UKRAINE: “SECOND AMONG EQUAL”

Lesson 3

Ukraine during the World War II.

Ukraine during the after-war period (1945-1986).

Plan

1. The Second World War in Ukraine.

2. Post-war reconstruction of Ukraine.

3. Destalinization.

4. Dissident movement.

5. Social and economic development in 60-80th years.

6. Chornobyl.

 

1.    The Second World War in Ukraine

Ukrainian SSR in 1940, after the Soviet invasions of Poland and Romania and before the German invasion of Soviet Union.

 

Second World War for Ukraine actually started on September 1 1939, when Germans attacked Poland, and Soviet Union a short time later occupied its eastern territories. The most cruel and tragic stage of the war began with the attack of Germany on the USSR on June 22 1941 and continued till the autumn of 1944, when German forces were turned out from Ukraine. After that Ukrainians consisting of Soviet army fought with the armies of fascist Germany and its allies half a year more – till May 8 1945, reaching Prague and Berlin. They also actively participated in the defeat of Japanese Quantune army in the Far East, releasing Manchjuriya and Korea, where the battle finished on September 2 1945.

Having guarantee of neutrality of the Soviet Union and being sure that allies of Poland – France and England – were not going to provide real help, Gitler attacked Poland, initiating the start of the Second World War. On September 17 1939 the Soviet army went to eastern Poland and occupied almost all territory, settled by Ukrainians and Belorusians.   

In June 1940 the USSR forced Rumania to give back Bessarabiya and Bukovyna. Such way to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic it was jointed over 7 millions inhabitants of the Western Ukraine.

Punitive bodies of the USSR arrested and deported Ukrainian political leaders to the East of Russia. Ukrainian political parties had to be dismissed. From 20 to 30 thousand Ukrainian activists run away to Poland, occupied by the Germans.  

It was declared that lands, expropriated from Polish landowners and “given” to the poorest peasants, were subject to collectivization, about 13 percent really were collectivized. After that the great majority of peasants finally turned away from new regime.

At the beginning many representatives of intelligence were impressed, as they received job in soviet educational and cultural establishments, but they quickly understood, that became strictly controlled by organization men of regime, and in case of violation of directions arose threaten of arrest and deportation. Local communists, which went out from underground and came useful to new regime, helping to expose of Ukrainian nationalists, supported soviet authorities. Representatives of Soviet Ukraine, which almost everywhere used Russian language quickly destroyed illusions concerning their vaunted “Ukrainian”.

In the spring of 1940 the regime opened the mask of democracy and began wile-ranging repressions – as against the Ukrainians, as against Poles. The most popular and awful their type was deportation to Siberia and Kazakhstan, where people died by the whole families.

Ukrainians under the fascist occupation. Movement of Opposition 

Flag of Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany to 1943.

In 1939 about 550 thousand of Ukrainians from Lemkivshina and Holemshina turned out in German occupation zone in the eastern remote area of Poland. Governor-general Gans Frank received special order from Hitler to consider this territory German colony and to give its people only minimum rights.

Adolf Hitler

Ukrainians being deported to Nazi Germany for forced labor, 1942

After the capture of the Carpathian Ukraine and breaking down its government by Hungarian army, Zacarpathian with 550 thousand Ukrainians formed a part of Hungary.  Hundreds of Ukrainophiles were shot, thousands were arrested, near 30 thousand run away to the neighboring Galychina.   

Soon after coming of Germans, in Ukraine appeared the national movement of opposition. There also existed underground organizational system of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Bolsheviks in the northern west – Poles, each of them had own partisan forces. As the large part of Ukraine is steppe, it was not suitable for partisan war, so partisans were mainly collected iorthern west part of the country – in the forests of Volyn, bogs of Polissya and Carpathians.

Partisans take on the village to drive away a German punitive expedition.

 

According to the official data, in the beginning of 1944 on the occupied lands of Ukraine in general 47 thousand 800 people in the form of partisan detachments and underground formations struggled with fascist conquers. Detachments of S. Kovpak and O. Saburov since Novenmber 1942 to March 1943 raided through Northern Ukraine – from Bryansk forests to Polissya. In May-October 1943 the detachment of Kovpak executed raid from Putivel through Volyn to Carpathians with the task to cut route of retreat for fascist, as well as for creation political and psychological effect in Volyn, where were developing the Ukrainian opposite army and in Galychina.  

The first partisan detachments of Ukrainian nationalists arose in Polissay and Volyn. Local Ukrainian figure Taras Bulba-Borovets formed irregular detachment, called Polisska Sych (later renamed to Ukrainian revolt Army) with the purpose of clearing their region from the rests of the Red army. When at the end of 1942 Germans tried to dismiss his detachment, he led his fighters to forests to struggle with Germans and with Bolsheviks. In 1942 members of different branches of Organization of Ukrainian nationalists (OUN) created small elements in Volyn.  

Execution of partisans by German soldiers, September 1941

At the end of 1942 OUN decided to form large partisan forces, initiating the beginning of regular Ukrainian army, which as was considered, would be useful when Nazi soviet war ended. It was induced by such reasons: first of all, with growing of German repressions the peasants demanded from OUN to take measures for their defense, secondly, when at the end of 1942 the soviet partisans began to penetrate from Belorussia to Western Ukraine, it was necessary that OUN played the role of nation’s army before it would be done by Bolsheviks. 

Due to wide and efficient underground system of OUN, Ukrainian revolt army (URA) quickly grew in the big, well-organized partisan army, which took control under the significant parts of Valyn, Polissya and finally Galychina. After releasing the Ukraine from the fascists, URA till 1956 continued partisan war with soviet regime on the territory of Western Ukraine. 

Return of the soviet power to Ukraine

The decisive crisis arose in the war in 1943: the soviet army began the gigantic counter-offensive, the main purpose of which was in liberation of the left-bank Ukraine.     

During the end of the summer-autumn of 1943 the soviet army under the command of Ivan Konyev, Mykola Vatutin and Radion Malynovskiy occupied left-bank and Donbas. On August 23 in result of desperate fight Kharkiv was liberated. In September-October the Red army broke powerful line of German defense at the Dnieper and on November 6 entered to Kyiv.  

In January 1944 after the short stop almost 2,3 million of Red army began clearing from Germans right-bank and Crimea.

In July 1944 the soviet army surrounded and broke under the Broad eight German divisions in the number of 60 thousand people. Among them there were 10 thousand fighters of Galychina divisions, formed with Ukrainians, which were unlucky to receive christening with fire in that catastrophic condition. After that victory the soviet forces quickly passed through Galychina, occupied Lviv and Peremishl, and on Julay 27 –  Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk city). In September they crossed the Carpathians and till the October 1944 all ethnic Ukrainian territory appeared in soviet hands.     

After liberation of Ukraine for impression of sovereignty of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, there were created additional Ukrainian ministries of foreign affairs and defense. On the high positions in the government were assigned known Ukrainian figures. In particular, Oleksandr Korniychuk became the minister of foreign affairs, and sown by the government honors of the commander of the soviet partisans Sidor Kovpak was assigned the minister of defense. Sensibly weakened control under the cultural activity of Ukrainians, and the patriotic poem of Volodymir Sosyura “Love Ukraine” was even rewarded with premium. 

Second World War took the lives at least 5,3 million Ukrainians, or one from every six citizen of Ukraine died in the struggle.  2,3 million Ukrainians were taken out fro the forced labor in Germany. Completely or partly it were destroyed over 700 big and small cities and 28 thousand villages, in result of what 10 million people became homeless.   As the war caused in Ukraine more damage, than in any country in Europe, losses in the economy gained huge measures. Complete or part destruction of over 16 thousand industrial enterprises meant, the loss of the most part of that Ukraine took with so high price in 1930. It was estimated, that Ukraine lost over 40 percent of its economy.

In the second part of XX century more and more facts indicated about secret agreement between the Kremlin and Kyiv, according to which the Ukrainian elite for support and collaboration was offered the role of junior partner in the government of soviet empire.    For the Kremlin to get the support of Ukrainians had fundamental meaning, because they were not only the second large nation, but the only nation in the USSR, which could be serious opponent of the Russian hegemony.

The Soviet Union was one of the Allies during World War II. Although it fought a peripheral war with Finland from November 1939 to March 1940, it did not join the general hostilities until 22 June 1941, when it was invaded by Germany and Romania. The bulk of Soviet fighting took place on the Eastern Front—includinga continued war with Finland—but it also invaded Iran (August 1941) in cooperation with the British and late in the war attacked Japan (August 1945).

Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union‘s Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. In the years followingLenin’s death in 1924, he rose to become the authoritarian leader of the Soviet Union.

In August 1939, at Stalin’s direction, the Soviet Union entered into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, containing a secret protocol, dividing the whole of eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Thereafter, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded their apportioned sections of Poland. The Soviet Union later invaded Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and part of Romania, along with an attempted invasion of Finland. Stalin and Hitler later traded proposals for a Soviet entry into the Axis Pact.

In June 1941, Germany began an invasion of the Soviet Union, before which Stalin had ignored reports of a German invasion. Stalin was confident that the total Allied war machine would eventually stop Germany, and the Soviets stopped the Wehrmacht some 30 kilometers from Moscow. Over the next four years, the Soviet Union repulsed German offensives, such as at the Battle of Stalingrad and Battle of Kursk, and pressed forward to victory in large Soviet offensives such as theVistula-Oder Offensive. Stalin began to listen to his generals more after Kursk.

Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran Conference and began to discuss a two-front war against Germany and future of Europe after the war. Berlin finally fell in April 1945, but Stalin was never fully convinced his nemesis Hitler had committed suicide. Fending off the German invasion and pressing to victory in the East required a tremendous sacrifice by the Soviet Union, which suffered the highest military casualties in the war, losing approximately 35 million men.

Stalin became personally involved with questionable tactics employed during the war, including the Katyn massacre, Order No. 270, Order No. 227 and NKVD prisoner massacres. Controversy also surroundsrapes and looting in Soviet-held territory, along with large numbers of deaths of POWs held by the Soviets, and the Soviets’ abusive treatment of their own soldiers who had been held in German POW camps.

In August 1939, Stalin accepted Adolf Hitler‘s proposal to enter into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, negotiated by the foreign ministers Vyacheslav Molotov for the Soviets and Joachim von Ribbentrop for the Germans.^[2] Officially a non-aggression treaty only, an appended secret protocol, also reached on August 23, 1939, divided the whole of eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. The USSR was promised an eastern part of Poland, then primarily populated by Ukrainians and Belarusians, in case of its dissolution, and Germany recognized Latvia, Estonia and Finland as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence, with Lithuania added in a second secret protocol in September 1939. Another clause of the treaty was that Bessarabia, then part of Romania, was to be joined to the Moldovan ASSR, and become the Moldovan SSR under control of Moscow.

The Pact was reached two days after the breakdown of Soviet military talks with British and French representatives in August 1939 over a potential Franco-Anglo-Soviet alliance. Political discussions had been suspended on August 2 when Molotov stated they could not be restarted until progress was made in military talks late in August, after the talks had stalled over guarantees of the Baltic states, while the military talks upon which Molotov insisted started on 11 August. At the same time, Germany—with whom the Soviets had started secret discussions since July 29 — argued that it could offer the Soviets better terms than Britain and France, with Ribbentrop insisting, “there was no problem between the Baltic and the Black Sea that could not be solved between the two of us.” German officials stated that, unlike Britain, Germany could permit the Soviets to continue their developments unmolested, and that “there is one common element in the ideology of Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies of the West.” By that time, Molotov obtained information regarding Anglo-Germaegotiations and a pessimistic report from the Soviet ambassador in France. After disagreement regarding Stalin’s demand to move Red Army troops through Poland and Romania (which Poland and Romania opposed), on August 21, the Soviets proposed adjournment of military talks using the excuse that the absence of the senior Soviet personnel at the talks interfered with the autumn manoeuvres of the Soviet forces, though the primary reason was the progress being made in the Soviet-Germaegotiations.^[11] That same day, Stalin received assurance that Germany would approve secret protocols to the proposed non-aggression pact that would grant the Soviets land in Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and Romania, after which Stalin telegrammed Hitler that night that the Soviets were willing to sign the pact and that he would receive Ribbentrop on August 23. Regarding the larger issue of collective security, some historians state that one reason that Stalin decided to abandon the doctrine was the shaping of his views of France and Britain by their entry into the Munich Agreement and the subsequent failure to prevent German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Stalin also viewed the Pact as gaining time in an inevitable war with Hitler in order to reinforce the Soviet military and shifting Soviet borders westwards, which would be militarily beneficial in such a war.

Stalin and Ribbentrop spent most of the night of the Pact’s signing trading friendly stories about world affairs and cracking jokes (a rarity for Ribbentrop) about England‘s weakness, and the pair even joked about how the Anti-Comintern Pact principally scared “British shopkeepers.” They further traded toasts, with Stalin proposing a toast to Hitler’s health and Ribbentrop proposing a toast to Stalin.

German and Soviet soldiers in victory parade in Brest in front of picture of Stalin

On September 1, 1939, the German invasion of its agreed upon portion of Poland started World War II. On September 17 the Red Army invaded eastern Poland and occupied the Polish territory assigned to it by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. Eleven days later, the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was modified, allotting Germany a larger part of Poland, while ceding most of Lithuania to the Soviet Union. The Soviet portions lay east of the so-called Curzon Line, an ethnographic frontier between Russia and Poland drawn up by a commission of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. In early 1940, the Soviets executed over 25,000 Polish POWs and political prisoners in the Katyn Forrest.

Planned and actual territorial changes in Eastern and Central Europe 1939–1940

In August 1939, Stalin declared that he was going to “solve the Baltic problem, and thereafter, forced Lithuania,Latvia and Estonia to sign treaties for “mutual assistance.”

After unsuccessfully attempting to install a communist puppet government in Finland, in November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland. The Finnish defense defied Soviet expectations, and after stiff losses, Stalin settled for aninterim peace granting the Soviet Union less than total domination by annexing only the eastern region of Karelia (10% of Finnish territory). Soviet official casualty counts in the war exceeded 200,000, while Soviet PremierNikita Khrushchev later claimed the casualties may have been one million. After this campaign, Stalin took actions to bolster the Soviet military, modify training and improve propaganda efforts in the Soviet military.

In mid-June 1940, when international attention was focused on the German invasion of France, Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. Stalin claimed that the mutual assistance treaties had been violated, and gave six hour ultimatums for new governments to be formed in each country, including lists of persons for cabinet posts provided by the Kremlin. Thereafter, state administrations were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres, followed by mass repression in which 34,250 Latvians, 75,000 Lithuanians and almost 60,000 Estonians were deported or killed. Elections for parliament and other offices were held with single candidates listed, the official results of which showed pro-Soviet candidates approval by 92.8 percent of the voters of Estonia, 97.6 percent of the voters in Latvia and 99.2 percent of the voters in Lithuania. The resulting peoples assemblies immediately requested admission into the USSR, which was granted by the Soviet Union.

In late June 1940, Stalin directed the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, proclaiming this formerly Romanian territory part of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. But in annexing northern Bukovina, Stalin had gone beyond the agreed limits of the secret protocol.

Stalin and Molotov on the signing of theSoviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact with theEmpire of Japan, 1941

After the Tripartite Pact was signed by Axis Powers Germany, Japan and Italy, in October 1940, Stalin personally wrote to Ribbentrop about entering an agreement regarding a “permanent basis” for their “mutual interests.” Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to negotiate the terms for the Soviet Union to join the Axis and potentially enjoy the spoils of the pact. At Stalin’s direction, Molotov insisted on Soviet interest in Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Greece, though Stalin had earlier unsuccessfully personally lobbied Turkish leaders to not sign a mutual assistance pact with Britain and France. Ribbentrop asked Molotov to sign another secret protocol with the statement: “The focal point of the territorial aspirations of the Soviet Union would presumably be centered south of the territory of the Soviet Union in the direction of the Indian Ocean.” Molotov took the position that he could not take a “definite stand” on this without Stalin’s agreement. Stalin did not agree with the suggested protocol, and negotiations broke down. In response to a later German proposal, Stalin’s stated that the Soviets would join the Axis if Germany foreclosed acting in the Soviet’s sphere of influence. Shortly thereafter, Hitler issued a secret internal directive related to his plan to invade the Soviet Union.

In an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on April 13, 1941, Stalin oversaw the signing of a neutrality pact with the Axis power Japan. While Stalin had little faith in Japan‘s commitment to neutrality, he felt that the pact was important for its political symbolism, to reinforce a public affection for Germany. Stalin felt that there was a growing split in German circles about whether Germany should initiate a war with the Soviet Union.

Further information: Operation Barbarossa

During the early morning of June 22, 1941, Hitler broke the pact by starting Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Soviet-held territories and the Soviet Union that began the war on the Eastern Front. Before the invasion, Stalin felt that Germany would not attack the Soviet Union until Germany had defeated Britain. At the same time, Soviet generals warned Stalin that Germany had concentrated forces on its borders. Two highly placed Soviet spies in Germany, “Starshina” and “Korsikanets”, had sent dozens of reports to Moscow containing evidence of preparation for a German attack. Further warnings came from Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy in Tokyo working undercover as a German journalist.

Seven days before the invasion, a Soviet spy in Berlin warned Stalin that the movement of German divisions to the borders was to wage war on the Soviet Union.^[48] Five days before the attack, Stalin received a report from a spy in the German Air Ministry that “all preparations by Germany for an armed attack on the Soviet Union have been completed, and the blow can be expected at any time.” In the margin, Stalin wrote to the people’s commissar for state security, “you can send your ‘source’ from the headquarters of German aviation to his mother. This is not a ‘source’ but a dezinformator.“ Although Stalin increased Soviet western border forces to 2.7 million men and ordered them to expect a possible German invasion, he did not order a full-scale mobilization of forces to prepare for an attack. Stalin felt that a mobilization might provoke Hitler to prematurely begin to wage war against the Soviet Union, which Stalin wanted to delay until 1942 in order to strengthen Soviet forces.

Viktor Suvorov suggested that Stalin had made aggressive preparations beginning in the late 1930s and was preparing to invade Germany in the summer 1941. He believes that Hitler forestalled Stalin and the German invasion was in essence a pre-emptive strike, precisely as Hitler claimed. This theory was supported by Igor Bunich, Joachim Hoffmann, Mikhail Meltyukhov (see Stalin’s Missed Chance) and Edvard Radzinsky (see Stalin: The First In-Depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia’s Secret Archives). Other historians, especially Gabriel Gorodetsky and David Glantz, reject this thesis. General Fedor von Boch‘s diary says that the Abwehr fully expected a Soviet attack against German forces in Poland no later than 1942.

In the initial hours after the German attack began, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general. Accounts byNikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions. But, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading historians such as Roberts to speculate that Khrushchev’s account is inaccurate.

In the first three weeks of the invasion, as the Soviet Union tried to defend against large German advances,it suffered 750,000 casualties, and lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft. In July 1940, Stalin completely reorganized the Soviet military, placing himself directly in charge of several military organizations. This gave him complete control of his country’s entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II.

A pattern soon emerged where Stalin embraced the Red Army‘s strategy of conducting multiple offensives, while the Germans overran each of the resulting small, newly gained grounds, dealing the Soviets severe casualties. The most notable example of this was the Battle of Kiev, where over 600,000 Soviet troops were quickly killed, captured or missing.

By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties^[59] and the Germans had captured 3.0 million Soviet prisoners, 2.0 million of whom died in German captivity by February 1942. German forces had advanced c. 1,700 kilometers, and maintained a linearly-measured front of 3,000 kilometers.^[60] The Red Army put up fierce resistance during the war’s early stages. Even so, according to Glantz, they were plagued by an ineffective defense doctrine against well-trained and experienced German forces, despite possessing some modern Soviet equipment, such as the KV-1 and T-34 tanks.

While the Germans made huge advances in 1941, killing millions of Soviet soldiers, at Stalin’s direction, the Red Army directed sizable resources to prevent the Germans from achieving one of their key strategic goals, the attempted capture of Leningrad. They held the city at the cost of more than a million Soviet soldiers in the region and more than a million civilians, many who died from starvation. While the Germans pressed forward, Stalin was confident of an eventual Allied victory over Germany. In September 1941, Stalin told British diplomats that he wanted two agreements: (1) a mutual assistance/aid pact and (2) a recognition that, after the war, the Soviet Union would gain the territories in countries that it had taken pursuant to its division of Eastern Europe with Hitler in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.^[62]The British agreed to assistance but refused to agree to the territorial gains, which Stalin accepted months later as the military situation had deteriorated somewhat by mid-1942. In November 1941, Stalin rallied his generals in a speech given underground in Moscow, telling them that the German blitzkrieg would fail because of weaknesses in the German rear in Nazi-occupied Europe and the underestimation of the strength of the Red Army, and that the German war effort would crumble against the British-American-Soviet “war engine”. On November 6, 1941, Stalin addressed the Soviet Union for the second time (the first was on July 2, 1941).

Correctly calculating that Hitler would direct efforts to capture Moscow, Stalin concentrated his forces to defend the city, including numerous divisions transferred from Soviet eastern sectors after he determined that Japan would not attempt an attack in those areas. By December, Hitler’s troops had advanced to within 30 km of the Kremlin in Moscow. On December 5, the Soviets launched a counteroffensive, pushing German troops back c. 80 km from Moscow in what was the first major defeat of the Wehrmacht in the war.

In early 1942, the Soviets began a series of offensives labeled “Stalin’s First Strategic Offensives”, although there is no evidence that Stalin developed the offensives. The counteroffensive bogged down, in part due to mud from rain in the Spring of 1942. Stalin’s attempt to retake Kharkov in the Ukraine ended in the disastrous encirclement of Soviet forces, with over 200,000 Soviet casualties suffered. Stalin attacked the competence of the generals involved. General Georgy Zhukov and others subsequently revealed that some of those generals had wished to remain in a defensive posture in the region, but Stalin and others had pushed for the offensive. Some historians have doubted Zhukov’s account.

At the same time, Hitler was worried about American support after their entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which did not occur until the summer of 1944). He changed his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort. While Red Army generals correctly judged the evidence that Hitler would shift his efforts south, Stalin thought it a flanking move in the German attempt to take Moscow.

The German southern campaign began with a push to capture the Crimea, which ended in disaster for the Red Army. Stalin publicly criticized his generals’ leadership.^[67] In their southern campaigns, the Germans took 625,000 Red Army prisoners in July and August 1942 alone. At the same time, in a meeting in Moscow, Churchill privately told Stalin that the British and Americans were not yet prepared to make an amphibious landing against a fortified Nazi-held French coast in 1942, and would direct their efforts to invading German-held North Africa. He pledged a campaign of massive strategic bombing, to include German civilian targets.

Estimating that the Russians were “finished,” the Germans began another southern operation in the fall of 1942, the Battle of Stalingrad. Hitler insisted upon splitting German southern forces in a simultaneous siege of Stalingrad and an offensive against Baku on the Caspian Sea. Stalin directed his generals to spare no effort to defend Stalingrad. Although the Soviets suffered in excess of 1.1 million casualties at Stalingrad, their victory over German forces, including the encirclement of 290,000 Axis troops, marked a turning point in the war.

Within a year after Barbarossa, Stalin reopened the churches in the Soviet Union. He may have wanted to motivate the majority of the population who had Christian beliefs. By changing the official policy of the party and the state towards religion, he could engage the Church and its clergy in mobilizing the war effort. On September 4, 1943, Stalin invited the metropolitans Sergius, Alexy and Nikolay to the Kremlin. He proposed to reestablish the Moscow Patriarchate, which had been suspended since 1925, and elect the Patriarch. On September 8, 1943, Metropolitan Sergius was elected Patriarch. One account said that Stalin’s reversal followed a sign that he supposedly received from heaven. he wrote that Ilya, Metropolitan of the Lebanon Mountains, claimed to receive a sign from heaven that

“The churches and monasteries must be reopened throughout the country. Priests must be brought back from imprisonment, Leningrad must not be surrendered, but the sacred icon of Our Lady of Kazan should be carried around the city boundary, taken on to Moscow, where a service should be held, and thence to Stalingrad Tsaritsyn.”

Shortly thereafter, Stalin’s attitude changed. Radzinsky wrote:

“Whatever the reason, after his mysterious retreat, he began making his peace with God. Something happened which no historian has yet written about. On his orders many priests were brought back to the camps. In Leningrad, besieged by the Germans and gradually dying of hunger, the inhabitants were astounded, and uplifted, to see wonder-working icon Our Lady of Kazan brought out into the streets and borne in procession.” Radzinsky asked, “Had he seen the light? Had fear made him run to his Father? Had the Marxist God-Man simply decided to exploit belief in God? Or was it all of these things at once?.“

The Soviets repulsed the important German strategic southern campaign and, although 2.5 million Soviet casualties were suffered in that effort, it permitted to Soviets to take the offensive for most of the rest of the war on the Eastern Front.

In 1943, Stalin ceded to his generals’ call for the Soviet Union to take a defensive stance because of disappointing losses after Stalingrad, a lack of reserves for offensive measures and a prediction that the German’s would likely next attack a bulge in the Soviet front at Kursk such that defensive preparations there would more efficiently use resources. The Germans did attempt an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets after Hitler canceled the offensive, in part, because of the Allied invasion of Sicily, though the Soviets suffered over 800,000 casualties. Kursk also marked the beginning of a period where Stalin became more willing to listen to the advice of his generals.

By the end of 1943, the Soviets occupied half of the territory taken by the Germans from 1941-1942. Soviet military industrial output also had increased substantially from late 1941 to early 1943 after Stalin had moved factories well to the East of the front, safe from German invasion and air attack. The strategy paid off, as such industrial increases were able to occur even while the Germans in late 1942 occupied over half of European Russia, including 40% (80 million) of its population, and c. 2,500,000 square kilometers of Russian territory. The Soviets had also prepared for war for over a decade, including preparing 14 million civilians with some military training. Accordingly, while almost all of the original 5 million men of the Soviet army had been wiped out by the end of 1941, the Soviet military had swelled to 8 million members by the end of that year. Despite substantial losses in 1942 far in excess of German losses, Red Army size grew even further, to 11 million. While there is substantial debate whether Stalin helped or hindered these industrial and manpower efforts, Stalin left most economic wartime management decisions in the hands of his economic experts. While some scholars claim that evidence suggests that Stalin considered, and even attempted, negotiating peace with Germany in 1941 and 1942, others find this evidence unconvincing and even fabricated.

Soviet advances from 1 August 1943 to 31 December 1944:

  to 1 December 1943

  to 30 April 1944

  to 19 August 1944

  to 31 December 1944

In November 1943, Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran. Roosevelt told Stalin that he hoped that Britain and America opening a second front against Germany could initially draw 30-40 German division from the Eastern Front. Stalin and Roosevelt, in effect, ganged up on Churchill by emphasizing the importance of a cross-channel invasion of German-held northern France, while Churchill had always felt that Germany was more vulnerable in the “soft underbelly” of Italy (which the Allies had already invaded) and the Balkans. The parties later agreed that Britain and America would launch a cross-channel invasion of France in May 1944, along with a separate invasion of southern France. Stalin insisted that, after the war, the Soviet Union should incorporate the portions of Poland it occupied pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Germany, which Churchill tabled.

In 1944, the Soviet Union made significant advances across Eastern Europe toward Germany, including Operation Bagration, a massive offensive inBelorussia against the German Army Group Centre.^[90] Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill closely coordinated, such that Bagration occurred at roughly the same time as American and British forces initiation of the invasion of German held Western Europe on France’s northern coast. The operation resulted in the Soviets retaking Belorussia and the western Ukraine, along with the successful effective destruction of the Army Group Centre and 300,000 German casualties, though at the cost of over 750,000 Soviet casualties.

Successes at Operation Bagration and in the year that followed were, in large part, due to a weakened Wehrmacht that lacked the fuel and armament they needed to operate effectively, growing Soviet advantages in manpower and materials, and the attacks of Allies on the Western Front. In his 1944 May Day speech, Stalin praised the Western allies for diverting German resources in the Italian Campaign, Tass published detailed lists of the large numbers of supplies coming from Western allies, and Stalin made a speech in November 1944 stating that Allied efforts in the West had already quickly drawn 75 German divisions to defend that region, without which, the Red Army could not yet have driven the Wehrmacht from Soviet territories. The weakened Wehrmacht also helped Soviet offensives because no effective German counter-offensive could be launched,

Beginning in the summer of 1944, a reinforced German Army Centre Group did prevent the Soviets from advancing in around Warsaw for nearly half a year. Some historians claim that the Soviets’ failure to advance was a purposeful Soviet stall to allow the Wehrmacht to slaughter members of a Warsaw Uprising by the Polish home army in August 1944 that occurred as the Red Army approached, though others dispute the claim and cite sizable unsuccessful Red Army efforts to attempt to defeat the Wehrmacht in that region. Earlier in 1944, Stalin had insisted that the Soviets would annex the portions of Poland it divided with Germany in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, while the Polish government in exile, which the British insisted must be involved in postwar Poland, demanded that the Polish border be restored to prewar locations. The rift further highlighted Stalin’s blatant hostility toward the anti-communist Polish government in exile and their Polish home army, which Stalin felt threatened his plans to create a post-war Poland friendly to the Soviet Union. Further exacerbating the rift was Stalin’s refusal to resupply the Polish home army, and his refusal to allow American supply planes to use the necessary Soviet air bases to ferry supplies to the Polish home army, which Stalin referred to in a letter to Roosevelt and Churchill as “power-seeking criminals.” Worried about the possible repercussions of those actions, Stalin later began a Soviet supply airdrop to Polish rebels, though most of the supplies ended up in the hands of the Germans. The uprising ended in disaster with 20,000 Polish rebels and up to 200,000 civilians killed by Wehrmacht forces, with Soviet forces entering the city in January 1945.

Other important advances occurred in late 1944, such as the invasion of Romania in August and Bulgaria. The Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria in September 1944 and invaded the country, installing a communist government. Following the invasion of these Balkan countries, Stalin and Churchill met in the fall of 1944, where they agreed upon various percentages for “spheres of influence” in several Balkan states, though the diplomats for neither leader knew what the term actually meant. The Red Army also expelled German forces from Lithuania and Estonia in late 1944 at the cost of 260,000 Soviet casualties.

In late 1944, Soviet forces battled fiercely to capture Hungary in the Budapest Offensive, but could not take it, which became a topic so sensitive to Stalin that he refused to allow his commanders to speak of it. The Germans held out in the subsequent Battle of Budapest until February 1945, when the remaining Hungarians signed an armistice with the Soviet Union. Victory at Budapest permitted the Red Army to launch the Vienna Offensive in April 1945. To the northeast, the taking of Belorussia and the Western Ukraine permitted the Soviets to launch the massive Vistula–Oder Offensive, where German intelligence had incorrectly guessed the Soviets would have a 3-to-1 numerical superiority advantage that was actually 5-to-1 (over 2 million Red Army personnel attacking 450,000 German defenders), the successful culmination of which resulted in the Red Army advancing from the Vistula river in Poland to the German Oder river in Eastern Germany.

Stalin’s shortcomings as strategist are frequently noted regarding massive Soviet loss of life and early Soviet defeats. An example of it is the summer offensive of 1942, which led to even more losses by the Red Army and recapture of initiative by the Germans. Stalin eventually recognized his lack of know-how and relied on his professional generals to conduct the war.

Additionally, Stalin was well aware that other European armies had utterly disintegrated when faced with Nazi military efficacy and responded effectively by subjecting his army to galvanizing terror and nationalist appeals to patriotism. He also appealed to the Russian Orthodox church and images of national Russian people.

By April 1945, Germany faced its last days with 1.9 million German soldiers in the East fighting 6.4 million Red Army soldiers while 1 million German soldiers in the West battled 4 million Western Allied soldiers. While initial talk existed of a race to Berlin by the Allies, after Stalin successfully lobbied for Eastern Germany to fall within the Soviet “sphere of influence” at Yalta, no plans were made by theWestern Allies to seize the city by a ground operation. Stalin still remained suspicious that western Allied forces holding at the Elbe river might move on the capital and, even in the last days, that the Americans might employ their two airborne divisions to capture the city.

Stalin directed the Red Army to move rapidly in a broad front into Germany because he did not believe the Western Allies would hand over territory they occupied, while he made the overriding objective capturing Berlin. After successfully capturing Eastern Prussia, three Red Army fronts converged on the heart of Eastern Germany, with one of the last pitched battles of the war putting the Soviets at the virtual gates of Berlin. By April 24, Berlin was encircled by elements of two Soviet fronts, one of which had begun a massive shelling of the city on April 20 that would not end until the city’s surrender. On April 30, Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide, after which Soviet forces found their remains, which had been burned at Hitler’s directive.  German forces surrendered a few days later. Some historians argue that Stalin delayed the last final push for Berlin by two months in order to capture other areas for political reasons, which they argue gave the Wehrmacht time to prepare and increased Soviet casualties (which exceeded 400,000), though this is contested by other historians. Despite the Soviets’ possession of Hitler’s remains, Stalin did not believe that his old nemesis was actually dead, a belief that remained for years after the war. Stalin also later directed aides to spend years researching and writing a secret book about Hitler’s life for his own private reading that reflected Stalin’s prejudices, including an absence of criticism of Hitler for his treatment of Jews.

Fending off the German invasion and pressing to victory over Nazi Germany in the World War II required a tremendous sacrifice by the Soviet Union (more than any other country in human history). Soviet military casualties totaled approximately 35 million (official figures 28.2 million) with approximately 14.7 million killed, missing or captured (official figures 11.285 million). Although figures vary, the Soviet civilian death toll probably reached 20 million.^[114] Millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians disappeared into German detention camps and slave labor factories, while millions more suffered permanent physical and mental damage. Economic losses, including losses in resources and manufacturing capacity in western Russia and Ukraine, were also catastrophic. The war resulted in the destruction of approximately 70,000 Soviet cities, towns and villages. Destroyed in that process were 6 million houses, 98,000 farms, 32,000 factories, 82,000 schools, 43,000 libraries, 6,000 hospitals and thousands of kilometers of roads and railway track.

Questionable tactics

Part of the March 5, 1940 memo from Lavrentiy Beria to Stalin proposing execution of Polish officers

After taking around 300,000 Polish prisoners in 1939 and early 1940, NKVD officers conducted lengthy interrogations of the prisoners in camps that were, in effect, a selection process to determine who would be killed. On March 5, 1940, pursuant to a note to Stalin from Lavrenty Beria, the members of the Soviet Politburo (including Stalin) signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish POWs, labeled “nationalists and counterrevolutionaries”, kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus. This became known as the Katyn massacre. Major-General Vasili M. Blokhin, chief executioner for the NKVD, personally shot 6,000 of the captured Polish officers in 28 consecutive nights, which remains one of the most organized and protracted mass murders by a single individual on record During his 29 year career Blokhin shot an estimated 50,000 people, making him ostensibly the most prolific official executioner in recorded world history.

Stalin personally told a Polish general requesting information about missing officers that all of the Poles were freed, and that not all could be accounted because the Soviets “lost track” of them in Manchuria. After Polish railroad workers found the mass grave, the Nazi’s used the massacre to attempt to drive a wedge between Stalin and the other Allies, including bringing in a European commission of investigators from twelve countries to examine the graves. In 1943, as the Soviets prepared to retake Poland, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels correctly guessed that Stalin would attempt to falsely claim that the Germans massacred the victims.^[133] As Goebbels predicted, the Soviets had a “commission” investigate the matter, falsely concluding that the Germans had killed the POWs. The Soviets did not admit responsibility until 1990.

On August 16, 1941, in attempts to revive a disorganized Soviet defense system, Stalin issued Order No. 270, demanding any commanders or commissars“tearing away their insignia and deserting or surrendering” to be considered malicious deserters. The order required superiors to shoot these deserters on the spot. Their family members were subjected to arrest. The second provision of the order directed all units fighting in encirclements to use every possibility to fight. The order also required division commanders to demote and, if necessary, even to shoot on the spot those commanders who failed to command the battle directly in the battlefield. Thereafter, Stalin also conducted a purge of several military commanders that were shot for “cowardice” without a trial.

In June 1941, weeks after the German invasion began, Stalin directed that the retreating Red Army also sought to deny resources to the enemy through a scorched earth policy of destroying the infrastructure and food supplies of areas before the Germans could seize them, and that partisans were to be set up in evacuated areas. This, along with abuse by German troops, caused starvation and suffering among the civilian population that were left behind. Stalin feared that Hitler would use disgruntled Soviet citizens to fight his regime, particularly people imprisoned in the Gulags. He thus ordered the NKVD to take care of the situation. They responded by murdering around one hundred thousand political prisoners throughout the western parts of the Soviet Union, with methods that included bayoneting people to death and tossing grenades into crowded cells. Many others were simply deported east.

In July 1942, Stalin issued Order No. 227, directing that any commander or commissar of a regiment, battalion or army, who allowed retreat without permission from his superiors was subject to military tribunal. The order called for soldiers found guilty of disciplinary measures to be forced into “penal battalions”, which were sent to the most dangerous sections of the front lines. From 1942 to 1945, 427,910 soldiers were assigned to penal battalions. The order also directed “blocking detachments” to shoot fleeing panicked troops at the rear. In the first two months following the order, over 1,000 troops were shot by blocking units and blocking units sent over 130,000 troops to penal battalions. Despite having some effect initially, this measure proved to have a deteriorating effect on the troops’ morale, so by October 1942 the idea of regular blocking units was quietly dropped By 20 November 1944 the blocking units were disbanded officially.

After the capture of Berlin, Soviet troops reportedly raped German women and girls, with total victim estimates ranging from tens of thousands to two million.^[143] During and after the occupation of Budapest, (Hungary), an estimated 50,000 women and girls were raped. Regarding rapes that occurred in Yugoslavia, Stalin responded to a Yugoslav partisan leader’s complaints saying, “Can’t he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?”

In former Axis countries, such as Germany, Romania and Hungary, Red Army officers generally viewed cities, villages and farms as being open to pillaging and looting. For example, Red Army soldiers and NKVD members frequently looted transport trains in 1944 and 1945 in Poland and Soviet soldiers set fire to the city centre of Demmin while preventing the inhabitants from extinguishing the blaze, which, along with multiple rapes, played a part in causing over 900 citizens of the city to commit suicide. In the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, when members of the SED reported to Stalin that looting and rapes by Soviet soldiers could result iegative consequences for the future of socialism in post-war East Germany, Stalin reacted angrily: “I shall not tolerate anybody dragging the honour of the Red Army through the mud.” Accordingly, all evidence of looting, rapes and destruction by the Red Army was deleted from archives in the Soviet occupation zone.

Stalin’s personal military leadership was emphasied as part of the “cult of personality” after the publication of Stalin’s ten victories extracted from 6 November 1944 speech “27th anniversary of the Great October socialist revolution” (Russian: «27-я годовщина Великой Октябрьской социалистической революции») during the 1944 meeting of the Moscow’s Soviet deputies.

According to recent figures, of an estimated four million POWs taken by the Russians, including Germans, Japanese, Hungarians, Romanians and others, some 580,000 never returned, presumably victims of privation or the Gulags, compared with 3.5 million Soviet POW that died in German camps out of the 5.6 million taken.

Soviet POWs and forced laborers who survived German captivity were sent to special “transit” or “filtration” camps meant to determine which were potential traitors. Of the approximately 4 million to be repatriated 2,660,013 were civilians and 1,539,475 were former POWs. Of the total, 2,427,906 were sent home and 801,152 were reconscripted into the armed forces. 608,095 were enrolled in the work battalions of the defense ministry. 272,867 were transferred to the authority of the NKVD for punishment, which meant a transfer to the Gulag system. 89,468 remained in the transit camps as reception personnel until the repatriation process was finally wound up in the early 1950s.

During the rapid German advances in the early months of the war, nearly reaching the cities of Moscow and Leningrad, the bulk of Soviet industry which could not be evacuated was either destroyed or lost due to German occupation. Agricultural production was interrupted, with grain harvests left standing in the fields that would later cause hunger reminiscent of the early 1930s. In one of the greatest feats of war logistics, factories were evacuated on an enormous scale, with 1523 factories dismantled and shipped eastwards along four principal routes to the Caucasus, Central Asian, Ural, and Siberian regions. In general, the tools, dies and production technology were moved, along with the blueprints and their management, engineering staffs and skilled labour.

The whole of the Soviet Union become dedicated to the war effort. The population of the Soviet Union was probably better prepared than any other nation involved in the fighting of World War II to endure the material hardships of the war. This is primarily because the Soviets were so used to shortages and coping with economic crisis in the past, especially during wartime—World War I brought similar restrictions on food. Still, conditions were severe. World War II was especially devastating to citizens of the USSR because it was fought on Soviet territory and caused massive destruction. In Leningrad, under German siege, over a million people died of starvation and disease. Many factory workers were teenagers, women and old people. The government implemented rationing in 1941 and first applied it to bread, flour, cereal, pasta, butter, margarine, vegetable oil, meat, fish, sugar, and confectionary all across the country. The rations remained largely stable in other places during the war. Additional rations were often so expensive that they could not add substantially to a citizen’s food supply unless that person was especially well-paid. Peasants received no rations and had to make do with local resources they farmed themselves. Most rural peasants struggled and lived in unbearable poverty but others sold any surplus they had at a high price and a few became rouble millionaires until a currency reform two years after the end of the war wiped out their wealth.

Despite harsh conditions, the war led to a spike in Soviet nationalism and unity. Soviet propaganda toned down extreme Communist rhetoric of the past as the people now rallied by a belief of protecting their Motherland against the evils of German invaders. Ethnic minorities thought to be collaborators were forced into exile. Religion, which was previously shunned, became a part of Communist Party propaganda campaign in the Soviet society in order to mobilize the religious elements. The social composition of Soviet society changed drastically during the war. There was a burst of marriages in June and July 1941 between people about to be separated by the war and in the next few years the marriage rate dropped off steeply, with the birth rate following shortly thereafter to only about half of what it would have been in peacetime. For this reason mothers with several children during the war received substantial honors and money benefits if they had a great enough number of children—mothers could earn around 1,300 rubles for having their fourth child and earn up to 5,000 rubles for their tenth.

Survival in Leningrad

The city of Leningrad endured more suffering and hardships than any other city in the Soviet Union during the war, as it was under siege for 900 days, from September 1941-January 1944.^[159] Hunger, malnutrition, disease, starvation, and even cannibalism became common during the siege of Leningrad; civilians lost weight, grew weaker, and became more vulnerable to diseases.^[160] Citizens of Leningrad managed to survive through a number of methods with varying degrees of success. Since only four hundred thousand Russians were evacuated before the siege began, this left two and a half million in Leningrad, including four hundred thousand children. More managed to escape the city; this was most successful when Lake Ladoga froze over and people could walk over the ice road—or “road of life”—to safety.

Most survival strategies during the siege, though, involved staying within the city and facing the problems through resourcefulness or luck. One way to do this was by securing factory employment because many factories became autonomous and possessed more of the tools of survival during the winter, such as food and heat. Workers got larger rations than regular civilians and factories were likely to have electricity if they produced crucial goods. Factories also served as mutual-support centers and had clinics and other services like cleaning crews and teams of women who would sew and repair clothes. Factory employees were still driven to desperation on occasion and people resorted to eating glue or horses in factories where food was scarce, but factory employment was the most consistently successful method of survival, and at some food production plants not a single person died.

Survival opportunities open to the larger Soviet community included bartering and farming on private land. Black markets thrived as private barter and trade became more common, especially between soldiers and civilians. Soldiers, who had more food to spare, were eager to trade with Soviet citizens that had extra warm clothes to trade. Planting vegetable gardens in the spring became popular, primarily because citizens got to keep everything grown on their own plots. The campaign also had a potent psychological effect and boosted morale, a survival component almost as crucial as bread.

Many of the most desperate Soviet citizens turned to crime as a way to support themselves in trying times. Most common was the theft of food and of ration cards, which could prove fatal for a malnourished person if their card was stolen more than a day or two before a new card was issued. For these reasons, the stealing of food was severely punished and a person could be shot for as little as stealing a loaf of bread. More serious crimes such as murder and cannibalism also occurred, and special police squads were set up to combat these crimes, though by the end of the siege, roughly 1,500 had been arrested for cannibalism.

 

2.     Post-war reconstruction of Ukraine

Over the next decades the Ukrainian republic not only surpassed pre-war levels of industry and production but also was the spearhead of Soviet power. Ukraine became the centre of Soviet arms industry and high-tech research. The republic was also turned into a Soviet military outpost in the cold war, a territory crowded by military bases packed with the most up-to-date weapons systems.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev

 The Khrushchev era saw increased construction of rapidly built, prefabricated apartment complexes.

 

Such an important role resulted in a major influence of the local elite. Many members of the Soviet leadership came from Ukraine, most notably Nikita Khrushchev(a Soviet leader from1953 to 1964) and Leonid Brezhnev (a Soviet leader from 1964 to 1982), as well as many prominent Soviet sportsmen, scientists and artists. In 1954, the Russian-populated oblast of Crimea was transferred from the Russian to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev

The products of the rapidly developed high-tech industry in Ukraine were largely directed for military consumption, similarly to the much of the Soviet economy, and the supply and quality of consumer goods remained low compared even to the neighboring countries of the Eastern bloc. A state-regulated system of production and consumption lead to gradual decreasing of life level and growing “shadowisation” of retail infrastructure as well as of corruption.

Four years of war had a harmful effect on the Ukrainian economy. Industrial production of the first post-war year 1945 accounted only a quarter from the level of 1940. Reconstruction of the hard industry swallowed up 85 percent of all investments, but it was successful: in 1950 industrial production in Ukraine by 15 percent exceeded the level of 1940. In Western Ukraine, where before war the hard industry had not existed, the progress impressed especially: industrial production grew 2,3 times. In 1950 Ukraine again became one from the leading industrial countries in Europe. It melted more iron per man, than Great Britain, Western Germany or France, and according to coal mining it almost was equal to Western Germany.  

But the life level of people improved very slowly. Light industry slightly reached 80 percent of the pre-war level. Currency reform of 1947 devaluated carbovanets and depreciated personal savings of citizens.  The position was complicated by catastrophic drought and starvation of 1946. The yield of 1950 corresponded only to 60 percent of 1940-year level. At the same time peasants were deprived the land and inventory, obtained during the war.  Nourishing nutrition for a long time remained rare profusion for Ukrainians.  

Started in 1954, project on development the virgin lands of Kazakhstan required the use of huge labor and material resources, and the big part of those expenses took Ukraine.  Before 1956 thousand tractors and 80 thousand experienced farm hands were taken from here. Many of them settled there forever. At the same time, every spring hundred thousand students voluntarily came from Ukraine on season work. Though this program gave some positive results, it exhausted resources of Ukraine and weakened agricultural production of the republic.

In spite of drastic changes and grandiose experiments the government did not manage to reach so quick growing of agricultural production as it was planned. The Kremlin later on refused to give the peasants sufficient incentives for better labor, officials in the far Moscow continued to decide, what cultures should cultivate collective farms, how to sow them, and the peasants were punished by duties for the tillage of their tiny (but incredibly productive) farm lands.   

3.     Destalinization

After the death of the dictator Stalin in 1953 new government of the country tried to receive wider support among the nonrussiaations and especially among Ukrainians.

At the beginning the Ukrainians reacted on these changes very carefully. It was sounded one of the first and then repeated several times the accusation of the regime for the terrible state of the Ukrainian language. Intelligentsia, students, workers and even partial officials – all repeated the same refrain: special status of the Russian language in the USSR did not mean, than the Ukrainian language should be discriminated. Such slogans as: “Let’s protect the Ukrainian language!” and “Let’s speak Ukrainian!”, more often sounded throughout the republic, especially in the field of the universities’ students.      

Making attempts to raise the Ukrainian science and to raise the prestige of the Ukrainian culture, the intelligentsia suggested to create possibilities in the republic for the development of such modern branches of knowledge as nuclear investigation and cybernetic.    In 1957 in Kyiv it was established the computer center, which in 1962 became the Institute of cybernetic and led Ukraine out to the leading position in this field in the USSR.  

Many million of Ukrainians jailed in the Siberian camps of forced labor, received amnesty and the permission to come back home. This partly liquidation of gigantic system of concentration camp was precipitated by the row of camp revolts, in particular in Vokrut in Novorylsk (1953), Karaganda (1954), where the leading role plaid members of Organization of Ukrainiaationalists and Ukrainian revolt army.

Among the Ukrainian youth expressively grew spirits to be guided in the life by the rights of individualism. For youth became unbearable  the monotone of the soviet life, old-fashioned manner to dress and very ideological system of studying. In Ukraine began to appear materialistic and egocentric “Me”- generation (already formed in the West), very differed from the previous, that gave birth of so violent communists and nationalists.  

4.     Dissident movement

During 1960 the part of Ukrainians, living in cities, reached 55 percent. In Ukraine also grew the quantity of specialists with higher education. Between 1960 and 1970 their quantity doubled from 700 thousands to 1,4 million.  

In Ukraine the cultural elite and especially writers made new attempts to wider measures of creative self-expression. They again wrote about losses, caused by the soviet regime of Stalin to Ukrainian culture.

Censorship continued strictly regulation of all, that were allowed to read, to see and to hear. Communist party retained absolute monopoly on the politic power. Increasing of Ukraine’s meaning of in the USSR and the political success of separate Ukrainians did not change the fact that interests of Ukraine remained completely subordinated to the interests of the soviet empire in general.

In 1960-70th years in the USSR arose noticeable occurrence, when the policy of the government was subject to the open criticism of not large but later on larger quantity of people, who usually were called dissidents and who demanded wider social, religious and national rights.

At the beginning the heart of Ukrainian dissidents consisted of so-called “men of the sixtieth” – new productive generation of writers, who got the acknowledgement. It included: Lina Kostenko, Vasyl Symonenko, Ivan Drach, Ivan Svitlycnniy, Evgen Sverstyuk, Mykola Vyngranovskiy, Alla Gorska and Ivan Dzyuba.  Later on Vasyl Stus, Myhaylo Osadchiy, Igor and Irina Kalinets, Ivan Gel and brothers Goryny jointed to them. Distinctive feature of this group was that its members were exemplary products of the soviet education and quickly made promising career.  Some of them were convinced communists. Though the dissidents acted mostly in Kyiv and Lviv, they originated from different parts of Ukraine.  

Vasyl Symonenko

Vasyl Stus

The first demonstration of this movement took place at the end 1950th – the beginning of 1960th, when in the Western Ukraine it was organized several small secret groups. So-called “group of jurists” at the head of a lawyer Levko Lukyanenko was distinguished among them. It called to execution of the legal right of Ukraine on going out of the Soviet Union. After disclosure of these groups their participants were sentenced to the long period imprisonment.  

 Levko Lukyanenko

Open dissidents, suspected in “unreliable” views, were dismissed. This wave of chase, resembling Stalin’s time, traumatized the whole generation of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and forced many of them to confess and leave the dissident activity.

In November 1976 in Kyiv appeared the Ukrainian Helsinki group. It was led by the writer Mykola Rudenko – the political commissar in the years of the Second World War and previous political official.

 Mykola Rudenko

His close comrade was the general of the Soviet army Petro Grygorenko – cavalier of many government honors, who was dismissed and chased for the active social activity. This group accounted 37 members, different by birth. They supposed resolving of social problems in following the law in general and respecting personal rights in particular.      

5.     Social and economic development in 60-80th

In 1965 in the USSR was performed an attempt of economic reform implementation, first of all improvement of production management.  But in the condition of production super centralization the execution of this reform  was braked. Only in 1976-1980 five-year plan, in Ukraine real income per man increased by 15 %. Wages of workers and officials rose by 75 %. 

Putting in order the automate machines and equipment lines promoted intensive development of hard industry, building, transport field, agriculture and power industry.  Actively developed airplane building and motor-car industry. In general in Ukraine were accounted over 150 industrial branches. Overall development was executed iewly created instrument-making industry and space field. Ukrainian RSU in that period launched in space 400 satellites.  

Agriculture like before plaid leading role in the economy of Republic. Ukraine became food donor for all the USSR, the area plough land in those years accounted 80 % from the total area of republic.

At the low level was social development of villages, and in consequences labor sources significantly decreased in result of urbanization. On the map of Ukraine were appearing new and growing old industrial centers, increased the house-building tare. During 1966-1985 years 4,6 people, mostly youth left Ukrainian villages. Social structure of republic’s population was changed. If in 1960 peasants accounted a half of republic’ s population, then in 1985 – it was 1/3.      

Implementation of compulsory general secondary education, enlargement of the system of secondary-special and higher educational institutions in Ukraine assisted to raising the authority of studying and education and further their development. The percent of specialists with higher education in Ukraine rapidly grew. Between 1960 and 1970 their quantity doubled – from 700 thousand to 1,4 million and reached the level of Western Europe countries.    

The field of functioning of the Ukrainian language greatly narrowed. Between 1969 and 1980 the share of magazines, issued in Ukrainian, decreased from 46 % to 19 %. Repertory of cinemas was Russian in 99 %. All kinds of art and culture were ideologized.  Artists were accustomed to think not only in artistic manner, but also in political categories for the image of “developed socialism” achievements.     

But in spite of all Ukrainian culture became firmly established. The world got to know about talented actors: A. Rogovtseva, B. Stupka, A. Gashinskiy, I. Mykolaychuk, singers D. Gnatyuk, A. Solovyanenko, E. Myrashnichenko. Significant development was gained by cinematography. Annually in Ukraine released 20 feature films. Among the most famous films were “Shadows of forgotten ancestors” of S. Poradganov (28 international awards, in particular in 1965 the award of the British academy for the best foreign film), “White bird with black mark”, author of which – Y. Illyenko – included to the quantity of a hundred outstanding producers of the world. It also was developing Ukrainian theatre art. 

Also impressed the achievements of the Ukrainian sportsmen, who appeared on the international arena under the soviet flag.  Olympic champions and heroes of the country were weight-lifter Leonid Dzabotynskiy, gymnasts Polina Astahova and Larisa Latynina, runner Valeriy Borzov, fighter Oleksander Kolchynskiy. In 1975 under the management of one of the best trainers in the planet Valeriy Lobanovskiy, the football club “Dynamo Kyiv” gained a victory in Cup of Cups and playing off Supercup UEFA , becoming the strongest football team in the continent. And Ukrainian forward Oleg Blohin was acknowledged the best football-player in Europe, receiving “Golden ball”.  

 “Dynamo Kyiv” — the Cup Winners.

 Oleh Blokhin — the Best European player 1975.

 

In 1978 it was passed the Constitution of URSR, in which were declared principles of widening and deepening of the “social democracy” by the means of energization of the activity of Rada of national deputies, involving the mass to the participation in state government. It was officially declared that in the USSR was built “developed socialism”, but the life level of people was much more lower, then in European countries.  

6.     Chornobyl

The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear reactor accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. It is considered to be the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history and the only level 7 instance on the International Nuclear Event Scale. It resulted in a severe release of radioactivity following a massive power excursion which destroyed the reactor. Two people died in the initial steam explosion, but most deaths from the accident were attributed to radiation.On 26 April 1986 01:23:45 a.m. (UTC+3) reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant, near Pripyat in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, exploded.

Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

The nuclear reactor after the disaster. Reactor 4 (image centre). Turbine building (image lower left). Reactor 3 (centre right)

 

The plume drifted over extensive parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Western Europe,and Northern Europe, with light nuclear rain falling as far as Ireland. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. According to official post-Soviet data, about 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus.

Location of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

 

The accident raised concerns about the safety of the Soviet nuclear power industry as well as nuclear power at all, slowing its expansion for a number of years, while forcing the Soviet government to become less secretive. The countries of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus have been burdened with the continuing and substantial decontamination and health care costs of the Chernobyl accident. It is difficult to accurately quantify the number of deaths caused by the events at Chernobyl as over time it becomes difficult to determine whether a decease was caused by exposure to radiation.

Zone of Allienation

The 2005 report prepared by the Chernobyl Forum, led by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and World Health Organization (WHO), attributed 56 direct deaths (47 accident workers, and nine children with thyroid cancer), and estimated that there may be 4,000 extra cancer deaths among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed people.Although the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and certain limited areas remain off limits, the majority of affected areas are now considered safe for settlement and economic activity.

The Sarcophagus, the concrete block surrounding reactor #4

 

 

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
Ukrainians	37541.7	77.8	72.7	100.3
Russians	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
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
Other	177.1	0.4	0.4	83.9

   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

 

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).