Ukraine is a republic in Eastern Europe. The land is mostly farmland, and the main natural resources are various metals, oil and natural gas, and of course arable land. Although it is a relatively diverse country, it is still majority Slavic with a large Russian population, which has caused conflicts in recent years.
The history of Ukraine is not as long as Russia, and it hasn't issued coins through most of its existence, meaning that I can cut back on it quite a bit. In addition, I am including the history of Crimea, which was often independent, now part of Ukraine, and occupied by Russia.
A personal note: Most of you may know Ukraine as my ancestral homeland, which is kind of true (because nearly my entire family is from there) except for the fact that I am also 100% Jewish. I also have a lot of family left in the country, so I follow the news a lot, which is why the recent revolution is covered in detail.
So, let us begin!
Like Russia, the modern history of Ukraine begins with Keivan Rus (founded 880), a Slavic state located in present-day European Russian and northern Ukraine. Keivan Rus adopted Orthodox Christianity (a major religion in modern Ukraine) from the Byzantine Empire, which is reflected on their Byzantine-style coins:
(Note the presence of the tryzub, a symbol of Ukraine)
Like Russia, Ukraine was overrun by the Mongols. In 1240 Kiev was destroyed and the rest of the country was left in ruins. However, in 1253, Danylo Romanovich established an independent state in the area that is now Western Ukraine. The country he created, Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, became a powerful force in Eastern Europe at the time. However, it was still a vassal state of the Mongol Empire, and it used Mongol coins as a result.
In the mid-14th century, Galicia–Volhynia came under Polish domination. Meanwhile the Lithuanians took Eastern Ukraine and Kiev, thus beginning a pattern of foreign domination of Ukraine. In 1386, Poland and Lithuania formed a dynastic union, and of course Ukraine became part of it. In 1569, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was founded and Ukraine formed the eastern frontier of the country. Polish-Lithuanian coins were used in Ukraine at that time.
In 1441, after the decline of the Mongol Empire, Hacı I Giray, a descendant of Ghengiz Kahn, founded a Mongol Kahnate in Crimea and the surrounding areas, the Crimean Kahnate. However, he was not able to fight off internal rivals until 1449 when he consolidated his power. After his death, his sons fought over which one should succeed him. The Ottomans intervened and installed Meñli I Giray. The Ottomans later imprisoned him but brought him back after three years under condition that he accept Ottoman sovereignty. Nevertheless, the Ottomans treated the powerful Crimean Kahnate as an ally rather than a vassal because of its military successes. Crimean coins essentially followed the Mongol pattern regardless of the political situation.
Now, back to Ukraine. The majority of the Ukrainian higher class received a lot of Polish influences and the peasant class no longer wanted to turn to them for protection. Instead, they became more loyal to the Zaporozhian/ Dnieper Cossaks, an ethnic Ukrainian military group. The Zaporozhian Cossaks fought off Crimean invasions and eventually declared independence and founded the Zaporozhian Host. The Zaporozhian Host was essentially a state which was owed loyalty to the Polish-Lithuaninian Commonwealth and assisted the Poles on the battlefield. However, in reality, it was very independent.
In 1648, the Cossak leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky led a massive rebellion against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The rebellion began a 30-year war known as "The Ruin" for its devastating consequences for Ukraine. Khmelnytsky signed a military agreement with Russia, which assisted the Cossaks on in their war. Although Khmelnytsky nearly destroyed his country, brought it under foreign domination, and committed large-scale ethnic cleansing, he is viewed as a nationalist hero in modern-day Ukraine. In the end, Ukraine was partitioned by Russia and Poland.
Rebelling Cossaks
In 1709, the Cossak leader, Ivan Mazepa, allied himself with Sweden, against Russia. Peter the Great realized that he would need to eliminate Ukrainian nationalism and the Cossaks in order to successfully control the region. Meanwhile, the Cossaks were acting more and more like a state when they passed the Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk. The Constitution was unique for the period because it recognized separation of powers and even an early attempt at democracy. In the 1760s and 1770s, all Cossak self-rule was abolished. In addition, Poland was partitioned between Austria, Russia, and Prussia, meaning all of Ukraine fell under Russian rule.
Meanwhile, the Crimean Kahnate began to fall as well and it was annexed as part of the Russian Empire in 1783.
After 1783, Russians began to settle in the areas that were once Crimea and southern Ukraine. The Tsars began a policy of Russification, which limited the use of the Ukrainian language and prohibited much of Ukraine's culture.
In the 1800's Ukrainian nationalism became a dominant force again. Let by the cultural elite, especially the National Poet Taras Shevchenko, ideas of romantic nationalism ensued. Russia and Austria (which also came to control small parts of Western Ukraine) largely ignored the country and did not explicitly prohibit nationalism. In 1917, as part of the Russian Revolution, Ukraine declared independence again. The new Ukrainian state, first a republic and then a socialist state, issued stamps but not coins.
Taras Shevchenko, "National Poet" of Ukraine
In 1921 and 1922 most of Ukraine become the Ukrainian SSR, part of the Soviet Union and had some autonomy. In addition, Western Ukraine became part of Poland and Bukovina was taken over by Romania. These areas had no autonomy. Finally, Carpathian Ruthenia was annexed by Czechoslovakia as an autonomous region. In Poland, there was a lot of conflict between the Polish Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and economic conditions were very bad. However, in Soviet Ukraine, they were much worse.
As part of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was heavily industrialized. In addition, private farms were taken over by the state. This meant that the government in Moscow was in charge of the food. They made unrealistic quotas for the Ukrainians and refused to give them any food until they were met. This resulted in the Holodomor, or Great Famine. Holodomor is usually described as a genocide against Ukrainians but not all scholars agree. The government used starvation as a punishment to force peasants into a Kolkhoz, or collective farms.
Following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany agreed on how to divide Europe into Germany and Soviet parts, Germany invaded Poland. As promised, the Soviet Union also invaded Poland, and annexed the territories which were once part of Ukraine. They also took formerly Ukrainian parts of Czechoslovakia and Romania (peacefully) and annexed a small part of Romania (also peacefully).
June 22nd, 1941, was a fateful day for the Soviet Union. Wehrmacht soldiers, under the command of Walther von Brauchitsch invaded the USSR. The fascist invaders were initially very successful - one statistic says that for every German soldier that died, ten Soviet soldiers were killed.
However, WWII was not simply about military glory, as Soviet propaganda would lead you to believe. The effects of the war were most devastating in Ukraine, where 5 to 8 million people were killed. The Reichskommissariat Ukraine, a Fascist territory under direct control of the Germany army was established. This government was responsible for most of the deaths, including a tremendous amount of Jews who were simply removed from their homes and murdered as part of the Holocaust (unlike in Western Europe where the Holocaust was a long process). The brutal scars left by the invasion are still felt in Ukraine today.
When Ukraine was liberated in 1944-45, the struggle was not over. Nearly 1000 cities and 30000 villages were destroyed. A famine in 1946-47 only made the situation worse. However, by 1950, the industry in Ukraine began to recover. In 1953, when Nikita Khrushchev became the leader of the Soviet Union, cooperation between Ukraine and Russia was emphasized. In 1954, Crimea was returned to Ukraine, a territory from which thousands of Tatars were deported by Stalin just a few years earlier.
In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, resulting in the worst nuclear disaster ever. Even now, there is a massive amount of unusable land near Chernobyl, know as the zona vidchuzhennya, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
On July 16th, 1990, the Ukrainian SSR declared partial sovereignty. The next year, it declared independence. The new country produced coins denominated in Kopeks in 1992, and they are still being struck today, despite the fact that the currency was changed in 1996 (from karbovanets to hryvnia).
Also, some higher-denomination NCLTs were struck in karbovanetsiv:
Although there was corruption in government following independence, the economy grew steadily, especially after the currency change. The corruption culminated in 2004, when Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych was declared the winner of the presidential elections, which had been rigged. The results caused a public protest in favor of the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, who opposed the outcome. This resulted in the peaceful Orange Revolution, bringing Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko to power, while putting Viktor Yanukovych as the opposition.
Yanukovych returned to power in 2006, probably also through corruption. He began to cooperate more and more with Russia, which made much of the population, who view Ukraine as European, upset. In 2013, this culminated in the refusal of President Yanukovych to sign an agreement with the European Union, instead signing an agreement with Russia.
This enraged the people of Ukraine, especially students. They took the the streets in November 2013, and formed a protest in Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or simply "Maidan". A Twitter hashtag, #EuroMaidan (combing 'Europe' and 'Maidan') was set up and soon became the name of the protest.
Throughout the month of December, the government felt the need to crack down on the protests. Although they were being attacked, the protesters held their ground, and more and more joined their numbers. Eventually Maidan was full and could not accommodate any more protesters. Meanwhile, they formed self-defense units and built barricades to protect themselves. As the government special forces became more and more violent throughout the months of December and January, the media began to brodcast the protest scenes to the world. One news website, Kyiv Post, was producing new updates every few minutes by reporters "on the field".
By February, Kiev was in chaos. Police and hired thugs continued their attacks on the protesters, while protesters continued their defensive. At the end of the month, Kiev was in a state of emergency. Schools, public transportation, and much of the government were shut down. On February 22nd, Yanokovych fled and the government was deposed. The new provisional government signed the deal with Europe. However, at the same time, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, and Donetsk and Luhansk declared Independence. Since then, Ukraine has been fighting rebels aided by the Russian army in Eastern Ukraine.
Euromaidan was commemorated by a Ukrainian coin:
Now, some extra stuff: