Establishment: 1917–1922 Aftermath of the revolution After the
Russian Revolution of 1917, several factions sought to create an independent Ukrainian state, alternately cooperating and struggling against each other. Numerous more or less socialist-oriented factions participated in the formation of the
Ukrainian People's Republic among which were Bolsheviks,
Mensheviks,
Socialists-Revolutionaries and many others. The most popular faction was initially the local
Socialist Revolutionary Party that composed the local government together with Federalists and Mensheviks. Following the abdication of Tsar
Nicholas II during the
February Revolution of 1917 in
Petrograd, many people in Ukraine wished to establish an autonomous Ukrainian Republic. During a period of the
Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1923, many factions claiming themselves governments of the newly born republic were formed, each with supporters and opponents. The two most prominent of them were an independent government in
Kiev called the
Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) and a
Soviet Russia-aligned government in
Kharkov called the
Ukrainian Soviet Republic (USR). The Kiev-based UNR was internationally recognized and supported by the
Central Powers following the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, whereas the Kharkov-based USR was solely supported by the Soviet Russian forces, while neither the UNR nor the USR were explicitly supported by the
White Russian forces that remained, although there were attempts to establish cooperation during the closing stages of the war with the former.
Early Soviet governments Immediately after the
October Revolution in
Petrograd, Bolsheviks instigated the
Kiev Bolshevik Uprising to support the revolution and secure Kiev. Due to a lack of adequate support from the local population and governing anti-communist
Central Rada, however, the Kiev Bolshevik group split. Most moved to
Kharkov and received the support of the eastern Ukrainian cities and industrial centers. Later, this move was regarded as a mistake by some of the
People's Commissars (
Yevgenia Bosch). They issued an ultimatum to the Central Rada on 17 December to recognise the
Soviet government of which the Rada was very critical. The Bolsheviks convened a separate congress and declared the first Soviet Republic of Ukraine on 24 December 1917 claiming the
Central Rada and its supporters outlaws that need to be eradicated. The conflict between the two competing governments, known as the
Ukrainian–Soviet War, was part of the ongoing
Russian Civil War, as well as the
Ukrainian War of Independence. The government of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was founded on 24–25 December 1917. In its publications, it named itself either the Republic of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies or the
Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets. The 1917 republic was only recognised by another non-recognised country, the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. Warfare ensued against the Ukrainian People's Republic for the installation of the Soviet regime in the country, and with the direct support from
Soviet Russia the Ukrainian National forces were practically overrun. The government of Ukraine appealed to foreign capitals, finding support in the face of the Central Powers as the others refused to recognise it. With the signing of the
Brest-Litovsk Treaty by Russia, the Russian SFSR yielded all the captured Ukrainian territory as the Bolsheviks were forced out of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets was eventually dissolved. In July 1918, the former members of the government formed the
Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, the constituent assembly of which took place in
Moscow. With the defeat of the Central Powers in
World War I, the
Bolsheviks resumed its hostilities towards the Ukrainian People's Republic fighting for Ukrainian independence and organised another Soviet Ukrainian government. The
Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine was created on November 28, 1918, in
Kursk, with its initial seat being located in the city of
Sudzha. On 10 March 1919, the
Third All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets ratified the
Constitution of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in Kharkiv. A group of three thousand workers were dispatched from Russia to take grain from local farms to feed Russian cities and were met with resistance. The Ukrainian language was also censured from administrative and educational use. Eventually fighting both White forces in the east and Ukrainian forces in the west,
Lenin ordered the liquidation of the second Soviet Ukrainian government in August 1919.
Incorporation into the Soviet Union Formally a sovereign republic until 1922, in view of some historians Soviet Ukraine de-facto came under control of Soviet Russia already in the course of the Civil War. In mid-1919, all republican organs responsible for the management of defence, economy, finance, transport and communications were subordinated to Russia's
people's commissariats. After the creation of the
Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine in Moscow, a third Ukrainian Soviet government was formed on 21 December 1919 that initiated new hostilities against Ukrainian nationalists as they lost their military support from the defeated Central Powers. Eventually, the
Red Army ended up controlling much of the Ukrainian territory after the Polish-Soviet
Peace of Riga. The war ended with the territory of pro-independence Ukrainian People's Republic being annexed into a new Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, and western Ukraine being annexed into the
Second Polish Republic. In 1920–1921 Russia, Ukraine and several other Soviet republics officially established
federative ties. In 1921 discussions emerged between two groups of the Bolshevik Party in relation to the nature of relations between Russia and other republics. One fraction, represented by
Stalin, considered it necessary to incorporate the latter as federal subjects of Russia, meanwhile their opponents, led by
Volodymyr Zatonsky, opposed Russian dominance and supported an equal federation. Meanwhile central Soviet ministries made attempts to establish direct control over enterprises in Ukraine, without consulting the republican government in Kharkiv, which led to protests from local authorities. Following Lenin's sickness, in 1922 Stalin proposed a project of the republics' incorporation into Soviet Russia on the rights of autonomies. However, Lenin opposed that idea, and promoted formal equality of republics including Russia, with simultaneous preservation of Moscow's central control. As a result, Soviet Russia's institutions attained the status of all-Union organs, achieving a higher status than organs of other republics. On 30 December 1922, along with the
Russian,
Byelorussian and
Transcaucasian republics, the Ukrainian SSR became one of the founding members of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The
1924 Constitution of the Soviet Union formalized this act and declared the state to be based on the principles of
dictatorship of the proletariat. File:Bolsheviks Kharkov Ukraine anrc 04262a.jpg|Bolshevik commissars in Ukraine (1919) File:Map of Ukraine for Paris Peace Conference.jpg|Territories claimed by the
Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–1920) File:Europe location UkrSSR 1922.png|Boundaries of the Ukrainian SSR (1922) File:Soviet Russia in Europe in 1921.jpg|Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine in 1921
Interwar years: 1922–1939 New Economic Policy The policies of
War Communism led to the devastation of Ukraine's economy and decline of
agriculture, provoking numerous peasant uprisings against Bolshevik authorities, which had to be suppressed with the use of troops of the
Red Army. The collapse in the agrarian sphere produced a detrimental effect on the whole economy, and by early 1921 only 4,060 of more than 10,000 industrial enterprises in Ukraine continued their operations. This, in its turn, contributed to the collapse of transport system, with railways coming to a standstill. Even personnel of the Red Army stationed in Ukraine suffered from famine and lack of goods. In these circumstances, central authorities of the
Bolshevik Party were forced to change their approach to the economy. The discussions on the introduction of
New Economic Policy (NEP), which started in Moscow cabinets during the early months of 1921, were initially met with skepticism by Ukrainian Communist leadership, which saw
prodrazvyorstka as an essential component in the reconstruction of economy. After the
10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), in May 1921 a council of Ukrainian party members in Kharkiv supported the transition to NEP despite some local opposition. A big role in that decision was played by massive peasant unrest. NEP didn't produce any significant changes in the Communist doctrine, but served as a tactical step in order to facilitate the exchange of goods between rural areas and the city. The introduction of the new system signified the failure of the Bolsheviks to rebuild agriculture according to Communist principles. A severe
drought hit
Southern Ukraine throughout 1921, at the peak of the Soviet government's campaign of food requisitions from peasants. Unrealistic grain production quotas led to the refusal of peasants to give up their grain, as a result of which authorities answered with terror, including taking of hostages and mass shootings. Despite the visible food problems in Ukraine, the Bolsheviks refused to appeal for international help, concentrating their attention on the
Volga region. As a result, a
major famine engulfed Southern Ukraine and the
Donbas, lasting until 1923. The lack of food resulted in a decline of insurgent activities against Soviet authorities, with some historians viewing the requisitions of food by the government as the first instance of terror through hunger in Ukraine.
Strengthening of Communist rule In order to increase its influence in regions dominated by non-Russian ethnic groups, the Bolshevik Party leadership developed the program of
korenizatsiya, which provided development of local languages and cultures with simultaneous preservation of centralized control. In Ukrainian SSR during the 1920s this process took the form of
Ukrainization and involved promoting the use and the social status of the Ukrainian language and the elevation of ethnic Ukrainians to leadership positions. These policies provided Ukrainians an impression of national sovereignty, without abandoning the Communist Party's dictatorial rule. The "nationalization" of Soviet bureaucracy also contributed to an increased efficiency of management, strengthening the regime. At the same time, Soviet authorities clearly distinguished between "Communist" and "
Petliurite" Ukrainization, seeing the latter as a threat to state unity. The campaign of Ukrainization aimed to prove the genuine character of Soviet rule in Ukraine and dispel the image of the regime as an alien occupying force. Its course was accelerated by power struggles in the
Kremlin following the death of Lenin, which made it necessary for supreme party leadership to attain support of the Ukrainian society. At the same time, Russian preserved its role as the language of interethnic communication, with Russians remaining de-facto title nation of the Soviet Union. Ukrainization was halted in 1932-1933, when Stalin's regime proclaimed Ukrainian "
bourgeois nationalism" to be the chief threat to Soviet unity. A major role in Soviet Ukraine's internal affairs during the 1920s was played by the
Cheka secret police and its successor
OGPU (GPU). Directly subordinated to the
Central Committee, those organs functioned as a "state within a state" and were tasked with supporting the party's monopoly on all levels of government and economy. To eliminate opposition to the regime, the secret police employed methods of public terror through
show trials, which were an annual occurrence in Ukraine during that period. Chekists were independent from local institutions of government and reported directly to Moscow, which allowed the central government to establish stricter control over affairs in the regions. The head of GPU's Ukrainian branch simultaneously served as the chief envoy of Russian GPU in Ukraine. The secret police also had its own military force, and its departments functioned in the Red Army and in transport enterprises. GPU regularly delivered reports to Ukrainian party leadership, informing them about popular attitudes to the Soviet regime and organizing fictitious "anti-Soviet" organizations in order to eliminate political opponents. One of the most prominent of such "organizations" was the "
Union for the Freedom of Ukraine".
Collectivization and Holodomor In 1929–1930 a new campaign of grain requisition from peasants was initiated as part of the Soviet regime's
collectivization policies. Simultaneously, tens of thousands of Ukrainians were
deported in course of
dekulakization, causing serious damage to the agricultural workforce. The creation of
collective farms led to the
pauperization of Ukrainian peasantry and led to cases of armed resistance in various parts of the country. In December 1930
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine adopted a decision to introduce additional taxes and grain requisitions for those villagers who refused to collectivize. As a result, over 70% peasant households in Soviet Ukraine had entered collective farms by late 1932. , 1933 The aggressive agricultural policies of Stalin's regime resulted in one of the largest national catastrophes in the modern history for the
Ukrainian nation. A famine known as the
Holodomor caused a direct loss of human life estimated between 2.6 million to 10 million. The famine was exacerbated by the fact, that grain storages in Soviet Ukraine were controlled by the Soviet Union's central authorities. In addition, transportation of private grain was outlawed, and peasants from famine-affected areas leaving Ukraine to buy goods in other regions of the USSR were turned back by guards. The
Law of Spikelets, adopted by the
Council of People's Commissars on 7 August 1932, introduced
execution by firing squad for appropriation of collective farms' property, including grain from uncultivated fields. Along with mass requisitions of grain, the employment of such methods in Ukraine had a political nature, aiming to eliminate all resistance to the central government. Weakened by the campaign of dekulakization and confiscation of weapons by the Cheka, Ukrainian peasants were unable to effectively resist the regime's policies. The campaign of government terror against rural inhabitants relied on part of the local cadres, which received preferential treatment, including access to food supplies. The practice of
blacklisting resulted in a
blockade of numerous settlements, whose inhabitants were deprived of all food and died of starvation. According to a telegram sent by Stalin on 1 January 1933 to Ukrainian Communist leadership, all peasants suspected of hiding grain were to have their entire property, including food products, confiscated. Any mention of the famine was banned by Soviet authorities until the 1980s. Some scholars and the
World Congress of Free Ukrainians assert that the famine was
an act of genocide. The
International Commission of Inquiry Into the 1932–1933 Famine in Ukraine found no evidence that the famine was part of a preconceived plan to starve Ukrainians, and concluded in 1990 that the famine was caused by a combination of factors, including Soviet policies of compulsory grain requisitions, forced
collectivization,
dekulakization, and
Russification. The General Assembly of the UN has stopped shy of recognizing the Holodomor as genocide, calling it a "great tragedy" as a compromise between tense positions of United Kingdom, United States, Russia, and Ukraine on the matter, while some nations went on to
individually categorize it as genocide, including France, Germany, and the United States after the 2022
Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Stalinist terror Beginning from the late 1920s, Stalin's dictatorial regime introduced a system of total and permanent
terror against perceived "remnants of ruling classes", "
counterrevolutionaries", "
enemies of the people", "saboteurs", spies and even party members. Even supporters of the regime were persecuted for mere criticism of some of its practices. In order to physically liquidate potential dissenters, GPU and its successor
NKVD was involved in creation of fictional "counterrevolutionary organizations", with people accused of participating in them being put on trial and executed. Among the first groups to become victims of Stalinist terror were
National Communists, followed by technical specialists and engineers (
Shakhty Trial) and members of
intelligentsia ("Union for the Freedom of Ukraine"). As a result of government persecution, several prominent Ukrainian Communists were driven to
suicide, among them
Mykola Khvylyovy,
Mykola Skrypnyk and
Panas Liubchenko. Millions of Ukrainians ended up in
concentration camps, where they were used as cheap labour force, and hundreds of thousands became victims of mass executions, such as
Vinnytsia massacre. Mass terror continued until 1938, reaching
its peak during the tenure of
Nikolay Yezhov. In Ukraine its main executors were security officers
Martin Latsis and
Vsevolod Balitsky, as well as party secretaries
Pavel Postyshev and
Nikita Khrushchev. In 1954 Ukraine also became a member of
UNESCO.
Soviet policies and resistance Despite a severe drought in the country, in 1946 Soviet authorities refused to decrease the planned amounts of harvest in Ukraine, and signed agreements on grain exports to Poland,
France,
Bulgaria, Romania and Czechoslovakia in order to support the local Comunist movements. As a result,
a new famine started in the Ukrainian province, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Unlike in 1933, relief to the affected areas was provided both by the Soviet authorities and by the
UNRRA. At the same time, in order to raise the productivity of agriculture, the Soviet central government adopted the
Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature, introduced community trials for unproductive farmers and attempted to increase the size of collective farms. In 1955 the party leadership adopted a resolution, ordering local authorities to dispatch 30,000 young specialists for work in collective farms and
sovkhozes. Starting from 1954, hundreds of thousands of agricultural workers were sent to the
Kazakh SSR as part of
Nikita Khrushchev's
Virgin Lands campaign. Despite the Soviet occupation and incorporation of Western Ukraine during WW2,
Anti-Soviet resistance by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the region continued for a decade after the war's end. In order to break the insurgency, Soviet authorities sent regular troops and NKVD formations in order to establish a blockade of rebel areas. Nevertheless, throughout 1946 OUN and UPA engaged in 1619 actions against the regime and its forces. By 1949, the base of insurgency had been significantly damaged as a result of special operations, deportations and collectivization, and UPA commander Roman Shukhevych ordered the incorporation of all rebel units into the structure of OUN-B. On 5 March 1950 Shukhevych was killed in battle in the village of Bilohorshcha near Lviv following a search operation led by
Pavel Sudoplatov. During the next two years,
MGB managed to eliminate several high-ranked rebels by infiltrating the underground organization. In May 1954
Vasyl Kuk, the last commander of UPA, was captured by Soviet authorities. After that, the nationalist insurgency gradually ceased, although minor operations against the rebels continued until 1960.
Khrushchev and Brezhnev: 1953–1982 Khrushchev Thaw , 1954, in honour of the 300th anniversary of Ukraine re-unification with Russia (Soviet name for the
Pereiaslav Agreement), ). When Stalin died on 5 March 1953, the
collective leadership of Khrushchev,
Georgy Malenkov,
Vyacheslav Molotov and
Lavrentiy Beria took power and a period of
de-Stalinization began. Change came as early as 1953, when officials were allowed to criticise Stalin's policy of
russification. The Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) openly criticised Stalin's russification policies in a meeting in June 1953. On 4 June 1953,
Aleksey Kirichenko succeeded
Leonid Melnikov as First Secretary of the CPU; this was significant since Kyrychenko was the first ethnic Ukrainian to lead the CPU since the 1920s. The policy of de-Stalinization took two main features, that of centralisation and decentralisation from the centre. In February 1954, the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR)
transferred Crimea to Ukraine during the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of Ukraine's reunification with Russia, Soviet term for the
Pereiaslav Agreement (), a treaty which brought Ukraine under Russian rule three centuries before. The massive festivities lasted throughout 1954, aiming to prove the old and brotherly love between
Ukrainians and
Russians, and depict the Soviet Union as a "family of nations"; it was also a way of legitimising
Marxism–Leninism. The
"Thaw"the policy of deliberate liberalisationwas characterised by four points: amnesty for some convicted of state crime during the war or the immediate post-war years; amnesties for one-third of those convicted of state crime during Stalin's rule; the establishment of the first Ukrainian mission to the United Nations in 1958; and the steady increase of Ukrainians in the rank of the CPU and government of the Ukrainian SSR. Not only were the majority of CPU Central Committee and Politburo members ethnic Ukrainians, three-quarters of the highest ranking party and state officials were ethnic Ukrainians too. The policy of partial
Ukrainisation also led to a cultural thaw within Ukraine. Late 1950s saw the emergence of Ukraine's
dissident movement. In 1958
Levko Lukianenko established the underground "Ukrainian Workers' and Peasants' Union", whose members were arrested three years later and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The process against the organization was publicized in foreign media through the efforts of
Ivan Svitlychnyi.
Brezhnev era were either born or raised in Ukraine:
Nikita Khrushchev and
Leonid Brezhnev (depicted here together). In October 1964, Khrushchev was deposed by a joint Central Committee and Politburo plenum and succeeded by another collective leadership, this time led by
Leonid Brezhnev, born in Ukraine, as First Secretary and
Alexei Kosygin as
Chairman of the
Council of Ministers. Brezhnev's rule would be marked by social and economic stagnation. The new regime introduced the policy of
rastsvet,
sblizhenie and
sliianie ("flowering", "drawing together" and "merging"/"fusion"), which was the policy of uniting the different Soviet nationalities into one
Soviet nationality by merging the best elements of each nationality into the new one. This policy turned out to be, in fact, the reintroduction of the
Russification. Brezhnev's tenure saw the gradual elimination of previously established distinctions between party oligarchy and the
nomenklatura. During its later years, the regime established by Brezhnev and his circle of aging Communist party officials was frequently described as a
gerontocracy. Brezhnev's ascent to leadership was widely seen as a sign of restoration of
Stalinist practices in Soviet politics, and produced hostile attitudes among Ukrainian intelligentsia. In order to suppress the opposition, in September 1965
First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine Petro Shelest ordered the
KGB to perform
a series of arrests against prominent dissdents. During the operation, numerous copies of
samizdat literature were confiscated. After learning about the arrests,
Ivan Dziuba and
Viacheslav Chornovil organized Ukraine's first
public protest in decades, which took place during the screening of
Sergei Parajanov's film
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors in Kyiv's Ukraina cinema. In 1968 Dziuba's
pamphlet Internationalism or Russification?, protesting against Russian
chauvinism, was published by
Suchasnist publishing house in
Munich, spreading awareness about Ukrainian intellectual resistance both in Ukraine and abroad. Both Dziuba and Chornovil never hid their dissident views, but instead openly contacted Soviet Ukraine's governing circles, demanding political change. After spending three years in imprisonment for his activities, in 1970 Chornovil started publishing
The Ukrainian Herald, which chronicled government repressions against Ukrainian activists. In January 1972
a new massive campaign against Ukrainian dissidents was started by authorities, producing significant damage to the opposition movement. However, following the
Helsinki Accords of 1975, a new wave of dissident activities started in form of the
Human rights movement. In November 1976 the
Ukrainian Helsinki Group was established in Kyiv by
Mykola Rudenko,
Oles Berdnyk,
Petro Hryhorenko,
Ivan Kandyba, Levko Lukianenko and several other activists. Soviet authorities started an immediate crackdown on the group, and in the following years many of its members were arrested, while others, such as Hryhorenko and
Leonid Plyushch, were forced to emigrate and continued the organization's activities abroad. Several political prisoners, including
Oleksa Tykhy,
Yuriy Lytvyn and
Vasyl Stus, died in imprisonment.
Gorbachev to independence: 1985–1991 Liberalization in Kyiv 5 days after the Chernobyl disaster, 1 May 1986 Gorbachev's policies of
perestroika and
glasnost (English:
restructuring and
openness) failed to reach Ukraine as early as other Soviet republics because of the influence of
Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, a conservative communist appointed by Brezhnev and the First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party. The
Chernobyl disaster of 1986, the russification policies, and the apparent social and economic stagnation led many Ukrainians to oppose Soviet rule. Gorbachev's policy of
perestroika was also never introduced into practice, 95 percent of industry and agriculture was still owned by the Soviet state in 1990. The talk of reform, but the lack of introducing reform into practice, led to confusion which in turn evolved into opposition to the Soviet state itself. The policy of
glasnost, which ended
state censorship, led the
Ukrainian diaspora to reconnect with their compatriots in Ukraine, the revitalisation of religious practices by destroying the monopoly of the
Russian Orthodox Church and led to the establishment of several opposition pamphlets, journals and newspapers. Glasnost policies resulted in the publication of previously classified information on Soviet history, including materials on the Holodomor of 1932–1933 and produced a significant change in outlooks of the Ukrainian elite. Among prominent people who became disillusioned with the Soviet regime were Ukrainian Central Committee member
Leonid Kravchuk and poet
Dmytro Pavlychko, both of whom adopted positions critical of Moscow's Communist rule. The issue of Holodomor was first mentioned on the highest level in July 1988 during
Borys Oliynyk's speech at the 19th all-Union Party Conference. In his interview given in November of the same year, writer
Yuriy Shcherbak called the famine an element of terror against the Ukrainian national liberation movement. In 1990 the Institute of Party History of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine published a collection of documents dedicated to the famine, which was approved by first secretary
Volodymyr Ivashko. Simultaneously, publication of previously banned works on Ukrainian history, including
Mykhailo Hrushevsky's
History of Ukraine-Rus, texts by
Dmytro Yavornytsky and
Mykhailo Drahomanov, memoirs of
Volodymyr Vynnychenko and the
History of Ruthenians was initiated by a Ukrainian party commission.
Rise of civil society The beginning of Perestroika was signified by the emergence of Soviet Ukraine's first non-government civic organizations. The first of them, the
Ukrainian Culturological Club and the
Lion's Society, were establihsed in 1987 by youth representatives and dissidents. A big role after the Chernobyl Disaster was played by the
ecology movement. In March 1988 former members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group established the
Ukrainian Helsinki Union under the leadership of Levko Lukianenko, who was released from prison later that year. In 1987
The Ukrainian Herald resumed publishing after a 15-year pause, making it the first legal independent political publication in Ukraine. In February 1989 the Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society was established under the leadership of Dmytro Pavlychko. In October of the same year the Supreme Council of Ukrainian SSR adopted the
Law on Languages, which officially recognized Ukrainian as
state language. Starting from 1988, first mass demonstrations were organized by non-governmental organizations in several Ukrainian cities. Their participants voiced opposition to the suppression of Ukrainian language, condemned plans to construct new nuclear power plants and commemorated victims of the Holodomor and Stalinist repression. In summer 1989
miners' strikes engulfed
Donbas and the
Lviv-Volyn coal basin, with their participants demanding better working conditions and higher wages. On 8-10 September 1989 the constituent congress of the
People's Movement of Ukraine (Rukh) was organized in Kyiv, with
Ivan Drach being elected as its leader. The movement's program didn't contain demands for immediate proclamation of Ukraine's independence, but voiced support of reformist forces in the Communist Party. On 21 January 1990 Rukh activists organized a
human chain in memory of the 1919
Unification Act between the
Ukrainian People's Republic and
West Ukrainian People's Republic, during which hundreds of thousands of participants connected Kyiv with
Lviv and
Ivano-Frankivsk. By October 1990 the number of Rukh's activists had increased to 633,000, and it enjoyed support from over 5 million people.
Economic reforms in Kyiv, 1989 The Soviet
anti-alcohol campaign, initiated by Gorbachev in 1985, was widely perceived as a demonstration of the regime's incompetence and resulted in the spread of
drug addiction and destruction of valuable
vineyards in Crimea and Transcarpathia. Additionally, the increase of
moonshine production resulting from the government bans led to a deficit of
sugar in stores. Following a period of crackdown on private enterprise, in November 1986 Soviet authorities adopted the Law on Individual Labour Activities, which permitted the formation of
cooperatives, predominantly in the spheres of
catering and other services. By the late 1980s cooperatives in Ukraine employed 700,000 people and produced the value of almost 5 billion
rubles. Functioning in a
command economy system, cooperatives worked according to market laws and served as a school of
free enterprise for Soviet people. In 1989 a government commission headed by
Leonid Abalkin proposed to decrease state involvement in the economy and initiate a transition to
free market. Meanwhile, the increasing
devaluation of Soviet ruble led to the emergence of
barter relations between enterprises. In order to prevent outflow of goods, in late 1990 Ukrainian authorities introduced consumer
coupons for purchase of basic goods in the republic. On 3 August 1990 the
Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR adopted the Law on Economic Sovereignty, which gave Ukrainian authorities right to define the republic's strategy of economic development.
Establishment of sovereignty In March 1989
first free elections since
1917 took place in the Soviet Union. In Ukraine, the vote was notable due to the failure of several high-ranked Communist officials to get elected. Nevertheless, 87,8% of Ukraine's representatives in the
Congress of People's Deputies were members of the Communist Party. At the same time, CPSU ceased to be a de-facto state institution and was forced to compete on par with other political forces. Preparing for the
following elections to the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet, in November 1989 Ukrainian civic activists established the
Democratic Bloc, which included representatives of Rukh,
Memorial, Ukrainian Helsinki Union and other organizations. As a result of the elections on 4 March 1990, the bloc failed to achieve victory in most of Ukraine, but received an absolute majority of votes in Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil oblasts. The following months were marked with the establishment of first Ukrainian parties serving as an alternative to Communists: in April the
Ukrainian Republican Party was founded in Kyiv, and
Ukrainian Christian Democratic Party was created in Lviv. In June the
Liberal Democratic Party of Ukraine organized its foundational congress in
Kyiv University, and in September the
Democratic Party of Ukraine was organized in
Terebovlia. During the same month, the
Green Party of Ukraine was officially established. Still, by early 1991 all new parties included only 30,000 members in comparison to almost 3 million people in the rows of the Communist Party of Ukraine. In February 1990 the "Democratic Platform" of the Communist Party of Ukraine constituted itself at a congress in Kharkiv. Its program promoted the abandonment of Communist ideological monopoly and supported transformation of the organization into a regular parliamentary party. After the platform failed to get support of the Central Committee, many of its members entered the
Party of Democratic Revival of Ukraine, which constituted itself in December 1990. The opening of Ukraine's newly elected Supreme Council on 15 May 1990 was marked by fierce opposition between the Communist majority and the fraction of Democratic Bloc, known as "People's Council". In order to accommodate the opposition, majority leader
Oleksandr Moroz allowed its representatives to establish control over seven parliamentary commissions. The ongoing power struggle between Gorbachev and
Boris Yeltsin in Moscow led to the adoption of pro-
sovereignty positions by many mebers of Ukrainian Communist nomenklatura. Following
the adoption of sovereignty declarations by parliaments of several Soviet republics, on 16 July 1990 the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine adopted its own
Declaration of State Sovereignty, which included notions of equality and self-sufficiency in spheres of interior and foreign affairs, economy, finance and culture, proclaimed the right of free development for all ethnicities inhabiting Ukraine, and issued claims on own armed forces, police and security services. On 18 July Leonid Kravchuk was elected new head of the Supreme Council, replacing Volodymyr Ivashko. On 10 October, the parliament adopted a resolution on the return of all Ukrainian
conscripts from other republics of the Soviet Union in order to continue their service in Ukraine.
Downfall of the Communist regime Following the declarations of sovereignty by republics, Gorbachev and his supporters produced a draft of the
New Union Treaty, which envisioned the republics as sovereign entities, but recognized the supremacy of the Union's law over local legislation. Rukh members opposed that project and demanded that the Supreme Council establish bilateral relations with Ukraine's neighbours. The unwillingness of the Supreme Council to introduce promised reforms led to a wave of dissatisfaction in the society, and in October 1990 a
hunger strike organized by students in Kyiv forced the parliament to remove
Vitaliy Masol from the post of prime minister, replacing him with
Vitold Fokin. On 23 October the Supreme Soviet abolished
Article 6 of the Ukrainian Soviet constitution. Another important reform provided more authonomy to local government. On 17 March 1991 a
referendum on the preservation of the Soviet Union took place simultaneously with an all-Ukrainian survey organized by the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine in respect to the Declaration of State Sovereignty. Both the question on the preservation of USSR and the question on Ukraine's sovereignty inside of the union received a positive answer from the majority of voters. On 3 July 1991 the Supreme Council introduced the title of
President of Ukraine and adopted election for that post for 1 December. , as printed on the ballot for the
referendum on 1 December 1991 Following the start of the
August Coup in Moscow on 19 August 1991,
Soviet Army commander
Valentin Varennikov was dispatched to Kyiv, and informed the Supreme Soviet that any attempts to disregard the decisions of the
State Emergency Committee would lead to the introduction of
martial law in the republic. Varennikov's declaration was delivered in presence of Ukrainian First Secretary
Stanislav Hurenko and a number of generals. Speaking on television on the same day, Leonid Kravchuk declared his support for constitutional norms and democracy, warning against bloodshed, but didn't adopt a clear position. In response to the coup, democratic opposition organized protest meetings in a number of cities. After receiving information about the indecision of coup organizers in Moscow, on 20 August Kravchuk declared his intention to protect Ukraine's sovereignty. On the same day, Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Ukriane refused to recognize orders of the State Emergency Committee. Simultaneously, regional administrations in several Ukrainian regions and Crimea recognized the committee's authority under the influence of local Communists. Following the coup's failure, on 23 August the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine issued an official condemnation of the event. On 24 August 1991, on the proposal of
Ihor Yukhnovskyi, the Supreme Soviet adopted the
Declaration of Independence of Ukraine and renamed the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as
Ukraine. On 26 August the activities of the Communist Party of Ukraine were suspended, and four days later the party was banned due to its members' participation in the coup attempt. However, former Communists remained active in political life and soon reorganized themselves into new political organizations, such as the
Socialist Party of Ukraine.
Final independence A
referendum on independence was held in Ukraine on 1 December 1991. 92.3% of voters voted for independence nationwide. The referendum carried in the majority of all oblasts, including
Crimea where 54% voted for independence, and those in
Eastern Ukraine where more than 80% voted for independence. In the
1991 Ukrainian presidential election held on the same day as the independence referendum, 62 percent of voters voted for Verkhovna Rada chairman
Leonid Kravchuk, who had been vested with presidential powers since the Supreme Soviet's declaration of independence. Kravchuk and the other presidential candidates all supported independence and campaigned for a “yes” vote in the independence referendum. For most of the Soviet Union's existence, Ukraine had been second only to Russia in economic and political power, and its secession ended any realistic chance of the Soviet Union staying together even on a limited scale. 8 December 1991, Kravchuk joined his Russian and Belarusian counterparts in signing the
Belovezh Accords, which declared that the Soviet Union had effectively ceased to exist and founded the
Commonwealth of Independent States as a quasi-replacement. On 21 December 1991, all the former Soviet republics (except Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania and Latvia) signed the
Alma-Ata Protocol which reiterated that the Soviet Union had functionally ceased to exist and formally established the CIS. The Soviet Union formally dissolved on 26 December 1991. == Politics and government ==