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DniproGES Hydroelectric power plant. Completed in 1932.

DniproGES Hydroelectric power plant. Completed in 1932

Interwar Soviet Ukraine

In the early Soviet years, the Ukrainian culture and language enjoyed a revival as the Ukrainization became a local implementation of the Soviet-wide Korenization (literally indigenization) policy.[25] These policies were sharply reversed by the early-1930s.

Starting from the late 1920s, Ukraine was involved in the Soviet industrialization and the republic's industrial output quadrupled in the 1930s. However, the industrialization had a heavy cost for the peasantry, demographically a backbone of the Ukrainian nation. To satisfy the state's need for increased food supplies and finance industrialization, Stalin instituted a program of collectivization of agriculture as the state combined the peasants' lands and animals into collective farms and enforcing the policies by the regular troops and secret police. Those who resisted were arrested and deported and the increased production quotas were placed on the peasantry. The collectivization had a devastating effect on agricultural productivity. As the members of the collective farms were not allowed to receive any grain until the unachievable quotas were met, starvation became widespread. In 1932-33, millions starved to death in a man-made famine known as Holodomor.[a] Scholars are divided as to whether this famine fits the definition of genocide, but 15 governments and the Ukrainian parliament recognize it as the genocide of the Ukrainian people.[26]

 

  
 
The times of industrialization and Holodomor also coincided with the Soviet assault on the national political and cultural elite often accused in "nationalist deviations". These policies of Ukrainization were reversed at the turn of the decade. Two waves of purges (1929–1934 and 1936–1938) resulted in the elimination of four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite.[27]
Following the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact in September 1939, German and Soviet troops divided the territory of Poland, including Galicia with its Ukrainian population. After France surrendered to Germany, Romania ceded Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to Soviet demands. The Ukrainian SSR incorporated northern and southern districts of Bessarabia, the northern Bukovina, and the Soviet-occupied Hertsa region, but ceded the western part of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to the newly created Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. All these territorial gains were internationally recognized by the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947.

Although the wide majority of Ukrainians fought alongside the Red Army,[28] some elements of the Ukrainian nationalist underground fought both Nazi and Soviet forces, forming the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in 1942. While other Ukrainians initially collaborated with the Nazis, having been ignored by all other powers. In total, about 4.5 million ethnic Ukrainians fought in the ranks of the Soviet Army[28][b] and another 43,500 Ukrainians as pro-Soviet partisan guerrilla units at their peak in 1943.[29] On the other hand, due to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army's unconventional structure, estimates are much less accurate, ranging anywhere from 25,000 to 200,000 Ukrainians.[30] In 1941 the German invaders and their Axis allies initially advanced against desperate but unsuccessful efforts of the Red Army. In the encirclement battle of Kiev, the city was acclaimed by the Soviets as a "Hero City", for the fierce resistance of the Red Army and of the local population. More than 600,000 Soviet soldiers (or one quarter of the Western Front) were killed or taken captive.[31][32]

Initially, the Germans were received as liberators by some Ukrainians, especially in western Ukraine, which had been occupied by the Soviets only in 1939. However, German brutal rule in the occupied territories eventually turned even many of its supporters against the occupation. Nazi administrators of conquered Soviet territories made little attempt to exploit the population of Ukrainian territories' dissatisfaction with Soviet political and economic policies. Instead, the Nazis preserved the collective-farm system, systematically carried out genocidal policies against Jews, deported others (mainly Ukrainians) to work in Germany, and began a systematic depopulation of Ukraine to prepare it for German colonization,[33] which included a food blockade on Kiev. Under these circumstances, most people living in the occupied territory either passively or actively opposed the Nazis.

Total civilian losses inflicted upon the Ukrainian population during the war are estimated between five and eight million,[34][35] including over half a million Jews killed by the Einsatzgruppen, sometimes with the help of local collaborators. Of the estimated 7.5 to 10.6 million Soviet troops who fell in battle and in captivity against the Nazis,[36][37] about a quarter (2.5 million) were ethnic Ukrainians.[34][b] Ukraine is distinguished as one of the first nations to fight the Axis powers in Carpatho-Ukraine, and one that saw some of the greatest bloodshed during the war.

 

 

 

 

  

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