Russia-Ukraine – Part III
World War II and After
In 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, wherein National Socialist Germany (they really didn’t refer to themselves as “Nazi”) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics signed a non-aggression agreement to partition Poland. The Soviets, launching their invasion two weeks after the German invasion, did so under the auspices of protecting ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians.[1]
Since the Treaty of Versailles (1919), Germany vehemently opposed the existence of the Polish Corridor, arguing that it unjustly separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany. However, much of this territory had been historically Polish before being absorbed by Prussia in the 18th century. Much like Russia’s argument today about Eastern Ukraine, Germany framed its grievances over the Polish Corridor as the restoration of historically German lands, though the region had a mixed history and population.
Germany, in June of 1941, violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, invading the Soviet Union under the name Operation Barbarossa, the largest land invasion in history. It was the fifth major invasion of Russian lands by Western powers, following incursions by Napoleon, the Crimean War, the Central Powers in World War I, and the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Joseph Stalin was stunned, retreating into isolation for a few days, but emerged to announce the Great Patriotic War.
Miscalculations about Soviet military strength, strategic reserves beyond German bomber range, and the logistical nightmare of supplying an overstretched army all contributed to Germany’s failure. The brutal Russian winter compounded these issues, but the decisive factor was the Soviet counteroffensive, which exploited German weaknesses and shattered their front lines.
Finally, the Germans were defeated at Stalingrad in 1943, the beginning of the end for Germany during the Second World War.
In 1945, Germany stood as a defeated nation for the second time at the hands of the Allied forces, their industry shattered, their people broken, and their military destroyed. The decision was made to partition the defeated Germany into sections, along with its capital, Berlin, in 1945 at the Yalta Conference and reiterated at the Potsdam Conference. There were four sectors divided among France, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Those divisions later solidified into West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) and East Germany (German Democratic Republic) by 1949. Eventually, East Germany fell under the influence of the Soviet Union and Communism, while the western zones fell under the influence of Western democratic influence.
The Cold War
The Cold War began in large part due to Stalin’s refusal to relinquish Eastern Europe, solidifying tensions between the Soviet Union and the West. With an estimated 26 million Soviet deaths and vast portions of the country devastated by World War II, Stalin viewed Eastern Europe as a necessary buffer against future Western incursions. The Yalta Conference (1945) shaped postwar Europe, but by 1948, Stalin had installed communist puppet governments in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany, alarming the Western Allies.
While Stalin justified these actions as defensive, aimed at preventing another invasion like those in 1812, 1914, and 1941, the West saw them as aggressive expansionism. This fear led to the creation of NATO in 1949, with its members pledging a united front under Article 5 to deter Soviet aggression. The Berlin Blockade of 1948, Stalin’s attempt to starve West Berlin into submission, further deepened Cold War hostilities and cemented divisions between East and West.
Ukraine During the Cold War
There was no independent Ukraine during the period of the Cold War (1945-1991) as the briefly independent nation (1917-1921) fell wholly under the control of the Soviet Union. Stalin and those that followed him instituted a policy known as “Russification” wherein Russian language, culture, and identity were forced on non-Russian populations in an attempt to assimilate them into the Russian-dominated Soviet Union.
Most often, this process was done by coercion, intimidation, and torture, the expansion of the gulags paramount in this effort during Stalin’s period. Upon Stalin’s death in 1953, a period known as destalinization took place, a time when the iron fist of Stalin was replaced by something less—a more subtle approach where overt violence ended, education and migration more common in an attempt to soften the approach of the Soviet Union to its satellites.
This new approach was undermined in 1956 by the brutal putdown of the Hungarian Revolt as well as the revolt in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Nikita Khrushchev, raised in Ukraine, ascended to power after Stalin, but that did little for the once-independent peoples there. Ukrainian schools closed in urban areas like the Donbas in the 1970s, and the migration of ethnic Russians into the eastern portion of Ukraine and the resulting intermarriage weakened Ukrainian cultural identity. By 1989, 22% of Ukraine was ethnic Russian.
Still, the Ukrainians persisted, with underground movements to preserve their culture as well as resist as best they could the ongoing process of Russification that so many of the territories surrounding ethnic Russia were subjected to. It is a testament to the power of literature and the Ukrainian people that they did not become submerged by Russification, but rather resisted and maintained their identity until the eventual fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
*Next Week: Part IV of Russia-Ukraine – The Death of Communism and an Uncertain World
[1] There is a long history in the region of ethnic quarrels, arguments, and fights over territorial hegemony, much too detailed and involved to write about here.
