I have read some articles claiming how integrated and similar Russian and Ukrainian history and culture are all over Medium. I have been trying to combat those misconceptions as well as I can. If Russia and Ukraine were so similar, thirty years of independence wouldn't have been enough time to change the trajectory of the two nations and Vladimir Putin's grand plans for taking Ukraine in three days would have been realized.
If Russia and Ukraine were so analogous, then why in the thirty-two years of independence has Russia had only three Presidents while Ukraine has had six?
It's because of their divergent history that happened long before modern Ukrainian territory became a part of the Russian Empire in the mid-seventeen hundreds.
The Birth of the Cossacks
Long before the Tsardom of Muscovy had designs on expansion, the territories of modern Ukraine were integrated into other states — Galicia into the Kingdom of Poland in the 1430s, and the rest into the Commonwealth of Lithuania in the late 1300s with the dissolution of the Galicia-Volhynian principality. The Galicia-Volhynian principality was the only Kyian-Rus legacy kingdom in modern Ukrainian territory to survive the Mongol invasion by accepting fealty to the Khans and providing occasional tribute. It was self-ruling until the late 14th century when its ruling family died out.
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania took a very different approach than Poland and intermarried with the Rus aristocracy, adopting the religion and the language for administrative purposes becoming the successor of Kyivan Rus in Ukrainian lands.
Under the Commonwealth and the eventual combination of the Kingdom of Poland and Duchy of Lithuania through marriage, ethnic Ukrainian nobles and peasants continued to move eastward into the empty land of Kyiv-Rus formally cleared out by the Mongols.
To entice the peasants to move eastward with the aristocracy, the Commonwealth gave the peasants years of tax-free service. As the peasants moved eastward, they realized they had more freedom from the serf-yoke by running away and banding together closer to the Crimean Tartars where the Kingdom and Commonwealth's authorities feared to tread swelling the ranks of the Cossacks.
The original Cossacks were traders from the towns but soon included many peasants as well. They set up their settlements near the southern mouth of the Dnipro River, close enough to the Tartars to keep the Commonwealth away. Their main fortification was the Zaporizhian Sich. They survived by hunting, fishing, and raiding and so had a healthy militant spirit. Because of their independent nature, they elected their own leaders and displaced them by killing them if they did not respect the will of the people. They also instilled harsh punishments incentivizing order among the men.
The Commonwealth realized the Cossacks had value as fighting men against the Tartars or Muscovy and supported their quasi-independence as long as the Cossacks supported the Commonwealth in times of war. They were organized as a military unit for just this purpose in the mid-1500s. There were times when the Cossacks would rebel against the Commonwealth and then sue for better favors. Then Bohdan Khmelnytsky came along and changed things.
The Creation of the Hetmanate
Bohdan Khmelnytsky was both a petty noble and a Cossack. Based on a land dispute with another Commonwealth noble that he could not resolve through the court system, he rode to the Zaporizhian Sich inciting the Cossacks to take arms up against the Commonwealth in 1648. The Cossacks overwhelmingly elected him Hetman. The Cossacks in alliance with the Tartars eliminated the combined Commonwealth and Kingdom of Poland armies and drove them to Lviv.
Khmelnytsky soon became the leader of an autonomous Hetmanate. Knowing the Hetmanate was not strong enough to remain independent of the Commonwealth of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland in perpetuity, the Hetman continued to seek allies. Finding the Tartars and Ottomans to be fickle allies as their cavalries seemed to evaporate before the Hetmanate could deliver a final blow to the Lithuanian and Polish armies, he started to look elsewhere. For their own selfish purposes, the Tartars and Ottomans only wanted a weakened Poland and Lithuania not one eliminated from the chessboard.
Khmelnytsky began to seek an alliance with Muscovy and Tsar Aleksei Romanov. Thinking with the Periaslav agreement of 1654 that the Hetmanate would have a similar relationship to Muscovy as it had had with the Commonwealth of Lithuania, they signed onto it. The Cossacks would come to the aid of the Tsar and the Tsar would protect them. However, Aleksei was not interested in the same kind of relationship as the Cossacks had with the Commonwealth. He expected the Cossacks to become his subjects.
The Running and Dissolution of the Hetmanate
For a little over fifty years, the Hetmanate became its own state and governed much of its own affairs.
While the more senior Cossack officers came from the landed local gentry, peasants and merchants alike could become Cossacks and gain rights such as land ownership and voting as long as they could afford to participate in military operations. This led to an egalitarian system arising in Ukraine at a time in Eastern Europe when class mobility was extremely limited.
The Hetmanate while self-governing, also sought alliances with Poland, Muscovy, and the Ottomans as it became trapped between these powers as their territories expanded. The Hetmanate was taken by the Ottomans at one point. Finally, Poland and Muscovy split the Hetmanate into two with the dividing line at the Dnipro River creating left and right bank versions. The right bank dissolved soon after into the Polish Kingdom. While the left bank continued to live through the seventeenth century within the Tsardom of Muscovy.
The left bank Hetmanate did not start to dissolve until 1709 with the Battle of Poltava waged between Muscovy and Sweden. Years later in 1721, Peter the Great would change his Tsardom's name to the Russian Empire. After Peter's death in 1725, the Cossacks tried unsuccessfully to reinvigorate the Hetmanate, but it became fully integrated into the newly named Russian Empire even though Cossack culture lived on much longer.
Legacy of the Hetmanate
Even though the Hetmanate only existed as a semi-autonomous nation for less than one hundred years, the impacts of the Hetmanate would live on with Ukrainians for hundreds of years to the present day.
The Cossacks from the time of their founding created a very different society than their medieval neighboring kingdoms. Their social ladder was built more on individual competence and outcomes than solely on birth. This enabled peasants to rise to the level of officers and petty nobles enabling a more mobile social ladder than existed elsewhere.
Their fierce independence and skepticism of authority meant that they built decentralized government models — not trusting power in the hands of only one or even a few. For example, the Hetman could never just order the Cossacks to fight. He had to convince them. The Cossacks might also splinter and choose alternate sides in fights if the Hetman was not very convincing.
Cossacks were also known to hunt, fish, and raid as a means of survival as well as developing wealth creating a spirit of self-reliance and individual merit.
Cossack traits and history permeate through Ukrainian culture today whether it's in their literature (e.g. Taras Bulba), musical instruments (e.g. the Surma), food (e.g. Salo), and culture (e.g. Cossack reenactments). This has heavily influenced Ukrainian identity. Cossacks passed on to Ukrainians not only their cultural legacy but also a sense of self-reliance, resilience, and skepticism of centralized authority. Their democratic spirit harkens back to those Hetman elections, egalitarian class movements, and governmental administration.
It is the key reason why, in my point of view, Ukraine post-1991 embraced democracy even in its imperfect form riddled with corruption while Russia easily fell into autocracy. It is also why Ukrainians took to the streets in masses in two major protests in 2004 and 2013, and why they continue without fear to come to the streets today to demand corruption reform and more investment into their military from their government.