On Nov. 19, the world marked 1,000 days of Russia’s war against Ukraine. However, this war did not simply start Feb. 24, 2022, with Russia’s most recent large-scale invasion. As the American Historical Association tells us, “Everything Has a History.”
Ukraine is an independent and sovereign nation. It has a history. It deserves to exist.
Ukraine’s story often begins in the ninth century with the creation of Kyivan Rus, the first major state of the eastern Slavic peoples. It was centered in Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv.
After the Mongol Empire destroyed Kyivan Rus in the 13th century, numerous states competed for Ukraine’s territory. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Zaporozhian Host, an independent state, grew in central Ukraine. It was destroyed by the Russian Empire.
In Forging the Modern World, St. Joe’s students learn empires are created by violent conquest. They are characterized by autocracy and oppression. Elites often cruelly rule over a vast, multi-ethnic majority with few rights.
In the 19th century, the Russian Empire was the third-largest empire the world had ever known (behind the Mongols and British). It conquered lands in East Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Europe and North America. Its monarchs ruled with iron fists. They brutally suppressed opposition and imposed cultural Russification.
When the Russian Empire collapsed in 1917, Ukrainians declared a new, independent Ukrainian People’s Republic. The rising Soviet state crushed it, but with the fall of the USSR in 1991, Ukrainians successfully gained an independent state.
Sadly, admirers of empires have not disappeared. Not long ago, they included the likes of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. In the early 2000s, Putin joined them by launching a plan to rebuild a Russian-dominated Eurasian empire.
In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine. It seized territory and started a war. In 2019, I visited Kyiv. Everywhere I went, there were posters, billboards and memorials to those fighting and dying. This war escalated to an extreme level when Russia invaded again in 2022.
At St. Joe’s, there are students, staff and faculty with loved ones in Ukraine. They deserve our support. Ukraine deserves our support.
Melissa Chakars, Ph.D., is a professor of history and chair of the history department.
