Kyiv

Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe.

Kyiv is an important industrial, scientific, educational, and cultural center in Eastern Europe. It is home to many high-tech industries, higher education institutions, and historical landmarks. The city has an extensive system of public transport and infrastructure, including the Kyiv Metro.

The city's name is said to derive from the name of Kyi, one of its four legendary founders. During its history, Kyiv, one of the oldest cities in Eastern Europe, passed through several stages of prominence and obscurity. The city probably existed as a commercial center as early as the 5th century. A Slavic settlement on the great trade route between Scandinavia and Constantinople, Kyiv was a tributary of the Khazars, until its capture by the Varangians (Vikings) in the mid-9th century. Under Varangian rule, the city became a capital of Kievan Rus', the first East Slavic state. Completely destroyed during the Mongol invasions in 1240, the city lost most of its influence for the centuries to come. It was a provincial capital of marginal importance in the outskirts of the territories controlled by its powerful neighbours, first Lithuania, then Poland and ultimately Russia.

The city prospered again during the Russian Empire's Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century. In 1918, after the Ukrainian People's Republic declared independence from Russian Republic, Kyiv became its capital. From 1921 onwards, Kyiv was a city of Soviet Ukraine, which was proclaimed by the Red Army, and, from 1934, Kyiv was its capital. The city suffered significant destruction during World War II but quickly recovered in the postwar years, remaining the Soviet Union's third-largest city.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukrainian independence in 1991, Kyiv remained Ukraine's capital and experienced a steady influx of ethnic Ukrainian migrants from other regions of the country. During the country's transformation to a market economy and electoral democracy, Kyiv has continued to be Ukraine's largest and wealthiest city. Its armament-dependent industrial output fell after the Soviet collapse, adversely affecting science and technology, but new sectors of the economy such as services and finance facilitated Kyiv's growth in salaries and investment, as well as providing continuous funding for the development of housing and urban infrastructure. Kyiv emerged as the most pro-Western region of Ukraine; parties advocating tighter integration with the European Union dominate during elections.

Name

* en, Kyiv ( , ) or Kiev ( )
* uk, Ки́їв, translit=Kyiv,
*russian: Киев, translit=Kiev,

Before standardization of the alphabet in the early 20th century, the name was also spelled , , or with the now-obsolete letter yat. The Old Ukrainian spelling from the 14th and 15th centuries was nominally , but various attested spellings include (gen.), , and ( acc.), кїєво or кїєвом ( ins.), києвє, Кіеве, Кїєвѣ, Києвѣ, or Киѣве ( loc.).

The name descends from Old East Slavic (). Old East Slavic chronicles, such as Laurentian Codex and Novgorod Chronicle, used the spellings Києвъ, Къıєвъ, or Кїєвъ. This is most likely derived from the Proto-Slavic name ''*Kyjevŭ gordŭ'' (literally, "Kyi's castle", "Kyi's gord"), and is associated with Kyi ( uk, Кий, russian: Кий), the legendary eponymous founder of the city. However, Кий derives from Proto-Slavic *kyjь, (''hammer, club''), which derives from Proto-Indo-European *kewh₂-, (''to forge, to strike''), so ''Kiev'' may mean '' smithy''.

''Kyiv'' is the romanized official Ukrainian name for the city, The entry is the same as the print edition of It includes the note "''Ukrainian name'': Kyiv". For American English, the website also includes the definition from In the 2018 fifth edition, WNWCD changed the main headword to ''Kyiv'', with ''Kiev'' as a see-also entry with the label "Russ. name for Kyiv". and it is used for legislative and official acts. ''Kiev'' is the traditional English name for the city, but because of its historical derivation from the Russian name, ''Kiev'' lost favor with many Western media outlets after the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014.

The city was known by various names in history. In the Norse sagas it was or , meaning "city of the Kyivans" (from ), which survives in modern Icelandic . Perhaps the earliest original manuscript to name the city is the Kyivan letter, written CE by representatives of the city's Jewish community, with the name written as .

The historian Julius Brutzkus in his work ''The Khazar Origin of Ancient Kiev'' hypothesizes that both Sambat and Kyiv are of Khazar origin meaning "hill fortress" and "lower settlement" respectively. Brutzkus claims that Sambat is not Kyiv, but rather Vyshhorod (High City), which is located nearby.

In the Byzantine Greek of Constantine Porphyrogenitus's 10th-century ''De Administrando Imperio'' it was , , and "also called Sambatas", . In Arabic, it was in Al-Istakhri's work of 951 AD, and according to ibn Rustah and other 10th-century authors. In the medieval Latin of Thietmar of Merseburg's ''Chronicon'' it was mentioned for the year 1015 as . After it was rebuilt in the 15th century, Kyiv was called by the Turkic ( Crimean Tatar) name or .

As a prominent city with a long history, its English name was subject to gradual evolution. Early English sources spelled this word as ''Kiou'', ''Kiow'', ''Kiew'', ''Kiovia''. On one of the oldest English maps of the region, , published by Ortelius (London, 1570), the name of the city is spelled ''Kiou''. On the 1650 map by Guillaume de Beauplan, the name of the city is ''Kiiow'', and the region was named ''Kÿowia''. In the book ''Travels'', by Joseph Marshall (London, 1772), the city is called ''Kiovia''. Originally published: London, J. Almon, 1773, .

In English, ''Kiev'' appeared in print as early as 1804 in John Cary's "New map of Europe, from the latest authorities", and in Mary Holderness's 1823 travelogue ''New Russia: Journey from Riga to the Crimea by way of Kiev''. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' included ''Kiev'' in a quotation published by 1883, and ''Kyiv'' in 2018.

The Ukrainian version of the name, ''Kyiw'', appears in the Volume 4 of the Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland, published in 1883.

After Ukraine's 1991 independence, the Ukrainian government introduced the national rules for transliteration of geographic names into the Latin alphabet for legislative and official acts in October 1995, according to which the Ukrainian name is romanized ''Kyiv''. These rules are applied for place names and addresses, as well as personal names in passports, street signs, and so on.

In 2018, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry launched #CorrectUA, an online campaign to promote the use of official Ukrainian spellings by countries and organizations, in place of "outdated, Soviet-era" place-names. Specifically, for the capital, the campaign KyivNotKiev was developed as part of the broader campaign.

The place name ''Kyiv'' is standardized in the authoritative database of Ukraine's toponyms maintained by Ukraine's mapping agency Derzhheokadastr. It has also been adopted by the United Nations GEGN Geographical Names Database, the United States Board on Geographic Names, the International Air Transport Association, the European Union, English-speaking foreign diplomatic missions and governments, several international organizations, and the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Some English-language news sources have adopted in their style guides, including the AP, CP, Reuters, and AFP news services, media organizations in Ukraine, and some media organizations in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, despite more resistance to the spelling change compared to others, like ''Beijing'' and ''Mumbai''.

Alternative romanizations used in English-language sources include ''Kyïv'' (according to the ALA–LC romanization used in bibliographic cataloguing), ''Kyjiv'' (scholarly transliteration used in linguistics), and ''Kyyiv'' (the 1965 BGN/PCGN transliteration standard).

The US media organization NPR adopted an on-air pronunciation of ''Kyiv'' closer to the Ukrainian, responding to the history and identity of the local population, in January 2022.

History

The first known humans in the region of Kyiv lived there in the late paleolithic period (Stone Age).Kyiv
at Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia The population around Kyiv during the Bronze Age formed part of the so-called Trypillian culture, as evidenced by artifacts from that culture found in the area. During the early Iron Age certain tribes settled around Kyiv that practiced land cultivation, husbandry and trading with the Scythians and ancient states of the northern Black Sea coast. Findings of Roman coins of the 2nd to the 4th centuries suggest trade relations with the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. The people of the Zarubintsy culture are considered the direct ancestors of the ancient Slavs who later established Kyiv. Notable archaeologists of the area around Kyiv include Vikentiy Khvoyka.

Scholars continue to debate when the city was founded: the traditional founding date is 482 CE, so the city celebrated its 1,500th anniversary in 1982. Archaeological data indicates a founding in the sixth or seventh centuries,Kyiv
", ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 9 March 2020. with some researchers dating the founding as late as the late 9th century,

There are several legendary accounts of the origin of the city. One tells of members of a Slavic tribe ( Eastern Polans), brothers Kyi (the eldest, after whom the city was named) Shchek and Khoryv, and their sister Lybid, who founded the city (See the ''Primary Chronicle''). Another legend states that Saint Andrew passed through the area in the 1st century. Where the city is now he erected a cross, where a church later was built. Since the Middle Ages an image of Saint Michael has represented the city as well as the duchy.

There is little historical evidence pertaining to the period when the city was founded. Scattered Slavic settlements existed in the area from the 6th century, but it is unclear whether any of them later developed into the city. On the Ptolemy world map there are several settlements indicated along the mid-stream of Borysthenes, among which is Azagarium, which some historians believe to be the predecessor to Kyiv.

However, according to the 1773 ''Dictionary of Ancient Geography'' of Alexander Macbean, that settlement corresponds to the modern city of Chernobyl. Just south of Azagarium, there is another settlement, Amadoca, which is supposed as the capital of Amadoci people living in area between marshes of Amadoca in the west and Amadoca mountains in the east.

Another name for Kyiv mentioned in history, the origin of which is not completely clear, is Sambat, which apparently has something to do with the Khazar Empire. The ''Primary Chronicle'' says the residents of Kyiv told Askold "there were three brothers Kyi, Shchek, and Khoriv. They founded this town and died, and now we are staying and paying taxes to their relatives the Khazars". In ''De Administrando Imperio'', Constantine Porphyrogenitus mentions a caravan of small-cargo boats which assembled annually, and writes, "They come down the river Dnieper and assemble at the strong-point of Kyiv (Kioava), also called Sambatas".

At least three Arabic-speaking 10th century geographers who traveled the area mention the city of Zānbat as the chief city of the Russes. Among them are ibn Rustah, Abu Sa'id Gardezi, and an author of the Hudud al-'Alam. The texts of those authors were discovered by Russian orientalist Alexander Tumansky. The etymology of Sambat has been argued by many historians, including Grigoriy Ilyinsky, Nikolay Karamzin, Jan Potocki, Nikolay Lambin, Joachim Lelewel, and Guðbrandur Vigfússon.

The Primary Chronicles state that at some point during the late 9th or early 10th century Askold and Dir, who may have been of Viking or Varangian descent, ruled in Kyiv. They were murdered by Oleg of Novgorod in 882, but some historians, such as Omeljan Pritsak and Constantine Zuckerman, dispute that, arguing that Khazar rule continued as late as the 920s (among notable historical documents are the Kyivan Letter and Schechter Letter).

Other historians suggest that Magyar tribes ruled the city between 840 and 878, before migrating with some Khazar tribes to the Carpathian Basin. The Primary Chronicles also mention movement of Hungarians pass Kyiv. To this day in Kyiv exists a place known as " Uhorske urochyshche" (Hungarian place), which is better known as Askold's Grave.

According to the aforementioned scholars the building of the fortress of Kyiv was finished in 840 under the leadership of Keő (Keve), Csák, and Geréb, three brothers, possibly members of the Tarján tribe. The three names appear in the Kyiv Chronicle as Kyi, Shchek, and Khoryv and may be not of Slavic origin, as Russian historians have always struggled to account for their meanings and origins. According to Hungarian historian Viktor Padányi, their names were inserted into the Kyiv Chronicle in the 12th century, and they were identified as old-Russian mythological heroes.

The city of Kyiv stood on the trade route between the Varangians and the Greeks. In 968 the nomadic Pechenegs attacked and then besieged the city. By 1000 CE the city had a population of 45,000.

In March 1169, Grand Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky of Vladimir-Suzdal sacked Kyiv, leaving the old town and the prince's hall in ruins. He took many pieces of religious artwork - including the ''Theotokos of Vladimir'' icon - from Vyshhorod. In 1203, Prince Rurik Rostislavich and his Kipchak allies captured and burned Kyiv. In the 1230s, the city was besieged and ravaged several times by different Rus princes. The city had not recovered from these attacks when, in 1240, the Mongol invasion of Rus', led by Batu Khan, completed the destruction of Kyiv.

These events had a profound effect on the future of the city and on the East Slavic civilization. Before Bogolyubsky's pillaging, Kyiv had had a reputation as one of the largest cities in the world, with a population exceeding 100,000 in the beginning of the 12th century.

In the early 1320s, a Lithuanian army led by Grand Duke Gediminas defeated a Slavic army led by Stanislav of Kyiv at the Battle on the Irpen' River and conquered the city. The Tatars, who also claimed Kyiv, retaliated in 1324–1325, so while Kyiv was ruled by a Lithuanian prince, it had to pay tribute to the Golden Horde. Finally, as a result of the Battle of Blue Waters in 1362, Algirdas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, incorporated Kyiv and surrounding areas into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1482, Crimean Tatars sacked and burned much of Kyiv.

With the 1569 (Union of Lublin), when the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was established, the Lithuanian-controlled lands of the Kyiv region (Podolia, Volhynia, and Podlachia) were transferred from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, and Kyiv became the capital of Kyiv Voivodeship. The 1658 Treaty of Hadiach envisaged Kyiv becoming the capital of the Grand Duchy of Rus' within the Polish–Lithuanian–Ruthenian Commonwealth, but this provision of the treaty never went into operation.

Occupied by Russian troops since the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav, Kyiv became a part of the Tsardom of Russia from 1667 on the Truce of Andrusovo and enjoyed a degree of autonomy. None of the Polish-Russian treaties concerning Kyiv have ever been ratified. In the Russian Empire, Kyiv was a primary Christian centre, attracting pilgrims, and the cradle of many of the empire's most important religious figures, but until the 19th century, the city's commercial importance remained marginal.

In 1834, the Russian government established Saint Vladimir University, now called the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv after the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861). (Shevchenko worked as a field researcher and editor for the geography department). The medical faculty of Saint Vladimir University, separated into an independent institution in 1919–1921 during the Soviet period, became the Bogomolets National Medical University in 1995.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Russian military and ecclesiastical authorities dominated city life; the Russian Orthodox Church had involvement in a significant part of Kyiv's infrastructure and commercial activity. In the late 1840s the historian, Mykola Kostomarov ''(russian: link=no, Nikolay Kostomarov)'', founded a secret political society, the Brotherhood of Saint Cyril and Methodius, whose members put forward the idea of a federation of free Slavic peoples with Ukrainians as a distinct and separate group rather than a subordinate part of the Russian nation; the Russian authorities quickly suppressed the society.

Following the gradual loss of Ukraine's autonomy, Kyiv experienced growing Russification in the 19th century by means of Russian migration, administrative actions and social modernization. At the beginning of the 20th century the Russian speaking part of the population dominated the city centre, while the lower classes living on the outskirts retained Ukrainian folk culture to a significant extent. However, enthusiasts among ethnic Ukrainian nobles, military and merchants made recurrent attempts to preserve native culture in Kyiv, by clandestine book-printing, amateur theatre, folk studies, etc.

During the Russian industrial revolution in the late 19th century, Kyiv became an important trade and transportation centre of the Russian Empire, specialising in sugar and grain export by railway and on the Dnieper river. By 1900, the city had also become a significant industrial centre, having a population of 250,000. Landmarks of that period include the railway infrastructure, the foundation of numerous educational and cultural facilities, and notable architectural monuments (mostly merchant-oriented). In 1892, the first electric tram line of the Russian Empire started running in Kyiv (the third in the world).

Kyiv prospered during the late 19th century Industrial Revolution in the Russian Empire, when it became the third most important city of the Empire and the major centre of commerce of its southwest. In the turbulent period following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Kyiv became the capital of several successive Ukrainian states and was caught in the middle of several conflicts: World War I, during which German soldiers occupied it from 2 March 1918 to November 1918, the Russian Civil War of 1917 to 1922, and the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921. During the last three months of 1919, Kyiv was intermittently controlled by the White Army. Kyiv changed hands sixteen times from the end of 1918 to August 1920.

From 1921 to 1991, the city formed part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which became a founding republic of the Soviet Union in 1922. The major events that took place in Soviet Ukraine during the interwar period all affected Kyiv: the 1920s Ukrainization as well as the migration of the rural Ukrainophone population made the Russophone city Ukrainian-speaking and bolstered the development of Ukrainian cultural life in the city; the Soviet Industrialization that started in the late 1920s turned the city, a former centre of commerce and religion, into a major industrial, technological and scientific centre; the 1932–1933 Great Famine devastated the part of the migrant population not registered for ration cards; and Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of 1937–1938 almost eliminated the city's intelligentsiaOrlando Figes ''The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia'', 2007, , pages 227–315.Robert Gellately, ''Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe'' (Knopf, 2007: ), 720 pages.

In 1934, Kyiv became the capital of Soviet Ukraine. The city boomed again during the years of Soviet industrialization as its population grew rapidly and many industrial giants were established, some of which exist today.

In World War II, the city again suffered significant damage, and Nazi Germany occupied it from 19 September 1941 to 6 November 1943. Axis forces killed or captured more than 600,000 Soviet soldiers in the great encirclement Battle of Kyiv in 1941. Most of those captured never returned alive. Shortly after the Wehrmacht occupied the city, a team of NKVD officers who had remained hidden dynamited most of the buildings on the Khreshchatyk, the main street of the city, where German military and civil authorities had occupied most of the buildings; the buildings burned for days and 25,000 people were left homeless.

Allegedly in response to the actions of the NKVD, the Germans rounded up all the local Jews they could find, nearly 34,000, and massacred them at Babi Yar in Kyiv on 29 and 30 September 1941. In the months that followed, thousands more were taken to Babi Yar where they were shot. It is estimated that the Germans murdered more than 100,000 people of various ethnic groups, mostly civilians, at Babi Yar during World War II.

Kyiv recovered economically in the post-war years, becoming once again the third-most important city of the Soviet Union. The catastrophic accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 occurred only north of the city. However, the prevailing south wind blew most of the radioactive debris away from Kyiv.

In the course of the collapse of the Soviet Union the Ukrainian parliament proclaimed the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine in the city on 24 August 1991. In 2004–2005, the city played host to the largest post-Soviet public demonstrations up to that time, in support of the Orange Revolution. From November 2013 until February 2014, central Kyiv became the primary location of Euromaidan.

Environment

Geography

Geographically, Kyiv is located on the border of the Polesia woodland ecological zone, a part of the European mixed woods area, and the East European forest steppe biome. However, the city's unique landscape distinguishes it from the surrounding region. Kyiv is completely surrounded by Kyiv Oblast.

Originally on the west bank, today Kyiv is located on both sides of the Dnieper, which flows southwards through the city towards the Black Sea. The older and higher western part of the city sits on numerous wooded hills (Kyiv Hills), with ravines and small rivers. Kyiv's geographical relief contributed to its toponyms, such as ''Podil'' ("lower"), ''Pechersk'' ("caves"), and ''uzviz'' (a steep street, "descent"). Kyiv is a part of the larger Dnieper Upland adjoining the western bank of the Dnieper in its mid-flow, and which contributes to the city's elevation change.

The northern outskirts of the city border the Polesian Lowland. Kyiv expanded into the Dnieper Lowland on the left bank (''to the east'') as late as the 20th century. The whole portion of Kyiv on the left bank of the Dnieper is generally referred to as the ''Left Bank'' (, ''Livyi bereh''). Significant areas of the left bank Dnieper valley were artificially sand-deposited, and are protected by dams.

Within the city the Dnieper River forms a branching system of tributaries, isles, and harbors within the city limits. The city is close to the mouth of the Desna River and the Kyiv Reservoir in the north, and the Kaniv Reservoir in the south. Both the Dnieper and Desna rivers are navigable at Kyiv, although regulated by the reservoir shipping locks and limited by winter freeze-over.

In total, there are 448 bodies of open water within the boundaries of Kyiv, which include the Dnieper itself, its reservoirs, and several small rivers, dozens of lakes and artificially created ponds. They occupy 7949 hectares. Additionally, the city has 16 developed beaches (totalling 140 hectares) and 35 near-water recreational areas (covering more than 1,000 hectares). Many are used for pleasure and recreation, although some of the bodies of water are not suitable for swimming.

According to the UN 2011 evaluation, there were no risks of natural disasters in Kyiv and its metropolitan area.

Climate

Kyiv has a warm-summer humid continental climate (Köppen ''Dfb''). The warmest months are June, July, and August, with mean temperatures of . The coldest are December, January, and February, with mean temperatures of . The highest ever temperature recorded in the city was on 30 July 1936.

The coldest temperature ever recorded in the city was on 11 January 1951. Snow cover usually lies from mid-November to the end of March, with the frost-free period lasting 180 days on average, but surpassing 200 days in some years.

Legal status, local government and politics

Legal status and local government

The municipality of the city of Kyiv has a special legal status within Ukraine compared to the other administrative subdivisions of the country. The most significant difference is that the city is considered as a region of Ukraine (see Regions of Ukraine). It is the only city that has double jurisdiction. The Head of City State Administration – the city's governor – is appointed by the president of Ukraine, while the Head of the City Council – the mayor of Kyiv – is elected by local popular vote.

The mayor of Kyiv is Vitali Klitschko