National, Political and Economic Factors in the Creation of Modern Ukraine

Abstract

The paper discusses the influence of various factors (national, political, economic) in the process of creating the modern Ukrainian state. This process is traced from Kievan Rus, as the origin of today's East Slavic states, including Malorussia, on the basis of which the modern Ukrainian identity was built. It points to the first manifestations of Ukraine and the Ukrainian ethnos at the time of the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and to the role of Poland in developing the concept of a separate Ukrainian nation, which was later taken over by Austria-Hungary. The emergence of Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation, however, followed only at the beginning of the 20th century, and the greatest credit goes to the Bolsheviks, who created the Ukrainian state not only on the territory of Malorussia, but also on the territory of Novorussia and expanded it over the past century to large areas in the west. as well as the territories of Russia in the northeast and Crimea. By neglecting the national principle (the inclusion of large areas inhabited by the Russian population in the USSR), as well as economic factors (which were highlighted during the formation of the Donetsk - Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic), and by accepting the federalization of the state, they actually laid the foundations for the success of separatist tendencies, not only in Ukraine. By choosing the path of confrontation with the Russian population and with Russia, after gaining independence in 1991, Ukraine became a testing ground for the development of not the once prosperous republic of the USSR, but an anti-Russian state, a factor of instability and conflict.

Keywords: Malorussia, Ukraine, national identity, Ukrainization, Soviet Ukraine, confrontation