History of Ukraine
Strikingly different interpretations of the medieval state of Kievan Rus' appear in the four schools of historiography within Ukraine: Russophile, Sovietophile, Eastern Slavic, and Ukrainophile. The Sovietophile and Russophile schools have become marginalized in independent Ukraine, with the Ukrainophile school being dominant in the early 21st century. The Ukrainophile school promotes an identity that is mutually exclusive of Russia. It has come to dominate the nation's educational system, security forces, and national symbols and monuments, although it has been dismissed as nationalist by Western historians. The East Slavic school, an eclectic compromise between Ukrainophiles and Russophilism, has a weaker ideological and symbolic base, although it is preferred by Ukraine's centrist former elites.
Early Slavs
According to historical records, the Slavic homeland would have been somewhere in central Europe, possibly along the southern shore of the Baltic Sea. The -Penkova- complex of cultures during the sixth and seventh centuries AD is generally accepted to reflect the expansion of Slavic speakers at the time. Core candidates are cultures within the territories of modern Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine. According to Polish historian Gerard Labuda, the ethnogenesis of Slavic people is the Trzciniec culture from about 1700 to 1200 BC. The Milograd culture hypothesis posits that the pre-Proto-Slavs (or Balto-Slavs) originated in the seventh century BC–first century AD culture of northern Ukraine and southern Belarus. According to the Chernoles culture theory, the pre-Proto-Slavs originated in the 1025–700 BC culture of northern Ukraine and the third century BC–first century AD Zarubintsy culture. According to the Lusatian culture hypothesis, they were present in north-eastern Central Europe in the 1300–500 BC culture and the second century BC–fourth century AD Przeworsk culture.
The Danube basin hypothesis, postulated by Oleg Trubachyov and supported by Florin Curta and "Nestor's Chronicle", theorizes that the Slavs originated in central and southeastern Europe.