Ukraine: time line of key events.

UKRAINE: TIME LINE OF KEY EVENTS

Since the 16th century, the name Ukraine has been used to refer to the area known as Ukraine today. The word means "borderland" or "at the border," and it fits. Throughout Ukraine's long history, its borders have repeatedly shifted or been invaded by neighboring peoples. Although the dispute over the country's 2004 presidential elections made headlines around the world, political conflict is nothing new to Ukrainians.

This time line shows some of the key political events in Ukraine's modern history. Read it, then answer the questions that follow. Write your answers on a separate sheet of paper.

TIME LINE

1918-1922: Ukraine declares its independence in 1918. In 1919, Russian troops invade and eventually win control. In 1922, Ukraine becomes one of the Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union.

1932-1933: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin forces peasants to work on state-run collective farms. Farmers must ship most of their produce to the Soviet Union. Resistance by farmers is brutally repressed. Without food, a famine results, killing as many as 7 million people.

1941-1945: During World War II, Nazi German troops occupy Ukraine. They kill more than 500,000 Ukrainian Jews. In all, more than 5 million Ukrainian civilians die. After the war, the Soviets control Ukraine. Stalin sends hundreds of thousands to concentration camps.

1953-1959: Stalin dies. In 1955, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev frees the majority of Ukrainians from concentration camps. Khrushchev also attempts to reduce Ukrainian identity by "Russification," in which Ukrainian-language instruction is replaced with Russian.

1960s-1972: Small, secret dissident groups begin to oppose Communist control. Defense of Ukrainian culture gradually becomes more open, especially among Ukraine's youth. In 1972, the government cracks down with mass arrests and tighter restrictions.

1970s-1989: Ukraine is dominated by Communist leader Vladimir Shcherbitsky and a repressive government. But Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost (openness), started in 1986, leads to new calls for independence. Shcherbitsky resigns in 1989.

1991: A coup fails in Moscow but leads to the breakup of the Soviet Union. On August 24, Ukraine again declares its independence, which becomes official in December, when approved by more than 90 percent of Ukrainian voters. Ukraine holds its first presidential election.

1994-2001: Leonid Kuchma, an economic reformer, is elected President in 1994. The country adopts a new constitution in 1996. In 1999, Kuchma is elected to a second term as President. Viktor Yushchenko serves for 17 months as Prime Minister.

2004-2005: Viktor Yanukovich is declared winner of the November 2004 presidential election. Widespread cheating is reported, and protests grow. In a new election, Viktor Yushchenko wins. He is sworn in as President in January 2005.

QUESTIONS

1. When, in the span of time covered by this time line, did Ukraine first declare its independence?

2. When was the Moscow coup that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union?

3. What does Ukraine mean?

4. What was the term for the Soviet policy of reducing Ukrainian national identity?

5. When did Ukraine's Communist government use mass arrests and tighter restrictions to squelch youth protests?

6. In what year did a huge percentage of voters approve Ukraine's declaration of independence?

7. What country occupied Ukraine during most of World War II?

8. What caused a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians?

9. Nazi German troops killed about one-third of Ukraine's Jewish population. What was the Jewish population before the German invasion?

10. What was ironic about Ukraine's new calls for independence in the late 1980s?

1. 1918

2. 1991

3. "borderland" or "at the border"

4. Russification

5. 1972

6. 1991

7. Nazi Germany

8. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin forced peasants to work on state-run collective farms. Most of what they produced was sent to the Soviet Union, leaving them too little food.

9. about 1.5 million

10. They were partly inspired by the program of glasnost, or openness, from Mikhail Gorbachev, head of the Soviet Union. The irony was that Ukraine's historic oppressor emboldened the country to press for freedom.