The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, abbreviated as the Ukrainian SSR, UkrSSR, UkSSR and also known as Soviet Ukraine or just Ukraine, was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991. Under the Soviet one-party model, the Ukrainian SSR was governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union through its republican branch, the Communist Party of Ukraine.
The first iterations of the Ukrainian SSR were established during the Russian Revolution, particularly after the Bolshevik Revolution. The outbreak of the Ukrainian–Soviet War in the former Russian Empire saw the Bolsheviks defeat the independent Ukrainian People's Republic, during the conflict against which they founded the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets, which was governed by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), in December 1917; it was later succeeded by the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1918. Simultaneously with the Russian Civil War, the Ukrainian War of Independence was being fought among the different Ukrainian republics founded by Ukrainian nationalists, Ukrainian anarchists, and Ukrainian separatists – primarily against Soviet Russia and the Ukrainian SSR, with either help or opposition from neighbouring states. In 1922, it was one of four Soviet republics (with the Russian SFSR, the Byelorussian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR) that signed the Treaty on the Creation of the Soviet Union. As a Soviet quasi-state, the Ukrainian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations in 1945 alongside the Byelorussian SSR, in spite of the fact that they were also legally represented by the Soviet Union in foreign affairs. Upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine declared independence and became the present-day independent state of Ukraine.
The republic's borders changed many times, with a general trend toward acquiring lands with ethnic Ukrainian population majority, and losing lands with other ethnic majorities. A significant portion of what is now western Ukraine was gained via the Soviet-German Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, with the annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia in 1939, significant portions of Romania in 1940, and Carpathian Ruthenia in Czechoslovakia in 1945. From the 1919 establishment of the Ukrainian SSR until 1934, the city of Kharkov served as its capital; however, the republic's seat of government was subsequently relocated in 1934 to the city of Kiev, the historic Ukrainian capital, and remained at Kiev for the remainder of its existence.
Geographically, the Ukrainian SSR was situated in Eastern Europe, to the north of the Black Sea, and was bordered by the Soviet republics of Moldavia (since 1940), Byelorussia, and Russia, and the countries of Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. The republic's border with Czechoslovakia formed the Soviet Union's westernmost border point. According to the 1989 Soviet census, the republic of Ukraine had a population of 51,706,746 (second after Russia).Hanna H. Starostenko, "Economic and Ecological Factors of Transformations in Demographic Process in Ukraine" , Uktraine Magazine No. 2, 1998.
Name
The original names of the republic in 1919 were both Ukraine1919 Constitution of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (, abbreviated ). After the ratification of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, full official names of all Soviet republics were changed, transposing the second (socialist) and third (sovietskaya in Russian or radianska in Ukrainian) words. In accordance, on 5 December 1936, the 8th Extraordinary Congress Soviets in Soviet Union changed the name of the republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was ratified by the 14th Extraordinary Congress of Soviets in Ukrainian SSR on 31 January 1937.
History
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.
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 the 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.