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History of Ukrania in Ottoman TimesThe first people to unify and control it for a long period were Scandinavians known as the Rus. The Rus took Kiev in 882 AD, and by the late 10th century the city was the center of a unified state known as Kievan Rus, which stretched from the Volga west to the Danube and south to the Baltic. In 988, the Kievan Rus leader Volodymyr accepted Christianity from Constantinople, beginning a long period of Byzantine influence over Ukrainian politics and culture in Ukrainian History. The Kievan Rus splintered into over a dozen rival princedoms in the 12th century, many of them falling under foreign domination in Ukrainian History. The Crimea became a vassal of the Constantinople-based Ottoman Turk Empire, which controlled all of coastal Ukraine by 1520 in Ukrainian History. Military devastation and plague had wiped out much of the population of the Ukrainian steppe by the 15th century, when the region became popular with runaway serfs and Orthodox refugees escaping more tightly controlled neighboring domains in Ukrainian History. These people came to be known as kazaks (Cossacks), a Turkic word meaning outlaw, adventurer or freebooter. Ukrainian Cossacks eventually formed a state that, although officially under Polish and later Russian rule, was to a significant degree self-ruling in Ukrainian History. Despite destroying the Polish army in 1648, Ukraine's independence was short-lived, ending 20 years later when treaties between Poland and Russia divided the country between the two powers. Russia took even more of the country when it partitioned Poland in the late 18th century in Ukrainian History. Ukrainian nationalism flourished in the 1840s, prompting Russian authorities to ban the Ukrainian language in schools, journals and books. The country's southern extremity was briefly involved in the Crimean War of 1854-56, when an Anglo-French-Turkish force besieged the Russian naval headquarters at Sevastopol. Inept command on both sides resulted in a bloody, stalemated war. The city was damaged so badly that Mark Twain, visiting the city a decade later, wrote, 'In whatsoever direction you please, your eye encounters scarcely anything but ruin, ruin, ruin!' Following WWI and the collapse of tsarist authority in Ukrainian History, Ukraine finally had a chance to gain its independence, but none of the bewildering array of factions could win decisive support. Civil war broke out and the country quickly descended into anarchy, with six armies vying for power and Kiev changing hands five times in one year in Ukrainian History. After prolonged fighting involving Russia, Poland and various Ukrainian political and ethnic factions, Poland retained portions of western Ukraine and the Soviets got the rest. Ukraine officially became part of the USSR in 1922 in Ukrainian History.
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