Richard W. Kropf: Religion and politics in Ukraine
Ever since the conversion and baptism of Prince Vladimir I at Kyiv around the year 889, the relationship between the Ruthenian or Ukrainian people - in the past often called the "Little Russians" -- and the rest of the Eastern Slavs (the "Great Russians") has been an off and on again affair. For the first 300 years or so, Ukraine (the word itself meant "borderland") and the rest of Russia formed one state. Then, after the Mongol and Tatar invasions, the Ukrainian peoples looked westward for help, to Poland, Lithuania, even to Sweden, from whom the Russian Czar, after a decisive battle in 1709, finally succeeded in reuniting the Ukraine to Russia as a whole.