Repository: UIHistories Project: War Publications - WWI Compilation 1923 - Article 21 [PAGE 4]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

warriors they have evolved in Zaporogia, which wai the si,ul 0f th Ukraine, a peculiar military organization of Coatack . The G* wore ruled by a " H e t m a n " elected each year from the nnL-. people and lisp.•

of

i i i — ~*

^

Maine*

tlurc, in the ninth century, on the banks of the river 1 )nicper, arose the first important Russian pr.ncipality, that of Kiev. It was from Kiev that the Scandinavian princes who ruled over the Russian Slavs made their expeditions against Hyzantium and it was through Kiev that the Byzantine influcnccsgradually penetrati d northward and westward into Russia, making themselves felt in Vladimir and in Smolensk, in Novgorod and in Moscow. Prince Vladimir of Kiev accepted the Gltek form or Christianity in 988 and after that for about two centuries Kiev, "the mother of Russian towns," played the leading role in the political and cultural lite of the Russian Slavs. The Kievite Russia became a victim ot internal dissensions; it disintegrated even before Ghenghiz Khan with his Mongolian hordes in the thirteenth century swept over the country, filling it with terror and devastation, and exacting tribute from all. Submerged for over two centuries and a half beneath thefloodof the latar invasion the Ukrainians were too weak in the fifteenth century to withstand the encroachments of the Polish-Lithuanian State; they were conquered, but not subdued. Frequent bloodv uprisings took place in which the ruthless and fiendish brutality of the Ukrainians was matched by the refined cruelty of the Poles. It was in 1653, when m St a bitious att Z nV ° ^ ^ P t s to regain freedom had failed, that the U n m a n s offered their allegiance to Czar Alexei Mikhailovich. MuSC Vlte G tion t o ^ T ° °vernment at that time showed little inclinam 0 n aUSe W i t h t h e u n r , v C Wthv n ^ 7 K " ^ a c k s . However, after y P n f Ukra5 e rainty o^1ZT% *' ^ * ° " came under the suze-

of eastern Galicia and nonkVsLt f ^ present about 4,000,000 LittTe p ' . - > where there dwell » Ruthenians. Russians known under the name of Since the second half of the «„(,* n t h k C c n t u e be the land of wild frJ' .^? T Ukraine ceased to military

4

Dnie er with the e S uTo w i n a P > B k