemicals, consumer electronics, automobiles, textiles, and processed food.
One major economic trend has been the rapid growth of the service sector, which now employs 40% of the Ukrainian workforce. Although most of this growth wasin state-funded services -- education, culture, health, and social care and research -- some private service industries including public catering and household services also prospered. The emergence of a modern Ukrainian financial sector is wholly a product of the 1990's; before this time, Ukrainians depended on foreign capital and state insurance.
Mining and Petrochemicals
Ukrainian industry is fuelled by Ukraine's vast mineral resources, which employ some 5% of the Ukrainian workforce in modernized facilities. The Donets Basin contains huge reserves of coal, while Kryvyy Rih has vast amounts of iron ore; other mineral resources in Ukraine include manganese, bauxite, titanium, and salt.
Transportation
Ukraine has approximately 235 000 kilometers of railroad track, owned by the parapublic Ukrainian Railways. These tracks link Ukraine's major cities with important industrial and agricultural areas and major points of entry and exit. The inland waterways of Egypt -- including the Nile, navigable throughout its course, the approximately 1900 km of shipping canals, and the more than 23 400 km of irrigation canals in the Nile delta -- are used extensively for transportation. The Dnepr River is the only major river which is regularly used for riverine transportation, and is navigable as far north as Kyyiv, while Ukraine possesses a collection of excellent ports on its Black Sea shoreline.
Immediately after the Soviet Civil War, Ukraine's transport network was dominated by railroads; motor traffic played only a minor role. In the subsequent economic boom autmobile ownership expanded rapidly, and in order to deal with this a vast program of road construction was initiated. A brief period of post-War decay came to an end with the introduction of European Confederation subsidies for the maintenance and improvement of Ukraine's road networks. Now, Ukraine has about 318 000 km of road, of which about 167 000 km are modern highways. Further, Ukraine possesses a large number of domestic and international airlines which between Ukraine's major cities and centres elsewhere in Europe and the world, using Ukraine's roughly 310 usable airfields.
Problems
In the early 21st century, Ukraine faces a whole series of major problems, stemming largely from the frantic attempts of Ukrainians to try to cope with the vast changes in their lives over the past generation. To an extent, these problems -- the pressures for economic modernization, large-scale foreign immigration, concerns over the survival of traditional culture, the need for rattrapage -- are those of its European partners, but these problems are so much more threatening in Ukraine than in, for instance, Poland that they differ qualitatively. Unlike some other Second World countries, Ukraine does have a safety net in the form of the European Confederation; at very worst, Ukraine can only stagnate, not degenerate to Third World levels. Nonetheless, such stagnation would prove the undoing of Ukraine's fragile consensus and could wreak chaos domestically and across eastern Europe. The dissipation of Ukraine's unquestionable potential would be a tragedy for Ukraine, Europe, and the wider world.