Right-bank Ukraine

Right-bank Ukraine ( _uk. "Pravoberezhna Ukrayina"; _ru. "Pravoberezhnaya Ukraina"; _pl. Prawobrzeżna Ukraina), a historical name of a part of Ukraine on the right (west) bank of the Dnieper River, corresponding with modern-day oblasts of Volyn, Rivne, Vinnitsa, Zhytomyr, Kirovohrad and Kiev, as well as part of Cherkasy and Ternopil.

In 1667 under the Treaty of Andrusovo, left-bank Ukraine was incorporated into Muscovy, while right-bank Ukraine (except for the city of Kiev) remained part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Five years later in 1672, Podolia was occupied by the Turkish Ottoman empire, while Kiev and Braclav came under the control of Hetman Petro Doroshenko until 1681, when they were also captured by Turks. After the Christian victory in the Battle of Vienna (1683), in 1699 the Treaty of Karlowitz returned those lands to the Commonwealth. During the eighteenth century, two Cossack uprisings took place. In 1793 right-bank Ukraine was finally annexed by the Russian Empire in the Second Partition of Poland [Orest Subtelny; [http://books.google.es/books?id=HNIs9O3EmtQC Ukraine History] ; University of Toronto Press; 2000. ISBN 0802083900. pp 117-145-146-148] , becoming part of the "guberniya" ('governorate') of Little Russia.

In the nineteenth century, the population of right-bank Ukraine was mostly Ukrainian, but most of the land was owned by the Polish or Polonized Ukrainian nobility. Many of the towns and cities were heavily Jewish. While the Polish-speaking nobility was mostly Roman Catholic. Most of the peasantry became Greek-Catholic only in the 18th century, and after the Partitions of Poland, largely reverted to Orthodoxy long before the disestablishment of the unia in 1839. The right-bank Ukraine was subsequently divided into three provinces (guberniyas), each with its own administration: Kiev, Volhynia, and Podolia.

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