17_Ukraine in the Soviet Union

This is the seventeenth #generalhistory note, following 16_Between Hitler and Stalin.

The Second Republic

Rebuilding Ukraine

• Ukraine’s situation on the ground after the war was dire:
  • It lost 7 million citizens
  • 10 million Ukrainians were left homeless
  • 700 cities and 28,000 villages lay in ruins
  • The nation lost 40 percent of its wealth and 80 percent of its industrial and agricultural equipment
  • In 1945, the republic produced only one quarter of its prewar industrial output and 40 percent of its agricultural produce
• At the same time, the wartime Soviet alliance with Britain and the US was collapsing, and a new conflict seemed imminent. Ukraine remained as important as ever to the Soviet war machine, with priority placed on arms and supply production. As a result, Ukraine’s agricultural output lagged behind the rest of its economy until the 1960s.
• The first postwar decade was shaped by the (re)introduction of political, social, and economic models developed in the 1930s.
• Chief among these was the reconstruction of the Zaporizhia Dnieper power station, overseen by Leonid Brezhnev. Disregarding the reconstruction of the rest of the city, he completed the Politburo’s assignment in record time, finishing in November 1947.
• Similar practices were common across Ukrainian territories. Combined with grain requisition policies, they caused a return of famine in 1946–1947, which killed close to one million people.
• Nikita Khrushchev recognized this and appealed directly to Joseph Stalin, asking that ration cards be introduced for peasants as they were for city dwellers. His proposal was rejected, rumors were spread about him being a Ukrainian nationalist, and his seat at the top of the Ukrainian SSR was given to Lazar Kaganovich (who had overseen the Holodomor).
• Kaganovich’s rule was marked by ideological purges against perceived deviants from Moscow’s line. This included the deposition of the head of the Ukrainian Writers’ Union for alleged Ukrainian nationalism.
• Khrushchev eventually regained his position, but attacks on Ukrainian cultural figures continued:
  • Musicians and historians were targeted
  • The campaign peaked in 1951 with an attack on Volodymyr Sosiura’s Love Ukraine. Written in 1944, it had originally been used by the Soviets to rally Ukrainian patriotism against German aggression
• Despite these attacks, the Soviet Union was unable to reimpose the same level of control it had held before the war. A major reason was the newly acquired territories, which had not experienced Stalinist rule in the 1930s and therefore required different strategies for integration.

Resistance and Repression

• Western Ukraine resisted Soviet rule well into the 1950s through the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army).
• The UPA was very active in the countryside and highly adaptive. In 1947, large formations were broken into units of around 50 fighters, and later into smaller groups of about 10. Their long-term strategy was to wait for a military confrontation between the Soviet Union and the West to exploit it.
• Although that confrontation never came, they continued to harass Soviet authorities, attacking state representatives and undermining collectivization efforts.
• The regime responded with repressive measures, including the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.
• Soviet forces finally eliminated UPA commander-in-chief Roman Shukhevych in the spring of 1950. Resistance continued but was much weaker and ended within the next few years.
• Some insurgent units escaped to the West, joining émigré nationalists led by Stepan Bandera in West Germany. Western powers later airdropped a few nationalist units back into the Soviet Union to gather intelligence.
• The Soviets retaliated by intensifying their campaign against émigré leaders, culminating in Bandera’s assassination by a KGB officer in 1959.
• Ukrainian nationalists were not the only targets of repression. Soviet Jews also came under attack after the founding of Israel, amid suspicions of “double loyalty.” This campaign resulted in purges of Jews from the party and arrests of Jewish doctors.

Ukraine's Rise

• Stalin died on March 5, 1953. This ended the antisemitic campaign and began a succession struggle.
• Immediately after Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev organized the arrest of his most dangerous opponent, Lavrentii Beria. In February 1955, he removed Georgii Malenkov. In June 1957, he crushed the opposition of Viacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich, and in March 1958, he became both head of the Communist Party and of the Soviet government.
• This spectacular success could not have been achieved without his Ukrainian allies, who held the largest voting bloc in the all-union Central Committee. As such, he rewarded them with some of the most powerful positions in the Soviet Union:
  • For example, Leonid Brezhnev became head of the Supreme Soviet
• These people, in turn, promoted their own allies into powerful positions, securing Khrushchev’s rule just as the Caucasian cadres had done for Stalin.
• Ukrainian communist elites thus became junior partners to the Russian party bosses running the Soviet Empire. They gained influence over decisions affecting the entire bloc, as well as more autonomy in Ukrainian affairs.
• Ukraine’s rise to second place in the Soviet hierarchy began with the tercentenary celebrations of the Pereiaslav Council in January 1954. Official party propaganda hailed the Hetmanate’s agreement with the Tsar as the “reunification of Rus.”
• A special document approved by Moscow—Theses on the Tercentenary of the Reunification of Ukraine with Russia—outlined the official interpretation:
  • Stalin’s policy of treating Russians as the leading force of the Soviet Union would continue
  • Ukrainians were elevated to the position of second most important nationality
  • Russians and Ukrainians were described as separate but closely related peoples
• The anniversary was marked by giving the awkward name to various institutions, but also by transferring the Crimean Peninsula to the Ukrainian SSR in February 1954.
  • Geography and economics primarily motivated this decision. Crimea needed Ukrainian assistance to rebuild its economy, as Russia was cut off by the Kerch Strait.
    • World War II and the expulsion of the Crimean Tatar population had devastated Crimea’s economy and agricultural output
    • The plan worked: between 1953–1954, Crimean electricity production increased by 60 percent

Khrushchev's Thaw

• In February 1956, Khrushchev delivered his secret speech to the Politburo condemning Stalin for his purges of party members. He did not mention the mass persecutions and deportations of non-party members, nor the Great Famine.
• His de-Stalinization campaign led to the rehabilitation of former Ukrainian leaders and nearly 300,000 Ukrainian victims of political terror. Tens of thousands of members of the Ukrainian nationalist underground, as well as Catholic bishops, were released from the Gulag.
• Khrushchev remained a devout believer in Marxist-Leninist doctrine and advocated both an abundance of consumer goods and a new communist construction program.
• However, his rule also brought staunch opposition to traditional religion. Ukraine saw the closure of nearly half of its Orthodox churches between 1960–1965.
  • Central and eastern Ukraine were hit hardest, as authorities feared conversions from Orthodoxy to the clandestine Catholic Church in the west.
• Khrushchev’s rule also allowed the return of a Ukrainian cultural generation that had been silenced under Stalin:
  • Oleksandr Dovzhenko, Ukraine’s best-known filmmaker, returned from exile
  • Poets Maksym Rylsky and Volodymyr Sosiura resumed their activities
• A new generation of Ukrainian poets also emerged during this period.
• The new party line emphasized the end of mass purges and some decentralization of power, which greatly benefited Ukrainian regional and republican elites:
  • Ukrainian authorities now controlled over 90 percent of enterprises in their territory, along with all agricultural facilities, thanks to new regional councils
  • They were far more independent from Moscow than their predecessors
  • Local officials governed Ukraine without the influx of Russian personnel
  • Ukrainian party networks reached into the Kremlin, giving them security other republics lacked
• Khrushchev’s reforms contributed to a significant expansion of Soviet industry, from which Ukraine benefitted enormously:
  • Three new hydroelectric power stations were built on the Dnieper between 1950–1960
  • Ukraine played a major role in Soviet atomic and space projects, supporting the arms race against the West
  • The largest missile production facility in Europe was built in Dnipropetrovsk
• These industrial gains did not alleviate the hardships of ordinary Ukrainians, who faced famine in the early 1960s due to drought. This time, however, the government chose not to export grain and instead imported supplies to provide relief.
• Khrushchev then attempted to help peasants by raising agricultural prices (the price of grain rose sevenfold). At the same time, he cut farmers’ individual plots in half, believing this would free up their time.
• These policies backfired, reducing agricultural output. Food became far more expensive in the cities, with butter prices rising by 50 percent and meat by 25 percent.
• This created a social divide: peasants preferred the 1960s, while city dwellers longed for the 1950s.

Brezhnev's Stagnation

• In October 1964, members of Khrushchev’s inner circle, including Leonid Brezhnev, removed him from power in a palace coup.
• The new power brokers, who ousted their former boss out of fear of being removed themselves over economic troubles, decided to return to the centralized model of the 1930s:
  • Regional economic councils were abolished and replaced by all-union ministries
  • The relatively high purchase price for agricultural products was maintained, turning the sector into a black hole requiring constant subsidies
  • Living conditions for collective farmers improved, but productivity did not
• Like Khrushchev, they wanted to improve living conditions, but they feared private ownership and private initiative.
• Eventually, Brezhnev emerged as the next leader. He was more pragmatic than his ideologically driven predecessor.
• He ended Khrushchev’s thaw and reinstated Stalin-era repression of public debate:
  • The shift was felt in Ukraine with the targeting of intellectuals in Kyiv during the summer of 1965. While these authors defended Ukrainian cultural preservation, they framed their arguments strictly within Marxist-Leninist language. One of their texts carried the provocative title Internationalism or Russification?
  • However, this did not formally end Khrushchev’s thaw in Ukraine, as national communism was revived under Petro Shelest (in power from 1963–1972).
• Petro Shelest promoted a new form of Ukrainian identity, highlighting both Ukraine’s role in defeating the Nazis and its strong position inside the USSR. The Soviet component remained dominant but was adapted to be more culturally Ukrainian.
• After Khrushchev’s removal, Shelest extended his rule by supporting Brezhnev in the succession struggle.
• Once Brezhnev consolidated power, however, he turned against Shelest in 1972, replacing him with Volodymyr Shcherbytsky from Dnipropetrovsk.
• Shelest’s departure was followed by an attack on his loyalists and Ukrainian intellectuals:
  • The author of Internationalism or Russification? was sentenced to five years in a labor camp
  • Historians studying pre-1917 Ukraine, particularly the Cossacks, were purged from the Academy of Sciences
• The KGB intensified its efforts in Ukraine, catching up on work it had been unable to carry out under Shelest’s relative leniency.

Imperial Decline

• On November 15, 1982, Brezhnev’s burial was broadcast live on TV.
• His long reign was marked by frozen upward social mobility and economic stagnation.
• From 1966 to 1985, Ukraine’s industrial growth rate declined from 8.4% to 3.5%. Its gas fields were depleted due to dependency on foreign hard currency. The standard of living was in free fall.
• Both elites and the general population became disillusioned with communism and “developed socialism". The only options left were either radical reform to repair the system or its complete breakdown.

Alienation from the Center

• After Brezhnev’s death, the alliance between Moscow and the Ukrainian elite broke down.
• Although Volodymyr Shcherbytsky was not removed by Brezhnev’s two short-lived successors, Mikhail Gorbachev viewed Ukraine’s entrenched power networks as a threat to his reform program.
• Gorbachev began replacing Ukrainian clients—who had once secured Khrushchev’s and Brezhnev’s power—with Russian officials like Boris Yeltsin.
• He also broke the unofficial rule that local party bosses came from their own regions, parachuting an ethnic Russian to lead the Kazakh Communist Party. This sparked the first nationalist riot in the USSR since World War II.
• Ukrainian leaders’ dissatisfaction grew after the Chernobyl disaster (1986), which revealed their lack of control over their own republic:
  • The plant was run by all-Union ministries
  • Moscow directed the disaster response
  • Ukrainian authorities were ordered to proceed with the May Day parade despite radiation dangers
    • Shcherbytsky himself was reportedly threatened with expulsion from the party by Gorbachev if he refused
• Radiation fallout affected around 2,300 settlements and 3 million people, contaminating soil, forests, and water supplies. The disaster united Ukrainians in anger at Moscow’s failures.
• After Brezhnev’s stagnation, Chernobyl became the first major public debate that fostered organized movements criticizing Moscow. One key example was Yurii Shcherbak, who founded an environmental group that later evolved into the Green Party.
• The nascent democratic opposition and the Communist Party elite found common ground in their opposition to Moscow and Gorbachev.
• Party bureaucrats resented perestroika, which stripped them of authority by empowering individual enterprises. Glasnost also exposed them to criticism from below, as restrictions on public life loosened.

Mobilized Dissent

• Political mobilization from below was driven by dissident groups newly released from the Gulag, such as the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, the first openly political organization in Ukraine:
  • Many of its members, including Levko Lukianenko, had belonged to the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, founded in 1976. That group monitored Soviet compliance with human rights obligations set at the Helsinki Conference. Their activities had been suppressed after Shelest’s removal, but revived under Glasnost.
• The movement gave Ukrainian dissidents a new ideology centered on human rights—both individual and national.
• Defense of national culture, especially language, became a key mobilizing issue.
  • The "Society for the Protection of the Ukrainian Language" grew to about 150,000 members by late 1989.
  • Concerns stemmed from the fact that only 88% of ethnic Ukrainians declared Ukrainian as their native language, and just 40% used it in daily life. (Based on the 1989 census)
    • This was mainly due to urbanization and Russification. Ukrainians formed majorities in most cities (except Donetsk), but in all except Lviv, Russian was the everyday language.
• Ukrainian history also became a major rallying point. Like other non-Russian peoples, Ukrainians sought to reclaim a past obscured by decades of Soviet historiography.
  • Works of Mykhailo Hrushevsky were republished in large numbers.
  • Writers and poets of the 1920s "Executed Renaissance" were also reprinted.
  • The Memorial Society spearheaded the uncovering of Stalin’s crimes during the Great Purge.
  • Central and Eastern Ukrainians emphasized the Holodomor, while Western Ukrainians highlighted nationalist resistance and insurgency.
  • A shared narrative was the Cossack period, which carried such weight that communist authorities themselves organized Cossack-themed events.
    • In summer 1990, the “March to the East” saw tens of thousands take part in a mass pilgrimage to Cossack sites along the Dnieper, aimed at “awakening Ukrainian identity.”
• 1989 marked a turning point:
  • Shcherbytsky was removed by Gorbachev
  • The first semifree elections to the new Soviet parliament were held
  • Rukh—the Popular Movement for Perestroika and the first true political mass organization—was founded and reached nearly 300,000 members in its first year
  • The Ukrainian Catholic Church was legalized
• In 1990, elections to the new Ukrainian parliament signaled a democratic shift: about a quarter of the deputies formed the People’s Council, a bloc advocating for democracy.
• Simultaneously, developments in neighboring countries increased pressure on the Soviet Union.

Continuation

Continues in 18_Collapse of the Soviet Union.

Sources

This information was gathered from The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine (Pages 291-316).