Altho, as time passed, the General Assembly (viche — a name that is applied to all political assemblies of the Ukrainians to this day) partly regained their former power, and, altho at the same time various provisions of the original constitution sifted into the new governmental organization, monarchy, nevertheless, always remained something extraneous and unpleasant to the people. There is no wonder, therefore, that the State of Kiev never attained a power in keeping with its great territory and population. The people ostensibly supported everything which tended to weaken the power of the government. Thru the entire existence of the ancient Kingdom of Kiev, its Great Princes were forced to wrestle with the Boyar nobility and the people for absolute power. This limitation of the monarchic power turned out to be a disaster for the Kingdom of Kiev. By applying the practice of succession to the throne, in accordance with a principle known as that of "seniority," there resulted the formation of numerous petty principalities, all rather loosely, perhaps only nominally, subject to the authority of the Great Prince of Kiev. The Boyar caste and the people were very persistent in their labors to aid in the formation and maintenance of these petty principalities thruout the southern portion of the Kingdom of Kiev.
At the same time, it is very probable that if the ancient State of Kiev had survived a longer time, the Ukrainian People would gradually have become accustomed to a constitution founded on caste and privilege. It would also have been possible, as early as the Middle Ages, for the Ukrainian People to attain a constitutional monarchy. But things happened differently.
The Kingdom, weakened by partitions, was soon confronted by a powerful enemy in the young Muscovite State which was formed by the northern petty principalities of the Kingdom. In a series of bloody wars with the Muscovite State, Kiev was so permanently weakened that the headquarters of Ukrainian political life had to be shifted southward, in the 13th Century, to Halich on the Dniester. Then, the situation of this Kiev country was such as to expose it to continuous invasion on the part of the nomadic warlike tribes which infested the steppes of the Ukraine. But the nation managed to hold them in check during this weary term of warfare. When, however, the hosts of the Mongol potentate, Djingis Khan, appeared in the Pontian steppes, the resources of Kiev and Halich were no longer equal to the pressure. In the three days' battle on the Kalka (1224) their army was annihilated, and in 1240 the city of Kiev was razed to the ground. The principality (later kingdom) of Halich survived it by almost a century, but could not withstand the continued aggressions of the Tatars on the one side and of the Poles and Lithuanians on the other; in 1340 it was incorporated with Poland by right of succession, and thus ended the first national organization of the Ukrainian People. All the Ukraine, excepting the forest regions in the northwest, had been completely devastated.
The Polish-Lithuanian state treated the Ukraine as conquered territory. Being now dissenters in the midst of a Catholic state, the Ukrainian nobles were limited in their prerogatives, and deserted their faith and their nationality, in order to have a share in the golden freedom of Poland. The burgher class was tyrannized (as was the practice all over Poland); the peasant became a serf. The splendid task of an ecclesiastical union with Rome was solved (Florence, 1439; Brest 1596) in an unsatisfactory manner and bore little fruit at the time. Every Ukrainian was made to feel the iron hand of the Polish government, and their dissatisfaction expressed itself in numerous rebellions. And yet the Polish-Lithuanian State was far too weak to protect the Ukraine against the onslaughts of the Tatars. Every year these hordes of riders sallied forth from the Crimea, pushing their invasions even as far as Galicia and Volhynia, devastating the country and depopulating it by seizures of slaves, conducted according to a systematic plan. The victims of this slave trade filled the markets of the Orient for centuries.
It was inevitable that this sorely-tried nation should take steps to defend itself. And its efforts were successful in that they led to the formation of a new independent state, but unsuccessful in that they exhausted its resources and later had a tragical outcome.