Chapter 1

Preconditions

World War I and the Bolshevik revolution were precursor events to genocide.¹ Historians trace the ideological roots of Soviet genocide against Ukrainians to writings of the fathers of scientific communism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and the founding father of the first communist state, Vladimir Lenin. Bolshevik policies toward non-Russian nations and land ownership were two preconditions for establishing the “dictatorship of proletariat.” Marx used the expression casually without explanation; Lenin interpreted it to mean a reign of the party incarnated in one leader, “based entirely on violence and not limited by law.”² Ukraine’s leaders attempted to stave off interference from the Entente and the Central Powers. Yet, mobilizing a national army out of remnants of the former imperial army to fight for Ukraine’s independence proved to be challenging. Efforts to establish a democratic republic in the Ukrainian ethnographic boundaries and rebuild its educational system evolved under several successive national governments, influenced by competing ideologies, but eventually succumbed to the demand from Moscow to train new “red” elite once Bolsheviks cemented their rule over Ukraine. The aim of totalitarian Soviet education became not to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any. Actions were to be guided by ideology. The famine of 1921–1923, which ensued after a series of Bolshevik onslaughts on Ukraine, dispensed with human will to resist.

MARXIST-LENINIST ROOTS OF SOVIET GENOCIDE

Throughout the final year of World War I, and the lengthy peace process, Ukraine became the battleground of ideas. A panoply of ideologies emerged: socialist (the Central Rada and later the Ukrainian National Republic), monarchist (Pavlo Skoropads′kyi), anarchist (Nestor Makhno³), national-communist (Borot′bists⁴), and imperialist (the Russian Whites).⁵ On their third attempt, Bolsheviks prevailed. Their ideology, aimed at eliminating the alleged privileged classes (such as the old intelligentsia) or groups blamed for sabotaging state policies (such as the kulaks, in Ukrainian kurkuli), provided legitimacy for violence. In situations characterized by collective violence, social engineering is inevitable. It is prudent to examine the foundations of Bolshevik ideology to uncover Marxist-Leninist roots of Soviet genocide against Ukrainians.

Marx’s Anti-national Bias

All students of history are required to study Marx’s theory. It has been influential in countries all over the world: in the West as a critique of capitalism, often disguised as the critical theory,⁶ and in the East as a blueprint for revolutionary change in the struggle against colonial oppression. In his introduction to the essential writings of Karl Marx, Frederic Bender argued that “his role in shaping many of the problems and movements of the industrial era distinguish him as the outstanding social philosopher of his (and our) time,” calling it the “Age of Marx.”⁷ In their theory of communism, German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels used the labels “reactionary” and “counterrevolutionary” to denote national and social groups that held adverse views to “progressive” communist goals. The language of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, written for the Communist League Congress held in London in 1847, left no doubt as to their anti-national bias.

Ukrainian writer Wasyl Hryshko pointed out that Soviet genocide was rooted in both Soviet-endorsed ideology of scientific communism and anti-Ukrainian policy.⁸ In Marxist canon, nationality as a concept is a bourgeois idea. Marx had foreseen the coming of socialism in countries where the industrial working class was in the majority. In the Russian Empire, there was no working class of this kind. Therefore, for Bolsheviks, who ruled over a largely agricultural population, there was an obvious problem. Besides, in the case of Ukraine, farmers were independent smallholders, hardworking, and nationally conscious; they overwhelmingly spoke Ukrainian, the language that Bolsheviks did not understand.

As to the question whether national differences would continue to exist under a new social order, Marx stated in the Communist Manifesto:

The working men have no country. . . . National differences, and antagonisms between peoples, are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie. . . . The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster.⁹

A worldwide communist international goal meant liquidation of many nationalities by way of their amalgamation and transformation into a few large supranational complexes. The nationless amalgamation could be only achieved by assimilation to the language and culture of a certain “great” (“first among equals”) imperial nation on the road to the “internationally united” communist world.

The fate of nationality in the communist doctrine was subordinated to the way the problem of private property (and the social class of private property owners) was projected to be solved. Engels clarified his program at the First Congress of the Communist League in London, in 1847, as follows:

The nationalities of the peoples who join together according to the principle of community will be just as much compelled by this union to merge with one another and thereby supersede themselves as the various differences between estates and classes disappear through the superseding of their base—private property.¹⁰

The proclaimed goal of the communist movement was the abolition of private property and liquidation of classes based on it. The Communist Manifesto praised bourgeois achievements in the destruction of the traditional rural way of life, contemptuously called “idiocy of rural life.”¹¹ Marx and Engels proclaimed their aversion to the small proprietors as “petty bourgeois,” considered to be a “conservative” and “reactionary” social force.¹² In addition to the labels created for them as a class of small landowners marked for liquidation, the authors described measures and methods that the victorious proletariat would use to consolidate their position as the ruling class. Their theory of action became a blueprint for politically justified genocidal violence. Here is an excerpt from the Communist Manifesto on this matter:

[T]he theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. . . . The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations. . . . The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all means of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class. . . . Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property . . . by means of measures . . . which . . . are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production. . . . These measures: Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. . . . Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country.

Political power, properly so-called, is merely the organized violence of one class for suppressing another. . . . If the proletariat . . . , by means of a revolution, makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally.¹³

In addition to the definition of political power as “the organized violence,” several of the key terms from this quotation were actually used by Vladimir Ill′ich Ul′ianov (Lenin)¹⁴ and later his successor Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Stalin)¹⁵ in speeches and resolutions: “sweeping away by force the old conditions of production” and liquidation of the “petty bourgeois” class took the form of liquidation of kulaks as a class and “total collectivization” (combination of agriculture with industry or merging of town and country). Robert Tucker referred to Stalin as “a teacher” and “propagandist,” who had mastery of his subject matter and could explain fundamentals of Marxism to ordinary workers.¹⁶ Stalin’s fellow revolutionary Simeon Vereshchak remembered him as someone who enjoyed the reputation of being “a second Lenin” and “the best authority on Marxism.”¹⁷

Whether intentionally or not, the founding fathers of the Soviet state ignored that Marx and Engels openly revealed their aversion to “small backward nations”—Austrian Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, and Ukrainians—because they did not fit into their scheme of “bourgeois revolution” as a necessary step toward the “proletarian revolution.” According to Hryshko, the ideological motivation of Marx and Engels’s negative attitude toward Slavs coincided with the great-state nationalism of Germans, Hungarians, and Poles who dominated over Slavs in the Austrian Empire: “Marx and Engels sided with dominant ‘big nations’ against awakened subjugated nations and ideologically rationalized this as siding with the ‘progressive’ and therefore ‘revolutionary’ nations against those that were ‘conservative’ and ‘counterrevolutionary.’” Hryshko found a striking resemblance between the way Marx and Engels combined communist ideology with German great-power nationalism and the way Lenin and Stalin subsequently combined communism with Russian chauvinism. Furthermore, Hryshko has argued that the great-state-nationalist aspect of Marx’s concept of “internationalism” in revolutionary practice has been used by all apologists for aggressive expansionism and racism, including German and Russian imperialism and, later, German Nazism and Russian Communism.¹⁸

To have total economic and social control over Ukraine, especially its grain, Marxist doctrine had to be adapted to fit the needs of Bolshevik colonizing ideology. The self-styled leader of the world proletariat, Lenin himself declared in a speech in Switzerland in 1914 (which is not included in Soviet editions of his works) that “it [Ukraine] has become for Russia what Ireland was for England: exploited in the extreme and receiving nothing in return.”¹⁹ Lenin’s use of the term “internal colony” in reference to Ukraine was put on a back burner until Ukrainian communists, especially historian Matvii Iavors′kyi, raised the issue of Ukraine’s colonial exploitation by the Russian Empire and its successor, the Soviet Union.²⁰

Soviet editions excluded inconvenient passages from Marx’s classics. For instance, Ukrainian writer Anatolii Dimarov in his last interview in 2014, at the age of ninety-two, intimated that when the Soviet troops “liberated” Luts′k, in Western Ukraine, the Soviet secret police came on the heels of the army:

What did they occupy themselves with at first? Libraries. They began to remove all the books that were published in Western Ukraine and bring them to the church to burn them later. They even threw out Marx’s Capital because under the Soviet regime the Capital was published without the last chapter, in which the author revised his views and concluded that dictatorship of the proletariat would necessarily lead to dictatorship of a few and arbitrary terror.²¹

Dimarov quietly stole the volume and took notes of the last chapter. For seventy years, the abridged Soviet version of Marxism thrived until it faded away, first from the consciousness of the people following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, then banned from parks, streets, and other public spaces in Ukraine following the adoption of decommunization laws in April 2015.²² The decontamination of minds from the communist past might take as long as decomposition of radioactive elements after the Chornobyl explosion in April 1986. Both built on lies, both highly contagious.

During the 1930s, the relationship between Marxism and nationalism in Soviet interpretation was reflected in a speech by Pavel Postyshev, who in late 1933 reportedly stated that “any attempt to harmonize proletarian internationalism with nationalism must make it an instrument of the nationalist counterrevolution.”²³ To an outside observer, Ewald Ammende, secretary general of the European Congress of Nationalities, Postyshev’s (and Bolshevik’s) program appeared as “war to the knife on all the national movements.”²⁴ This “war” was meted against Ukrainians as members of a national group rather than a mere “class,” which was an ideological disguise. All means of production had to be in the hands of the state. The Communist Manifesto, a programmatic document, clearly outlined a way of achieving the ultimate goal of the new society: the “expropriation of property in land” by exercising political power as “the organized violence.”

The “Double Task” of Lenin’s Policies

The goals and guidance provided by the Communist Manifesto were taken over as an inheritance from the fathers of scientific communism by Lenin, who was half German on his mother’s side, and who exhibited a striking affinity for Germany and Marx’s teaching.²⁵ In a historical paradox, Lenin was transported from Germany to Russia in a sealed train²⁶ and implemented Marx’s theory in a country that was last to industrialize. The Russian Empire he attempted to transform was largely non-Russian and thrived on economically exploiting its inner non-Russian colonies. For these reasons, policies that Lenin’s minority faction, which referred to themselves euphemistically as Bolsheviks (the majority), had to rely on deception, coercion, and brute force to gain and maintain their power. An analysis of Lenin’s writings on the Bolshevik formulation of nationality and land policies provides key to understanding the origins of Soviet genocide.

Regarding Bolshevik nationality policy, its main feature was a dialectical tension between opposites: the proclamation of the “right of every nation to self-determination and even to secession” and the openly declared denial of this right because it clashed with “international” interests of the proletariat. The duplicity of this policy was cynically explained by Lenin himself. Following is a compilation of Lenin’s writings on this matter in a logical rather than chronological order from Bolshevik publications:

In Russia, where the oppressed nations account for 57 percent of the population, where they occupy mostly the border regions, where some of them are more highly cultured than the Great Russians . . . there, in Russia, recognition of the right of nations oppressed by Tsarism to free secession from Russia is absolutely obligatory for Russian Social-Democrats, for the furtherance of their democratic and socialist aims.

. . .

The right to self-determination is one thing, of course, and the expedience of self-determination, the secession of a given nation under given circumstances, is another. This is elementary.

We are in favor of the right to secession (and not in favor of everyone’s seceding!) . . . Secession is not what we plan at all. We do not advocate secession. In general, we are opposed to secession. But we stand for the right to secede.

The right to self-determination is an exception in our general premise of centralism. This exception is absolutely essential in view of reactionary Great Russian nationalism . . . but exception must not be too broadly interpreted. In this case, there is not, and must not be anything more than the right to secede.²⁷

These pronouncements were part of the Bolshevik official program, Theses on the National Question, adopted in 1913 and effective up to the revolution of 1917.²⁸

Lenin adopted Engels’s thesis about the mission of the proletariat to “destroy nationality” through the “merging with one another” within a large multinational “community” and adapted it to conditions of the Russian Empire. Using Marxist “internationalist” language, Lenin endorsed assimilation, which implied Russification. The following excerpt from Lenin’s writings illustrates how he used Marxist arguments in support of his concept of state centralism based on Russian great-power nationalism:

Marxists are, of course, opposed to federation and decentralization, for the simple reason that capitalism requires for its development the largest and most centralized possible states. . . . The great centralized state is a tremendous historical step forward from medieval disunity to the socialist unity of the whole world, and only via such a state (inseparably connected with capitalism) can there be any road to socialism.

. . .

We are certainly in favor of democratic centralism. We are opposed to federation. . . . Federation means the association of equals, an association that demands common agreement. . . . We are opposed to the federation in principle, it loosens economic ties and is unsuitable for a single state.²⁹

Lenin never defined “democratic centralism”; rather, the regime that he established was better known as the “dictatorship of the proletariat” with his party as the “proletarian vanguard.” The rule was centralized without any trace of democracy.

The assimilation of nations in Lenin’s mind meant to be nonvoluntary because it involved the supremacy of one nation over another. In Lenin’s view the dominant nation was Russia; thus, he welcomed the process of assimilation in Ukraine as a “progressive” factor. The Bolshevik policy was disguised as a process of “getting together” of Russians and Ukrainians. Lenin explained this process as follows:

For several decades a well-defined process of accelerated economic development has been going on in the South, i.e., Ukraine, attracting hundreds of thousands of peasants and workers from Great Russia to capitalist farms, mines and cities. The “assimilation” [quotation marks by Lenin]—within these limits—of Great Russian and Ukrainian proletariat is an indisputable fact. And this fact is undoubtedly progressive. Capitalism is replacing the ignorant, conservative, settled muzhik of the Great Russian or Ukrainian backwoods with a mobile proletariat whose conditions of life break down specifically national narrow-mindedness, both Great Russian and Ukrainian.³⁰

Any form of resistance to assimilatory Russification was labeled “bourgeois nationalism” because it posed danger to “international” unity of the proletariat. Lenin condemned the idea of “national culture” and coined an indefinable concept, “international culture of the proletariat,” instead. This “internationalization” was a fine substitute for Russification as an instrument of establishing power in the Bolshevik multinational state. Here are some excerpts from Lenin’s writings on this matter:

We do not support “national culture” but international culture. . . . We are against national culture as one of the slogans of bourgeois nationalism. . . . We are in favor of the international culture of the fully democratic and socialist proletariat. . . . Down with the deceptive bourgeois, compromise slogan of “cultural-national autonomy”! . . . The slogan is incorrect, because already under capitalism all economic, political and spiritual life is becoming more and more international. Socialism will make it completely international.³¹

Notable in Lenin’s writings is his view on education for national minorities:

The interests of the working class demand amalgamation of the workers of all nationalities in a given state in united proletarian organizations—political, trade unions, co-operative, educational. . . . The essence of the plan, or program, of what is called “cultural-national autonomy” is separate schools for each nationality. . . . This is absolutely impermissible! As long as different nations live in a single state they are bound to one another by millions and thousands of millions of economic, legal and social bonds. How can education be extricated from these bonds? . . . On the contrary, efforts should be made to unite the nations in educational matters, so that school should be a preparation for what is actually done in real life. . . . We must strive to secure the mixing of the children of all nationalities in uniform pursuit of proletarian educational policy. . . . To preach the establishment of special schools for every “national culture” is reactionary.³²

Lenin attacked the idea of “national-cultural autonomy” because, at the time, this demand was most prominent in programs of the Jewish Social Democratic Bund and the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers’ Party. For the former, it kept the extraterritorial Jewish nationality alive under pressure of assimilatory factors of the Russian state policy of anti-Semitism. For the latter, it established a legal basis for resistance to Russification and organized struggle for territorial and political autonomy. These two parties evoked Lenin’s fury after their refusal to accept a “one and indivisible” Russian “party of the proletariat” of all nations. Leading spokesmen of these parties, F. Liebman and Lev Yurkevych, accused Lenin of being an “assimilator.”³³ In his polemic with Yurkevych, leader of the Ukrainian Social Democrats, Lenin argued,

A Marxist who heaps abuse upon a Marxist of another nation for being an “assimilator” is simply a nationalist philistine. In this unhandsome category of people are the Bundists and Ukrainian nationalist-socialists such as L. Yurkevych, D. Dontsov and Co. . . . It would be a downright betrayal of socialism, and a silly policy even from the standpoint of the bourgeois “national aims” of the Ukrainians to weaken the ties and the alliance between the Ukrainian and Great Russian proletariat that now exist within the confines of a single state. . . . The Great Russian and Ukrainian workers must work together, and, as long as they live in a single state, act in the closest organizational unity and concert, toward a common or international culture of the proletarian movement, displaying absolute tolerance in the question of language. . . .This is the imperative demand of Marxism. All advocacy of the segregation of the workers of one nation from those of another, all attacks upon Marxist “assimilation,” where the proletariat is concerned, to contrapose one national culture as a whole to another allegedly integral national culture, and so forth is bourgeois nationalism, against which it is essential to wage a ruthless struggle.³⁴

Lenin’s call for a “ruthless struggle” against the “bourgeois nationalism” of Ukrainian Marxists, according to Wasyl Hryshko, was reminiscent of Marx and Engels’s threat to employ “ruthless terror” against those “counterrevolutionary nations” which refused to submit their national interests to the great-power interests of Germans, Magyars, and Poles during the European revolutions of 1848.³⁵ From his study of Marx and Engels, Lenin drew the lesson: “the interests of the liberation of a number of big and very big nations in Europe rate higher than the interests of the movement for liberation of small nations.”³⁶ When Lenin was engaging in this polemic, he was still in exile in Western Europe.

Lenin’s treatment of the “Ukrainian question” was closely tied to his hostile attitude toward the “petty bourgeois” class of small proprietors because their aspirations ran contrary to the idea of abolishing private property. To transform a primarily agrarian “bourgeois-democratic” revolution into the “socialist revolution” of the proletariat, he proposed a tactical plan to equitably distribute the land (part of which was held by landlords).³⁷ In the process, he destroyed not only the autocracy but along with it the economy. At the time, the slogan for “land and freedom” was very appealing. The plan became more urgent during World War I. Bolsheviks seized the opportunity to win the trust of land tillers. The cynicism behind their plan was explained by Lenin as follows:

There is not a word in the resolution about the party undertaking to support transfer of the confiscated land to petty-bourgeois proprietors. The resolution states: we support . . . “up to and including confiscation,” i.e. including expropriation without compensation; however, the resolution does not in any way decide to whom the expropriated land is to be given. It was not by chance that the question was left open. . . . We must help the peasant uprising in every way, up to and including confiscation of the land, but certainly not including all sorts of petty-bourgeois schemes. We support the peasant movement to the extent that it is revolutionary-democratic. We are making ready (doing so now, at once) to fight it when, and to the extent that, it becomes reactionary and anti-proletarian. The essence of Marxism lies in that double task, which only those who do not understand Marxism can vulgarize or compress into a single and simple task.³⁸

The Bolshevik plan was to nationalize all land, making it property of the state, more precisely of the proletariat represented by the party. This plan was in compliance with Marxist doctrine, but for propaganda purposes, the transfer of land was the party’s “double task.” Hryshko summed up the advantage of such a political “double task”: it made it easy to switch from “pro” to “contra” and vice versa at any given time, “depending on tactical or propagandistic expediency.”³⁹

Both the nationality and land questions became intertwined in Lenin’s treatise, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). His theses, on the substance of national liberation movements of peoples living under colonial oppression of imperialist states, spell out practical activities formulated as follows:

It is beyond any doubt that any national movement can only be the bourgeois-democratic movement, since the overwhelming mass of the population of the backward countries consists of peasants who represent bourgeois-capitalist relationships. . . . We, as Communists, should, and will support bourgeois-democratic movements in colonial countries only when they are genuinely revolutionary and when their exponents do not hinder our work of educating and organizing in a revolutionary spirit the peasantry and the masses of the exploited.⁴⁰

Under the pretense of being champions of the “right to self-determination” for oppressed nations and of “land and freedom” for tillers, Bolsheviks established their rule in Ukraine.⁴¹

INTELLIGENTSIA DURING THE NATIONAL LIBERATION STRUGGLE, 1917–1921

Lenin believed the goal of Soviet schools was “to give youth basic knowledge, to give them skills to develop their own communist views, and to make them into educated people.”⁴² Other Bolshevik leaders also stressed the political significance of schooling. Stalin formulated his views on the importance of school very candidly: “Education is a weapon, the effect of which depends on the hands that keep it.”⁴³

In Soviet historiography, Lenin’s nationality policy is given credit for giving an opportunity to the working people of Ukraine to create “truly free, sovereign socialist state.” A historical narrative was constructed to present educational, economic, cultural, scientific, and technological achievements of the Ukrainian SSR as being possible only in a “brotherly family of nations.” Authors of a history of education in the Soviet Union, published in Moscow on the fiftieth anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution of 1917, quoted the 1897 census, according to which 76 percent of the Ukrainian population was illiterate, with illiteracy rate in rural areas almost 80 percent, and 90 percent among women. In 1914–1915, most of the children in Ukraine did not have a chance to attend even a primary school. The authors blamed high illiteracy among Ukrainians on “centuries of suffering under foreign yoke.”⁴⁴

How could a vast illiterate mass appear in Ukraine, the cradle of European scholarship? Monasteries in medieval Kyїvan Rus′ in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries were the centers of learning; women of the clerical order, in particular, enjoyed a comparatively high level of literacy and were founders of schools for girls.⁴⁵ Institutions of higher education appeared in Ukraine early—Ostroh Academy, founded in 1576, and Kyїv-Mohyla Academy, established in 1615—which prompted David Saunders to write a monograph about the Ukrainian impact on Russian culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.⁴⁶ The answer is several hundred years of Russian imperial policies.⁴⁷ Peter the Great appropriated the name of Rus′ for Muscovy and established a hierarchy of Muscovites as Great Russians, Ukrainians as Little Russians, and Belarussians as White Russians. He banished thousands of Ukrainian Cossacks to dig a canal to the White Sea.⁴⁸ The staggering illiteracy rate in Ukraine was also a contribution of Catherine the Great: the “enlightened” ruler’s decision to put serfs in bondage to their masters and liquidate all Ukrainian-language schools so that her imperial subjects would speak one common language of the empire, Russian.⁴⁹ In the Russian Empire, Ukrainian language was forbidden in schools, in the press, and in public life.⁵⁰ It was necessitated by the Russian economic colonization of Ukraine rather than a result of “foreign yoke.”⁵¹

“Without its own national school, the genius of the nation stagnates, it wears off toward denationalization, its spirituality withers away. Foreign culture and education imposed from outside hurt the subjugated nation,” wrote Symon Petliura, a teacher-turned-journalist, in an opinion piece in 1907.⁵² To Petliura, the first step toward social liberation was through national schooling in Ukraine. He knew intimately the situation in his native Poltava province, where one-third of school-age children (36.9 percent) attended 870 public schools (918 classrooms). Out of 2.9 million people in the province, 204,575 were school-age children who needed as many as 3,409 classrooms.⁵³ The percentage of schoolgirls was extremely low (14 percent in 1899). It did not escape the author’s attention that budget allocations for schools declined from 606,959 in 1899 to 592,000 karbovantsi in 1900, all the while the province collected 15.2 million in taxes for the imperial Russian government, but spent only 8.8 million karbovantsi on its own needs. Influenced by Marxism, Petliura at first advocated Ukrainian autonomy within Russia, but soon he became an ardent advocate for Ukraine’s independence.

While battles between Russia and Germany raged on the fields of Ukraine during World War I, successive governments in Ukraine embarked on a project of reconstructing the educational system. This project meant universal, free, mandatory, secular primary education, proportionate representation of national minorities in schools, and a right to open private schools. The school system was envisioned as integrated and accessible, with seven years of mandatory schooling.⁵⁴

Rebuilding the educational system underwent several phases aligned with challenging and rapidly changing political circumstances. During the first phase, from March 1917 to April 1918, centrist political forces in Ukraine supported the Provisional Government in Petrograd and its policies. Together with national and socialist forces, they established the Central Rada (Council), the first modern Ukrainian government. However, it was the Provisional Government in Petrograd that controlled the situation in Ukraine via local self-government (zemstvo) agencies. The Provisional Government was in no hurry to allocate financial resources to reform the educational system in Ukraine, but allowed to establish departments of Ukrainian language and literature, history and law.⁵⁵ Therefore, in April 1917, nationally conscious members of intelligentsia formed an All-Ukrainian Teachers’ Union to implement the Central Rada’s policies. On the eve of the First All-Ukrainian Teachers’ Congress, held on April 5–6, 1917, Mykhailo Hrushevs′kyi appealed to Ukrainian professors and lecturers scattered all over Russia to return to Ukraine to help establish national universities.⁵⁶ In the summer of 1917, the All-Ukrainian Teachers’ Union organized short-term courses for teachers, worked out new terminology for textbooks, and revised the orthography.⁵⁷

After Central Rada issued its First Universal in June 1917, local governments not only recognized its authority but also collected funds to support it financially. Central Rada established an office in charge of education, with Ivan Steshenko as its general secretary.⁵⁸ In November 1917, Steshenko appealed to all regional and district administrations to organize a conference to discuss the organization of people’s education in Ukraine. The conference was held on December 15–20, 1917, and topics of discussion focused on establishing schools and institutes and training cadres. Representatives from district and regional councils were given voice and a seat at the helm of the republic’s educational administration. They were entrusted with establishing a network of schools, preschool and after-school programs, drafting budgets, and coordinating activities with cultural and community organizations. They were also in charge of hiring and training teachers, opening libraries, and supplying textbooks to schools. Steshenko praised school administrators: “The organization of a new, liberal, democratic school, which is loved and supported by the people, depends on local self-governing agencies.”⁵⁹

Reform of the educational system in Ukraine started. Parish schools were transferred from religious authorities to local self-governing agencies. Most of these schools were primary. Ukrainian language was mandatory in all schools, including those with Russian as the language of instruction. To intensify this transition, the Second All-Ukrainian Teachers’ Congress in August 1917 passed a resolution, stating, “From 1 September 1917 all primary schools shall use the Ukrainian language for instruction.” The resolution also mandated the use of Ukrainian language in secondary schools and teacher training institutes in accordance with resolutions of the First All-Ukrainian Teachers’ Congress.⁶⁰ A total of fifty-three new Ukrainian secondary schools, including three Ukrainian gymnasiums in Kyїv, had been established by September 1917.⁶¹ Often, they lacked new buildings to house these schools. At times, the newly established Ukrainian schools had to share buildings with Russian-language schools or conduct classes during evening shifts. For instance, Gymnasium No. 1 named after Taras Shevchenko (see Figure 1.1), later renamed Kyїv Labor School No. 1, operated without a permanent building, whereas the First Kyїv Russian Gymnasium occupied a former palace.⁶²

Figure 1.1 A choir of the Kyïv Labor School No. 1 named after Taras Shevchenko, with school principal Volodymyr Durdukivs′kyi, 1920s. Source: From TsDKFFAU, od. obl. 0-I 86088.

Alongside creating new schools, Ukrainian authorities turned to establishing a system of after-school education. As periodical Vil′na ukraïns′ka shkola (Free Ukrainian School) reported in 1918, local school authorities in villages as well as towns had to tackle a monumental task because 80 percent of the people in Ukraine were illiterate. Considering that most of these illiterates were adults beyond school age, local authorities had to organize after-school education. To implement this task, regional and district authorities established educational sections. Scores of instructors were recruited to teach adult courses in the evening or on Sunday morning.⁶³ Local zemstvos also organized three-month courses to train instructors and offered scholarships to attract attendees. The first of such courses for instructors was taught in November 1917, and in 1918 recommendations for organizing after-school education were published in Kyїv.⁶⁴

On January 22, 1918, the Fourth Universal of the Ukrainian National Republic (Ukraїns′ka narodnia respublika, or UNR) declared Ukraine independent, breaking away from the federation with the Russian republic.⁶⁵ This was done to the sound of the firing of Russian guns across the Dnipro. The Central Rada decided to make peace with the Central Powers. On February 7, 1918, the Germans, Austrians, and the delegates of the Central Rada signed the first of the treaties made at Brest-Litovsk. The Central Powers recognized the independence of the Ukrainian National Republic in return for 1 million tons of grain. Also the Central Powers promised to return the Ukrainian prisoners of war and to arm the Ukrainian army to fight against Bolsheviks.⁶⁶

As the educational system became independent from Petrograd’s supervision, new commissariats of education for national minority groups (Jewish, Polish, and Russian) as well as school boards were established. The general secretary of education Ivan Steshenko⁶⁷ became minister of education. His agenda included establishing free primary seven-year schools, with four-year lower-level and three-year upper-level grades. The Ministry of Education coordinated activities of newly created national minority education councils and established schools in areas of compact settlement of the respective minorities. The goal was to decentralize and democratize education.⁶⁸ To overcome the shortage of teachers, Ukrainian authorities organized Institutes of People’s Education (Instytuty narodnoї osvity, or INOs, which replaced universities) and one-year courses to train cadres for after-school programs. They planned to raise a teacher’s salary from 840 to 1,800 karbovansti. However, dire financial circumstances at the time did not allow them to satisfy teachers’ needs.⁶⁹

A parallel system of education was established in Kharkiv, when Bolsheviks launched their military aggression against Ukraine on December 17, 1917. Lenin used a disinformation tactic to mislead the public by seemingly granting independence to Ukraine while preparing the Red Army to cross the border. His ultimatum was deliberately worded: “On the Recognition of the Ukrainian National Republic by the Council of People’s Commissars and on the Presentation of the Central Rada with an Ultimatum in Response to its Counterrevolutionary Activity.”⁷⁰ The “counterrevolutionary activity” meant that the Ukrainian Central Rada refused to recognize the Soviets. The Bolsheviks’ goal was to discredit the UNR government that began setting up diplomatic missions in Germany, Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.⁷¹ When Bolsheviks set up their own government in Kharkiv and proclaimed formation of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, they appointed Volodymyr Zatons′kyi as Commissar of Education. The Soviet government embarked on a path toward vocational polytechnic education already established in neighboring Russia. This first Soviet government was short-lived.⁷²

Preceding the confrontation with Bolsheviks, Central Rada received diplomatic recognition by Great Britain and France and engaged in preliminary talks with the Central Powers aimed at concluding a separate peace treaty.⁷³ These efforts did not result in any military assistance that could stop the Bolshevik invasion. The only victory that Central Rada achieved was at the ballot box. It gained two-thirds of votes in the Ukrainian elections to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, mostly among the rural delegates.⁷⁴ Ukrainian parties secured 53 percent, whereas Bolsheviks obtained only 10 percent of all votes cast in Ukraine.⁷⁵ The popularity of the Central Rada did not mean the majority of those who voted for it were also willing to fight for it. This was particularly true of land tillers, “whose sympathies were then lukewarm toward any government.”⁷⁶

In January 1918, Central Rada further alienated farmers by outdoing the Bolsheviks in their populism, and abolishing private property on land.⁷⁷ Although the slogan of “socialization of land” was popular among poorer farmers, it did not mean they desired a collectivist organization of agriculture. A contemporary observer, who knew the conditions in the Ukrainian countryside, noted that socialization was understood as “taking over the land from the landowners without compensation.”⁷⁸ Russian repartition of land by the village commune⁷⁹ was alien to highly individualist Ukrainian smallholders. Central Rada’s decision to overturn the principle of private land ownership caused a disturbance in the life of the village.

Central Rada’s decision to sign a peace treaty with the Central Powers on February 9, 1918, gave credence to accusations of Ukrainian Germanophilism.⁸⁰ Opponents painted the Ukrainian national movement as weak. Critics failed to note that the fateful decision was made in a futile attempt to stop the Bolsheviks from subjugating Ukraine. Bolsheviks subverted Central Rada’s efforts to recruit an army. Bolsheviks disbanded military regiments; all ranks and uniforms became obsolete. The masses were weary of the war and longed to return home to their land.⁸¹ Neither Germans nor Austrians had interest or sympathy for the Ukrainian national movement. Despite assertions by Soviet historians that from the mid-nineteenth century, Germany worked actively to break up the Russian Empire and create independent Ukraine, evidence suggests otherwise. Before World War I, Germany’s investment in Russia totaled 441.5 million rubles, or 19.7 percent of the country’s foreign capital.⁸² The Reich’s policies were aimed at colonizing the black earth belt, the fertile lands of Ukraine.⁸³ A claim that the German Drang nach Osten and the Ukrainian national movement were in some kind of alliance had no basis in fact. The Ukrainian struggle for national liberation was an independent development in which neither the Allies nor the Central Powers played any significant part.⁸⁴

In March 1918, after signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk separately with German and Austrian governments, Ukraine, rather than being independent, became a de facto zone of occupation by German and Austrian troops, and a transit station for a large number of refugees. The Central Rada failed to gather 1 million tons of grain to satisfy German military authorities. This provided an excuse for occupying powers to appoint Hetman Pavlo Skoropads′kyi as Ukraine’s ruler in April 1918.⁸⁵ His rule was short-lived and marked by a health crisis caused by multiple epidemic diseases such as typhus, chicken pox, dysentery, and cholera plus the Spanish flu pandemic that swept through Ukraine in the summer and fall of 1918.⁸⁶ By October 1918, nearly 50 percent of the population in urban and rural areas of Ukraine had been infected with the new strain of flu, on top of concurrently running slew of other infectious diseases. Temporary closure of schools, public health education campaigns, and prophylactic measures were implemented.

Amid this health crisis and economic ruin, Ukraine’s system of education underwent a second phase in its development. Although Hetman’s administration reversed the tendency and attempted to centralize power and dismantle national minority education councils, it continued the Ukrainian language policy in schools initiated by its predecessors.⁸⁷ The newly appointed minister of education Professor Mykola Vasylenko appealed to school boards:

In 1917 children enrolled in primary schools to study in Ukrainian. Now the children in these and other schools need an opportunity to continue their education in Ukrainian, especially in the environment where their national language and motherland are valued and respected.⁸⁸

The Ministry of Education further mandated the establishment of primary schools throughout the republic in 1918–1919 with the teaching of all subjects in Ukrainian. Newly introduced mandatory subjects included history and geography of Ukraine. The press reported that during 1918–1919, nearly 800 primary schools taught mostly in Ukrainian.⁸⁹ By that time, all rural schools had already switched to Ukrainian. Skoropads′kyi, in the presence of his Education Minister Vasylenko, assured delegates at teachers’ courses that the situation with secondary schools would improve. In the summer of 1918, sixty-four courses for teachers were offered, of these, fifty-nine in Ukrainian and five in Polish and Hebrew.⁹⁰ Those secondary schools that continued to use Russian as the language of instruction were required to offer courses in Ukrainian language, literature, history, and geography of Ukraine.⁹¹ Local administrations also financially contributed to developing teaching materials and publishing textbooks in Ukrainian. By the end of 1918, Ukraine boasted 1,073 educational institutions, including boys’ and girls’ gymnasiums, institutes, commercial and trade schools, seminaries, and clerical schools.⁹²

During this period, the first Ukrainian national universities were established, one in Kyїv on October 9, 1918, and another in Kam’ianets′-Podil′s′kyi on October 22, 1918.⁹³ Also at this time, the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences was founded. Its president was Volodymyr Vernads′kyi and secretary Ahatanhel Kryms′kyi, both world-known scholars.⁹⁴

Not long after German and Austrian collapse, Hetman’s conservative rule was overthrown by national socialist forces in December 1918. A Directory with Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Symon Petliura inaugurated the third period in the history of the Ukrainian National Republic. The Directory, a collective governing body, and its minister of education Petro Kholodnyi, while on the road in an armored train, retreating from city to city, continued the work started by Central Rada on developing compulsory education. A separate department within the Ministry of Education laid out plans for higher education in Ukraine. In 1918 alone, nine teacher training institutes were established, as well as teacher training courses. The most significant achievement of the Directory was the law of January 1919; it recognized Ukrainian as a state language and required its use in all educational institutions as well as the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Simultaneously, the Ministry of Education approved a new orthography that spurred publication of textbooks and instructional materials. The Directory raised teachers’ salaries several times and worked closely with the All-Ukrainian Teacher’s Union on solving urgent problems.⁹⁵

The Directory’s achievements on the educational front were not matched on the military front. By mid-December 1918, a month after World War I ended in armistice, when Skoropads′kyi fled from Kyїv, the army of the Directory embraced nearly 100,000, while new recruits continued to pour in, both from cities and outlying areas.⁹⁶ Cossack chiefs (otamans) at all levels, sergeants, self-made captains, colonels, school teachers, and citizens of every rank rushed to support the independence movement.⁹⁷ The Directory’s army appeared strong to prevent Russia’s Bolsheviks from invading from the north, as well as to fight off Russian Monarchist troops of the White General Anton Denikin, who threatened Ukraine from the southeast. Despite the Directory’s initial successes and the enthusiasm of its Ukrainian followers, the army began to melt away, and within several months had shrunk to 21,000.⁹⁸ The Directory faltered in its implementation of new programs.⁹⁹ The Bolsheviks’ slogan “land to the tillers” was much more appealing to Ukrainian farmers who were unsuspecting of the Bolshevik’s “double task” regarding the land policy.

Prior to the Paris Peace Conference, there was not a single attempt to come to grips with the possible menace of Bolshevism to European security. Ukraine’s struggle for national liberation from oppressive policies of German imperialists and Russian Bolsheviks went unnoticed by the Big Four.¹⁰⁰ Although during the Red Scare in the 1920s, Edmund Gale of the Los Angeles Times in his cartoon “On the Threshold!” represented Bolshevism not as a pathetic Russian bear but as the bearded Cossack who presses a bloody hand on the door of “Civilization,” Bolshevism was viewed in America and Europe as “a temporary, abnormal condition.”¹⁰¹ It was assumed that a democratic constitutional government would be established in Russia.¹⁰²

As of January 21, 1919, the Woodrow Wilson administration was aware that if the Bolshevik regime continued in power, then “there seems to be no alternative to accepting the independence and tracing the frontiers of all the non-Russian nationalities.”¹⁰³ The authors of the Inquiry report presented to Wilson further recommended the formation of an independent Ukrainian state. The Crimea, too, was to be included in the proposed Ukrainian state. Nevertheless, Wilson’s decision was formed by his top Russian adviser Frank A. Golder, who urged the president: “For the sake of peace of the world, for the sake of Russia and Ukraine, for the sake of the Central Powers themselves, Great Russia and Little Russia must be united into a strong and free nation.”¹⁰⁴

President Wilson’s Fourteen Points included his commitment to preserve the territorial integrity of what was referred to as “Russia.”¹⁰⁵ The Ukrainian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference presented a map of Ukraine, with a prospectus outlining geographic and ethnographic boundaries of territories historically settled by Ukrainians, including Kuban′ in the North Caucasus.¹⁰⁶ However, their bid was ultimately rejected, which led to the incorporation of Ukraine into the Soviet Union.

In his examination of American–Ukrainian relations in the 1920s, Constantine Warvariv noted that the official attitude of the United States was further reiterated by the Department of State, when it ordered the Liquidation Commission not to extend credit sales of surplus stocks—clothing, medical supplies, and motor equipment stored by American Forces in France—to Ukraine.¹⁰⁷ As evidence he cited a telegraphic report from the U.S. Commission to Negotiate Peace to the Secretary of State: “The recognized Ukrainian Mission in Paris, which has purchased large quantities of American Army supplies, represents the Petliura Government.”¹⁰⁸ In response to the State Department’s inquiry, Frank Polk, American plenipotentiary at the Peace Conference, cabled on October 17, 1919:

The acting President of the mission is Count Tyszkevych and the Vice President is Dr. Paneyko. . . . Paneyko confirms reported purchase by Ukrainian mission of war stocks from American Army but states they have been unable to ship them out of France. Do not know who American army authorities consulted in connection with the sale but it would seem to have been an extraordinary action for them to take without getting views of the Department.¹⁰⁹

Secretary of State Lansing ordered a thorough investigation of the transaction between the Ukrainian Mission in Paris and American military authorities. The investigation revealed that in April 1919, the chairman of the Liquidation Commission, Judge Edwin Parker, was approached by representatives of the Ukrainian National Republic for the purchase of supplies. Although the United States did not recognize Ukraine at the time, the proposal for the purchase of supplies valued in excess of $11,500,000 was accepted and the contract signed in June. In September 1919, at a meeting with Brig. General Edgar Jadwin, United States’ observer in Ukraine, Petliura protested the nondelivery of clothing and equipment bought from the Liquidation Commission. General Jadwin also reported to the State Department that Petliura “requested that Ukrainians in America be permitted to join his army.”¹¹⁰

When the Liquidation Commission stopped deliveries in early 1920, property valued at approximately $8,000,000 had already been sold (transfer effected on November 11, 1919). The payment was signed by three representatives of the Ukrainian National Republic at the Peace Conference. The materials comprised $6,500,000 worth of articles of clothing, blankets; $1,000,000 worth of medical supplies; and $300,000 worth of motor material including seventy-five Cadillac automobiles. All these were still stored in warehouses in France near Bordeaux and Marseilles during the months of investigation. An additional 600,000 francs were sold to corporations in France in order to defray the expenses of transportation, storage, and handling of supplies. The apparent collapse of the Petliura Government influenced the U.S. State Department’s considerations on the matter. The contract was annulled on January 16, 1920, no motive or reason given.¹¹¹

On January 17, 1920, Petliura sent a note to Allied and U.S. commanders in Paris, stating that for two years since December 3, 1918, “Ukraine alone has been fighting against the third Bolshevik onslaught and attempt to bring Communist experiment to Ukraine.”¹¹² He requested free transit through Europe of medical supplies purchased by the Ukrainian representatives in France to help the army and people of Ukraine to withstand existential dual threats from Russian occupation and epidemics of infectious diseases. However, his calls to restore Ukraine’s physical well-being to resolve the problem on the Eastern Front went unheeded.

To understand the U.S. State Department’s policy toward Ukraine, it is worthwhile to quote the message addressed to the Commission to Negotiate Peace in Paris:

On the basis of past investigations, the Department is disposed to regard the Ukrainian separatist movement as largely the result of Austrian and German propaganda seeking the disruption of Russia. It is unable to perceive an adequate ethnical basis for erecting a separate state and is not convinced that there is a real popular demand for anything more than such greater measure of local autonomy as will naturally result from the establishment in Russia of a modern democratic government, whether federative or not. The Department feels, accordingly, that the policy of the United States, while leaving to future events the determination of the exact character of the relations that exist between Great and Little Russia, should tend in the meantime, rather to sustain the principle of essential Russian unity than to encourage separatism.¹¹³

Without internal and external support, the Directory collapsed, and the Red Army marched into Kharkiv.¹¹⁴ Lenin appointed Christian Rakovsky as head of the new Soviet government in Ukraine. With an utter lack of sensitivity to Ukrainian national aspirations, a French-educated physician of Bulgarian origin, and Rumanian subject who had become a Russian Bolshevik, made derogatory remarks at the Third Ukrainian Congress of Soviets about Ukrainian as the official language of the republic.¹¹⁵ He was quoted as saying, in February 1919, that recognition of Ukrainian as the national language would be a “reactionary” measure, benefiting the nationalist intelligentsia.¹¹⁶

During their second occupation of Ukraine, Bolsheviks were using the same tactics as in previous years. They tried to establish agricultural communes and state farms on the former estates. They also continued their practice of requisitioning grain from Ukrainian farmers. In January 1919, Lenin sent Aleksandr Shlikhter to Ukraine as commissar of supply. He needed 50 million puds of grain by June in order to feed Russia’s cities and the Red Army.¹¹⁷ A poster published by the propaganda department in Moscow touted, “Only the Red Army will give us bread” (see Figure 1.2). The artist, N. Pomansky, told the story in two parts. The top half presents the problem: “Denikin has occupied Kharkov and Ekaterinoslav. There is no bread in Moscow and Petrograd.” The bottom half presents the solution: “The Red Army is advancing—bread is coming to Soviet Russia.” The scales in the center illustrate an increase in bread ration from one-eighth of a pound (top) to a pound and a half (bottom). A note on the bottom warns, “Anyone who tears off this poster or covers it with a flier—commits a counter-revolutionary act!”

Figure 1.2 Poster “Only the Red Army will give us bread” by N. Pomansky (Moscow, 1919). Source: From Harold M. Fleming Papers, 1917–1971: Russian Revolutionary Era Propaganda Posters, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

As many as 2,700 activists from Petrograd and Moscow arrived to assist Shlikhter with grain expropriation.¹¹⁸ He later reported that “blood was spilled for every pound of grain collected.”¹¹⁹ From April to June 1919, nearly 328 anti-Bolshevik rebellions swept through Ukraine (in one month from April 1 to May 1—93, in two weeks from May 1 to May 15—28, and from June 1 to June 19—207 rebellions).¹²⁰ Bolsheviks held the big cities, but had lost the countryside. Bands of Ukrainian farmers cut telegraph lines, seized sections of railroads, and prevented Bolshevik officials from functioning.¹²¹ By summer, anti-Bolshevik uprisings had cleared the path for Denikin’s White Army to move into Ukraine from the southeast. The Directory retreated toward Kyїv. The Ukrainian communists had fled to Russia as Denikin proceeded to threaten Moscow itself.¹²²

Anton Denikin’s policy overturned all the achievements of the Central Rada, Hetman, and the Directory in the sphere of education. He restored attributes of the imperial school administration that were in existence prior to 1917. School boards lost their right to elect board members and hire teachers. Local self-governing administrations could no longer establish schools and finance education. Most drastically, Ukrainian language was banned. Russian language was proclaimed the official language on the territory of Russia, as well as “Little Russia,” as Denikin referred to Ukraine in his decree “To the People of Little Russia” and his Order No. 22 in regard to Ukrainian schools.¹²³ The latter, in particular, reversed the policy of mandatory use of Ukrainian language in schools that conducted classes in Russian and banned the teaching of history and geography of Ukraine. Ukrainian language teaching became optional. A clarification was added on September 20, 1919, which allowed primary school teachers in early grades to use their students’ “native language as a supplementary tool to improve comprehension” in the classroom.¹²⁴

Educational leaders protested against Denikin’s policy. Ukrainian cultural and educational associations were formed to support local self-governing administrations. In the midst of political and social upheaval, enthusiasm and selfless efforts of a citizenry arose, dedicated to the idea of Ukrainian statehood. Musicians like Kyrylo Stetsenko, the student of Mykola Lysenko, arranged Ukrainian folk songs and composed liturgical works, including the Panakhyda, the first canonical national requiem.¹²⁵ In 1919, Stetsenko together with Oleksandr Koshyts′ founded the Ukrainian National Chorus to demonstrate the achievements of Ukrainian national music to the world.¹²⁶ To finance schools, Poltava intelligentsia created a cooperative Educational Association, “Ukrainian Culture,” and raised several million karbovantsi. Other cooperatives emerged, the largest of them Dniprosoiuz and Ukrainbank, to support functioning of schools and printing of textbooks.¹²⁷ Teachers’ conferences passed resolutions condemning Denikin’s policy. In the absence of the central government, Ukraine’s territory was divided and controlled not only by Denikin’s White Army but also a score of warlords, including Nestor Makhno, and the Bolsheviks.

Warlords, who led anarchist bands in central and eastern Ukraine, did very much as they wished.¹²⁸ They represented “a single wave in the great sea of rebellion.”¹²⁹ They were outside of the Directory’s control, and did no justice to the national liberation movement. As Henry Abramson pointed out, despite the fact that atrocities, including pogroms in Jewish settlements, were perpetrated by warlords, the Red and White Armies, Soviet historiography blamed Petliura and his command for the 1919 pogroms.¹³⁰

Despite the betrayal of the Galician division, which at a critical moment switched sides and joined Denikin’s army, and the indifference of Western powers to the plight of the Ukrainian people, Petliura achieved symbolic victory when on August 8, 1919, the World Socialist Conference in Lucerne recognized the Ukrainian National Republic’s independence. Summing up this period of struggle for national liberation, Petliura wrote with a sense of disillusionment and dark foreboding:

The territory of Ukraine has been considered [by the great powers] as a booty if they can support their claim to it with the military force, but not as a home for the Ukrainian people and minorities who enjoy the right to freedom and equality.¹³¹

He condemned Russian communists who sought to bolster their own republic’s claim to greatness by extracting resources from Ukraine. In hindsight, he realized that Russian Bolsheviks used Marx’s anti-capitalist rhetoric as an instrument to “leapfrog into the ranks of great powers.”¹³²

After assuming leadership at the first congress of the Third International (Comintern), launched in March 1919, Bolsheviks prevailed on their third attempt to take over Ukraine. When the Red Army reoccupied Ukraine following the defeat of Denikin, the Politburo meeting, held on November 21, 1919, adopted Lenin’s theses concerning the Russian Communist Party’s policy toward Ukraine. It is worthwhile to study the entire document:

1. Greatest caution regarding nationalist traditions, strictest observance of equality of the Ukrainian language and culture, all officials to be required to study the Ukrainian language and so forth.

2. Temporary bloc with the Borot′bists to form a center before the convocation of the Congress of Soviets, with the concurrent launching of a propaganda campaign for the complete merger [of the Ukraine] with the RSFSR.

3. For the time being, an independent Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, in close federation with the RSFSR, on the basis of 1 June 1919.

4. In connection with the advance of Red Army troops into the Ukraine, intensified work on the [class] differentiation of the village; singling out three groups; recruiting poor peasants (+ middle peasants) into the administration. Rendering the kulaks completely harmless.

5. Immediately and without fail admit to all revolutionary committees and local soviets no fewer than half of the local peasants, first from among the poorest and second from the middle ones.

6. The strictest requirement of accounting for the implementation of this demand by all nonlocal [party] workers, by all those sent from the center, by all members of the intelligentsia.

7. Detailed working out of procedures for this accounting, and oversight of their actual implementation.

8. The countryside must be disarmed without fail and at all costs.

9. Food work in the Ukraine:first, give priority to feeding Kharkov and the Donets Basin;¹³³ second, delay extraction of the surpluses from the Ukraine to Russia, stretching it out as much as possible (that is, getting by in Russia with our [own] surpluses; third, use any extraction of surpluses to feed the local poor peasants no matter what, giving them without fail a share [of what is] taken from the kulaks; fourth, in general, conduct the food policy more cautiously than in Russia, sparing the middle peasant more, taking fewer surpluses.

10. Treat the Jews and urban inhabitants in the Ukraine with an iron rod, transferring them to the front, not letting them into government agencies (except in an insignificant percentage, in particularly exceptional circumstances, under class control).

11. [Place] the teachers’ union [spilka], the cooperatives, and other such petty bourgeois organizations in the Ukraine under special surveillance, with special measures for their disintegration, for the singling out of Communists.

12. Initiate immediately especially energetic training of a special cadre of [party] workers for the Ukraine with specially reinforced surveillance and screening.

13. Quickly carry out such preparations both through all the individual people’s commissariats and through the Orgburo.¹³⁴

First, Lenin cautioned his comrades about Ukrainian “nationalist” rather than “national” traditions. The requirement for all Bolshevik officials to use the Ukrainian language behind the veneer of “equality” disguised the instrumental purpose of Bolshevik elite to indoctrinate cadres loyal to the occupying regime rather than to guarantee language rights of the local population. Second, Lenin proposed to launch a propaganda campaign as a tool to alter mass consciousness in the desired direction: to merge Ukraine with Russia. Third, Lenin admits that the colonial regime would have to be backed by military force. Notable is Lenin’s guidance on class differentiation, without a clear definition of who belonged to either a “poor” or “middle peasant” or “kulak” category. This document illustrates that the classification started as early as 1919, establishing categories for social divisions that would mark certain groups as enemies of the occupying regime, subject to eventual extermination. Kulaks as a distinct group for the time being were rendered “harmless.” Further down the list, Lenin singled out the All-Ukrainian Teachers’ Union (spilka) for “special surveillance” with subsequent disintegration. It was liquidated in 1920, when teachers were forced to join a new professional union for educational employees.¹³⁵ Immediately, and “without fail,” recruiting half of the local population into soviets to support the regime as stated in the fourth thesis clearly sets the mechanism for genocidal violence that these “ordinary” people would perpetrate a decade later. In anticipation of potential resistance, Lenin directed the Politburo to disarm the countryside. The sixth thesis became a blueprint for the Bolshevik food policy in Ukraine.

Particularly interesting in Lenin’s theses is his call for excluding Jews from Soviet government in Ukraine. Richard Pipes noted that this exclusion followed the practice of the White Armies during their 1919 occupation of Ukraine.¹³⁶ If Jews were excluded from the Soviet government, where did the perception come that they overwhelmingly supported Bolshevism? Rarely discussed issue appears to have been the migration of Jews from what, until 1914, had been the Pale of Settlement to the cities. Myroslav Shkandrij has noted that Jews were desperate for any kind of employment; for this reason, they were available and prepared to serve the new regime, in the organs of repression, specifically the GPU. The low number of Ukrainians among leading cadres of the republic’s security police, according to Vadym Zolotar′iov, “can be explained only by the hidden anti-Ukrainian politics of the Soviet leadership at the time.”¹³⁷ Jews and Ukrainians were played off against each other: sometimes leaders of Jewish origin were replaced by Ukrainians, sometimes the reverse.¹³⁸

In his fourth thesis, Lenin singled out “all members of the intelligentsia” along with other main enforcers of the policy, who are largely nonlocal party and central apparat authorities. Ukrainian intelligentsia varied in ideological orientations and attitudes toward Bolsheviks. Teachers, many of whom came from the families of nobles, urban industrialists, small proprietors, village clergy, and to a lesser extent proletariat, remained distrustful and refused to recognize the Soviet government, but showed obedience out of fear to lose a job or freedom.¹³⁹ Some focused on their narrow teaching duties. To keep a pulse on teachers’ sentiments, Bolsheviks gathered teachers at conferences and meetings. Recognizing the challenge of winning teachers onto their side, Bolsheviks initiated a policy of electing teachers to fill vacancies. On May 10, 1919, Volodymyr Zatons′kyi signed a resolution “On the Election of School Personnel,” which stated that teachers “had to be trusted by the people.” Teachers were selected based on their public performance and had to be recommended by a committee that usually included Communist Party members and union representatives loyal to the Soviet regime. Scholars refer to this policy as the beginning of the purges in teachers’ ranks.¹⁴⁰

Under military control of the Red Army, Bolsheviks formed a new People’s Commissariat of Education in Ukraine (Narodnyi komisariat osvity or NKO). It established a network of labor schools modeled on already existing ones in neighboring Russia. All other types of schools were eliminated. The labor school was mandatory, free, and secular. The emphasis on the labor component meant to closely align education with practical application of skills demanded by the economy. The labor was meant to be motivated by inner desire rather than forced. It had to be purposeful and useful to the society. Being socialists first, Ukrainian Bolsheviks initially had common ground with their Russian comrades; they envisioned free labor as an educational rather than exploitative tool. In 1919, the NKO in Soviet Ukraine supported the idea of polytechnic education.

In March 1920, the First All-Ukrainian Conference on People’s Education refocused the goal toward social protection of children. It was dictated by devastating circumstances of the war and a sharp increase in the number of children who lost parents and homes. Discussions at the conference focused on establishing a new system of education in Soviet Ukraine. The first unified type of seven-year school was created with two levels: primary (grades 1 through 4) and secondary (grades 5 through 7). The seven-year school gave access to professional training in technical colleges. Institutes of higher education also underwent transformation.¹⁴¹

Soviet Ukraine’s Commissar of Education Hryhorii Hryn′ko and his deputy Ian Riappo did not adhere strictly to the principle of polytechnic school, and delayed its implementation in the republic. This new course, which was approved by the delegates of the Second All-Ukrainian Conference on People’s Education in August 1920, was harshly criticized by Lenin. The party recalled Hryn′ko to Moscow to appear before a committee hearing and, unexpectedly, seconded the position of the Ukrainian delegation that the republic needed a different type of school system to meet its needs. Encouraged by the support from the central authorities, Ukrainian Bolsheviks believed that they could combine two incompatible ideologies, national and communist, in creating a unique system of education suitable for future citizens of Ukraine.¹⁴²

The system of education in Soviet Ukraine reflected the need to take over the function of families broken by war, and not only educate children, but also shelter them, organize activities of daily living, and teach social skills.¹⁴³ In the midst of the devastation wrecked by war, in 1920, the NKO issued a “Declaration on the Social Upbringing of Children,” which refocused emphasis from the labor school toward a “children’s house.” At first, it was a necessary measure to house all orphaned children. Ultimately, the goal was to take children from the “harmful influence” of their individualistic parents and raise them in a spirit of collectivism. The then Soviet Ukraine’s Commissar of Education Hryn′ko explained:

The social upbringing in its full extent is the structuring of childhood as a whole, developing a collective life for the entire population of children. This is not a starting point, but the final goal of social upbringing. This means the end of individualistic upbringing of children in their families, which would not be possible without establishing socialist economy and restructuring society.¹⁴⁴

In practice, this meant registering all children under the age of fifteen, distributing them among shelters, developing a network of kindergartens and after-school clubs, opening orphanages, uniting these institutions into children’s communities, protecting the rights of children in need of social assistance, especially children with disabilities, labeled at the time “defective” children. The result of the declared program was a total control of the child’s individuality by the newly established regime.¹⁴⁵

A total control of the person’s individuality also applied to teachers. Bolsheviks used a variety of forms of ideological pressure to fulfill Lenin’s dictum that schools cannot be outside politics or be separate from the state. Chief among these forms was the participation of Communist Party representatives in all teachers’ conferences and congresses. Libraries with political propaganda, short summer courses to train social science teachers, guest lectures to acquaint teachers with political theory, and political literacy tests were instituted on a permanent basis.

In March 1920, after liquidation of the Borot′bists,¹⁴⁶ the All-Ukrainian Teachers’ Union was dissolved. In August, a new union was established for teachers in Soviet Ukraine, Robos (a blend from robitnyky osvity or educational employees).¹⁴⁷ Toward the end of 1920, the Bolsheviks succeeded in enforcing teachers’ cooperation with the Soviet government, and Communist Party cells were established in all branches of the Robos in Soviet Ukraine.¹⁴⁸

From 1921 on, with a temporary liberalization that came along with the New Economic Policy (NEP), the intellectual atmosphere was conducive to educational innovation and experimentation. Communist Party planners expressed no preference for a specific scientific paradigm, and most scholars disagreed on how to interpret Marx’s philosophy. No unity existed among educational theorists either. However, they agreed that the prerevolution system of schooling, with its classical gymnasium, had to give way to a school that integrated students from all strata of society. In Ukraine, the struggle for national liberation from 1917 to 1921 spurred efforts to create its national school. The social and political circumstances of the interrupted national struggle led to a search for new methods and approaches to schooling.¹⁴⁹

New methods had, as their scientific basis, developments in physiology and psychology of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. One influence on educational theory came from Ivan Pavlov’s experimental work on conditional reflexes.¹⁵⁰ Ivan Sokolians′kyi believed that it would bring “a true paradigm shift in pedagogy.”¹⁵¹ Another influence on educational theory came from psychologist Vladimir Bekhterev, author of the Basic Principles of Objective Psychology and Psycho-reflexology (1910), who found that human behavior, from rudimentary organic reactions to complex acts of creativity, is essentially reflexive.¹⁵² Educational reflexology was established as a field of study, focusing on child anatomy and physiology based on conditional and unconditional reflexes. In sum, the child’s life and education had to be structured and controlled.

All future teachers were required to study Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, the origin of species, anatomy and physiology of the human body, as well as the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, and endocrine system function, and their effects on the formation of a child’s character. Psychological testing became popular, and measurements of sensory organs, motor functions, will, and aesthetic feelings were used to select intellectually gifted children and direct their choice of future profession.¹⁵³ Teachers, however, were hardly aware of Engels’s compliment to Marx’s achievements as the “Darwin of history.”¹⁵⁴ Hannah Arendt drew parallels between the two theories: “The ‘natural’ law of the survival of the fittest is just as much a historical law and could be used as such by racism as Marx’s law of the survival of the most progressive class.”¹⁵⁵ Teachers were unsuspecting that forces of nature and history let loose by these theories would not permit free action or opposition, or even sympathy, to interfere with the struggle to eliminate “enemies of the people,” based on race or class.

The Ukrainian educators in their search for a new scientific theory turned to the West. Despite frequent visits to German universities on scholarly exchanges, they mostly followed Moscow’s lead. Nevertheless, the pro-Western orientation in the early 1920s is evident from a programmatic speech presented by Soviet Ukraine’s Commissar of Education, Hryn′ko, appropriately titled “Our Path Westward” (Nash shlyakh na Zakhid). He stated that Europe had a rich tradition of scientific research in psychology, psychophysiology, psychological techniques, as well as trained specialists in the field of education. In contrast, in Soviet Ukraine, social and political upheaval led to a “chaotic-revolutionary pedagogical activity,” which required scientific grounding. Soviet education historian Ol′ha Sukhomlyns′ka characterized Hryn′ko’s speech not as a declaration, but “an approach to creating a new pedagogical theory in Ukraine.”¹⁵⁶

THE FAMINE OF 1921–1923 IN SOVIET UKRAINE

Once Lenin and his “red” disciples consolidated their power, they attempted to realize Marx’s economic doctrine. Bolsheviks replaced trade with barter and abolished commodity-money relations and the free market.¹⁵⁷ To run the state, they brought about total appropriation of the economy under the guise of nationalization of industrial enterprises and the collectivization of agriculture. The first attempt to build utopia led to a crisis that verged on economic collapse and culminated in the catastrophic famine of 1921–1923 (masked by droughts). According to Soviet historian Stanislav Kul′chyts′kyi, Lenin got out of the crisis by “canceling the prohibition on private enterprise, forgoing the collectivization of agriculture, and restoring free trade between town and country.”¹⁵⁸ From the policy of “War Communism,” a set of extraordinary measures that had nothing to do with Marx’s doctrine, Lenin transitioned to the NEP.

The NEP began in 1921, when prodrazverstka was suspended.¹⁵⁹ From 1921 to 1927, the state obtained grain for cities, the army, and a new export fund from farmers either by levying fixed taxes in kind or by purchasing their produce on the free market.¹⁶⁰ The legalization of the market forced Bolshevik leaders to allow entrepreneurial activity. Nationalized industry was organized in trusts based on principles of cost accounting, which required the generation of revenue to fund production costs. Restoration of the credit and banking systems, the introduction of a stable currency, and the promotion of private enterprise revived production.¹⁶¹ However, teachers’ financial situation worsened because, due to the shortage of cash, funding for people’s education was transferred to local authorities.¹⁶² The situation with teachers’ salaries throughout Soviet Ukraine was dire. In 1922, in the Kyїv region, a teacher could hardly survive on the wage earnings equivalent to one-seventh of the cost of living.¹⁶³

In Soviet Ukraine, famine lasted until the summer of 1923. It was caused by droughts, postwar devastation, the policy of grain expropriation, and excessive export of grain outside the Soviet Union.¹⁶⁴ In 1921, 20 percent of the harvest was lost due to droughts. In Soviet Ukraine, the three regions that were affected most included Donets′k (40 percent), Zaporizhzhia (63 percent), and Katerynoslav (64 percent). To avoid interrupting transport of grain from Soviet Ukraine to Russia, the Council of People’s Commissars of the Russian SFSR did not acknowledge the existence of famine in southeastern regions of the Ukrainian SSR until early 1922, when mass mortality began. Once the famine was recognized, the head of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR, Christian Rakovsky,¹⁶⁵ appealed for aid.¹⁶⁶ The American Relief Administration (ARA), which had been working in the Volga region, the second largest grain-producing area, since August 1921, gave starving Ukrainians 180.9 million emergency rations, only after the Russian SFSR agreed to it on January 10, 1922. The Fridtjof Nansen charitable mission gave 12.2 million in emergency rations. Workers’ International Relief, created by the Communist International, gave Soviet Ukraine 383,000 emergency rations. In the fall of 1922, the Soviet government announced that the new harvest had ended the famine; however, in Soviet Ukraine famine lasted till the summer of the following year.¹⁶⁷

By January 1922, about 1.9 million people had starved in the five famine-struck provinces in Soviet Ukraine’s south, but by April their number increased to 3.2 million, and by June peaked at 3.8 million, or 40 percent of the population in affected areas. Diseases, including typhus and cholera, were rampant, and by August, took over half a million more lives. In one governorate, Mykolaїv, from January to October 1922, as many as 37,331 died of hunger, and 50,600 more suffered in various stages of disease due to starvation. Overall, according to the official census data,¹⁶⁸ Ukraine lost between 5.5 and 7.5 million people as a result of World War I, the war for national liberation, and the famine.¹⁶⁹

The famine of 1921–1923 paralyzed the most rebellious areas of Ukraine’s countryside. When physical survival became the most immediate problem, partisan resistance in the villages became impossible. Thus, according to Wasyl Hryshko, “the famine became the ultimate weapon in the Soviet pacification of Ukraine and a proven method of genocide.” Hryshko further noted:

Whether it was planned and executed by the Soviet regime as a genocidal action cannot be positively proved, but the thing is clear: it was used by the Soviet regime as an effective tool in the final stage of subjugation inside Ukraine. The Soviet Russian authorities at first denied the famine in Ukraine, and then hindered all attempts by Western European and American relief organizations to develop full scale action for rescuing the Ukrainian people from mass starvation, while at the same time welcoming relief actions in the Volga region.¹⁷⁰

Some contemporary Ukrainian scholars, along with diaspora scholars, have noted that the Soviet authorities used the famine instrumentally to put an end to the opposition.¹⁷¹ However, in her Red Famine, Anne Applebaum has argued that this thesis cannot be proven as there is no evidence of a premeditated plan.¹⁷² Yet in the following paragraph, Applebaum quoted Lenin’s letter to Viacheslav Molotov, arguing that the famine offered a unique opportunity to seize church property and “not hesitate to put down the least opposition.”¹⁷³

The standard of living of intellectual elites declined precipitously. They lost social security and pensions, suffered from arbitrary evictions or requisitions of “surplus” property, and became isolated from their European colleagues due to severed academic ties. Many leading members of the intelligentsia became demoralized, suffering acute material and intellectual deprivations. In 1920, authorities in Moscow established a Central Commission for Food Supply in Russia.¹⁷⁴ Soviet Ukraine had not received any support from the central government, even in the provinces hard hit by famine until October 1921. By then only limited food assistance trickled down to Kharkiv and Kyïv. The leading research centers in these two cities received 170 and 120 food assistance rations.¹⁷⁵ Only 25 percent of scientists and 4 percent of artists in Kharkiv, then capital of Soviet Ukraine, received food assistance.¹⁷⁶ This policy of “divide and rule,” typical of imperial control, became evident to M. M. Berezhkov, professor at Nizhyn Institute of People’s Education, who recorded in his diary:

Vulgarity, stupidity, ignorance, brutality have become entrenched, consuming everyone, even noble and honest people. We have descended into the sneaky, petty calculation, the mercantilism, the procurement of food rations . . . Civil servants received a food supplement, or a handout (I don’t know what to call it) of half a pound of pastry cookies, half a pound of jam and a pound of salt, for a total of 90 krb. (Enjoy yourself, indulge like children. . ., but then pay for the indulgence). . . . Without faith, without hope, without active love, there is no authentic, true life, but only existence, animalistic, slavish.¹⁷⁷

This Bolshevik policy toward the intelligentsia was deliberate. It allowed the ruling regime to control the intelligentsia and force them to compromise. Leon Trotsky admitted bluntly: “We will use hunger to force the intelligentsia to work for us.”¹⁷⁸

Although Bolshevik leaders appealed for international relief, it was too little too late to save children in Soviet Ukraine. By the fall of 1922, nearly 2 million children were starving in Soviet Ukraine’s southeastern provinces. Less than half of them (943,500) received food relief.¹⁷⁹ Parents could apply for food assistance for their starving children through TsK Dophol VUTsVK, a special commission of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee to assist the starving, or through foreign charitable organizations. International relief missions took photographs of children partially or fully unclothed to show the effects of famine (see children swollen from starvation in Figure 1.3).¹⁸⁰

Figure 1.3 Famished children, Berdians′k, Ukraine, 1922. Source: From the Photographic Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, V-P-HIST-02591-07A.

In January 1923, the Ukrainian Red Cross opened free kitchens to feed 63,000 of the starving children; by February their capacity grew to 100,000, but subsequently no more than 70,000 children received assistance.¹⁸¹ In April 1923, foreign charitable organizations, including the ARA, Nansen mission, American Baptists (Mennonites), and the Swiss Red Cross, among others, provided food assistance to 360,000 children in Soviet Ukraine.¹⁸² But foreign assistance dwindled once the Soviet Union started shipping grain to sell on the world market. Foreign missions could not fathom that the Soviet government could sell grain overseas as a source of revenue while its own people were dying of hunger.

Homeless children were placed in orphanages, but due to intermittent supply shortages those children were malnourished. Orphanages turned into hot spots for epidemics and mass deaths among children. Even in the better off province of Poltava, half of schoolchildren suffered from tuberculosis and the remaining were emaciated and anemic.¹⁸³ Orphanages were severely overcrowded because 56,000 children from famine struck areas in Soviet Russia were evacuated to Soviet Ukraine, and in 1922, they constituted 75 percent of all children in Ukraine’s orphanages.¹⁸⁴ In his speech at the Seventh All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, held in December 1922, Hryhorii Petrovs′kyi reported that Ukraine accommodated 80,000 children, most of them evacuated from the Volga region (obligated to take care of only 25,000).¹⁸⁵ This organized evacuation plus uncontrolled migration of starving children from Russia aggravated the famine situation in Soviet Ukraine. Along with the evacuation and migration, came a wave of cruelty and child prostitution.

In his classic study, Man and Society in Calamity, Pitirim Sorokin assessed the impact of famine on human behavior. As a survivor of the 1921–1922 famine in Soviet Russia, Sorokin came up with a range of behaviors that victims engage in. He gathered evidence from world’s calamities—wars, revolutions, and famines—to help the reader understand that cannibalism in non-cannibalistic societies is extremely rare (less than one-third of 1 percent of population), whereas violations of basic honesty and fairness in pursuit of food, such as misuse of rationing cards, hoarding, and taking unfair advantage of others, are widespread (from 20 to 99 percent), but highly variable. Half of the population succumb to pressure of starvation, surrendering or disengaging from most of the aesthetic activities irreconcilable with food-seeking activities.¹⁸⁶

For the first time in 300 years, cases of cannibalism were reported in areas affected by the famine in Soviet Ukraine’s south.¹⁸⁷ Based on Sorokin’s observation, more than 99 percent of the population avoided such behavior. As a result of the war, revolution, and famine, human life lost value. Along with physical degradation, morality and dignity vanished. This famine of 1921–1923 became a “dress rehearsal”¹⁸⁸ for the Great Famine of 1932–1933, the apex of the Holodomor, perpetrated with greater ruthlessness by Bolshevik henchmen with support of “devils in military uniforms” (the GPU), who created conditions incompatible with life, causing physical and mental suffering among millions of their victims.

Seeds of genocidal violence, sown in the 1920s, took many years to ripen before reaching the apogee in the 1930s. The main stages of its growth are well-known now. If the whole of human history is to be conceived in class terms, as spelled out in Marx’s writings, then “it does follow that the new society must start by a violent break in cultural continuity from the old one.”¹⁸⁹ After World War I, Ukraine’s struggle to establish itself as a national republic, with a representative democratic government, was curtailed. Using both lethal and nonlethal means, such as vicious propaganda against the weak national government, Bolsheviks subjugated Ukraine, banned all political parties and trade unions, and established a monopoly rule of the Leninist party, the only legitimate mouthpiece of the “toiling masses,” equipped with an ideology which justified their power. Economic and nationality policies, conceived as temporary at the time, became permanent components of the new society. After the seizure of power, education became the task of the vanguard of society; the creation of the new Soviet species was the product of sheer coercion.

NOTES

1. Smeulers, “Perpetrators of International Crimes,” 233, 235.

2. Leszek Kołakowski, “The Marxist Roots of Stalinism,” in The Great Lie: Classic and Recent Appraisals of Ideology and Totalitarianism, ed. F. Flagg Taylor IV (Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2011), 171. The article first appeared in My Correct Views on Everything (St. Augustine’s Press, 1977).

3. For a special study of Makhno’s role in the Ukrainian struggle for liberation, see Frank Sysyn, “Nestor Makhno and the Ukrainian Revolution,” in The Ukraine, 1917–1921: A Study in Revolution, ed. Taras Hunczak (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1977), 271–304.

4. S. V. Kul′chyts′kyi, “Borot′bysty,” in Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine, ed. I. M. Dziuba et al. (Kyїv: Instytut entsyklopedychnykh doslidzhen′ NAN Ukraïny, 2004), http://esu.com.ua/search_articles.php?id=37346.

5. Andrea Graziosi, “Viewing the Twentieth Century through the Prism of Ukraine: Reflections on the Heuristic Potential of Ukrainian History,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 34, no. 1–4 (2015–2016): 118.

6. Stephen Bronner, Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); see also James Bohman, “Critical Theory,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/critical-theory/.

7. Karl Marx: Essential Writings, ed. Frederic L. Bender (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1972), ix–x.

8. Wasyl Hryshko, “The Origins of Soviet Genocide,” in The Ukrainian holocaust of 1933, ed. and trans. Marco Carynnyk (Toronto: Bahriany Foundation, SUZHERO, DOBRUS, 1983), 8.

9. Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company for the Great Books Foundation, 1949), 30.

10. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1845–1848), vol. 6, 103.

11. Marx, Communist Manifesto, 13.

12. Ibid., 20–21.

13. Ibid., 24, 32–34.

14. Lenin is the nom de guerre of Vladimir Ul′ianov adopted after the place of his exile near the Lena river in Siberia. See James H. Billington, “The Legacy of Russian History,” in The Stalin Revolution: Foundations of Soviet Totalitarianism, ed. Robert V. Daniels (Lexington and Toronto: D. C. Heath and Company, 1972), 160.

15. In 1910, Dzhugashvili adopted the nom de guerre Stalin, which rhymed with Russian-sounding Lenin, and meant “Man of Steel” from the Russian word stal′. His earlier conspiratorial pseudonym was Koba, meaning “the fearless” in Turkish. See Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973), 132. See also Billington, “The Legacy of Russian History,” 160.

16. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 116.

17. S. Vereshchak, “Stalin v tiur′me (Vospominaniia politicheskoho zakliuchennogo),” Dni, January 22, 1928; quoted in Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 117.

18. Hryshko, “The Origins of Soviet Genocide,” 14, 19.

19. Roman Serbyn, “Lénine et la question ukrainienne en 1914: le discours ‘séparatiste’ de Zurich,” Pluriel, no. 25 (1981): 83; quoted in Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 4th ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 268–69.

20. Vladislav Grinevich, “Podolannia totalitarnoho mynuloho – Chastyna 3: Chy buv SSSR imperiieiu, a Ukraïna – koloniieiu?” Ukraïna moderna, August 22, 2019, uamoderna.com/blogy/vladislav-grinevich/totalitarism-part-3.

21. Tetiana Teren, “Neopublikovana rozmova z Anatoliiem Dimarovym: Shkoduiu, shcho v takyi strashnyi chas zhyv, koly ne mozhna bulo pysaty pravdu,” Ukraїns′ka Pravda, July 7, 2014, https://life.pravda.com.ua/society/2014/07/7/174315/.

22. The decommunization of public space commenced in April 2015 when the government of Ukraine, a year following the Revolution of Dignity of 2013–2014, outlawed communist symbols. See Alexander J. Motyl, “Kiev’s Purge: Behind the New Legislation to Decommunize Ukraine,” Foreign Affairs, April 28, 2015, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2015-04-28/kievs-purge.

23. Ewald Ammende, Human Life in Russia (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1936), 142.

24. Ammende, Human Life in Russia, 145.

25. Lenin’s mother, Maria Ul′ianova (née Blank), was the daughter of Alexandr Blank, a well-to-do physician. Some researchers argue that he was a Jewish convert to Orthodox Christianity, Srul′ Blank, also spelled Israil Blank. Others believe she was the descendant of German colonists invited to Russia by Catherine the Great. However, Russian historians argue this was another man by a similar name. Her mother Anna Groschopf was the daughter of a German father Johann Groschopf and Swedish mother Anna Östedt. See Christopher Read, Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (New York: Routledge, 2005) and Robert Pein, Lenin: Zhizn′ i smert′ (Moscow: Molodaiia gvardiia, 2008). See also interview with Lenin’s biographer E. A. Kotelenets, “Bitva za Lenina: shest′ mifov o vozhde revoliutsii,” Komsomol′skaia Pravda, April 22, 2017, https://www.kp.ru/daily/26670.5/3692043/.

26. See Michael Pearson, The Sealed Train (New York: Putnam, 1975) and Edward Crankshaw, “When Lenin Returned,” The Atlantic Monthly, October 1954, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1954/10/when-lenin-returned/303867/. For a train route from Switzerland to Petrograd via Finland, see Joshua Hammer, “Vladimir Lenin’s Return Journey to Russia Changed the World Forever,” Smithsonian Magazine, March 2017,

27.

28. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/vladimir-lenin-return-journey-russia-changed-world-forever-180962127/.

29. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 45 vols. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1960–1970), vol. 22, 154; vol. 19, 243–44, 500–1, 526; vol. 21, 413; quoted in Hryshko, “The Origins of Soviet Genocide,” 24–25.

30. The theses were written in October–December 1913 and published in the journal Prosveshcheniie no. 10, 11, and 12. For the English text, see V. I. Lenin, “Critical Remarks on the National Question,” in Collected Works, trans. Bernard Isaacs and Joe Fineberg, ed. Julius Katzer, vol. 20 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), 17–51, available from https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/pdf/lenin-cw-vol-20.pdf.

31. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 20, 28, 30, 45; vol. 21, 419; vol. 19, 500; quoted in Hryshko, 26–28.

32. Ibid., vol. 20, 31–32; quoted in Hryshko, 28–29. The Russian word muzhik means a rustic, a country bumpkin.

33. Ibid., vol. 19, 116, 118, 246, 248, 250–51, 380–81, 503–4, 533; vol. 20, 20, 22; quoted in Hryshko, 30.

34. Ibid.

35. Hryshko, 32.

36. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 20, 28, 30–33; quoted in Hryshko, 33.

37. Hryshko, 33.

38. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 22, 340–41; quoted in Hryshko, 33.

39. N. Lenin, “The Soldiers and the Land,” Soldatskaia Pravda, no. 1, April 15, 1917, reprinted in Collected Works, vol. 24, 137–38; “Draft Resolution on the Agrarian Question,” first published in May 1917 in the pamphlet Material on the Agrarian Question, reprinted in Collected Works, vol. 24, 483–85; “Speech on the Agrarian Question, May 22 (June 4) 1917,” published in Izvestiia, no. 14, May 25, 1917, reprinted in Collected Works, vol. 24, 486–505; quoted in V. I. Lenin, Between the Two Revolutions: Articles and Speeches of 1917 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971), 132–33, 221–42.

40. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 9, 235–36; quoted in Hryshko, 37.

41. Hryshko, 37.

42. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 31, 242–43; quoted in Hryshko, 40.

43. Hryshko, 40.

44. V. I. Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 30 (Moscow: Partiinoe izd-vo, 1932), 413.

45. I. V. Stalin, Voprosy leninizma (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1945), 610.

46. “Ukrainskaia SSR,” in Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, 1917–1967, eds. M. A. Prokofiev, P. V. Zimin, M. N. Kolmakova, M. I. Kondakov, and N. P. Kuzin (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1967), 326.

47. Oleksander Luhovyi, Vyznachne zhinotstvo Ukraïny: istorychni zhyttiepysy v chotyr′okh chastynakh (Toronto: The Ukrainian Publishing Company, 1942), 30, 37, see Digital Collection of the National University “Kyïv-Mohyla Academy” at https://dlib.ukma.edu.ua/document/87; Natalia Polons′ka-Vasylenko, Vydatni zhinky Ukraïny (Winnipeg: Ukrainian Women’s Association of Canada, printed by Trident Press, 1969), 37–38, 58–59.

48. David Saunders, The Ukrainian Impact on Russian Culture, 1750–1850 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1985).

49. Solovey, Golgota Ukraïny, 17. For a detailed analysis of consistent and long-lasting policy of eradicating all varieties of Ukrainian from social realm (ecclesiastic, administrative, and literary) by imperial Russian rulers, see Andrii Danylenko and Halyna Naienko, “Linguistic Russification in Russian Ukraine: Languages, Imperial Models, and Policies,” Russian Linguistics 43, no. 1 (2019): 19–39, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-018-09207-1.

50. The fact that Peter the Great started building a canal from the While Sea to the Gulf of Finland was reported by a journalist from a pro-Soviet British monthly Russia Today at the time when Stalin, like Peter I more than 230 years earlier, sent hundreds of thousands of recalcitrant Ukrainians who opposed his regime to dig the canal in 1932. See Geoffrey Pinnock, “A Great Canal Beats Arctic Ocean,” Russia Today, December 1932, 16. Thanks to Jars Balan of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies for bringing this article to my attention.

51. Isabel de Madariaga, “The Foundation of the Russian Educational System by Catherine II,” Slavonic and East European Review 57, no. 3 (1979): 385, 388, 390; and by the same author, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).

52. See Johannes Remy, “Against All Odds: Ukrainian in the Russian Empire in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” in The Battle for Ukrainian: A Comparative Perspective, eds. Michael S. Flier and Andrea Graziosi (Cambridge: Harvard University Press for the Ukrainian Research Institute, 2017), 43–61.

53. Solovey, Golgota Ukraïny, 49.

54. Symon Petliura, “Ukraïns′ki katedry i ukraïns′kyi proletariat,” Slovo (Kyїv), no. 22, September 22, 1907, reprinted in Symon Petliura: Statti, lysty, dokumenty (New York: Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., 1956), 64–66.

55. Symon Putliura, “Stan narodn′oï osvity ta medytsyny v Poltavshshyni v tsyfrakh,” Literaturno-Naukovyi Vistnyk V, no. XIX (1902): 152–54, reprinted in Symon Petliura, 13–15.

56. Ol′ha Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy istoriï ukraïns′koho shkil′nytstva (1905–1933) (Kyïv: Zapovit, 1996), 79.

57. D. Rozovyk, “Stanovlennia natsional′noï vyshchoï osvity i naukovo-doslidnoï pratsi v Ukraïni (1917–1920 rr.),” Etnichna istoriia narodiv Ievropy: Zbirnyk naukovykh prats′, vyp. 8 (2001): 55–58.

58. “Do ukraïntsiv-profesoriv i prepodavateliv vyshchykh shkil,” Visti z Ukraïns′koï Tsentral′noï rady u Kyievi, March 21, 1917; quoted in Viktor Adams′kyi, “Ideia natsional′noho universytetu za doby Tsentral′noï Rady: sproba realizatsiï,” Osvita, nauka i kul′tura na Podilli, no. 24 (2017): 17.

59. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 80, 110–11; see also Klitsakov, Pedahohichni kadry Ukraїny, 55.

60. TsDAVOU, f. 2581, op. 1, spr. 15, ark 1.

61. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 111–12.

62. Ibid., 112.

63. Ibid., 80.

64. Ibid., 113.

65. I. Kryzhanovs′kyi, “Dekil′ka uvah do postanovky pozashkil′noї osvity na mistsiakh,” Vil′na ukraїns′ka shkola, no. 5–6 (1918): 26–30; quoted in Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 114.

66. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 114.

67. The Central Rada in its Third Universal proclaimed the UNR in reaction to the Bolshevik coup d’état in Petrograd, in federation with future democratic Russia. It declared complete independence in its Fourth Universal. For English translation of all four universals, see Taras Hunczak, ed., The Ukraine, 1917–1921: A Study in Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1977).

68. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Select Committee on Communist Aggression, Communist Takeover and Occupation of Ukraine, Special Report No. 4, 88th Cong., 2nd Sess. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1954), 9.

69. Ivan Steshenko was murdered by the Bolsheviks in July 1918. See Leonid Bilets′kyi, “Ivan Steshenko,” Vil′na ukraïns′ka shkola, no. 1 (1918): 1–3; quoted in Serhii Bilokin′, “Dolia chleniv Tsentral′noï Rady v SSSR,” Vyzvol′nyi shliakh, kn. 1 (2000): 14–26, https://web.archive.org/web/20081122004310/http://bilokin.myslenedrevo.com.ua/terror/dchcr.html.

70. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 81–82.

71. Ibid., 114.

72. Istoriia Sovetskoi Konstitutsii (v dokumentakh) 1917–1956, ed. S. S. Studenikin (Moscow: Gosiurizdat, 1957), 74. See also Communist Takeover and Occupation of Ukraine, 8.

73. Solovey, Golgota Ukraїny, 43.

74. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 82.

75. Regarding British recognition of Ukraine, see “Mérey an das k.u.k. Min. d. Äussern: Über die Ankunft der Delegierten der Kiewer Zentralrada sowie Bedenken gegen ihre Zulassung zur nachträglichen Unterzeichnung des Waffenstillstandsvertrages, Brest-Litovsk, 16 December 1917,” H-H-SA/PA, Vienna, Kr. 70/6, in Theophil Hornykiewicz, ed., Ereignisse in der Ukraine, 1914–1922, deren Bedeutung und historische Hintergründe, vol. II (Horn: Ferdinand Berger und Söhne, 1966), 3. For the French part in the recognition, see Dmytro Doroshenko, Istoriia Ukraїny, 1917–1923 rr., vol. I, 2nd ed. (New York: Bulava Publishing Corporation, 1954), 230–40, 436–37.

76. “Gautsch an das k.u.k. Min. d. Äussern: Bericht über die erste Besprechung mit den ukrain. Delegierten” (n.d.), H-H-SA/PA, Vienna, Kr. 70/6, in Hornykiewicz, vol. II, 6–7.

77. Jurij Borys, The Russian Communist Party and the Sovietization of the Ukraine: A Study in the Communist Doctrine of the Self-Determination of Nations (Stockholm: Norstedt & Soner, 1960), 173; see also Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, 34.

78. Ihor Kamenetsky, “Hrushevsky and the Central Rada: Internal Politics and Foreign Interventions,” in The Ukraine, 1917–1921: A Study in Revolution, ed. Taras Hunczak (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1977), 40.

79. Ivan L. Rudnytsky, “The Fourth Universal and Its Ideological Antecedents,” in The Ukraine, 1917–1921: A Study in Revolution, ed. Taras Hunczak (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1977), 209.

80. Illia Vytanovych, Agrarna polityka ukraїns′kykh uriadiv, 1917–1920 (Munich: Ukraїns′ke istorychne tovarystvo, 1968), 5–60.

81. For more on the Russian repartition, see Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, 19.

82. Oleh S. Fedyshyn, “The Germans and the Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine, 1914–1917,” in The Ukraine, 1917–1921: A Study in Revolution, ed. Taras Hunczak (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1977), 305–6.

83. Isaak Mazepa, Ukraïna v ohni i buri revoliutsiï, 1917–1921, Part I (Prague: Vyd-vo “Prometei,” 1950), 36–37.

84. Fedyshyn, “The Germans and the Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine,” 308.

85. See “Timothy Snyder on Germany’s Historical Responsibility towards Ukraine,” lecture in the German Bundestag on June 20, 2017, organized by the parliamentary faction of the German Green Party, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDjHw_uXeKU.

86. Fedyshyn, “The Germans and the Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine,” 322.

87. Communist Takeover and Occupation of Ukraine, 10.

88. Liubov Zhvanko, “Tyf, cholera, ‘ispanka’: zakhody uriadu Skoropads′koho z podolannia epidemiї,” Ukraïna moderna, March 20, 2020, http://uamoderna.com/md/zhvanko-skoropadsky-pandemics; see also L. M. Zhvanko, Sotsial′ni vymiry Ukraïns′koï Derzhavy (kviten′– hruden′ 1918 r.) (Kharkiv: Prapor, 2007).

89. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 83.

90. “Khronika,” Vil′na ukraїns′ka shkola, no. 1 (1918–1919): 52.

91. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 115.

92. Ibid., 83.

93. Ibid., 116.

94. Ibid., 83.

95. Solovey, Golgota Ukraїny, 40.

96. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 84.

97. Ibid., 84–85.

98. Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Vidrodzhennia natsiї, vol. III (Kyїv-Vienna: Vyd. Dzvin, 1920), 244–45.

99. Arthur E. Adams, “The Great Ukrainian Jacquerie,” in The Ukraine, 1917–1921: A Study in Revolution, ed. Taras Hunczak (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1977), 255.

100. 98.John S. Reshetar, Jr., The Ukrainian Revolution, 1917–1920: A Study in Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), 257.

101. 99.Adams, “The Great Ukrainian Jacquerie,” 259.

102. For more on Directory’s negotiations with the representatives of the Entente and a list of demands, see Mazepa, Ukraïna v ohni i buri revoliutsiï, 96–114. Mazepa, an eyewitness of the events, noted that the Ukrainian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference consisted of H. Sydorenko and A. Petrushevych, who arrived in Paris on January 20, 1919. The remaining delegates were stuck in other European countries awaiting visas to France.

103. This cartoon was reprinted in Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 1917–1933 by Peter G. Filene (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 38.

104. “Russia Democratized,” Nation, vol. CIV (March 22, 1917), 327 (editorial); quoted in American Views of Soviet Russia, 1917–1965, ed. Peter G. Filene (Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press, 1968), 2.

105. An Outline of Tentative Recommendations of January 21, 1919, Inquiry Archives, National Archives; quoted in Constantine Warvariv, “America and the Ukrainian National Cause, 1917–1920,” in The Ukraine, 1917–1921: A Study in Revolution, ed. Taras Hunczak (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1977), 371.

106. Inquiry Archives, typewritten document No. 188, National Archives; quoted in Warvariv, “America and the Ukrainian National Cause,” 370–71.

107. For more on the impact of Wilson’s policies on the modern political structuring of Eastern Europe, see Larry Wolff, Woodrow Wilson and the Reimagining of Eastern Europe (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2020).

108. The map of Ukraine was included in Mémoire sur l’indépendance de l’Ukraine présenté à la Conférence de la paix par la délégation de la république ukrainienne, an official publication of the joint government of the Ukrainian National Republic and Western Ukrainian National Republic (after January 22, 1919, western and eastern parts of Ukraine were reunited). The map was reproduced in an article posted by Likbez.org at http://likbez.org.ua/ua/ukrainskaya-respublika-karta-dlya-parizhskoj-mirnoj-konferentsii-1919-g.html.

109. The Liquidation Commission was established by an act of Congress as part of the U.S. War Department for the purpose of disposing surplus war stocks of the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe that were held in French warehouses. Such classes of stock as clothing, food, medical equipment, and transportation seemed suitable for relieving hunger and the urgent needs of the peoples and stabilizing the governments of Eastern Europe.

110. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919: Russia (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1937), 779; quoted in Warvariv, “America and the Ukrainian National Cause,” 373.

111. Ibid., 374.

112. For a digest of General Jadwin’s report, see Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919, 781–83; quoted in Warvariv, “America and the Ukrainian National Cause,” 374–78.

113. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919, 787–88; quoted in ibid., 375–78.

114. Symon Petliura, “Nota do Naivyshchoï Rady Soiuznykh i Spoluchenykh Derzhav u Paryzhi,” in Oleksander Dotsenko, Litopys Ukraïns′koï Revoliutsiï, vol. II, book 5 (L′viv, 1924), 190–91; reprinted in Symon Petliura, 243–44.

115. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919, 783–84; quoted in Warvariv, “America and the Ukrainian National Cause,” 378–79.

116. At the peak of the Russian Civil War (1917–1923), the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, commonly referred to as the Red Army, counted 5.4 million in its ranks, two-thirds of whom fought in the former imperial army during the Great War. See G. F. Krivosheev, Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century (London: Greenhill Books, 1997).

117. John S. Reshetar, Jr., “The Communist Party of the Ukraine and Its Role in the Ukrainian Revolution,” in The Ukraine, 1917–1921: A Study in Revolution, ed. Taras Hunczak (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1977), 180–81.

118. Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, 37.

119. Reshetar, “The Communist Party of the Ukraine,” 181.

120. A. Shlikhter, “Bor′ba za khleb na Ukraine v 1919 godu,” Litopys revoliutsiї, no. 2 (29) (1928): 117, 135, https://chtyvo.org.ua/authors/Litopys_revoliutsii/1928_N2_29/.

121. Panas Fedenko, Ukraïns′kyi hromads′kyi rukh u XX st. (Podebrady, 1934), 115; quoted in Solovey, Golgota Ukraïny, 22.

122. Fedenko, Ukraïns′kyi hromads′kyi rukh, 115; quoted in Solovey, Golgota Ukraïny, 22.

123. The failure of Bolshevik policy and the various uprisings in Ukraine are discussed in Arthur E. Adams, Bolsheviks in the Ukraine: The Second Campaign, 1918–1919 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963).

124. Reshetar, “The Communist Party of the Ukraine,” 181–82.

125. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 117.

126. Ibid., 118.

127. The premiere performance of the requiem took place before the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Council in 1918. In October 1921, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was established. But by the spring of 1922, famine and epidemics became rampant in the country. Stetsenko contracted typhus from one of his parishioners and died at the age of forty. The first complete volume of his sacred works, Kyrylo Stetsenko: Dukhovni tvory, ed. by M. Hobdych, was published in Kyїv in 2013.

128. The Ukrainian National Chorus toured Europe in 1920 and 1921. Their performance of Mykola Leontovych’s composition Shchedryk (Carol of the Bells) gained worldwide popularity after the Ukrainian National Chorus under the direction of composer Koshyts′ sang it in Carnegie Hall, where Peter Wilhousky heard it and published it with the English text. The English text is not a translation of the original Ukrainian. The first recording was made in New York City in October 1922 on the Brunswick label. For more on the history of this Christmas classic, see Lydia Tomkiw, “Toll of the Bells,” Slate, December 19, 2019, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/carol-bells-shchedryk-ukraine-leontovych.html.

129. The Dniprosoiuz cooperative annual trade was estimated at 60 million golden karbovantsi, whereas Ukrainbank’s credit operations amounted to 2.5 billion golden karbovantsi. See Solovey, Golgota Ukraïny, 38. The Dniprosoiuz sponsored Ukrainian National Chorus performances and published music scores and school textbooks.

130. Among the otamans who played significant roles were Hryhoriiv, in Katerynoslav and Aleksandriia; Struk of Chernihiv province; Anhel and Ihnatiiev-Mysera, in Poltava province; Shepel, in Podillia province; Zelenyi, in Kyїv and Poltava provinces; Shuba, in the Lubny district; Kotsur, a village school teacher; Bozhko, in the territory between Bar and Mohyliv-Podil′s′kyi, who proclaimed the restoration of the Zaporozhian Sich; and Nestor Makhno, who was joined in the southeastern steppe by many lesser known men as well as the Bolsheviks. See Adams, Bolsheviks in the Ukraine, 256–57.

131. Adams, Bolsheviks in the Ukraine, 257.

132. Henry Abramson, A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917–1920 (Cambridge: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University, 1999). See also Applebaum, Red Famine, 40–53.

133. “Vid Pravytel′stva Ukraïns′koï Narodnoï Respubliky,” in Dotsenko, Litopys Ukraïns′koï Revoliutsiï, vol. II, book 4 (Kyїv-L′viv, 1923), 343–46; reprinted in Symon Petliura, 240–42.

134. Stephen Kotkin, “The Communist Century,” Wall Street Journal, November 4–5, 2017, C1.

135. The Donets′ River industrial basin in southern Ukraine, north of the Sea of Azov, is the main center of the Donbas. Welsh engineers, among them John James Hughes, constructed a metallurgical plant there in 1870 and a small town for coal mine workers around it. It was the beginning of Iuzivka, named after Hughes (modern day Donets′k). See Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 175.

136. “Draft Theses of the Central Committee RKP(b) Concerning Policy in the Ukraine,” in The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive, ed. Richard Pipes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 76–77.

137. Solovey, Golgota Ukraïny, 41.

138. Pipes, ed., The Unknown Lenin, 76.

139. Vadym Zolotar′ov, “Kerivnyi sklad NKVS URSR pid chas ‘velykoho teroru’ (1936–1938 rr.): sotsial′no-statystychnyi analiz,” Z arkhiviv VUChK-GPU-NKVD-KGB 2, no. 33 (2009): 103–4, http://resource.history.org.ua/publ/gpu_2009_33_2_86.

140. Myroslav Shkandrij, “Breaking Taboos: The Holodomor and the Holocaust in Ukrainian–Jewish Relations,” in Jews and Ukrainians, eds. Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern and Antony Polonsky (Portland: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2014), 263–64.

141. Koliastruk, Intelihentsiia USRR u 1920-ti roky.

142. Klitsakov, Pedahohichni kadry Ukraïny, 37–40.

143. “Ukrainskaia SSR,” in Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, 329; see also Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 86, 160.

144. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 87; see also Klitsakov, Pedahohichni kadry Ukraïny, 46.

145. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 154.

146. Ibid., 155.

147. Ibid., 155–56.

148. For a unique account about this party, see memoirs written by the last survivor of the Borot′bists and GULAG survivor Ivan Maistrenko, Borot′bism: A Chapter in the History of the Ukrainian Revolution, ed. Christopher Ford (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2018).

149. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 12, ark. 27.

150. Klitsakov, Pedahohichni kadry Ukraïny, 48–50, 57–59.

151. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 121–22.

152. American psychologist William Horsley Gantt of Johns Hopkins University, who served as chief of the Medical Division of the American Relief Administration in 1922–1923, worked for five years with Ivan Pavlov (1924–1929). He visited the Soviet Union in the summer of 1933 and in 1935. His personal relations with doctors enabled him to obtain unofficial estimates of the famine losses, which were in contradiction to the official figures given to him in 1933 and 1935 by officials who did not know that he had first-hand information about the real conditions in the Soviet Union. See William Horsley Gantt, “A Medical Review of Soviet Russia: Results of the First Five-Year Plan,” British Medical Journal 2, no. 3939 (July 4, 1936): 19.

153. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 123.

154. Pauly, Breaking the Tongue, 45.

155. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 124.

156. Hannah Arendt, “Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government,” in The Great Lie: Classic and Recent Appraisals of Ideology and Totalitarianism, ed. F. Flagg Taylor IV (Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2011), 130. Originally appeared in Review of Politics 15, no. 3 (1953).

157. Arendt, “Ideology and Terror,” 130.

158. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 125; Pauly, Breaking the Tongue, 45.

159. For a discussion of the Communist onslaught of 1918–1920, see Edward Hallett Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923, 3 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1950–53); see also David Priestland, The Red Flag: A History of Communism (New York: Grove Press, 2009).

160. Kulchytsky, The Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine, 141.

161. Ibid., 154.

162. For an informative study of the continuities between the fiscal practices of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union and how taxation was simultaneously used as a revenue-raising and a state-building tool, see Yanni Kotsonis, States of Obligation: Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early Soviet Republic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016).

163. Stanislav Kul′chyts′kyi, Komunizm v Ukraїni: pershe desiatyrichchia (1919–1928) (Kyїv: Osnovy, 1996).

164. Koliastruk, Intelihentsiia USRR u 1920-ti roky, 223.

165. TsDAVOU, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 287, ark. 17.

166. Holod 1921–1923 rokiv v Ukraїni: Zbirnyk dokumentiv i materialiv, ed. S. V. Kul′chyts′kyi (Kyїv: Naukova dumka, 1993), 5.

167. Francis Conte, Christian Rakovski: A Political Biography (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1989).

168. “Dopovidna zapyska Kh. G. Rakovs′koho V. I. Leninu pro organizatsiiu prodovol′choї roboty ta zbyrannia khliba v Ukraїni, 28 sichnia 1922 r.,” TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 981, ark. 1–9; reprinted in Holod 1921–1923 rokiv v Ukraїni, ed. Kul′chyts´kyi, 75–85.

169. Stanislav Kul′chyts′kyi and Ol′ha Movchan, Nevidomi storinky holodu 1921–1923 rr. v Ukraїni (Kyїv: Instytut istoriї Ukraїny NAN Ukraїny, 1993).

170. The first All-Russian Census of 1897 did not collect data on national self-identification. The information about the nationality was based on the mother tongue claimed by the respondents. Inasmuch as national identification and language do not necessarily correspond, the 1897 census underestimated the number of Ukrainians. Nevertheless, because few non-Ukrainians learned Ukrainian and because language use is an identifiable badge, language could represent a minimal approximation to nationality in the Ukrainian provinces in 1897. The nationality information compiled from the 1897 census is not comparable to those figures obtained from the later Soviet censuses, which contained different questions and took place after territorial changes. Sole knowledge of Ukrainian did not coincide with a high degree of national awareness, ethnic cohesion, political assertiveness, or ability to act collectively on the part of the speaker. See George Liber, Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR, 1923–1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 209–10.

171. God bor′by s golodom 1921–1922: Cherez delegatov VII Vseukrainskogo s′′ezda Sovetov vsem trudiashchimsia. Otchet Tsentral′noi Komissii po bor′be s posledstviiami goloda pri VUTsIKe (Khakrov, 1923), 28–30; reprinted in Holod 1921–1923 rokiv v Ukraїni, 201–3.

172. Hryshko, The Ukrainian holocaust of 1933, 55.

173. Halyna Zhurbeliuk, “Metodyka istoryko-pravovykh doslidzhen′ problem holodu 1921–1923 rr. v Ukraïni: rozvinchannia mifiv,” in Holod v Ukraïni u pershii polovyni XX stolittia: prychyny ta naslidky (1921–1923, 1932–1933, 1946–1947): Materialy Mizhnarodnoï naukovoï konferentsiï, Kyïv, 20–21 lystopada 2013 r., ed. Myroslava Antonovych, Hennadii Boriak, Oleksandr Hladun, and Stanislav Kul′chyts′kyi (Kyïv, 2013), 51–58; see also Stanislav Kul′chyts′kyi, Holodomor 1932–1933 rr. iak henotsyd: trudnoshchi usvidomlennia (Kyïv: Nash chas, 2008), 140–70.

174. Applebaum, Red Famine, 66.

175. Pipes, ed., The Unknown Lenin, 152–53; quoted in Applebaum, Red Famine, 67.

176. Koliastruk, Intelihentsiia USRR u 1920-ti roky, 207.

177. TsDAVOU, f. 331, op. 1, spr. 7, ark. 10.

178. Derzhavnyi arkhiv Kharkivs′koї oblasti (DAKhO), f. R-203, op. 1, spr. 981, ark. 10–11; quoted in Koliastruk, Intelihentsiia USRR u 1920-ti roky, 207.

179. Instytut rukopysiv Natsional′noї biblioteky Ukraїny im. V. I. Vernads′koho (IR NBUV), f. XXIII, spr. 48, ark. 24–24zv.

180. Quoted in V. Topolianskii, Vozhdi v zakone: Ocherki fiziologii vlasti (Moscow: Izd-vo “Prava cheloveka,” 1996), 25.

181. TsDAVOU, f. 166, op. 2, spr. 1746, ark. 43; reprinted in Holod 1921–1923 rokiv v Ukraїni, 19.

182. The photograph was featured in Ivan Herasymovych, Holod na Ukraïni (Berlin: Ukraïns′ke slovo, 1922), 143. It was one of the seventeen photographs mailed by the Ukrainian Red Cross in an official envelop date-stamped as arriving in Geneva on May 5, 1922. According to Roman Serbyn, it is now housed among the documents of the “Union international de secours aux enfants” in the Canton Archives of Geneva, Switzerland. The image was also used in a poster and on a postcard to raise relief funds by the Conference universelle juive de secours (Jewish World Relief Conference) in 1921–1922. The author is indebted to Lana Babij for providing detailed documentation about this photograph. The image can be located in the Holodomor Photo Directory, sponsored by the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta.

183. Bil′shovyk (Kyїv), February 11, 1923; TsDAVOU, f. 1, op. 2, spr. 1583, ark. 1; spr. 888, ark. 125.

184. Holod 1921–1923 rokiv v Ukraїni, 19.

185. “Z dopovidi holovy Tsentral′noї Komisiї dopomohy holoduiuchym H. I. Petrovs′koho na VII Vseukraїns′komu z’їzdi Rad pro stanovyshche dytiachoho naselennia, 10–14 hrudnia 1922,” TsDAVOU, f. 1, op. 2, spr. 487, ark. 217–18; reprinted in Holod 1921–1923 rokiv v Ukraїni, 186–87.

186. Holod 1921–1923 rokiv v Ukraїni, 13.

187. “Iz zvitu Tsentral′noї Komisiї po borot′bi z naslidkamy holodu pry VUTsVK pro evakuatsiiu ditei z Polovzhia v Ukraїnu, 1923,” God bor′by s golodom 1921–1922, 31; reprinted in Holod 1921–1923 rokiv v Ukraїni, 200.

188. Pitirim A. Sorokin, Man and Society in Calamity: The Effects of War, Revolution, Famine, Pestilence upon Human Mind, Behavior, Social Organization and Cultural Life (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1942), 81.

189. “Iz chernetky dopovidi likaria L. Aikhenval′da ‘Do kazuїstyky liudozherstva’ Odes′kii huberns′kii komisiї po borot′bi z naslidkamy holodu, 1923,” Derzhavnyi arkhiv Odes′koї oblasti (DAOO), f. R-702, op. 1, spr. 102a, ark. 28–69; reprinted in Holod 1921–1923 rokiv v Ukraїni, 204–16.

190. Vasyl′ Marochko, among other Ukrainian historians, considers this famine as the first Soviet holodomor because Lenin’s policy of “War Communism” had at its core a deliberate attempt to use food as a weapon to create conditions of life that caused mass deaths from forced starvation inflicted on grain growers in Ukraine. See his article “Lenins′kyi liudomor 1921–1923 rr.: ‘bratnii’ rozpodil smerti,” Slovo Prosvity, April 19–25, 2018, 3.

191. Kołakowski, “The Marxist Roots of Stalinism,” 174.