Is Ukraine considered a slavic state?

Strikingly different interpretations of the medieval state of Kievan Rus' appear in the four schools of historiography within Ukraine: Russophile, Sovietophile, Eastern Slavic, and Ukrainophile. The Sovietophile and Russophile schools have become marginalized in independent Ukraine, with the Ukrainophile school being dominant in the early 21st century. The Ukrainophile school promotes an identity that is mutually exclusive of Russia. It has come to dominate the nation's educational system, security forces, and national symbols and monuments, although it has been dismissed as nationalist by Western historians. The East Slavic school, an eclectic compromise between Ukrainophiles and Russophilism, has a weaker ideological and symbolic base, although it is preferred by Ukraine's centrist former elites.

History of Ukraine

Prehistoric Ukraine, as part of the Pontic steppe, has played an important role in Eurasian cultural contacts, including the spread of the Chalcolithic, the Bronze Age, Indo-European expansion and the domestication of the horse.

Part of Scythia in antiquity and settled by Getae, in the migration period, Ukraine is also 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 in the 12th century. After the middle of the 14th century, present-day Ukrainian territories came under the rule of three external powers:After a 1648 rebellion against dominantly Polish Catholic rule, an assembly of the people ("rada") agreed to the Treaty of Pereyaslav in January 1654. In consequence, the southeastern portion of the Polish-Lithuanian empire (east of the Dnieper River) came under Russian rule for the following centuries. After the Partitions of Poland (1772–1795) and the Russian conquest of the Crimean Khanate, the Russian Empire and Habsburg Austria were in control of all the territories that constitute present day Ukraine.

A chaotic period of warfare ensued after the Russian Revolutions of 1917. The internationally recognised Ukrainian People's Republic emerged from its own civil war of 1917-1921. The Ukrainian–Soviet War (1917-1921) followed, in which the bolshevik Red Army established control in late 1919. The Ukrainian Bolsheviks, who had defeated the national government in Kiev, established the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which on 30 December 1922 became one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union. Initial Soviet policy on Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture made Ukrainian the official language of administration and schools. Policy in the 1930s turned to russification. In 1932 and 1933, millions of people, mostly peasants, in Ukraine starved to death in a devastating famine, known as Holodomor. It is estimated by Encyclopædia Britannica that 6 to 8 million people died from hunger in the Soviet Union during this period, of whom 4 to 5 million were Ukrainians. Nikita Khrushchev was appointed the head of the Ukrainian Communist Party in 1938.

After Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in September 1939, the Ukrainian SSR's territory expanded westward. Axis armies occupied Ukraine from 1941 to 1944. During World War II the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought for Ukrainian independence against both Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1945 the Ukrainian SSR became one of the founding members of the United Nations. After the death of Stalin (1953), Khrushchev as head of the Communist Party of Soviet Union enabled a Ukrainian revival. Nevertheless, political repressions against poets, historians and other intellectuals continued, as in all other parts of the USSR. In 1954 the republic expanded to the south with the transfer of the Crimea.

Ukraine became independent again when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. This started a period of transition to a market economy, in which Ukraine suffered an eight-year recession. Subsequently, however, the economy experienced a high increase in GDP growth. Ukraine was caught up in the worldwide economic crisis in 2008 and the economy plunged. GDP fell 20% from spring 2008 to spring 2009, then leveled off.

The prolonged Ukrainian crisis began on 21 November 2013, when then-president Viktor Yanukovych suspended preparations for the implementation of an association agreement with the European Union. This decision resulted in mass protests by pro-Europeans - events which became known as the "Euromaidan". After months of such protests, the protesters ousted Yanukovych on 22 February 2014. Following his ousting, unrest enveloped the largely Russophone eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, from where Yanukovych had drawn most of his support. An invasion by Russia of the Ukrainian autonomous region of Crimea resulted in the annexation of Crimea by Russia on 18 March 2014. Subsequently, unrest in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine evolved into a war between the post-revolutionary Ukrainian government and pro-Russian insurgents. The Ukrainian crisis also very negatively influenced the Ukrainian economy.

Settlement in Ukraine by members of the genus "Homo" has been documented into distant prehistory. The Neanderthals are associated with the Molodova archaeological sites (43,000-45,000 BC) which include a mammoth bone dwelling. Gravettian settlements dating to 32,000 BC have been unearthed and studied in the Buran-Kaya cave site of the Crimean Mountains.

Around 10,000 years ago the world's longest river emptied glacier melted water through the Don and the Black Sea. From springs in Gobi it flowed along the Yenisei, which was then dammed by northern glaciers. Through the West Siberian Glacial Lake flowed about 10,000 km; It was longer than any river known today.
The late Neolithic times the Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture flourished from about 4500–3000 BC. The Copper Age people of the Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture resided in the western part, and the Sredny Stog Culture further east, succeeded by the early Bronze Age Yamna ("Kurgan") culture of the steppes, and by the Catacomb culture in the 3rd millennium BC.

During the Iron Age, these were followed by the Dacians as well as nomadic peoples like the Cimmerians (archaeological Novocherkassk culture), Scythians and Sarmatians. The Scythian Kingdom existed here from 750–250 BC. Along with ancient Greek colonies founded in the 6th century BC on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea, the colonies of Tyras, Olbia, Hermonassa, continued as Roman and Byzantine cities until the 6th century.

In the 3rd century AD, the Goths arrived in the lands of Ukraine around 250–375 AD, which they called Oium, corresponding to the archaeological Chernyakhov culture. The Ostrogoths stayed in the area but came under the sway of the Huns from the 370s. North of the Ostrogothic kingdom was the Kiev culture, flourishing from the 2nd–5th centuries, when it was overrun by the Huns. After they helped defeat the Huns at the battle of Nedao in 454, the Ostrogoths were allowed by Romans to settle in Pannonia.
With the power vacuum created with the end of Hunnic and Gothic rule, Slavic tribes, possibly emerging from the remnants of the Kiev culture, began to expand over much of the territory that is now Ukraine during the 5th century, and beyond to the Balkans from the 6th century.

In the 7th century, the territory of modern Ukraine was the core of the state of the Bulgars (often referred to as Old Great Bulgaria) with its capital city of Phanagoria. At the end of the 7th century, most Bulgar tribes migrated in several directions and the remains of their state were absorbed by the Khazars, a semi-nomadic people from Central Asia.

The Khazars founded the Khazar kingdom in the southeastern part of today's Europe, near the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus. The kingdom included western Kazakhstan, and parts of eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, southern Russia, and Crimea. Around 800 AD, the kingdom converted to Judaism.

In the 5th and 6th centuries, the Antes Union was located in the territory of what is now Ukraine. The Antes were the ancestors of Ukrainians: White Croats, Severians, Polans, Drevlyans, Dulebes, Ulichians, and Tiverians. Migrations from Ukraine throughout the Balkans established many Southern Slavic nations. Northern migrations, reaching almost to the Lake Ilmen, led to the emergence of the Ilmen Slavs, Krivichs, and Radimichs, the groups ancestral to the Russians. After an Avar raid in 602 and the collapse of the Antes Union, most of these peoples survived as separate tribes until the beginning of the second millennium.

As Hrushevsky states, the city of Kiev was established during the time when area around the mid- and low-Dnipro was the part of the Khazar state. He derived that information from local legends because no written chronicles from that period are left.

In 882, Kiev was conquered from the Khazars by the Varangian noble Oleg who started the long period of rule of the Rurikid princes. During this time, several Slavic tribes were native to Ukraine, including the Polans, the Drevlyans, the Severians, the Ulichs, the Tiverians, the White Croats and the Dulebes. Situated on lucrative trade routes, Kiev among the Polanians quickly prospered as the center of the powerful Slavic state of Kievan Rus.

In 941 AD, the prince of Kiev invaded the Byzantine Empire but was defeated in the Rus'–Byzantine War (941).

In the 11th century, Kievan Rus' was, geographically, the largest state in Europe, becoming known in the rest of Europe as Ruthenia (the Latin name for Rus'), especially for western principalities of Rus' after the Mongol invasion. The name "Ukraine", meaning "in-land" or "native-land", usually interpreted as "border-land", first appears in historical documents of the 12th century and then on history maps of the 16th century period.

This term seems to have been synonymous with the land of Rus' propria—the principalities of Kiev, Chernigov and Pereyaslav. The term, "Greater Rus'" was used to apply to all the lands of entire Kievan Rus, including those that were not just Slavic, but also Uralic in the north-east portions of the state. Local regional subdivisions of Rus' appeared in the Slavic heartland, including, "Belarus'" (White Russia), "Chorna Rus'" (Black Russia) and "Cherven' Rus'" (Red Russia) in northwestern and western Ukraine.

While Christianity had made headway into the territory of Ukraine before the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea (325) (particularly along the Black Sea coast) and, in western Ukraine during the time of empire of Great Moravia, the formal governmental acceptance of Christianity in Rus' occurred in 988. The major promoter of the Christianization of Kievan Rus' was the Grand-Duke, Vladimir the Great ("Volodymyr"). His Christian interest was midwifed by his grandmother, Princess Olga. Later, an enduring part of the East-Slavic legal tradition was set down by the Kievan ruler, Yaroslav I, who promulgated the Russkaya Pravda (Truth of Rus') which endured through the Lithuanian period of Rus'.

Conflict among the various principalities of Rus', in spite of the efforts of Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh, led to decline, beginning in the 12th century. In Rus' propria, the Kiev region, the nascent Rus' principalities of Halych and Volynia extended their rule. In the north, the name of Moscow appeared in the historical record in the principality of Suzdal, which gave rise to the nation of Russia. In the north-west, the principality of Polotsk increasingly asserted the autonomy of Belarus. Kiev was sacked by Vladimir principality (1169) in the power struggle between princes and later by Cumans and Mongol raiders in the 12th and 13th centuries, respectively. Subsequently, all principalities of present-day Ukraine acknowledged dependence upon the Mongols (1239–1240). In 1240, the Mongols sacked Kiev, and many people fled to other countries.

Five years after the fall of Kiev, Papal envoy Giovanni da Pian del Carpine wrote:

A successor state to the Kievan Rus' on part of the territory of today's Ukraine was the principality of Galicia-Volhynia.
Previously, Vladimir the Great had established the cities of Halych and Ladomir (later Volodimer) as regional capitals. This state was based upon the Dulebe, Tiverian and White Croat tribes.

The state was ruled by the descendants of Yaroslav the Wise and Vladimir Monomakh. For a brief period, the country was ruled by a Hungarian nobleman. Battles with the neighbouring states of Poland and Lithuania also occurred, as well as internecine warfare with the independent Ruthenian principality of Chernihiv to the east. At its greatest extension the territory of Galicia-Volhynia included later Wallachia/Bessarabia, thus reaching the shores of the Black Sea.

During this period (around 1200–1400), each principality was independent of the other for a period. The state of Halych-Volynia eventually became a vassal to the Mongolian Empire, but efforts to gain European support for opposition to the Mongols continued. This period marked the first "King of Rus'"; previously, the rulers of Rus' were termed, "Grand Dukes" or "Princes."

During the 14th century, Poland and Lithuania fought wars against the Mongol invaders, and eventually most of Ukraine passed to the rule of Poland and Lithuania. More particularly, the lands of Volynia in the north and north-west passed to the rule of Lithuanian princes, while the south-west passed to the control of Poland (Galicia). Also the Genoese founded some colonies in Crimean coasts until the Ottoman conquest in the 1470s.

Most of Ukraine bordered parts of Lithuania, and some say that the name, "Ukraine" comes from the local word for "border," although the name "Ukraine" was also used centuries earlier. Lithuania took control of the state of Volynia in northern and northwestern Ukraine, including the region around Kiev (Rus'), and the rulers of Lithuania then adopted the title of ruler of Rus'. Poland took control of the southeastern region. Following the union between Poland and Lithuania, Poles, Germans, Lithuanians and Jews migrated to the region. The 15th-century decline of the Golden Horde enabled the foundation of the Crimean Khanate, which occupied present-day Black Sea shores and southern steppes of Ukraine. Until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, exporting about 2 million slaves from Russia and Ukraine over the period 1500–1700. It remained a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire until 1774, when it was finally dissolved by the Russian Empire in 1783.

After the Union of Lublin in 1569 and the formation of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Ukraine fell under Polish administration, becoming part of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. The period immediately following the creation of the Commonwealth saw a huge revitalisation in colonisation efforts. Many new cities and villages were founded. Links between different Ukrainian regions, such as Galicia and Volyn were greatly extended.

New schools spread the ideas of the Renaissance; Polish peasants arrived in great numbers and quickly became mixed with the local population; during this time, most of Ukrainian nobles became polonised and converted to Catholicism, and while most Ruthenian-speaking peasants remained within the Eastern Orthodox Church, social tension rose.

Ruthenian peasants who fled efforts to force them into serfdom came to be known as Cossacks and earned a reputation for their fierce martial spirit. Some Cossacks were enlisted by the Commonwealth as soldiers to protect the southeastern borders of Commonwealth from Tatars or took part in campaigns abroad (like Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny in the battle of Khotyn 1621). Cossack units were also active in wars between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Tsardom of Russia. Despite the Cossack's military usefulness, the Commonwealth, dominated by its nobility, refused to grant them any significant autonomy, instead attempting to turn most of the Cossack population into serfs. This led to an increasing number of Cossack rebellions aimed at the Commonwealth.

The 1648 Ukrainian Cossack ("Kozak") rebellion or Khmelnytsky Uprising, which started an era known as the Ruin (in Polish history as The Deluge), undermined the foundations and stability of the Commonwealth. The nascent Cossack state, the Cossack Hetmanate, usually viewed as precursor of Ukraine, found itself in a three-sided military and diplomatic rivalry with the Ottoman Turks, who controlled the Tatars to the south, the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania, and the Tsardom of Muscovy to the East.

The Zaporizhian Host, in order to leave the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, sought a treaty of protection with Russia in 1654. This agreement was known as the Treaty of Pereyaslav. Commonwealth authorities then sought compromise with the Ukrainian Cossack state by signing the Treaty of Hadiach in 1658, but—after thirteen years of incessant warfare—the agreement was later superseded by 1667 Polish–Russian Treaty of Andrusovo, which divided Ukrainian territory between the Commonwealth and Russia. Under Russia, the Cossacks initially retained official autonomy in the Hetmanate. For a time, they also maintained a semi-independent republic in Zaporozhia, and a colony on the Russian frontier in Sloboda Ukraine.

During subsequent decades, Tsarist rule over central Ukraine gradually replaced 'protection'. Sporadic Cossack uprisings were now aimed at the Russian authorities, but eventually petered out by the late 18th century, following the destruction of entire Cossack hosts. After the Partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795, the extreme west of Ukraine fell under the control of the Austrians, with the rest becoming a part of the Russian Empire. As a result of Russo-Turkish Wars the Ottoman Empire's control receded from south-central Ukraine, while the rule of Hungary over the Transcarpathian region continued. Ukrainian writers and intellectuals were inspired by the nationalistic spirit stirring other European peoples existing under other imperial governments and became determined to revive the Ukrainian linguistic and cultural traditions and re-establish a Ukrainian nation-state, a movement that became known as Ukrainophilism.

Russia, fearing separatism, imposed strict limits on attempts to elevate the Ukrainian language and culture, even banning its use and study. The Russophile policies of Russification and Panslavism led to an exodus of a number of Ukrainian intellectuals into Western Ukraine. However, many Ukrainians accepted their fate in the Russian Empire and some were to achieve a great success there. Many Russian writers, composers, painters and architects of the 19th century were of Ukrainian descent. Probably the most notable were Nikolai Gogol, one of the greatest writers in the history of Russian literature, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, one of the greatest composers in the history of Russian music, whose father came of Ukrainian Cossack stock.

The fate of the Ukrainians was far different under the Austrian Empire where they found themselves in the pawn position of the Russian-Austrian power struggle for the Central and Southern Europe. Unlike in Russia, most of the elite that ruled Galicia were of Austrian or Polish descent, with the Ruthenians being almost exclusively kept in peasantry. During the 19th century, Russophilia was a common occurrence among the Slavic population, but the mass exodus of Ukrainian intellectuals escaping from Russian repression in Eastern Ukraine, as well as the intervention of Austrian authorities, caused the movement to be replaced by Ukrainophilia, which would then cross-over into the Russian Empire. With the start of World War I, all those supporting Russia were rounded up by Austrian forces and held in a concentration camp at Talerhof where many died.
Ukraine emerges as the concept of a nation, and the Ukrainians as a nationality, with the Ukrainian National Revival in the mid-18th century, in the wake of the peasant revolt of 1768/69 and the eventual partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Galicia fell to the Austrian Empire, and the rest of Ukraine to the Russian Empire.

While right-bank Ukraine belonged to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until late 1793, left-bank Ukraine had been incorporated into Tsardom of Russia in 1667 (under the Treaty of Andrusovo). In 1672, Podolia was occupied by the Turkish Ottoman Empire, while Kiev and Braclav came under the control of Hetman Petro Doroshenko until 1681, when they were also captured by the Turks but in 1699 the Treaty of Karlowitz returned those lands to the Commonwealth.

Most of Ukraine fell to the Russian Empire under the reign of Catherine the Great; in 1793 right-bank Ukraine was annexed by Russia in the Second Partition of Poland.

Ukrainian writers and intellectuals were inspired by the nationalistic spirit stirring other European peoples existing under other imperial governments. Russia, fearing separatism, imposed strict limits on attempts to elevate the Ukrainian language and culture, even banning its use and study. The Russophile policies of Russification and Panslavism led to an exodus of a number some Ukrainian intellectuals into Western Ukraine, while others embraced a Pan-Slavic or Russian identity. This led to many of the great Russian authors and composers of the 19th century being of Ukrainian origin (notably Nikolai Gogol and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky).

Ukraine, which included Crimea, the Kuban, and portions of Don Cossack lands with large Ukrainian populations (along with ethnic Russians, and Jews), tried to break free from Russia after the February 1917 revolution in St. Petersburg. Historian Paul Kubicek states:
A Canadian scholar Orest Subtelney provides a context from the long span of European history:

The Ukrainian War of Independence of 1917 to 1921 produced the Free Territory of Ukraine, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (in 1919 merged from the Ukrainian People's Republic and West Ukrainian People's Republic) which was quickly subsumed in the Soviet Union. Galicia, South Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and Carpathian Ruthenia were added as a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in 1939 and the Soviet victory over Germany in the Second World War, 1939-45.
The Soviet famine of 1932–33, now known as the Holodomor, left millions dead in the Soviet Union, the majority of them Ukrainians not only in Ukraine but also in Kuban and former Don Cossack lands.

The Second World War began in September 1939, when Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland, the Soviet Union taking most of Western Ukraine. Nazi Germany with its allies invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Some Ukrainians initially regarded the Wehrmacht soldiers as liberators from Soviet rule, while others formed a partisan movement. Some elements of the Ukrainian nationalist underground formed a Ukrainian Insurgent Army that fought both Soviet forces and the Nazi. Others collaborated with the Germans. In Volhynia, Ukrainian fighters committed a massacre against up to 100,000 Polish civilians. Residual small groups of the UPA-partizans acted near the Polish and Soviet border as long as to the 1950s.

After World War II some amendments to the Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR were accepted, which allowed it to act as a separate subject of international law in some cases and to a certain extent, remaining a part of the Soviet Union at the same time. In particular, these amendments allowed the Ukrainian SSR to become one of founding members of the United Nations (UN) together with the Soviet Union and the Byelorussian SSR. This was part of a deal with the United States to ensure a degree of balance in the General Assembly, which, the USSR opined, was unbalanced in favor of the Western Bloc. In its capacity as a member of the UN, the Ukrainian SSR was an elected member of the United Nations Security Council in 1948–1949 and 1984–1985.
The Crimean Oblast was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became an independent state, formalised with a referendum in December 1991.

On January 21, 1990, over 300,000 Ukrainians organized a human chain for Ukrainian independence between Kiev and Lviv. Ukraine officially declared itself an independent state on August 24, 1991, when the communist Supreme Soviet (parliament) of Ukraine proclaimed that Ukraine would no longer follow the laws of USSR and only the laws of the Ukrainian SSR, de facto declaring Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union. On December 1, voters approved a referendum formalizing independence from the Soviet Union. Over 90% of Ukrainian citizens voted for independence, with majorities in every region, including 56% in Crimea. The Soviet Union formally ceased to exist on December 26, when the presidents of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia (the founding members of the USSR) met in Białowieża Forest to formally dissolve the Union in accordance with the Soviet Constitution. With this Ukraine's independence was formalized de jure and recognized by the international community.

(Also) on 1 December 1991 Ukrainian voters first presidential election elected Leonid Kravchuk. During his presidency the Ukrainian economy shrank by more than 10% per year (in 1994 by more than 20%).

The presidency (1994-2005) of the 2nd President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma was surrounded by numerous corruption scandals and the lessening of media freedoms; including the Cassette Scandal. During Kuchma's presidency, the economy recovered, with GDP growth at around 10% a year in his last years in office.

In 2004, Kuchma announced that he would not run for re-election. Two major candidates emerged in the 2004 presidential election. Viktor Yanukovych, the incumbent Prime Minister, supported by both Kuchma and by the Russian Federation, wanted closer ties with Russia. The main opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, called for Ukraine to turn its attention westward and aim to aim to eventually join the EU.
In the runoff election, Yanukovych officially won by a narrow margin, but Yushchenko and his supporters alleged that vote rigging and intimidation cost him many votes, especially in eastern Ukraine. A political crisis erupted after the opposition started massive street protests in Kiev and other cities ("Orange Revolution"), and the Supreme Court of Ukraine ordered the election results null and void. A second runoff found Viktor Yushchenko the winner. Five days later, Yanukovych resigned from office and his cabinet was dismissed on January 5, 2005.

During the Yushchenko term, relations between Russia and Ukraine often appeared strained as Yushchenko looked towards improved relations with the European Union and less toward Russia. In 2005, a highly publicized dispute over natural gas prices with Russia caused shortages in many European countries that were reliant on Ukraine as a transit country. A compromise was reached in January 2006.

By the time of the presidential election of 2010, Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko — allies during the Orange Revolution — had become bitter enemies. Tymoshenko ran for president against both Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych, creating a three-way race. Yushchenko, whose popularity had plummeted, persisted in running, and many pro-Orange voters stayed home. In the second round of the election Yanukovych won the run-off ballot with 48% to Tymoshenko's 45%.

During his presidency (2010-2014) Yanukovych and his Party of Regions were accused of trying to create a "controlled democracy" in Ukraine and of trying to destroy the main opposition party Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko, but both have denied these charges. One frequently cited example of Yankukovych's attempts to centralise power was the 2011 sentencing of Yulia Tymoshenko, which has been condemned by Western governments as potentially being politically motivated.
In November 2013, President Yanukovych did not sign the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement and instead pursued closer ties with Russia. This move sparked protests on the streets of Kiev and, ultimately, the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. Protesters set up camps in Kiev's Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), and in December 2013 and January 2014 protesters started taking over various government buildings, first in Kiev and, later, in Western Ukraine. Battles between protesters and police resulted in about 80 deaths in February 2014.

Following the violence the Ukrainian parliament on 22 February voted to remove Yanukovych from power (on the grounds that his whereabouts were unknown and he thus could not fulfil his duties), and to free Yulia Tymoshenko from prison. The same day Yanukovych supporter Volodymyr Rybak resigned as speaker of the Parliament, and was replaced by Tymoshenko loyalist Oleksandr Turchynov, who was subsequently installed as interim President. Yanukovych had fled Kiev, and subsequently gave a press conference in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.

In March 2014, the Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation resulted in Crimea being annexed by Russia. Though official results of a referendum on reunification with Russia were reported as showing a large majority in favor of the proposition, the vote was organized under Russian military occupation and was denounced by the European Union and the United States as illegal.
The Crimean crisis was followed by pro-Russian unrest in east Ukraine and south Ukraine. In April 2014 Ukrainian separatists self-proclaimed the Donetsk People's Republic and Lugansk People's Republic and held referendums on 11 May 2014; the separatists claimed nearly 90% voted in favor of independence. Later in April 2014, fighting between the Ukrainian army and pro-Ukrainian volunteer battalions on one side, and forces supporting the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics on the other side, escalated into the War in Donbass. By December 2014 more than 6,400 people had died in this conflict and according to United Nations figures it led to over half a million people becoming internally displaced within Ukraine and two hundred thousand refugees to flee to (mostly) Russia and other neighboring countries. During the same period, political (including adoption of the law on lustration and the law on decommunization) and economic reforms started. On 25 May 2014, Petro Poroshenko was elected president in the first round of the presidential election.

By the second half of 2015 independent observers noted that reforms in Ukraine had considerably slowed down, corruption did not subside, and the economy of Ukraine was still in a deep crisis.

By December 2015, more than 9,100 people had died (largely civilians) in the War in Donbass, according to United Nations figures.

The scholarly study of Ukraine's history emerged from romantic impulses in the late 19th century. The outstanding leaders were Volodymyr Antonovych (1834–1908), based in Kiev, and his student Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866–1934). For the first time full-scale scholarly studies based on archival sources, modern research techniques, and modern historical theories became possible. However, the demands of government officials—especially Soviet, but also Czarists and Polish—made it difficult to disseminate ideas that ran counter to the central government. Therefore, exile schools of historians emerged in central Europe and Canada after 1920.

Many historians in recent years have sought alternatives to national histories, and Ukrainian history invited approaches that looked beyond a national paradigm. Multiethnic history recognises the numerous peoples in Ukraine; transnational history portrays Ukraine as a border zone for various empires; and area studies categorises Ukraine as part of Eurasia, or more often as part of East-Central Europe. Plokhy (2007) argues that looking beyond the country's national history has made possible a richer understanding of Ukraine, its people, and the surrounding regions.

After 1991, historical memory was a powerful tool in the political mobilization and legitimation of the post-Soviet Ukrainian state, as well as the division of selectively used memory along the lines of the political division of Ukrainian society. Ukraine did not experience the restorationist paradigm typical of some other post-Soviet nations, including the Baltic states, although the multifaceted history of independence, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, Soviet-era repressions, mass famine, and World War II collaboration were used to provide a different constitutive frame for the new Ukrainian nation. The politics of identity (which includes the production of history textbooks and the authorization of commemorative practices) has remained fragmented and tailored to reflect the ideological anxieties and concerns of individual regions of Ukraine.

Belarus–Ukraine relations (, "Byelaruska-ŭkrainskiya adnosiny",, "Ukrains'ko-Bilorus'ki vidnosyny",, "Belorussko-ukrainskiye otnosheniya") are foreign relations between Belarus and Ukraine. Both countries were successively ruled by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Second Polish Republic, and ultimately, the Russian Empire. Prior to the 1991 breakup, both countries were part of the Soviet Union as the Belarusian SSR and Ukrainian SSR when they were the founding members of the United Nations in 1945. Being Slavic nations, both Belarus and Ukraine share closely related cultures and are predominantly inhabited by the East Slavic ethnic groups of Belarusians and Ukrainians respectively, along with a few Russians. Today, the two countries share an 891–km border.

Belarus–Ukraine relations

Belarus has an embassy in Kiev and an honorary consulate in Lviv. Ukraine has an embassy in Minsk and a general consulate in Brest. Both countries are full members of the Baku Initiative and Central European Initiative.

An agreement on the state border between Belarus and Ukraine signed in 1997 was to be submitted to the Belarusian parliament for ratification after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko finished the process of the formalization of the border issues between the two states early November 2009.

Slavs are the largest ethno-linguistic group in Europe. Present-day Slavic people are classified into East Slavs (chiefly Belarusians, Russians, Rusyns, and Ukrainians), West Slavs (chiefly Czechs, Kashubs, Moravians, Poles, Silesians, Slovaks and Sorbs), and South Slavs (chiefly Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Gorani, Pomaks, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenes).

Slavs

Slavs are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group who speak the various Slavic languages of the larger Balto-Slavic linguistic group. They are native to Eurasia, stretching from Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe all the way north and eastwards to Northeast Europe, Northern Asia (Siberia), the Caucasus, and Central Asia (especially Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) as well as historically in Western Europe (particularly in East Germany) and Western Asia (including Anatolia). From the early 6th century they spread to inhabit the majority of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Today, there is a large Slavic diaspora throughout North America, particularly in the United States and Canada as a result of immigration.

Slavs can be further grouped by religion. Orthodox Christianity is practiced by the majority of Slavs. The Orthodox Slavs include the Belarusians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Russians, Serbs, and Ukrainians and are defined by Orthodox customs and Cyrillic script as well as their cultural connection to the Byzantine Empire (Serbs also use Latin script on equal terms). Their second most common religion is Roman Catholicism. The Catholic Slavs include Croats, Czechs, Kashubs, Moravians, Poles, Silesians, Slovaks, Slovenes, and Sorbs and are defined by their Latinate influence and heritage and connection to Western Europe. There are also substantial Protestant and Lutheran minorities especially amongst the West Slavs, such as the historical Bohemian (Czech) Hussites.

The third largest religion amongst the Slavs is Islam. Muslim Slavs include the Bosniaks, Pomaks, Gorani, Torbeši, and other Muslims of the former Yugoslavia. Modern Slavic nations and ethnic groups are considerably diverse both genetically and culturally, and relations between them – even within the individual groups – range from ethnic solidarity to mutual hostility.

The oldest mention of the Slavic ethnonym is the 6th century AD Procopius, writing in Byzantine Greek, using various forms such as "Sklaboi" (), "Sklabēnoi" (), "Sklauenoi" (), "Sthlabenoi" (), or "Sklabinoi" (), while his contemporary Jordanes refers to the "" in Latin. The oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic, dating from the 9th century, attest the autonym as "Slověne" (). These forms point back to a Slavic autonym which can be reconstructed in Proto-Slavic as, plural "Slověne".

The reconstructed autonym "" is usually considered a derivation from "slovo" ("word"), originally denoting "people who speak (the same language)," i. e. people who understand each other, in contrast to the Slavic word denoting German people, namely, meaning "silent, mute people" (from Slavic "mute, mumbling"). The word "slovo" ("word") and the related "slava" ("glory, fame") and "slukh" ("hearing") originate from the Proto-Indo-European root ("be spoken of, glory"), cognate with Ancient Greek ( "fame"), as in the name Pericles, Latin ("be called"), and English.

Ancient Roman sources refer to the Early Slavic peoples as Veneti, who dwelled in a region of central Europe east of the Germanic tribe of Suebi, and west of the Iranian Sarmatians in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The Slavs under name of the "Antes" and the "Sclaveni" first appear in Byzantine records in the early 6th century. Byzantine historiographers under emperor Justinian I (527–565), such as Procopius of Caesarea, Jordanes and Theophylact Simocatta describe tribes of these names emerging from the area of the Carpathian Mountains, the lower Danube and the Black Sea, invading the Danubian provinces of the Eastern Empire.

Jordanes in his work "Getica" (written in 550 or 551 AD). describes the Veneti as a "populous nation" whose dwellings begin at the sources of the Vistula and occupy "a great expanse of land". He describes the Veneti as the ancestors of Antes and Slaveni, two early Slavic tribes, who appeared on the Byzantine frontier in the early 6th century. Procopius wrote in 545 that "the Sclaveni and the Antae actually had a single name in the remote past; for they were both called "Sporoi" in olden times". The name "Sporoi" derives from Greek σπείρω ("I scatter grain"). He described them as barbarians, who lived under democracy, believe in one god, "the maker of lightning" (Perun), to whom they made sacrifice. They lived in scattered housing, and constantly changed settlement. In war, they were mainly foot soldiers with small shields and battle axes, lightly clothed, some entering battle naked with only genitals covered. Their language is "barbarous" (that is, not Greek), and the two tribes are alike in appearance, being tall and robust, "while their bodies and hair are neither very fair or blond, nor indeed do they incline entirely to the dark type, but they are all slightly ruddy in color. And they live a hard life, giving no heed to bodily comforts..." Jordanes described the Sclaveni having swamps and forests for their cities. Another 6th-century source refers to them living among nearly impenetrable forests, rivers, lakes, and marshes.

Menander Protector mentions a Daurentius (circa 577–579) who slew an Avar envoy of Khagan Bayan I for asking the Slavs to accept the suzerainty of the Avars; Daurentius declined and is reported as saying: "Others do not conquer our land, we conquer theirs – so it shall always be for us".

According to eastern homeland theory, prior to becoming known to the Roman world, Slavic-speaking tribes were part of the many multi-ethnic confederacies of Eurasia – such as the Sarmatian, Hun and Gothic empires. The Slavs emerged from obscurity when the westward movement of Germans in the 5th and 6th centuries CE (thought to be in conjunction with the movement of peoples from Siberia and Eastern Europe: Huns, and later Avars and Bulgars) started the great migration of the Slavs, who settled the lands abandoned by Germanic tribes fleeing the Huns and their allies: westward into the country between the Oder and the Elbe-Saale line; southward into Bohemia, Moravia, much of present-day Austria, the Pannonian plain and the Balkans; and northward along the upper Dnieper river. It has also been suggested that some Slavs migrated with the Vandals to the Iberian Peninsula and even North Africa.

Around the 6th century, Slavs appeared on Byzantine borders in great numbers. Byzantine records note that Slav numbers were so great, that grass would not regrow where the Slavs had marched through. After a military movement even the Peloponnese and Asia Minor were reported to have Slavic settlements. This southern movement has traditionally been seen as an invasive expansion. By the end of the 6th century, Slavs had settled the Eastern Alps regions.

When Slav migrations ended, their first state organizations appeared, each headed by a prince with a treasury and a defense force. In the 7th century, the Frankish merchant Samo supported the Slavs against their Avar rulers, and became the ruler of the first known Slav state in Central Europe, Samo's Empire. This early Slavic polity probably did not outlive its founder and ruler, but it was the foundation for later West Slavic states on its territory. The oldest of them was Carantania; others are the Principality of Nitra, the Moravian principality (see under Great Moravia) and the Balaton Principality. The First Bulgarian Empire was founded in 681 as an alliance between the ruling Bulgars and the numerous slavs in the area, and their South Slavic language, the Old Church Slavonic, became the main and official language of the empire in 864. Bulgaria was instrumental in the spread of Slavic literacy and Christianity to the rest of the Slavic world. The expansion of the Magyars into the Carpathian Basin and the Germanization of Austria gradually separated the South Slavs from the West and East Slavs. Later Slavic states, which formed in the following centuries included the Kievan Rus', the Second Bulgarian Empire, the Kingdom of Poland, Duchy of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Croatia, Banate of Bosnia and the Grand Principality of Serbia.

As of the end of 1878, there were only four Slavic states in the world: the Russian Empire, Principality of Serbia, Principality of Montenegro and the Principality of Bulgaria. In the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire of approximately 50 million people, about 23 million were Slavs. The Slavic peoples who were, for the most part, denied a voice in the affairs of the Austria-Hungary, were calling for national self-determination. Because of the vastness and diversity of the territory occupied by Slavic people, there were several centers of Slavic consolidation. In the 19th century, Pan-Slavism developed as a movement among intellectuals, scholars, and poets, but it rarely influenced practical politics and did not find support in some Slavic nations. Pan-Slavism became compromised when the Russian Empire started to use it as an ideology justifying its territorial conquests in Central Europe as well as subjugation of other Slavic ethnic groups such as Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians, and the ideology became associated with Russian imperialism.

During World War I, representatives of the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes set up organizations in the Allied countries to gain sympathy and recognition. In 1918, after World War I ended, the Slavs established such independent states as Czechoslovakia, the Second Polish Republic, and the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (which merged into Yugoslavia).

During World War II, Nazi Germany planned to kill, deport, or enslave the Slavic and Jewish population of occupied Central and Eastern Europe to create "Living space" for German settlers, and also planned the starvation of 80 million people in the Soviet Union. The partial fulfilment of these plans resulted in the deaths of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war.

The first half of the 20th century in Russia and the Soviet Union was marked by a succession of wars, famines and other disasters, each accompanied by large-scale population losses. Stephen J. Lee estimates that, by the end of World War II in 1945, the Russian population was about 90 million fewer than it could have been otherwise.

The common Slavic experience of communism combined with the repeated usage of the ideology by Soviet propaganda after World War II within the Eastern bloc (Warsaw Pact) was a forced high-level political and economic hegemony of the USSR dominated by Russians. A notable political union of the 20th century that covered most South Slavs was Yugoslavia, but it ultimately broke apart in the 1990s along with the Soviet Union.

The word "Slavs" was used in the national anthem of Yugoslavia (1943–1992) and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992–2003), later Serbia and Montenegro (2003–2006). Today the modern Slavic people come from a wide variety of genetic backgrounds, the frequency of the Haplogroup R1a which is a DNA, is a human Y chromosome lineage and ranges accordingly : 63.39% by the Sorbs, 56.4% in Poland, 54% in Ukraine, 47% in Russia, 39% in Belarus, 15.2% in Republic of Macedonia, 14.7% in Bulgaria and 12.1% in Bosnia & Herzegovina.
Former Soviet states, as well as countries that used to be satellite states or territories of the Warsaw Pact, have numerous minority Slavic populations, many of whom are originally from the Russian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR. As of now, Kazakhstan has the largest Slavic minority population with most being Russians (Ukrainians, Belarusians and Poles are present as well but in much smaller numbers).

Pan-Slavism, a movement which came into prominence in the mid-19th century, emphasized the common heritage and unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires: the Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice. The Russian Empire used Pan-Slavism as a political tool; as did the Soviet Union, which gained political-military influence and control over most Slavic-majority nations between 1939 and 1948 and retained a hegemonic role until the period 1989–1991.

Proto-Slavic, the supposed ancestor language of all Slavic languages, is a descendant of common Proto-Indo-European, via a Balto-Slavic stage in which it developed numerous lexical and morphophonological isoglosses with the Baltic languages. In the framework of the Kurgan hypothesis, "the Indo-Europeans who remained after the migrations [from the steppe] became speakers of Balto-Slavic". Proto-Slavic is defined as the last stage of the language preceding the geographical split of the historical Slavic languages. That language was uniform, and on the basis of borrowings from foreign languages and Slavic borrowings into other languages, cannot be said to have any recognizable dialects – this suggests that there was, at one time, a relatively small Proto-Slavic homeland.

Slavic linguistic unity was to some extent visible as late as Old Church Slavonic (or Old Bulgarian) manuscripts which, though based on local Slavic speech of Thessaloniki, could still serve the purpose of the first common Slavic literary language. Slavic studies began as an almost exclusively linguistic and philological enterprise. As early as 1833, Slavic languages were recognized as Indo-European.

Standardised Slavic languages that have official status in at least one country are: Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, and Ukrainian.

The alphabets used for Slavic languages are frequently connected to the dominant religion among the respective ethnic groups. Orthodox Christians use the Cyrillic alphabet while Roman Catholics use the Latin alphabet; the Bosniaks, who are Muslim, also use the Latin alphabet. Additionally, some Eastern Catholics and Roman Catholics use the Cyrillic alphabet. Serbian and Montenegrin use both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. There is also a Latin script to write in Belarusian, called the Lacinka alphabet.

Slavs are customarily divided along geographical lines into three major subgroups: West Slavs, East Slavs, and South Slavs, each with a different and a diverse background based on unique history, religion and culture of particular Slavic groups within them. Apart from prehistorical archaeological cultures, the subgroups have had notable cultural contact with non-Slavic Bronze- and Iron Age civilisations. Modern Slavic nations and ethnic groups are considerably diverse both genetically and culturally, and relations between them – even within the individual ethnic groups themselves – are varied, ranging from a sense of connection to mutual feelings of hostility.

West Slavs have origin in early Slavic tribes which settled in Central Europe after the East Germanic tribes had left this area during the migration period. They are noted as having mixed with Germanics, Hungarians, Celts (particularly the Boii), Old Prussians, and the Pannonian Avars. The West Slavs came under the influence of the Western Roman Empire (Latin) and of the Roman Catholic Church.

East Slavs have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed and contacted with Finno-Ugrics, Balts, and Caucasians. Their early Slavic component, Antes, mixed or absorbed Iranians, and later received influence from the Khazars and Vikings. The East Slavs trace their national origins to the tribal unions of Kievan Rus' and Khaganate, beginning in the 10th century. They came particularly under the influence of the Byzantine Empire and of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

South Slavs from most of the region have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed with the local Proto-Balkanic tribes (Illyrian, Dacian, Thracian, Paeonian, Hellenic tribes), and Celtic tribes (particularly the Scordisci), as well as with Romans (and the Romanized remnants of the former groups), and also with remnants of temporarily settled invading East Germanic, Asiatic or Caucasian tribes such as Gepids, Huns, Avars, Goths and Bulgars. The original inhabitants of present-day Slovenia and continental Croatia have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed with Romans and romanized Celtic and Illyrian people as well as with Avars and Germanic peoples (Lombards and East Goths). The South Slavs (except the Slovenes and Croats) came under the cultural sphere of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), of the Ottoman Empire and of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Islam, while the Slovenes and the Croats were influenced by the Western Roman Empire (Latin) and thus by the Roman Catholic Church in a similar fashion to that of the West Slavs.

The pagan Slavic populations were Christianized between the 7th and 12th centuries. Orthodox Christianity is predominant in the East and South Slavs, while Roman Catholicism is predominant in West Slavs and some western South Slavs. The religious borders are largely comparable to the East–West Schism which began in the 11th century.

The majority of contemporary Slavic populations who profess a religion are Orthodox, followed by Catholic, while a small minority are Protestant. There are minor Slavic Muslim groups. Religious delineations by nationality can be very sharp; usually in the Slavic ethnic groups the vast majority of religious people share the same religion. Some Slavs are atheist or agnostic: in the Czech Republic 20% were atheists according to a 2012 poll.

Mainly Eastern Orthodoxy:

Mainly Roman Catholicism:

Mainly Islam:
Throughout their history, Slavs came into contact with non-Slavic groups. In the postulated homeland region (present-day European Russia and Ukraine), they had contacts with the Iranic Sarmatians and the Germanic Goths. After their subsequent spread, the Slavs began assimilating non-Slavic peoples. For example, in the Balkans, there were Paleo-Balkan peoples, such as Romanized and Hellenized (Jireček Line) Illyrians, Thracians and Dacians, as well as Greeks and Celtic Scordisci and Serdi. Because Slavs were so numerous, most indigenous populations of the Balkans were Slavicized. Thracians and Illyrians vanished as defined ethnic groups in this period. Exceptions are Greece, where Slavs were Hellinized because Greeks were more numerous (aided by more Greeks returning to Greece in the 9th century and by the church and administration); Romania, where Slavs settled en route to present-day Greece, Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria and East Thrace, but assimilated, and the modern Albanian nation which claims descent from Illyrians.

Ruling status of Bulgars and their control of land cast the nominal legacy of "Bulgarian country and people" onto future generations, but Bulgars were gradually also Slavicized into the present day South Slavic ethnic group Bulgarians. The Romance speakers within the fortified Dalmatian cities retained their culture and language for a long time. Dalmatian Romance was spoken until the high Middle Ages. But, they too were eventually assimilated into the body of Slavs.

In the Western Balkans, South Slavs and Germanic Gepids intermarried with invaders, eventually producing a Slavicized population. In Central Europe, the West Slavs intermixed with Germanic, Hungarian, and Celtic peoples, while in Eastern Europe the East Slavs had encountered Uralic and Scandinavian peoples. Scandinavians (Varangians) and Finnic peoples were involved in the early formation of the Rus' state but were completely Slavicized after a century. Some Finno-Ugric tribes in the north were also absorbed into the expanding Rus population. In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Kipchak and the Pecheneg, caused a massive migration of East Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north. In the Middle Ages, groups of Saxon ore miners settled in medieval Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria, where they were Slavicized.

Polabian-Pomeranian Slavs even settled on Norse age Iceland. "Saqaliba" refers to the Slavic mercenaries and slaves in the medieval Arab world in North Africa, Sicily and Al-Andalus. Saqaliba served as caliph's guards. In the 12th century, Slavic piracy in the Baltics increased. The Wendish Crusade was started against the Polabian Slavs in 1147, as a part of the Northern Crusades. The pagan chief of the Slavic Obodrite tribes, Niklot, began his open resistance when Lothar III, Holy Roman Emperor, invaded Slavic lands. In August 1160 Niklot was killed, and German colonization ("Ostsiedlung") of the Elbe-Oder region began. In Hanoverian Wendland, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Lusatia, invaders started germanization. Early forms of germanization were described by German monks: Helmold in the manuscript "Chronicon Slavorum" and Adam of Bremen in "Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum." The Polabian language survived until the beginning of the 19th century in what is now the German state of Lower Saxony. In Eastern Germany, around 20% of Germans have historic Slavic paternal ancestry, as revealed in Y-DNA testing. Similarly, in Germany, around 20% of the foreign surnames are of Slavic origin.

Cossacks, although Slavic-speaking and practicing Orthodox Christianity, came from a mix of ethnic backgrounds, including Tatars and other Turks. Many early members of the Terek Cossacks were Ossetians.

The Gorals of southern Poland and northern Slovakia are partially descended from Romance-speaking Vlachs, who migrated into the region from the 14th to 17th centuries and were absorbed into the local population. The population of Moravian Wallachia also descend of this population.

Conversely, some Slavs were assimilated into other populations. Although the majority continued towards Southeast Europe, attracted by the riches of the area that became the state of Bulgaria, a few remained in the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe, and were assimilated into the Magyar people. Numerous river and other place names in Romania have Slavic origin.

There are an estimated 360 million Slavs worldwide.

Slavs

Slavs are the largest ethno-linguistic group in Europe. Present-day Slavic people are classified into East Slavs (chiefly Belarusians, Russians, Rusyns, and Ukrainians), West Slavs (chiefly Czechs, Kashubs, Moravians, Poles, Silesians, Slovaks and Sorbs), and South Slavs (chiefly Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Gorani, Pomaks, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenes).

The third largest religion amongst the Slavs is Islam. Muslim Slavs include the Bosniaks, Pomaks, Gorani, Torbeši, and other Muslims of the former Yugoslavia. Modern Slavic nations and ethnic groups are considerably diverse both genetically and culturally, and relations between them – even within the individual groups – range from ethnic solidarity to mutual hostility.

The oldest mention of the Slavic ethnonym is the 6th century AD Procopius, writing in Byzantine Greek, using various forms such as "Sklaboi" (), "Sklabēnoi" (), "Sklauenoi" (), "Sthlabenoi" (), or "Sklabinoi" (), while his contemporary Jordanes refers to the "" in Latin. The oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic, dating from the 9th century, attest the autonym as "Slověne" (). These forms point back to a Slavic autonym which can be reconstructed in Proto-Slavic as, plural "Slověne".

Menander Protector mentions a Daurentius (circa 577–579) who slew an Avar envoy of Khagan Bayan I for asking the Slavs to accept the suzerainty of the Avars; Daurentius declined and is reported as saying: "Others do not conquer our land, we conquer theirs – so it shall always be for us".

Around the 6th century, Slavs appeared on Byzantine borders in great numbers. Byzantine records note that Slav numbers were so great, that grass would not regrow where the Slavs had marched through. After a military movement even the Peloponnese and Asia Minor were reported to have Slavic settlements. This southern movement has traditionally been seen as an invasive expansion. By the end of the 6th century, Slavs had settled the Eastern Alps regions.

During World War I, representatives of the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes set up organizations in the Allied countries to gain sympathy and recognition. In 1918, after World War I ended, the Slavs established such independent states as Czechoslovakia, the Second Polish Republic, and the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (which merged into Yugoslavia).

During World War II, Nazi Germany planned to kill, deport, or enslave the Slavic and Jewish population of occupied Central and Eastern Europe to create "Living space" for German settlers, and also planned the starvation of 80 million people in the Soviet Union. The partial fulfilment of these plans resulted in the deaths of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war.

The first half of the 20th century in Russia and the Soviet Union was marked by a succession of wars, famines and other disasters, each accompanied by large-scale population losses. Stephen J. Lee estimates that, by the end of World War II in 1945, the Russian population was about 90 million fewer than it could have been otherwise.

The common Slavic experience of communism combined with the repeated usage of the ideology by Soviet propaganda after World War II within the Eastern bloc (Warsaw Pact) was a forced high-level political and economic hegemony of the USSR dominated by Russians. A notable political union of the 20th century that covered most South Slavs was Yugoslavia, but it ultimately broke apart in the 1990s along with the Soviet Union.

Slavic linguistic unity was to some extent visible as late as Old Church Slavonic (or Old Bulgarian) manuscripts which, though based on local Slavic speech of Thessaloniki, could still serve the purpose of the first common Slavic literary language. Slavic studies began as an almost exclusively linguistic and philological enterprise. As early as 1833, Slavic languages were recognized as Indo-European.

Standardised Slavic languages that have official status in at least one country are: Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, and Ukrainian.

The alphabets used for Slavic languages are frequently connected to the dominant religion among the respective ethnic groups. Orthodox Christians use the Cyrillic alphabet while Roman Catholics use the Latin alphabet; the Bosniaks, who are Muslim, also use the Latin alphabet. Additionally, some Eastern Catholics and Roman Catholics use the Cyrillic alphabet. Serbian and Montenegrin use both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. There is also a Latin script to write in Belarusian, called the Lacinka alphabet.

West Slavs have origin in early Slavic tribes which settled in Central Europe after the East Germanic tribes had left this area during the migration period. They are noted as having mixed with Germanics, Hungarians, Celts (particularly the Boii), Old Prussians, and the Pannonian Avars. The West Slavs came under the influence of the Western Roman Empire (Latin) and of the Roman Catholic Church.

East Slavs have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed and contacted with Finno-Ugrics, Balts, and Caucasians. Their early Slavic component, Antes, mixed or absorbed Iranians, and later received influence from the Khazars and Vikings. The East Slavs trace their national origins to the tribal unions of Kievan Rus' and Khaganate, beginning in the 10th century. They came particularly under the influence of the Byzantine Empire and of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The pagan Slavic populations were Christianized between the 7th and 12th centuries. Orthodox Christianity is predominant in the East and South Slavs, while Roman Catholicism is predominant in West Slavs and some western South Slavs. The religious borders are largely comparable to the East–West Schism which began in the 11th century.

The majority of contemporary Slavic populations who profess a religion are Orthodox, followed by Catholic, while a small minority are Protestant. There are minor Slavic Muslim groups. Religious delineations by nationality can be very sharp; usually in the Slavic ethnic groups the vast majority of religious people share the same religion. Some Slavs are atheist or agnostic: in the Czech Republic 20% were atheists according to a 2012 poll.

Mainly Eastern Orthodoxy:

Mainly Roman Catholicism:

Ruling status of Bulgars and their control of land cast the nominal legacy of "Bulgarian country and people" onto future generations, but Bulgars were gradually also Slavicized into the present day South Slavic ethnic group Bulgarians. The Romance speakers within the fortified Dalmatian cities retained their culture and language for a long time. Dalmatian Romance was spoken until the high Middle Ages. But, they too were eventually assimilated into the body of Slavs.

Cossacks, although Slavic-speaking and practicing Orthodox Christianity, came from a mix of ethnic backgrounds, including Tatars and other Turks. Many early members of the Terek Cossacks were Ossetians.

The Gorals of southern Poland and northern Slovakia are partially descended from Romance-speaking Vlachs, who migrated into the region from the 14th to 17th centuries and were absorbed into the local population. The population of Moravian Wallachia also descend of this population.

Conversely, some Slavs were assimilated into other populations. Although the majority continued towards Southeast Europe, attracted by the riches of the area that became the state of Bulgaria, a few remained in the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe, and were assimilated into the Magyar people. Numerous river and other place names in Romania have Slavic origin.

There are an estimated 360 million Slavs worldwide.


When was Margaret Lucas Cavendish born?

Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1623 – 15 December 1673) was an English aristocrat, philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction-writer, and playwright during the 17th century. Born Margaret Lucas, she was the youngest sister of prominent royalists Sir John Lucas and Sir Charles Lucas, who owned the manor of St. John's Abbey in Colchester. She became an attendant of Queen Henrietta Maria and travelled with her into exile in France, living for a time at the court of the young King Louis XIV. She became the second wife of William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1645, when he was a marquess.

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Cavendish was a poet, philosopher, writer of prose romances, essayist, and playwright who published under her own name at a time when most women writers published anonymously. Her writing addressed a number of topics, including gender, power, manners, scientific method, and philosophy. Her utopian romance, "The Blazing World", is one of the earliest examples of science fiction. She is singular in having published extensively in natural philosophy and early modern science. She published over a dozen original works; inclusion of her revised works brings her total number of publications to twenty-one.

Cavendish has been championed and criticized as a unique and groundbreaking woman writer. She rejected the Aristotelianism and mechanical philosophy of the seventeenth century, preferring a vitalist model instead. She was the first woman to attend a meeting at Royal Society of London in 1667 and she criticized and engaged with members and philosophers Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, and Robert Boyle. She has been claimed as an advocate for animals and as an early opponent of animal testing.

Cavendish's father, Thomas Lucas, was exiled after a duel that resulted in the death of "one Mr. Brooks"; he was pardoned by King James and returned to England in 1603. As the youngest of eight children, Cavendish recorded that she spent a great deal of time with her siblings. She did not have a formal education but had access to scholarly libraries and tutors, although she intimated that the children paid little attention to the tutors, who were "rather for formality than benefit". At an early age, Cavendish was already putting her ideas and thoughts down on paper since during this time period it was not common or accepted for women to be publicly intelligent. She kept her intellectual endeavours within the privacy of her home. The family was one of relatively significant means and Cavendish indicated that despite being a widow, her mother chose to keep her family in a condition "not much lower" than when her father was alive; the children had access to "honest pleasures and harmless delights." Her mother had little to no male help.

When Queen Henrietta Maria was in Oxford, Cavendish successfully appealed to her mother for permission to become one of her Ladies-in-waiting. Cavendish accompanied the Queen upon her exile and moved to France. This took Cavendish away from her family for the first time. She notes that while she was very confident in the company of her siblings, amongst strangers she became extremely bashful. Cavendish explains that she was afraid she might speak or act inappropriately without her siblings' guidance, which would go against her ambition to be well received and well liked. She spoke only when absolutely necessary and, consequently, she came to be regarded as a fool. Cavendish excused her behaviour by stating that she preferred to be received as a fool rather than as wanton or rude. Regretting that she had left home to be a lady-in-waiting, Cavendish informed her mother she wanted to leave the court. Her mother, however, persuaded Cavendish to stay rather than disgrace herself by leaving and provided her with funds that, as Cavendish notes, quite exceeded the normal means of a courtier. Cavendish remained a lady-in-waiting for two more years until she was married to William Cavendish who was, at the time, Marquis of Newcastle (he was later made Duke).

Cavendish noted that her husband liked her bashfulness. She also stated that he was the only man she was ever in love with, loving him not for title, wealth or power, but for merit, justice, gratitude, duty, and fidelity. She believed these to be attributes that would hold people together, even through misfortune. She further credited such qualities as assisting her husband and her family to endure the suffering they experienced as a result of their political allegiance. Cavendish never had any children, despite efforts made by her physician to help her inability to conceive. Her husband had two children from a previous marriage to survive infancy who went on to write a comedy that portrayed the couple as newlyweds. Cavendish later went on to write a biography on her husband, entitled "The Life of the Thrice Noble, High and Puissant Prince William Cavendishe." In her dedication to her husband, Cavendish recounts a time when there were rumors surrounding the authorship of her works (specifically that her husband wrote them). Cavendish notes that her husband defended her amidst these accusations. But, she does admit to a creative relationship with her husband. Cavendish even gives him credit as her writing tutor. Her own writing "fashions an image of a husband and wife who rely on each other in the public realm of print."

A few years after her marriage, Cavendish and her husband's brother, Sir Charles Cavendish, returned to England. Cavendish had heard that her husband's estate (sequestrated due to his being a royalist delinquent) was to be sold and that she, as his wife, could hope to benefit from the sale. Cavendish, however, received no benefit. She pointedly noted that while many women petitioned for funds, she herself only petitioned once and, being denied, decided such efforts were not worth the trouble. After a year and a half she left England to be with her husband again.

Cavendish asserted in "A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life" that her bashful nature, what she described as "melancholia", made her "repent my going from home to see the World abroad." This melancholic nature manifested itself in a reluctance to talk about her work in public spheres, but it was something she satirised and reconceptualised in her writing Cavendish both defined and administered self-cures for the physical manifestations of her melancholia, which included "chill paleness," an inability to speak, and erratic gestures.

In her memoir, Cavendish explained her enjoyment in reinventing herself through fashion. She said that she aimed for uniqueness in her dress, thoughts, and behavior, and that she disliked wearing the same fashions as other women. She also made her desire to achieve fame public. Several passages of her memoir remarked upon her virtuous character, and that while she acknowledged goodness in others, she thought it acceptable that she should hope to be better than them. Cavendish said her ambition was to have everlasting fame. She also expected to be criticized for her decision to write a memoir. She responded by stating that she wrote the memoir for herself not for delight, but so that later generations would have a true account of her lineage and life. She said that she felt justified in writing her memoirs since it had been done by others, such as Caesar and Ovid.

"Poems and Fancies" is a collection of poems, epistles, and some prose, written by Cavendish on a variety of themes. Topics included natural philosophy, atoms, nature personified, macro/microcosms, other worlds, death, battle, hunting, love, honour, and fame. Her poems at times take the form of dialogues between such things as earth and darkness, an oak and a man cutting it down, melancholy and mirth, and peace and war. As noted by Mistress Toppe (see below), formerly Elizabeth Chaplain and Cavendish's maid, Cavendish's writings took the form of poetical fiction, moral instruction, philosophical opinion, dialogue, discourses and poetical romances. "Poems and Fancies" also included "The Animal Parliament", a prose piece consisting largely of speeches and letters. The collection concludes with Cavendish's thoughts on her writing and an advertisement promoting one of her future publications.

Cavendish concluded the collection by stating that she was aware that she did not write elegantly and that her phrasing and placement of words could be criticized. She said she had difficulty creating rhymes that could communicate her intended meaning. In short, Cavendish stated that she strove to keep meaning at the expense of elegance, as her aim was to successfully communicate her ideas. She also noted that she expected her work to be criticized for not being useful. In response, she stated that she wrote not to instruct her readers in the arts, sciences or divinity, but to pass her time, asserting that she made better use of her time than many others. Cavendish returned to these assertions throughout her epistles and poems.

Like authors such as Aphra Behn and William Wordsworth, Cavendish revealed much about her intended audience, writing purpose and philosophy in her prefaces, prologues, epilogues and epistles to the reader. Cavendish wrote several epistle dedications for "Poems and Fancies". The epistles were most often justifications of her writing both in terms of her decision to write at a time when women writers were not encouraged and in terms of her subject choice. Cavendish used the epistles to instruct readers how they ought to read and respond to her poetry, most often by inviting praise from supporters and requesting silence from those who did not like her work. Cavendish commonly used the epistles to call attention to and excuse potential weaknesses in her writing. The epistles were directed to specific audiences and varied accordingly.

The following is an account of several of Cavendish's epistles from "Poems and Fancies".

In her epistle dedication to Sir Charles Cavendish, her brother in law, Cavendish compared writing poetry to spinning and described poetry as mental spinning. She noted that while it was commonly thought to be more appropriate for women to spin than to write, she herself was better at writing. This is one of several occasions where Cavendish calls attention to stereotypical gender roles, such as the belief that women should spin and not write, and then expands upon her reasons for not adhering to them. As in this epistle, Cavendish often employed metaphors to describe her writing in terms of stereotypical feminine tasks or interests, such as spinning, fashion, and motherhood. While Cavendish criticized her own work, she asserted that it would seem better if Sir Charles Cavendish looked favorably upon it. Cavendish often appealed to the reader to applaud her work, asserting that if it was well received it would actually be somewhat improved. She concludes by complimenting Charles' charity and generosity.

In her epistle to noble and worthy ladies, as in many of her epistles, Cavendish straightforwardly expressed her desire for fame. Cavendish stated that she was not concerned that the best people like her writing, as long as many people did. She justified this by linking fame to noise and noise to great numbers of people. Cavendish often assumed a defensive position in her epistles, here justified by her assertion that she expected critiques from males and females not only on her writing, but on her practice of writing itself, as women writers were not encouraged. To this Cavendish argued that women who busy themselves writing will not act inappropriately or gossip. Though she anticipated criticism from females, she calls for female support so that she might gain honour and reputation. She closed by stating that if she should fail, she would see herself as being martyred for the cause of women.

In her epistle to Mistress Toppe, Cavendish stated that her main reason for writing was her desire for fame. Again, Cavendish acknowledged her writing as a digression from accepted gender norms and asked for acceptance. While Cavendish often spoke of her writing in metaphors of domestic or stereotypically feminine activities, here she attempted to excuse her desire for fame by distancing her ambition from the feminine. She described her ambition as a quest for glory, perfection, and praise, which, she stated, was not effeminate. Further, she pointed out that even while writing and pursuing fame she had remained modest and honourable and noted that she had done nothing to dishonour her family. Cavendish attributed her confidence, in what she describes as a time of censor, to her belief that there was no evil, only innocence in her desire for fame. As to her writing without permission, Cavendish excused herself by stating that it was easier to get a pardon after the fact than to obtain permission before. She privileged writing over gossiping, which she treated as a common and negative female activity. She considered writing to be a comparatively harmless pastime. She credited her books as tangible examples of her contemplation and contrasted her self-proclaimed harmless ideas with wild thoughts which, she stated, led to indiscreet actions.

Cavendish explored writing closet dramas during her exile and became one of the most well known women playwrights due to her interest in philosophical nature.

A response from Mistress Toppe follows this epistle in "Poems and Fancies", in which Toppe praised Cavendish and her skill in poetical fiction, moral instruction, philosophical opinion, dialogue, discourses and poetical romances.

Cavendish also included a prefatory letter to natural philosophers. Cavendish stated that she did not know any languages except English, and that even her knowledge of English was somewhat limited, since she was familiar only with "that which is most usually spoke." In other words, she downplayed her knowledge of the technical vocabulary used by natural philosophers. Thus, she said, she lacked knowledge of the opinions and discourses which precede her own. She then dismissed any errors she might make as trivial, asserting that she did not mean her text to be taken as truth. Rather, she wrote simply to pass time and expected that her work would be read for the same purpose. This epistle was also the contained her explanation for writing in verse. She stated that poets were thought to write fiction, and that fiction was aligned with pastime, not truth. Verse, then, was expected to contain errors. Cavendish lamented that her work was not more entertaining and advised readers to skip any part of the book that they did not like.

In her epistle to the reader, Cavendish stated that with no children and, at that time, no estate, she had a lot of spare time. She, therefore, did not engage in housewifery, but filled her time with writing. She stated that good husbandry in poetry was well ordered fancy composed of fine language, proper phrases and significant words. Cavendish excused any errors that might be found in her work as due to her youth and inexperience, and explained that she wrote only to distract herself from thoughts of her husband's and her own hardships. Comparing her book to a child, she said that the book/child was innocent, young, well-behaved, bashful and sensitive, and requested that the reader blame her, the author/mother, not the book, if they did not like it. If, however, the book was well liked, she made it clear that she expected fame.

In her epistle to the poets, Cavendish noted that since women seldom wrote, her own act of writing might be ridiculed, as the strange and unusual seem fantastical, the fantastical seems odd, and the odd seems ridiculous. She requested that her work be judged by reason, not prejudice. She then excused any weaknesses in her poetry by stating that she wrote only to get away from melancholy thoughts and to fill idle time. She employed a food/feasting metaphor and stated that her poems are not ripe, but that applause and praise would make them pass as a 'general feast' to those of vulgar taste who take quantity over quality. As was typical in her writing, applause was welcomed and criticism censored, as she advises those who did not like her poetry to keep silent. She also stated that hers are poems of fancy and thereby required study. She recommended that as one with a troubled conscience ought to look to a minister for guidance, so should the reader ask a poet for help in understanding her poems. Attempting once again to guide the reader to a positive reception of her book, Cavendish drew a distinction between poets (able judges of poetry) and rhymers (faulty judges of poetry) and advised people not to say that her book was nonsense or poorly constructed out of their own ignorance and malice. Returning again to her desire for fame, Cavendish noted that if an honest poet, who was not envious, judged her work, it would receive applause.

Cavendish asked the reader to read her fancies (poems) slowly, paying attention to every word, because every word was a fancy itself. She warned that if readers lost their place or missed lines, they would miss the meaning of the entire work.

Cavendish followed some of her epistles with poems that instructed the reader how the poems came to be published and how they should be received. The proximity of the poems to the epistles and their similarity in subject and tone, suggests that they may be interpreted as being written from Cavendish's own point of view.

The poem "The Poetresses hasty Resolution", like many of Cavendish's epistles, contained excuses for any errors that might be found in the poet's work and begged for praise. In the poem, the poet stated that self-love influenced her judgement of her own poetry, which she found she liked so much that she was moved to continue writing in hope of fame. She said that she wrote without thought about how her work would be received by critics. The poet then recalled how she was visited by Reason who advised her to stop writing. Reason told her that her writing was a waste of time, that her work would not be well received and that she should not have her work printed so that the printer would not lose money. Reason also informed the poet that there were already too many books and that she should burn what she had written to spare the world from even more. The poet noted her angry response and stated that she sent her book to press before she could be persuaded otherwise. In hindsight, however, she regretted her actions. Informing the reader that she felt shamed by her writing, the poet told the reader to pity her and wipe away her tears with praise.

In "The Poetresses Petition", she compared a negative reception to her books with their death. If the books suffered such a death (i.e. criticism), she requested silence and that they be forgotten, without altar or inscriptions, and left undisturbed unless new merit was found in them. Again, Cavendish would censor criticism and promote fame, instructing that only positive criticism should be voiced.

In "An Apology for Writing So Much upon This Book", she compared her book to a child and compared the book/child and author/parent to birds. The book, she stated, was like a baby bird just going out on its own. The author, like a parent bird, was unsure whether or not the book/baby bird would be safe and wrote/chirped in an attempt to protect it.

Cavendish published her autobiographical memoir "A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life" as an addendum to her collection "Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life", in 1656. She wrote it at the age of 33, which is a topic of discussion for literary critics One critic believes Cavendish's autobiography was a way to establish credibility as well as construct a marketable image that would undercut her, in the opinion of society, improper public image. Cavendish wrote her autobiography to compete with what people were saying about her during her lifetime as opposed to competing with what was written on her. The memoir related Cavendish's lineage, social status, fortune, upbringing, education, and marriage. Within the memoir, Cavendish also described her pastimes and manners and offered an account of her own personality and ambition, including thoughts on her extreme bashfulness, contemplative nature, and writing. Cavendish also shared her views on gender (appropriate behavior and activity), politics (Parliamentarians versus Royalists) and class (the proper behavior of servants).

Cavendish's memoir also detailed the lives of her family including a short biography of her brother Charles Lucas, one of the best Civil War Cavalier cavalry commanders who was executed by the Parliamentarians for treason during the Second English Civil War. In addition, Cavendish addressed the economic and personal hardships she and her family faced as a result of war and political allegiance, such as the loss of estates and bereavements.

Eileen O'Neill provided an overview of Cavendish's natural philosophy and its critical reception in her introduction to "Observations upon Experimental Philosophy". O'Neill described Cavendish's natural philosophy as rejecting Aristotelianism and mechanical philosophy and favouring Stoic doctrines. She noted that while women rarely wrote about natural philosophy in the seventeenth century, Cavendish published six books on the subject. O'Neill pointed out that Cavendish herself was not formally educated in natural philosophy, though William Cavendish and his brother Charles shared an interest in the subject and supported Margaret's interest and study in the area. Cavendish might also have been influenced through social encounters with philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes. O'Neill believed that Hobbes (who had instructed Charles in philosophy) had significant influence on Cavendish's natural philosophy and noted that Cavendish was among the few seventeenth-century supporters of Hobbes' materialist philosophy, which argued that incorporeal souls did not exist in nature. Beginning in the 1660s, Cavendish began to study the work of her contemporaries more seriously. O'Neill suggested that such study was intended to enable Cavendish to argue her own points better by contrasting them with those of other natural philosophers.

O'Neill noted that Cavendish's natural philosophy, and writing in general, was criticised by many of her contemporaries as well as by more recent readers, such as Samuel Pepys, Henry More and Virginia Woolf. Cavendish's work has also received positive criticism and she was lauded by many for having written on typically male-dominated subjects, such as natural philosophy. Letters and poems of praise written by her husband were included in several of her published works.

In her preface to "Observations upon Experimental Philosophy", Cavendish stated that she expected readers to say that her practice of writing prolifically was a disease. If so, Cavendish stated, then many others, including Aristotle, Cicero, Homer, and St. Augustine, had also been very ill of the same disease. She remarked that it was an honour for someone of great ambition (as she often identified herself) to share the disease of such wise and eloquent men. In these, as in her other writings, she asserted that she wrote for herself and that her writing was a harmless pastime when compared with those of many other women. She contradicted herself, however, by adding that she wrote for delight, which she had denied in her previous work. Also somewhat contradictory was her assertion that she would continue to write even if she had no readers, which is not in line with her desire for fame. Ultimately, Cavendish excused her criticism of and engagement with the theories of other natural philosophers as a necessary step in the search for truth.

In her epistle to the reader, Cavendish wrote that woman's wit may equal that of man, and therefore women might be able to learn as easily as men. She argued that wit was natural, whereas learning was artificial, and that, in her time, men had more opportunity to educate themselves than women.

Cavendish remarked upon her own experience reading philosophical works. She noted that many such works challenged her understanding, as they often contained difficult words and expressions that she had not previously encountered. It followed that Cavendish advised writers of philosophy to use appropriate language to aid their less expert readers. Cavendish defended her position by stating that philosophical terms ought to ease communication of one's thoughts. She believed that successful communication was possible in all languages and criticised those who complicated communication (particularly English writers) as aiming to gain esteem from those who admire writing simply because they did not understand it, without considering that it might be nonsense. In her own work, Cavendish stated, she had chosen not to use difficult terms, although she pointed out that she understood such terms. Her stated reason was that she desired her work to be accessible to people regardless of their education. Her aim was to communicate her ideas clearly. She requested that any errors that might be found within her work should be overlooked and that readers should remain focused on her main ideas. Here, as in many of her epistles, Cavendish instructed her reader how to approach her work and requested that readers should read her work in its entirety and withhold criticism until they have done so.

Cavendish's prose tale was published in 1666 and again in 1668. Each time it was published with "Observations upon Experimental Philosophy."

As noted by many, including Silvia Bowerbank and Sara Mendelson, this early version of science fiction criticized and explored such issues as science, gender, and power. It also examined the relationship between imagination vs. reason and philosophy vs. fiction. Cavendish wrote herself into the book, which detailed a fictional new world (not just a new continent but an entirely separate world) and its empress. She remarked in her epilogue to the reader that she herself was empress of the philosophical world. In fact, in Cavendish's epistle to the reader she remarked that, in much the same way as there was a Charles the First, she would be considered Margaret the First.

Published in 1664 by William Wilson, "CCXI Sociable Letters" (1664) is a collection of letters as if composed by real women. The organisation of the letters is similar to her other book "The World's Olio" (1655). The topics are as varied as the forms and length of the letters. Topics include marriage, war, politics, medicine, science, English and classical literature, and miscellaneous topics like gambling and religious extremism. Though some letters seem to indicate some characters are actual people, e.g., Thomas Hobbes may be the character in letter 173 and C. R. possibly stands for King Charles II, and some letters are addressed to real people Cavendish communicated with often, the majority of characters are fictional leading to a surprisingly vibrant and ongoing conversation and observation about contemporary life.

Two volumes of Cavendish's dramatic works were printed. "Plays" (1662), printed by A. Warren (London) includes the following:"Plays, Never Before Printed" (1668) was published by Anne Maxwell (London) and contains:Cavendish's views on God and religion remained somewhat ambiguous. From her writings, it is clear that she was a Christian but she did not often address her religious orientation. In her Physical Opinions, however, she explicitly acknowledges her belief in the existence of God, writing "pray account me not an Atheist, but beleeve as I do in God Almighty." Still, she seeks to split philosophy from theology, and therefore avoids debating God's actions in many of her philosophical works. Uncertainty regarding her theological viewpoints is unusual for a woman writer of her time period, considering that much of early modern women's writing was oriented around religion. However, Cavendish acknowledged the existence of God but she "holds that natural reason cannot perceive or have an idea of an immaterial being". She argued that “when we name God, we name an Unexpressible, and Incomprehensible Being.”

Cavendish also published collections of "Philosophical Letters" (1664), orations, as in her collection entitled "Orations" (1662). Many of her works addressed such issues as natural philosophy, gender, power and manners. Cavendish's plays were never acted during her lifetime, but a number of plays, including "The Convent of Pleasure" (1668) have been staged since. As noted, several of Cavendish's works have epistles, prefaces, prologues and epilogues in which she discussed her work, philosophy and ambition while instructing the reader how to read and respond to her writing. Cavendish's writing has been criticised and championed from the time of its original publication to present day.Because of her being a woman author at the time, the fact that she was willing to converse with men on natural philosophy, and her theatrical sense of dress, she eventually gained the nickname "Mad Madge", and many of her contemporaries lambasted her works for their perceived eccentricity. For example, fellow scientist and Royal Society member Samuel Pepys, once famously wrote that she was "a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman" after reading one of her biographies. Dorothy Osborne reflected in one of her published letters, after reading one of the Duchess' books, that she was "sure there are soberer people in Bedlam." This was typical of the impression the general public seemed to have of her. She had her admirers, however: Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland, wrote a poem in her honor on the flyleaf of his copy of "Poems and Fancies"; John Dryden congratulated Newcastle on his wife's "masculine style"; Sir Kenelm Digby and Henry More, to both of whom she gave copies of her work, professed to value it; and Joseph Glanvill and Walter Charleton respected her enough to offer her serious criticism and advice. Not only that, but Charles Lamb enjoyed her "Sociable Letters" and so much admired her biography of her husband, the Duke, that he referred to it as a jewel "for which no casket is rich enough."

As for her scientific pursuits, she was widely looked down upon by the Royal Society, who had a history of excluding women from their ranks; Margaret Cavendish was the first female to be invited, and it wasn't until 1945 that they inducted their first female member. One member, John Evelyn, considered her "a mighty pretender to learning, poetry, and philosophy." A second member, Robert Boyle, considered many of the experiments shown to Cavendish by the Royal Society to be trifles, disparaged her tendency to measure things by their "strangeness" and "prettiness," as opposed to their "use." Even so, her knowledge was still recognized by some, such as proto-feminist Bathsua Makin, who wrote that "The present Dutchess of New-Castle, by her own Genius, rather than any timely Instruction, over-tops many grave Gown-Men," and considered her a prime example of what women could become through education. New manuscript evidence also suggests that she was read and taken seriously by at least some early Royal Society members such as the secretary, Nehemiah Grew.

For a long time after her death, her eccentricity prevented her from being taken seriously by literary historians; it wasn't until Virginia Woolf wrote "The Common Reader" in 1925 that discourse rediscovered the Duchess of Newcastle. On the subject of Cavendish's works, Woolf said that "though her philosophies are futile, and her plays intolerable, and her verses mainly dull, the vast bulk of the Duchess is leavened by a vein of authentic fire. One cannot help following the lure of her erratic and lovable personality as it meanders and twinkles through page after page. There is something noble and Quixotic and high-spirited, as well as crack-brained and bird-witted, about her. Her simplicity is so open; her intelligence so active; her sympathy with fairies and animals so true and tender. She has the freakishness of an elf, the irresponsibility of some non-human creature, its heartlessness, and its charm."

After centuries of disinterest due to her eccentricity, Margaret Cavendish became popular in the 1980s as she was rediscovered and analyzed from a modern feminist perspective; in that time, there have been nine book length critical studies of Cavendish, not including a biography that was written in 1957, which can be found here. There have been many attempts to justify her eccentricity with a historic lens. She has also gained fame as one of the first female science fiction writers, namely for her early utopian novel "The Blazing World". Her self insert character, named Margaret Cavendish, in "The Blazing World" is said to be one of the earliest examples of the modern Mary Sue trope. More recently, her plays have also been examined by the lens of Performance Studies, as they blur the lines between performance and literature, challenge gender identities, and upset gender norms. Additional analysis on Margaret Cavendish can be found here.

This new wave of interest has also brought about several modern media projects in Cavendish's name. "Margaret the First" by Danielle Dutton dramatizes the life of the eccentric author and is written “with lucid precision and sharp cuts through narrative time”, encompassing a new approach to “imagining the life of a historical woman”. Additionally, as the Digital Humanities rise in popularity and importance, several digital projects have started that archive Cavendish's works. The International Margaret Cavendish Society was established to “provide a means of communication between scholars worldwide” and to increase awareness of Cavendish's scholarly presence. The site is a hub for newsletters, contacts, and links to Cavendish's works. Similarly, the Digital Cavendish Project works to make Cavendish's writing accessible and readable for people across the web as well as to “highlight digital research, image archives, scholarly projects, and teaching materials”. On January 26, 2018, the Digital Cavendish Twitter account announced that their next goal would be to compile the Completed Works of Margaret Cavendish.