Stalin’s Imperial Perception of Ukrainian Nationalism and the famines of the 1920s & 1930s

O’Neil 21

Stalin’s Imperial Perception of Ukrainian Nationalism and the famines of the 1920s & 1930s

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, many political changes took place in Europe and in Asia, from new Marxist views and how or if communism should be implemented and where to whether or not capitalism and nationalism had any place in a socialist country. Joseph Stalin seemed to, at least initially, believe, like Lenin, that Ukrainians could maintain their identity whilst being a part of a larger economic picture of the Stalinist Soviet Union which focused on a Russo-centric government that was as afraid of external threats as it was a fifth column mutiny. Soon, Stalin learned that nationalism could not be whisked away with the deporting of the intellectual minds of the Ukrainian people. A constant throughout the 20th century, even present under Stalin’s rule and the heinous state of affairs in the Soviet Union during its time, Ukrainian nationalism has been and continues to be loud and clear through present day.

Slightly smaller than the state of Texas, Ukraine is known as the “breadbasket of Europe.”[footnoteRef:1] As a former part of the lands gathered in the Golden Horde, Ukraine is located between Russia to the north and northeast, Belarus to the northwest, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungry to the west, Romania and Moldova to the southwest, the Black Sea to the south, and the Sea of Azov to the southeast.[footnoteRef:2] Batu Khan’s Golden Horde primarily consisted of the area of land from Carpathian Mountains in Eastern Europe to Siberia.[footnoteRef:3] It was a mixture of Mongolians, Turks, and north-eastern Rus, who primarily lived in the western part of the Mongolian territory. After the decline of the Mongolian empire in the 15th Century, there was a power struggle over this land[footnoteRef:4] between Lithuanian, Polish, Turkish, Cossack, and Russian challengers who sought to establish a government in that area. [1: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Basic Facts About Ukraine (2007). ] [2: National Geographic, Ukraine Map (2015).] [3: Sarah Pruitt, Archeologists Reveal City Ruled by Genghis Khan Heirs (A&E Television Networks, 2014).] [4: Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire (Reading, MA: Longman (Pearson Education), 2001), 19.]

Map of Ukraine and Surrounding Region[footnoteRef:5] [5: National Geographic, Ukraine Map, 2015. ]

In 1648, Ukraine was liberated from the Polish by the Cossacks (a group of people who were eventually taken over by the Russians in 1670).[footnoteRef:6] Beginning in 1654 with the Pereiaslav treaty[footnoteRef:7] signed by Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, Russian dominance was established in the region. As a result, Ukraine came under the protection of Russia who established a military presence in the region with an army of 60,000 Cossacks. These Cossacks, along with nobility, burghers,[footnoteRef:8] and clergy, were given rights and freedoms previously not afforded to them under the new regime.[footnoteRef:9] The Ukrainian government no longer entered into talks or negotiations without the Tsar’s permission or emissaries, especially with Poland or Turkey, who frequently came to odds with the Ukrainian people. [6: Ihor Solovey, Ukrainian History: Chronological Table (2000).] [7: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654 (2001).] [8: A citizen of a town or city, typically a member of the wealthy bourgeoisie. ] [9: Ibid.]

But, because of the vague wording and inconclusive structuring of the Treaty[footnoteRef:10], many dissenters on both sides (Ukrainian and Russian) fought over interpretations. “The majority of Ukrainian historians see the act of 1654 as an alliance between two independent partners who at the most envisaged a temporary Muscovite protectorate[footnoteRef:11], but no incorporation into the Russian state”.[footnoteRef:12] The government of Ukraine, under the command of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, saw the treaty as a temporary alliance, both political and militarily, and was put off when the Muscovite officials under the orders of the Tsar visited 120 cities, villages, and towns and ordered the Ukrainian men to swear allegiance to the ruler of Russia.[footnoteRef:13] [10: The Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654 is difficult to obtain and is still only found in Russian and French languages via an official Ukrainian website. ] [11: A protectorate is a region or a group of people who are under the protection of a larger or more powerful governing body (ex. Guam or Puerto Rico is under the protection of The United States of America). A protectorate can also be a term used to describe a ruler or a governing official who is the head of a government or group that is protecting a region. ] [12: Kappeler, The Russian Empire, 61.] [13: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.]

Where the wording of the Pereiaslav treaty led the Ukrainian government to assume liberties on their side, the Russian officials viewed the document very differently. “… [I]t had been an axiom among Soviet historians that it represented the liberation from the Polish yoke of eastern Slav brothers who had been separated from them after the decline of the Kievan state.”[footnoteRef:14] [14: Kappeler, The Russian Empire, 61.]

Scholars even argue over the treaty’s meaning to this day. Some believe it was a voluntary complete or partial incorporation of Ukraine into Russia[footnoteRef:15] or a way for Ukraine to remain autonomous within the tsardom and, later, when it became the Russian empire.[footnoteRef:16] Some argue that it was a political union between two states (as the United States of America are a union of individual states)[footnoteRef:17] or something more personal, as an argument between the Tsar and the leader of Ukraine, Khmelnytsky, to remain sovereigns of their own country but work together to move their countries forward.[footnoteRef:18] Another ideology holds that the treaty was a written bond of Ukraine’s vassalage to Russia[footnoteRef:19] or to ensure the Ukraine’s status as a protectorate.[footnoteRef:20] But most current Soviet historians[footnoteRef:21] believe it to be “the culmination of the desire of two ‘fraternal peoples’ to unite in a unitary Russian state.”[footnoteRef:22] [15: Historians: Odinets, Rozenfeld, and Miakotin. ] [16: Historian Nolde. ] [17: Historians: Diakonov, Filippov, and Popov.] [18: Historians: Lashchenko and Sergeevich.] [19: A large number of historians have backed this interpretation including: Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Korkunov, Ican Krypiakevych, Miakotin, Lev Okinshevych, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Mykhailo Slabchenko and Andrii Yakovliv in his earlier works.] [20: Historians: Hrushevsky, Dmytro Doroshenko, Borys Krupnytsky, Krypiakevych, and Yakovliv.] [21: Historians: Lypynsky and Oleksander Ohloblyn believe this to be the correct connotation of the Pereiaslav Treaty.] [22: Ibid.]

When Khmelnytsky died, Russia used the treaty as a method to interfere more in the internal affairs of Ukraine, limiting the regions political and governmental reach as well as nullifying some of the treaty’s provisions all together and imposing other Russo-centric ideologies such as the outlawing of the Ukraine language and the enforcement of Russian customs, governments, and religion.[footnoteRef:23] [23: Kappeler, The Russian Empire, 60.]

With the ratification of the Pereislav Treaty and Ukraine’s swearing of “eternal fealty”[footnoteRef:24] to the Tsar, Russia had veritably announced its intentions on Ukraine and with reason. [24: Ibid., 63.]

The Ukrainians were by far the largest non-Russian nation of the multi-ethnic empire, and Ukraine was and continues to be of extraordinary economic and strategic importance. Furthermore, the similarity between the languages, membership of the Orthodox Church, and what is in part a common history have always made the Ukrainians seem a special case to Russian eyes, in so far as they were not simply regarded as being part of the Russian nation.[footnoteRef:25] [25: Ibid., 61.]

Russia seemed to be intent on swallowing Ukraine as a protectorate or a lesser state to be governed by a more knowledgeable government.

Following the Pereislav Treaty of 1654, Russia began to take steps to elevate the Ukrainian people, such as granting the status of academy to the ancient Kiev Collegium in 1701. The Kiev Collegium, much to the Russians’ chagrin, began to effect and influence Russians. Also, it was noted that Ukraine began to have a better education system with more numerous and skilled students coming out of elementary and secondary schools when compared to Russia.[footnoteRef:26] [26: Ibid., 66.]

It was not until the third Northern War that Ukraine became the physical site of military action which had dominated other Slavic, Russian, and Scandinavian lands.

Mazepa [a Cossack/Ukrainian leader] and the Zaporozhian Sich [a self-governing Cossack people living in Ukraine] took the side of Sweden. The Russian government reacted promptly to this by destroying the Sick and deposing Mazepa. After Peter the Great [Tsar of Russia until his death in 1725] had inflicted a decisive defeat on his Swedish enemy, Charles XII, and the latter’s ally Mazepa at the battle of Poltava, he began to draw the hetmanate [Cossack/Rus people living in Ukraine] more closely into Russia.[footnoteRef:27] [27: Ibid., 66-67.]

The Russian governing body knew that they had to draw the Ukrainian people closer so as to further assimilate them into the Russian general population. Russia believed that allowing the Ukrainians to remain autonomous would spell disaster for the tsardom.

Ivan Mazepa[footnoteRef:28] [28: Dmytro Kalynchuk, Who Betrayed Ivan Mazepa? (Ukrainian Week, 2011).]

To overcome these fears of the Ukrainian people gaining power, Russia began to amass soldiers and garrisoned them on Ukrainian soil and exploited the people with exorbitant taxes and customs duties. Russia even went so far as to establish a Russian-only soldier college called the “Little Russian College” in 1722 to lower attendance at Ukrainian schools such as the Kiev Collegium.[footnoteRef:29] “This process of assimilation was supported by the fact that Russian nobles were granted estates in Ukraine on the left bank of the Dnepr.”[footnoteRef:30] Commonly a Cossack and Ukrainian populace, giving away lands to higher ranking Russians was seen as a slap in the face for the peasantry inhabiting the area. [29: Kappeler, The Russian Empire, 67.] [30: Ibid.,]

It was not until Catherine the Great, who reigned from July 9, 1762 until November 17, 1796,[footnoteRef:31] that the hetmanate[footnoteRef:32] was stripped of its autonomy. [31: Biography Website, Catherine II. ] [32: Ukrainian Cossack state on the territory of Dnieper Ukraine and Siveria. ]

The empress denied ‘Little Russians’ independence of any kind, in particular on account of the fact that their elite was gradually being absorbed into the Russian nobility. Apart from this she considered the pre-absolutist estate-based organization of the hetmanate, and of the Zaporozhian Sich in particular, as an impediment to the modernization of Russia and as a potential danger for the tsarist autocracy.[footnoteRef:33] [33: Kappeler, The Russian Empire, 67.]

She believed that even more integration was possible as Russia forced its way into the steppes of the northern Black Sea, thus granting Ukraine more economic and strategic importance.

The hetmanate’s status as an administration and designation as a people was abolished at the beginning of the 1780s when Russia introduced a new provincial administration and system of taxation.[footnoteRef:34] In 1785, portions of the Cossack elite were invited to join the ranks of the Russian hierarchy and take positions within the empire. Those Cossacks, with lesser standing, had to fight for their positions, eventually having to go to court to prove their rank in lawsuits that might last decades, leaving them destitute.[footnoteRef:35] Other ranks and groups within the hetmanate were systematically absorbed into the Russian populace. One such group: [34: Ibid., 67-68.] [35: Ibid., 68.]

The free Cossacks, who were a characteristic of the hetmanate, were gradually incorporated into the category of state peasants, whereas the Ukrainian peasants, who were largely dependent, but not serfs, were degraded to the status of serfs, and the Ukrainian clergy brought into line with the Russian clergy. Linguistic homogeneity also made some progress, for the upper class gradually began to speak Russian, which was also the official administrative language. Ukrainian sank to the level of spoken language of the peasants.”[footnoteRef:36] [36: Ibid., 68.]

These changes, however, did not go over entirely without protest. But, it was because Catherine II had elevated the Ukrainian and Cossack elite who held power in Ukraine that little was done at a higher level; the peasant may have objected but the elite were happy with their positions.

By this time, Russia solidly viewed Ukraine as a portion of their empire. “In the eyes of the Russian government, Ukraine on the left bank of the Dnepr had become part of the Russian core, and the Ukrainian polity created by the Dnepr Cossacks had been eliminated.”[footnoteRef:37] With the failure to uphold the hetmanate, Ukraine was no longer able to maintain their sovereign state and was now by and large a part of the Russian empire. [37: Ibid.]

During the 18th and 19th Centuries, Russia took further steps to alienate the Ukrainian people and strip them of their national identity.[footnoteRef:38] The Ukrainian language and the Ukrainian dialect of Russian were alternately outlawed, reinstated, and abolished again before Russia began undercutting education and establishing a Russian presence in the region. In 1720, Peter I banned printing presses and seized all church books printed in Ukrainian. Peter II took the measures farther in 1729 when he ordered all decrees and orders to be rewritten from Ukrainian to Russian. Catherine II banned the teaching of the Ukrainian language in the Kieve Mohyla Academy in 1763. In 1789, all Ukrainian schools were closed under the disposal of the Polish Sejm Commission Education. The Polish language was introduced into public schools in Western Ukraine in 1817 before the entire education system was reorganized, in 1832, on the idea of boosting the Russian empire’s hold on the country where all education was no Russian language based. In 1859, the Ministry of Religion and Science attempted to replace the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet (which is very similar to the Russian Cyrillic alphabet) with that of Latin. Alexander III banned Ukrainian from baptisms (outlawing Ukrainian names) and decreed it illegal to use the language in official institutions and instructions. At the end of the 19th century, it became a felonious act to rewrite books from Russian into Ukrainian and, 1895, it was decreed by the Main Administration of Press (a Russian institution) that it would be criminal to publish books for Ukrainian children in Ukraine. [38: Ihor Solovey, Ukrainian History.]

Other impositions where placed on the peasants when, taxation and grain demands on the Ukrainian farmers began to rise beginning in the early 1910s. Each year, a certain percentage of the produce that they would grow would be demanded of them by the Soviet government. Impoverished Ukrainian farmers during the late 1910s and early 1920s began to “…refuse to cultivate and harvest grain that would be forcibly taken away from them.”[footnoteRef:39] The demand for grain from Ukrainian farmers was most severe in the steppe region where the average farm was larger than in other regions of Ukraine. Even though the amount of acreage planted decreased, the Soviet Union demanded higher and higher amounts until 1920 when it seemed almost inevitable that the peasants would revolt. [39: Nakai, Kazuo, Soviet Agricultural Policies in the Ukraine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1982).]

It was in 1921, four years after the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks took power in Russia and a growing disquietude started in Ukraine. Beginning with a drought and, then, a crop failure, a two year famine began to emerge. [footnoteRef:40] All of the Soviet Union was affected by this naturally occurring famine, but it was Ukraine that was hardest hit. Because Ukraine was forced to ship the majority of its crop to Russia, who then sold it and distributed it to the world, the crop from the previous year was long gone. It is believed that the devastating famine of 1921-1923 may have been avoided in the Ukraine, where the grain was grown and largely stored, if the Soviet government had not removed massive quantities of it before and during the shortage.[footnoteRef:41] During this time, Russia, publically, denied there was a problem in Ukraine and the surrounding region and diverted the aid it was receiving to the Volga region in southern Russia instead.[footnoteRef:42] [40: Andrij Makuch and Vasyl Markus, Famine of 1921-1913. (1984).] [41: Ibid.] [42: Ibid.]

In September and October of 1921, refugees from Volga (Russia) began to pour into Ukraine, under the misconception that the “bread-basket of the Soviet Union” would be over flowing with grain and food. Instead, they found death and unmitigated hunger wherever they went. But these refugees, also, brought with them disease: typhus[footnoteRef:43] and cholera,[footnoteRef:44] which swept the country.[footnoteRef:45] The mortality rate of these victims was very high. [43: According to the United States National Library of Medicine, Typhus is a disease that spreads to and from human to human via fleas and lice. The bacteria lives primarily where there are unhygienic conditions and cold temperatures. Symptoms include: chills, confusion, high fever, low blood pressure delirium, debilitating muscle pain, severe headache, and stupor. Prognosis includes death when not treated. ] [44: According to the United States National Library of Medicine, Cholera is a bacterial infection caused by ingestion of water contaminated with human or animal feces.] [45: Roman Serbyn, The first man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine 1921-1923 (1988).]

During this famine, a huge demographic of victims were children. Over a million children were orphaned by years of war and famine, and they were left to fend for themselves since there was no charitable organizations that could help them in any significant way as the Soviet Union continued to deny that there was a problem in Ukraine.[footnoteRef:46] These children, alone in the cities and countryside, became known as “bezprytulni” who traveled in large groups for protection against kidnappers and those who were desperate enough to resort to cannibalism[footnoteRef:47]. The children resorted to crime, group theft, attack mobs, and often flocked to railway stations to ride freight cars to search out a warm place to sleep and a morsel of food. [46: Ibid.] [47: Ibid.]

It was these railway stations that became a gathering place for people seeking to flee the starvation. People waited in broke-down wagons for a chance to hop on a train that would take them anywhere. Many people died of cold or exposure on these trains. “Suzanne Ferriere, assistant secretary general of the International Save the Children Fund, visiting Poltava in 1922, was told that in that city 400 frozen children were removed from the train on two particularly cold days.”[footnoteRef:48] The death toll was so high during the famine that the bodies could not be buried fast enough and they lay for weeks or months in morgues, cemeteries, or where they fell until they could be tended to (if they were at all – many cases of animals or humans scavenging for something to eat via anthropophagy were reported). [48: Ibid.]

And, still, the relief aid did not come to Ukrainians. In his capacity as a representative to the High Commissariat (Dr. Fridtj) of Nansen (a Geneva-based international organization who dealt with relief aid to famine sufferers and refugees),[footnoteRef:49] Captain Vidkun Quisling toured Ukraine in February of 1922. After inspection the province of Zaporizhzhia, Quisling wired Nansen to report that "[t]he situation is terrible. Local official statistics show that of the province’s l,288,000 inhabitants, 900,000 are without food. This number will certainly grow by 200,000 before the end of April. Sixty percent of the famished are children. Public resources are exhausted and public institutions can provide only 10,000 rations daily."[footnoteRef:50] [49: Now referred to as the ICRC (The International Committee of the Red Cross)] [50: Roman Serbyn, The first man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine 1921-1923 (1988).]

Relief Aid Post Cards (upper left,[footnoteRef:51] upper right,[footnoteRef:52] lower left,[footnoteRef:53] lower right[footnoteRef:54]) sent out during the Ukraine Famine of 1921 - 1923 [51: Relief aid post card depicting a stylized mother and child asking for help surrounded by French language words. ] [52: Mailing side of the relief aid post card asking for help from worldwide citizens .] [53: Picture side of the relief aid post card showing a young girl collecting the precious grain which fell out of the bags when they were loaded on the trains.] [54: A young boy feeds his brother the majority of the food he has in an attempt to keep him alive. This picture appeared on the front of an aid post card. ]

More horror stories would emerge from the region including babies in orphanages who were so hungry that they would flail their arms and legs, screaming for food, until they were covered in cuts and bruises which quickly became infected and took their lives. George Dessonnaz of Nansen wrote that hundreds of thousands of children looked more like living corpses, “It seems to me that the cause of our inertia is the fact that all these horrors are happening ‘somewhere else’, far away. The cries and pleas of the starving don’t reach European ears and yet these voices are there… they are still ringing in my ears….”[footnoteRef:55]   [55: Haller, Francis. Famine in Russia: the Hidden Horrors of 1921 (August 12, 2003).]

The famine in Ukraine continued, and, the area remained heavily taxed throughout the summer of 1922 even though 60% of its crops failed.[footnoteRef:56] Yet, publically, once again, the Soviet Union lied to the world, insisting that the harvest of 1922 eliminated the famine. The Bolsheviks were afraid that their power infrastructure would be threatened if they admitted to the multi-country famine and epidemics that were decimating its people.[footnoteRef:57] More of the population would lose their lives during the next year but a lack of record keeping would prove detrimental to those looking for a final body count. Medical workers in the Ukraine estimated that they saw 235,000 people die the winter of 1921-1922 and twice that the following year[footnoteRef:58]. [56: Andrij Makuch and Vasyl Markus, Famine of 1921 – 3. (1984).] [57: Ibid.] [58: Ibid.]

Many humanitarian relief workers at the time and present day historians still question why the Soviet powers during the famine of 1921-1923 allowed so many people to die, especially in Ukraine. It can be theorized that:

The first and perhaps most benign explanation is that the famine was a by-product of the rushed Soviet effort to establish the rudiments of a centralized planned economy. It is also possible that the authorities were keen to prevent unrest in industrial centers, where large concentrations of hungry and discontented workers would have represented a real threat to Soviet rule, and therefore grain and food were redirected there from the countryside, whose peasant inhabitants were much more atomized and thus less of a concern. The Bolsheviks might also have wanted to consolidate their main base of support in Russia and did so by supplying it with grain and food at Ukraine’s expense. Finally, it has been posited that in order to quell Ukrainian opposition to Bolshevik rule.[footnoteRef:59] [59: Ibid.]

The possibilities that the Bolsheviks allowed the people of Ukraine to die as a way to squash a rebellion and put them into their place beneath a Soviet rule looks to be a highly probable conclusion.

Dr. Roman Serbyn Professor of History at the University of Quebec at Montreal has researched the causes and consequences of the famines in Ukraine. According to the research of Dr. Serbyn, the Bolsheviks expected that socialism would wipe out the different nationalities of the peasants and create simple agricultural workers for the betterment of the Soviet Union. That was not the case, in fact there was such an opposition that the government tried to implement a “strategic withdrawal.”[footnoteRef:60] However, by 1921, it was far too late, the ruined agriculture caused by the overzealous solicitation of grains combined with the years of drought and harvest failures caused the famine of 1921-1923. [60: A directed measure for removal for withdrawal which would have a positive strategic impact for the withdrawing party.]

To alleviate some of the tensions, Lenin created the “new economic policy” (NEP), which was a more liberal policy for the people of the Soviet Union. The NEP “tried to appease the peasants and to reach a compromise with bourgeois and capitalist elements of society, and was accompanied by a flexible policy on nationalities which was designed to induce the non-Russians to support the Soviet State.”[footnoteRef:61] After a few years, Dr. Serbyn claims that due to the NEP and the Kremlin’s preoccupation with finding Lenin’s successor, Ukrainian peasants, making up 80% of the population, remained essentially Russification free unlike their counterparts in the urban areas of Ukraine. The Soviet Union needing the support of Ukraine, went so far as to recruit cadres[footnoteRef:62] of Ukrainian descent and promoting the Ukrainian language. Literacy spread throughout the peasants of Ukraine and created a new market for publications. Dr, Serbyn’s research claimed that the peasants with their new means went into the cities more often, consequently the Ukrainianization of the urban population began. It did not take long for the revitalization of Ukrainian nationalism to start to take a political over tone. [61: Kappeler, The Russian Empire, 373.] [62: A member of an activist group.]

In the village of Gori, in the recently Russian-absorbed country of Georgia,[footnoteRef:63] Joseph Stalin, the self-proclaimed “Man of Steel,” was born Iosif Vissioronovich Djugashvili. He was the son of a poor shoe maker and did not change his name until he began his political career.[footnoteRef:64] Stalin rose to power playing a minor role during the October Revolution of 1917 as a member of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Party and was appointed as the Commissar of Nationalities and then as the General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1922.[footnoteRef:65] Outmaneuvering potential rivals, such as Ukrainian born Leon Trotsky, a Marxist revolutionary, theorist, and founder of the Red Army,[footnoteRef:66] Stalin rose to power, despite “Lenin dictat[ing] a letter breaking off all comradely relations”[footnoteRef:67] with him just days before his own death. [63: Elaine MacKinnon, Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), 996.] [64: Elaine MacKinnion, 996.] [65: Ibid., 997.] [66: Leon Trotsky, Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1941)] [67: Ibid., 469.]

Stalin’s Russian policy on nationalities was that he allowed ethnic groups a modicum of autonomy as long as they did not disturb the political status quo via an uprising or any other political machinations. As a group known as political talkers and thinkers, Ukrainians had in the past stirred national feelings away from Russification and towards a more pro-Ukrainian sentiment.[footnoteRef:68] [68: Kappeler, The Russian Empire, 373.]

Russia continued to push nationalism on the people of the Soviet Union. Historians such as David Brandenberger, who specializes in Stalin-era propaganda, ideology, and nationalism, argues that Stalin pressed Russification on Soviet people as a way to further their plans to construct government buildings, enlist of soldiers, and to sway the popular opinion of the people towards a positive Russian outlook in general.[footnoteRef:69] Essentially, it was a means of legitimizing the Soviet government in the eyes of a people who were poorly educated and had difficulty understanding the more abstract and conceptual Marxist ideas and practices.[footnoteRef:70] [69: Serhy Yekelchyk, Stalin’s Empire of Memory (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 4.] [70: Ibid.]

Stalin’s reign sought to abolish the class system. Yet, the importance of nationality still lived on:

In fact, the notion of ‘class’ had long been losing its utility for the state as a classification tool precisely because the Bolsheviks had recast this sociological category to define individuals’ relationship to the state, as well as their political rights and obligations. In a ‘workers’ and peasants state[sic] populated exclusively, at least on paper, by workers and kolkhoz peasantry, the category ‘class’ lost its taxonomic value. Nationality, then, became the only universal label for classifying – and ruling – the Soviet populace.[footnoteRef:71] [71: Ibid.]

Stalin’s Soviet Union no longer classed its people but, unofficially, ranked them based on nationality: headed by the ‘great Russian people’[footnoteRef:72] and less important people who had lost their land and cultural privileges. It can be said that in 1920s, “the USSR was a state of equal nationalities and unequal classes, [but] by 1930s it had become a state of equal classes and unequal nationalities, in what a party-state increasingly identified with the Russian nation.”[footnoteRef:73] [72: Ibid.] [73: Ibid.]

Dr. Serhy Yekelchyk, an expert in Russian and Eastern European history, claims that the Soviet Union’s status as an empire is a debatable topic. He believes that in general most historians accept the Soviet Union was a “composite state in the centre dominated many distinct ethnic societies, and that the relations of control, inequality, and hierarchy between the centre and the periphery qualified the USSR as an empire. Never having been an ethnically ‘Russian empire,’ the Soviet Union nevertheless pursued familiar imperial strategies for ruling and exhibited recognizable imperial attitudes.”[footnoteRef:74] Debated still is whether or not Stalin’s Soviet Empire was different from the other modern empires and what if anything the differing characteristics between them may show regarding how “empires sought to ‘civilize’ their dominions.”[footnoteRef:75] Stalin must have viewed and ruled over the Soviet Union with an imperialistic eye because of the way in which he envisioned the future of the Soviet Union; a forerunner in the world of industry, Stalin knew that for the Soviet Union to reach such a lofty goal he would need the support of many different cities and thus he needed to control every area his iron fist could reach with Stalinistic Communism.[footnoteRef:76] [74: Ibid., 5.] [75: Ibid.] [76:  The extreme suppression of dissident political or ideological views, the concentration of power in one person, and an aggressive international policy.]

Shortly after he came to power, Stalin wanted the Soviet Union to begin the collectivization of its farms. According to Dr. Serbyn, the biggest threat the Kremlin thought it had was the Ukrainian Kulaks.[footnoteRef:77] Stalin wanted the agricultural society of the past gone and in its place a new industrial power house. The Ukrainian intelligentsia that seemed to stand in Stalin’s way had been shipped off to Siberia a year or so before because it was thought that without the educated people there would be no one to rally the people together for a revolution. Forceful collectivization could now take place and, again, Ukraine became the primary mark of the government. In the summer of 1932, 70% of Ukrainian agriculture was in collective farms, but only 59% in Russian agriculture was in collective farms. When Stalin knew for certain that collectivization farms were in place, and, that he had enough food being produced to feed his industrializing cities, he was now ready for the worst phase of the 1932-1933 famine began.[footnoteRef:78] [77: Rich peasants.] [78: Roman Serbyn, The Cause and Consequences of Famine in Soviet Ukraine. (1998).]

Ukrainians that year (1932), would have harvested enough to live off of if it had not been for the Police-like men that Stalin had keeping an ever watchful eye on the food stores. The demanded amount of grain from the Ukrainian peasantry became quite unrealistic; yet, they continued to raise the stakes higher and higher. There was more than enough grain to feed the industrialized cities, and after that they even had enough and exported some to make a profit. All while the Ukrainians starved to death.[footnoteRef:79] [79: Jaroslaw Bilocerkowycz, Soviet Ukrainian Dissent: A Study of Political Alienation (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988), 18. ]

The Ukrainian ethnic expert and scholar, Dr. James Mace[footnoteRef:80] observes that “the famine seemed to represent a means used by Stalin to impose a ‘final solution’ on the most pressing nationality problem in the Soviet Union.”[footnoteRef:81] Particularly when “the individualistic-minded Ukrainian peasant employed various methods of resistance to compulsory collectivization. These included: the refusal to ‘voluntarily’ join collective farms, killing off of domestic animals rather than losing them to the Soviet requisition teams, and withholding agricultural output produced.”[footnoteRef:82] Noncooperation with the collectivization led many Ukrainians to be immediately shot or taken off to a Siberian camp to preform forced labor. So intent was Stalin on completely tearing down the ‘independent-minded Ukrainian peasantry, the backbone of the Ukrainian nation, and he thus pursued collectivization and food appropriations at a pace and under conditions that ensured tragic human costs.”[footnoteRef:83] Stalin’s personal vendetta against Ukrainians and their nationalistic tendencies led to the more than 7 million deaths in about two years’ time. [80: Dr. James E. Mace, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. ] [81: Bilocerkowycz, Soviet Ukrainain Dissent, 18.] [82: Ibid.] [83: Ibid.]

However, Stalin’s purposefully implemented nationwide famine on Ukrainians had a considerably different impact on the Ukrainian Soviets than he ever considered. Rather than quashing Ukrainian nationalism with the forced collectivization of their farms and the “mass purges of the 1930s, Ukrainian hostility toward the Soviet regime increased.”[footnoteRef:84] Ukrainians never seemed to have even dimmed the light of their own nationality or their nationalistic spirit, even when they were harshly persecuted for it. With the end of the famine in Ukraine 1933, “almost all Ukrainian nationalists became convinced that Ukraine’s worst enemy was communist Russia.”[footnoteRef:85] Nationalism, as shown, has always been a prominent part of Ukrainian history in its often complicated relationships with other powers, nations, or empires. Even years after the Holodomor,[footnoteRef:86] the elite Ukrainian “tried as hard as it could to conduct a policy of ethnic self-isolation in every area. For example, the Ukrainian cooperative movement developed under the slogan ‘Our Own to Our Own for Our Own.’”[footnoteRef:87] That slogan used by the Ukrainian elite so many years prior, sums up many centuries of a Ukrainian people’s lust for their own self-governing nation. [84: Ibid., 19.] [85: Zaitsev, Ukrainian Integral Nationalism, 17.] [86: Name given to the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933. Literal translation is: extermination by hunger. ] [87: Oleksandr Zaitsev, Ukrainian Integral Nationalism in Quest of a “Special Path” (1920s—1930s) (Vol. 51, chap. 5), 11.]

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