During the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture under the state of Kievan Rus´, which emerged in the 9th century ...
and was ultimately destroyed by the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. After the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia emerged, the area was contested, divided, and ruled by a variety of external powers for the next 600 years, including the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Tsardom of Russia. The Cossack Hetmanate emerged in central Ukraine in the 17th century, but was partitioned between Russia and Poland, and ultimately absorbed by the Russian Empire. After the Russian Revolution, a Ukrainian national movement re-emerged, and formed the Ukrainian People´s Republic in 1917. This short-lived state was forcibly reconstituted by the Bolsheviks into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which became a founding member of the Soviet Union in 1922. In the 1930s, millions of Ukrainians were killed during the Holodomor, a Stalin-era man-made famine.
