Post by pieter on Jul 14, 2007 14:22:10 GMT -7
Lithuania
During 1944-1952 approximately 100,000 Lithuanians participated in partisan fights against the Soviet system and the Red Army. More than twenty thousand partisans ("forest brothers") were killed in those battles. Many more were arrested and deported to Siberian GULAGs. Some historians view this period as a war of independence against the Soviet Union.
Lithuanian foreign relations
Lithuania became a member of the United Nations on September 18, 1991, and is a signatory to a number of its organizations and other international agreements. It is also a member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, NATO and its adjunct North Atlantic Coordinating Council, the Council of Europe, and the European Union. Lithuania gained membership in the World Trade Organization on May 31, 2001. It also seeks membership in the OECD and other Western organizations.
Lithuania maintains foreign diplomatic missions in 94 countries on six continents and consular posts in two countries that are not represented by an embassy. Lithuania's liberal "zero-option" citizenship law has substantially erased tensions with its neighbors. Lithuania's suspension of two strongly ethnic Polish district councils on charges of blocking reform or disloyalty during the August 1991 coup had cooled relations with Poland, but bilateral cooperation markedly increased with the holding of elections in those districts and the signing of a bilateral Friendship Treaty in 1994. Relations with Poland are now among the closest enjoyed by Lithuania. Although a similar bilateral friendship agreement was signed with Belarus in 1995, Lithuania has joined the United States and other European nations in urging the Government of Belarus to adopt democratic and economic reforms.
Ethnic composition of Lithuania
Among the Baltic states, Lithuania has the most homogeneous population. According to the census conducted in 2001, 83.45% of the population identified themselves as ethnic Lithuanians, 6.74% as Poles, 6.31% as Russians, 1.23% as Belarusians, and 2.27% as members of other ethnic groups.
Poles are concentrated in the Vilnius region, the area controlled by Poland in the interwar period. Especially large Polish communities are located in the Vilnius district municipality (61.3% of the population) and the Šal?ininkai district municipality (79.5%). This concentration allows Election Action of Lithuania's Poles ( www.awpl.lt/ ), an ethnic minority-based political party, to exert political influence. This party has held 1 or 2 seats in the parliament of Lithuania for the past decade. The party is more active in local politics and controls several municipality councils.
Russians, even though they are almost as numerous as Poles, are much more evenly scattered and do not have a strong political party. The most prominent community lives in the Visaginas city municipality (52%). Most of them are scientists who moved from Russia to work at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. Lithuania is noted for its success in limiting Russian worker migration during the Soviet occupation (1945-1990). A number of ethnic Russians left Lithuania after the declaration of independence in 1990.
In the past, the ethnic composition of Lithuania has varied dramatically. The most prominent change was the extermination of the Jewish population during the Holocaust. Before World War II, about 7.5% of the population was Jewish; they were concentrated in cities and towns and had a significant influence on crafts and business. They were called Litvaks and had a strong culture. The population of Vilnius, which was sometimes nicknamed "the Northern Jerusalem", was about 30% Jewish. Almost all its Jews were killed during the Nazi Germany occupation or later emigrated to the United States and Israel. Now there are only about 4,000 Jews living in Lithuania.
Belarus
Belarusians or Belorussians (Belarusian: Bielarusy, previously also spelled Belarussians, Byelorussians and Belorusians) are an East Slavic ethnic group who populate the majority of the Republic of Belarus and form minorities in neighboring Poland (especially in the former Bialystok province), Russia, Lithuania and Ukraine. Noticeable numbers have immigrated to the United States, Brazil and Canada in the early 20th century. Since the breakup of the USSR several hundred thousand have immigrated to the European Union, United States, Canada and Russia. Introduced to the world as a new state in the early 1990s, the Republic of Belarus brought with it the notion of a re-emerging Belarusian ethnicity, drawn upon the lines of the Belarusian language. There are over 8 million people who associate themselves with the Belarusian ethnicity today.
The native language of the territory of Belarus is Belarusian; however the majority of Belarusians in Belarus are able to speak Russian and often use it as their day-to-day language (especially in Minsk and other large cities).
History
Between the sixth and the twelfth centuries, modern-day Belarus was settled by the Slavs, who still dominate the country. The Early East Slavs gradually came into contact with the Varangians and were organized by them under the state of Kievan Rus'.
In the thirteenth century, several of the separate Ruthenian principalities were badly affected by a Mongol invasion. Later, parts of Rus were swallowed up by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Most of its population was ethnically Slavonic. Slavonic lands enjoyed limited autonomy within the Lithuanian state. While it is sometimes wrongly assumed that Belarusian was the official language of the state, Latin, Old Russian (Ruthenian), and Polish were used side by side in state affairs. The Belarusian language emerged in the middle of the 19th century when Russian speakers in modern day Belarusian territory were subject to a heavy cultural influence from Poland. At the beginning of 17th century the Old Russian language was banned in Lithuania and replaced by Polish, which had already been dominant for centuries. The use of Old Russian (Old Slavonic-Ruthenian) was allowed in Ruthenian autonomies (principalities). Belarusian lands were easily incorporated into the Duchy within the next one hundred years, because of the strength of Lithuania and the threat of Mongols on modern day Belarusian lands. During this time, the Duchy was involved with battles between different forces. One of the major battles was between the Duchy and the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410. The Duchy won the battle and the victory allowed the Duchy to control the North-western borders of Eastern Europe. Other military battles took place between the Duchy and the Mongols and the Turks, resulting in military victories for the Duchy. By the fifteenth century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania stretched across much of Eastern Europe, spanning from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
On February 2, 1386, Grand Duke of Lithuania Jogaila was crowned King of Poland, and allied the Grand Duchy with Kingdom of Poland in a personal union. The union was formed between Jogaila and the daughter of King Luis of Poland, Jadwiga, by marriage. This was seen by the Polish as a move to end a union with Hungary. In the early parts of the This personal union eventually resulted in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a federation created in 1569. The Muscovites, led by Tsar Ivan the III, began military conquests in 1486 to try and gain the Kievan Rus' lands, specifically Belarus and Ukraine. The union between Poland and Lithuania ended in 1795, with the commonwealth partitioned and annexed by Imperial Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Belarusian territories remained part of the Russian Empire until they were occupied by Germany during World War I.
Belarus first declared independence on 25 March 1918, forming the Belarusian People's Republic. The Republic, however, was short-lived, and the regime was overthrown soon after the German withdrawal. In 1919, Belarus became the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). After Russian occupation of eastern and northern Lithuania, it was merged into the Lithuanian-Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. After the Polish-Soviet War ended in 1921, Byelorussian lands were split between Poland and the Bolsheviks, and the recreated Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922.
In September 1939, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union invaded Poland and annexed its eastern lands, including majority of Polish-held Byelorussian land.
Demographics
The majority of the population of Belarus are native Belarusians, who comprise 81.2% of the total population of 10,293,011 people. Russians are the second largest group, making up 11.4% of the population. Poles and Ukrainians account for 3.9% and 2.4% of the population, respectively.
Languages commonly spoken in Belarus are Russian and Belarusian. Both are the official languages of Belarus.
The population density is about 50 persons per square kilometer (127/sq. mi) and 71.7% of the total population lives in urban areas. Of the urban population, 24% live in Minsk, the national capital and largest city.
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north-east, Belarus to the north, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the south-west, and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The historic city of Kiev (Kyiv) is the country's capital.
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1300–1600)
On the Ukrainian territory, the state of Kievan Rus' was succeeded by the principalities of Halych and Volodymyr-Volynskyi, which were merged into the state of Halych-Volynia. In the mid-fourteenth century it was subjugated by Casimir IV of Poland while the heartland of Rus', including Kiev, fell under the Gediminids of Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Following the 1386 marriage of Lithuania's Grand Duke Jagiello to Poland's King Jadwiga (her title was "King" even though she was a woman), most of the Ukrainian territory was controlled by the increasingly Ruthenized Lithuanian rulers as part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the term Ruthenia and Ruthenians as the Latinized versions of "Rus'", became widely applied to the land and its people, respectively).
By the 1569 Union of Lublin that formed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a significant part of Ukrainian territory was moved from largely Ruthenized Lithuanian rule to the Polish administration, as it was transferred to the Polish Crown. Under the cultural pressure of polonization much of the Ruthenian upper class converted to Catholicism (such transitions were beneficial for achieving political influence within the state), for example, King Michael of Poland, who reigned from 1669 to 1673, was of the Ruthenian Vishnevetsky Wi?niowiecki family. At the same time the common people, especially the peasants retained their old ways of especially, the allegiance to their historic Eastern Orthodox Church, which led to the increasing social tensions, visible in such events as the 1596 Union of Brest, created by Sigismund III Vasa, who attempted to bring the Orthodox population under the Catholicism through creation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. This controversial move failed to achieve its goals. Resisted even by some Ruthenian magnates, otherwise loyal to the Polish kings (Ostrogskis being the most notable example), the new "intermediate" religion was unnecessary for the most of the upper class, much of whom increasingly turned directly towards Catholicism with each subsequent generation. Thus, the Ukrainian commoners, deprived of their native protectors among Ruthenian nobility, turned for protection to the Cossacks who remained fiercely Orthodox at all times.
From 1569 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot, pillage and capture slaves into jasyr. The borderland area to the south-east was in a state of semi-permanent warfare until the 18th century. Some researchers estimate that altogether more than 3 million people, predominantly Ukrainians but also Circassians, Russians, Belarusians and Poles, were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate.
Rise of the Cossacks (1600–1800)
In the mid of the seventeenth century, a Cossack state, the Zaporozhian Sich, was established by the Dnieper cossacks and the Ruthenian peasants fleeing Polish serfdom. Poland had little real control of this land in what is now central Ukraine, which became an autonomous military state, at times allied with the Commonwealth in the military campaigns. However, the enserfment of peasantry by the Polish nobility, overall emphasis of the Commonwealth's agricultural economy on the fierce exploitation of the unfree workforce, and, perhaps most importantly, the suppression of the Orthodox church pushed the allegiances of Cossacks away from Poland. Their aspiration was to have a representation in Polish Sejm, recognition of Orthodox traditions and the gradual expansion of the Cossack Registry, all being vehemently denied by the Polish kings. The cossacks turned toward Orthodox Russia, which was one reason for the later downfall of the Polish-Lithuanian state.
In 1648, Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the largest of the Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth and the Polish king John II Casimir. This uprising finally led to a partition of Ukraine between Poland and Russia. Left-Bank Ukraine was eventually integrated into Russia as the Cossack Hetmanate, following the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav and the ensuing Russo-Polish War. After the partitions of Poland in the end of the eighteenth century by Prussia, Habsburg Austria, and Russia at the end of the eighteenth century, Western Ukrainian (Galicia) was taken over by Austria, while the rest of Ukraine was progressively incorporated into the Russian Empire. Despite the promises of Ukrainian autonomy given by the treaty of Pereyaslav, Ukrainians never received the freedoms they were hoping for from Imperial Russia.
Current political situation
Ukraine is currently through a transition state after a substantial constitutional reform was introduced in the beginning of 2006. The amendments to the Constitution were meant to transform the Ukrainian state from a presidential republic to a mixed parliamentary-presidential republic. However, the amendments happened to be far from perfect and created a great opportunity for potential conflicts between the President on one side and the Parliamentary coalition on the other. The political life of Ukraine during the last year could be characterized as a constant struggle between the President and the Prime-Minister for power, which is aggravated by the fact, that the President and the Prime-Minister represent the opposite parts of the political spectrum and have some very significant differences concerning the foreign and the internal policy. This conflict has been accompanied by accusations from both parts. The President Yushchenko accuses the coalition of trying to usurp the power and take away even those powers, that he preserved after the reform. On the other hand, the coalition accuses the President of unwillingness to accept the consequences of the constitutional reform and trying to regain his former powers by all means possible.
In late March of 2007 and early April the Ukrainian political system dealt with another constitutional crisis. President Viktor Yushchenko dissolved the Ukrainian parliament and ordered an early election to be held May 27, 2007. Crowds of about 70,000 gathered on Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the central square of Kiev, and supported the dismissal of parliament, with 20,000 supporting Yanukovych's plan to keep the parliament together.[4] On April 3, 2007, President Yushchenko signed the bill into existence. Two hours later on Kiev's Maidan, it was announced to the crowds that Parliament no longer existed.
The Verkhovna Rada immediately called an emergency session and voted against Yuschenko's decree (255 votes in favor; opposition didn't participate). A group of members of the parliament took the case to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, challenging the validity of the President's decree. But the Court closed the case without opinion. A political struggle ensued between the Parliamentary coalition and the opposition.
A compromise between Yushchenko and Yanukovych has been reached to reschedule parliamentary elections for September 30, 2007. The current legal status of the parliament is unclear. Formally, the parliament has been dissolved, because more than a third of its members have resigned, and their parties cleared the reserve party lists. According to the Constitution this rendered the parliament inoperative. On the other hand, the Constitution states that the existing parliament is valid until the new parliament is elected.
During 1944-1952 approximately 100,000 Lithuanians participated in partisan fights against the Soviet system and the Red Army. More than twenty thousand partisans ("forest brothers") were killed in those battles. Many more were arrested and deported to Siberian GULAGs. Some historians view this period as a war of independence against the Soviet Union.
Lithuanian foreign relations
Lithuania became a member of the United Nations on September 18, 1991, and is a signatory to a number of its organizations and other international agreements. It is also a member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, NATO and its adjunct North Atlantic Coordinating Council, the Council of Europe, and the European Union. Lithuania gained membership in the World Trade Organization on May 31, 2001. It also seeks membership in the OECD and other Western organizations.
Lithuania maintains foreign diplomatic missions in 94 countries on six continents and consular posts in two countries that are not represented by an embassy. Lithuania's liberal "zero-option" citizenship law has substantially erased tensions with its neighbors. Lithuania's suspension of two strongly ethnic Polish district councils on charges of blocking reform or disloyalty during the August 1991 coup had cooled relations with Poland, but bilateral cooperation markedly increased with the holding of elections in those districts and the signing of a bilateral Friendship Treaty in 1994. Relations with Poland are now among the closest enjoyed by Lithuania. Although a similar bilateral friendship agreement was signed with Belarus in 1995, Lithuania has joined the United States and other European nations in urging the Government of Belarus to adopt democratic and economic reforms.
Ethnic composition of Lithuania
Among the Baltic states, Lithuania has the most homogeneous population. According to the census conducted in 2001, 83.45% of the population identified themselves as ethnic Lithuanians, 6.74% as Poles, 6.31% as Russians, 1.23% as Belarusians, and 2.27% as members of other ethnic groups.
Poles are concentrated in the Vilnius region, the area controlled by Poland in the interwar period. Especially large Polish communities are located in the Vilnius district municipality (61.3% of the population) and the Šal?ininkai district municipality (79.5%). This concentration allows Election Action of Lithuania's Poles ( www.awpl.lt/ ), an ethnic minority-based political party, to exert political influence. This party has held 1 or 2 seats in the parliament of Lithuania for the past decade. The party is more active in local politics and controls several municipality councils.
Russians, even though they are almost as numerous as Poles, are much more evenly scattered and do not have a strong political party. The most prominent community lives in the Visaginas city municipality (52%). Most of them are scientists who moved from Russia to work at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. Lithuania is noted for its success in limiting Russian worker migration during the Soviet occupation (1945-1990). A number of ethnic Russians left Lithuania after the declaration of independence in 1990.
In the past, the ethnic composition of Lithuania has varied dramatically. The most prominent change was the extermination of the Jewish population during the Holocaust. Before World War II, about 7.5% of the population was Jewish; they were concentrated in cities and towns and had a significant influence on crafts and business. They were called Litvaks and had a strong culture. The population of Vilnius, which was sometimes nicknamed "the Northern Jerusalem", was about 30% Jewish. Almost all its Jews were killed during the Nazi Germany occupation or later emigrated to the United States and Israel. Now there are only about 4,000 Jews living in Lithuania.
Belarus
Belarusians or Belorussians (Belarusian: Bielarusy, previously also spelled Belarussians, Byelorussians and Belorusians) are an East Slavic ethnic group who populate the majority of the Republic of Belarus and form minorities in neighboring Poland (especially in the former Bialystok province), Russia, Lithuania and Ukraine. Noticeable numbers have immigrated to the United States, Brazil and Canada in the early 20th century. Since the breakup of the USSR several hundred thousand have immigrated to the European Union, United States, Canada and Russia. Introduced to the world as a new state in the early 1990s, the Republic of Belarus brought with it the notion of a re-emerging Belarusian ethnicity, drawn upon the lines of the Belarusian language. There are over 8 million people who associate themselves with the Belarusian ethnicity today.
The native language of the territory of Belarus is Belarusian; however the majority of Belarusians in Belarus are able to speak Russian and often use it as their day-to-day language (especially in Minsk and other large cities).
History
Between the sixth and the twelfth centuries, modern-day Belarus was settled by the Slavs, who still dominate the country. The Early East Slavs gradually came into contact with the Varangians and were organized by them under the state of Kievan Rus'.
In the thirteenth century, several of the separate Ruthenian principalities were badly affected by a Mongol invasion. Later, parts of Rus were swallowed up by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Most of its population was ethnically Slavonic. Slavonic lands enjoyed limited autonomy within the Lithuanian state. While it is sometimes wrongly assumed that Belarusian was the official language of the state, Latin, Old Russian (Ruthenian), and Polish were used side by side in state affairs. The Belarusian language emerged in the middle of the 19th century when Russian speakers in modern day Belarusian territory were subject to a heavy cultural influence from Poland. At the beginning of 17th century the Old Russian language was banned in Lithuania and replaced by Polish, which had already been dominant for centuries. The use of Old Russian (Old Slavonic-Ruthenian) was allowed in Ruthenian autonomies (principalities). Belarusian lands were easily incorporated into the Duchy within the next one hundred years, because of the strength of Lithuania and the threat of Mongols on modern day Belarusian lands. During this time, the Duchy was involved with battles between different forces. One of the major battles was between the Duchy and the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410. The Duchy won the battle and the victory allowed the Duchy to control the North-western borders of Eastern Europe. Other military battles took place between the Duchy and the Mongols and the Turks, resulting in military victories for the Duchy. By the fifteenth century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania stretched across much of Eastern Europe, spanning from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
On February 2, 1386, Grand Duke of Lithuania Jogaila was crowned King of Poland, and allied the Grand Duchy with Kingdom of Poland in a personal union. The union was formed between Jogaila and the daughter of King Luis of Poland, Jadwiga, by marriage. This was seen by the Polish as a move to end a union with Hungary. In the early parts of the This personal union eventually resulted in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a federation created in 1569. The Muscovites, led by Tsar Ivan the III, began military conquests in 1486 to try and gain the Kievan Rus' lands, specifically Belarus and Ukraine. The union between Poland and Lithuania ended in 1795, with the commonwealth partitioned and annexed by Imperial Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Belarusian territories remained part of the Russian Empire until they were occupied by Germany during World War I.
Belarus first declared independence on 25 March 1918, forming the Belarusian People's Republic. The Republic, however, was short-lived, and the regime was overthrown soon after the German withdrawal. In 1919, Belarus became the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). After Russian occupation of eastern and northern Lithuania, it was merged into the Lithuanian-Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. After the Polish-Soviet War ended in 1921, Byelorussian lands were split between Poland and the Bolsheviks, and the recreated Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922.
In September 1939, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union invaded Poland and annexed its eastern lands, including majority of Polish-held Byelorussian land.
Demographics
The majority of the population of Belarus are native Belarusians, who comprise 81.2% of the total population of 10,293,011 people. Russians are the second largest group, making up 11.4% of the population. Poles and Ukrainians account for 3.9% and 2.4% of the population, respectively.
Languages commonly spoken in Belarus are Russian and Belarusian. Both are the official languages of Belarus.
The population density is about 50 persons per square kilometer (127/sq. mi) and 71.7% of the total population lives in urban areas. Of the urban population, 24% live in Minsk, the national capital and largest city.
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north-east, Belarus to the north, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the south-west, and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The historic city of Kiev (Kyiv) is the country's capital.
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1300–1600)
On the Ukrainian territory, the state of Kievan Rus' was succeeded by the principalities of Halych and Volodymyr-Volynskyi, which were merged into the state of Halych-Volynia. In the mid-fourteenth century it was subjugated by Casimir IV of Poland while the heartland of Rus', including Kiev, fell under the Gediminids of Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Following the 1386 marriage of Lithuania's Grand Duke Jagiello to Poland's King Jadwiga (her title was "King" even though she was a woman), most of the Ukrainian territory was controlled by the increasingly Ruthenized Lithuanian rulers as part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the term Ruthenia and Ruthenians as the Latinized versions of "Rus'", became widely applied to the land and its people, respectively).
By the 1569 Union of Lublin that formed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a significant part of Ukrainian territory was moved from largely Ruthenized Lithuanian rule to the Polish administration, as it was transferred to the Polish Crown. Under the cultural pressure of polonization much of the Ruthenian upper class converted to Catholicism (such transitions were beneficial for achieving political influence within the state), for example, King Michael of Poland, who reigned from 1669 to 1673, was of the Ruthenian Vishnevetsky Wi?niowiecki family. At the same time the common people, especially the peasants retained their old ways of especially, the allegiance to their historic Eastern Orthodox Church, which led to the increasing social tensions, visible in such events as the 1596 Union of Brest, created by Sigismund III Vasa, who attempted to bring the Orthodox population under the Catholicism through creation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. This controversial move failed to achieve its goals. Resisted even by some Ruthenian magnates, otherwise loyal to the Polish kings (Ostrogskis being the most notable example), the new "intermediate" religion was unnecessary for the most of the upper class, much of whom increasingly turned directly towards Catholicism with each subsequent generation. Thus, the Ukrainian commoners, deprived of their native protectors among Ruthenian nobility, turned for protection to the Cossacks who remained fiercely Orthodox at all times.
From 1569 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot, pillage and capture slaves into jasyr. The borderland area to the south-east was in a state of semi-permanent warfare until the 18th century. Some researchers estimate that altogether more than 3 million people, predominantly Ukrainians but also Circassians, Russians, Belarusians and Poles, were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate.
Rise of the Cossacks (1600–1800)
In the mid of the seventeenth century, a Cossack state, the Zaporozhian Sich, was established by the Dnieper cossacks and the Ruthenian peasants fleeing Polish serfdom. Poland had little real control of this land in what is now central Ukraine, which became an autonomous military state, at times allied with the Commonwealth in the military campaigns. However, the enserfment of peasantry by the Polish nobility, overall emphasis of the Commonwealth's agricultural economy on the fierce exploitation of the unfree workforce, and, perhaps most importantly, the suppression of the Orthodox church pushed the allegiances of Cossacks away from Poland. Their aspiration was to have a representation in Polish Sejm, recognition of Orthodox traditions and the gradual expansion of the Cossack Registry, all being vehemently denied by the Polish kings. The cossacks turned toward Orthodox Russia, which was one reason for the later downfall of the Polish-Lithuanian state.
In 1648, Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the largest of the Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth and the Polish king John II Casimir. This uprising finally led to a partition of Ukraine between Poland and Russia. Left-Bank Ukraine was eventually integrated into Russia as the Cossack Hetmanate, following the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav and the ensuing Russo-Polish War. After the partitions of Poland in the end of the eighteenth century by Prussia, Habsburg Austria, and Russia at the end of the eighteenth century, Western Ukrainian (Galicia) was taken over by Austria, while the rest of Ukraine was progressively incorporated into the Russian Empire. Despite the promises of Ukrainian autonomy given by the treaty of Pereyaslav, Ukrainians never received the freedoms they were hoping for from Imperial Russia.
Current political situation
Ukraine is currently through a transition state after a substantial constitutional reform was introduced in the beginning of 2006. The amendments to the Constitution were meant to transform the Ukrainian state from a presidential republic to a mixed parliamentary-presidential republic. However, the amendments happened to be far from perfect and created a great opportunity for potential conflicts between the President on one side and the Parliamentary coalition on the other. The political life of Ukraine during the last year could be characterized as a constant struggle between the President and the Prime-Minister for power, which is aggravated by the fact, that the President and the Prime-Minister represent the opposite parts of the political spectrum and have some very significant differences concerning the foreign and the internal policy. This conflict has been accompanied by accusations from both parts. The President Yushchenko accuses the coalition of trying to usurp the power and take away even those powers, that he preserved after the reform. On the other hand, the coalition accuses the President of unwillingness to accept the consequences of the constitutional reform and trying to regain his former powers by all means possible.
In late March of 2007 and early April the Ukrainian political system dealt with another constitutional crisis. President Viktor Yushchenko dissolved the Ukrainian parliament and ordered an early election to be held May 27, 2007. Crowds of about 70,000 gathered on Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the central square of Kiev, and supported the dismissal of parliament, with 20,000 supporting Yanukovych's plan to keep the parliament together.[4] On April 3, 2007, President Yushchenko signed the bill into existence. Two hours later on Kiev's Maidan, it was announced to the crowds that Parliament no longer existed.
The Verkhovna Rada immediately called an emergency session and voted against Yuschenko's decree (255 votes in favor; opposition didn't participate). A group of members of the parliament took the case to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, challenging the validity of the President's decree. But the Court closed the case without opinion. A political struggle ensued between the Parliamentary coalition and the opposition.
A compromise between Yushchenko and Yanukovych has been reached to reschedule parliamentary elections for September 30, 2007. The current legal status of the parliament is unclear. Formally, the parliament has been dissolved, because more than a third of its members have resigned, and their parties cleared the reserve party lists. According to the Constitution this rendered the parliament inoperative. On the other hand, the Constitution states that the existing parliament is valid until the new parliament is elected.