During the Northern War (1700-21) tried the Hetman IS Masepa , initially allied with Tsar Peter the Great , under whom a lively intellectual and artistic life developed (“Ukrainian Baroque”), in alliance with Charles XII. of Sweden to detach left-bank Ukraine from Russian rule. After this failed due to the defeat of Poltava (1709), its autonomy was gradually abolished; In 1764 the last hetman Kyrylo Hryhorowytsch Rozumowsky (Russian: Kirill Grigorjewitsch Rasumowski; * 1728, † 1803), a favorite of Empress Elisabeth, became a favorite of Catherine II. Forced to abdicate, in 1775 the fortified center of the Zaporozhian Cossacks (Sitsch) destroyed by Russian troops and by 1783 the special legal and social status of the Ukrainian territories was eliminated. With the partitions of Poland (1772, 1793 and 1795) most of the area fell to Russia; Galicia as well as the western parts of Volynia and Podolia came to Austria. Under Russian rule, the previously deserted steppe areas were quickly settled (including by the Black Sea Germans in and around Odessa), with large cities such as Odessa often not receiving Ukrainian majority populations.
According to itypeusa, the national consciousness that developed in the first half of the 19th century was suppressed under Nicholas I , legal peculiarities that still existed such as the Magdeburg law of the cities were abolished (1835), the Greek Catholic Church was dissolved in 1839 and its members joined the Orthodox Church forced. The secret Kyrillos Methodios Society, which was founded in the vicinity of Kiev University in 1846 and which was the first to articulate Ukrainian political goals, was forcibly dissolved in 1847. In the reform era under Alexander II (1855-81) could in the residence of Saint Petersburg and in Kiev under the leadership of the historian MI Kostomarow and the poet T. H. Shevchenko Develop Ukrainian literature with strong national but not anti-Russian tendencies. Nevertheless, the Russian government saw connections with the Polish January uprising of 1863/64 and banned the printing of Ukrainian books (1863, renewed and reinforced in 1876). The Ukrainian language has been referred to as the “Little Russian” dialect of Russian; only the revolution of 1905 brought freedom from printing. In 1900 the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party was the first political party in eastern Ukraine; after a left wing split off that joined the Russian Social Democracy in 1908, it renamed itself the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers’ Party in 1905.
In the first and second Reich Duma (1906 and 1907) there was a Ukrainian parliamentary group, close to the Trudoviki, of 63 and 47 members respectively, who sought cultural autonomy – not political independence.
In Eastern Habsburg Galicia (after 1918 and 1921, respectively, it belonged to the areas known as “Western Ukraine”), the Ukrainian language and culture were initially promoted as a counterweight to Polishism compared to the so-called “Russian Ukraine”. However, after the equalization in 1867, the Poles, which dominated Eastern Galicia, turned to the Ukrainians for further concessions. In 1848 a chair for Ukrainian language and literature was established in Lemberg, and in 1894 a chair for Eastern European (de facto Ukrainian) history (Hruschewsky) built. The division of Galicia into a Polish and a Ukrainian part of the country, which the Ukrainians were striving for, as well as the establishment of a Ukrainian university in Lviv, were not achieved. Since 1867, however, a dense network of popular education associations (“Prosvita”) has formed; In addition, there were Ukrainian-language magazines and the important cultural-scientific Shevchenko Society (from 1873), which z. T. took over university functions. In the 19th century, Greek Catholic clergy had been the bearers of a Ukrainian national idea in eastern Galicia. The Greek Catholic (“Uniate”) Church remained important until the first half of the 20th century (the role of the Lviv Metropolitan Count Andrej Scheptyzky was outstanding[* 1865, † 1944]), the importance of worldly forces, v. a. by intellectuals, but has increased significantly since the second half of the 19th century. They also increasingly included politically more radical voices such as those of the ethnographer and writer Mychajlo Pawlyk (* 1853, † 1915), the writer and publicist IJ Franko (* 1856, † 1916) or the intellectual Julian Batschynsky (»Ukraina irredenta«, 1895 / 96). Before 1914, the Ukrainian national movement in eastern Galicia had become a mass movement.
Maidan Revolution
President Yanukovych’s refusal to sign an association agreement with the EU on November 29, 2013 led to mass protests by the opposition, some of which were accompanied by violence. A vote of no confidence in the Azarov government failed on December 3, 2013 in parliament. The Independence Square (»Majdan«) in Kiev became the center of the protests, which subsequently escalated and on January 22, 2014 claimed the lives of the first time. Against the background of this escalation of the conflict, Prime Minister Azarov resigned resigned on January 28, 2014. Nonetheless, the situation remained tense. On February 18, 2014, security forces attempted to forcibly evacuate the Independence Square, which was occupied by the opposition. At least 26 people were killed in heavy street battles with opponents of the regime on the night of February 19. A renunciation of force agreed between the government and the opposition did not last. On February 20, the civil war-like clashes continued. According to official information, at least 77 people died in the bloody conflict. Resistance to the government also formed in other regions of the country, for example the regional administration of the Lviv region was occupied. An EU delegation with the German Foreign Minister F.-W. Steinmeier traveled to Kiev to negotiate a political solution with the government and opposition. Russia also got involved in the mediation process. On February 21, 2014, the conflicting parties agreed on an agreement which, among other things, the formation of a transitional government of national unity, a return to the constitutional reform of 2004, which would restrict the power of the president, and presidential elections in December 2014. With a large majority (386 votes in favor), Parliament immediately passed a law that revised the constitution in line with the agreement. On the evening of February 21, President Yanukovych left whose power base was increasingly eroding, Kiev. The following day, contrary to the previous agreement, parliament voted with a large majority in favor of his dismissal and the holding of presidential elections on May 25, 2014. Former Prime Minister Tymoshenko was released from custody. The parliament confirmed the previous parliamentary president Alexander Turtschinow (* 1964) on February 23, 2014 as interim president. On February 27, 2014, the Verkhovna Rada elected a politician from the VOB party to the office of Prime Minister with 371 votes: A. Yatsenyuk , the former President of Parliament and Foreign Minister, was elected by Yatsenyuk ruled government confirmed. The deposed President Yanukovych continued to describe himself as the legitimate Ukrainian head of state at a press conference in the Russian city of Rostov on February 28, 2014.
