of today's Ukraine was included in the governorates of Chernihiv (Chernigov in

Russian), Kharkiv (Kharkov), Kyiv 1708–1764, and Little Russia 1764–1781, Podillia (Podolie),

and Volyn (Volhynia)—with all but the first two informally grouped into the Southwestern Krai.
After the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774), Catherine the Great and her immediate successors
encouraged German immigration into Ukraine and especially into Crimea, to thin the previously
dominant Turk population and encourage agriculture.[65] Numerous Ukrainians, Russians,
Germans, Bulgarians, Serbs and Greeks moved into the northern Black Sea steppe formerly
known as the "Wild Fields".[66][67]
In the 19th century, Ukraine was a rural area largely ignored by Russia and Austria.[citation needed] With
growing urbanization and modernization, and a cultural trend toward romantic nationalism, a
Ukrainian intelligentsia committed to national rebirth and social justice emerged. The serf-turned-
national-poet Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861) and the political theorist Mykhailo
Drahomanov (1841–1895) led the growing nationalist movement.[68][69]

A map from 1904 showing administrative units of Little Russia, South Russia and West Russia within
the Russian Empire prior to Ukrainian independence

Beginning in the 19th century, there was migration from Ukraine to distant areas of the Russian
Empire. According to the 1897 census, there were 223,000 ethnic Ukrainians in Siberia and
102,000 in Central Asia.[70] An additional 1.6 million emigrated to the east in the ten years after
the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1906.[71] Far Eastern areas with an ethnic Ukrainian
population became known as Green Ukraine.[72]
Nationalist and socialist parties developed in the late 19th century. Austrian Galicia, under the
relatively lenient rule of the Habsburgs, became the centre of the nationalist movement.[73]
Ukrainians entered World War I on the side of both the Central Powers, under Austria, and
the Triple Entente, under Russia. 3.5 million Ukrainians fought with the Imperial Russian Army,
while 250,000 fought for the Austro-Hungarian Army.[74] Austro-Hungarian authorities established
the Ukrainian Legion to fight against the Russian Empire. This became the Ukrainian Galician
Army that fought against the Bolsheviks and Poles in the post-World War I period (1919–23).
Those suspected of Russophile sentiments in Austria were treated harshly.[75]
Polish troops enter Kyiv in May 1920 during the Polish–Soviet War in which Ukrainians sided with Poland
against the Bolsheviks. Following the Peace of Riga signed on 18 March 1921, Poland took control of
modern-day western Ukraine while Soviet forces took control of eastern Ukraine.

World War I destroyed both empires. The Russian Revolution of 1917 led to the founding of the
Soviet Union under the Bolsheviks, and subsequent civil war in Russia. A Ukrainian national
movement for self-determination emerged, with heavy Communist and Socialist influence.
Several Ukrainian states briefly emerged: the internationally recognized Ukrainian People's
Republic (UNR, the predecessor of modern Ukraine, was declared on 23 June 1917 proclaimed
at first as a part of the Russian Republic; after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Ukrainian People's
Republic proclaimed its independence on 25 January 1918), the Hetmanate, the Directorate and
the pro-Bolshevik Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (or Soviet Ukraine) successively
established territories in the former Russian Empire; while the West Ukrainian People's
Republic and the Hutsul Republic emerged briefly in the Ukrainian lands of former Austro-
Hungarian territory.[76]
The short lived Act Zluky (Unification Act) was an agreement signed on 22 January 1919 by
the Ukrainian People's Republic and the West Ukrainian People's Republic on the St. Sophia
Square in Kyiv.[77] This led to civil war, and an anarchist movement called the Black Army (later
renamed to The Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine) developed in Southern Ukraine
under the command of the anarchist Nestor Makhno during the Russian Civil War.[78] They
protected the operation of "free soviets" and libertarian communes in the Free Territory, an
attempt to form a stateless anarchist society from 1918 to 1921 during the Ukrainian Revolution,
fighting both the tsarist White Army under Denikin and later the Red Army under Trotsky, before
being defeated by the latter in August 1921.
Poland defeated Western Ukraine in the Polish-Ukrainian War, but failed against the Bolsheviks
in an offensive against Kyiv. According to the Peace of Riga, western Ukraine was incorporated
into Poland, which in turn recognised the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in March 1919. With
establishment of the Soviet power, Ukraine lost half of its territory, while Moldavian autonomy
was established on the left bank of the Dniester River. Ukraine became a founding member of
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922.[79]

Western Ukraine, Carpathian Ruthenia and Bukovina

See also: Ruthenians and Ukrainians in Czechoslovakia (1918–1938)

Hutsuls living in Verkhovyna, c. 1930

The war in Ukraine continued for another two years; by 1921, however, most of Ukraine had
been taken over by the Soviet Union, while Galicia and Volhynia (mostly today's West Ukraine)
were incorporated into the Second Polish Republic. Modern-day Bukovina was annexed by
Romania and Carpathian Ruthenia was admitted to the Czechoslovak Republic as an autonomy.
[80]

A powerful underground Ukrainian nationalist movement arose in eastern Poland in the 1920s
and 1930s, which was formed by Ukrainian veterans of the Ukrainian-Soviet
war (including Yevhen Konovalets, Andriy Melnyk, and Yuriy Tyutyunyk) and was transformed
into the Ukrainian Military Organization and later the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists
(OUN). The movement attracted a militant following among students. Hostilities between Polish
state authorities and the popular movement led to a substantial number of fatalities, and the
autonomy which had been promised was never implemented. The pre-war Polish government
also exercised anti-Ukrainian sentiment; it restricted rights of people who declared Ukrainian
nationality, belonged to the Eastern Orthodox Church and inhabited the Eastern Borderlands.[81]
[82]
 The Ukrainian language was restricted in every field possible, especially in governmental
institutions, and the term "Ruthenian" was enforced in an attempt to ban the use of the term
"Ukrainian".[83] Despite this, a number of Ukrainian parties, the Ukrainian Catholic Church, an
active press, and a business sector existed in Poland. Economic conditions improved in the
1920s, but the region suffered from the Great Depression in the early 1930s.[84]

Inter-war Soviet Ukraine

See also: Holodomor

The Dnieper Hydroelectric Station under construction, around 1930

The Russian Civil War devastated the whole Russian Empire including Ukraine. It left over 1.5
million people dead and hundreds of thousands homeless in the former Russian Empire territory.
Soviet Ukraine also faced the Russian famine of 1921 (primarily affecting the Russian Volga-
Ural region).[85][86] During the 1920s,[87] under the Ukrainisation policy pursued by the national
Communist leadership of Mykola Skrypnyk, Soviet leadership encouraged a national renaissance
in the Ukrainian cultur