How did the name “Ukraine” come about? When was Ukraine formed as a separate state? How was the Ukrainian state formed and when?
“Ukrainian statehood” – what is it? And accordingly, the struggle for the restoration of “Ukrainian statehood” is what and the struggle for what? Of course, besides the fact that this is a tragedy, because it sheds streams of blood and plunges people into poverty, on the one hand, and besides the fact that this is vaudeville - because it cannot but cause ridicule as those who understood what was happening - before, and so is almost the entire world, including the patrons of this drama, today.
A conglomerate of political groups, which seized power in Kyiv with the support of a coalition of Western states, speaks of its sovereignty, statehood and the right to the inviolability of its borders and the integrity of its territory.
At the same time, these groups claim the inviolability of their territory within the borders of the Ukrainian SSR, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic - within the borders of 1985-91, that is, de facto, continuity with the Ukrainian SSR. However, they themselves proclaim their continuity not with it, but with the “Ukrainian state”, proclaimed by Bandera after the invasion of the USSR by the army of the Third Reich, in the territory occupied by the forces of the Third Reich, and under the auspices of the Third Reich.
However, the proclaimed self-education was liquidated a few days after its emergence. That is, the current Kiev leadership officially claims continuity with an entity that has never existed either legally or in fact - and has had no definite and minimally established territory.
That is, there is a certain postmodern clownery: “We are the successors of what did not exist, but we claim the inheritance of what was.”
Another object of historical sympathies of the current Kiev government is the “Ukrainian People’s Republic,” which appeared and disappeared in the 1918-1920s in the intervals between the establishment of control over the region by Germany, the High Command of the South of Russia (Denikin), and the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.
The UPR declared independence on January 22, 1918 and was able to briefly confirm it, as a result of the support of Germany and the conclusion of a separate agreement with it on February 9, 1918 (even before the signing of the Brest Peace Treaty, which led to humiliating conditions for Soviet Russia), but already on April 28 that same year, its authorities were dispersed by a German patrol, and power was transferred to the Hetmanate and the “Ukrainian State”. After the fall of the hetman, the UPR was again proclaimed, in January 1919 it declared war on Soviet Russia - and by February 1919 it was defeated. In the summer of 19, taking advantage of Denikin’s offensive, Petliura’s troops managed to enter Kiev, but a day later they were thrown out of there by the regiments of the All-Russian Kyrgyz Republic, which refused to conduct any negotiations with the UPR and the Directory at all. Petliura fled to Poland. He practically recognized vassal dependence on it and concluded an agreement on a joint struggle with Soviet Russia on the terms of transferring the territory of Western Ukraine to the new sovereign. Thus, after the end of the war, the UPR ceased to exist.
That is, one can talk about its “state existence” only in short periods from February to April 1918 (under the patronage of Germany), from November 1918 to February 1919 - while the Ukrainian Soviet Republic eliminated the consequences of the German occupation, a short period in the summer of 19, in gaps between the power of the Soviet Republic and the power of the All-Russian Union of Yugoslavia - and not for long in the summer of 1919 under the patronage of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. That is, it has always, in one way or another, been a product of either the invasion of foreign armies, or various kinds of confrontations within Russia.
But in general, that’s not the point. It is unlikely that anyone can be attracted to the role of historical successors of this or that local ataman during times of great historical transformations.
Ukrainian statehood, if it ever existed, was only during the times of the Old Russian state and Kievan Rus. But then it hardly occurred to anyone to call this statehood “Ukrainian”.
This ancient “Kiev statehood” fell in the battle on the Irpen River, after which the Principality of Kiev had completely lost its sovereignty, and the Olgerdovichs, who were installed as reigning princes of Lithuania and the kings of Poland and were their vassals, were established on its throne. And in 1471, the Principality of Kiev itself disappeared.
That is, the Kiev statehood fell, unable to defend itself, during the era of the Horde invasion. The Kiev region and the Dnieper region returned to Russia only at the end of the 17th century, and restored their own statehood only in 1918.
And here two competing tendencies and new traditions are born.
One is the tradition of Soviet Ukraine within the USSR, a single union state, as its system-forming part (representatives of the Ukrainian SSR led the Union for 28 of the 70 years of its history from 1954 to 1982, representatives of the RSFSR - for only 16 years - from 1922 to 1929 and from 1983 to 1991.
The second is the tradition of the nationalist Ukrainian People's Republic, which formally appealed to “independence”, but in reality has always been a kind of vassalage of either Germany, as in 1918, or Poland, as in 1918-19, and again Germany in 1941. An attempt to gain “independence” "After secession from the USSR, it ultimately ended in the same way: first, a craving for vassalage of the European Union from mid-1995 to February 2014, and after February 2014, a real vassalage in relation to the United States.
The prehistory or history of “Ukrainian statehood” can be considered those times when it existed in a single state with the rest of the Russian lands, before the Horde invasion, after liberation from Polish domination from the 17th century to 1917, after the October Revolution and the Civil War.
Always, when “Ukrainian statehood” tried to assert its exclusivity and oppose itself to the unification of Russian, Russian, Soviet territories, it fell into decay, lost sovereignty and acquired vassal and colonial status.
In this regard, “Ukrainian Independence” is generally a historical simulacrum, which in reality was only a kind of instrument in the struggle of Russia’s competitors against historical Russia.
And if it became a reality, it was only through the forces of an external aggressor, who speculated on the complexes of resentment of the people, who actually once became the basis for the creation of the greatest power, but due to the historical drama, spent several hundred years of its history in isolation from this great power, and found itself part of it. , as it might seem, not its core, but its “Ukraine”.
“Independent Ukraine” was born only when someone had the opportunity and strength to strike Russia as such. She was never truly “independent” and always rested on other people’s bayonets. It arose as a product of someone else's policy, when Russia, in one or another of its historical guises, weakened, and always collapsed as soon as Russia began to strengthen again.
Once upon a time, in general, Ukraine was called only “Russian lands under the rule of Poland,” and exactly the same in the twentieth century, what appropriated the name “independence” was only a form of occupation of Russian and Soviet lands by one or another aggressor who invaded the territory of historical Russia .
“Independence” is not at all a choice of fate made by free Ukrainians; “independence” is just a form of aggression against Russia.
Moreover, it is especially important to remember that, having used “independence” against Russia, its sovereigns immediately refuse to support it as soon as there is reason to believe that making peace with Russia turns out to be more profitable than waging war with it to the end.
And one of the reminders of this is the fate of Petliura’s “Ukrainian People’s Republic”: in May 1920, Petliura entered into an alliance with Poland and began a joint war with the Ukrainian SSR and Russia.
One can argue whether Soviet Russia or lordly Poland won this war, but one thing is indisputable: when they made peace, they divided among themselves all the territories claimed by the allied Poland and the “independent” UPR.
Someone may disagree, but the fate of the current “Independence” will be approximately the same, when the EU and the USA get tired and prefer to make peace with the Russian Federation.
Exactly like this. Unless the citizens of the current “Independence” have enough intelligence and will to get rid of the current Kyiv clownery, take power into their own hands and create a single union state with the Russian Federation.
That is, either Ukraine will rebel against its Western overlords and unite on an equal footing with the Russian Federation, or these “Western sovereigns” themselves will make peace with the Russian Federation, giving it the Ukraine they themselves devastated as a prize.
It was understandable without translation, but in Tsarist Russia it was considered a Polish toponym to designate part of the Lesser Poland Province.
As we see, on the maps of the Russian Empire in the 19th century it is not even an administrative unit, since it is assigned to the European part of Russia, as a region of the same type Russian Novorossiya, located to the south.
Ukraine and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
History of Ukraine's independence cannot in any way be connected with the pirate Zaporozhye Sich, since even after, independence of Ukraine was not part of the Cossacks' plans. I don't understand what this is because outskirts for the Poles, these lands became during the adoption of the Union of Lublin, when King Sigismund II Augustus in March 1569 issued a Universal about the seizure and transfer to the Kingdom of Poland of the cities of Kyiv, Podolia, Podlaskie and Volyn voivodeships. That's why it's strange to search independence of Ukraine(and Ukraine itself) earlier than 1569, although the word itself “ ukraina"was already in Polish. For the royal secretary Jana Zamoyskiego, a Pole by nationality, distant lands were truly Ukrainian, which he reflected in the title of the draft order, the title of which already in 1570 sounded like this: Porządek ze strony Niżowców i Ukraine . Of course there's a word here Ukraine used as a toponym (along with Niżowcow, which designated the land of the Sich Cossacks along the lower reaches of the Dnieper, but with the light hand of the future hetman the toponym Ukraine appears (though only) on European maps to indicate Ukrainian parts of the Lesser Poland Province as part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. |
It should be noted that it was not used on maps of Tsarist Russia, since it had its own - Little Russia, which designated the territory inhabited by several Rusyn nationalities. Therefore the topic is History of the formation of Ukraine- is acceptable, since it is considered as carriers of the Little Russian dialect of the Western Russian language as part of the all-Russian people.
Actually, I carried out all the reasoning just for the sake of this. to show that any ancient history of Ukraine in Russian language can only be written in line with the concept of the triune Russian people, since only then can one rely on historical categories - the Eastern Slavs, Kievan Rus, the Galician-Volyn principality, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where the real history of today's Ukrainian people took place.
Ukrainian statehood
The purpose of my article is much more modest, because history of the Ukrainian state fits within the previous century. I would like to warn readers that this introductory, therefore there are no specific details of the events, but only a brief history of the emergence of the state of Ukraine- a general excursion into, undertaken to find the causes of the present. I have no doubt that Ukraine as an independent state will remain because it is not needed for economic reasons. After all, today Russia needs people, not economically unpromising territories. I would like to keep my own.
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Brief history of the Ukrainian state
Article UKRAINE Wikipedia indicates TWO dates of Ukraine's independence:
- January 9 (22), 1918 as UPR from Soviet Russia;
- August 24, 1991 as Ukraine from the USSR,
which reflects a change in state ideology. According to the current Ukrainian authorities, the first declaration of independence of Ukraine happened January 9 (22), 1918 , when it was published, according to which the Ukrainian People's Republic became “independent, independent from anyone, a free sovereign state of the Ukrainian people.”
Actually, after comparison with the date of formation of the UPR itself - November 7 (20), 1917 , arises feeling of bewilderment. However, this incident is revealed simply - since independence of Ukraine is not counted from the moment of the emergence of the UPR itself, which is guilty of was autonomy as part of the Russian Republic, and exclusively with moment of rupture relations between the UPR and Soviet Russia (aka the first RSFSR).
Therefore the official history of Ukraine as a state(and the same thing in) - this is like a nationalistic version, which denies the seemingly natural option when date of independence of Ukraine was calculated from the moment of proclamation of the III Universal, in which, in fact, the creation was announced Ukrainian People's Republic(UNR) as an independent state entity while maintaining the federal connection with Russia.
However, in any case, keep a record of the history of the state Ukraine from the UPR doubtful for many reasons, since “ autonomous Ukraine“did not last long and was marked not only by the persecution of the revolutionary masses and complicity with the white movement, which by today’s Kiev standards can be passed off as a fight against Bolshevism, but the UPR concluded a separate Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the German bloc, thereby betraying the Entente countries.
“In exchange for military assistance against the Soviet troops, the UPR undertook to supply Germany and Austria-Hungary by July 31, 1918, a million tons of grain, 400 million eggs, up to 50 thousand tons of cattle meat, lard, sugar, hemp, manganese ore, etc. ."
However, the call for the occupation of Ukraine, later formalized as a military convention between the UPR, Germany and Austria-Hungary, must be recognized as a special act of “patriotism” of the Central Rada. At the end of February - beginning of March, German troops quickly occupied most of Ukraine, including Kiev, where the Central Rada returned after them, having fled from the Soviet troops to the German-Ukrainian front itself. The end of the UPR was also “glorious”, when on April 28, 1918, the Central Rada was dispersed by a German military patrol that entered the meeting hall.
So, news of the February Revolution in Petrograd reached Kyiv on March 3 (16), 1917. Power passed to provincial and district commissars appointed by the Provisional Government. If the Soviets had just begun to emerge, then the bourgeois political organizations turned out to be more active, so on the same day, March 3 (16), 1917, a meeting of representatives of political, social, cultural and professional organizations was held in Kiev, at which the creation of the Central Rada was announced. which, in accordance with the concept of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921, is called the pre-parliament.
"Already during the creation Central Rada Different opinions emerged regarding the future status of Ukraine. Supporters of independence (independent people), led by N. Mikhnovsky, advocated the immediate declaration of independence. The autonomists (V. Vinnychenko, D. Doroshenko and their supporters from the Partnership of Ukrainian Progressives) saw Ukraine autonomous republic in federation with Russia. Thus, two centers of national forces were formed with different views on the state-political organization of the future Ukraine.”
President of the UPR | In an effort (at a meeting on March 4 (17)) to avoid a split, the leaders agreed to create a united body, called Ukrainian Central Rada. On March 7 (20), leadership elections were held, as a result of which Mikhail Grushevsky, who was in exile in Moscow at that moment, was elected Chairman of the UCR (in absentia). Professor Mikhail Grushevsky was considered a recognized leader, therefore, after Grushevsky’s return, the Central Rada launched active activities, the goal of which was to obtain Ukraine autonomy. Moreover, M. S. Grushevsky himself immediately became a member of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (UPSR). |
The next step towards becoming an all-Ukrainian authority for the UCR was its holding of the All-Ukrainian National Congress on April 6 (19) - 8 (21), 1917, which re-elected the UCR as a representative body. In May, the UCR sends the Provisional Government formulations of the principles of national-territorial autonomy of Ukraine, and in response in July, the Provisional Government recognizes the General Secretariat of the Rada (under the leadership of V. Vinnychenko) as the highest administrative body of Ukraine, and agrees to the development by the Rada of a draft national-political statute of Ukraine. “On June 13 (26), 1917, A.F. Kerensky signed a protocol recognizing the General Secretariat of the Central Rada,” which is considered recognition national autonomy Ukraine. The proclamation of formal autonomy within the framework of a unified Russian state was reflected in the first two Universals, which explained to citizens the relationship between the Central Rada and the Provisional Government of Russia on the issue of the form of government.
However, in August 1917, the Provisional Government rejected the draft Statute of the General Secretariat developed by the UCR and replaced it with the “Temporary Instructions for the General Secretariat.” The fact is that the Provisional Government considered the proposals of the UCR to be beyond its authority and decided to postpone the final response until the Constituent Assembly.
Elections to the All-Ukrainian Constituent Assembly were scheduled for December 1917, until the election of which all power belonged to the Central Rada and the General Secretariat, but on October 25-26 (November 7-8, new style) during an armed uprising, the Provisional Government was overthrown. " November 7 (25), 1917 The Ukrainian Central Rada (UCR) approved the III Universal, in which it proclaimed the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), without formally severing federal ties with Russia. The power of the Central Rada extended to 9 provinces: Kyiv, Podolsk, Volyn, Chernigov, Poltava, Kharkov, Yekaterinoslav, Kherson and Tauride (northern counties, without Crimea). The fate of some regions and provinces adjacent to Russia (Kursk, Kholm, Voronezh, etc.) was supposed to be decided in the future.”
The Rada formally recognized the power of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Republic and was forced to coexist with the Ukrainian Soviets, but actively blocked the orders of the Council of People's Commissars and disarmed the Bolshevik units, which led to hostilities between Soviet Russia and the Ukrainian People's Republic. Bolshevik hopes for a peaceful “absorption” of the Ukrainian Central Rada First The All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets on December 4 (17) in Kyiv was not justified, since about 2,000 self-proclaimed deputies who supported the Central Rada showed up at the Congress from other parties.
Therefore, about 60 Bolshevik delegates from the Kiev Congress of Soviets and some of the delegates who supported them from other left parties (Ukrainian Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Ukrainian Social Democrats) - a total of 127 people - moved to Kharkov, where there was also dual power, since a large number of people gathered there number of Red Guards, and the day before Russian troops arrived under the command of Antonov-Ovseenko, directed against Kaledin’s forces on the Don.
December 12 (25), 1917 The congress in Kharkov announced that it was taking full power in Ukraine and depriving the Central Rada and the General Secretariat of their powers. The Ukrainian People's Republic that existed at that time was declared illegal, canceling all decisions of the Central Rada and declaring Ukraine a republic of Soviets as parts federal Russian Soviet republic, its original official name was Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets of Workers', Peasants', Soldiers' and Cossacks' Deputies. And on December 19, 1917 (January 1, 1918), the Council of People's Commissars of Soviet Russia (RSFSR) recognized the People's Secretariat of the UNRS as the only legitimate government of Ukraine.
“In December 1917 - January 1918, Soviet power was established in a number of industrial centers of Ukraine - Yekaterinoslav, Odessa, Nikolaev, and the Donbass. Until the end of January 1918, with the support of Russian Soviet troops and Red Guard detachments, the power of the Ukrainian Soviet government extended to the entire Left Bank, part of the right bank cities (Vinnitsa, Kamenets-Podolsky), Crimea.
At the same time, the position of the Central Rada itself in Kiev becomes precarious, since “On March 17 - 19, 1918, the 2nd All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets was held in Yekaterinoslav, which... united all Soviet formations and forces on the territory of Ukraine into a single Ukrainian Soviet Republic", which was considered an independent Soviet republic. On the night of January 25-26 (February 7-8), the Ukrainian government and the remnants of the UPR troops left Kiev along the Zhitomir highway, and on January 27 (February 9) Kyiv was taken by Soviet troops.
However, taking advantage of the unauthorized antics of Trotsky, who declared the position of “neither peace nor war” at the negotiations in Brest-Litovsk, German troops launched an offensive along the entire front, as a result of which Austrian-German troops entered Kiev on March 1. The Central Rada also returned along with the occupying forces. In fact, in the spring of 1918, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic ceased to exist, since most of the UPR was occupied by the Germans.
On April 29, 1918, the socialists of the Central Rada were replaced by General P. P. Skoropadsky, whose regime was called the Ukrainian State (Second Hetmanate), but by the fall Germany had lost all interest in Ukrainian events, which allowed the leaders of the dissolved Central Rada to organize an uprising against the Germans and the Ukrainian state. The attempt to restore the UPR ended with the formation of the dictatorship of the former military minister of the UPR Symon Petliura. On January 22, 1919, the Directorate of the UPR signed the “Act of Union” (Ukrainian “Act of Zluki”) with the government of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic: this day is celebrated today as the Day of Unification of Ukraine. However, already in July, the WUNR army was driven out by the Poles from the territory of Western Ukraine, and at the end of 1919, dictator Petrushevich denounced the Unification Treaty with the UPR.
With the beginning of the evacuation of German-Austrian troops at the end of 1918, thanks to the support of the armed forces of Soviet Russia, the Soviet government back again to the territory of the Ukrainian People's Republic. March 10, 1919 at the III All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, held in Kharkov, which became the capital, Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, was proclaimed as an independent republic; At the same time, the first Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR was adopted.
However, in April 1920, Polish troops entered the conflict on the main territory of Ukraine, and throughout 1920-1921. Central and Right Bank Ukraine were the scene of the Soviet-Polish War. The chain of conflicts ended in 1920-1921. the establishment of Soviet power and the establishment of the Ukrainian SSR on most of the territory of modern Ukraine (except for Western Ukraine, which, in accordance with the Treaty of Riga, was divided by the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Poland) and the Czechoslovak Republic, as well as the Kingdom of Romania).
On December 30, 1922, the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Byelorussian SSR and the Transcaucasian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR, which marked the beginning of the establishment of the USSR.
So, power Ukraine arose thanks to the events associated with the revolution of 1917, therefore it should be grateful to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who was involved in the emergence of the opportunity for the Little Russian regions to become a separate republic. Moreover, it was the Bolshevik policy of Ukrainization that gave complete freedom of action to Ukrainian nationalists and provided them with the territory of Little Russia to spread their poisonous ideas.
Formation of the territory of Ukraine
In the following diagram you can see how the territory of the administrative unit grew, the center of which was Kyiv. I was not mistaken in calling this state entity an administrative unit, since the Ukrainian SSR within the USSR had only formal independence, although the Ukrainian SSR was listed among the founding members of the UN.
Galicia in Ukraine
When in the middle of the 19th century there was a rise in national self-awareness of the numerous nationalities inhabiting the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the main danger for the Austrians, who occupied a significant part of geographical Ukraine, was represented by separatism of the Poles, and in essence, a national liberation struggle for the independence of Poland. The Austrian authorities, in order to prevent the merger of the Polish revolutionary movement with the national rise of the Rusyns, began to incite ethnic hatred between the Rusyn population and the Poles, as the main nationalities of Galicia. Galician massacre
At the same time, the Austrians understood that in order to keep Galicia within Austria-Hungary, the national movement of the Rusyns posed no less of a threat, since it invariably had the goal of reunification with Russia for the simple reason that the Rusyns considered themselves ethnic Russians, direct descendants of the inhabitants of Kievan Rus. Then, at the end of the 19th century, the Austrians decided to create a new nation from the Galicians Ukrainians, in order to replace the national movement of the Rusyns with a fictitious “struggle for the freedom of the Ukrainian nation.”
Ukrainization scenario the Austrians took from the national policy of the Hungarian kings, who had previously successfully conducted an experiment to break the Orthodox Serbs And Croats by Catholicizing the latter and Latinizing their language. Actually, Serbs and Croats have one language, which, like Russian, was divided into several dialects. The Hungarians managed to pit these fraternal peoples against each other by supporting the claims of the Croatian elite to the lands occupied by Serbian settlers. The atrocities of the Croatian Ustaše Nazis, who carried out the genocide of the Serbs during the Second World War, aggravated the conflict between fraternal peoples who, like the brothers Cain and Abel, fought against each other during the collapse of Yugoslavia.
In the Russian Empire in the 19th century, some commoners considered that the name Ukrainian, as the Galicians have now begun to call themselves, can become a banner under which the struggle for the liberation of Little Russians from serfdom can be waged. Ukrainophiles thought that the inclusion of Little Russians to the Ukrainians brings the Little Russian serfs closer to acquiring the rights and freedoms supposedly available to the Austrian “Ukrainians.” At the same time, they did not take into account the truth that the Rusyns of Galicia were poorer than the last serf in Russia (). Ukrainophiles did not understand the catch of the term Ukrainian, which they perceived as a symbol of the territorial unity of all Rusyn peoples of Ukraine, whereas according to the Austrian idea, the name Ukrainian had racial meaning as a denial of any kinship with the rest of the East Slavic peoples, and especially with the Russians.
Until the revolution, the Little Russians were looked upon as urban madmen, since no one could imagine that the Little Russians could change their own identification as Russians. However, after the civil war, the Bolsheviks decided to rely on local nationalist organizations, which was reflected in the policy of indigenization, which looked like a continuation of the fight against the empire, which they called the “prison of nations.” Massive Soviet Ukrainization, at the state level, continued from the 1920s almost until the Second World War.
When did the Ukrainian language appear, who invented it?
The Soviet government declared all Little Russians Ukrainians, and in 1928 a reform of the spelling of the Little Russian dialect took place, thanks to which the Ukrainian language acquired its “graphic independence”, based again on the developments of “”, which was led by Professor Grushevsky in Lvov. This was the norm of an artificial language, which the Austro-Hungarian authorities officially approved back in 1893 for the Galician Govirka, based on the Kulish system (“Kulishovka”, which was a system for teaching illiterate Little Russians) and “Zhelehovka” (an extremely simplified spelling system), from where completely the Latinized Ukrainian alphabet was adopted.
It is interesting that perhaps the first work in the “Ukrainian” language is seriously considered to be “The Aeneid, translated into the Little Russian language by I. Kotlyarevsky,” a satirical poem on contemporary Ukrainian landowners with their riotous temper, shortcomings and chimeras, published in 1798 year. Kotlyarevsky, for the sake of emphasizing the base features of the “Ukrainian people,” forced the heroes to speak in that wild dialect of the common people, in which the word “horse” sounded like “kin”, and “cat” sounded like “whale”. However, for readers, “The Aeneid” was equipped with an extensive glossary of “Ukrainian” and invented words (more than 1000), which also contained their correct spelling according to the phonetic variant of spelling, known as “yaryzhka”, which was the first phrasebook of rural Little Russian dialects.
But the Dictionary of “ancient” Ukrainian language, which was created by the “Scientific Partnership im. Shevchenka”, formed on December 8, 1868 in Lvov under the auspices of the Austrian authorities, surpassed in volume both the works of Kotlyarevsky and the “yaryzhka” itself, since it was created by replacing all Russian words in the “Galician govirka” with generous borrowings from Polish and German, but the masterpiece was the invented words that they tried to stylize as folk.
If Kotlyarevsky used the language of the very bottom of society - the language of serfs - for satirical purposes, then the members of the partnership under the name of the great Little Russian poet - shoved into the Ukrainian language everything that came to mind, as long as it was further from Russian, so that Soviet Ukrainian philologists had to change: a gasket for a stool, a navel cutter for a midwife, a lift for an elevator, a hundred percent for a percentage, a screenshot for a gearbox, although the gasket was changed to a parasol (from the French parasol), but the runny nose remained undead. Apparently, this was greatly facilitated by the ignorance of the Little Russian language by the head of the Shevchenko Society, Professor Grushevsky, who is now known as a recognized Ukrainian language constructor.
Annexation of Crimea to Ukraine
Crimea's problem is related to its geopolitical position, which makes it Russia's unsinkable aircraft carrier on the Black Sea. The Crimean Peninsula had the significance of a Russian military base from the moment it joined the Russian Empire on April 19, 1783.
It so happened historically that Ukraine was perhaps the only region where the population settlement corresponded to Thünen’s model of agricultural standort, since the cities of Ukraine appeared as natural centers of economic life for the surrounding territories, and not military fortresses, as was the case in the rest of Rus'-Russia. Therefore, immediately after joining Russia, the territory of Ukraine began to turn into a strong economic complex with its center in Kyiv. Moreover, in the 19th century, the Odessa port became the main one for the export of grain, which made Odessa the final station of many railways that were actively being built throughout Russia. Of course, Crimea was more important as a southern outpost, since the main base of the Black Sea Fleet was located in Sevastopol, and the formation of the peninsula as a resort area created economic ties with the nearest Novorossiysk regions.
After the formation of the Ukrainian SSR, Crimea became an administrative island, separated from the state apparatus of the RSFSR, so when the Kiev elite earned the trust of the authorities in Moscow, transfer of Crimea to Ukraine, which was justified from a management point of view, since Crimea has long been part of the Ukrainian economy.
When we consider the history of Ukraine, you involuntarily come to the conclusion that Ukraine has always been an object, which is precisely confirmed by the frivolity with which the Bolsheviks changed the borders of the Ukrainian SSR and annexed Crimea.
Return of Crimea to Russia- this is the result of a coincidence of circumstances that resolved the problem of the Russian naval base on the Black Sea, but from an economic point of view - Crimea is a “black hole”, since entering the ruble zone deprives the peninsula of the prospect of becoming a resort, otherwise it is clearly a subsidized region . dated August 24, 1991.
Thus it was the elite of Ukraine that initiated the collapse of the USSR, but we don’t know whether this referendum would have played any role if Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin had not immediately recognized it, so assessments of the historical role of Yeltsin and Kravchuk will shift towards the negative.
Education is an objective process (for example, the EU) that allowed Russia to be a world power. Lacking population density, Russia is doomed to be a raw materials appendage, but due to the diversity of resources that simply could not exist on such a vast territory, a tolerable standard of living was ensured for the population.
Due to the collapse of the USSR, all republics completely lost their industrial prospects, especially those that fell away from the Russian market. The principles of Soviet industry did not allow it to integrate into the global division of labor, and the uncompetitive products of enterprises of the former republics of the former USSR could only be sold on the CIS market.
But new elite of Ukraine, like some other fragments of the USSR, decided to move to another one, which was richer. In order to make themselves more attractive to the West, many declared their adherence to anti-communist ideology, then simply anti-Russian, since it turned out that the elites of capitalist countries themselves could not exist without the Cold War. It’s just that the demonization of Russia is a long-standing technique, borrowed from the Polish gentry of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which allows the West to maintain the myth of its own democracy.
The revival of nationalism in Ukraine
A feature of the Ukrainian elite was its anti-Russian attitude, which was based on the legacy of the Bolshevik national policy of Ukrainization. If under the tsar it had completely disappeared, the Bolsheviks not only recognized the racial meaning of the word Ukrainian (which had previously had a collective geographical meaning in Russia), but even declared total Ukrainization - an achievement of the “national” revival of the newly-minted Ukrainian nation. Although the successes of Ukrainization very soon “backfired”, so that Ukrainization was declared an excess even before the war, but Lenin’s mistake in the form of education separate And national Ukraine - as a fundamental root cause - could no longer be eliminated.
The motives of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who insisted on the existence of a SEPARATE and NATIONAL republic within the USSR, are understandable as a compromise with nationalist forces UPR, but the formation of THREE separate republics inhabited by one people confronted the new state entities with the task of searching and emphasizing at least some differences to justify their own existence. After all, no one has canceled the trinity of the Russian people, so the elites all the more needed to somehow explain the division of the single people by the Bolsheviks by the borders of the newly created republics.
Ukraine after the Maidan
Therefore, it is not surprising that Ukraine, having raised nationalism (and essentially anti-Soviet anti-Russian separatism) to the level of state policy, in 25 years achieved the goal that the Austro-Hungarians, Poles and Germans set when creating Ukrainian nationalism.
Basically, we are watching elite games Ukraine and Russia, which included the world elites using events in Ukraine as a reason to weaken Russia’s position in the world. Understand crisis in Ukraine is possible only from a cynical point of view, which soberly believes that the people are not the subject of history. The subject of history is the people.
Ukrainian elite considered that in Europe she would be safer from her most dangerous competitor - the Russian elite, so she decided to drag her property, in the sense of the people from whom she feeds, to the European Union, which was announced as “the choice of the Ukrainians.”
However, post-Soviet elite of Ukraine was a small-town unprofessional without broad support, so the coup was not long in coming; the oligarchs, as the real masters of Ukraine, took direct control of Ukraine into their hands, and the turbulent history of new Ukraine written literally on the pages of the morning newspapers.
Analysis of the reasons for the confrontation between Western and Eastern elites in Ukraine before and after the declaration of independence.
Geo-economic analysis of the state of Polish Ukraine and the Russian kingdom at the time of Ukraine’s annexation to Russia.Ukraine is the largest state in Europe. Although some historians claim that the country is the cradle of European culture and has existed for many centuries, this is not true. The formation of Ukraine as a state actually happened 23 years ago. This is a young country that is just learning to live independently, without anyone’s support. Of course, Ukraine has its own centuries-old history, but still there is no mention of the country as a full-fledged state. This territory was once inhabited by Scythians, Sarmatians, Turkic peoples, Russians, and Cossacks. All of them influenced the development of the country in one way or another.
Ancient history
We need to start with the fact that the word “Ukraine” translated from Old Russian means “outskirts”, that is, no man’s land, borderland. These territories were also called “wild fields”. The first mentions of the Black Sea steppes date back to the 7th century BC, when the Scythians settled there. In the Old Testament they are described as an unmerciful and cruel nomadic people. In 339 BC. e. The Scythians were defeated in battle with Philip of Macedon, the beginning of their end.
For four centuries the Black Sea region was under the rule of the Sarmatians. These were related nomadic tribes who migrated from the Lower Volga region. In the 2nd century AD e. the Sarmatians were supplanted by the Turkic peoples. In the 7th century, the Slavs, who in those days were called Rusichs, began to settle on the banks of the Dnieper. That is why the lands they occupied were called Kievan Rus. Some researchers argue that the formation of Ukraine as a state occurred in 1187. This is not entirely true. At that time, only the term “Ukraine” appeared; it meant nothing more than the outskirts of Kievan Rus.
Tatar raids
At one time, the lands of modern Ukraine were subject to raids. The Russians tried to develop the rich, fertile lands of the Great Steppe, but constant robberies and murders did not allow them to complete their plans. For many centuries, the Tatars posed a great threat to the Slavs. Vast territories remained uninhabited only because they were adjacent to Crimea. The Tatars carried out raids because they needed to somehow support their own economy. They were engaged in cattle breeding, but it did not provide much profit. The Tatars robbed their Slavic neighbors, captured young and healthy people, and then exchanged slaves for finished Turkish products. Volyn, Kiev region and Galicia suffered the most from Tatar raids.
Settlement of fertile lands
Grain growers and landowners were well aware of the benefits that could be derived from fertile, free territories. Despite the fact that there was a threat of attack by the Tatars, rich people appropriated the steppes and built settlements, thus luring peasants to themselves. Landowners had their own army, thanks to which they maintained order and discipline in the territories they controlled. They provided the peasants with land for use, and in return they demanded payment of quitrents. The grain trade brought untold wealth to Polish magnates. The most famous were the Koretskys, Pototskys, Vishnevetskys, and Konetspolskys. While the Slavs worked as laborers in the fields, the Poles lived in luxurious palaces, swimming in wealth.
Cossack period
The freedom-loving Cossacks, who began to populate the free steppes at the end of the 15th century, sometimes thought about creating a state. Ukraine could be a haven for robbers and vagabonds, because they were the ones who originally inhabited this territory. People who wanted to be free came to the deserted outskirts, so the bulk of the Cossacks were farm laborers escaping from the master's slavery. Also, townspeople and priests came here in search of a better life. Among the Cossacks there were people of noble origin; they were mainly looking for adventure and, of course, wealth.
The gangs consisted of Russians, Poles, Belarusians and even Tatars, they accepted absolutely everyone. Initially, these were the most ordinary bandits of robbers who robbed the Tatars and Turks and lived on the stolen goods. Over time, they began to build sichs - fortified camps, in which a military garrison was always on duty. They returned there from campaigns.
Some historians believe that 1552 is the year of the formation of Ukraine as a state. In fact, at this time a famous one arose that Ukrainians are so proud of. But it was not the prototype of the modern state. In 1552, the Cossack bands were united, and their fort was built on the island of Malaya Khortytsia. Vishnevetsky did all this.
Although initially the Cossacks were ordinary robbers who robbed the Turks for their own benefit, over time they began to protect the settlements of the Slavs from Tatar raids and freed their fellow countrymen from captivity. To Turkey, these freedom-loving brethren seemed like heavenly punishment. The Cossacks on their seagulls (long, narrow boats) silently sailed to the shores of the enemy country and suddenly attacked the strongest fortifications.
The state of Ukraine wanted to create one of the most famous hetmans - Bogdan Khmelnytsky. This chieftain led a grueling struggle with the Polish army, dreaming of independence and freedom for all his fellow countrymen. Khmelnitsky understood that he alone could not cope with the Western enemy, so he found a patron in the person of the Moscow Tsar. Of course, after this the bloodshed in Ukraine ended, but it never became independent.
Fall of Tsarism
The emergence of Ukraine as a state would have been possible immediately after the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty. Unfortunately, local politicians did not have enough strength, intelligence, and most importantly, solidarity to complete their plans and make their country independent. Kyiv learned about the fall of tsarism on March 13, 1917. In just a few days, Ukrainian politicians created the Central Rada, but ideological limitations and inexperience in such matters prevented them from retaining power in their hands.
According to some sources, the formation of Ukraine as a state took place on November 22, 1917. It was on this day that the Central Rada promulgated the Third Universal, proclaiming itself the supreme authority. True, at that time she had not yet decided to sever all ties with Russia, so Ukraine temporarily became an autonomous republic. Perhaps such caution among politicians was unnecessary. Two months later, the Central Rada decided to form a state. Ukraine was declared an independent country completely independent from Russia.
Interaction with the Austrians and Germans
The period when Ukraine emerged as a state was not easy. For this reason, the Central Rada was forced to ask for support and protection from European countries. On February 18, 1918, the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was signed, according to which Ukraine was supposed to carry out massive supplies of food to Europe, and in return received recognition of independence and military support.
The Austrians and Germans sent troops into the territory of the state in a short period of time. Unfortunately, Ukraine could not fulfill its part of the terms of the agreement, so at the end of April 1918 the Central Rada was dissolved. On April 29, Pavel Skoropadsky began governing the country. The formation of Ukraine as a state was given to the people with great difficulty. The trouble is that the country did not have good rulers who could defend the independence of the controlled territories. Skoropadsky did not last even a year in power. Already on December 14, 1918, he fled in disgrace along with the allied German forces. Ukraine was thrown to the wolves; European countries never recognized its independence and did not provide support.
The Bolsheviks came to power
The beginning of the 20s of the twentieth century brought a lot of grief to Ukrainian homes. The Bolsheviks created a system of tough economic measures in order to somehow stop the collapse of the economy and save the newly formed state. Ukraine suffered the most from the so-called “war communism”, because its territories were a source of agricultural products. Accompanied by armed detachments, officials walked through the villages and forcibly took grain from the peasants. It got to the point that freshly baked bread was taken from houses. Naturally, such an atmosphere did not contribute to an increase in agricultural production; the peasants simply refused to work.
Adding to all the misfortunes was drought. The famine of 1921-1922 claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. The government understood perfectly well that it was no longer advisable to use the whip method. Therefore, the NEP (New Economic Policy) law was passed. Thanks to him, by 1927 the area of cultivated land increased by 10%. This period marks the true formation of the state. Ukraine is slowly forgetting about the horrors of civil war, famine, and dispossession. Prosperity returns to the homes of Ukrainians, so they begin to treat the Bolsheviks more leniently.
Voluntary-forced entry into the USSR
At the end of 1922, Moscow began to think about uniting Russia, Belarus and the Transcaucasian republics to create more stable ties. Some seven decades remained until the time when Ukraine was formed as a state. On December 30, 1922, representatives of all Soviet republics approved the unification plan, thus the USSR was created.
Theoretically, any of the republics had the right to leave the union, but for this it had to obtain the consent of the Communist Party. In practice, gaining independence was very difficult. The party was centralized and controlled from Moscow. Ukraine ranked second among all republics in terms of area. The city of Kharkov was chosen as the capital. Answering the question about when Ukraine was formed as a state, we should note the 20s of the twentieth century, because it was then that the country acquired territorial and administrative borders.
Renewal and development of the country
Breathed life into Ukraine. During this time, 400 new enterprises appeared, and the country accounted for about 20% of all capital investments. In 1932, the Dnepropetrovsk hydroelectric power station was built, which at that time became the largest in Europe. Thanks to the labor of the workers, the Kharkov Tractor Plant, the Zaporozhye Metallurgical Plant, and many Donbass factories appeared. A huge number of economic transformations were carried out in a short time. In order to improve discipline and increase efficiency, competitions were introduced to complete the plan ahead of schedule. The government singled out the best workers and awarded them the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.
Ukraine during World War II
In the period 1941-1945. Millions of people died in the country. Most Ukrainians fought on the side of the Soviet Union, but this does not apply to Western Ukraine. In this territory, different sentiments prevailed. According to the OUN militants, the SS Galicia divisions, Ukraine was supposed to become independent from Moscow. The history of the formation of the state could have been completely different if the Nazis had nevertheless won. It’s hard to believe that the Germans would give Ukraine independence, but with promises they managed to win over about 220,000 Ukrainians to their side. Even after the end of the war, these armed groups continued to exist.
Life after Stalin
The death of the Soviet leader brought with it new life for millions of people living in the USSR. The new ruler was Nikita Khrushchev, who was closely connected with Ukraine and, of course, patronized it. During his reign, it reached a new level of development. It was thanks to Khrushchev that Ukraine received the Crimean peninsula. How the state arose is another matter, but it formed its administrative-territorial boundaries precisely in the Soviet Union.
Then Leonid Brezhnev, also a native of Ukraine, came to power. After the short reign of Andropov and Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev took the helm. It was he who decided to radically change the stagnant economy and the Soviet system as a whole. Gorbachev had to overcome the conservatism of society and the party. Mikhail Sergeevich always called for openness and tried to be closer to the people. People began to feel freer, but still, even under Gorbachev, the communists completely controlled the army, police, agriculture, industry, the KGB, and monitored the media.
Gaining independence
The date of formation of Ukraine as a state is known to everyone - it is August 24, 1991. But what preceded this significant event? On March 17, 1991, a survey was held, thanks to which it became clear: Ukrainians are not at all against sovereignty, the main thing is that it does not subsequently worsen their living conditions. The communists tried in every possible way to keep power in their hands, but it inevitably eluded them.
On August 19, 1991, the reactionaries isolated Mikhail Gorbachev in Crimea, and in Moscow they themselves tried to seize the initiative by declaring a state of emergency and forming the State Emergency Committee. But the communists did not succeed. On August 24, 1991, when Ukraine emerged as a state, the Verkhovna Rada declared the country's independence. And after 5 days the activities of the Communist Party were banned by parliament. On December 1 of the same year, Ukrainians supported the Act of Independence in a referendum and elected their first president, Leonid Kravchuk.
Over the course of many years, the formation of Ukraine as a state took place. The map of the country changed frequently. Many territories were annexed in the Soviet Union, this applies to Western Ukraine, part of the Odessa region and Crimea. The main task of Ukrainians is to preserve modern administrative-territorial borders. True, this is difficult to achieve. Thus, the third president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, gave part A to Romania in 2009. In 2014, Ukraine also lost its pearl - the Crimean peninsula, which passed to Russia. Whether the country will be able to keep its territories intact and remain independent, only time will tell.
Today, when in all post-Soviet republics the ruling class of the bourgeoisie is strenuously trying to rewrite the history of their peoples, when everything is being done to make the working people of the former Soviet republics forget about their heroic past - about how they fought for their freedom and independence, it is extremely important to know that what actually happened, since knowledge of the past can help understand the present, and understanding the present will point the way to the future.
But, unfortunately, finding out the truth has now become not so easy - the truth has become dangerous for the current masters. The libraries have been pretty cleaned out, and those who by profession are supposed to be the guardians of knowledge - teachers, teachers, scientists - do not care about the truth and prefer to serve the ruling class, fulfilling all its whims, disfiguring the consciousness of their fellow citizens with lies.
The dangers of lies can be seen in Ukraine, where the bourgeois class launched a civil war over the redistribution of property. It is not oligarchs who die in this war, but ordinary children - the children of workers, office workers, peasants, and the working intelligentsia.
Why are they shooting at each other? Because they are fooled by their bourgeoisie, which, without total deception, would never force them to die for the sake of its interests. The lie helped turn the working people of Ukraine, Russia, and Donbass into puppets, pitting them against each other, and now the oligarchs, who brazenly and cynically use the working people for their own purposes, are rubbing their hands in contentment.
How can you protect yourself from this? With knowledge, only knowledge can protect us from the influence of lies and show us the path to freedom, since it is the invaluable experience of many generations of those who lived before us.
Below is a brief summary of the true history of the Ukrainian people, the history of their struggle for their own state - a free and independent Ukraine, and this story is not at all the same as what is told today in Ukrainian schools, universities, and the media.
History of the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian state
The history of the Ukrainian people is the history of the centuries-old struggle of the masses against social and national oppression, for reunification in a single Ukrainian state.
This struggle was not easy. The people of Ukraine had to bear a lot of grief on their shoulders until they were able to become free. And this struggle would not have been successful if the Ukrainian people had not been helped by their blood brothers - the Belarusian and especially the Russian people.
The historical paths and destinies of fraternal peoples have long been intertwined: Ukrainian and Russian, “peoples so close in language, place of residence, character, and history” (Lenin). That is why the Ukrainian and Russian peoples have strived throughout history for unification and helped each other in the fight against foreign invaders. And the Ukrainian people, divided for many centuries and forced to live under foreign oppression, sought not only national reunification, but also unification with the fraternal, half-blooded Russian people. These two peoples - Ukrainian and Russian (as well as Belarusian) were united by a common history, a common ancestral root.
In the 9th century AD, a large state of the Eastern Slavs, the Kiev State, was formed on the territory of the European part of the former USSR.
The history of the Kievan state - Kievan Rus - was the common, initial history of three fraternal, half-blooded peoples: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian. In the second half of the 12th century, Kievan Rus split into a number of separate feudal principalities; the largest of them were Kiev, Galicia-Volynskoe, Vladimir-Suzdal, Chernigov, Smolensk. But even after the collapse of Kievan Rus, a close connection remained between the populations of these principalities in the 12th-13th centuries.
In Fig. - territory of Kievan Rus
The bulk of the population of Kievan Rus and the principalities of the 12th-13th centuries were Eastern Slavs (Polyans, Drevlyans, Northerners, Ilmen Slavs, Krivichi, Radimichi, Ulichi, Tivertsy, Polotsk, Vyatichi and others). They occupied a gigantic territory - from the Baltic to the Black Sea, including the lands of present-day Galicia, Northern Bukovina, and Bessarabia.
The ancient chronicle of our peoples (which began to be created in the 11th century) always considers the history of Kievan Rus as the history of one state of several East Slavic tribes, a state that the chroniclers called “Russian Land”.
The famous pilgrim Daniel (beginning of the 12th century) in Jerusalem puts up a lamp “from all the Russian land.” The author of the famous “Tale of Igor’s Campaign” (created around 1187) calls Prince Svyatoslav of Kiev, Prince Vsevolod of Vladimir-Suzdal, Roman Mstislavovich of Volyn, Mstislav of Lutsk (or Peresopnytsia), Mstislav of Lutsk (or Peresopnytsia), and Yaroslav Osmomysl of Galicia, and Rurik of Przemysl, as Russian princes. , and Smolensk David.
In the “Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land” (written around the middle of the 13th century), the boundaries of this “Russian land” are indicated to the north - to the Arctic Ocean and to the west - to the lands of the Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, Lithuanians, and Germans.
In the southwest, they included the Dniester region and the mouth of the Danube (present-day Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina), as there is authoritative evidence in such a source as the slip “City to all Russians, far and near” (in the latest edition compiled around the middle of the 15th century) . In this note, among the Russian cities on the Danube and the Dniester region, cities such as Belgorod (Ackerman), Khotyn, Gorodok on Cheremosh and others are indicated. It is not without reason that in the “Tale of Igor’s Campaign” we read that the Galician prince Yaroslav Osmomysl “closed the gates of the Danube, sword of burdens through the clouds, rowing judgments to the Danube.” The author of “The Lay” says that “the maidens sing on the Danube, their voices curl across the sea to Kyiv,” that is, that there is a close, constant connection between Kiev and the Danube.
The population of the Kyiv state had a single language, as well as a single religion - first pagan and then Christian.
The unity of the people of Kievan Rus and the principalities of the 12th-13th centuries was also manifested in legal relations. Throughout the territory of Kievan Rus and the later principalities, the legislation of the “Russian Truth” was in force (began to be created in the first half of the 11th century).
The culture of Kievan Rus and the later principalities was also united, which was especially reflected in the chronicles. The main edition of The Tale of Bygone Years, the pride of our common chronicle, was compiled in Kyiv at the beginning of the 12th century. But the chronicler, as established by the research of A. Shakhmatov and M. Priselkov, used the Novgorod chronicle code and the Chernigov chronicle. The same “Tale” was used as the basis for the Galician-Volyn chronicle. One of the sources of the Galician-Volyn chronicle (XIII century) was the Rostov-Suzdal chronicle.
Foreign contemporaries (Liutprand, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Thietmar, George Kedrin, Ibn al-Asir and others) spoke of the lands of Kievan Rus and the later principalities as a single whole.
The unity of the people of the lands of the Kyiv state and the principalities of the 12th-13th centuries was clearly manifested in the common struggle against foreign invaders.
In 1018, the Novgorodians helped the Kyivians expel the Polish invaders who invaded Kiev. In the battle of Kiev in 1036, where the power of the Pechenegs was crushed, in the troops; Novgorodians also lived under Yaroslav the Wise.
In the first half of the 13th century, the lands of the Galicia-Volyn principality had to repel aggression from the knights of the German Teutonic Order, Poland and Hungary, and in this struggle we often see the mutual assistance of the two peoples to each other. In particular, the North Russian squads, who arrived led by Prince Mstislav the Udal from Novgorod, provided great assistance to the Galicians.
Since the 14th century, the lands of Ukraine (by the 14th century the Ukrainian nationality had already been largely formed) became the object of aggression from foreign invaders.
In Fig. The Old Russian state in 1237 on the eve of the Mongol invasion
The heavy Tatar-Mongol yoke hindered the development of our common country. The Lithuanian state, created in the east of Europe, began to subjugate the Belarusian and then Ukrainian lands. By the middle of the 14th century, most of the Ukrainian lands were under Lithuanian rule. The Polish lords after the Union of Krevo in 1385 (this union united Poland and Lithuania under the rule of the Polish king) rushed to Galicia and captured it in 1387. The Ukrainian population had to experience not only severe social oppression, but also national-religious oppression. In the captured Ukrainian cities, the Polish government implanted a wealthy Polish and German philistinism and transferred city self-government into their hands; at the same time, the Ukrainian petty bourgeoisie were subject to all sorts of restrictions in trades, trade, and crafts; Ukrainians were almost not allowed to participate in city government.
By the end of the 15th century, the Lithuanian government liquidated the appanage principalities of the Ukrainian lands and destroyed the remnants of Ukrainian statehood. In an effort to denationalize and Catholicize the Ukrainian people and Belarusians (whose lands were also seized by Lithuania), trying to break their ties with the fraternal Russian people, the Polish and Lithuanian governments introduced a church union in 1596, subordinating the Ukrainian and Belarusian churches to the Pope.
In the 14th century, Moldova captured Northern Bukovina, and during the 14th - 15th centuries, the lands of Bessarabia, and later part of these lands fell under Turkish rule; the majority remained under the rule of the Moldavian rulers, who were in vassal dependence on Turkey.
By that time, the Ukrainian population of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina had increased. The Tatars and the Moldavian ruler Stefan attacked Podolia and Galicia in 1498. Stefan captured about 100 thousand Ukrainians in these parts and settled them on the lands of his state, “so that to this day,” says the 17th-century Moldavian chronicler Ureke, “the Russian language has spread in Moldova.”
The Ukrainian people did not submit to foreign invaders who tried to denationalize them, but fought steadfastly and stubbornly, in a wide variety of ways and means.
By the end of the 15th century, the Cossacks arose in the steppes of Ukraine, which later spread to other areas of the Dnieper region. In the second half of the 16th century, the Cossacks created their own center beyond the thresholds of the Dnieper - the Zaporozhye Sich, which became the center for organizing almost all uprisings against foreign invaders. In the structure of the Zaporozhye Sich, the embryonic forms of a new Ukrainian statehood are already visible. It is no coincidence that K. Marx speaks about the emergence of the Cossacks this way: on the Dnieper islands “a Christian Cossack Republic».
The Cossack movement spread throughout Ukraine. It is not for nothing that in the first list of Cossacks that has come down to us (1581) we see residents of various localities of Ukraine, the cities of Kiev, Cherkassy, Lyubech, Dubno, Rivne, Galich, Vinnitsa, Ostra, residents from near Lvov, etc.
In the middle of the 15th century, organizations of Ukrainian petty bourgeois - brotherhoods - began to emerge to fight against the invaders and their accomplices. The first brotherhood arose in Lvov. And then the brotherhoods, spreading to other lands of Ukraine, covered not only the townspeople, but also wider circles of the population. And this movement reflected the unity of the Ukrainian people.
The Polish government was forced to reckon with the fact of this unity, with the fact that Galicia is a Ukrainian land, and not a Polish one. In 1435, it was forced to give the voivodeship organized in Galicia the name “Russian voivodeship.”
That Galicia is not Poland, but “Rus”, was also recognized by the scientific circles of the then Europe. Thus, on the map of Cardinal Nicholas Cusan (compiled around 1460, engraved in 1491), the western Ukrainian lands with the cities of Sambir, Lviv, Belz, Galich and others are located in the territory called Russia. In the same way, on the map of Poland and Hungary by S. Münster (published in Basel in 1540), the territory of Galicia is called Russia (“Russia”). The same lands with the cities of Przemysl, Lvov, Galich and others are called “Russia” on the maps of the Italian cosmographer J. Gastaldi (1562, 1568).
Despite the fact that the Ukrainian people and the Russian people were separated by state borders, the ties between them were not interrupted, but grew, taking on the most diverse forms.
Ukrainians helped the Russians in the fight against foreign invaders and helped defend the borders of the Russian state. By the beginning of the 16th century, part of the lands of Ukraine - Severshchina with the cities of Chernigov, Novgorod-Seversky and others - was freed from the rule of Lithuania and became part of the Moscow state, which was a progressive fact for these lands.
The Polish government was not satisfied with the capture of Galicia, but captured Podolia in the first third of the 15th century. But this was not enough for the Polish gentry: they sought to subjugate the rest of the lands of Ukraine. In 1569, a Sejm was convened in Lublin, at which the question was raised that the Bratslav region, Volyn, Kiev region with Left Bank Ukraine from under the rule of Lithuania should come directly under the rule of Poland. Only representatives of the Ukrainian feudal lords were present at this Sejm. The Polish government tried to legally justify the seizure by citing the fact that these lands supposedly once belonged to Poland, which, of course, never happened. Reaching the point of absurdity in justifying their “historical rights,” the Polish lords argued their claims to the Kiev region by the fact that in 1018 and 1069 Kyiv was “taken and plundered” by the Polish kings. The Polish lords, of course, wisely kept silent about the fact that both times the rebel people quickly expelled the invaders.
By force, threats and other unclean ways, the Polish government achieved that the above-mentioned Ukrainian lands were subordinated to Poland by decision of the Lublin Sejm. This so-called Union of Lublin delayed for a long time the reunification of the Ukrainian people and their unification with the Russian people. Only a part of the Ukrainian feudal lords agreed to the union. The owner of the Ukrainian land - the people themselves - did not give consent to this union and responded to it with a struggle that lasted for a number of centuries.
"Union of Lublin"
After the Union of Lublin, a period of intense national liberation struggle began in the history of Ukraine against the Polish-gentry invaders, who brought severe social and national-religious oppression to the Ukrainians.
The oppressors sought to Polish and Catholicize the Ukrainian people. They subjected him to the most severe social oppression. In a number of lands in Ukraine, corvee labor reached 5 and even 6 days a week, not counting other types of in-kind and monetary duties. The Ukrainian petty bourgeoisie was limited in trade, trade, and participation in city government. To limit the growth of the Cossacks, a so-called register (list) was introduced, where only a small number of Cossacks were included; the rest of the Cossacks were forced to return to the rule of the lords. The Polish government, in the fight against the Ukrainian people, sought to exploit the class contradictions between the wealthy Cossacks, on the one hand, and the poor Cossacks, on the other.
The Ukrainian people responded to the Polish-gentry oppression with a decisive, fierce resistance. The masses of the people sought not only to throw off the yoke of foreign invaders, but also to reunite in a single Ukrainian state, unite with the Russian people, and annex Ukraine to Russia. These moments, closely intertwined with each other, give us a complete picture of the national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people.
The liberation movement after the Union of Lublin and until the beginning of the second half of the 17th century can be divided into two periods: the first - until the end of the 30s of the 17th century - and the second - the period of the great national liberation war of 1648-1654, which ended with the annexation of Ukraine to Russia.
The brotherhoods created by Ukrainians, the number of which increased more and more, opened schools and printing houses, fought against Polish-Catholic aggression and propaganda, and strengthened the Ukrainian people and culture. At first, the center of the ideological struggle was the Western Ukrainian lands, especially the cities of Lviv and Ostrog. In the second decade of the 17th century, Kiev became such a center, where a number of active figures from Western Ukraine, in particular from Galicia (Elisha Pletenetsky, Job Boretsky, Zechariah Kolystensky and others) moved. Ukrainian brotherhoods acted in contact with Belarusian brotherhoods, helping each other.
Another form of struggle of the Ukrainian people was the uprising against the Polish-gentry invaders; of these, the largest were the uprisings of 1591-1593 led by K. Kosinsky, 1594-1596 led by G. Loboda, M. Shauloy, S. Nalivaiko, the uprising of 1630 led by T. Fedorovich, 1635 led by I. Sulima, 1637-1638, led by Pavlyuk, Y. Ostryanin, D. Gunya.
The struggle of the Ukrainian people against the Polish-gentry invaders in most cases bore a religious overtones as a struggle for their own Orthodox faith, against Catholicism, union, against someone else's faith. This religious coloring of the national liberation struggle is quite understandable, since “the appearance of political protest under a religious cover is a phenomenon characteristic of all peoples at a certain stage of their development.” The Polish government managed through armed force (Poland at that time was militarily the strongest of the European states) to suppress these uprisings, flooding the Ukrainian lands with streams of blood. However, it was not possible to break the Ukrainian people and Polish the Ukrainians: they still considered themselves the Ukrainian people in all their lands. It is characteristic that Hetman P. Sagaidachny, shortly before his death (April 1622), bequeathed significant sums of money for the activities of the brotherhoods of the two largest centers of Ukraine: Kiev and Lvov.
And foreign contemporaries considered the Western Ukrainian lands and the whole of Ukraine to be Ukraine, and not Poland.
In 1573, the French prince Henry of Valois was elected king of Poland. For him, Blaise de Viginère composed a detailed note about Poland; in this note, Kiev region, Podolia, Galicia, Volyn are called Russian lands, that is, Ukrainian. Thus, about Galicia (Chervona Rus) Vizhiner writes: “Southern Russia, which forms part of all Russia, which will be discussed in detail in a separate chapter, extends along the Sarmatian mountains, which the locals call the Tatras and which protect it from the south to the Dniester River at borders of Wallachia." The main cities of Galicia in this note are named Przemysl and Lviv.
On the map compiled in 1634 by order of the Polish king Vladislav IV by military engineer I. Pleitner, the western Ukrainian lands with the cities of Lvov, Galich, Kolomyia and others are called “Russia”.
The ties between the Ukrainian people and the Russian people grew and strengthened. Many Ukrainians, fleeing the persecution of the invaders, moved to the Moscow state, often entered military service there, and helped defend the Russian borders from the Turks and Tatars. According to the testimony of the Englishman D. Fletcher, who was in Russia (1588), of the 4,300 people of the mercenary infantry of the Moscow State, 4 thousand were Ukrainians; The Frenchman J. Margeret, who was in the service in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century, also gives approximately the same figure. Zaporozhye Hetman K. Kosinsky acted in contact with Russian troops against attacks by the Turks and Tatars.
K. Kosinsky
After the suppression of the uprisings, many Ukrainians moved within the Russian state and settled in Sloboda Ukraine.
The founder of book printing in Russia, Ivan Fedorov, printed the first printed book in Ukraine in Lvov in 1574.
Especially close ties were between the Don and Ukrainian Cossacks, who concluded a defensive alliance in the 30s of the 17th century. Many Cossacks lived for a long time, sometimes for a number of years, on the Don; in turn, the Don people also lived for a long time in the Zaporozhye Sich. The Don and Zaporozhye Cossacks together made a number of campaigns against the Turks and Tatars, such as the campaigns of 1616, 1621, 1623, 1625. There were also Don Cossacks in the ranks of the Ukrainian rebels.
The question of Ukraine's annexation with Russia is also on the agenda. Already Hetman K. Kosinsky in 1593, during the uprising, negotiated about this with the Russian government. In 1625, this problem was again the subject of negotiations between Bishop I. Boriskovich (envoy of the Kyiv Metropolitan I. Boretsky) with the Russian government in Moscow. During the uprisings of 1630 and 1637, the question of Ukraine's annexation to Russia was still on the order of the day.
The struggle of the Russian people in 1612 against the Polish-gentry invaders who sought to seize Russia ended, as we know, in the defeat and expulsion of the Poles. The defeat of the Polish interventionists in 1612 weakened Poland and thereby contributed to the strengthening of the national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people and their unification with the Russian people.
Before moving on to the national liberation war of 1648-1654, let's say a few words about the so-called historical rights of Poland to Ukrainian lands.
A number of Polish nationalist historians, in particular M. Grabowski, K. Shainokha, T. Lyubomirsky, A. Yablonovsky and others, argued at one time that after the devastation of Ukraine by the Tatars (in the 13th century), colonists came there from Poland and, mixing with the remnants of the local population, laid the foundation for a new tribe, closer to the Poles than to the Russians. In the 15th century, the Poles allegedly completed the settlement of Galicia, Podolia and part of Volyn, and later the lands captured by the Union of Lublin in 1569. This is supposedly the basis of Poland’s rights to Ukrainian lands. (We still periodically hear similar “arguments” from reactionary circles of the Polish bourgeoisie, looking for “historical” reasons for annexing Ukrainian lands.)
This unhistorical theory, which has no basis in facts, was most fully criticized by Prof. M. Vladimirsky-Budanov. Using the works of his predecessors and numerous archival primary sources, he came to clear, convincing conclusions that overturned the false theory of Polish nationalist historians. Vladimirsky-Budanov, with facts in hand, showed that the Ukrainian people themselves, without the help of Poland, settled their lands devastated by the Tatars. When the Polish gentry moved to seize foreign, Ukrainian lands, the people responded to this, on the one hand, with further movement into the uninhabited steppes and resettlement within the boundaries of the Moscow state, on the other hand, with bloody uprisings that led to the events of 1648-1654.
Hetman Bogdan Khmelnytsky
In 1648, a national liberation war of the Ukrainian people broke out against the Polish-gentry invaders. Reflecting the historical aspirations of the Ukrainian people, its leader, Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, from the very first days of the war raised the question of overthrowing the Polish yoke, reunifying Ukrainian lands in a single Ukrainian state and the annexation of Ukraine to Russia.
The uprising that broke out in the Dnieper region spread to Volyn, Galicia, and reached the Carpathian Mountains. Uprisings began in Belarus; There were uprisings against the gentry in Poland itself, and Khmelnitsky helped the Belarusian and Polish rebels. The fact is that Bogdan Khmelnitsky was not an enemy of the Polish people. He was an enemy, and an irreconcilable enemy, only of that Polish gentry, who, with their reckless policies, led Poland to destruction. As for the Polish people, Bogdan Khmelnitsky helped them in the fight against the gentry who oppressed them. So, in the fall of 1648, the hetman helped the Polish peasant rebels. The conspiracy of the urban poor in Warsaw against the nobility was organized then, on the instructions of Khmelnitsky. In 1651, Kostka-Napierski, the leader of the Polish peasant rebels near Krakow, acted in contact with Chmielnicki.
The unity of the Ukrainian people in this war was also manifested in the fact that from the lands of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina the rebels went to the aid of their brothers in the Dnieper region and Galicia. Polish troops suffered a series of heavy defeats near Zhovti Vody, Korsun, Pilyavtsy, Zborov, Vinnitsa, Batog, and Monastyrische from the Ukrainians.
Bogdan Khmelnytsky, by the will of the Ukrainian people, already on June 8, 1648, began negotiations with the Russian government on the annexation of Ukraine to Russia and did not stop them throughout the war. Envoys of the Russian government to Ukraine, such as G. Unkovsky (1649), A. Sukhanov (1650), G. Bogdanov (1651), A. Matveev, I. Fomin (1653), carefully collecting information about the mood of the Ukrainians , was convinced that the whole people wanted this accession.
Already at the beginning of 1649, Khmelnytsky told Unkovsky that he demanded that Poland renounce Ukrainian lands and return all lands that were within the borders of Kievan Rus and the principalities of the 12th-13th centuries. During negotiations in February of the same year with Polish representatives, Bogdan Khmelnytsky indicated that his goal was to liberate all Ukrainian lands from Polish rule and reunite them into one state. The hetman spoke about his Ukrainian state, which also includes the Western Ukrainian lands with the cities of Lvov and Galich.
On January 8 (old style), 1654, at the Rada in the city of Pereyaslav (now Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky), the annexation of Ukraine to Russia was proclaimed - an event that played an extremely important role in the further history of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. The war of 1648-1654 led to the reunification of only the bulk of the Ukrainian lands (Dnieper region). But the close ties that from now on welded the Russian and Ukrainian peoples together served as a guarantee that further cooperation of these peoples would help reunite all Ukrainian lands in a single Ukrainian state.
It is characteristic that the French engineer G. Boplan, an authoritative expert on Eastern Europe who lived in that era (he spent about 20 years in Ukraine), defined Ukraine as a single country from Hungary to Russia. On the Boplan map, Galicia as “Rus' Rubra” was part of Ukraine.
After Ukraine annexed Russia in 1654, Poland, and later Turkey and its vassal Crimea, attacked Ukraine more than once. The Ukrainians, with the help of the Russian people, repelled the attempts of the aggressors and at the same time sought to liberate from them those of their lands that still remained under foreign yoke.
Already at the end of 1654, the Nizhyn archpriest M. Filimonovich, reflecting the aspirations of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples, said in his speech to Tsar Alexei that now the matter is about the liberation of “Lvov land, Podolsk, Pokuttsky, Podgorsk, Polessky, Belarusian and their broad principalities, glorious cities." In the fall of 1655, Bogdan Khmelnitsky declared to S. Lyubovitsky and S. Grondsky, sent by the Polish king with a proposal to end the war and subjugate Ukraine to Poland, that there could be no talk of any subordination either now or in the future. Peace can only be concluded if Poland renounces all claims to Western Ukrainian lands with the cities of Vladimir, Lviv, and Przemysl.
Until the very last days of his life, the great son of Ukraine Bogdan Khmelnytsky fought for the reunification of Ukrainian lands in a single state, seeking the inclusion of “all Chervona Rus along the Vistula” into its composition.
After the death of Khmelnitsky (1657), for a number of years, separate groups of Cossack elders tried to subjugate Ukraine to Poland, Turkey, and Crimea. However, the attempts of these groups of elders (groups of I. Vygovsky, P. Doroshenko, P. Sukhovey, M. Khanenko) ultimately suffered failures due to resistance from the popular masses. If the aggressors (Poland, Turkey) managed to seize one or another part of the lands of Ukraine, then the Ukrainian people stubbornly fought against the foreign yoke and strived for the reunification of all their lands in a single Ukrainian state that was part of Russia.
In 1660, Poland managed to capture the Right Bank. However, already in 1663, an uprising broke out there in Pavoloch, with the goal of reuniting the Right Bank with the Left Bank as part of Russia. In March of the following year, an uprising broke out again on the Right Bank, and, as P. Teter, a supporter of Poland, informed the King of Poland, “almost all of Ukraine decided to die for the name of the Tsar of Moscow,” that is, for the annexation of Ukraine to Russia.
Both peoples - Ukrainian and Russian - fought shoulder to shoulder not only against foreign invaders (only with the help of Russia did the Ukrainians manage to repel the aggression of Poland, Turkey and Crimea), but also against common exploiters - tsarism, landowners. Many Ukrainians fought in the troops of Stepan Razin (uprising of 1670-1671); The uprising spread to Sloboda Ukraine, where the rebels captured a number of cities, such as Sumy, Chuguev, Kharkov and others.
Hetman I. Samoilovich
In 1686, the tsarist government, contrary to the will of the Ukrainian people, made peace with Poland, leaving the Right Bank (without Kyiv) and Galicia under its rule. The Ukrainian people protested against this world, which was tearing apart the living body of Ukraine. It is not for nothing that Hetman I. Samoilovich in 1685, that is, during peace negotiations, through his envoy to Moscow V. Kochubey, insisted on the need to reconquer Ukrainian lands from Poland, and not only the Right Bank, but “and all of Chervona Rus” with the cities of Galich, Lvov, Przemysl and others. The peace of 1686 did not put an end to the struggle of the Ukrainian people for reunification into one whole and for unification with the Russian people.
The lands of the Central Kiev region, devastated by disastrous wars, were repopulated at the end of the 17th century by Ukrainian settlers from Galicia, Podolia, Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the Left Bank. The national hero Semyon Paley played an extremely important role in this settlement. He also negotiated with the Russian government about the reunification of these lands with the Left Bank and their inclusion in Russia.
The armed struggle against the Polish-gentry invaders who rushed to these lands did not stop; A particularly large uprising broke out in 1702-1703, and the main leader of the rebels, Samus, from the very beginning declared his goal to reunite the Right Bank with the Left Bank and announced that he was ready to submit to the Russian government. This uprising, starting in the Kiev and Bratslav regions, spread to Volyn, Podolia, and Galicia. Ukrainians moved from Northern Bukovina, Bessarabia, and the Left Bank to help the rebels. Although Poland managed to suppress the uprising, Paley defended the areas of Fastov and Bila Tserkva, which, like a number of neighboring localities on the Right Bank, remained virtually part of Russia.
Hetman Mazepa
During the Northern War between Russia and Sweden in 1708, Hetman of Left Bank Ukraine Mazepa betrayed Russia and Ukraine and entered into an alliance with the Swedish king Charles XII, seeking with his assistance to subjugate all Ukrainian lands to Poland. Charles XII, at the head of the army, then the strongest in Europe, moved to Ukraine. The Ukrainian people did not follow the traitor Mazepa and remained faithful to the alliance with the Russian people. Guerrilla warfare flared up in Ukraine, bleeding and sapping the strength of the Swedes. The heroic defense of Poltava, defended by Russian troops and local residents, further undermined the strength of the Swedish army. On June 27, 1709, near Poltava, the Swedes were defeated by the Russian army (it also included Ukrainian units) led by Peter I. The defeat of the army of Charles XII was of exceptional importance for the history of Ukraine, putting an end to Poland’s attempts to seize Left Bank Ukraine.
An unsuccessful war with Turkey forced Peter I in 1711 to agree that the Middle Dnieper region would again fall under Polish rule.
But on the Right Bank and in Galicia there was a tireless struggle against Polish domination; uprisings broke out one after another, of which the largest was the “Koliivshchyna” of 1768. These uprisings, in particular the Koliivshchyna, spread to Galicia. And each time the rebels raised the question of the reunification of Ukrainian lands and their inclusion in Russia. In Poland at that time, both peasants and townspeople suffered extremely heavy oppression from the gentry. Therefore, in the ranks of the Ukrainian rebels (in the 18th century they were usually called Haidamaks) there were many Polish poor and farm laborers. We have authoritative evidence of this from Russian border officials, as well as from the contemporary Pole Kitovich. Moreover, the appeal (“Project of the Cotton Confederation”) of 1767 has also been preserved, calling on Polish peasants to fight together with the Ukrainian peasants oppressed by the gentry against the lords.
At the end of the 18th century, Poland was brought to ruin by its ruling classes: its lands were divided between its neighbors. And of those Ukrainian lands that were under the yoke of lordly Poland, the Right Bank of Ukraine became part of Russia, and Galicia was captured by Austria (1772). In 1775, Austria also occupied Northern Bukovina, previously subject to the Turks. Note that, according to Austrian government statistics, at that time 2/3 of the population of Bukovina were Ukrainians, as established by General Erzberger, the ruler of Bukovina since 1778.
Throughout the late 17th and 18th centuries, the Ukrainian people were unable to reunite in a single Ukrainian state, and a significant part of their land remained under the yoke of Poland and Turkey. However, even in that dark time, the Ukrainian people did not lose consciousness of their unity. Thus, the chronicler S. Velichko in his work (started in 1720) says that Ukraine includes the Right Bank, Volyn and Galicia. The author of the description of the Chernigov governorship, A. Shafonsky (1786), also writes about this. Galicia also appears as “Rus” on the maps of Delide in 1703 and Schenck in 1705.
The territory of Austria-Hungary before 1914.
In the first half of the 19th century, that part of the Ukrainian people that was under the rule of Austria-Hungary had to endure heavy oppression from the German government of Austria. The dominant German and Hungarian circles of Austria-Hungary sought, with the help of the Polish gentry, to denationalize, Germanize, Polonize, and Magyarize the Ukrainians. However, this did not break the spirit of the Ukrainian people. The national revival in Ukraine developed more and more, ties between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples grew and strengthened. The Ukrainian people, preserving the idea of their unity, sought reunification.
K. Marx and F. Engels pointed out that Galician Ukrainians gravitate “to other Little Russian regions that have united with Russia.” Marx and Engels noted that “the Austrian Slavs are membra disjecta (disunited members) who strive for reunification either with each other or with the main bodies of their nationalities.”
V. Bronevsky, an officer of the Russian fleet, who traveled from Trieste to St. Petersburg in 1810, writes: “When entering Galicia, everything made me happy; the similarity of the inhabitants with our Little Russians is striking: their scrolls and hats are exactly the same as those we wear in Ukraine, and they speak so clearly that I, not being a Little Russian, could understand everything without difficulty; and nature itself seemed to me more beautiful and more abundant than I saw it yesterday.” Bronevsky points out that in Galicia “the language of the common people is still completely similar to Little Russian.”
The common struggle both against foreign invaders and against tsarism further united Ukrainians with the Russian people. During Napoleon's invasion in 1812, in Left Bank Ukraine alone, 15 Cossack regiments were formed to fight against Napoleon's hordes, in addition, masses of Ukrainians fought in the ranks of all-Russian military formations.
Taras Shevchenko
The fraternal friendship of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, as a focus, was reflected in the common activities and connections that existed between Taras Shevchenko and Russian revolutionary democrats, in particular N. Chernyshevsky and N. Dobrolyubov. A great friend of the Ukrainians, Chernyshevsky in his works opposed the Germanization of Ukrainians in Galicia, against the artificial division of the Ukrainian people.
Shevchenko was also connected in his activities with leading Polish figures of that time, for example with Zalessky.
In the second half of the 19th century, the struggle of the Ukrainian people against social and national oppression took on an even wider scope. In those areas of Ukraine that were part of Russia, the working class was closely connected with the Russian proletariat, whose struggle always found its echo in Ukraine. In 1895, when V.I. Lenin created the “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class” in St. Petersburg, similar struggle unions arose in Ukraine - in Kiev, Nikolaev, Yekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk). The Kiev and Ekaterinoslav “Unions” took part in the First Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. At the II Party Congress in 1903, delegates from the Ukrainian committees were present: Kharkov, Kiev, Odessa, Nikolaev, Ekaterinoslav.
The first social democratic circles
The events of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1905-1907 had a wide impact and development in Ukraine. This was the case in the January days of 1905, and in the October days, and during the December armed uprising in Moscow, when armed uprisings took place in a number of cities in Ukraine - Kharkov, Lugansk, Gorlovka.
Galician Ukrainians found themselves in exceptionally difficult conditions under the rule of Austria-Hungary. In Eastern Galicia (where the overwhelming majority of the population were Ukrainians) large latifundia of Polish landowners predominated; wages for agricultural workers were very low. High mortality and low equivalent consumption distinguished Galicia from all European countries.
Ukrainian culture was suppressed. Lviv University was dominated by the Germans until 1870, and later by the Poles. There was one secondary Ukrainian school per 820 thousand population, and one secondary Polish school per 30 thousand population; per thousand Poles, 97 children attended lower school, and per thousand Ukrainians - only 57.
Ivan Franko
And in these lands, the Ukrainian people stubbornly fought for their freedom, for their own national culture. From his midst at that time such outstanding figures as Ivan Franko, Osip Fedkovich, Olga Kobylyanskaya emerged. In 1870, a workers' strike broke out in Lvov.
In 1901, several hundred Ukrainian students left Lviv University in protest against its forced polonization and refusal to expand the rights of the Ukrainian language. Progressive circles of Polish university youth also reacted sympathetically to this step. The peasant uprising of 1902 involved about 100 thousand people. An attempt by Ukrainian reactionaries to come to an agreement with Polish landowners (the so-called Antonovich-Badeni agreement) at the end of the 19th century failed due to resistance from the popular masses.
Despite the fact that part of the Ukrainian people was outside Russia, a sense of unity grew increasingly stronger in the minds of the masses. This was figuratively expressed in the early 60s of the 19th century by the Ukrainian public figure P. Kulish: “Our brother will sing across the Danube or near Poltava, but in Lviv and the Beskydy the voice resounds. Galician Rus' groans under the Carpathians, and over the Dnieper people’s hearts ache.”
The most prominent progressive Western Ukrainian figures, like Ivan Franko, saw their half-brother in the Russian people. Franco told his opponents: “We are all Russophiles, hear, I repeat once again that we are all Russophiles. We love the Great Russian people, we wish them all the best... And we know and love Russian writers, great in the spiritual kingdom...”
After the February bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1917, wide avenues opened up for the Ukrainian people to realize their cherished aspirations: to reunite in a single Ukrainian state. The bulk of the Ukrainian people followed the Bolshevik Party, which always stood for the point of view of self-determination of peoples right up to secession, i.e. the full right of peoples to arrange their own lives as they wish.
The bourgeois Provisional Government and the Ukrainian Central Rada (the organ of the Ukrainian landowners and bourgeoisie) formed shortly after the revolution, despite pseudo-democratic phraseology, created obstacles to the liberation struggle of the Ukrainian working people. Only the Bolsheviks, as before, remained in truly popular positions in general, on the Ukrainian issue in particular. Even before the First World War, V.I. Lenin proclaimed his famous position: “With the united action of the Great Russian and Ukrainian proletarians, a free Ukraine possible, without such unity there can be no talk of it.” At the same time, Lenin proclaimed the right of the Ukrainian people to create their own state.
The Great October Socialist Revolution and the formation of the Soviet government were extremely important for the struggle of the Ukrainian people for their reunification. Now, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, the Ukrainian people could eliminate social and national oppression and reunite in their single state. Already at the end of December (25th new style) 1917, the Soviet government of Ukraine was organized in Kharkov, leading the struggle of the Ukrainian people against the Central Rada and against the bourgeois counter-revolution, seeking to tear Ukrainian workers away from their class brothers.
During the years of the civil war, the Ukrainian people had to expend a lot of effort, a lot of blood had to be shed in order to achieve their liberation and preserve their Soviet statehood. Without the help of the Russian people, without the leadership of the proven Bolshevik Party, the Ukrainian people would not have been able to resist.
At the beginning of 1918, the Central Rada, expelled by the rebellious people, sold their homeland to the German invaders and called their hordes to Ukraine. But, burning with anger, the people of Ukraine rose up in a patriotic war against foreign invaders and by the end of the year, with the help of the Russian people, Russian workers and peasants and other peoples of young Soviet Russia under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, they expelled the invaders and their accomplices from their country.
It is characteristic that the Ukrainians, who were in the Austrian troops at that time, not only refused to fight against the Ukrainian people all the time, but even joined the Ukrainian partisans, as official circles in Austria testified to this. (But now the Ukrainian oligarchy has fooled the heads of its workers so much that they do not consider it shameful to shoot at each other. And for what? For the sake of the fullness of the pockets of Poroshenko and Kolomoisky? The comfortable life of Tymoshenko, Yatsenyuk, etc.?)
At the end of the war of 1914-1918, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers (England, the United States of America, France and others) decided that Poland should include only ethnographically Polish areas. Accordingly, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers then established the so-called “Curzon Line,” which provided for the entry of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, populated overwhelmingly by Ukrainians and Belarusians, into the Soviet Union.
Later, throughout 1919, other foreign invaders who tried to seize Ukraine with the help of the traitor Petlyura also failed. In 1920, Petliura entered into an agreement with the White Poles, agreeing that a significant territory of Ukraine (including Galicia, part of Volyn) with a population of up to 11 million people would come under the rule of Poland, and for this the Poles pledged to help Petliura seize power in Ukraine. This treacherous adventure also failed. The Red Army defeated and expelled the White Poles from the territory of Soviet Ukraine. Only Trotsky’s treacherous activity then prevented the liberation of Western Ukrainian lands from Polish rule, since his proposed adventure of a “march on Warsaw” in 1920 led to the retreat of the Red Army, during which it had to leave a significant part of the Ukrainian and Belarusian territories. As a result, the RSFSR was forced to sign the Treaty of Riga, which extended the Polish-Soviet border far east of the Curzon Line, capturing the western parts of Ukraine and Belarus.
"Curzon line"
After the collapse of Austria, boyar Romania, which had captured Bessarabia even earlier, at the beginning of 1918, also captured the lands of Northern Bukovina.
At the end of the civil war, broad prospects for comprehensive development opened up before the Ukrainian people, who formed their own state - the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, an integral, integral part of the USSR. Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, Soviet Ukraine became a powerful industrial country, a region of developed agriculture, and a region of exceptional growth of national culture.
At the same time, in the lands of Ukraine occupied by Poland and Romania there was a completely opposite picture. The industry of Western Ukraine decreased by 40%, sugar consumption - by 93%, salt - by 72%, coal - by 50%. More than 50% of peasant farms did not have horses and only 47% had cows. Ukrainian culture fell into decline, suffering persecution from the occupiers. Of the 3,662 Ukrainian schools by the end of Polish rule, 135 remained, of 61 Ukrainian gymnasiums - 5, and at Lvov University a percentage rate was introduced for Ukrainians. The number of illiterate people in Western Ukraine reached 60%.
In Bessarabia, 80% of all land was cultivated with antediluvian tools, and 63 thousand hectares were not cultivated at all, gardening decreased by 5 times, tobacco growing fell by almost 80%. In Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, forced Romanianization was carried out. The population of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia was exhausted under the yoke of usury and exorbitant taxes. The working day in Western Ukraine, Northern Bukovina, Bessarabia sometimes reached 16 hours!
Ukrainians of the occupied lands never recognized the power of the occupiers, and nothing could suppress the freedom-loving aspirations of the people: not the cruel Polish “pacification” of the West. Ukraine in 1930, nor the bloody suppression by the Romanians of the Khotyn and Tatar-Bunar uprisings of 1919 and 1924. The Ukrainian people of the occupied lands always turned their gaze to the east, to Soviet Ukraine, to the Soviet Union, from where they expected help and support.
In turn, the peoples of the Soviet Union never forgot about their oppressed brothers. The Soviet Union never recognized the capture of Bessarabia by the Romanians.
In 1939-1940, the cherished dream of the Ukrainian people came true, the long-awaited reunification came true. In the war with Nazi Germany, Poland suffered a number of defeats, since the leaders of the Polish government (in particular Colonel Beck) in previous years only helped Hitler in his vile anti-Soviet game, and failed to organize the defense of Poland. In mid-September 1939, the Polish government fled, leaving the country to its fate. Hitler's troops had already begun to penetrate Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. The Soviet government could not remain a passive spectator under such conditions. On September 17, the Red Army entered Western Ukraine and Western Belarus and within a few days liberated its half-brothers - Belarusians and Ukrainians - from the rule of foreigners.
On October 22, 1939, elections to the People's Assembly took place in Western Ukraine. All citizens of Western Ukraine who have reached the age of 18, regardless of their race, nationality, religion, education, social origin, property status and past activities, had the right to choose and be elected to this Assembly. Elections took place on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot. It was a truly nationwide, free plebiscite. The population of Western Ukraine itself had to decide its fate. The results of the plebiscite showed the will of Western Ukraine. Out of 4,776,275 voters, 4,433,997 people participated in the elections, that is, 92.83% of voters. 90.93% of all votes (4,032,154) were cast for the candidates nominated to this Assembly by peasant committees, temporary administrations, meetings of the labor guards, workers, and intelligentsia.
On October 26-28, the People's Assembly took place in the ancient Ukrainian city of Lviv. It unanimously proclaimed the establishment of Soviet power throughout Western Ukraine and decided to ask the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “to accept Western Ukraine into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, to include Western Ukraine into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in order to reunite the Ukrainian people in a single state, to put an end to the centuries-long disunity of the Ukrainian people.”
On November 1 of the same year, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR at its 5th session decided to satisfy this request and “include Western Ukraine into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with its reunification with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.”
On November 14, in the capital of Ukraine Kyiv, at the III, extraordinary session of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, a law on the inclusion of Western Ukraine into the Ukrainian SSR was unanimously adopted.
In 1940, the lands of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were liberated from the yoke of the Romanian invaders. On August 2, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR at its VII session granted the petition of representatives of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina for the inclusion of Northern Bukovina and the Khotyn, Akkerman and Izmail districts of Bessarabia populated by Ukrainians into the Ukrainian SSR.
Ukrainian SSR in 1940
These acts of 1939-1940 completed the reunification of the Ukrainian people in their single state- Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The working people of Ukraine did not want to live in isolation from their fellow workers and peasants and became part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
But the Ukrainian people did not have to rejoice in their freedom for long. On June 22, 1941, Hitler threw his predatory hordes into the Soviet Union, seeking to destroy the world's first socialist country and enslave the entire great and free Soviet people. Hitler's plans also included the seizure of Soviet Ukraine, which he wanted to annex to Germany as a colony. Rich in natural resources, food and skilled labor, which the Nazis turned into slaves in the occupied territories, Ukraine was a tasty morsel for the Nazi invaders.
The Republic is one of the first to receive the enemy’s insidious blow. The destructive military rampart did not pass a single populated area on the territory of the republic, sweeping through it twice - during the advance of the fascists and during their retreat.
Hitler hoped that the USSR would not survive for long, that a struggle would begin between the peoples of the Soviet Union; he believed that the peoples of the USSR lived together only because the communists forced them to do so. The West expected the Soviet Union to collapse at the first blow. However, the Ukrainian people, like other peoples of our country, remained faithful to each other and to their Soviet motherland. Voluntary Union of Peoples clearly showed the difference between multinational capitalist states, where there is always strife between the peoples inhabiting them (since the national bourgeoisie is constantly competing with each other for the right to exploit the working people living in one or another territory of the country), and a multinational socialist state, where the peoples there is nothing to divide among themselves and where they are truly free and truly independent.
All the peoples of the USSR rose as one against the fascist hordes. They had to pay a terrible price for their freedom - 20 million dead. For Ukraine, this cost was about 8 million human lives. In fact, every sixth resident of Ukraine died during the war.
Millions of sons and daughters of Ukraine fought the enemy in the ranks of the Soviet Army and Navy. The Republic gave over 7 million soldiers to the front. Every second of them died, and half of those who survived returned home disabled.
There were 150 thousand fighters in 650 fighter battalions. About 1.3 million people joined the people's militia. Over 2 million citizens of Ukraine took part in the construction of defense fortifications.
About 500 thousand people worked near Kiev alone. August 29, 1941 at the Kiev Drama Theater named after. Frank, a citywide youth rally took place. During the meeting, it became known that the enemy had broken through the defenses and was approaching the city. Those present in the hall made a unanimous decision - everyone should take up arms, and the rally would be extended after the danger had been eliminated. When the youth again gathered in the theater late in the evening, many chairs remained empty - more than 200 young men and women did not return from the battlefield.
During the occupation of Ukraine 1941-1944. the Nazis killed over 5 million people (3.8 million civilians and about 1.5 million prisoners of war); 2.4 million people were taken to work in Germany.
The entire powerful industrial base of the republic was liquidated: either taken deep into the USSR, or destroyed so that it would not fall to the enemy. In difficult conditions from July to October 1941, over 500 large enterprises were evacuated from Ukraine, which then continued their work in different parts of the Soviet Union.
The liberation of Ukraine lasted almost two years. Ten fronts fought fiercely for it, the forces of the Black Sea Fleet, which made up almost half of the personnel and military equipment of the entire active army of the USSR.
I. Kozhedub
The contribution of the Ukrainian people to the victory over fascism is invaluable. About 2.5 million Ukrainians were awarded orders and medals, over 2 thousand were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, one of them was I.M. Kozhedub was awarded this high title three times. Of the 115 twice Heroes of the Soviet Union, 32 are Ukrainians or natives of Ukraine. Of the four Heroes of the Soviet Union and at the same time full holders of the Order of Glory, two are Ukrainians.
But the newly reunited Ukrainian people had to go through a lot. The policy of Hitler's fascists was aimed at destroying any national identity of the peoples of the USSR, the goal was to degrade people, turning them into dumb and stupid animals for hard work. Everything that could serve as any basis for the desire for national independence and the liberation movement was suppressed. In Ukraine, this was manifested, for example, in limiting the general education of Ukrainians to four grades of school and reducing the higher levels of education to highly specialized practical professions. Any amateur manifestations of the cultural initiative of the Ukrainian population, including those of a purely educational and cultural nature, were suppressed in every possible way. Publishing houses, scientific institutions, libraries and museums were closed, the most valuable of them were exported to Germany. The press and theaters, although they operated, were limited; their level was extremely primitive. (Approximately the same as now in all post-Soviet republics.)
There could be no talk of any social guarantees for the local population. Even vitally important services, such as sanitary and medical services, were allowed to residents of Nazi-occupied territories on a very minimal basis. According to the fascist authorities, the lot of the Soviet peoples is hunger, all kinds of restrictions, and not a trace of human rights. Add here the inhumane treatment of Ukrainian and Soviet prisoners of war taken to Germany, as well as mass executions of the local population for actual or imaginary support of any resistance or protest.
The fascist occupiers created over 230 concentration camps and ghettos on the territory of Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war, women, children, old people, and disabled people became their prisoners. More than two hundred and fifty Ukrainian villages were burned to the ground by the occupiers.
This kind of power was supported by Ukrainian nationalists from a whole bunch of bourgeois-nationalist organizations and military units such as OUN, UPA, Nachtigal, Roland (battalion), SS division "Galicia", etc., which in today's fascist Ukraine are passed off as national heroes who allegedly fought for independence of Ukraine. These “heroes” actively participated in the executions and shootings of Ukrainian civilians, served in the fascist police, and were part of punitive battalions that destroyed partisans who fought against foreign invaders.
Who joined these anti-people nationalist organizations? Patriots of Ukraine? No matter how it is! Most of these organizations were created by the Nazis even before the war on the territory of capitalist countries (mostly Poland) from representatives of the working people of the bourgeoisie and kulaks who fled from power. In words, the nationalists advocated the independence of Ukraine, but for some reason independence under the rule of the working people, i.e. independence of Soviet Ukraine, which was part of the USSR according to voluntary agreement (as now, for example, European countries are part of the European Union), they were not at all happy with it. They wanted to have a bourgeois Ukraine, with the dominance of the bourgeois class and an uncomplaining working population that could be mercilessly exploited, they longed for independence from the people- that’s what all these Banderas and Stetskos, Kachinskys, etc. were striving for. That’s why they found a common language with fascism, which is of the same capitalist-exploitative root. The fact that for some time there were some tensions between the Nazis and the Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists does not in any way indicate that they defended the interests of the Ukrainian people. This shows that the competitive struggle within the bourgeois class never stops: Hitler’s fascists and Ukrainian nationalists just divided among themselves who to rob and exploit the Ukrainian working people. (Russian, Ukrainian, and European-American monopolies, which started the war in Donbass, are now doing the same thing).
“According to the Fuhrer’s concept, there can be no talk of an independent Ukraine in the coming decades,” said Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s minister for the occupied territories of the East.
Both the Ukrainian land and the people groaned under the forged boot of the fascist beast. Ukraine could not tolerate such outrage. The anger of the people was terrible. Both young and old were filled with hatred, joined the partisans, and created underground cells. The flames of partisan warfare engulfed the whole of Ukraine.
In Ukraine, under the leadership of the Central Committee of the party, the Ukrainian headquarters of the partisan movement was created. Everywhere the underground organizations of the Bolsheviks were at the head of the partisan detachments.
During the partisan war in Ukraine, remarkable commanders and organizers of the partisan movement emerged, such as S. Kovpak, A. Fedorov, S. Rudnev, P. Vershigora and others. For courage and heroism they were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and S. Kovpak and A. Fedorov became twice Heroes of the Soviet Union.
Under the leadership of the Secretary of the Regional Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) A.F. Fedorov, the underground organizations of the Chernihiv region launched successful military activities.
There are still legends about Kovpak in Ukraine. And his name alone made the Germans tremble.
S. A. Kovpak
Before the war, S. A. Kovpak was the chairman of the local Council in the small Ukrainian town of Putivl. After the occupation of Putivl by the Germans, Kovpak and Rudnev organized a partisan detachment, the fame of whose exploits spread widely throughout Ukraine. In 1942, Kovpak, together with other partisan commanders, at the suggestion of the Central Committee, organized a deep partisan raid on the right bank of Ukraine with the aim of rousing the people to fight the Germans and strike at enemy communications. Kovpak’s troops launched a large war of extermination in the Carpathian Ukraine. They destroyed several oil refineries, more than 50 thousand tons of oil. To fight the partisan detachments of Kovpak, the Germans sent troops from Galicia and Hungary. However, the partisan detachments broke through the encirclement and returned to Ukraine.
The Carpathian raid of the Kovpakovites had not only great military, but also moral and political significance. He showed that the Nazis were powerless to conquer the Ukrainian people, and had a great influence on the rise of partisan warfare in Western Ukraine.
The partisan struggle in Ukraine has assumed a truly national character. Relying on the support of the entire people, the partisans of Ukraine during the Patriotic War disabled over 450 thousand enemy soldiers and officers, derailed several thousand military trains with manpower and equipment, blew up and burned 2,200 railway and highway bridges, and destroyed hundreds of ammunition depots and equipment, recaptured from the Germans and distributed to the Soviet population a large number of trains with grain and livestock (the Germans took away even the most necessary things from Soviet citizens, forcing them to starve, and took it all to Germany).
On October 28, 1944, the last Nazi formations were expelled from the territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Ukraine was liberated.
But this was still part of the victory, because after the fascist invasion there was such devastation that for several more years it was necessary to restore everything, from residential buildings and schools, to power plants, factories, mines, etc.; it was necessary to clear the fields and forests of mines, to re-introduce agriculture in the republic, for which it had been famous since ancient times, so that beautiful Ukraine would bloom again and shine with happiness and freedom.
After the German occupation:
The first session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the second convocation approved the law on a five-year plan for the restoration and development of the national economy for 1946-1950.
The German occupiers caused enormous damage to the USSR. Therefore, the Supreme Council demanded that the first task be to restore the affected areas, to restore the pre-war level of industry and agriculture, and then to exceed this level on a significant scale. And this task was successfully completed - by 1950, industry and agriculture were completely restored, and became even more powerful than before the war.
For example, the five-year plan provided that the production of the entire industry of the USSR in 1950 should increase by 48% compared to the pre-war 1940. This level of production was not only achieved, but also significantly exceeded: in 1950, Soviet industry produced by 73% more production than in 1940. Newly built and put into operation over 6 thousand industrial enterprises, not counting small state and cooperative enterprises!
The industry of the areas affected by the war, and primarily of Ukraine, was not only restored, but also modernized! Now Ukrainian enterprises were equipped with new, modern technology.
The metallurgical industry in Ukraine has been completely restored and on a new technical basis. It began to produce more metal than before the war. The entire coal industry of Donbass, completely destroyed during the war, was also completely restored and also began to produce more coal than before the war. By 1950, the new Donbass had become the largest and most mechanized coal basin in the country. The oil industry of Western Ukraine, destroyed during the war, has been completely restored and technically re-equipped.
The same is true in agriculture. As a result of the measures taken by the Soviet government and the dedicated work of collective farmers in 1950, the gross harvest of grain crops, cotton, sugar beets, etc. exceeded the level of the pre-war 1940. Collective and state farm productive livestock farming, which suffered greatly during the war, was completely restored. By 1950, collective and state farms in Ukraine had achieved a significant increase in the number of breeding livestock.
As for the standard of living of the Soviet population, including citizens of Soviet Ukraine, the monetary reform, the abolition of cards for food and industrial goods on December 14, 1947, as well as three annual price reductions sharply increased the well-being of the population of the Soviet republics. The real wages of workers and employees and the incomes of collective farmers increased significantly, by 1950 exceeding the pre-war level by 27-30%.
The Soviet government had special control over the issue of housing, which was badly damaged in enemy-occupied territories. In the post-war years, over 100 million square meters were restored and built in cities. m of living space, more than 2 million residential buildings have been commissioned in rural areas. Thousands of new schools, libraries, children's institutions, a large number of new hospitals, sanatoriums, holiday homes, clubs, theaters and cinemas were built.
Thanks to the care of the Soviet government, selfless work for the benefit of their homeland of Ukrainians and the help of the people of all Soviet republics, Ukraine has truly become more beautiful than before.
For three and a half decades, the Ukrainian people did not know grief, living freely and happily in friendship with other Soviet peoples. But the bourgeois counter-revolution, better known as Gorbachev's Perestroika, put an end to his prosperity. The bourgeoisie, which grew up in the country thanks to Gorbachev's reforms, wrested political power from the hands of the working class of the USSR. In all Soviet republics, the division of public property began. The newly-minted capitalists grappled with each other in a competitive struggle for the right to undividedly exploit the working class of different republics and tore the united Soviet state apart. Ukraine, like Russia, became bourgeois countries, formally sovereign and independent, but in reality - primitive colonies of the major imperialist powers of the world - the USA, England, West Germany, etc. What the Soviet peoples fought against during the Great Patriotic War happened through for just over half a century, the free Soviet peoples found themselves enslaved by world capital, in the name and on behalf of which the local national bourgeoisie rules the territory of their “independent” countries.
Does world capital and the national Ukrainian bourgeoisie need the prosperity of the Ukrainian people? No way! They only want profit. And the interests of profit do not coincide with the interests of the working people, because for the bourgeoisie they themselves are the only source of profit. The capitalist’s profit is generated only from the exploitation of the working class and the working masses - the economic laws of capitalism have not changed since they were discovered in the mid-19th century by K. Marx. And therefore the result that we now see in Ukraine is the deindustrialization of the country, the degradation of agriculture, the destruction of social guarantees, the sharp impoverishment of the working population, progressive unemployment, the decline of culture, science, education, the growth of crime, drug addiction, prostitution, constant increases in the state apparatus, total corruption, militarization of the country and its involvement in a war for a new redivision of the world - was natural and inevitable for the capitalist system. He the same as in all former Soviet republics.
The Ukrainian people found themselves once again divided not only with their blood brother, the Russian people, but even among themselves! The greed of the oligarchs, who were at each other's throats, led to the fact that one part of Ukraine began to fight with the other.
Ukrainian Donbass today
But is this imperialist war currently going on in the Donbass necessary for the working people of Ukraine, Donbass, and Russia?
No! It is needed only by capitalists, oligarchs, and the bourgeois class. For in this war the bourgeoisie earns huge profits, which workers, office workers and rural workers and their loved ones have to pay for with their lives and their health.
The Ukrainian people can, as before, get rid of all the troubles that have befallen them only by uniting and acting together with the Russian people. (And the peoples of all other former Soviet republics!).
Only an irreconcilable class struggle against the entire bourgeois class, which turned the once mighty industrial Ukraine into a shameful raw materials colony of world imperialism - a class struggle against the bourgeoisie, both its own national and any foreign for working class power and all the working masses can once again give him freedom, genuine statehood and national independence.
Prepared by V. Kozhevnikov, 01/26/2016
References:
1. N. Petrovsky “Reunification of the Ukrainian people in a single Ukrainian Soviet state”, “Bolshevik”, 1944, No. 2, pp. 42-55.
2. http://svatovo.ws/s/war_Ukraine.html
3. A. Pankratova, History of the USSR, 1952
4. “Bolshevik”, 1950, No. 4
How the Ukrainian language was created - artificially and for political reasons. “The truth is never sweet,” Irina Farion recently noted, presenting her next book about the Ukrainian language on the First Channel of the National Radio of Ukraine. And in some ways, it’s hard to disagree with the now widely known deputy of the Verkhovna Rada. The truth will always be bitter for Ukrainian “nationally conscious” figures. They are too far apart from her. However, it is necessary to know the truth. Including the truth about the Ukrainian language. This is especially important for Galicia. After all, Mikhail Sergeevich Grushevsky admitted this.
“Work on the language, as in general work on the cultural development of Ukrainians, was carried out primarily on Galician soil,” he wrote.
It is worth dwelling on this work, which began in the second half of the 19th century, in more detail. Galicia was then part of the Austrian Empire. Accordingly, Russia was a foreign country for Galicians. But, despite this circumstance, the Russian literary language was not considered alien in the region. Galician Rusyns perceived it as an all-Russian, common cultural language for all parts of historical Rus', and therefore for Galician Rus'.
When at the congress of Galician-Russian scientists, held in 1848 in Lvov, it was decided that it was necessary to cleanse folk speech from Polonisms, this was seen as a gradual approach of Galician dialects to the norms of the Russian literary language. “Let the Russians start from the head, and we start from the feet, then sooner or later we will meet each other and converge in the heart,” said the prominent Galician historian Antoniy Petrushevich at the congress. Scientists and writers worked in the Russian literary language in Galicia, newspapers and magazines were published, and books were published.
The Austrian authorities did not like all this very much. Not without reason, they feared that cultural rapprochement with the neighboring state would entail political rapprochement and, in the end, the Russian provinces of the empire (Galicia, Bukovina, Transcarpathia) would openly declare their desire to reunite with Russia.
And then they came up with the roots of “mova”
From Vienna, Galician-Russian cultural ties were obstructed in every possible way. They tried to influence the Galicians with persuasion, threats, and bribery. When this did not work, they moved on to more vigorous measures. “The Rutens (as the official authorities in Austria called the Galician Rusyns - Author) have, unfortunately, done nothing to properly separate their language from the Great Russian, so the government has to take the initiative in this regard,” said the viceroy of France. Joseph in Galicia Agenor Golukhovsky.
At first, the authorities simply wanted to ban the use of the Cyrillic alphabet in the region and introduce the Latin alphabet into the Galician-Russian writing system. But the indignation of the Rusyns over this intention turned out to be so great that the government backed down.
The fight against the Russian language was carried out in a more sophisticated manner. Vienna was concerned with creating a movement of “young Ruthenians”. They were called young not because of their age, but because they rejected the “old” views. If the “old” Ruthenians (Rutens) considered the Great Russians and Little Russians to be a single nation, then the “young” insisted on the existence of an independent Ruthenian nation (or Little Russian - the term “Ukrainian” was used later). Well, an independent nation must, of course, have an independent literary language. The task of composing such a language was set before the “young Rutenes”.
Ukrainians began to be raised together with the language
They succeeded, however, with difficulty. Although the authorities provided all possible support to the movement, it had no influence among the people. The “young Ruthenians” were looked upon as traitors, unprincipled servants of the government. Moreover, the movement consisted of people who, as a rule, were intellectually insignificant. There could be no question that such figures would be able to create and disseminate a new literary language in society.
The Poles came to the rescue, whose influence in Galicia was dominant at that time. Being ardent Russophobes, representatives of the Polish movement saw direct benefit for themselves in the split of the Russian nation. Therefore, they took an active part in the “linguistic” efforts of the “young Rutenes”. “All Polish officials, professors, teachers, even priests began to study primarily philology, not Masurian or Polish, no, but exclusively ours, Russian, in order to create a new Russian-Polish language with the assistance of Russian traitors,” recalled a major public figure in Galicia and Transcarpathia Adolf Dobryansky.
Thanks to the Poles, things went faster. The Cyrillic alphabet was retained, but “reformed” to make it different from the one adopted in the Russian language. They took as a basis the so-called “Kulishivka”, once invented by the Russian Ukrainophile Panteleimon Kulish with the same goal - to dissociate the Little Russians from the Great Russians. The letters “ы”, “е”, “ъ” were removed from the alphabet, but “є” and “ї”, which were absent in Russian grammar, were included.
In order for the Rusyn population to accept the changes, the “reformed” alphabet was introduced into schools by order. The need for innovation was motivated by the fact that for the subjects of the Austrian emperor “it is both better and safer not to use the same spelling that is customary in Russia.”
It is interesting that the inventor of the “kulishivka” himself, who by that time had moved away from the Ukrainophile movement, opposed such innovations. “I swear,” he wrote to the “young Ruten” Omelyan Partitsky, “that if the Poles print in my spelling to commemorate our discord with Great Russia, if our phonetic spelling is presented not as helping the people to enlightenment, but as a banner of our Russian discord, then I, writing in my own way, in Ukrainian, will print in etymological old-world orthography. That is, we don’t live at home, talk and sing songs in the same way, and if it comes down to it, we won’t allow anyone to divide us. A dashing fate separated us for a long time, and we moved towards Russian unity along a bloody road, and now the devil’s attempts to separate us are useless.”
But the Poles allowed themselves to ignore Kulish’s opinion. They just needed Russian discord. After spelling, it's time for vocabulary. They tried to expel as many words used in the Russian literary language from literature and dictionaries. The resulting voids were filled with borrowings from Polish, German, other languages, or simply made-up words.
“Most of the words, phrases and forms from the previous Austro-Ruthenian period turned out to be “Moscow” and had to give way to new words, supposedly less harmful,” one of the “transformers”, who later repented, said about the language “reform”. - “Direction” - this is a Moscow word that cannot be used any longer - they said to “young people”, and they now put the word “directly”. “Modern” is also a Moscow word and gives way to the word “current”, “exclusively” is replaced by the word “inclusive”, “educational” - by the word “enlightenment”, “society” - by the word “companionship” or “suspense”.
The zeal with which the Rusyn speech was “reformed” surprised philologists. And not only locals. “The Galician Ukrainians do not want to take into account that none of the Little Russians have the right to the ancient verbal heritage, to which Kiev and Moscow equally have a claim, to frivolously abandon and replace with Polonisms or simply fictitious words,” wrote Alexander Brickner, a professor of Slavic studies at the University of Berlin ( Pole by nationality). - I cannot understand why in Galicia several years ago the word “master” was anathematized and the word “kind” was used instead. “Dobrodiy” is a remnant of patriarchal-slave relations, and we cannot stand it even in politeness.”
However, the reasons for “innovation” had, of course, to be sought not in philology, but in politics. They began to rewrite school textbooks in a “new way.” It was in vain that the conferences of national teachers, held in August and September 1896 in Peremyshlyany and Glinany, noted that now the teaching aids had become incomprehensible. And they are incomprehensible not only for students, but also for teachers. In vain did teachers complain that under the current conditions “it is necessary to publish an explanatory dictionary for teachers.”
The authorities remained adamant. Dissatisfied teachers were fired from schools. Rusyn officials who pointed out the absurdity of the changes were removed from their positions. Writers and journalists who stubbornly adhered to the “pre-reform” spelling and vocabulary were declared “Muscovites” and persecuted. “Our language goes into the Polish sieve,” noted the outstanding Galician writer and public figure, priest John Naumovich. “Healthy grain is separated like Muscovy, and the seedings are left to us by grace.”
In this regard, it is interesting to compare different editions of Ivan Franko’s works. Many words from the writer’s works published in 1870-1880, for example - “look”, “air”, “army”, “yesterday” and others, were replaced in later reprints with “look”, “povitrya”, “viysko”, “yesterday”, etc. Changes were made both by Franco himself, who joined the Ukrainian movement, and by his “assistants” from among the “nationally conscious” editors.
In total, in 43 works that were published in two or more editions during the author’s lifetime, experts counted more than 10 thousand (!) changes. Moreover, after the death of the writer, “edits” of the texts continued. The same, however, as “corrections” of the texts of works by other authors. This is how independent literature was created in an independent language, later called Ukrainian.
But this language was not accepted by the people. Works published in Ukrainian experienced an acute shortage of readers. “Ten to fifteen years pass until the book of Franko, Kotsyubynsky, Kobylyanskaya sells one thousand to one and a half thousand copies,” complained Mikhail Grushevsky, who then lived in Galicia, in 1911. Meanwhile, books by Russian writers (especially Gogol’s “Taras Bulba”) quickly spread throughout the Galician villages in huge circulations for that era.
And one more wonderful moment. When World War I broke out, an Austrian military publishing house published a special phrase book in Vienna. It was intended for soldiers mobilized into the army from various parts of Austria-Hungary, so that military personnel of different nationalities could communicate with each other. The phrasebook was compiled in six languages: German, Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Croatian and Russian. “They missed the Ukrainian language. This is wrong,” the “nationally conscious” newspaper “Dilo” lamented about this. Meanwhile, everything was logical. The Austrian authorities knew very well that the Ukrainian language was created artificially and was not widespread among the people.
It was possible to implant this language on the territory of Western Ukraine (and even then not immediately) only after the massacre of the indigenous population committed in Galicia, Bukovina and Transcarpathia by the Austro-Hungarians in 1914-1917. That massacre changed a lot in the region. In Central and Eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian language spread even later, but in a different period of history...
Alexander Karevin