REMAPPING UKRAINE
15th Century BCE to 21st Century CE
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
Vanderbilt University
Winter Term 2015
Mary Pat Silveira
UKRAINIAN ETHNOGRAPHIC
TERRITORY: 1922
THE INTERWAR YEARS
• Bolshevik policy of “War Communism”
• 1921: Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP:
temporary return to market economy
• USSR created as federation 1922; Union Treaty
1924
REPUBLICS OF THE SOVIET UNION
• 1922: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and
“Transcaucasia”
• 1924: Transcaucasia split into Armenia,
Azerbaijan & Georgia; Turkmenistan &
Uzbekistan added.
• 1929: Tajikistan added.
• 1936: Kazakhstan & Kyrgyzstan added.
• 1940: Moldova, Estonia*, Latvia* &
Lithuania* added (*disputed: “occupied)
1924 UNION TREATY
• Exclusive Prerogative of Central Government:
– Military
– Foreign relations
– Foreign trade
– Transportation & communications
• Republics:
– Economic, social & cultural affairs
INDIGENIZATION
• 1923: Twelfth Party Congress adopt policy of
indigenization
– Promote diversity
– Actively recruit Ukrainians to state & party
– Foster development Ukrainian culture
– Expand education and publishing in Ukrainian
RISE OF STALIN
• Lenin dies in 1924; Stalin consolidates power
• First Five Year Plan (1928-32)
– returns to socialism
– Large-scale industrialization
– Forced collectivization of agriculture
– Suppression of “bourgeois” culture
– Use of state coercion and control
INDUSTRIALIZATION
• Ukraine benefits from 27% of 1500 new Soviet
industrial plants
– Includes largest hydroelectric dam in Europe
– Giant tractor factory and steel mill
• Most investments in Eastern Ukraine only, in
Donbas & Lower Dnipro area
UKRAINE’S INDUSTRIAL AREA
AGRICULTURE AND BLACK FAMINE
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Enforced collectivization & grain requisitioning
Emphasis on grain exports for foreign capital
Crusade against kulaks
No food for consumption; Peasants resist
Demand rises; supply falls; drought intervenes
Black Famine of 1932 and 1933
– b/w 7 and 8 million dead; 15-20 % Ukrainian pop
THE BLACK (GREAT) FAMINE: 1930s
The Great Terror/The Great Purge
• Stalin’s “Cultural Revolution
– 1933 retreats from Lenin’s nationalities
– 1934-38: purges intellectuals; hundreds of
thousands killed & millions sent to Gulag
• Poles and Germans deported to Soviet Asia
• Jewish section of Communist Party dissolved
– New Soviet elite – “the class of 38”
UKRAINIANS IN POLAND
• Repression of Ukrainians
• 1925: Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance
• Ukrainian support for Soviet Ukrainians
increases: create Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists 1929
UKRAINIAN LANDS IN POLAND
1930
UKRAINIANS IN ROMANIA &
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
• Romania: Bessarabia and Bukovyna
• Czechoslovakia: Transcarpathia
– Given autonomy in 1938 – “Carpatho-Ukraine”
UKRAINIAN LANDS IN ROMANIA &
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
RISING THREAT OF WAR
• 1938: Appeasement at Munich: Germany
invades Sudentenland
• 3/ 1939: Germany invades all Czechoslovakia
• 8/ 1939: German-Soviet nonaggression treaty
(Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact)
SECRET CODICIL
• Secret codicil of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact:
Division of Eastern Europe
• Sept 1, 1939: Germany invades Poland from west
• Sept 17, 1939: Soviet troops invade Poland from
east; annex
• Galicia, west Volhynia & Polisia to Ukrainian SSR(1939)
• northern Bukovyna and Bessarabia (1940); and
• 3 Baltic States (1940)
GERMANY ADVANCES
• Germany is given lands in Poland west of San and Buh
Rivers
– 500,000 Ukrainians in this area
• Germany sets up Generalgouvernement
– Life at first appears better than in Soviet Ukraine
– Many Ukrainian activists emigrate here & make center of
Ukrainian life
– Establish Ukrainian Central Committee in 1940
• 1941: Germany breaks Pact w/ USSR; invades and
occupies Soviet Ukraine
UKRAINE WW II
RUSSIAN RETREAT
• Many Ukrainians reluctant to help USSR following
years of starvation & purge
• Russians arrest nationalists, industrialists & civil
servants; to avoid evacuating, kill most prisoners;
deport others to Siberia, Arctic Circle & CA
• Russians in retreat: dismantle industry, destroy
infrastructure & pursue “scorched earth policy”
REICHSKOMMISSARIAT
• Brief period allowed of Ukrainian national life
• Sense that Germans were “liberators”
• Third Reich cracks down
• Lebensraum & ethnic hatred apparent
HOLOCAUST IN UKRAINE
• Jews both shipped off in cattle cars to death
camps or herded to outskirts of cities
– e.g.,
Babyn Yar (34,000 Jews shot)
• Nazis, with Ukrainian collaborators,
responsible for killing In Ukraine:
– Over 900,000 Jews; second only to Poland
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Equaled approximately 20% of the Jewish population
END OF WWII
• Red Army expels Germans by fall 1944
• Altogether, Ukraine lost an estimated:
– 4.1m civilians and 1.4m military
– 3.9m evacuated eastward by Soviets;
– 2.2m deported to Germany as forced laborers
• Total loss (Est):
11.6 million
• Population in 1939: 40 million
YALTA 1945
• Major territorial change. Ukraine adds:
– Eastern Galicia, Volhynia and Polissia
– Northern Bukovina and lower Bessarabia
– Transcarpathia
• For first time in modern history, all Ukrainian
ethnic lands united in a single state structure:
the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
UKRAINE 1945
POST WWII SOVIET UKRAINE
• Faced two challenges: integrate country &
(re)build centralized command economy
– 28,000 villages and 714 towns and cities in ruin
– Center of Kyiv 85% demolished
– Kharkiv, second largest city, 70% in ruins
– More than 19 million homeless
INDUSTRIAL BASE SHATTERED
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Soviets had dismantled 544 industrial enterprises
Germans destroyed another 16,150 enterprises
833 coal mines were blown up
Electric power stations, dams, RR lines, bridges &
roads were destroyed
• 872 state farms, 1300 machine tractor stations,
and 27,910 collective farms destroyed
MAJOR DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE
• Ukraine lost most of its Jewish population
• Poles in Western Ukraine either emigrate or
are expelled
• Large German settlements that had existed
before the war gone
• Tartars in Crimea sent to Central Asia
FOURTH FIVE-YEAR PLAN: 1949-50
• Emphasis on industry
• By end of plan:
– Industrial production 2.2 x 1940
– Highest p/c production pig iron & sugar in Europe
– Second highest in steel smelting & iron ore mining
– Third highest in coal mining
AGRICULTURE IN FOURTH PLAN
• Agriculture remains collectivized
– Collective farms increase from 28,000 to 33,000
– Heavy emphasis on industrial crops & low
productivity
• Drought again in 1946: Famine
– Deaths estimated anywhere from 100,000 to 1 m
• Total harvests far below prewar level
• Problem recurs next five years as well
NEW CAMPAIGNS BEGIN
• 1951: Kremlin begins comprehensive campaign
against “nationalist deviations” in West Ukraine
– Russian language only in schools
– Uniate and Catholic churches banned in West
– Anti-Jews (“rootless cosmopolians” and “killer
doctors”)
• Relocate large number of Russians to Western
areas
HISTORICAL IDEOLOGY
• All forced to accept Soviet version history,
elaborated in 1954:
1. Russian, Ukrainian & Belarusian peoples trace
origin to single root – the Russian people who
had founded Kievan Rus’
2. Throughout history, Ukrainian and Belarusian
people had desired unification w/ Russian people
HISTORICAL IDEOLOGY
3. Reunifcation is a progressive act
4. Throughout history, Russian people were the
“senior brother” in family of East Slavic peoples
5. Russia’s main virtue constituted in its giving rise
to a strong working class, which in turn
produced its vanguard, the Communist Party
NATIONAL EXPRESSION
• Individual national expression only permitted
if it recognized Marxist-Leninist theory, as
interpreted by Stalin… and
• Only if it took place within mind-set that
accepted superiority of Russian culture &
language as a model & means of expression
STALIN TO KHRUSHCHEV
• Death of Stalin 1953; Khrushchev begins new
approach toward Ukraine
• Celebrates 300th anniversary Agreement of
Pereiaslav (“reunification Russia & Ukraine”)
• Cedes Crimea to Ukraine in 1954
UKRAINE: 1922-1954
KHRUSCHEV
• 20th Party Congress: The Personality Cult & its
Consequences – blames Stalin for his crimes:
– Execution, torture & imprisonment of loyal party
members on false charges
– Foreign policy errors
– Failings of Soviet agriculture
– Ordering mass terror
– Mistakes that led to appalling loss of life in WWII
and German occupation
DE-STALINIZATION
• De-Stalinization reawakes Ukrainian
nationalism
• Writers, directors, composers & artists: the
“Sixties Group”
– Reject socialist realism
– Reaffirm that literature an individual expression
– Renew traditional Ukrainian cultural values and
language
– Rehabilitate banned Ukrainian authors
END OF KHRUSCHEV ERA
• Economy begins to level off
• Agriculture still in crisis
• Khruschev removed Oct 1964; followed by
Brezhnev & Kosygin
BREZHNEV-KOSYGIN ERA
• New restrictions on nationalist culture
• Repression of writing; first wave of arrests of
dissident intellectuals 1965-66; next wave, 197172, broader
• 1979 – all union conference calls for mandatory
of teaching Russian in every kindergarten and
pre-kindergarten
BREZHNEV TO GORBACHEV
• Brezhnev dies 1982
• Andropov dies after 15 months in office
• Chernenko dies after only 13 months in office
• Gorbachev becomes general secretary of
Communist Party in 1985