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Early Times to Mongol Invasion (1240)

Kiev was probably founded in the 5th century by East Slavs. The legend of Kyi, Schek and Khoryv speaks of a founder-family consisting of a Slavic tribe leader Kyi, the eldest, his brothers Schek and Khoriv, and also their sister Lybid, who founded the city. Kyiv/Kiev is translated as "belonging to Kyi". It is unclear when Kiev fell under the rule of the Khazar empire but the Primary Chronicle (a main source of information about the early history of the area) mentions Slavic Kievans telling Askold and Dir that they live without a local ruler and pay a tribute to Khazars in an event attributed to the 9th century. At least during the 8th and 9th centuries Kiev functioned as an outpost of the Khazar empire. A hill-fortress, called Sambat (Old Turkic for "High Place") was built to defend the area. At some point during the late ninth or early tenth century Kiev fell under the rule of Varangians (see Askold and Dir, and Oleg of Novgorod) and became the nucleus of the Rus' polity. The date given for Oleg's conquest of the town in the Primary Chronicle is 882, but some historians, such as Omeljan Pritsak and Constantine Zuckerman, dispute this and maintain that Khazar rule continued as late as the 920s (documentary evidence exists to support this assertion - see the Kievian Letter and Schechter Letter.)

From Oleg's seizure of the city until 1169 Kiev was the capital of the principal East-Slavic state, known as Kievan Rus' (or Kyivan Rus') which was ruled by initially Varangian Rurikid dynasty which was gradually Slavisized. The Kievan Grand Princes had traditional primacy over the other rulers of the land and the Kiev princehood was a valuable prize in the intra-dynastic rivalry. In 968 the city withstood a siege by the nomadic Pechenegs. In 988 by the order of the Grand Prince Vladimir I of Kiev (St. Vladimir or Volodymyr), the city residents baptized en-masse in the Dnieper river, an event the symbolized the Baptism of Kievan Rus'. Kiev reached the height of its position of political and cultural Golden Age in the middle of the 11th century under Vladimir's son Yaroslav the Wise. The following years were marked by the rivalries of the competing princes of the dynasty and weakening of Kiev's political influence. In one of such wars (1169) Kiev was sacked by the Suzdalian troops of Andrei Bogolyubsky.

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Mongol Invasion to the Seventeenth Century
Nineteenth century to the 1917 Revolution
Ukrainian Revolution and Independence
1918-1941
World War II
Post-WWII Ukrainian SSR
Independent Ukraine

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