ABSTRACT
Polish colonization of Ukraine and the imposition of serfdom on the population led to the formation of Cossack bands in the steppe and to outbreaks of social unrest. War and civil war raged over Ukraine from 1648 until the land was divided between Poland and Russia in 1667 by the treaty of Andrusovo and more definitively by the Eternal Peace of 1686. In the Counter-Reformation era, Jews in Polish-ruled Ukraine endured restrictions imposed by Roman Catholic Church authorities, such as a prohibition on keeping Christian servants and an injunction to keep off the streets on certain Catholic feast days. Most of Russian-ruled Ukraine fell within the Pale. The conquest of the Black Sea region in the same period brought additional Jews into the empire. Even in World War II, when the Germans invaded the USSR, the Soviet population of all nationalities looted state stores in order to stock provisions.
