[64] Ukrainian peasants still referred to their country as "Ukraine" (a name associated with the Zaporozhian Sich, with the Hetmanate and with their struggle against Poles, Russians, Turks and Crimean Tatars) and to themselves and their language as Ruthenians/Ruthenian.

[61][62][63][65] The appellation Ukrainians initially came into common usage in Central Ukraine[66][67] and did not take hold in Galicia and Bukovina until the latter part of the 19th century, in Transcarpathia until the 1930s, and in the Prešov Region until the late 1940s.

[81] According to some previous assumptions,[citation needed] an estimated number of almost 2.4 million people of Ukrainian origin live in North America (1,359,655 in Canada and 1,028,492 in the United States).

Large numbers of Ukrainians live in Brazil (600,000),[b] Kazakhstan (338,022), Moldova (325,235), Argentina (305,000), (Germany) (272,000), Italy (234,354), Belarus (225,734), Uzbekistan (124,602), the Czech Republic (110,245), Spain (90,530–100,000) and Romania (51,703–200,000).

There are also large Ukrainian communities in such countries as Latvia, Portugal, France, Australia, Paraguay, the UK, Israel, Slovakia, Kyrgyzstan, Austria, Uruguay and the former Yugoslavia.

[86][c] In the last decades of the 19th century, many Ukrainians were forced by the Tsarist autocracy to move to the Asian regions of Russia, while many of their counterpart Slavs under Austro-Hungarian rule emigrated to the New World seeking work and better economic opportunities.

[87] Today, large ethnic Ukrainian minorities reside in Russia, Canada, the United States, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Italy and Argentina.

[91] The Gothic historian Jordanes and 6th-century Byzantine authors named two groups that lived in the south-east of Europe: Sclavins (western Slavs) and Antes.

[98] Ukrainians, like most Europeans, largely descend from three distinct lineages:[99] Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, descended from populations associated with the Paleolithic Epigravettian culture;[100] Neolithic Early European Farmers who migrated from Anatolia during the Neolithic Revolution 9,000 years ago;[101] and Yamnaya Steppe pastoralists who expanded into Europe from the Pontic–Caspian steppe of Ukraine and southern Russia in the context of Indo-European migrations 5,000 years ago.

Among them the most known are Hutsuls,[111] Volhynians, Boykos and Lemkos (otherwise known as Carpatho-Rusyns – a derivative of Carpathian Ruthenians),[dubious – discuss] each with particular areas of settlement, dialect, dress, and folk traditions.

In the 9th century the Varangians from Scandinavia conquered the proto-Slavic tribes on the territory of today's Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia and laid the groundwork for the Kievan Rus' state.

The internecine wars between Rus' princes, which began after the death of Yaroslav the Wise,[113] led to the political fragmentation of the state into a number of principalities.

The quarreling between the princes left Kievan Rus' vulnerable to foreign attacks, and the invasion of the Mongols in 1236. and 1240. finally destroyed the state.

The Cossacks of Zaporizhzhia since the late 15th century controlled the lower bends of the river Dnieper, between Russia, Poland and the Tatars of Crimea, with the fortified capital, Zaporozhian Sich.

A brilliant military leader, his greatest achievement in the process of national revolution was the formation of the Cossack Hetmanate state of the Zaporozhian Host (1648–1782).

The period of the Ruin in the late 17th century in the history of Ukraine is characterized by the disintegration of Ukrainian statehood and general decline.

Ukrainian leaders during the period are considered to have been largely opportunists and men of little vision who could not muster broad popular support for their policies.

But news and information about what was going on reached the West and evoked public responses in Polish-ruled Western Ukraine and in the Ukrainian diaspora.

[123] As of March 2008, the parliament of Ukraine and the governments of several countries, including the United States have recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide.

When the German armies invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, those regions temporarily became part of the Nazi-controlled Reichskommissariat Ukraine.

The pro-Soviet partisan guerrilla resistance in Ukraine is estimated to number at 47,800 from the start of occupation to 500,000 at its peak in 1944, with about 50% being ethnic Ukrainians.

[124] A concerted effort to reverse the growth of Ukrainian national consciousness was begun by the regime of Joseph Stalin in the late 1920s, and continued with minor interruptions until the most recent times.

[125] Even after Joseph Stalin's death the concept of a Russified though multiethnic Soviet people was officially promoted, according to which the non-Russian nations were relegated to second-class status[citation needed].

[128] Attempts to introduce a territorial-political concept of Ukrainian nationality on the Western European model (presented by political philosopher Vyacheslav Lypynsky) were unsuccessful until the 1990s.

The official declaration of Ukrainian sovereignty of 16 July 1990 stated that "citizens of the Republic of all nationalities constitute the people of Ukraine.

A strong Christian culture was predominant for many centuries, although Ukraine was also the center of conflict between the Catholic, Orthodox and Islamic spheres of influence.

[citation needed] However, it was only by the 10th century that the emerging state, the Kievan Rus', became influenced by the Byzantine Empire; the first known conversion was by the Princess Saint Olga who came to Constantinople in 945 or 957.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union there has been a growth of Protestant churches (Baptists, Evangelism, Pentecostalism)[e][140] There are also ethnic minorities that practice other religions, i.e. Crimean Tatars (Islam), and Jews and Karaim (Judaism).

[148] Ukraine is often called the "Breadbasket of Europe", and its plentiful grain and cereal resources such as rye and wheat play an important part in its cuisine; essential in making various kinds of bread.

Religious music existed in Ukraine before the official adoption of Christianity, in the form of plainsong "obychnyi spiv" or "musica practica".