Ukraine under the after-war Stalin regime (1946-53)

An important outcome of the war for Ukrainians was the unification of Western and Eastern Ukraine into one state. To the great disappointment of the Poles, Stalin persuaded Great Britain and the United States to accept his annexation of lands in which West Ukrainians constituted the majority of the population. Especially painful for the Poles was the loss of Lviv, a bastion of Polish culture and influence in the region. To avoid potential ethnic conflicts in the future, Stalin moved about 800, 000 Poles from Galicia and Volhynia to Poland. In similar manner, about 500,000 Ukrainians, who had found themselves on the Polish side of the new border, moved to Soviet Ukraine. Despite its harshness this decision of Stalin ended the long-term conflict between the two peoples.

Shortly after the war, Stalin also persuaded Czechoslovakia and Romania (these countries were under Soviet occupation) to give up their claims to Transcarpathia and Bukovyna, respectively. Hungarians, Romanians, and some other nationalities were repatriated from Ukraine to their own countries. Thus, Western Ukraine, with its more than 7 million inhabitants was permanently incorporated into the USSR.

Ukraine was the Soviet republic that suffered most in the war. Foreign experts calculated that it would take at least 20 years for Ukraine to recover. They were mistaken since they did not take into account the enormous mobilization possibilities of the Soviet totalitarian system. The party efficiently focused the masses and resources on strategic directions. In addition to millions of Soviet citizens, hundreds of thousands of “enemies of the people” (Soviet political convicts) and war prisoners were actively used to rebuild the economy. By 1950 the industrial output of Ukraine was 15% higher than in 1940. In the 1950s Ukraine once again became one of the leading industrial countries of Europe. In Western Ukraine, which had practically no heavy industry before the war, progress was especially impressive: by 1955 the industrial output of the region was four times greater than before the war. Because the factories were new and often outfitted with machines expropriated from Germany, the West Ukrainian enterprises possessed some of the most modern equipment in the USSR. Rapidly growing Lviv became one of the major industrial centers of the republic.

In 1945 Ukraine, quite unexpectedly for itself, became a member of the United Nations. Stalin wanted to include all Soviet republics into the UN to get extra votes, but Americans said that in this case they would demand similar rights for their 50 states. As a compromise Stalin agreed to limit the number of Soviet votes to three (USSR, Ukraine, and Belarus).[1] However, the function of the Ukrainian foreign ministry was merely ceremonial and symbolic. It closely followed Moscow’s instructions.

In 1946 Moscow decided to liquidate the Greek Catholic church, one of the major symbols of West Ukrainians’ distinctness. The Greek Catholic church did not oppose the Soviet regime. It was loyal and tried to cooperate. For example, it called UPA fighters to lay down their arms and surrender. But Moscow could not retain the church since it would have been contradictory to the Soviet unification policy principles (one language, one religion, one ideology). The Soviet leadership wanted Ukraine to be “sovieticized” and Russified as much as possible and it could not agree that West Ukrainians had a distinct church with the center in Rome. The center was to be in Moscow (to make control easier). In fact, all Russian Orthodox hierarchs were under strict control of the KGB (secret police). The Soviet leadership also used the Russian Orthodox Church as a means of Russification policy.

In March 1946, the terrorized Greek Catholic priests proclaimed the dissolution of the Union of Brest of 1596, a break with Rome, and the “reunion” of the Greek Catholic church with the Russian Orthodox church. Those who refused were imprisoned. Some priests, however, continued to practice their religion secretly until 1989 when the Greek Catholic church was again legalized.

Despite the end of the World War II the UPA continued its resistance to Soviet power. It hoped that a war between the USSR and the USA would soon start in which Ukraine would get independence with the UPA’s help. The widespread activity of the UPA was the result of its popular support and effective organization. In order to deprive the UPA of popular support, the NKVD used a variety of ruthless tactics. It depopulated areas where the UPA had base camps, deporting to Siberia the family of anyone associated with the resistance, and even entire villages. It is estimated that, between 1944 and 1952, about 500,000 West Ukrainians were repressed (153,000 of them were killed; 203,000 were exiled to cold areas of the USSR) On the other hand, the SB (the OUN security police) ruthlessly exterminated Ukrainians, who cooperated with Soviet authorities. The UPA’s leader, Roman Shukhevych, insisted on killing everyone who recognized Soviet power. “We should not be afraid of being cursed by the people for our cruelty, even if half the population perished,” he stressed. According to NKVD sources, UPA fighters exterminated more than 30,000 of the Soviet soldiers, activists, sympathizers and their families for the period of 1944-1953. More than 16,000 of them were peasants and workers, about 2,000 - intellectuals, and 860 - the old, housewives, and children. Thus, the civil population suffered from terror on both sides.

By 1947-48, when it became obvious that an American-Soviet war would not occur, many UPA units disbanded. A serious blow to the UPA was the spread of collectivization because, unlike the individual peasant households, the strictly controlled collective farmers could not serve as sources of provisions for the partisans. At the beginning of the 1950s the OUN and UPA stopped to exist.

A separate chapter in the history of the UPA was its activity on the Polish side of the border, in the area inhabited by the Ukrainian Lemkos. Between 1944 and 1947, the OUN-UPA enjoyed strong support and maintained a powerful presence in the area. In 1947 the Polish government decided to eliminate the Ukrainian nationalist movement in the region and launched an operation under the code name Wisla. With the help of Soviet and Czechoslovak troops, the Polish forces suppressed the OUN resistance in Poland and forcibly resettled the Lemko population (about 150 000) throughout Poland in order to prevent the UPA from ever reestablishing itself in the region again. In this manner, the Poles finally rid themselves of the Ukrainian problem.

In 1946 a severe drought struck Ukraine, Moldova, and Southern Russia. It caused the third famine in Ukraine during its Soviet period. The famine could have been avoided had the government demanded less grain from Ukraine that year. In fact, the peasants were forced to give all their grain supplies. In 1946 and 1947 the famine killed hundreds of thousands in Ukraine. That famine was also artificial. The state had enough bread to feed its population. But for political, mostly propagandistic reasons, the USSR exported grain to Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, and France at ridiculously low (even symbolic) prices. The president of Czechoslovakia Kliment Gotwald said, “The Soviet Union has saved us from famine.” The existence of famine in the USSR was silenced by the Soviet government. The famine avoided Western Ukraine since collectivization had not yet encompassed all the peasants in the area by 1946 and climatic conditions there had been good. Western Ukraine was lucky to escape all Soviet holodomors (1921, 1933, and 1946).

In nationality policy Stalin decided to return to the old tsarist scheme of Russian-Ukrainian relations, slightly modifying it. In 1950 he put forward a thesis that Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians were branches of a “single Old Rus Nationality” (Древнерусская народность). This nationality could be interpreted as the Old Russian, but in no way as the Old Ukrainian. Thus, paradoxically, Ukrainians were considered as younger brothers, despite the fact that Kyiv was the political center of the single Old Rus Nationality.[2]

In 1946 in the USSR appeared the so-called Zhdanovshyna, named after its major protagonist Andrei Zhdanov. Zhadonovshyna was a wide ideological offensive of the Stalinist regime against those who wanted a freer cultural climate and admired the achievements of Western civilization. Stalin believed that this offensive was necessary since millions of Soviet people had seen life in Europe during the war. Zhdanov proposed an alternative to Western culture. The aim of his ideological campaign was the glorification of Russian cultural and scientific achievements. The Russian nation was proclaimed as “the most outstanding nation… the leading force in the Soviet union.” Thus, many intellectuals in Soviet republics who had glorified their own cultures were now accused of “bourgeois nationalism.” Ukrainian historians were given orders to stress close ties between Ukrainian and Russian peoples and show “the great progressive role of the Russian people” in Ukrainian history.

Zhdanovshyna stiffened the cultural development of Soviet republics. Creative activity practically stopped as frightened intellectuals had to admit their ‘ideological mistakes’ and glorify the Soviet leadership and communist ideology.

At the end of the 1940s Stalin became more anti-Semitic than ever before. According to M. Khrushchev, Stalin, at this time, often mocked Jews by imitating their accent at his Politburo meetings. Jews were selected as a special target for accusations of cosmopolitism[3] and of worshiping the West. Stalin was especially enraged when Jews asked him to establish a Jewish autonomous republic in Crimea.[4] Many Jewish intellectuals were repressed at this time. The press instigated anti-Jewish feelings. There were even pogroms in Kyiv and Kharkiv.

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