During the 14th century most of the Ukrainian lands were part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, ruled by princes of the Gediminas dynasty, and the Kingdom of Poland. At that time, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ruled over all segments of the population with Lithuanian statutes, the rules of which were in force until the 1830s. At the end of the 15th century a new social group emerged within the Dnieper thresholds – the Cossacks, from which the Polish King later recruited for military service. In 1569 there was a proclamation of the united state of the Commonwealth, which included Ukrainian territories and caused the spread of European cultural influences.

Ukrainian lands in the period XVII – XVIII centuries. were part of the Moscow State and the Commonwealth. At the same time, the Cossack state autonomy was formed and Slobozhanshchyna was settled – a kind of buffer zone between the autonomous Hetmanate and Moscow, a revolution took place under the leadership of B. Khmelnytsky. At the same time, the influence on the culture of church intellectuals, in particular the Kyiv metropolitanate, increased, the Union Church took the first steps, and the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium gained university status. Ukrainian influence in various spheres was felt in the Russian Empire, but after Ivan Mazepa’s unsuccessful speech against Peter I, the first Ukrainian political emigration appeared. In the Polish-Lithuanian part of Ukraine at that time there was a confrontation known as Koliivshchyna, the population of these lands differed from the Hetmanate by greater ethnic diversity, Hasidism spread here. Ukrainian art of the XVIII century. was influenced by the Baroque. The end of the century was marked by another redistribution of Ukrainian lands due to the division of the Commonwealth, a number of reforms in the administrative and social spheres, as well as changes that eventually led to the emergence of a modern education system.