During the 5th and 6th centuries, the Hunnic and Gothic kingdoms had fallen, and Slavs began to migrate in all directions, settling as far south as the Balkans, the Oder River, and the Arctic.

Such land became in course of time private property.”[2] Before the rise of Rus, the first East Slavic state, a Turkic people who adopted Judaism established an empire on the Caspian Sea that included the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, southern Russia, and eastern Ukraine.

[3] Trade between the Khazars and Swedes increased during this time, requiring the Varangians, or as they styled themselves, Rus, to follow the River Dnieper south across Eastern Europe.

The area of early Slavdom, which roughly coincides with the territory of Ukraine, was at an important crossroad, namely, barbarian migrations from the north, south, and west.

[citation needed] Circa AD 800, the Varangians Askold and Dir organised an army and travelled down the Dnieper to Kiev in order to save the city's inhabitants from a besieging tribe.

There was also the fact that the elites and boyars were united by common language: Church Slavonic, which is demonstrated by the lack of translators in the courts of various princes from all parts of Kievan Rus'.

As previously mentioned, after the death of Grand Prince Igor, the Rus language began to develop dialectal forms, corresponding with the conquering of the northern Slavic towns such as Suzdal and Vladimir and the future nation-states of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.

Though this did not lead to drastic estrangement between the monarch and commoners, it provided friction between the boyars and the centralised authority, much like the conflicts being played out in the Kingdoms of France and England at the same time.

“All the power of government rested originally in the hands of the general assembly of all freemen, whose decrees were executed by elected officials, consisting in part of the war-chieftains,” who became subservient to the princes of the Rurik dynasty.

The royalty of Kiev rested their power on military control and over time developed a tradition of central government: the boyars in this respect had the advantage, since their institution of “noble democracy” was well established, even during the tribal era.

The military alliances were formed with Poland, Hungary, and Romania, against the Mongol "Golden Horde", which had conquered the northern Rus principalities and the old centre of Rusyn culture, Kiev.

During the era of Golden Horde hegemony over parts of the Eastern Slavic tribes, a frontier that was lawless and sparsely populated formed on the edge of Kievan Rus' and Halych-Volhynia domains, to the south and west of these political entities.

It was a no-man's land until the Ruthenian (not to be confused with modern Rusyns) peasants, merchants, and nobles began to flee there and settle it, calling the new frontier Zaporizhia, or “past the rapids.” The extent of Rus control in the south was set at the first rapids on the River Dnieper.

For that matter, in the 14th to 18th centuries, scholars could not agree as to whether Ruthenians (medieval Latin term for Ukrainians and Belarusians) should be grouped with Poland or Muscovy (proto-Russia).

As far back as Kievan Rus', Rurikid dynasty members were married to Western and Central European royalty, such as the ruling houses of England and France.

During the period of increased European cultural influence, the Ruthenian identity appears among ethnic Belarusians and Ukrainians, whose lands had been transferred to the administration of Lithuania and Poland, respectively.

Their origins lie in the establishment of small communities on the outskirts of Polish and Tsarist control, to the south and west of traditional centres of Ukrainian power and culture.

These Cossacks, who stood up to Polish, Turkish, and Russian imperial authority, were the true national heroes of Ukraine during this time, and defined what it was to be Ukrainian for generations to come.

The subsequent revival of Ukrainian culture and nationalism during the 19th century in Kharkiv was hugely influenced by Cossack exploits in state-building and keeping the rival imperial powers at bay.

[16] To that effect, the Tsarist government adopted the policy of Russification, which would continue to play a major role in domestic politics within the Russian Empire and Soviet Union until the independence of Eastern European nations behind the Iron Curtain.

[18] This precarious hold on the past could have been eliminated had there been universal primary education including Russian language courses and history lessons that legitimised the rule of the Romanovs.

[19] Simultaneously, the colonisation of Nova Rossiya (New Russia), or the southern and western peripheries of Ukraine, attracted a wide array of people from all over the Russian empire.

The Tsentralna Rada, or the Central Council initially governed the newly independent Ukrainian state, elected nationalist historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky as its president.

When the Central Powers (Germany, Austria, Ottoman, and Bulgaria) lost the war and agreed to an armistice in November 1918, all German armies within Ukraine were recalled and another socialist government, the Directorate, overthrew the conservative monarchy of Skoropadsky.

The Directorate overthrew the Hetmanate by force through the cooperation of the Sich Rifles, who had been established with the purpose of providing the Ukrainian National Republic a military defence in the volatile climate of Eastern Europe.

The Directorate signed peace treaties with Poland and Romania, allowing it to focus its efforts on defeating the anti-Bolshevik and Bolshevik forces that threatened Ukraine’s newfound autonomy.

During the German occupation of Ukraine, many nationalists became disillusioned with the Nazis and Soviets because of the retention of collectivised agricultural policies and deportation of Ukrainians to forced-labour in Germany.

However, since Ukraine sported many crucial economic sectors, such as agriculture, weapons and rocket manufacturing, it was heavily garrisoned by the Soviet armed forces and attempts were made to “Russify” the population.

These policies had an enormous impact on Ukrainian elites, many of whom became high-ranking members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, such as Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev.

This civic citizenship policy was a result of conflicting ideas over Ukrainian identity advocated by the Soviet elites, the political left and right.