About “The” Ukraine

There was a reason why we used the definite article.

When I was younger, we always referred to the country we now call Ukraine as “The Ukraine.” that is because the word “Ukraine” comes from the Slavic word “Ukraina” — which means “borderlands” (the word is the same in both Russian and Polish). So it was never really its own country.

Both the Russians and the Poles called it “the borderlands”.

Italian map of “European Tartaria” (1684). Dnieper Ukraine is marked as “Vkraine or the land of Zaporozhian Cossacks” (Vkraina o Paese de Cosacchi di Zaporowa). In the east there is “Vkraine or the land of Don Cossacks, who are subject to Muscovy” (Vkraina overo Paese de Cosacchi Tanaiti Soggetti al Moscovita).

In other words, the place now called Ukraine was always regarded as an outlying territory that formed the buffer between Russia and other states.

Indeed, much of what we now call Ukraine was “owned” by Poland, Austria and Hungary (in the West) and by Russia (in the East). It truly was a “borderland” that separated Russia from Western Europe.

In fact, another name for this place was “Mala Rus” — which means literally “Little Russia”.

Under the Soviet Union, The Ukraine was made into a Soviet Socialist Republic as part of the USSR. Sort of like how the New Mexico Territory became a U.S. State.

Then, the Soviet Union collapsed, and in 1991 — for the FIRST TIME IN HISTORY — the world witnessed the emergence of an independent “Ukraine”. But for Moscow, that place, and those people, were still “Little Russia.”