Download Liberation efforts of 1914-1921. Revival of the Ukrainian state

Lesson 2
Liberation efforts of 1914-1921. Revival of the Ukrainian state.
Ukraine between the two World Wars.
Plan
1. Ukrainians in the First World War.
2. Revolution in Ukraine.
3. Ukraine in the first years of USSR.
4. Industrialization of Ukraine. Collectivization.
5. The famine. Great Purge
1. Ukrainians in the First World War
World War I also known as the First World War was a global military conflict
which involved most of the world's great powers,[1] assembled in two opposing
alliances: the Allies of World War I centred around the Triple Entente (initially
consisted of the United Kingdom, France, and Russia) and the Central Powers (initially
consisted of the German Empire, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire), centred around the
Triple Alliance.[2] More than 70 million military personnel were mobilized in one of the
largest wars in history.[3] More than 15 million people were killed, making it one of the
deadliest conflicts in history.[4] During the conflict, the industrial and scientific
capabilities of the main combatants were entirely devoted to the war effort.
The assassination, on 28 June 1914, of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the
heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, is seen as the immediate trigger of the war,
though long-term causes, such as imperialistic foreign policy, played a major role. The
archduke's assassination at the hands of Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip resulted in
demands against the Kingdom of Serbia.[5] Several alliances that had been formed over
the past decades were invoked, so within weeks the major powers were at war; with all
having colonies, the conflict soon spread around the world.
By the war's end in 1918, four major imperial powers—the German, Russian,
Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires—had been militarily and politically defeated,
with the last two ceasing to exist as autonomous entities.[6] The revolutionized Soviet
Union emerged from the Russian Empire, while the map of central Europe was
completely redrawn into numerous smaller states.[7] The League of Nations was formed
in the hope of preventing another such conflict. The European nationalism spawned by
the war, the repercussions of Germany's defeat, and the Treaty of Versailles would
eventually lead to the beginning of World War II in 1939.[
Upon the outbreak of the First World War, the name Ukraine was used only
geographically, as the term did not exist nationally. The territory that made up the
modern country of Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire with a notable southwestern
region administered by Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the border dating to the
Congress of Vienna in 1815.
However as the border did not undermine the ethnic composition of Europe, both
Empires towards the latter 19th century, on the tide of rising national awareness of the
period attempted to exert their influence on the adjacent territory. For the Russian
Empire, viewed Ukrainians as Little Russians and had support of the large Russophile
community among the Ukrainian population in Halychyna. Austria on the contrary
supported the late-19th century rise in Ukrainian Nationalism. Ultimately for both
empires Western Ukraine was but a pawn in a major standoff for the Balkans and the
Slavic Orthodox population it harboured.
Religion also played a key role in the standoff. When Russia and Austria
partitioned Poland at the end of the 18th century, they inherited largely Eastern-rite
Catholic populations. Russia went to great lengths to revert the population to
Orthodoxy, often peacefully, but at times forcibly (as took place in Chelm)
The final factor was that by 1914, Ukrainian nationalism had matured to a point
where it could significantly influence the future of the region. As a result of this
nationalism and of the other main sources of Russo-Austrian confrontations, including
Polish and Romanian lands, both empires eventually lost these disputed territories when
these territories formed new, independent states.
The Russian advance into Halychyna began in August 1914. During the
offensive, the Russian army successfully pushed the Austrians right up to the
Carpathian ridge effectively capturing all of the lowland territory, and fulfiling their
long aspirations of annexing the territory.
Ukrainians were split into two separate and opposing armies. 3.5 million fought
with the Imperial Russian Army, while 250,000 fought for the Austro-Hungarian Army.
Many Ukrainians thus ended up fighting each other. Also, many Ukrainian civilians
suffered as armies shot and killed them after accusing them of collaborating with
opposing armies.
The Ukrainian Austrian internment was part of the confinement of enemy
aliens in Austria during World War I. Central Camp Talerhof (German: Thalerhof) was
a concentration camp operated by the Austro-Hungarian imperial government between
1914 and 1917 in the Austrian province of Styria.
Central Camp Talerhof 1914-1917
Over twenty thousand Ukrainian Moscophiles were arrested and imprisoned in
the camp and in the fortress of Terezín, Bohemia. The camp housed primarily
Russophile individuals and families from Halychyna. All were suspected of
collaboration with the advancing tsarist Russian Army that had invaded Halychyna at
the outset of World War I.
The first group of prisoners was transported to Talerhof by soldiers of Austrian
regiment of Graz on September, 4, 1914. Until the winter of 1915, there were no
barracks in Talerhof; prisoners slept in the open air on the ground.
On November, 9, 1914, according to the official report of Field Marshal Schleer,
there were 5700 Ukrainians and Lemkos in Talerhof. In total, 20,000 people were
prisoners from September 4, 1914 to May 10, 1917.
In the first year and a half, three thousand prisoners died. In addition, tens of
thousands of Ukrainians and Lemkos were victims of reprisals carried out by AustroHungarian authorities in the Western Ukraine during World War I. In May 1917, the
camp was closed by order of Emperor Charles I (r. 1916-1918).
Modern Ukraine's borders superimposed on the 1912 administrative
division of the Russian and Austrian Empires
Eastern Front on the verge of conflict in 1914
Eastern Front, September 1914.
The consequences of the First World War of 1914-1918 for Ukrainians, who had to
fight for both belligerent parties, were tragic. During the whole war Halychyna appeared
the arena of the biggest and bloodshed battles on the Eastern front, its population got
awful damages from destructions and devastation, caused by the war actions, and
roughness of Russian and Austrian command.
But together with physical losses the war even greater worsened the fate of
Ukrainians, who did not have own state, which could defense their particular interests.
The great amount of Ukrainians (in Russian army it was amounted 3.5 mln of Ukrainian
soldiers and 250 thousand served in Austrian forces) fought and died for empires, which
not only ignored their nation interests, but also active tried, as in particular Russia, to
eliminate their national movement. The worst was that Ukrainians as the participants of
fight from both parties were forced to kill each other.
All Ukrainian cultural establishments, cooperative and periodic editions were
closed by order of tsar authority of Russia. There were implemented restrictions to use
Ukrainian language and made attempts to apply Russian language at schools. Especially
massive attacks had Greece Catholic Church – the symbol of western Ukrainian
originality. Hundreds of Greece catholic priests were removed to Russia, instead there
were put Orthodox priests, who inclined peasants to Orthodoxy. Metropolitan Andrew
Sheptitskiy, who refused to save himself from the Russians by escape, was arrested and
taken to the city Suzdal. But Russians had no time to execute finally their plans, as the
Austrians launched to counter-offensive and up to the May 1915 retook the most part of
eastern Halychyna. Going back, tsar forces took in hostages several hundreds of
outstanding Ukrainian figures and evacuated thousands of people, including many
Russophiles, role of which in Ukrainian policy finished.
2. Revolution in Ukraine
3.
Map of the West Ukrainian People's Republic
During World War I the western Ukrainian people were situated between AustriaHungary and Russia. Ukrainian villages were regularly destroyed in the crossfire.
Ukrainians could be found participating on both sides of the conflict. In Halychyna,
over twenty thousand Ukrainians who were suspected of being sympathetic to Russian
interests were arrested and placed in Austrian concentration camps, both in Talerhof,
Styria and in Terezín fortress (now in the Czech Republic).
The brutality did not end with the end of the First World War for Ukrainians.
Fighting actually escalated with the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The
revolution began a civil war within the Russian Empire and much of the fighting took
place in the Ukrainian provinces. Many atrocities occurred during the civil war as the
Red, White, Polish, Ukrainian, and allied armies marched throughout the country. The
Jewish suffered the most as Cossack gangs raped, looted, and massacred many Jewish
communities. Other villages experienced raping, looting, and killing but not to the same
scale as the Jewish communities.
There were two attempts during this period where the Ukrainians tried to become
their own state. One was at the city of Kiev and the other in Lviv but neither gained
enough traction to work and they both failed.
The 1919 Treaty of Versailles gave away Ukrainian land to other European
countries. In the west, Halychyna and western Volyn» were given to Poland. The
Kingdom of Romania received the Bukovina province. Czechoslovakia gained
Uzhhorod and Mukachevo. The remaining central and eastern Ukrainian provinces were
given to the Soviet Union. As a result of World War I and the Russian Civil War,
Ukrainians saw all of their land given to other countries and 1.5 million had lost their
lives.
With the collapse of the Russian and Austrian empires following World War I
and the Russian Revolution of 1917, Ukrainian national movement for selfdetermination emerged again. During 1917–20 several separate Ukrainian states briefly
emerged: the Central Rada, the Hetmanate, the Directorate, the Ukrainian People's
Republic and the West Ukrainian People's Republic. However, with the defeat of the
latter in the Polish-Ukrainian War and the failure of the Polish Kiev Offensive (1920) of
the Polish-Soviet War, the Peace of Ryha concluded in March 1921 between Poland and
Bolsheviks left Ukraine divided again. The western part of Halychyna had been
incorporated into the newly organized Second Polish Republic, incorporating territory
claimed or controlled by the ephemeral Komancza Republic and the Lemko-Rusyn
Republic. The larger, central and eastern part, established as the Ukrainian Soviet
Socialist Republic in March 1919, later became a constituent republic of the Soviet
Union, when it was formed in December 1922.
News about the collapse of Russian tsar regime reached Kyiv on March 13 1917.
For several days the representatives of the most important establishments and
organizations of the city founded Executive committee, which had to keep order and act
on the behalf of Temporary government of Russia. At the same time Kyiv Rada of
working and soldiers deputies became the center of radically disposed lefts. But
opposite to the events in Petrograd, in Kyiv the third active person came out the arena:
on March 17 Ukrainians founded Central Rada. It was established by moderate liberals
from the Association of Ukrainian progressives under the leading of Evgen Chykalenko,
Sergiy Efremov and Dmytro Doroshenko together with social demokrates at the head of
Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Symon Petlyura. Mykhaylo Hrushevskiy – well known,
authoritative figure, who returned from deportation, was elected the president of the
Central Rada. So unlike Russians, in Kyiv the Ukrainians of all ideal persuasion
gathered in one representative body.
Ukrainian Central Rada
Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Hrushevsky on fifty hryvnia note
When defenselessness of the Temporary government became more obvious, the
Central Rada decided to use its advantages. To gain the recognition of the highest
political force in Ukraine, on June 19 1917 it issued the First universal, which declared:
“So be Ukraine free. Not separating finally from Russia and not breaking connections
with Russian state, let’s Ukrainian people receive the right to dispose on their own their
life on their land”. Volodymyr Vynnychenko, who took responsibility to govern
Ukraine, headed General Secretariat, consisting mainly from social democrats.
On November 7 (October 25 according to Julian stile) 1917 in Petrograd the
Bolsheviks threw off the Temporary government and took authority in their hands. The
Bolsheviks mainly concentrated in the industrial centers of Russia and in Ukraine they
had scantly influence, mostly in Donbas. So among almost 2 million workers of
Ukrainians the supporters of the Bolshevik accounted tiny percent. Besides, as
Bolshevik’s program was mainly turned to proletariat, among which the Ukrainians
were slightly represented, it attracted them a little.
As most of Russians in Ukrainians, the Bolsheviks with enmity attituded to the
Ukrainian movement. For one of outstanding Bolshevik Christian Rakovskiy it was
problematically to define even the fact of existence of Ukrainian nation. About the
spread of such facts inside the party evidenced one of few outstanding Ukrainian
Bolshevik Mykola Skripnik: “For the most members of our party Ukraine did nit exist
as national unit”.
But the leader of the Bolshevik’s party and revolution and the head of the
government of Russia Volodymyr Lenin was too much careful politicians, to allow such
approaches to form the party’s course. He understood that the nationalism was powerful
force, which the party could user. It is why he formulated rather tangled state that the
Bolshevik should acknowledge and accept the execution of the right of oppressed
nations for the cultural development and self-government, till the time – in that place
there was very important warning – while it did not hindered proletarian revolution. For
example, if Ukrainian nationalism led to the separation of Ukrainian workers from
Russian, and that according to Lenin constituted bourgeois nationalism, with which it
was necessary to fight. In other words, in theory national aspiration of Ukrainians was
not defined and in practice they were through away.
After the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, the question about who would govern
Ukraine arose. As they had not enough power for defeating Central Rada and supporters
of the Temporary government in Kyiv, which gathered around the army headquarters,
the Bolsheviks decided to maintain good relations with Ukrainians for some time, trying
at the same time to be through with army headquarters.
But Bolsheviks were stunned when the Central Rada declared, that it took the
supreme power in all nine provinces, where the Ukrainians amounted the majority.
Formally it was confirmed by its Third universal dated July 7 1917, which declared the
establishment of autonomous Ukrainian Republic. Still not dare to break off relations
with Russia, the Central Rada declared about of its aim – to create in former Russian
empire federation of free and equitable nation.
Map of the Ukrainian
People's Republic
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Vladimir Lenin addressing a crowd in 1920.
From northern east 12 thousand Bolshevik forces at the head of commanders
Volodymyr Antonov-Ovsientko and Myhail Muravyov moved to Ukraine. Against them
the Ukrainian military Minister Symon Petlyura had scattered in different places 15
fighters, consisting of peasant army of “free Cossacks”, former prisoners of war from
Halychyna and several hundreds of Kyiv gymnasia pupils, which went to front straight
from the school.
Symon Petliura
To the east from the city Kruty (modern Chernigiv region) in the last great fight
with the approaching forces of Muravyov faced detachments of Petlyura. After
desperate fights the Ukrainians had to step back. 300 of gymnasium pupils got into
encirclement, they all died, their death got honorable place for them in the Ukrainian
national pantheon.
Seven incomplete years of war and social distempers led subordinated to
Bolsheviks territories of former Russian empire to the state of ruins. Only in Ukraine
battles, shootings and epidemics, connected with the First World and civil Wars, took
over 1,5 people. Shortage of food, fuels, unemployment forced hundred thousand
people to go out from city to village. Industrial production was almost cut off.
3. Ukraine in the first years of USSR
Flag
Coat of arms
The Moscow Kremlin, the official residence of the government of the USSR.
Soviet Union administrative divisions, 1989
Geographic location of various ethnic groups
within the Soviet Union in 1941
The Soviet Union is traditionally considered to be the successor of the Russian
Empire and of its short-lived successor, The Provisional Government under Georgy
Yevgenyevich Lvov and then Alexander Kerensky. The last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II,
ruled until March, 1917 when the Empire was overthrown and a short-lived Russian
provisional government took power, the latter to be overthrown in November 1917 by
Vladimir Lenin. From 1917 to 1922, the predecessor to the Soviet Union was the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), which was an independent
country, as were other Soviet republics at the time. The Soviet Union was officially
established in December 1922 as the union of the Russian (colloquially known as
Bolshevist Russia), Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics ruled by
Bolshevik parties.
On December 28, 1922 a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the
Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Belorussian SSR
approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the
USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These two documents were
confirmed by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by heads of
delegations - Mikhail Kalinin, Mikha Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze and Grigory
Petrovsky, Aleksandr Chervyakov respectively on December 30, 1922. On February 1,
1924, the USSR was recognized by the British Empire. Also in 1924, a Soviet
Constitution was approved which further legitimized the December 1922 union of the
Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Belarusian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR
to form the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR).
The intensive restructuring of the economy, industry and politics of the country
began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was performed
according to Bolshevik Initial Decrees, documents of the Soviet government, signed by
Vladimir Lenin. One of the most prominent breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, that
envisioned a major restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of
the country. The Plan was developed in 1920 and covered a ten to 15 year period. It
included construction of a network of 30 regional power plants, including ten large
hydroelectric power plants, and numerous electric-powered large industrial enterprises.]
The Plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was basically
fulfilled by 1931.
Subordinated to Moscow communist party fully controlled the Ukrainian soviet
government, though it could not dismiss or swallow it up. So till 1923 soviet
government of Ukraine separately from soviet Russia maintained foreign relations (it
concluded 48 own agreements), had foreign trade and even began to initiate the ground
of separate Ukrainian army.
With the purpose to demonstrate voluntariness of union, Lenin suggested to give
each republic consisting Russia the right of free exit from it. This term was stipulated in
the constitution of 1924. Prerogatives of the government were determined in such way:
some operations remained exclusively in the area of Ukraine’s responsibilities, others
were divided between Ukrainian and Russian (Moscow) ministers, and others were
solved by union government. Such way the Ukrainian soviet government on the
territory of republic theoretically had jurisdiction under agriculture, internal affairs,
legislation, education, health defense and social providing. External affairs, army, fleet,
transport, foreign trade, communication were referred to exclusively competence of
union government, located in Moscow.
Joining to the structure of Soviet Union, Ukrainian republic became the second its
component in size. It took territory of 450 thousand square km. and had population over
26 mln people. The capital of the country became Kharkiv, which as against Kyiv, was
not closely connected with former national governments.
The first facilities of Ukrainian government in the field of culture and education
had the purpose to extend the use of Ukrainian language, especially in the party and
government. Necessity of this was obvious: in 1922 on one member of Comparty of
Ukraine referred seven of those who spoke Russian, and in the government this
proportion amounted one to three. In August 1923 with the purpose to eliminate this
disproportion party and government officials received direction to pass specially
organized courses of Ukrainian language. To those who did not manage to pass it
successfully threatened dismissal. In 1925 the officials received direction to use
Ukrainian language in all government letters and publications. In 1927 it was
announced that all party documentation should be in Ukrainian. Contrary to the absence
of significant enthusiasm in numerous nonukrainian members of the government and
the party, new policy gave striking affect. If in 1922 less than 20 % were handled in
Ukrainian, in 1927 it were 70 % of such documents.
Similar rebirth felt Ukrainian press, which was cruelty oppressed by tsar regime
and for which the first steps of soviet authority were not the best. In 1922 among all
published books in Ukraine only 27% were issued in Ukrainian, among all newspapers
and documents in Ukrainian published only 10 items. Up to 1927 more than a half of
books published in Ukrainian, in 1933 from 433 newspapers of the republic 373 were
issued in Ukrainian. Ukrainian.
4. Industrialization of Ukraine. Collectivization.
This period of the Soviet Union was dominated by Joseph Stalin, who sought to
reshape Soviet society with aggressive economic planning, in particular a sweeping
collectivization of agriculture and development of industrial power. He also constructed
a massive bureaucracy, which arguably is responsible for millions of deaths as a result
of various purges and collectivization efforts. During his time as leader of the USSR,
Stalin made frequent use of his secret police, GULAGs (the government agency that
administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union ), and nearly unlimited power to
reshape Soviet society.
Joseph Stalin
At the 15th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in December
1927, Stalin attacked the left by expelling Leon Trotsky and his supporters from the
party and then moving against the right by abandoning Lenin's New Economic Policy
which had been championed by Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Ivanovich Rykov.
Warning delegates of an impending capitalist encirclement, he insisted that survival and
development could only occur by pursuing the rapid development of heavy industry.
Stalin remarked that the Soviet Union was "fifty to a hundred years behind the advanced
countries" (the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, etc.), and thus
must narrow "this distance in ten years." In a speech foreboding World War II, Stalin
declared, "Either we do it or we shall be crushed."
To oversee the radical transformation of the Soviet Union, the party, under
Stalin's direction, established Gosplan (the State General Planning Commission), a state
organization responsible for guiding the socialist economy toward accelerated
industrialization. In April 1929 Gosplan released two drafts that began the process that
would industrialize the primarily agrarian nation. This 1,700 page report became the
basis the First Five-Year Plan for National Economic Construction, or Piatiletka, calling
for the doubling of Soviet capital stock between 1928 and 1933.
"Let's Turn the Five-Year-Plan into a Four-Year One" (Gustav
Klutsis, 1930)
The new economic system put forward by the first Five−Year plan entailed a
complicated series of planning arrangement. The first Five−Year plan focused on the
mobilization of natural resources to build up the country's heavy industrial base by
increasing output of coal, iron, and other vital resources. Despite the high human cost,
this process was largely successful, and caused long−term industrial growth more rapid
than any country in history.
The mobilization of resources by state planning augmented the country's
industrial base. From 1928 to 1932, pig iron output, necessary for further development
of the industrial infrastructure rose from 3.3 million to 6.2 million tons per year. Coal,
the integral product fueling modern economies and Stalinist industrialization,
successfully rose from 35.4 million to 64 million tons, and output of iron ore rose from
5.7 million to 19 million tons. A number of industrial complexes such as Magnitogorsk
and Kuznetsk, the Moscow and Gorky automobile plants, the Urals and Kramatorsk
heavy machinery plants, and Kharkov, Stalingrad and Cheliabinsk tractor plants had
been built or were under construction.
In real terms, the workers' standards of living tended to drop, rather than rise
during the industrialisation. Stalin's laws to “tighten work discipline” made the situation
worse: e.g. a 1932 change to the RSFSR labor law code enabled firing workers who had
been absent without a reason from the work place for just one day. Being fired
accordingly meant losing “the right to use ration and commodity cards” as well as the
“loss of the right to use an apartment″ and even blacklisted for new employment which
altogether meant a threat of starving. Those measures, however, were not fully enforced,
as managers often desperately needed to hire new workers. In contrast, the 1938
legislation, which introduced labor books, followed by major revisions of the labor law,
were enforced. For example, being absent or even 20 minutes late were grounds for
becoming fired; managers who failed to enforce these laws faced criminal prosecution.
Later, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, 26 June 1940 “On the
Transfer to the Eight-Hour Working Day, the Seven-day Work Week, and on the
Prohibition of Unauthorized Departure by Laborers and Office Workers from Factories
and Offices″ replaced the 1938 revisions with obligatory criminal penalties for quitting
a job (2–4 months imprisonment), for being late 20 minutes (6 months of probation and
pay confiscation of 25 per cent) etc.
Based largely on these figures the Soviet government declared that Five Year
Industrial Production Plan had been fulfilled by 93.7 percent in only four years, while
parts devoted to heavy−industry part were fulfilled by 108%. Stalin in December 1932
declared the plan a success to the Central Committee, since increases in the output of
coal and iron would fuel future development.
During the second five−year plan (1933–37), on the basis of the huge investment
during the first plan, industry expanded extremely rapidly, and nearly reached the plan.
By 1937 coal output was 127 million tons, pig iron 14.5 million tons, and there had
been very rapid developments in the armaments industry.
While undoubtedly marking a tremendous leap in industrial capacity, the first
Five Year Plan was extremely harsh on industrial workers; quotas were difficult to
fulfill, requiring that miners put in 16 to 18−hour workdays. Failure to fulfill the quotas
could result in treason charges. Working conditions were poor, even hazardous. By
some estimates, 127,000 workers died during the four years (from 1928 to 1932). Due
to the allocation of resources for industry along with decreasing productivity since
collectivization, a famine occurred. The use of forced labor must also not be
overlooked. In the construction of the industrial complexes, inmates of labor camps
were used as expendable resources. But conditions improved rapidly during the second
plan. Throughout the 1930s, industrialization was combined with a rapid expansion of
education at schools and in higher education.
Prisoner labour at the construction of Belomorkanal,
1931–33
From 1921 until 1954, during the period of state−guided, forced industrialization,
it is claimed 3.7 million people were sentenced for alleged counter−revolutionary
crimes, including 0.6 million sentenced to death, 2.4 million sentenced to labor camps,
and 0.7 million sentenced to expatriation. Other estimates put these figures much
higher. Much like with the famines, the evidence supporting these high numbers is
disputed by some historians, although this is a minority view. The peak of the
repressions was during the great Purge of 1937–8, and it had the effect of greatly
slowing down production in 1937.
Gulag
population statistics from 1934 to 1953
prisoner
In 1928 Ukraine received over 20% of the total investments that meant that from
1500 new industrial enterprises, established in the USSR, 400 of them accounted for
Ukraine. Some of those plants were huge. Dnieproges, erected in 1932 by the force of
10 thousand workers, was the biggest hydroelectric power station in Europe. New
metallurgical plant in Zaporizhye and tractor plant in Kharkiv was the biggest in their
area. In Donetsk and Krivoy Rog’s basins so many plants were established, that the
whole district looked like vast building site.
Flag of Soviet Ukraine.
In spite of those shortages the first five-year plan achieved striking success. In
1940 the industrial potential of Ukraine in eight times exceeded the level of 1913 (in
Russia – in nine times). Productivity of labor also increased (though wages generally
decreased). Thus if the whole USSR from the fifth of the biggest industrial country in
the world turned to the second, Ukraine (which under the production power
approximately was equal to France), turned to one of the leading industrial countries in
Europe.
Comparative Growth: Industrial Production Average Annual Growth (%)
Collectivization in the Soviet Union was a policy pursued under Stalin between
1928 and 1940. The goal of this policy was to consolidate individual land and labour
into collective farms (Russian: колхо́з, kolkhoz, plural kolkhozy). The Soviet leadership
was confident that the replacement of individual peasant farms by kolkhozy would
immediately increase the food supply for urban populations, the supply of raw materials
for processing industry, and agricultural exports. Collectivization was thus regarded as
the solution to the crisis of agricultural distribution (mainly in grain deliveries) that had
developed since 1927. This problem became more acute as the Soviet Union pressed
ahead with its ambitious industrialization program.
Peasants having lunch in a commune.
Already in the early 1930s over 90% of agricultural land was "collectivized" as
rural households entered collective farms with their land, livestock, and other assets.
The sweeping collectivization often involved tremendous human and social costs while
the issue of economic advantages of collective farms remains largely undecided.
The idea of collective farms was seen by peasants as a revival of serfdom.
Soviet propaganda poster: "Comrade, come and join the kolkhoz!"
The Soviet Communist Party had never been happy with private agriculture and
saw collectivization as the best remedy for the problem. Lenin claimed "Small-scale
production gives birth to capitalism and the bourgeoisie constantly, daily, hourly, with
elemental force, and in vast proportions."Apart from ideological goals, Stalin also
wished to embark on a program of rapid heavy industrialization which required larger
surpluses to be extracted from the agricultural sector in order to feed a growing
industrial work force and to pay for imports of machinery. The state also hoped to
export grain, a source of foreign currency needed to import technologies necessary for
heavy industrialization. Social and ideological goals would also be served though
mobilization of the peasants in a co-operative economic enterprise which would
produce higher returns for the State and could serve a secondary purpose of providing
social services to the people.
Faced with the refusal to hand grain over, a decision was made at a plenary
session of the Central Committee in November 1929 to embark on a nationwide
program of collectivization.
In November 1929, the Central Committee decided to implement accelerated
collectivization in the form of kolkhozes and sovkhozes. This marked the end of the
New Economic Policy (NEP), which had allowed peasants to sell their surpluses on the
open market. Stalin had many so-called "kulaks" transported to collective farms in
distant places to work in agricultural labor camps. It has been calculated that one in five
of these deportees, many of them women and children, died. In all, 6 million peasants
lost their lives to the conditions of the transportation or the conditions of the work
camps. In response to this, many peasants began to resist, often arming themselves
against the activists sent from the towns. As a form of protest, many peasants preferred
to slaughter their animals for food rather than give them over to collective farms, which
produced a major reduction in livestock.
Collectivization had been encouraged since the revolution, but in 1928, only
about one percent of farm land was collectivized, and despite efforts to encourage and
coerce collectivization, the rather optimistic First Five Year Plan only forecast 15
percent of farms to be run collectively.
The situation changed incredibly quickly in the fall of 1929 and winter of 1930.
Between September and December 1929, collectivization increased from 7.4% to 15%,
but in the first two months of 1930, 11 million households joined collectivized farms,
pushing the total to nearly 60% almost overnight.
To assist collectivization, the Party decided to send 25,000 "socially conscious"
industry workers to the countryside. This was accomplished during 1929–1933, and
these
workers
have
become
known
as
twenty-five-thousanders
("dvadtsat'pyat'tysyachniki"). Shock brigades were used to force reluctant peasants into
joining the collective farms and remove those who were declared kulaks and their
"agents".
Agricultural work was envisioned on a mass scale. Huge glamorous columns of
machines were to work the fields, in total contrast to peasant small-scale work.
Due to high government quotas peasants got, as a rule, less for their labor than
they did before collectivization, and some refused to work. Merle Fainsod estimated
that, in 1952, collective farm earnings were only one fourth of the cash income from
private plots on Soviet collective farms. In many cases, the immediate effect of
collectivization was to reduce output and cut the number of livestock in half. The
subsequent recovery of the agricultural production was also impeded by the losses
suffered by the Soviet Union during World War II and the severe drought of 1946.
However the largest loss of livestock was caused by collectivization for all animals
except pigs. The numbers of cows in the USSR fell from 33.2 million in 1928 to 27.8
million in 1941 and to 24.6 million in 1950. The number of pigs fell from 27.7 million
in 1928 to 27.5 million in 1941 and then to 22.2 million in 1950. The number of sheep
fell from 114.6 million in 1928 to 91.6 million in 1941 and to 93.6 million in 1950. The
number of horses fell from 36.1 million in 1928 to 21.0 million in 1941 and to 12.7
million in 1950. Only by the late 1950s did Soviet farm animal stocks begin to approach
1928 levels.
Despite the initial plans, collectivization, accompanied by the bad harvest of
1932–1933, did not live up to expectations. The CPSU blamed problems on kulaks
(Russian: fist; prosperous peasants), who were organizing resistance to collectivization.
Allegedly, many kulaks had been hoarding grain in order to speculate on higher prices.
The Soviet government responded to these acts by cutting off food rations to
peasants and areas where there was opposition to collectivization, especially in the
Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of those who opposed collectivization were executed
or sent to forced-labor camps. Many peasant families were forcibly resettled in Siberia
and Kazakhstan into exile settlements and a significant number died on the way.
On August 7, 1932, the Decree about the Protection of Socialist Property
proclaimed that the punishment for theft of kolkhoz or cooperative property was the
death sentence, which "under extenuating circumstances" could be replaced by at least
ten years of incarceration. With what some called the Law of Spikelets ("Закон о
колосках"), peasants (including children) who hand-collected or gleaned grain in the
collective fields after the harvest were arrested for damaging the state grain production.
Martin Amis writes in Koba the Dread that the number of sentences for this particular
offense in the bad harvest period from August 1932 to December 1933 was 125,000.
Between 1929 and 1932 there was a massive fall in agricultural production and
famine in the countryside. Stalin blamed the well-to-do peasants, referred to as 'kulaks',
who he said had sabotaged grain collection and resolved to eliminate them as a class.
Estimates suggest that about a million so-called 'kulak' families, or perhaps some five
million people, were sent to forced labor camps. Estimates of the deaths from starvation
or disease directly caused by collectivization have been estimated as between four and
ten million. According to official Soviet figures some 24 million peasants disappeared
from rural areas with only an extra 12.6 million moving to state jobs. The implication is
that the total death toll (both direct and indirect) for Stalin's collectivization program
was on the order of twelve million people.
In 1945 Joseph Stalin confides to Winston Churchill at Yalta that 10 million
people have died in the course of collectivization.
5. The famine. Great Purge.
The origins of the word Holodomor come from the Ukrainian words holod,
‘hunger’, and mor, ‘plague’, possibly from the expression moryty holodom, ‘to inflict
death by hunger’. The Ukrainian verb "moryty" (морити) means "to poison somebody,
drive to exhaustion or to torment somebody". The perfect form of the verb "moryty" is
"zamoryty" — "kill or drive to death by hunger, exhausting work". The neologism
“Holodomor” is given in the modern, two-volume dictionary of the Ukrainian language
as "artificial hunger, organised in vast scale by the criminal regime against the country's
population." Sometimes the expression is translated into English as "murder by hunger
or starvation."
The famine affected the Ukrainian SSR as well as the Moldavian ASSR (a part of
the Ukrainian S.S.R. at the time) between 1932 and 1933. However, not every part
suffered from the Holodomor for the whole period; the greatest number of victims was
recorded in the spring of 1933. It is believed that over 12 million Ukrainians died in this
small time period.
Child victim of the Holodomor
The first reports of mass malnutrition and deaths from starvation emerged from 2
urban area of Uman - by the time Vinnytsya and Kiev oblasts dated by beginning of
January 1933. By mid-January 1933 there were reports about mass “difficulties” with
food in urban areas that had been undersupplied through the rationing system and deaths
from starvation among people who were withdrawn from rationing supply according to
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine Decree December 1932. By the
beginning of February 1933, according to received reports from local authorities and
Ukrainian GPU, the most affected area was listed as Dnipropetrovsk Oblast which also
suffered from epidemics of typhus and malaria. Odessa and Kiev oblasts were second
and third respectively. By mid-March, most reports originated from Kiev Oblast.
By mid-April 1933, the Kharkiv Oblast reached the top of the most affected list,
while Kiev, Dnipropetrovsk, Odessa, Vinnytsya, Donetsk oblasts and Moldavian SSR
followed it. Last reports about mass deaths from starvation dated mid-May through the
beginning of June 1933 originated from raions in Kiev and Kharkiv oblasts. The “less
affected” list noted the Chernihiv Oblast and northern parts of Kiev and Vinnytsya
oblasts. According to the Central Committee of the CP(b) of Ukraine Decree as of
February 8 1933, no hunger cases should have remained untreated, and all local
authorities were directly obliged to submit reports about numbers suffering from
hunger, the reasons for hunger, number of deaths from hunger, food aid provided from
local sources and centrally provided food aid required. Parallel reporting and food
assistance were managed by the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR. Many regional reports and
most of the central summary reports are available from present-day central and regional
Ukrainian archives. There is documentary evidence of widespread cannibalism during
the Holodomor. The Soviet regime of the time even printed posters declaring: "To eat
your own children is a barbarian act."
The reasons for the famine are a subject of scholarly and political debate. Some
scholars view the famine as a consequence of the economic problems associated with
radical economic changes implemented during the period of Soviet industrialization.
However it has been suggested by other historians that the famine was an attack on
Ukrainian nationalism engineered by Soviet leadership of the time and thus may fall
under the legal definition of genocide.
By the end of 1933, millions of people had starved to death or had otherwise died
unnaturally in Ukraine, as well as in other Soviet republics. The total estimate of the
famine victims Soviet-wide is given as 6-7 million or 6-8 million. The Soviet Union
long denied that the famine had ever taken place, and the NKVD (and later KGB — the
public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule
of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Stalin) archives
on the Holodomor period opened very slowly. The exact number of the victims remains
unknown and is probably impossible to estimate even within a margin of error of a
hundred thousand.Numbers as high as seven to ten million are sometimes given in the
mediaand a number as high as ten or even twenty million is sometimes cited in political
speeches.
One reason for estimate variance is that some assess the number of people who
died within the 1933 borders of Ukraine; while others are based on deaths within
current borders of Ukraine. Other estimates are based on deaths of Ukrainians in the
Soviet Union. Some estimates use a very simple methodology based percentage of
deaths that was reported in one area and applying the percentage to the entire country.
Others use more sophisticated techniques that involves analyzing the demographic
statistics based on various archival data. Some question the accuracy of Soviet censuses
since they may have been doctored to support Soviet propaganda. Other estimates come
from recorded discussion between world leaders like Churchill and Stalin. For example
the estimate of ten million deaths, which is attributed to Soviet official sources, could be
based on a misinterpretation of the memoirs of Winston Churchill who gave an account
of his conversation with Stalin that took place on August 16, 1942. In that
conversation,Stalin gave Churchill his estimates of the number of "kulaks" who were
repressed for resisting collectivization as 10 million, in all of the Soviet Union, rather
than only in Ukraine. When using this number, Stalin implied that it included not only
those who lost their lives, but also forcibly deported.
A number of difficulties exist when attempting to estimate casualty rates. Some
estimates include the death toll from political repression including those who died in the
Gulag, while others refer only to those who starved to death. In addition, many of the
estimates are based on different time periods. Thus, a definitive number of deaths
continues to be a source of great debate.
The Soviet archives show that excess deaths in Ukraine in 1932-1933 numbered
1.54 million. In 1932-1933, there were a combined 1.2 million cases of typhus and
500,000 cases of typhoid fever. All major types of disease, apart from cancer, tend to
increase during famine as a result of undernourishment lowering resistance and
generating unsanitary conditions; thus these deaths resulted primarily from lowered
resistance rather than starvation per se. In the years 1932–34, the largest rate of increase
was recorded for typhus, which is spread by lice. In conditions of harvest failure and
increased poverty, the number of lice is likely to increase, and the herding of refugees at
railway stations, on trains and elsewhere facilitates their spread. In 1933, the number of
recorded cases was twenty times the 1929 level. The number of cases per head of
population recorded in Ukraine in 1933 was already considerably higher than in the
USSR as a whole. But by June 1933, incidence in Ukraine had increased to nearly ten
times the January level and was higher than in the rest of the USSR taken as a whole.
Rate of population decline in Ukraine and South Russia.
1929-1933.The map was created according to the datas of the localities affected by the Holomodor and
extrapolated to the post-WW2 administrative divisions. For example, in the Moldavian SSR, only
Transnistria have been affected by the Holodomor. In the Odessa Oblast, the Bugeac was not affected
by the Holomodor.
To honour those who perished in the Holodomor, monuments have been dedicated and
public events held annually in Ukraine and worldwide. The first public monument to the
Holodomor was erected and dedicated outside City Hall in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
in 1983 to mark the 50th anniversary of the famine-genocide. Since then, the fourth
Saturday in November has in many jurisdictions been marked as the official day of
remembrance for people who died as a result of the 1932-33 Holodomor and political
repression.
A monument in the capital of Ukraine Kiev
In 2006, the Holodomor Remembrance Day took place on November 25. President
Viktor Yushchenko directed, in decree No. 868/2006, that a minute of silence should be
observed at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on that Saturday. The document specified that
flags in Ukraine should fly at half-staff as a sign of mourning. In addition, the decree
directed that entertainment events are to be restricted and television and radio
programming adjusted accordingly.
A Holodomor monument in Calgary, Canada
In 2007, the 74th anniversary of the Holodomor was commemorated in Kiev for three
days on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti. As part of the three day event, from November 2325th, video testimonies of the communist regime's crimes in Ukraine, and
documentaries by famous domestic and foreign film directors are being shown.
Additionally, experts and scholars gave lectures on the topic.Additionally, on November
23, 2007, the National Bank of Ukraine issued a set of two commemorative coins
remembering the Holodomor.
As of September 2009, Ukrainian schoolchildren will take a more extensive course of
the history of the Holodomor and OUN and UPA fighters.
"Light the candle" event at a
Holodomor memorial in Kiev, Ukraine
Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in
the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1936–1938. It involved a large-scale
purge of the Communist Party and Government officials, repression of peasants, Red
Army leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by
widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and
executions. According to the archive data, in 1937–38 the number of death sentences
was 681,692 and many more died in GULAG labor camps.
The term "purge" in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the expression
purge of the Party ranks. In 1933, for example, some 400,000 people were expelled
from the Party. But from 1936 until 1953, the term changed its meaning, because being
expelled from the Party came to mean almost certain arrest, imprisonment, or even
execution.
The former NKVD Headquarters on Lubyanka
Square designed by Aleksey Schusev. Now serves the FSB.
The political purge was primarily an effort by Stalin to eliminate challenge from
past and potential opposition groups, including left and right wings led by Leon Trotsky
and Nikolai Bukharin, respectively. Following the Civil War and reconstruction of the
Soviet economy in the late 1920s, the "temporary" wartime dictatorship which had
passed from Lenin to Stalin seemed no longer necessary to veteran Communists. Stalin's
opponents on both sides of the political spectrum chided him as undemocratic and lax
on bureaucratic corruption. These tendencies may have accumulated substantial support
among the working class by attacking the privileges and luxuries the state offered to its
high-paid elite. The Ryutin Affair seemed to vindicate the Stalin's suspicions. He
therefore enforced a ban on party factions and banned those party members who had
opposed him, effectively ending democratic centralism. In the new form of Party
organization, the Politburo, and Stalin in particular, were the sole dispensers of
communist ideology. This necessitated the elimination of all Marxists with different
views, especially those among the prestigious "old guard" of revolutionaries.
Communist heroes like Tukhachevsky and Béla Kun, as well as Lenin's entire politburo,
were shot for minor disagreements in policy. The NKVD were equally merciless
towards the supporters, friends, and family of these heretical Marxists, whether they
lived in Russia or not. The most infamous case is that of Leon Trotsky, whose family
was almost annihilated, before he himself was killed in Mexico by NKVD agent Ramón
Mercader, who was part of an assassination task force put together by Special Agent
Pavel Sudoplatov, under the personal orders of Joseph Stalin.
Another official justification was to remove any possible "fifth column" in case of
a war, but this is less substantiated by independent sources. This is the theory proposed
by Vyacheslav Molotov, a member of the Stalinist ruling circle, who participated in the
Stalinist repression as a member of the Politburo and who signed many death warrants.
Stalin's vehemence in eliminating political opponents may have had some basis in, and
was definitely given official justification by, the need to solidify Russia against her
neighbors, most notably Germany and Japan, whose governments had previously
invaded, and now openly threatened, Soviet territory. A famous quote of Stalin's is "We
are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in 10
years. Either we do it, or they crush us." The Communist Party also wanted to eliminate
what it perceived as "socially dangerous elements", such as ex-kulaks, ex-"nepmen",
former members of opposing political parties such as the Social Revolutionaries, and
former Tsarist officials.
Repression against perceived enemies of the Bolsheviks had been a systematic
method of instilling fear and facilitating social control, being continuously applied by
Lenin since the October Revolution, although there had been periods of heightened
repression, such as the Red Terror, the deportation of kulaks who opposed
collectivization, and a severe famine. A distinctive feature of the Great Purge was that,
for the first time, the ruling party itself underwent repressions on a massive scale.
Nevertheless, only a minority of those affected by the purges were Communist Party
members and office-holders.The purge of the Party was accompanied by the purge of
the whole society.
In the 1920s and 1930s, two thousand writers, intellectuals, and artists were
imprisoned and 1,500 died in prisons and concentration camps. After sunspot
development research was judged un-Marxist, twenty-seven astronomers disappeared
between 1936 and 1938. The Meteorological Office was violently purged as early as
1933 for failing to predict weather harmful to the crops. But the toll was especially high
among writers. Those who perished during the Great Purge include:
The great poet Osip Mandelstam was arrested for reciting his famous anti-Stalin
poem Stalin Epigram to his circle of friends in 1934. After intervention by Nikolai
Bukharin and Boris Pasternak (Stalin jotted down in Bukharin's letter with feigned
indignation: “Who gave them the right to arrest Mandelstam?”), Stalin instructed
NKVD to "isolate but preserve" him, and Mandelstam was "merely" exiled to Cherdyn
for 3 years. But this proved to be temporary reprieve. In May 1938, he was promptly
arrested again for "counter-revolutionary activities". In August 2, 1938, Mandelstam
was sentenced to five years in correction camps and died on December 27, 1938 at a
transit camp near Vladivostok. Boris Pasternak himself was nearly purged, but Stalin is
said to have crossed Pasternak's name off the list, saying "Don't touch this cloud
dweller."
1938 NKVD arrest photo of the poet Osip Mandelstam, who died in NKVD custody. Officially his
death was of natural causes, but it is possible that he was murdered.
Writer Isaac Babel was arrested in May 1939, and according to his confession
paper that contained blood stain he "confessed" to being a member of Trotskyist
organization and being recruited by French writer Andre Malraux to spy for France. In
the final interrogation, he retracted his confession and wrote letters to prosecutor's office
that he implicated innocent people, but to no avail. Babel was tried before an NKVD
troika and convicted of simultaneously spying for the French, Austrians, and Leon
Trotsky, as well as "membership in a terrorist organization." On January 27, 1940, he
was shot in Butyrka prison.
Butyrka prison, 1890s
Writer Boris Pilnyak was arrested on October 28, 1937 for counter-revolutionary
acitivies, spying and terrorism. One report alleged that "he held secret meetings with
(Andre) Gide, and supplied him with information about the situation in the USSR.
There is no doubt that Gide used this information in his book attacking the USSR."
Pilnyak was tried on April 21, 1938. In the proceeding that lasted 15 minutes, he was
condemned to death and executed shortly afterward.
Theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold was arresed in 1939 and shot in February
1940 for "spying" for Japanese and British intelligence. In a letter to Vyacheslav
Molotov dated January 13, 1940, he wrote: "The investigators began to use force on me,
a sick 65-year-old man. I was made to lie face down and beaten on the soles of my feet
and my spine with a rubber strap... For the next few days, when those parts of my legs
were covered with extensive internal hemorrhaging, they again beat the red-blue-andyellow bruises with the strap and the pain was so intense that it felt as if boiling water
was being poured on these sensitive areas. I howled and wept from the pain. I
incriminated myself in the hope that by telling them lies I could end the ordeal. When I
lay down on the cot and fell asleep, after 18 hours of interrogation, in order to go back
in an hour's time for more, I was woken up by my own groaning and because I was
jerking about like a patient in the last stages of typhoid fever." His wife, the actress
Zinaida Raikh, was murdered in her apartment by NKVD agents. She was stabbed 17
times, two of them through the eyes.
Georgian poet Titsian Tabidze was arrested on October 10, 1937 on charge of
treason and was tortured in a prison. In a bitter humor, he named only the 18th-century
Georgian poet Besiki as his accomplice in anti-Soviet activities. He was executed on
December 16, 1937. His friend and poet Paolo Iashvili, having earlier been forced to
denounce several of his associates as the enemies of the people, shot himself with a
hunting gun in the building of the Writers’ Union. (He witnessed and even had to
participate in public trials that ousted many of his associates from the Writers' Union,
effectively condemning them to death. When Lavrenty Beria further pressured him with
alternative of denouncing his life-long friend Tabidze or being arrested and tortured by
the NKVD, he killed himself.)
In early 1937, poet Pavel Vasiliev is said to have defended Bukharin as "a man of
the highest nobility and the conscience of peasant Russia" at the time of his
denunciation at the Pyatakov Trial(Second Moscow Trial) and damned other writers
then signing the routine condemnations as "pornographic scrawls on the margins of
Russian literature." He was promptly shot on July 16, 1937.
Jan Sten, philosopher and deputy head of the Marx-Engels Institute was Stalin's
private tutor when Stalin was trying hard to study Hegel's dialectic. (Stalin received
lessons twice a week from 1925 to 1928, but he found it difficult to master even some
of the basic ideas. Stalin developed enduring hostility toward German idealistic
philosphy, which he called "the aristocratic reaction to the French Revolution") In 1937,
Sten was seized on the direct order of Stalin, who declared him one of the chiefs of
Menshevizing idealists. On June 19, 1937, Sten was put to death in Lefortovo prison.
On July 30, 1937 the NKVD Order no. 00447 was issued, directed against "exkulaks" and other "anti-Soviet elements" (such as former officials of the Tsarist regime,
former members of political parties other than the communist party, etc.).
Katyn massacre 1943 exhumation. Photo made by
Polish Red Cross delegation.
The implementation was swift. Already by August 15, 1937, 101,000 were
arrested and 14,000 convicted.
According to the declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, the NKVD
detained 1,548,367 victims, of whom 681,692 were shot - an average of 1,000
executions a day. Historian Michael Ellman claims the best estimate of deaths brought
about by Soviet Repression during these two years is the range 950,000 to 1.2 million,
which includes deaths in detention and those who died shortly after being released from
the Gulag as a result of their treatment in it. He also states that this is the estimate which
should be used by historians and teachers of Russian history. According to Memorial
society
On the cases investigated by the State Security Department of NKVD (GUGB
NKVD):
o
At least 1,710,000 people were arrested
o
At least 1,440,000 people were sentenced
o
At least 724,000 were executed. Among them:

At least 436,000 people were sentenced to death by
NKVD troikas as part of the Kulak operation

At least 247,000 people were sentenced to death by
NKVD Dvoikas' and the Local Special Troykas as part of the Ethnic
Operation

At least 41,000 people were sentenced to death by
Military Courts
Among other cases in October 1936-November 1938:
o
At least 400,000 were sentenced to labor camps by Police
Troikas as Socially Harmful Elements (социально-вредный элемент,
СВЭ)
o
At least 200,000 were exiled or deported by Administrative
procedures
o
At least 2 million were sentenced by courts for common
crimes, among them 800,000 were sentenced to Gulag camps.
Some experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is
understated, incomplete or unreliable. For example, Robert Conquest suggests that the
probable figure for executions during the years of the Great Purge is not 681,692, but
some two and a half times as high. He believes that the KGB was covering its tracks by
falsifying the dates and causes of death of rehabilitated victims.
Percentage of people with Ukrainian as their native language according to 2001 census (in regions).
Ukraine produces the
fourth largest number of post-secondary graduates in Europe, while being ranked seventh in
population.
Ethnic Ukrainians in Ukraine (2001)
Ukrainian administrative divisions by monthly salary
About number and composition population of UKRAINE
by data All-Ukrainian population census'2001 data
The peculiarity of the national structure of the population of
Ukraine is its multinational composition. According to All-Ukrainian
population census data, the representatives of more than 130
nationalities and ethnic groups live on the territory of the country.
The data about the most numerous nationalities of Ukraine are
mentioned below:
Total
(thousand
persons)
as % to the
result
2001
as % to
1989
2001
1989
37541.7
77.8
72.7
100.3
8334.1
17.3
22.1
73.4
Belarussians
275.8
0.6
0.9
62.7
Moldavians
258.6
0.5
0.6
79.7
Ukrainians
Russians
Crimean Tatars
248.2
0.5
0.0
in 5.3
times more
Bulgarians
204.6
0.4
0.5
87.5
Hungarians
156.6
0.3
0.4
96.0
Romanians
151.0
0.3
0.3
112.0
Poles
144.1
0.3
0.4
65.8
Jews
103.6
0.2
0.9
21.3
Armenians
99.9
0.2
0.1
in 1.8
times more
Greeks
91.5
0.2
0.2
92.9
Tatars
73.3
0.2
0.2
84.4
Gipsies
47.6
0.1
0.1
99.3
Azerbaijanians
45.2
0.1
0.0
122.2
Georgians
34.2
0.1
0.0
145.3
Germans
33.3
0.1
0.1
88.0
Gagausians
31.9
0.1
0.1
99.9
177.1
0.4
0.4
83.9
Other
The part of Ukrainians in the national structure of population of
region is the largest. it accounts for 3.754.700 people. or 77.8% of
the population. During the years that have passed since the census of
the population ‘1989. the number of Ukrainians has increased by
0.3% and their part among other citizens of Ukraine has increased by
5.1 percentage points.
Russians are the second numerous nation of Ukraine. Since
1989 their number has decreased by 26.6% and at the date of the
census it accounted for 8.334.100 people. The part of Russians in
total population has decreased by 4.8 percentage points and
accounted for 17.3%.
Ukrainian History: Chronological Table
Year/Ce
ntury
839
Event
More info
MAP:
Mention of Rus' in the Bertynsky chronicles
Eastern
associated with the mission to Ludwig I of the
Europe, 250Frankish kingdom.
800
840
Magyars and khazars attacking Kyiv.
853
Askold becomes Kyiv's Prince.
877
Novgorod's Prince Oleh annexes Kyiv, kills
Askold and brings the capital of Rus' from
Novgorod to Kyiv.
890
Pechenegs advancing to Black Sea steppe.
Ugrians (Hungarians) move to Danube.
Prince Oleh travels to Byzantine's capital
907-911 Constantinopol (Ukrainian "Czarhorod") with a big
army and demands an annuity to Kyiv.
945
Prince Ihor signs a treaty with Byzantine
Empire - ready to accept Orthodox Christianity.
957
Princess Olha (Ihor's wife) becomes a ruler of
Kyiv.
Svyatoslav (Olha's son) becomes a Prince of
960-972 Kyiv. He confrontates with Khazars, then attacks
Bulgaria and fights with Byzantine Empire. At the
time Svjatoslav is in the offensive on Bulgaria,
Khazars attack Kyiv. He returns but gets killed in
a skirmish with Pechenegs.
980
Volodymyr The Great becomes a Prince.
988
Official Christianization of Kyiv Rus'.
Volodymyr accepts Orthodoxy and marries
Byzantine Princess Anna.
1015
Death of Volodymyr The Great. Sons are
struggling to rule the country until 1019.
1019
MAP:
Yaroslav The Wise - one of Volodymyr's sons
Kyivan Rus is
becomes a Prince.
11th century
1027
Construction of Svyata Sofia (St. Sophia)
Cathedral.
1054
Death of Prince Yaroslav.
Polovtsi army attack Kyiv state for the first
time.
1068
1098
1099
-
1111
Magyars attack Halychyna.
Kyiv Princes conquer Polovtsi.
1113
Volodymyr Monomakh - the last of great
princes of Kyiv.
1152
Yaroslav Osmomysl becomes a Prince of
Halychyna.
1155
1157
-
1155
1169
-
Suzdal (Russian) Prince Yuriy Dovgoruky
(founder of Moscow) attacks Kyiv and becomes a
prince for a short period of time.
Destruction of Kyiv by Andrey Bogoliubsky,
the Vldimir-Suzdal prince
1187
The word Ukraine (Ukrayina) first used to
describe Kyiv and Halychyna lands.
1223
Ukrainians first battle Tatars in a battle near
Kalko River in treaty with Polovetz - Tatars win.
1238
Danylo Halytsky becomes a Prince of
Halychyna. Next year he unites Halychyna with
Kyiv.
MAP:
Southern Rus
1250.
1240
Tatars capture Kyiv.
1256
Lviv is founded by King Lev.
1320
Yuriy becomes a King of Halychyna.
1330
Yuriy marries Lithuanian Princess, daughter
of Gedymin.
1360s
Lithuanian Prince Olgerd frees Kyivschyna
and Podillya from Tatars. They fell under
Lithuanian control.
1378
Last Halychyna King Volodyslav dies.
1387 XVIII century
1414
1475
1774
Poland rules Halychyna.
Prince Fedir Koryatovych of Mukachevo.
-
1490
Crimea (Krym)
Empire's rule.
under
Turkish
(Osman)
First mentioning of cossacks (kozaks).
(More)
1550
Dmytro Vyshnyvetsky establishes a fortress
of Zaporizhzhya (Zaporizhia).
1569
Lyublinska Uniya (Lublin Union) - All
Ukrainian territory under Lithuanian rule (except
Polissia and Beresteyshchyna) transfers to
Poland.
1576
Foundation of Ostroh Academy
University-like school in Eastern Europe.
-
MAP:
Ukrainian
lands after
1569
first
1590
First Kozak uprisings (Kostynsky, Mazyvako).
1596
Union of Brest (Beresti) - beginning of
religious struggles.
1608
MAP:
Ukrainian
lands 1400
Fall of Ostroh Academy.
MAP:
1610
1622
-
Het'man Sahaydachny is a het'man (the
arch) of Zaporizka Sich.
Zaporizka
Sich
1630
Kozak uprising against Poland.
Petro Mohyla establishes a Collegium in
Kyiv.
1637
Beginning of liberation of Ukraine from Polish
rule headed by kozak het'man Bohdan
Khmelnytsky
1648
Bohdan Khmel'nytsky signs Pereyaslav treaty
with Muscovy
1654
1657
-
Het'man Petro Doroshenko.
Establishment of Russian control under the
right-bank kozaks.
1685
Kyiv
Orthodox
Church
Metropolitan
(Patriarkhat) becomes a division of Muscovite
Metropolitan.
-
Het'man Ivan Mazepa - period of palingenecy
of Kozak state.
1708
Treaty had been signed between Ukraine
and Sweden.
1709
Battle in Poltava (Ukraine). Russians defeat
Swedish-Ukrainian army and execute Kozak
troops after the surrender of Swede army
1709
Death of Ivan Mazepa.
1710
Pylyp Orlyk becomes a het'man.
Russians prohibit the use of Ukrainian
language - still preferred by Ukrainians.
1720
1722
(more)
Two het'mans in Ukraine. Het'man of the Left
bank of Dnipro - in coalition with Russia; het'man
from right bank - against Russia.
1670
1687
1709
(more
info)
Swedish-Ukrainian coalition against Russia.
1663
1665
1676
MAP:
Kozak state
after 1649
-
First het'man of Ukraine appointed by
MAP:
Ukrainian
lands after
1667
1727
1734
1744
1745
Russian Czar.
Het'man Danylo Apostol's uprising on the
Right Bank (Haydamaky).
Construction of St. George Cathedral in Lviv.
Oleksa Dovbush - legendary Ukrainian hero.
1764
Abolition of
(Zapiriz'ka Sich).
1765
Slobodzhanschyna
control.
1772
Russian, German and Austrian empires
divide parts of Poland among themselves.(First
division) Halychyna falls under Austrian control.
1775
Second division of Poland. Austria annexes
Bukovyna
1775
1787
Zaporizhzhya
falls
Het'manate
under
Russian
Zaporizka Sich destroyed by Russians.
Russians rebuild a village of Kodak into a city
and name it after queen Ekaterina II
(Katerynoslav). During Ukrainian Republic of
1917 - 1920 the city was renamed into Sicheslav
("In Honour of Sich"). In 1924 communists gave it
a present name - Dnipropetrovsk (Combination of
words "Dnipro" (main Ukrainian river) and
"Petrovskij" (The last name of major of city, a
Stalinist)).
1789
Establishment of Mykolayiv (Nikolayev)
1780
End of Het'manate.
1794
Establishment of Odesa (Odessa).
1793
1798
Transfer of lands on the Right Bank to Russia
from Poland excluding Halychyna, Bukovyna,
Volyn and a part of Polissya, already annexed by
Austria.
Ivan Kotlyarevsky publishes "Eneyida".
MAP:
Ukrainian
lands around
1750
MAP:
1831
Repnev attempts to renew kozak army.
1834
Establishment of The University of Kyiv.
1840
Taras Shevchenko's first publication of
"Kobzar", probably the most popular book in
Ukrainian.
1861
First
railroad
(Peremyshl - Lviv).
1861
1863
1890
on
Ukrainian
Dnipro
Ukraine
around 1850
territory
Abolition of slavery in Russia.
Ukrainian language is officially prohibited to
use by Russian government.
First Ukrainian Political Party (Halytska)
1905
Annulment of restrictions on the usage of
Ukrainian language in Russian empire.
1917
Revolution in Russia. Ukrainian writer and
historian Mykhaylo Hrushevsky becomes the
president of newly proclaimed Ukrainian state
(Ukrayinska Narodna Respublika). The power of
the new government is very weak, Russian
czarists, communists and Germans try to conquer
Ukraine again. Symon Petlyura becomes a
commanders of Ukrainian armed forces.
President signs a treaty with Germans, but it was
annulled in 1919 in Brest, Belorussia, where
Germany signed a treaty with Communist Russia.
Ukrainian lands are united after Western
Ukrainian Republic and Ukrainian republic unite.
1918
MAP:
Austrian
empire
breaks
up.
Newly
Western
established West-Ukrainian Republic is annexed
Ukraine 1772by Czechoslovakia and Romania.
1914
1921
Formation of Soviet Socialist Republic of
Ukraine.
1929
Collectivization starts. All lands that belonged
to Ukrainian farmers are taken away and put into
MAP:
Ukrainian
lands 19141919
MAP:
Ukraine in
a large "kolhosps" (co-operative farms.) People, interwar years
who didn't want to give their land away are
(more)
arrested and murdered.
19331934
Artificial Famine in Ukraine, caused by
Stalin's policy. At least three million people die in
result.
19391940
Annexation of Western Ukraine by Soviet
Union according to a secret treaty with Nazi
Germany.
(more)
MAP:
Ukraine during
WW2
19411944
19431944
German occupation of Ukraine. Ukrainian
Insurgent Army (UPA). SS Division "Galizien".
(more on
UPA)
(Ukrainian
Russians return. Massive immigration to the
s in
west (England, France, Canada, USA.)
Saskatchewan,
Canada)
19451947
Discrimination and murders of Ukrainian
population in Poland by Polish army and police.
19451955
Continued fight for liberation of Ukraine in the
western regions.
1950's
Illegal anti-communist literature begins to
appear.
1986
Nuclear reactor explosion in Chernobyl,
Ukraine.
1980's
National movement for the liberation of
Ukraine "Rukh" is formed.
1990
Human chain
independence.
1990
1991
(more on
division
"Galizien")
protests
for
Ukrainian
Ukrainian sovereignty is proclaimed.
Ukrainian independence is proclaimed.
Elections of Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) and
(picture)
(more)
the President Leonid Kravchuk.
1994
Ukraine signs an treaty with NATO
1996
Constitution is proclaimed.
(the text of
constitution)
References:
1. Декларація про державний суверенітет України. Прийнята Верховною Радою
Української РСР 16 липня 1990 року. - К. 1991.
2. Акт проголошення незалежності України, прийнятий Верховною Радою
України 24 серпня 1991 року. - К. 1991.
3. Конституція України. Прийнята на п'ятій сесії Верховної Ради України 28
червня 1996 року. - К. 1996.
4. Крип'якевич І. П. Історія України. - Львів, 1990.
5. Полонська-Василенко Н. Історія України. Т. 1-2.-К. 1992.
6. Andrew Wilson. The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation. Yale University Press;
2nd edition (2002).
7. Anna Reid. Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine. London, Orion
Books; 4th impression (1998, preface 2003).
8. Mykhailo Hrushevsky. History of Ukraine-Rus’ in 9 volumes.
9. Orest Subtelny. Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (1988).
10. Paul Robert Magocsi. A History of Ukraine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press
(1996).