Borderlands | The Animated History of Ukraine

the samurai limited edition pin is available now hurry and audios now before they run out or get one for free by signing up at patreon like all of these nice people this episode is supported by recon a wireless earbud company co-founded by ray j and many other titans of the music industry at about half the price of the leading premium brands head to buy recon dot com slash s-u-i-b-h-n-e to get a further 15 off your order which will also help support this channel ukrainian identity long precedes the formation of any nation state on this soil the modern geopolitical entity and the current ukrainian crisis can all trace their roots back to the land's unique geography and some of europe's most fascinating cultures an identity that has its foundations in no less than three geographic features the eurasian steppes the nipah river and of course the black sea these three very important parts of ukraine not only shape its culture and identity but have also made ukraine a pawn in the strategic and economic games of larger powers especially between russia and the west during the centuries of russian hegemony this was less of a problem monarchs and autocrats don't really care much for identity politics after all but post-independence the centuries of influence from outside powers have started to show but ukraine has its own nationhood and a story that goes all the way back to the migration of nomads through the pontic caspin step [Music] well it's been a long time coming the remake of my old ukraine video let's see if i can get it right this time now i know what you're thinking doesn't ukraine's history begin with the slavic migrations and the answer is kind of yes but the nomadic cultures of the eurasian steps are inseparable from ukraine's early development a step in geographic terms if you're not aware lends itself almost exclusively to the development of nomadic societies they lack geographic boundaries for defense materials for building and the grazing patterns of animals mean that well you go where the food goes this is one of the reasons why the horse was domesticated in the steps it made travel and hunting easier and facilitated the raiding of rival tribes and if a horde got big enough it might start raiding say the crumbling roman empire hordes of alan's huns avas bulgars and kazaars had passed through this area on their way to the rich lands of rome and each had left a massive influence on the slavs and directly caused their migrations in the first place if you think about it the only place being worse than rome would have been like anything on the way to rome next is our second geographic feature the nipper river which means we get to talk about vikings now the lands of the slavs you see were pretty irresistible to the swedish vikings no centralized control tons of wealth to raid and trade for and hundreds of miles of long navigable rivers through it all at the end of which lies the jackpot itself constantinople it wasn't long before these norsemen who the slavs called ruse had built a huge trade empire centered on the nipper river an old khazar trading post called kiev now of course the slavs did eventually expel the vikings from their land but then quite ironically politely asked them to return and rule them which began the medieval state known as the kievan rus to try and create some unity through religion prince vladimir the great sent envoys to all the neighboring lands to study their various faiths who reported that the jews had lost israel and therefore couldn't possibly be a blessed people the muslim bulgars were sad and stinky their words not mine and also prohibited drinking to which all vlad here laughed saying drinking is the joy of the ruse before finally settling on christianity to be specific eastern orthodox christianity ostensibly because of how impressed his envoys were with the hagia sophia but between you and me i think they were just trying to suck it up to the byzantines his son who had become known as yaroslav the wise greatly expanded the prosperity of the rush state with ukraine's oldest body of codified laws although the roofs were pretty prosperous they soon fragmented into regional rival city-states for two main reasons one was the arrival of the cubans who took control of crimea and severely handicapped their trade routes and two was the decline of its most wealthy ally constantinople thanks to a little event called the fourth crusade you really can't trace a lot of europe's history to this event huh due to increased infighting the rue cities were at their weakest point in decades and so probably wouldn't deal very well with say oh i don't know a horde of more than 30 000 mounted archers from mongolia [Music] ooh just their rotten luck the part i want to focus on here during an era called the mongol tata yoke is not so much the rapid rise of the golden horde which made the ruse its glorified cash cow through extortion but rather its inevitable and arguably more important collapse because in what was the medieval roost state three regional powers would come to fill the mongol vacuum forever driving a wedge between the north east and the southwest moscow would consolidate in the north becoming the genesis of the russian state but for ukraine that genesis was in lithuania it's hard to conceptualize this today but the lithuanian state once stretched from the baltic to the black sea later forming a union with poland absorbing swathes of those old mongol roost lands which in latin they called ruthenia this was the turning point for the lands of the roost controlled by the west diverging from those controlled by moscow through the polish-lithuanian commonwealth what would become ukraine had a direct line to western philosophy and liturgy with the greek catholic or uniate church flourishing in this period whereas moscow was isolated and inherited its autocratic rule from the mongols even more so symbolically moscow saw itself as the third rome the defender of the orthodox faith which further alienated it from the west then we have our third regional power the crimean khanate a rump state of the mongol influenced humans whom the slav simply called tatars and here we get to talk about one of the most fascinating aspects of ukrainian history with the introduction of serfdom a more severe form of feudalism thousands of peasants fled to the vast open sparsely populated frontiers to escape subjugation embracing their nomadic roots living off the land free and fairly they constructed a whole society with refugees peasants escaped serfs and slaves tatars ruthenians catholics orthodox and muslims alike they would become perhaps the most important piece of ukraine's identity the cossacks it's hard for me to overstate just how powerful the cossacks became not only were they instrumental in leveraging their autonomy and powerful armies in service of the polish crown but they became inseparable from the idea of self-determination the roots of ukrainian ideas of independence were the cossacks and if they weren't treated the way they wanted to be as equal autonomous partners then they would be more than happy to fight on behalf of someone else an opportunity they soon took during the second northern war the northern walls were a long series of not altogether related events but basically amounted to these four powers butting heads for more territory especially over the baltic sea but the part we're gonna focus on is the kamal nitsuki uprising and for this we have joe from the channel jabzy although the cossacks had formed a close bond with the commonwealth and had participated in numerous wars against the turks and tartars the spirit of independence within their homeland this apparition siege lived on tensions had reached a boiling point when king of poland john cashmere ii treated the siege with contempt and made efforts to curtail their autonomy spurred by many local cossack uprisings when wars broke out between the empires of russia sweden and poland lithuania the cossacks took the opportunity to assert their independence and revolted under the leadership of hetman bodan kamilnitsky aligning themselves with moscow to this day it is still unclear whether the treaty between the tsar and the kosaks aimed for further integration within the russian empire or simply as a temporary military corporation but the russian empire's growth in the 18th century would ensure that russia's interests would soon dominate however right bank ukraine still remained loyal to the commonwealth and when the left bank cossacks invaded poland on the side of russia it set off a series of brutal atrocities remembered in poland as the deluge and in right bank ukraine it is known as the ruin this pivotal event would not only weaken the commonwealth as a regional power but also result in the creation of a cossack hetman minute within the ironically far more heavy-handed rule of the russian tsars and if you'd like to learn more about this period come check out my video on the kemalitsky uprising over on my channel jabzy now basically from the onset of the uprising the cossacks were treated with a certain degree of suspicion by the russians they were all too happy to use them to defend against tatar raids and even to aid them in their conquest of siberia but the tsars knew all too well that a cossack revolt could spell absolute disaster if they ever lost the hetmanate's favor all the cossacks wanted was independence and russia simply couldn't allow that to happen their fears were pretty well founded as it turns out since the cossacks again switched sides in support of sweden during the great northern war but this time at the disastrous battle of poltava the kossac host was defeated and from this point on the seeds of malicious distrust in ukraine had been sown russian control over the cossacks and ruthenians in general would slowly increase over time accelerated by the partitions of poland where all of ukraine safer galicia found itself under russian rule there was of course an added benefit to increased control over the ruthenians and that was because they stood between them and something the russians deeply coveted the black sea from the 15th century onward it was clear to the russians that the only way to truly become a world power like those of western europe was through a large powerful navy but they lacked much in the way of seaports this was one of the motivations behind the northern wars after all gaining control of the baltic sea and it wasn't long before russia started eyeing the black sea as well inconveniently controlled by the ottomans and the tatars one russo turkish war later crimea was now easy pickings and annexed in 1783 just in case you thought russia annexing crimea was a new phenomenon as with most of the territories acquired by the russian empire ukraine was heavily suppressed its cossack hosts lost more and more of their autonomy the ruthenian language we now call ukrainian was banned and rebellions were violently put down this was all part of a process known as russification and one of its largest proponents was catherine the great jews were especially affected by these policies restricted to stay in an area known as the pale in small economically disadvantaged communities called the shtetl which greatly contributed to the suppression of jewish culture now although 19th century russia was succeeding in the spreading of its internal power the same cannot be said for its place on the world stage and their intellectual control over ruthenia would weaken due to several reasons firstly was the spreading of the enlightenment ideas of self-determination during the french revolution secondly the revolutions of 1848 and thirdly the very overt demonstration that russia was not the invincible power it fancied itself losing major world conflicts in the disastrous campaigns of the crimean war and the russo-japanese war had exposed a weakness in the tsarist regime that had stubbornly lacked reform and industrialization on the scale of other nations it's not surprising then to see that ukraine was at the ready to go its own way during the worst conflict europe was to know at the time at the outbreak of the first world war the effects of which would lead to the russian civil war it's worthwhile to remember that the russian civil war was by no means a monolith it was a complicated network of ever-changing alliances and this is no more evident than in ukraine where it is remembered as the ukrainian war for independence and independence they ultimately did not achieve the anti-bolshevik white army allied with some of the ukrainian nationalists who in turn had allied with the second polish republic the black army had initially seized sways of territory to form an anarcho-socialist society before eventually allying with the bolshevik reds and the bolsheviks even used ukraine as a bargaining chip to seal a peace with germany in 1918 but also with poland in 1921 which is where the borders were ultimately settled on again splitting ukraine in two it was not until the second world war that west ukraine would be reunited by force i've covered the history of the soviet union in a separate video so i won't go into too much detail about this era here but i do want to go over some important details in ukraine's more contemporary development the first was that of exploitation ukraine became a massive center of industrialization and natural resources in the soviet era making it a huge target for two of humanity's worst dictators not only hitler during the invasion of the soviet union but also the soviet's own premier joseph stalin whose lad reforms would cause the great soviet famine known as the holodomor which led to the deaths of between 3 and 12 million ukrainian peasants a majority of the more than 2 million soviet jews who perished in the holocaust but also from ukraine which erased almost all of its historical jewish community in kiev alone the ss killed more than 30 000 jews in just two days during the infamous babanyan massacre the second is more to do with ukraine's current geopolitical standpoint which i think is vital to understanding post-independence ukraine which has been in a push and pull in two directions directly linked to its unique geography the vast open steps are still envied by the kremlin who has lost one of its great buffer zones to nato pro-western leadership in this young nation has been hamstrung by russian influence on more than one occasion russia wants ukraine to be a quiet and stable ally and they've actively supported pro-russian separatists since 2014 the nipper river still forms the nucleus of the nation and a divide that has gone back centuries by influences from outside powers the inhabitants on the east of this river are still more likely to identify as and to speak russian thanks to centuries of oppression under the tsars and the soviet union and of course the black sea is still as hotly contested as ever fearing ukraine moving to closer ties with the european union and the rampant instability of the ukrainian crisis russia illegally annexed the crimean peninsula to protect its black sea ports the current ukrainian crisis may feel new but it's worth remembering that we're not at the end of ukraine's story nor are we ever we're in the middle of its most recent chapter and conceptualizing its past may help with its future going forward [Music] thank you to today's sponsor ray kong sorry no clever segues this time all i want to let you know is that i hate buying earbuds they're always way too expensive these days and audiophiles talk endlessly with words i don't understand and at the end of the day they're probably gonna get lost or eaten by my dog anyway so raycon is the perfect solution to all my problems a good pair of earbuds should be comfortable affordable and also sound great and these everyday e25 models tick all three of those boxes if you like the co-founder ray j which is sick of good audio being too expensive then these will be perfect for you too i run in these i sleep in them you barely notice them there and they sound just like other great premium brands and they start at about half the price don't put off good earbuds any longer head to buy raycon dot com slash sui bhne for a huge 15 off your already super affordable order and you'll be supporting the channel when you do [Music] thank you everyone for watching i know this remake has been a long time coming i must admit i was a little gun-shy about tackling this topic again since the first one i made i'm pretty sure i was way under 100 000 subscribers so i hope i managed to get it right this time hope everyone is keeping safe follow me on twitter or join my subreddit if you'd like to discuss the episode and are so inclined until next time

Channel: Suibhne

Views: 1,555,721

Keywords: ukraine, history, suibhne, animated history of ukraine, cossacks, kmelnytsky, poltava, sich, vikings, poland lithuania, russia

Id: zJvz3Ai9Ppw

Length: 17min 1sec (1021 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 14 2020