The Ukrainian national revival in the territory what is today Western Ukraine is considered to have started around 1837, when Markiyan Shashkevych, Ivan Vahylevych and Yakiv Holovatsky published Rusalka Dnistrovaya, an almanac of Ukrainian folk songs in Buda, Hungary. During the Revolution of 1848, the Supreme Ruthenian Council was founded in Lviv, becoming the first legal Ukrainian political organization. In May 1848, Zoria Halytska started publishing as the first newspaper in Ukrainian language. In 1890, Ukrainian Radical Party, the first Ukrainian political party, was founded.

The Ukrainian National Revival took place during a historical period of time when the territory of modern Ukraine was divided between the Austrian Empire, Kingdom of Hungary and the Russian Empire after the partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century. The period took place soon after the Haidamaka Uprisings (also known as Koliivshchyna) rocked lands of former Cossack Hetmanate.

It was a period when the Ukrainian national resistance was almost entirely subjugated and went completely underground. All the state institutions of the Cossack Hetmanate were completely liquidated along with the Cossack movement. The European territory of the Russian Empire had successfully crossed the Dnieper and extended towards Central Europe, as well as reaching the shores of Black Sea.

Nonetheless, the period is also considered to be the beginning of modern Ukrainian literature, foremostly the works of Ivan Kotliarevsky. A number of Ukrainian historians such as Volodymyr Doroshenko and Mykhailo Hrushevsky divided the period into three stages. The first stage stretches from the end of the 18th century to the 1840s, the second stage covers the period of the 1840s-1850s, and the third stage is the second half of the 19th century.