15_Interwar Years

This is the fifteenth #generalhistory note, following 14_A New Nation.

Nationalism and Communism

• After the First World War, the two prevalent ideologies were nationalism and communism. In the case of Ukraine, which endured a big blow to its national aspirations, the interplay would result in two experiments that would later go on to influence each other in turn:
  • A national-communist experiment in Soviet Ukraine
  • A radical nationalist movement in Galicia

Ukrainization

• In December 1922, the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (which would change its name to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1937) signed a four-party agreement with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, and the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
• Joseph Stalin, who was then General Secretary of the Communist Party, opposed this arrangement, believing that the other republics should join the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic as subordinate regions with rights of autonomy.
• Vladimir Lenin thought that social revolution implied national liberation and that a union of sovereign Soviet republics could achieve both. Within this framework, it was also far easier to incorporate potential future republics joining, as the socialist end-goal was world revolution.
• The Union's goals in regard to Ukraine were to keep the Poles out, the Ukrainians in, and the Russians out. Soviet officials saw Ukrainians as the most rebellious ethnicity under their rule (based on experiences with Symon Petliura and peasant uprisings) and Russian nationalism as a potential threat to the multi-ethnic state.
• Between the Union’s federalism and the centralism of the Communist Party, Ukraine enjoyed de facto autonomy. Ukraine's next nation-building steps would take place under the political and legal framework of the Soviet regime.
• That regime introduced the policy of korenizatsiia or indigenization, which put an emphasis on the economic development of non-Russian peripheries and the support of local cultures in the Twelfth Party Congress, which took place in April 1923. The policy was meant to solidify regime control of a country recovering from conflict.
• One goal of korenizatsiia was the creation of a loyal local elite, carrying on the Romanov legacy. The admission of local revolutionary elites proved insufficient, as it couldn't stabilize the Bolshevik regime. In 1922, Ukrainians represented roughly 80 percent of the republic, but less than 25 percent of the Ukrainian Communist Party.
• The national communists (who saw revolution as a vehicle for both national and social revolution) proposed that the party should adopt Ukrainian in order to appeal to the peasants. Communist ideology was a workers’ movement that resonated most in the cities, and the villages proved to be a major difficulty, so measures that could help eventually won out—though there was strong resistance from some puritans who insisted on a lingua franca for all true believers.
• Some of the policy's strongest adversaries were in the Ukrainian Communist Party, where only 18 percent of members in civil service and 44 percent of the service as a whole claimed a good knowledge of Ukrainian.
• Oleksandr Shumsky, leader of the national communists, demanded a harder line on Ukrainization. His proposals included:
  • Replacing Stalin's protégé Lazar Kaganovich with Vlas Chubar as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine.
  • The promotion of the linguistic Ukrainization of workers. This policy had initially been targeted at just ethnic Ukrainians, as Russians and other minorities had their own indigenization programs.
• Stalin refused to fulfill either of these. He claimed the proposal to remove Kaganovich was badly timed and remained insistent on Ukrainization, even though he relied on the Ukrainian Communist Party in his struggle for power after Lenin's death.
• He was especially critical of calls for distancing Ukrainian culture from Russian culture:

"While West European proletarians and their communist parties are full of sympathy for ‘Moscow’, the citadel of the international revolutionary movement and Leninism; while West European proletarians gaze with sympathy on the banner waving in Moscow, the Ukrainian communist Khvyliovy can say nothing more in favor of Moscow than exhort Ukrainian activists to flee ‘Moscow… as quickly as possible’." – The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine, page 233

• Stalin then decided to retake the initiative from the Ukrainian national communists and to lead the Ukrainization drive himself—or rather, to delegate it to Kaganovich.
• He and his successor fulfilled that task, changing what had been a vague decree before 1926 into comprehensive policy.
• This manifested in the educational institutions and cultural work among the working class.
  • Ukrainian-language instruction in institutions of higher learning increased from 33 percent in 1926 to 58 percent in 1928–1929.
  • The percentage of Ukrainian-language newspapers grew from 30 percent in 1926 to 92 percent in 1932.
  • In June 1932, 75 percent of all lectures given to miners in Ukraine were in Ukrainian.

Show Trials

• Stalin's support for Ukrainization was temporary and insincere. He believed that Russians and Ukrainians were the same people, and by the late 1920s, tactical considerations had changed. The party decided the regime depended on the support of the largest ethnic group—Russians—thus requiring the suppression of Ukrainian national aspirations.
• In 1929, the OGPU (Soviet secret police) launched a wave of arrests in Ukraine, preparing for the first show trial in Kharkiv. They targeted the leadership of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and accused them of belonging to a fake organization called the "Union for the Liberation of Ukraine," allegedly part of a Polish conspiracy to create an independent Ukraine.
• The accusations were fabricated, but 15 people were sentenced to death, 192 imprisoned, and 87 exiled. Most of the targets were at the forefront of the Ukrainization drive.
• While the party claimed to be combating "great power chauvinism", no similar trials were organized in Russia, despite Ukrainian national communist Mykola Skrypnyk suggesting such measures.
• With this, the Ukrainization drive effectively ended, especially in the industrial east and south of the country, which were barely affected to begin with. This would have long-term consequences for regional self-identification.
• Another important outcome was the emergence of a group of Russian-speaking Ukrainians who began to identify as Ukrainian despite their language. These individuals would later become a crucial bridge between Russian-speaking Russians and Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians.

Polonization of Galicia

• Soviet leaders sought to use Ukrainian territories to destabilize their western neighbors, while Western powers were trying to turn countries like Poland into a buffer zone against Bolshevism.
• Bolshevik propaganda often depicted Soviet Ukraine as a beacon of Ukrainian statehood, which resonated in the western territories where conditions were worse.
• Polish-ruled Galicia had 5 million inhabitants, 4.4 million of whom were Ukrainian.
• The Versailles and Riga treaties, along with the Polish constitution, guaranteed equality among ethnicities, including protections for minority schools and cultural centers.
• In practice, Poles and Ukrainians harbored deep animosity, a legacy of the Polish-Ukrainian War. Ukrainians boycotted Polish institutions, ran underground organizations, and ignored both the 1920 Polish census and the 1922 elections.
• These tactics failed. The Conference of Ambassadors at the Paris Peace Conference recognized Polish rule over Galicia, ending hopes for Western intervention.
• The decision was based on the assumption that Ukrainians would receive some autonomy. That promise was never fulfilled; instead, Poland pursued a policy of assimilation to stabilize the state.
• In 1924, the Lex Grabski was introduced, restricting Ukrainian rights, especially in language and education.
• The Ukrainian language became central to national struggle once again, as the literacy rate among Ukrainians dropped from 65% to 59% in a few years due to educational discrimination.
  • In 1930, there were 58 state-run Polish gymnasiums, compared to just six Ukrainian ones.
  • In the private sector: 22 Polish gymnasiums vs. 14 Ukrainian.
  • Out of 12,000 teachers in Galicia, fewer than 3,000 were ethnic Ukrainians. Nearly 600 Ukrainian teachers were reassigned to Polish-settled areas.
• The Polish government promoted Polish settlement in traditionally Ukrainian areas. After breaking up large estates—often owned by Polish elites—the state redistributed the land but prioritized Polish veterans in allocation.
• The same policy applied to Volhynia, where 40% of newly available land went to Polish colonists.
• For many Ukrainians (around 200,000) and Jews, this was the final straw. They emigrated to the U.S., Britain, or Australia. Many Jews left for the British Mandate of Palestine.
• Conditions in Galicia worsened further as Poland cut investment in the eastern territories. A striking example: oil extraction declined by 70% during the 1930s.
• Ukrainian peasants responded by reviving the cooperative movement, the most successful example being the Dairy Union, which almost every Ukrainian farmer joined.
• However, these efforts were limited in effect, given the scarcity of urban jobs and the widespread poverty—about half of peasant farms did not exceed five acres.

Radical Nationalism

• Polish policies toward Ukrainians differed starkly from Soviet ones:
  • Soviets: rapid industrialization | Poles: reliance on agriculture
  • Soviets: integration of Ukrainians into state structures | Poles: external administrators and settler colonization in Galicia
• The main distinction, however, was the Soviet lack of an electoral system. In contrast, Polish democracy (however limited) allowed Ukrainian political organizing.
• After WWI, the most important Ukrainian national institution was the Greek Catholic Church. Due to Poland’s refusal to include "nationality" in the census and the growing dominance of the Polish language, religion became a key marker of Ukrainian identity.
• Politically, the National Democratic Alliance (successor to the pre-war National Democratic Party) dominated the scene.
• The landscape changed in 1929 with the founding of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), an outgrowth of the Ukrainian Military Organization. While its methods—terrorism and the goal of independence—remained the same, its ideological underpinnings shifted.
• The new ideology, radical nationalism, condemned the liberal nationalism of pre-war Ukrainian leaders as defeatist and overly focused on language. It was heavily influenced by the writings of Dmytro Dontsov, who, notably, never actually joined the OUN.
• Though initially a marginal force, the OUN had outsized political impact:
  • In 1933, it orchestrated the assassination of a Soviet diplomat in Lviv, citing the Holodomor.
  • In 1934, it assassinated Polish Minister of the Interior Bronisław Pieracki in retaliation for the Pacification campaign.
• Both attacks were organized by Stepan Bandera, who became head of the OUN in 1933. At his second trial, he stated:

"The OUN values the lives of its men very highly, but as we understand our idea, it is so grand that when it comes to its realization, not only individual sacrifices, but hundreds and thousands must be offered to realize it." — The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine, p. 239

• In the 1930s, the OUN expanded into Volhynia, which had historically been a stronghold of Russian nationalism. Now it was undergoing Polonization and competing Ukrainian nation-building projects:
  • A Galician model, anti-Polish in character.
  • A more moderate current loyal to the Polish state.
• The Polish state aimed to isolate Volhynia from Galician nationalist influence, establishing the Sokal border, banning Prosvita societies, limiting Galician literature, and preventing OUN networks from forming.
• The main proponent of this strategy was Henryk Józewski, governor of Volhynia. Having fought alongside Petliura, he believed in Ukrainian-Polish accommodation and supported Ukrainian nationalism loyal to Poland.
• Yet anti-Polish sentiment also came from the Communist Party of Western Ukraine (CPWU), far larger than the OUN at the time:
  • By the mid-1930s: CPWU = 1600 members | OUN = 800
  • CPWU appealed to peasants through its promises of both social and national revolution.
• Both groups were repressed in the late 1930s:
  • 3,000 communists and 700 nationalists were detained.
  • The Soviet border was closed.
    • Józewski adopted Ukrainization as a countermeasure:
      • He supported Ukrainian-language education and made Ukrainian an obligatory subject in Polish-Ukrainian schools.
• Józewski resigned in 1938. After Pilsudski’s death in 1935, Polish policy hardened toward minorities, and Ukrainization ended.
• Despite state efforts, nationalism continued to spread in Volhynia, eventually turning it into a Ukrainian nationalist stronghold.

Romania

• Both Ukrainian nationalists and communists were active in Romanian territories, which hosted roughly 1 million Ukrainians.
• The Romanian state adopted differing policies based on region and background:
  • Petliura veterans were welcomed.
  • Former Russian-ruled regions like Bessarabia were allowed Ukrainian schools.
  • Former Austrian territories like Bukovyna saw harsher repression than in Poland:
    • Ukrainian culture and politics were restricted.
    • Romanian settlement was encouraged via land reform.
    • Romanian became the sole administrative language.
• Due to widespread dissatisfaction with the Romanian regime, Ukrainians turned to alternative ideologies:
  • Communism resonated more in Bessarabia.
  • Nationalism spread more effectively in Bukovyna.
• In Bukovyna, National Democrats attempted parliamentary reform and cultural organizing in the 1920s. While they had some success, they failed to shift government policy.
• This opened space for more radical forces. The OUN founded its first Bukovyna cell in 1934, and soon began publishing the newspaper Svoboda, which reached a circulation of 7,000 before being shut down in 1937.

Czechoslovakia

• The breakup of the Austro-Hungarian empire left around half a million Ukrainians in Transcarpathia, and then voluntarily joined Czechoslovakia.
• These people were still conflicted on whether they were Ukrainian, Russian or Ruthenian (basically their own thing).
• The Czechoslovak government mostly stayed neutral, though it backed the Ruthenians eventually. While it made Czechs and Slovaks the administrators of that region and encouraged settlement by colonists, it was still an improvement over the Hungarian "Magyarization" effort.
• Czechoslovakia was the only eastern European country with free and fair elections. Due to the pronounced land hunger of the peasants and social tensions, the communists won the Ukrainian vote.
• Nation builders were hopelessly split between three identities, but Russophiles and Ukrainophiles seemed to have an advantage. The Prosvita society had 96 reading rooms as opposed to the 192 by the Russophile Dukhanovich foundation. The Russophiles had a hold on the Orthodox church, while the Ukrainophiles had influence in the Greek Catholic one.

Recap

• The Soviet Union was the only nation to give the Ukrainian nation building project some form of statehood and cultural support. Their communist project had wide appeal both inside Soviet Ukraine and in the neighboring countries.
• However, national communism faced several challenges:
  • anti-communist and anti-Ukrainian policies in surrounding countries
  • opposition from the mainstream which wanted to co-exist with the regimes
  • rising competition from radical nationalist ideology
  • Soviet change in policy in the 1930s.

Stalin's Ukraine

• After Stalin's victory in the succession struggle after Lenin's death, he started two economic policies:
  • Socialist Industrialization: A government-funded program intended to drastically increase industrial production, with a special focus on the development of heavy industry, production of energy and building of machinery.
  • Collectivization: The creation of state-run collective farms.
• This ended the last economic policy, which allowed market economies in agriculture, light industry and services.
• Soviet leadership also insisted that a cultural revolution was necessary to ensure the regime's survival.
• There was internal debate about the pace of these reforms, but Stalin eventually settled on faster implementation. The main reasoning behind this was the fact that the Soviet Union could only fund industrialization from within, and the only source was agriculture.

Construction Efforts

• Moscow saw Ukraine both as a source of funds for industrialization (given the agricultural output) and as an area for investment (given the pre-existing industrial base).
• With the Center in control of the funds, local leadership had to lobby for investment from the pool it contributed to.
• Ukraine did relatively well during the first five-year plan (1928-1933) and received around 20 percent of the funds. The share they received slacked in the next period, when more money was allocated to the Urals and Siberia. Most of the money going to Ukraine was sent to the east and the south.
• The largest construction project launched in Ukraine during the first five-year plan was the Dniprohes, the Dnieper dam and electric power station.
  • Its construction remade Zaporizhia into an industrial center.
  • It also drained the Dnieper rapids so much that you could now ship things through them.
• While Soviet propaganda claimed this was the first step towards communism, the party actually hired American consultants to help them build the dam. Stalin himself said:

"The combination of Russian revolutionary sweep with American efficiency is the essence of Leninism in party and state activity" - The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine, page 247

• The "revolutionary sweep" mentioned by Stalin referred to the tens of thousands of unqualified Ukrainian workers. This was the first time since the industrial revolution ethnic Ukrainians made up the main workforce. The reasons for this were the concurrent developments in the countryside.

Collectivization

• In the fall of 1929, Stalin demanded a stricter and more complete implementation of collectivization.
• This campaign hit hardest in the grain-producing areas, of which Ukraine was the most productive. Tens of thousands of GPU officers went out into the countryside to coerce peasants into joining collective farms, which meant giving up their land and property.
• In March 1930, the authorities reported that 70 percent of arable land had been collectivized, up from 6 percent the previous year.
• Most peasants were bullied into accepting, but a sizable portion resisted.
• By the spring of 1930, the countryside was the scene of a peasant revolt. In March alone, the authorities registered 1,700 revolts and protests. Dozens of Soviet administrators were killed and hundreds more were assaulted. Whole villages bordering Poland fled into the neighboring country.
• This triggered a hefty response from the Soviet government, which used the secret police and the army to go after dissenters. Their main targets were the better-off peasantry, who had little interest in joining collective farms and often led protests.
• These people were referred to as "Kulaks" and often imprisoned and forcibly resettled. Later on, the term was applied to everyone but the poorest villagers.
• The Soviets ended up deporting around 75,000 alleged Kulak families, often to rural parts of Russia, including Siberia. In many cases, deportation meant being abandoned in the open, without any supplies, left to die.
• Opposition was too large to counter just by repression, so the authorities decided on a tactical retreat. Problems were blamed on zealous local officials, and the policy was scaled back.
• It didn't remain that way for long, as collectivization ramped back up in the fall of 1930. This time, peasants opted for other means of protest like:
  • refusal to grow more grain than necessary for survival
  • the slaughtering of livestock to avoid confiscation
  • flight from the village towards the cities

Holodomor

• Stalin and the Politburo refused to admit defeat and accused the peasants of sabotage, declaring they were hiding grain in an attempt to starve the cities.
• Their solution was the imposition of grain quotas on the peasantry. Ukraine was singled out for especially harsh treatment, as it was crucial for Moscow's economic plans.
  • While Ukraine only produced 27 percent of the grain, it became responsible for 38 percent of all grain deliveries.
• Hundreds of thousands of people starved, with 80,000 dying of hunger in the Kyiv region alone in 1932.
• The head of the Ukrainian government admitted that excessive requisitions were the cause of the famine. He wrote to Stalin:

"Given the overall impossibility of fulfilling the grain requisition plan, the basic reason for which was the lesser harvest in Ukraine as a whole and the colossal losses incurred during the harvest, a system was put in place confiscating all grain produced by individual farmers, including seed stocks, and almost complete confiscation of all produce from the collective farms." - The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine, page 251

• He then asked Stalin to provide Ukraine with famine relief. Stalin denied there was one and banned the word from official correspondence. He attributed the failures of his policy to peasant resistance and Ukrainian party cadres.
• Stalin was concerned with the survival of his regime. He was very worried about a Polish surprise attack through Ukraine with local collaborators joining, as happened in the spring of 1920.
  • In particular, he was worried about the Ukrainized party members backstabbing him in case of a Polish attack.
• In July of 1932, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Poland.
• As Stalin saw it, this was a prime opportunity to "secure Ukraine" by requisitioning grain, punishing the peasants who resisted collectivization, and purging the Ukrainian party apparatus.
• This focus can be seen in his August 1932 letter to Kaganovich, in which he said:

"We should set ourselves the goal of turning Ukraine into a real fortress of the USSR, a truly model republic" - The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine, page 252

• In December, he turned a Politburo meeting on grain procurement into an occasion to attack the Ukrainian party leadership not only in the fulfillment of quotas, but also in their implementation of Ukrainization.
• That basically ended the Ukrainization policy in regards to the Far East settlements and started a vehement attack on Ukrainian party members that supported the policy in Ukraine itself.
  • The main example of this was the suicide of Mykola Skrypnik, who was the main proponent of Ukrainization on the state level.
• Blame for the failures was also assigned to nationalists, who were seen as instigators of sabotage. That way, nationalism and resistance to grain restrictions were linked.
• Stalin's next act was to send Viacheslav Molotov to Ukraine to ensure the quotas were met.
• Local cadres were thus pressured into taking as much as they could from the dying peasantry.
• Authorities punished those villages that failed to comply with the quotas by cutting off basic food supply and confiscating anything that could be used as food.
• The first starvation-related deaths were reported in December 1932, and it turned into a mass phenomenon by March 1933.
• Party bosses in the hardest hit regions requested aid from Kharkiv and Moscow, but the aid delivered came in insufficient quantity and too late.
• Close to 4 million people died as a result, every eighth person in the country succumbed to hunger in 1932-1934.
• Despite the cover-up implemented after it ended, the Holodomor is broadly recognized by scholars as a genocide today.

Aftermath

• The Soviet Ukraine that emerged from the Holodomor was different from the one before it. Stalin had ensured party and population loyalty by purging everyone who wouldn't submit to him.
  • Every secretary of a district party committee that didn't take food from the starving was fired (more than half of them)
  • The peasants who had refused to join collective farms had either joined them (because they were taxed less and the only ones to receive relief in the spring of 1933) or were dead
• Ukrainian villages also completely changed their dynamics.
• The transformation from autonomous Soviet republic to a mere province of the Soviet Union was completed with the transfer of its capital from Kharkiv to Kyiv, as the local intelligentsia had been dismantled.
• Soviet Ukraine became a model for collectivization and industrialization:
  • Its industrial output by the end of the 1930s exceeded its output in 1915 eightfold.
  • 98 percent of all households and 99.9 percent of all arable land were collectivized.
• However, it also incurred several losses in life:
  • Its population shrank from 29 to 26.5 million between 1926 and 1937, before rising to 28 million in 1938.
  • Many perished in the Great Purge from 1936 to 1940. Around 270 000 people were arrested and close to half of them executed. The policy was aimed, once again, at the survival of the regime with Stalin at its helm. Ironically, many of the cadres that proved themselves in the Holodomor were purged, as Stalin wanted new cadres, unaware of past crimes.
• Soviet Ukraine was under scrutiny in the Great Purge because it was a border region with large ethnic minorities of the Soviet Union's greatest rivals, Germany and Poland. Both these groups were disproportionately targeted as potential fifth columns.

Anticipating war

• After dealing with the inner threats, Stalin saw the need to prepare for war with external forces, sending Nikita Khrushchev into Ukraine to turn it into a socialist fortress. There Khrushchev said:

"We shall bend every effort to ensure that the task and the directive of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) and Comrade Stalin—to make Ukraine a fortress impregnable to enemies—is fulfilled with honor."-The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine, page 255

• In October 1938, the government of Czechoslovakia, which was currently being dismantled by Hitler, appointed a Ukrainian activist to lead the government of autonomous Transcarpathia.
• This followed the takeover of Hungarian-populated parts of the region by Hungary. The new government replaced a Russophile one. Its steps included:
  • The renaming from "Subcarpathian Rus’" to "Carpatho-Ukraine"
  • The introduction of Ukrainian as the official language
  • The creation of self-defense paramilitary units to resist Hungarian and Polish militias. Those units were called the Carpathian Sich and often consisted of young OUN members
• Rumors started appearing in foreign ministries about Hitler using Carpatho-Ukraine as a springboard for an invasion of the Soviet Union. In January 1939, Hitler offered the Polish foreign minister Ukrainian territories he'd gain by invading the USSR in exchange for Danzig and the Polish Corridor to the Baltic Sea. The Polish minister declined.
• Hitler eventually decided against playing the Ukrainian card and promised Transcarpathia to Hungary after he ended Czechoslovak statehood and marched to Prague.
• The leaders of Carpatho-Ukraine were disappointed by this and declared their independence. It didn't last long as Hungarian forces overwhelmed the Ukrainian defenders. Notably, their paramilitary units were the only ones who offered resistance:

"At a time when 8 million Czechs submitted to the rule of the German state without offering the least resistance, thousands of Ukrainians came out against a Hungarian army of several thousand"-The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine, page 256

• Stalin was worried enough about the Transcarpathian developments that he gave a speech ridiculing German support for Ukrainian independence in March 1939.
• The existence of large Ukrainian territories out of his reach which could be used to contest his control of Soviet Ukraine was a large concern of Stalin and his regime. The concept of Ukrainian unification was a crack in their defensive bulwark.

Continuation

Continues in 16_Between Hitler and Stalin.

Sources

This information was gathered from The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine (Pages 229-257).

Related Notes

• Holodomor
• The Ukrainian Holodomor of 1932-1933 as a crime of genocide_a legal assessment