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Is It Ukraine or The Ukraine?

  If you were paying attention to international affairs before the year 1991, you might have noticed that the name of the former Soviet Socialist Republic of the Ukraine, often referred to as “the Ukraine,” started to be referred to simply as “Ukraine” since then.  The definite article the was dropped from the name at the time, just like it appeared on the map for Hasbro’s Risk board game.  But why did it go?  And why was it there in the first place?  For that matter, why are many media outlets referring to the nation’s capital as Kyiv recently instead of Kiev, which has been the English name for the city for centuries? Hasbro Risk board.  Ukraine is even bigger than the Kievan Rus’ ever was!  Note: no article. Let’s start with the name of the country.  For years in English, the place was referred to as The Ukraine , whether it was under Russian domination, Soviet domination, or independent.  This is not exactly a direct translation out of Ukrainian or Russian.  It can’t be, since

Pripyat: The Nuclear City and its Guided Tours

In 1970, the Soviet Union founded a settlement that would one day be the city of Pripyat ( Прип'ять) .  Pripyat is in the extreme north of the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic, named after the nearby Pripyat River, which originates in Ukraine, and flows mostly through modern-day Belarus.  The city of Pripyat officially became a city in 1979, after enough people had moved there.  Pripyat was the ninth Nuclear City in the Soviet Union.  Nuclear cities are quite literally that: cities built around nuclear power plants.  Throughout the 1970s, the main reason one might live in Pripyat was to service the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant.  By the time the population had hit 49,000 in 1979, it was officially a city. Pripyat, Ukraine SSR, circa 1980     Pripyat was what was called a “closed city”.  This doesn’t mean access was restricted, like it might be around a military base.  You were free to come and go; all that was “closed” was the purpose of the city: produci