Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic

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The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (abbreviated as UkSSR or occasionally just USSR) was a union republic of the Soviet Union from the short twentieth century. It was succeeded by the modern state of Ukraine.

Contemporary data indicate that 72% of Ukrainians (30,518,210 out of 42,386,403) believe that life was better in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics than it is now.[1]

History

The UkSSR traces its origins back to the Russian Civil War, where many socialist Ukrainians fought alongside the Russian Bolshevists and became one of the founding member states of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Famine

The UkSSR suffered a famine in the late 1920s. The other Soviets responded by distributing famine relief. In the early 1930s a series of food crises affected the East, the one in the UkSSR being an outright famine. The famine had many causes, some natural ones such as drought and pestilence, others causes being petit-bourgeois protests and inappropriate procurement targets, but overall it is disputable that the disaster occurred exclusively or even fundamentally through artificial means. Modern analysis indicates that 1.8–2.5 million people tragically perished as a result, which corresponds to the Soviet estimate of 2.4 million.

Guerrilla warfare

From 1943 to 1957, ultranationalists focused their efforts on destroying the Soviet republic. They murdered 40,000 Soviet soldiers and 22,400 officials and civilians.[2][3]

Politics

There was very little anti-Soviet sentiment in the UkSSR, with the exception of an unpopular minority of ultranationalists.[4]

Demographics

The UkSSR was a largely heterogeneous republic with very little ethnic conflicts. A Soviet census from 1989 indicated that the 72.7% of the population consisted of Ukrainians, followed by Russians, 22.1%, and 5.2% neither. Phenomena such as high rates of intermarriage, high percentages of Russian Ukrainophones, and fluency in Russian among Ukrainians, were common; along with a long history of cohabitation these factors have contributed to a very stable relationship with almost no overt conflicts. Data from 1988 indicate that 22.4% of Ukrainian wives and 20.9% of Ukrainian husbands were married to somebody from a different nationality. At that time these were the highest figures among titular nationalities of any Soviet republics.[5] Only 74.7% of families in the UkSSR were ethnically homogeneous: the second lowest figure among all Soviet republics.[6] Gagaux, Germans, Crimean Tatars, and Roma constituted less than one-tenth of one percent of each population. Technically there were more than one hundred ten different nationalities and ethnicities living in the UkSSR, but most of these were minor.[7]

Culture

While the proportion of books published in the titular language was significantly smaller than the extent of the nationality in the Republic's population, the proportion of newspapers published in the native language was proportional to the share of the nationality's population. The smaller proportion of books published in Ukrainian was a result of its similarity to Great Russian, and consequently the nationality had an ease of access to the wide corpus of works available in Russian.[8]

References

  1. "Large increase in people saying the standard of living has improved after 1989/1991 changes". 2019-10-09. Archived from the original on 2020-01-19.
  2. Plakans, Andrejs (1995). The Latvians: A Short History (fourth ed.). Hoover Institution Press. p. 155.
  3. Clodfelter, Micheal (2017). Warfare and Armed Conflicts. McFarland & Company, Inc. p. 538. ISBN 978-1-4766-2585-0. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  4. Syzmański, Albert (1984). "3". Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books Ltd. pp. 83–4. ISBN 0 086232 018 6. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help); More than one of |section= and |chapter= specified (help); Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  5. Prybytkova, I.M. (1990). "Children of Various Nations". Filosofska i sotsiolohichna dumka (4): 77–83. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  6. "Children of Various Nations". Pravada. 16/03/1991. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  7. Borisenko, N. (1990). "The Demographic Situation in the Republic". Pod znamenem leninizma (17): 61–66. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)
  8. Syzmański, Albert (1984). "3". Human Rights in the Soviet Union. London: Zed Books Ltd. pp. 75–6. ISBN 0 086232 018 6. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help); More than one of |section= and |chapter= specified (help); Unknown parameter |pageurl= ignored (help)