|
|
Article: Ukraine
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
UKRAINE
UKRAINE.
Ukraine entered the fifteenth century with no independent state of its own, as the formerly powerful principalities of Galicia and Volhynia
—
heirs of the once mighty Kievan Rus'
—
succumbed to the rule of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. While the Rus' elites of the Galicia and Kholm regions, annexed by Poland in 1387, played little if any role in the political life of the Polish state, their counterparts in the rest of the Ruthenian (Ukrainian and Belarusian) territories, which were taken over by the Lithuanian princes in the course of the fourteenth century, became the most influential political force in the Grand Duchy of ...