Following the abolition of autonomy in the Hetmanate and Sloboda Ukraine and the annexation of the Right Bank and Volhynia, Ukrainian lands in the Russian Empire formally lost all traces of their national distinctiveness. The territories were reorganized into regular Russian provinces (guberniyas) administered by governors appointed from St. Petersburg. The Right Bank, along with some adjoining territories, formed part of the Pale of Settlement, to which the Jewish population of the empire was residentially restricted (see pale). With the liquidation of the Sich and the annexation of the Crimean khanate in 1783, the sparsely settled southern lands (named Novorossiya, or New Russia) were colonized by migrants from other parts of Ukraine, as well as smaller numbers from Russia, the Balkans, and Germany. This colonization movement greatly expanded Ukrainian ethnic territory. The new Black Sea port of Odessa (Odesa) grew into a large and cosmopolitan metropolis.

Equally important developments occurred in the social sphere. As compensation for their lost rights as a ruling elite in the Hetmanate, the Cossack starshyna were equalized with the Russian nobility; many entered imperial service, and some achieved the highest government ranks. Through education, intermarriage, and government service, the Ukrainian nobility gradually became Russified—as the earlier Ruthenian nobility had been Polonized—though many retained a sentimental attachment to the land and its folklore. The Polish nobility in the Right Bank continued as the dominant landowning class, although its status eroded over time, particularly after the Polish insurrections of 1830–31 and 1863–64 (see November Insurrection; January Insurrection). The large Jewish population was bound by numerous legal disabilities and, from 1881, victimized by recurrent waves of pogroms. The gradual process of enserfment of the peasantry in the Left Bank culminated in 1783 under Catherine II. The obligations there, however, were less onerous than in the Right Bank. Agitation among the peasant class, coupled with the Russian defeat in the Crimean War (1853–56), hastened the decline of serfdom, but it remained the dominant lot of the peasantry until the emancipation of 1861. After emancipation, the peasants were still burdened by inadequate land allotments and heavy redemption payments that led to the impoverishment of many.

Nevertheless, the reforms stimulated the development of industry within the Russian Empire by releasing labour from the land. Industrial development was especially marked in eastern Ukraine, notably the Donbas region (Donets Basin). However, the workers attracted to the growing metallurgical industry and other industrial concerns generally came from other parts of the empire; the Ukrainian population seeking economic improvement more commonly emigrated to agricultural lands. As a result, the emerging working class and the growing urban centres in Ukraine became highly Russified islands in a Ukrainian rural sea.

As in the political and social realms, in religious policy the tsarist regime promoted the elimination of Ukrainian peculiarities. Although the largely Polish Roman Catholic Church was allowed to continue, Catherine launched a program of administrative conversion of Ukrainians from the Uniate church. The anti-Uniate campaign was partially reversed by her immediate successors but was renewed with vigour by Nicholas I. In 1839 the Uniate metropolitanate was abolished, the Union of Brest-Litovsk declared null and void, and the Uniates finally absorbed into the Russian Orthodox Church, while the recalcitrant clergy were harshly punished. The Russian Orthodox Church became an important vehicle for the Russification policies of the imperial regime in Ukraine.

In the 19th century the development of Ukrainian cultural life was closely connected with academic circles. The first modern university in Ukraine was established in 1805 at Kharkiv, and for 30 years Sloboda Ukraine was the major centre for Ukrainian scholarship and publishing activities. In 1834 a university was founded in Kyiv and in 1865 at Odessa. Though Russian institutions, they did much to promote the study of local history and ethnography, which in turn had a stimulative effect on the Ukrainian national movement.

Literature, however, became the primary vehicle for the 19th-century Ukrainian national revival. The most important writer—and unquestionably the most significant figure in the development of a modern Ukrainian national consciousness—was Taras Shevchenko. Born a serf, Shevchenko was bought out of servitude by a group of artists who recognized his talent for painting. Though considered by many to be the father of modern Ukrainian painting, Shevchenko made his unique mark as a poet. His poetry spanned themes from the fantastic in folklike ballads to epic romanticization of Cossack glory, from wrathful indictments of social and national oppression under the tsars to mystical reflections based on the biblical prophets. Apart from its seminal impact on the subsequent course of Ukrainian literature, Shevchenko’s poetry reflected a conception of Ukraine as a free and democratic society that had a profound influence on the development of Ukrainian political thought.

By the mid-19th century the cultural and literary stirrings in Ukraine aroused concern in tsarist ruling circles. In the official view, dominant also in Russian historiography, the Ukrainians were a subdivision, or “tribe,” of Russians—“Little Russians”—torn from the unity of Rus by the Mongol-Tatars and deflected from their proper historical course by the baneful influence of Poland. Thus, it was deemed essential to reintegrate Ukraine fully into the Russian body politic. Shevchenko’s patriotic verse earned him arrest and years of exile in Central Asia. In 1863 the minister of the interior, Pyotr Valuev, banned virtually all publications in Ukrainian, with the exception of belles lettres. The ban was reinforced by a secret imperial decree, the Ems Ukaz, of Alexander II in 1876 and extended to the publication of belles lettres in Ukrainian, the importation of Ukrainian-language books, and public readings and stage performances in the language. The prohibition even extended to education—a major contributing factor to the low rate of literacy among Ukrainians (only 13 percent in 1897). With such restrictions, writers from Russian-ruled Ukraine could see their works published only in Austrian Galicia, and many figures in the national movement shifted their activities there.

Tsarist repression and the still premodern, largely rural character of Ukrainian society in the Russian Empire impeded the growth of a political movement. A secret society, the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, existed briefly in 1845–47. Its program advocated social equality, an end to national oppression, and a federation of Slavic states under the leadership of Ukraine. The brotherhood was quickly uncovered and suppressed and its leaders arrested and punished. In the second half of the 19th century, clandestine societies called hromadas (“communities”) were formed in various cities to promote Ukrainian culture, education, and publishing under conditions of illegality. Originally associated with the Kyiv hromada was the leading political thinker of the time, Mykhaylo Drahomanov, who advocated the transformation of the tsarist empire into a federative republic in which Ukrainian national rights would be assured. Toward the end of the century, younger, primarily student-led hromadas became involved in more overtly political activities. One such group in Kharkiv developed into the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party, which in a pamphlet published in 1900 advanced for the first time as a political goal “one, single, indivisible, free, independent Ukraine.”

The revolution that shook the Russian Empire in 1905 spawned worker strikes and peasant unrest in Ukraine as well (see Russian Revolution of 1905). The consequent transformation of the tsarist autocracy into a semiconstitutional monarchy led to some easing in Ukrainian national life. The ban on Ukrainian-language publishing lapsed, and societies to foster popular enlightenment and scholarship proliferated, as did theatrical troupes and musical ensembles. Nevertheless, the population affected by these cultural endeavours remained small, and the Ukrainian language was still excluded from schools.

In the political arena the introduction of an elected assembly, or Duma, in 1906 initially provided Ukrainians with a new forum to press their national concerns. In the short-lived First and Second Dumas, Ukrainians had a sizable representation and formed their own caucus. Changes in the electoral law to the detriment of the peasantry and national minorities, however, severely limited Ukrainian representation and effectiveness in the Third and Fourth Dumas. Until the Russian Revolution of 1917, the agenda of nationally conscious, politically active Ukrainians seldom exceeded demands for language and cultural rights and some form of local autonomy.