When Ukraine Was Re-Born Part II

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

  Golda Meir, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Mila Kunis and    Sholom Alechem were all born in Ukraine and are Jews

Ukraine was the site of early Slavic expansion, and enters history proper with the establishment of the medieval state of Kievan Rus', which emerged as a powerful nation in the Middle Ages but disintegrated by the mid-12th century. 

The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people that in the late 6th-century CE established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, Crimea, and Kazakhstan

Kiev was a Russian city, capital of Ukraine, founded in the 8th century, possibly by the Khazars, people that converted to Judaism.   Jewish merchants visited the town in the 9th and 20th centuries with the Jewish population growing there steadily, despite persecutions which started in 1113.  The community was destroyed by the Tartars in 1240. The Tatars is an umbrella term for different Turkic ethnic groups bearing the name "Tatar". Initially, the ethnonym Tatar possibly referred to the Tatar confederation. That confederation was eventually incorporated into the Mongol Empire when Genghis Khan unified the various steppe tribes.                    

By the end of the 14th century, Jews were encouraged to return.  However, they were expulsed twice;  in 1495 (after Columbus sailed the ocean blue) and 1619, the year before Pilgrims took the Mayflower from Holland to America's Plymouth Rock.  

1362 – 1503
1362 – Kiev is conquered by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. 1495 – Jews are exiled from Kiev as well as from all Lithuania. 
1503 – the decree of exile is revoked by Alexander Jagiellon; revival of the Jewish community.  

1654
Kiev becomes a part of the Tsardom of Muscovy; Jews are not allowed to settle in the city.

With the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in December 1991, Ukraine gained full independence. The country changed its official name to Ukraine, and it helped to found the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an association of countries that were formerly republics of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine had experienced a brief period of independence in 1918–20, but portions of western Ukraine were ruled by Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia in the period between the two World Wars, and Ukraine thereafter became part of the Soviet Union as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (S.S.R.).   

Modern Town & Country	Other Names	c. 1950 After WWII Town / Country	c. 1930 Between Wars Town / District / Province / Country	c. 1900 Before WWI Town / District / Province / Country	# of JGFF Entries
Lviv, Ukraine 49°50' N 24°00' E 292 miles W of Kyyiv	L'viv [Ukr], Lwów [Pol], Lemberg [Ger], Lemberik [Yid], L'vov [Rus], Leopol [Lat]	L'vov Soviet Union	Lwów Lwów Lwów Poland	Lemberg Lwów Galicia

When Poland was reborn after WWI,  its leaders sought to regain the former pre-partition state borders. So, they aspired to acquire some of the areas from which the Ukrainians wanted to create their state. In 1918, it was impossible to delineate a clear border separating Poles from Ukrainians. The best example is the city of Lviv (earlier Lwów), where before the Second World War most of the inhabitants were Poles, but mainly Ukrainians lived in the surrounding villages.

   'Signing the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR,' by Stepan Dudnik

We all remember On December 30, 1922, these constituent republics established the U.S.S.R. Additional union republics (Soviet Socialist Republics) were set up in subsequent years: the Turkmen and Uzbek S.S.R.'s in 1924, the Tadzhik S.S.R. in 1929, and the Kazakh and Kirgiz S.S.R.'s in 1936.

               Lenin and Stalin

Interesting fact: In 1922, Stalin was a People’s Commissar (de facto, minister) for Nationalities of the Russian Republic. And it was he who, together with Lenin, on November 3, 1917, signed the ‘Declaration of the Rights for the Peoples of Russia’ that particularly said: “The right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination, even to the point of separation and the formation of an independent state.” Now, Stalin was going for quite the opposite.

When the Soviet Union began to unravel in 1990–91, the legislature of the Ukrainian S.S.R. declared sovereignty (July 16, 1990) and then outright independence (August 24, 1991), a move that was confirmed by popular approval in a plebiscite (December 1, 1991). 

Back during the 14th and 15th centuries, present-day Ukrainian territories came under the rule of three external powers: the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland (which later constituted the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and then the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth).                   

     Golden Horde, also called Kipchak Khanate, Russian designation for the Ulus Juchi, the western part of the Mongol empire, which flourished from the mid-13th century to the end of the 14th century. The people of the Golden Horde were a mixture of Turks and Mongols, with the latter generally constituting the aristocracy.  (Our Jewish males'DNA tests on QBZ67 haplogroup -like my father-origin,  was said to be from Siberia, Mongolia and parts of Turkey).   

     The Crimean Khanate officially the Great Horde and Desht-i Kipchak and in old European historiography and geography known as Little Tartary. (Latin: Tartaria ...

This all became the Pale of Settlement created by Catherine the Great of Russia.  The Pale consisted of 25 provinces of Czarist Russia (in Poland, Lithuania, White Russia, Ukraine, Bessarabia, and Crimea) where Jews were permitted permanent residence.  This was instituted in 1791 by decree of Catherine.  Borders were arbitrarily restricted to Jews from time to time.  They were penned in. No wonder that Jews find relatives from Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine and wonder in which they were born.  

Russia's Putin has to dig way back to Kievan Rus' in the Middle Ages to have a claim on Ukraine, and then it wasn't for very long.  

David Livingston / Getty ImagesIn case you weren’t aware, Mila, American actress, was born in Ukraine before moving to the US as a child. And so, after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of her home country in late February, Mila and her husband, Ashton, have been raising their voices — and funds — to support those in need.  Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher have always been vocal when it comes to issues close to their hearts, and now, with Mila’s native Ukraine currently under attack, the couple is speaking out more than ever.  For one, they are reminding their children that they are half Ukrainian. 

 On March 3, Mila and Ashton announced a fundraising goal of $30 million to help Ukrainians affected by the war, donating $3 million of their own money to the cause. Within 48 hours, the couple hit a halfway point and ultimately reached their goal on March 17, after over 65,000 donations.

As an aside, Kutcher grew up as a Roman Catholic. As an adult, he practices Kabbalah, and has visited Israel and studied the Torah; his wife Mila Kunis stated that he "taught [me] everything I never knew" about her religion, Judaism, though as of 2018, he has not converted. On trips to Israel, Kutcher visited Kabbalah centers in Tel Aviv and in Tsfat. In 2013, Kutcher remarked, "Israel is near and dear to my heart ... coming to Israel is sort of coming back to the source of creation – trying to get closer to that. And as a creative person, going to the source of creation is really inspiring. And this place has been really inspiring for me – not only on a spiritual level, but also on an artistic and creative level."

Resource:

https://www.yadvashem.org/education/educational-materials/learning-environment/babi-yar/historical-background2.html

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/16-jews-from-ukraine-who-changed-the-world/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Khanate

https://www.britannica.com/place/Golden-Horde

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ukraine

https://warsawinstitute.org/poland-ukraine-history-divides/

https://www.britannica.com/place/Soviet-Union

https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine