Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  With the Rada’s influence steadily increasing, the Provisional Government was forced to recognize it and, in July 1917, grant Ukraine autonomy. Following the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd on November 7, the Rada refused to recognize the new Soviet government and proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, in federation with a future, democratic Russia. Meanwhile, at the first All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets (Kharkiv, December 1917), the Bolsheviks proclaimed Ukraine a Soviet republic. In January 1918 Bolshevik troops from Russia began advancing on Kiev, prompting the proclamation by the Central Rada of full independence on January 22.

  Following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Bolsheviks were forced to evacuate their troops from Ukraine. The Rada government returned with the German and Austro-Hungarian armies, but it was too left-leaning for the Central Powers. In April 1918 a German-supported coup installed General Pavlo Skoropadsky as Hetman of Ukraine. This conservative monarchy lasted in Ukraine until December, when the defeated Central Powers withdrew their troops, and was replaced by the Directory of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. The new government was at first a dictatorship of several Ukrainian socialists and nationalists, who had previously been associated with the Rada, but later all power became concentrated in the hands of Symon Petliura.

  As the Austro-Hungarian Empire began disintegrating in October 1918, the Ukrainian political

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  UKRAINE AND UKRAINIANS

  leaders there declared the creation of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic. On January 22, 1919, the two Ukrainian republics proclaimed their unification, which, however, was never carried through. The Western Republic found itself fighting a civil war against the Poles, who claimed all of Galicia for their new state and eventually defeated the Ukrainian forces in July 1919. In the meantime, the Eastern Republic was being torn apart in an even more confusing and brutal civil war fought among the Directory, the Reds, the Whites, and various anarchist armies. The collapse of civic order in 1919 resulted in Jewish pogroms, which were committed by all the participating armies, but especially by unruly peasant rebels. By early 1920 Soviet forces controlled all Ukrainian territories of the former Russian Empire except Volhynia and Western Podolia, which were occupied by Poland. A Polish-Soviet war in the spring and summer of 1920 briefly restored the Petliura government in Kiev, but ultimately resulted in the affirmation of Ukraine’s division between the USSR and Poland. Northern Bukovyna became part of the Kingdom of Romania, while Transcarpathia found itself within a newly created Czechoslovak republic.

  INTERWAR UKRAINE

  The Ukrainian territories under Bolshevik control had been constituted as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which in 1922 became a founding member of the Soviet Union. Although it possessed all the structures and symbols of an independent state, Soviet Ukraine was effectively governed from Moscow. During the early years of Bolshevik rule, the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, or CP(b)U, was predominantly Russian and Jewish in its ethnic composition. The proportion of Ukrainians increased to some 20 percent only in 1920, after the absorption of the Borotbisty, a non-Bolshevik communist party in Ukraine. Still, the CP(b)U always remained an integral part of the All-Union Communist Party.

  During the 1920s, in order to reach out to the overwhelmingly peasant population and disarm the appeal of Ukrainian nationalism, the Bolsheviks pursued the policy of Ukrainization. This affirmative action program fostered education, publishing, and official communication in the Ukrainian language, and sponsored the recruitment of Ukrainians to party and government structures. By the late 1920s the proportion of ethnic Ukrainians in the CP(b)U exceeded 50 percent. The Ukrainization drive eventually caused resistance among Russian bureaucrats in Ukraine and uneasiness in Moscow. Yet, some Ukrainian Bolsheviks, led by the vocal Mykola Skrypnyk, defended the policy of Ukrainization. Peasant resistance to the forcible collectivization of agriculture during the First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932) led to Moscow’s denunciation of Ukrainization and its defenders. Skrypnyk killed himself in 1933, the same year that millions of Ukrainian peasants died in a catastrophic famine, which was caused by state policies. Ukrainian cultural figures suffered disproportionately during the Great Terror. Stalinist-era industrialization, however, turned the Ukrainian republic into a developed industrial region.

  In interwar Poland and Romania, Ukrainians experienced discrimination and assimilationist pressure. By the mid-1930s, popular discontent with the inability of mainstream Ukrainian political parties, such as the National Democrats, to counter Polish oppression, propelled Ukrainian radical nationalists to prominence. The conspiratorial Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN, founded in 1929) became increasingly influential among Ukrainian youth. The situation was different in Czechoslovakia, where the government promoted multicultural-ism and modernized the economy in Transcarpathia. When Hitler began dismembering Czechoslovakia in 1938, this region was granted autonomy and briefly enjoyed independence as Carpatho-Ukraine before being occupied by Hungary.

  The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (August 1939) transferred Poland’s Ukrainian territories and Romania’s Northern Bukovyna to the Soviet sphere of influence. The USSR occupied these regions in September 1939 and June 1940, respectively, under the guise of reuniting the Ukrainian nation within a single state structure. The OUN had just split into a more moderate wing led by Andrii Mel-nyk and a more radical one under the leadership of Stepan Bandera. The infighting between the OUN(M) and OUN(B) effectively prevented radical nationalists from putting up any resistance.

  WORLD WAR II AND THE LATE SOVIET PERIOD

  The surprise Nazi attack on the USSR in June 1941 turned the Ukrainian republic into a battlefield. The Germans scored one of the war’s biggest victories when they took Kiev in September at a cost of 600,000 Soviet fatalities and an equal number of soldiers who were taken prisoner. By the end of 1941 the German armies controlled practically all

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  1603

  UKRAINE AND UKRAINIANS

  of Ukrainian territory. In Lviv on June 30, 1941, the OUN(B) attempted the proclamation of a Ukrainian state, but the Gestapo soon began arresting the leading Banderites. The German administration divided Ukraine into several administrative entities and discouraged Ukrainian national aspirations. The economy was exploited and the population brutalized. The Nazis exterminated between 600,000 and 900,000 Ukrainian Jews, including 34,000 who were machine-gunned during a two-day massacre in the ravine of Babi Yar in Kiev (September 1941). The Red Army began the liberation of Ukraine in mid-1943, and completed it by October 1944. In Western Ukraine, Soviet troops encountered fierce resistance from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which continued its guerilla war in the region until the early 1950s. In 1945 Czechoslovakia ceded Transcarpathia to the Soviet Union, thus completing the unification of all Ukrainian ethnic lands within the Ukrainian SSR.

  The first postwar decade was characterized by economic reconstruction and the Sovietization of Western Ukraine. In 1946 the authorities forcibly dissolved the Uniate Church, the national institution of Galician Ukrainians. In Ukraine, the Zhdanovshchina (Zhdanov’s time) campaign from 1946 to 1948 was aimed primarily at real and imaginary manifestations of Ukrainian national ism, and to reinstall in Soviet culture Bolshevik val ues. In 1949 the long-serving first secretary of the CP(b)U, Nikita Khrushchev, left for a higher posi tion in Moscow, but continued to consider the re public as his power base. Therefore, his ascendancy to power in the Kremlin after Stalin’s death sig naled the Ukrainians’ promotion to the status of the Russians’ junior partner in running the USSR. This change was sealed by the celebrations in 1954 of the tercentenary of Ukraine’s “reunification” with Russia and the transfer of the Crimea from Russia to Ukraine. By 1959 ethnic Ukrainians con stituted more than 60 percent of the membership of the Communist Party of Ukraine (renamed the CPU in 1952) and dominated its Central Commit tee and Politburo. Following a long line of nonUkrainian party leaders, aft
er 1953 all first secretaries were Ukrainian. In particular, Petro Shelest, who headed the CPU from 1963 to 1972, dis tinguished himself as a defender of the republic’s economic interests and culture until his removal on charges of being soft on nationalism.

  His replacement and Leonid Brezhnev’s faithful client, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky (1972-1989) began his rule with a purge of patriotic intellectuals.

  1604

  From the late 1950s Ukraine was a hotbed of the dissident movement. In addition to human rights issues, Ukrainian dissidents focused on the defense of the Ukrainian language and culture. In 1975 the movement acquired more political coloration, when the writer Mykola Rudenko founded a Helsinki Watch Group. However, by the late 1970s the KGB succeeded in breaking up organized dissent in the republic. The Shcherbytsky regime promoted Rus-sification and consumerism, but could do nothing to halt the deterioration of the economy. The crisis was brought home by the world’s worst nuclear accident, at Chernobyl power plant near Kiev in April of 1986.

  Glasnost was slow to develop in Ukraine due to Shcherbytsky’s perseverance in his post, but the first mass demonstrations in Lviv and Kiev took place in 1988. The next year saw the emergence of a mass popular front, Rukh (Movement), and the defeats of many prominent party leaders in free elections. The elections to the Ukrainian Parliament in 1990 broke the Communist Party’s hold on political power, while Rukh openly proclaimed independence as its ultimate aim.

  INDEPENDENT UKRAINE

  In the wake of a failed coup in Moscow, on August 24, 1991, the Ukrainian Parliament proclaimed the republic’s full independence, an act endorsed by more than 90 percent of voters in a referendum in December 1991. Under President Leonid Kravchuk (1991-1994), Ukraine experienced hyperinflation and a sharp drop in the gross national product. The state promoted Ukrainiza-tion of education and culture and in foreign affairs sought to develop closer ties with the West. In the elections of 1994 Kravchuk lost to Leonid Kuchma, who advocated economic reform and the restoration of Ukraine’s special relationship with Russia. By dividing the Black Sea Fleet between Russia and Ukraine (1995), Kuchma resolved the tension between the two countries. In 1997 he signed a comprehensive friendship treaty with Russia. Kuchma was re-elected in 1999 and, after a long period of decline, the economy began to recover during Victor Yushchenko’s tenure as prime minister from 1999 to 2001. For most of the 1990s Ukraine was among the largest recipients of U.S. financial aid. Relations between the West and Kuchma’s administration cooled in 2001 and 2002 due to rampant corruption in Ukraine, as well as the president’s alleged involvement in a journalist’s murder and the sale of a sophisticated radar system to Iraq.

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  UNIATE CHURCH

  See also: BOROTBISTY; COSSACKS; CRIMEA; CRIMEAN TATARS; CYRIL AND METHODIUS SOCIETY; ENSERF-MENT; KRAVCHUK, LEONID MAKAROVICH; MUSCOVY; ROMANOV DYNASTY; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; SKRYPNYK, MYKOLA OLEKSIIOVYCH; UNIATE CHURCH; WORLD WAR I; WORLD WAR II

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Armstrong, John A. (1990). Ukrainian Nationalism, 3rd ed. Englewood, NJ: Ukrainian Academic Press. D’Anieri, Paul; Kravchuk, Robert S.; and Kuzio, Taras. (1999). Politics and Society in Ukraine. Boulder, CO: Westview. Dyczok, Marta. (2000). Ukraine: Movement without Change, Change without Movement Amsterdam: Har-wood Academic Publishers. Harasymiw, Bodhan. (2002). Post-Communist Ukraine. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press. Himka, John-Paul. (1988). Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Century. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press. Kappeler, Andreas. (1994). Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine. Munich: C. H. Beck. Kappeler, Andreas; Kohut, Zenon E.; Sysysn, Frank E.; and Von Hagen, Mark L., eds. (2003). Culture, Nation, and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter, 1600-1945. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press. Kuzio, Taras. (1997). Ukraine under Kuchma: Political Reform, Economic Transformation, and Security Policy in Independent Ukraine. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Kuzio, Taras. (1998). Ukraine: State and Nation Building. New York: Routledge. Kuzio, Taras, and Wilson, Andrew. (1994). Ukraine: Per-estroika to Independence. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Kuromiya, Hiroaki. (1998). Freedom and Terror in the Don-bas: A Ukrainian-Russian Borderland, 1870s-1990s. New York: Cambridge University Press. Magocsi, Paul R. (1985). Ukraine: A Historical Atlas. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Magocsi, Paul R. (1996). A History of Ukraine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Marples, David. (1991). Ukraine under Perestroika: Ecology, Economics and the Workers’ Revolt. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Motyl, Alexander J. (1993). Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press.

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  Potichnyj, Peter J., and Aster, Howard, eds. (1987). Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press. Potichnyj, Peter J.; Raeff, Marc; Pelenski, Jaroslaw; and Zekulin, Gleb N., eds. (1992). Ukraine and Russia in their Historical Encounter. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press. Rudnytsky, Ivan L. (1987). Essays in Modern Ukrainian History. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press. Shkandrij, Miroslav. (2001). Russia and Ukraine: Literature and the Discourse of Empire from Napoleonic to Postcolonial Times. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Subtelny, Orest. (2000). Ukraine: A History, 3rd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Szporluk, Roman. (1982). Ukraine: A Brief History, 2nd ed. Detroit: Ukrainian Festival Committee. Szporluk, Roman. (2000). Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. Wilson, Andrew. (2000). The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation. New Haven: Yale University Press. Yekelchyk, Serhy. (2003). Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

  SERHY YEKELCHYK

  ULOZHENIE OF 1649 See LAW CODE OF 1649.

  UNIATE CHURCH

  The traditional name for Eastern or Byzantine rite churches in communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

  The largest church within the Uniate Church is Ukrainian Catholic Church, which emerged as a result of the church union of Berestia (Brest-Litovsk) in 1596. Of the Soviet successor states, smaller pockets of Byzantine-rite Catholics also exist in Belarus. Although the historic term “Uniates” is still widely used in Russia, Ukrainian Catholics in the early twenty-first century considered it imprecise and pejorative.

  By the end of the sixteenth century, a crisis within the Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, combined with pressure from Polish

  1605

  UNION OF RIGHT FORCES

  authorities, prompted some Orthodox bishops to advocate union with Rome. Part of their motivation was to ensure the equal treatment of Orthodox believers and clergy in the Catholic Commonwealth. Having received assurances that the Byzantine liturgy, rites, and entitlement of priests to marry would be respected, in 1595 four Orthodox bishops and the metropolitan of Kiev agreed to recognize the pope’s supreme authority in matters of faith and dogma. Following the approval of Pope Clement VIII, the union was proclaimed in October 1596 at a synod in Berestia.

  Opposition from other bishops within the Kiev metropoly and the Orthodox nobility sparked a fierce religious polemic. The Ukrainian Cossacks proved themselves to be staunch opponents of the union. During the Cossack-Polish wars of 1648-1657, the Cossacks often massacred Uniates en masse. The Cossack state under Bohdan Khmel-nytsky dissolved the Uniate Church, but it continued to exist in Poland. The partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century split the Uniate church between the Russian and Austrian empires. Russian tsars encouraged the conversion of Uniates to Orthodoxy until 1839, when Nicholas I declared the Union of Berestia null and void, thus forcing all Uniates into the fold of the Russian Orthodox Church.

  In contrast, the Uniate Church in Austria was granted equal status with the Roman Catholic Church. In 1807 Pope Pius V
II created the Uniate metropoly of Halych with its see in Lviv, the capital of Galicia. Austrian rulers established educational institutions and provided support for the clergy of what they renamed the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church. During the nineteenth century it became the national church of Galicia’s Ukrainians, culminating in the long tenure of Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky (1900-1944), who achieved the stature of a national symbol. In 1939 the church had some 5.5 million faithful.

  In April 1945, with Western Ukraine under Soviet control, Stalin ordered the entire Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy imprisoned. In March 1946 the authorities convened in Lviv a spurious sobor (church council), which reunited the Uniates with the Orthodox Church. However, the Uniate Church continued to exist underground, as well as in the Ukrainian diaspora. A mass movement to restore the Ukrainian Catholic Church began during the glasnost period and culminated in the church’s legalization in December 1989. It quickly regained its position as a dominant church in Western

  1606

  Ukraine. As of 2003, the Ukrainian Catholic Church had 3,317 parishes in Ukraine and was headed by Major Archbishop Lubomyr Cardinal Husar. See also: CATHOLICISM; ORTHODOXY; UKRAINE AND UKRAINIANS