Quote:
Originally Posted by gwynedd1
Ukraine was never a country and that is due in part to their leaders which had a habit of undermining their princes , and inviting foreign influence. Their nobility adopted Polish culture and then back again to orthodoxy.
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Sorry but I think you are confused here.
The Orthodoxy started in what's now "Ukraine," ( that's the birth place of the Russian orthodoxy, that's where the
Christianisation of the Kievan Rus' took place,) and it had nothing to do with the Catholic Poland.
Poland came in the picture much later, when "Russia proper" grew eastward and was not able to retain all of its original Orthodox lands, that it lost to Poland ( or rather to Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.)
Ukrainians however remained Orthodox, and they were suppressed by the Catholic Poland, that was regarding them as people of a second sort.
That's why they HAD to ask for Moscow's protection and joined "Russia proper" back in the 1600ies.
The two Westernmost provinces of Ukraine were the only place that made agreement with the Catholic church back in 1200ies, and their destiny thus was different from the rest of Ukraine. They were the exception, and throughout their history they were always part of something else - be that POlish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or Austro-Hungarian Empire. Not Russia.
But that's not "Ukraine," only a small part of it - the part that Stalin adjoined to "Ukraine" only in 1939, and that was nothing but a troublemaker ever since.
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