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previous: Chapter 7 This webpage reproduces a chapter of Twentieth-Century Ukraine by Clarence Manning published by Bookman Associates New York, 1951 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 9

 p79  VIII

The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic

I. Ukrainization

Lenin and his associates had definite ideas as to the type of new world which they wished to produce. It was to be a world in which the proletariat would rule but their definition of the proletariat was peculiarly their own. It was to be a world of Communists, by Communists and for Communists. It was to be an international world in which the "proletariat" of all countries was to feel at home.

There was less agreement as to the cultural significance of this new creation. In the early days of Brest-Litovsk, when leaders like Trotsky had momentarily expected a world revolution, there had been some hesitation as to the position that the Russian variety was to hold in the Communist structure. A success­ful revolution, according to theory, in Germany, France or England would have been carried on by men who had come on a par with the Russian leaders.​1

It did not happen and Lenin quickly discovered that the Third International on which he had built such high hopes was not the gathering of the heads of dominant Communist parties meeting in Moscow as a world center. It was rather a group of more or less discredited failures coming to learn from him who alone had found the path to success. In view of the accepted infallibility of Marxian dialectics, it was strange that it was in the relatively undeveloped Russian empire  p80 where the new regime saw light and gained strength and not in the industrialized areas where there was a strong proletariat. It was men trained in the Russian revolutionary technique who had been able to overthrow a government and it was only natural that from every ground these men came to accept their methods as the only correct ones.

They conveniently forgot and the world forgot with them that their victory was due to the indecision of their opponents. It was easy for them to overlook the fact that it was German policy, or lack of it, that had set Lenin up in Russia and allowed him to carry on his propaganda. It was easy to forget that it was American, British and French wavering between the independent republics which had liberated themselves from Russia and the White Russians that had facilitated the downfall of these lands. It was easy for them to gloss over and explain away the fall of the Ukrainian National Republic and to besmirch the reputations of its leaders. At first they remembered and acted with caution.

Lenin had the shrewd idea that it was going to be impossible to unify and standardize the world, or even Russia, as rapidly as he wished. More than any of the leaders of the former Russian Provisional Government or any of his Communist associates, he realized the possibilities in the cry for self-determination that was being raised on all sides. He appreciated to the full the extent to which the triumph of Bolshevism had been aided by the fighting between the White Russians and the struggling nationalities and he cleverly saw that he could use the conflicting claims of nationality and of government to further his cause in Poland and elsewhere. So he deliberately set about a policy of encouraging the growth of nationalist movements.​2

There was another aspect to his policy. Bolshevism had not yet destroyed or exiled all of its "reactionary" enemies. The encouragement of the nationalities would develop and bring to light those men who possessed the natural gifts that might make them dangerous to him. Even a temporary catering to  p81 the nationalities would bring these men into the open and put them within his power, whenever he was ready for the next step. In 1917 the meeting at Kiev had bluntly condemned the Communist policy. The defeat of the Ukrainian National Government had disheartened many of the leaders. They did not want to live in exile but they were suspicious of the power that had profited by their downfall. It was necessary to lull their suspicions and bring them into the net. Ukrainization might help.​3

Lenin had no intention of allowing the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic to slip out of his control. The Communist party would hold the reins but in the beginning it would be done behind a façade of nationalism. For this reason the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was called upon to play an independent role in the events of the day. The Russians emphasized its independence.​4 They went through all the motions of treating it as a sovereign state. They allowed it to have its own foreign minister, its own army, its own school system, its own administration. But all these were to be under the thumb of the Kremlin. This was effected by insisting upon the unity of the Communist party and by demanding that the Communists should hold all the key positions, especially those that had to do with the maintenance of order.​5

So it came about that the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic signed a treaty of peace with Poland at Riga. It sent diplomatic representatives to all those capitals that had formerly recognized the Ukrainian National Republic. These persons were often either Russians or Ukrainians who had spent many years in Russian Communist circles but the farce continued. The democratic powers who did not believe in the existence of Ukraine and did not try to follow all the windings of Communist policy were completely deceived.

Meanwhile there was continuous activity by armed bands under men like Nestor Makhno who had played a role as more or less isolated guerilla leaders in the last days of the republic.​6 They rallied liberty-loving peasants and malcontents and  p82 proved a thorn in the side of the new regime which was based so largely upon the cities and their non-Ukrainian elements. However, their efforts were futile and merely added to the misery of the population without accomplishing any positive good.

In 1921‑22 a new misfortune came upon the country. A long and severe drought completely destroyed the crops. Throughout the centuries this phenomenon has been spasmodically repeated. Due to climatic conditions, the spring and the autumn rains sometimes fail to appear. The results are serious for a land which is so uniformly fertile. Again and again these droughts have not only affected the material well-being of the population but their intensity has had a pronounced effect upon the grain markets of the entire world. In 1921 and 1922, the effects were catastrophic. War, revolution and turmoil had seriously curtailed production of food in earlier years. The dispossession of the great land­owners who alone had the means to store up harvests and let them gradually pass upon the market and the demands of the organized and unorganized armies had reduced reserves to almost nothing. Famine broke out and large numbers of people perished.

The loss of the grain supply threatened not only the Soviet regime in Ukraine but even the masters in Moscow. It led to serious discontent which the authorities dreaded to quell. They appealed for world assistance. The American Relief Administration directed by Herbert Hoover came to the rescue and huge quantities of food were sent to the affected area. No attempt was made to exploit the revolt latent in the people and the relief workers brought aid to all without discrimination. There was no political upheaval and the Soviet government emerged more deeply entrenched than before.

Yet it was evident that something had to be done to remedy the persistent suffering and the lack of organized production. In 1921, therefore, the old period of militant Communism was ended and the New Economic Policy was proclaimed. Under this, while the fundamental principles of Communism were  p83 retained, there was granted a considerable freedom for small, private trade. The peasant was allowed to raise and sell his grain on a relatively free market. The small shopkeeper was allowed to do business without fear of punitive actions by the authorities. Almost immediately the prosperity of Ukraine began to revive. The peasants worked harder and saved their money. The cities began to brighten and a freer air pervaded the countryside. The outside world looked on with approval, believing that the Soviets were now coming to see the advantages of capitalism and that a real rapprochement might be possible.​7

There were of course dark sides to the picture. By one device or another the contributions that Ukraine was forced to make to the central regime became heavier and heavier, so that even some of the Ukrainian Communists who had the welfare of their homeland at heart began to complain that the country was being ruined and its wealth drained off. The entire life of the country was under the control of the OGPU, the secret police, which had succeeded the Cheka, and was later to be replaced by the NKVD (the forces of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs). Yet all this was indirect and the average citizen was unaware of the general purpose and the methods that were being applied.

The wealthy land­owners had already been dispossessed and driven into exile or liquidated. Attempts were made to form communal farms but the various cooperative organizations were allowed to flourish and the police rule was none too severe.

The first step toward limiting Ukrainian power and influence was undertaken with the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922. This was ostensibly a higher union to include the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian, the Georgian, and in fact all of the countries that Moscow dominated. But however it appeared on paper, it meant a legal justification for control by the Moscow regime of all the governments of the other Soviet republics and it soon became evident that the higher  p84 administration was composed of exactly those persons who had sat in Moscow previously.

The whole field of foreign affairs and defense was handed over to the All-Union government, although for a while the custom continued of having a Ukrainian secretary in all the Soviet missions abroad. Yet even this was not too much of a blow, for there were a good many people in 1917 who would have been satisfied with the setting up of Ukraine as one of the federated states of a Russian republic and it seemed as if this ideal was now being realized under the rule of the Soviet Union.

Of course the real bond of union was the Communist party which itself was under the direction of Moscow. This made little appeal to the Ukrainians themselves and the bulk of its members in Ukraine were of non-Ukrainian origin. Even as late as 1927 there were at most only about one hundred and twenty-two thousand Ukrainian Communists, approximately thirty-nine for every ten thousand of the population — one of the smallest ratios of any of the Soviet republics.​8

Yet during these years national sentiment was to a considerable degree appeased and canalized into nonpolitical paths by the emphasis that was laid upon the development of Ukrainian culture in all senses of the word. Before the outbreak of World War I, Ukrainian literature, art and music had been developing with great rapidity and broadening in scope and adapting the artistic methods of the West. National independence naturally lent zest to the movement but the stormy life of the republic made it impossible for the younger writers and artists to come to their mature status. The downfall of the republic hardly checked the flowering of the renaissance, for the Soviet regime was on the whole even more liberal than it was in the Russian Soviet Republic. Authors were compelled to pay a certain lip service to Communist ideals or at least not devote themselves to openly anti-Communist notions but within a broad range, they were free to express themselves and a little ingenuity in avoiding taboo subjects enabled them  p85 to function with little fear of censor­ship. This was especially true during the period up to 1925 when in Moscow the "Fellow Travelers," who included all the leading authors, were gradually winning esteem at the expense of the more distinctively proletarian writers.​9

This period saw not only the development of literature, art and music but the foundation and growth of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev. This had taken shape under the presidency of Professor Volodymyr Vernadsky during the hetmanate of Skoropadsky, but the rapid change of control in Kiev had precluded serious work. The Ukrainian Soviet Republic allowed the academy to reopen and granted it relative freedom, even though the bylaws were amended to turn it into a typical Communist institution. Still, these were disregarded and the academy was allowed to correspond freely with Ukrainian scholars abroad and elect members from Western Ukraine and elsewhere.​10

To strengthen its staff, the academy was allowed to call back many of the outstanding figures of the republic. Professor Hrushevsky, the first head of the old Rada, returned to Kiev from an émigré life in Vienna, and became the head of the historical division. He resumed his researches as the dean of Ukrainian scholars. There was Serhey Efremiv, the lengthy historian and critic, who had played a part also in the various Ukrainian national governments. Then men who had been primarily politicians and statesmen, like Holubovych, prime minister at the time of Brest-Litovsk, were induced to return.

We can well pardon and understand the point of view of optimists who saw in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic the fulfillment of many of their hopes and dreams. The Ukrainian language was introduced into the schools and the administration. It was the theoretical language of command in the Ukrainian army. Every official in the republic was supposed to be able to speak Ukrainian and use it in his office, even though exemptions were made for non-Ukrainian citizens. This was more than the Ukrainians had dared expect, even fifteen  p86 years before.​11

The situation promised well for the future. The gradual improvement in living conditions brought about by recovery from the war, the flowering of the culture, the increasing prosperity of the peasants, the new opportunities all seemed to justify the inclusion of the country within the Soviet Union and the optimists — and these included all except the most bitter and fanatical opponents of Communism — were tolerably well satisfied with the progress that was being made.

The OGPU in the background, the attacks on religion, the other drawbacks, all seemed to be passing phases. They were little felt in the villages, although in the cities with a non-Ukrainian population they played a larger role.

The men selected to administer the state were also reassuring. The dominant figures in the Communist party were men like Rakovsky, a Romanian and an old Bolshevik, the prime minister; Gregory Petrovsky, the president; and above all Mykola Skrypnyk, the commissar of internal affairs. Rakovsky had passed through the usual routine of the professional international revolutionary but Skrypnyk was a more unusual character.

He had early enlisted in the Bolshevik party, when it was still but a struggling group largely in exile. He had become a friend of Lenin and had been prominent in the Cheka in Petrograd. He was a confirmed and ruthless Communist​12 but when he was transferred to the Ukrainian Republic, he showed at first a surprising kindliness toward the new renaissance. For some years he allowed conditions to develop as they would but always with an eye to the future triumph of the general principles of Communism as he understood them and as he had learned them from Lenin. He proved himself to be a true Ukrainian Communist and during this golden age, despite his Communist ideas, he used his influence on the whole in beneficent ways.

Thus during the twenties, the Ukrainian urge for independence in the political sphere seemed to slumber. The cultural  p87  autonomy which was given to the people, the opportunities that they had to shape Ukrainian culture along the lines of Ukrainian tradition seemed to replace that fervor for independence which had been so marked in the earlier years.

---

The Author's Notes:

1 This is shown by the outline of the Communist International (the Comintern) published in Russia-U.S.S.R. (pp332 ff.) and resting on the declaration of 1914. The Comintern took definite shape in Moscow in 1919 before the ending of hostilities. Ruth Fischer in Stalin and German Communism (Cambridge, 1948, p547) says: "Comintern life and Comintern policy should have been divorced from the Russian party." Still she notes that as early as 1920 Russian methods were already being applied in Germany. The failure of the Communists outside of Moscow had the inevitable result of emphasizing the success of Lenin and his followers but it is difficult to decide at exactly what date Russian domination became a matter of right and not of policy.

2 See the citations in Russia-U.S.S.R., p171.

3 See Yuriy Sherekh, "Trends in Ukrainian Literature under the Soviets," The Ukrainian Quarterly, IV, 154.

4 The Constitution of the Uk. S. S. R. of March 14, 1919, definitely declares it to be a state completely independent of the R. S. F. S. R. (the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic), Russia-U.S.S.R., p174.

5 Thanks to the statutes of the Communist International and its theories of class and not of geographical member­ship, there is no inconsistency on this point.

6 Makhno did not leave Ukraine until 1921. Chamberlin, op. cit., p50. The guerilla movement died away of itself as the guerillas sank to mere bandits. Soviet literature of these years loves to reproduce this type. Compare the sequence in Boris Savinkov's Black Horse (London, 1924).

7 Chamberlin, op. cit., pp56 f.

8 Russia-U.S.S.R., p115.

9 See Gleb Struve, Soviet Russian Literature (London, 1935), pp224 ff.

10 Nicholas D. Czubatyj, "Silver Jubilee of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, 1918‑1943," The Ukrainian Quarterly, I, 236 ff.

11 See W. E. D. Allen, Ukraine (Cambridge, 1940), p280.

12 For an estimate of Skrypnyk in Moscow, see Reuben Darbinian, "A Mission to Moscow," in The Armenian Review, Vol. I, No. 3, pp28 ff.

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