Campi Deserti Citra Boristenem

According to the Polish cartographer, Tomasz Makovsky’s notes that he made in 1590’s, Ukrainian wild steppes beyond Kaniv were marked as “campi deserti citra Boristenem” (desert plains over Borysthenes). Various peoples inhabited these lands: Trypillians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Goths, Greeks, Khazars, Tatars, Ruthenians etc. Geographically, all of them lived within one social union, which only changed its forms of authority and political order. Traditions and mentality of those peoples have greatly influenced today’s inhabitants of these territories. Actually, their ancient cultural codes comprise modern Ukraine too. At the end of the XVII century, the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich deceptive Ukrainian Hetman Bogdan Khmelnitsky and turned their planned military alliance into a de-facto incorporation of Ukraine into the Moscow principality. Since then these lands were of no interest to anyone until the end of the 19th century, when entrepreneurs from England, France, Switzerland became interested in the economic potential of the region and began to develop coal and metal industry there. The region had never been industrial before: for centuries, locals had cultivated land. They were not really interested in the benefits brought by industrialization. At the beginning of the XX century, Southern and Eastern Ukraine had got to know its own version of the American “Wild West”. Various people from all over the Russian Empire were coming to the region looking for work, in the hope for a better life. New towns and villages grew around factories. They were majorly populated with workers from Russia. After a genocide of the rural population, better known as the “Holodomor of 1932-33”, the population of Ukraine significantly decreased (10 millions of confirmed victims). Survivors were assimilated and cemented in the Soviet mentality. It was in that same state of mind that they carried on peacefully up until spring 2014 came and the Kremlin attacked the region. People had to quickly decide who they were. A geopolitical earthquake - the biggest so far in the XXI century, began with Moscow violating the international law, invading Crimea and Donbas - the region of desert plains over Borysthenes.