(uit de Lonely Planet)
Population: 2.6 millionKiev (Kyiv in Ukrainian) is not only the capital of Ukraine but also the mother City for all Eastern Slavic peoples. Kievan Rus, the state from which Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are all descended, was established here between the 9th and 1lth centuries. Kievan Rus was also the place of origin of the Russian Orthodox Church and all Eastern Slavic art and architecture. The state from which all later Eastern Slavic states were descended (Kievan Rus), the Russian Orthodox Church and Eastern Slavic art and architecture were all founded here between the 9th and 1lth centuries. Russian is widely heard on the street, but most people also speak Ukrainian, which is slowly becoming more prevalent as Kiev tries to define and establish its independence in the aftermath of over 300 years of rule from Moscow.
St Sophia Cathedral and the Caves Monastery are two of the country's most fascinating sites, dating back to the days of Kievan Rus. The city's old areas stand on wooded hills above the west bank of the snaking Dnipro River. Modern Kiev's wide boulevards and broad squares can 't match the allure of the city's heritage which has somehow managed to survive Mongol invasions, devastating fires, communist urban planning and the massive destruction of WW II. Today, Kiev has a big-city atmosphere, more cosmopolitan than any other in the country, but within its urban sprawl, gracious testaments to its tumultuous history can still he found.
Archaeology suggests Kiev has existed since the late 5th century (482 is the official date), although traces of earlier human settlements have been discovered in the area. An 11th- century chronicle written by the monks of the Caves Monastery says it was founded by the leaders of an Eastern Slay tribe - the three brothers Ky (after whom the city is said to be named), Shchek and Khoriv, and their sister Lybid, whose names today demark the topography of the city. In the 9th century, Scandinavians from Novgorod took control of Kiev from the Magyars, Asiatic vassals of the Khazars. The story goes that in 882, a Scandinavian called Oleb killed two other Scandinavians, Askold and Dir, who had had some kind of arrangement with the Magyars, and declared himself an independent ruler, inaugurating Kievan Rus. 'Rus' was the original name given by Eastern Slays to the Scandinavian traders/settlers who eventually became their overlords; Kievan Rus became the name for the great state which was eventually ruled from Kiev by this Slavicised Scandinavian dynasty. Kiev thrived off the river trade, sending furs, honey and slaves to pay for the luxuries of Constantinople. Under the rule of Svyatoslav (962-72), the state governed an area spreading from the Volga to the Danube to Novgorod.
Constantinople was one rival that couldn't be defeated, and in 988 Svyatoslav's son Volodymyr, evidently deciding that if he couldn't beat them he might as well join them, married the emperor's sister and adopted Christianity as his state religion. Kiev's pagath idols were destroyed, and its people baptised in the Dnipro. Under Volodymyr's son Yaroslav the Wise (1017-54), Kiev became a cultural and political centre in the Byzantine mould. St Sophia cathedral was built to proclaim the glory of both God and city. Like all great cities, it exploited its favourable geographic location, becoming the primary trading centre and, economic hub between the Baltics, Western Europe and Constantinople. By the 12th Century, Kiev reputedly had over 400 churches, but its economic prowess had already begun to wane. Power had shifted to a number of breakaway principalities, and in 1169 Andrey Bogolyubov, from the outlying, north-eastern Kievan principality of Suzdall sacked Kiev and took the title of Grand Prince, of Rus away from the city to the north.
In 1240 Kiev was sacked again by the Tatars. An Italian who visited the city six tears later reported that barely 200 houses remained standing. Kiev shrank to the riverside area known as Podil - the area surrounding today's Kontraktova ploshcha - which remained its centre through centuries, first as a Lithuanian or Polish frontier town and then from 1667, following Cossack rule, as a Russian outpost. After the Second Partition of Poland, in 1793, much of Ukraine passed from Polish to Russian hands and Kiev's importance grew as the capital of Russian Ukraine. During the next century, tsarist policies encouraged Russian emigration and Russification, while suppressing Ukrainian national identity, a policy ruthlessly imitated by the early communists. After a fire in 1811, the city began to rapidly develop, spreading back up the hill, with industry and railways arriving in the second half of the 19th century. During the chaos following the Bolshevik Revolution, Kiev was the site of frequent battles between Red and White Ukrainian forces. Another industrial boom followed in the 1930s, fuelled by the arrival of large numbers of starving peasants from the surrounding rural areas. By 1912, Kiev had 626,000 people; by 1939, just before WW 11, the population had risen to 846,000.
In August 1941, the advancing Germans killed or captured over half a million soviet troops at Kiev (you won't find many memorials to this). The Germans also killed about 100,000 Jews and other minorities at Baby Yar, in the north of the city. Four in 10 buildings were destroyed and 80% of the city's inhabitants were homeless by the time the Red Army retook Kiev on 6 November 1943. The postwar years saw even more rapid industrialisation with the construction of the unsightly suburbs which surround the city. During the late 1980s, nationalistic and democratic movements from Western Ukraine began to catch on in the capital city, and with the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, the Supreme Rada of Ukraine declared Independence in Kiev on 24 August 1991.