Holodomor - Ukrainians Between Two World Wars

The First World War put an end to three mighty empires: the Ottoman Empire, Russia and the

Austro-Hungarian Empire. Ukrainian people had spent the previous centuries as subjects of

the latter two. Just like many other nations subjugated by these empires, they hoped that

this period of great dislocation might give them a chance of self-rule. Unfortunately, the new

Russian Empire, also known as the Soviet Union, had other things planned for Ukraine, including

the horrific Holodomor, a genocidal famine caused by Stalin’s policies that killed millions of

Ukrainians in the 1930s. Welcome to our latest video on the history of Ukraine. In our last

video, we discussed how the Ukrainian language and culture survived the Russification attempts of the

Tsarist Regime. In this video, we will explore the Ukrainian attempts at independence following

the end of World War 1, the Soviet takeover of Ukraine, and the cataclysmic Holodomor.

UKRAINE DURING WW1. INDEPENDENCE ATTEMPTS In February 1917, the October Revolution swept the

3-century-old Romanov dynasty from power and put an end to monarchy in Russia. The wind of change

and the atmosphere of liberty was blowing in Ukraine as well. For centuries, the Russian empire

had rejected seeing Ukrainians as a separate identity, banned the use of the Ukrainian language

and suppressed Ukrainian national self-expression. However, following the collapse of the Romanovs,

there was hope among the intelligentsia of the Russian Empire’s many minority peoples that

the revolution would allow them to reclaim some form of cultural and political autonomy. Thus,

in March of 1917, Ukrainian political parties, clergy, businessmen, military servants, workers,

and intelligentsia came together to create the Central Rada, a provisional Ukrainian government

centred in Kyiv. Mykhailo Hrushevsky, a Ukrainian historian and a socialist politician, was elected

the chairman of this new Ukrainian body politic. The Central Rada gradually expanded its base by

involving more groups, and by April, they started adopting laws. Simultaneously, soldiers of

different peoples populating the Russian Empire started calling for their own units. Ukrainian

soldiers were not an exception, advocating for the use of the Ukrainian language and the adoption of

the military insignia of the Cossack era. The plans of the Central Rada to redistribute land

in Ukraine appealed to soldiers. Still, they had a formidable competitor in that respect,

the Bolsheviks, who were quite popular among the soldiers at the time due to their calls to

end the still-ongoing First World War immediately. With the geopolitical situation in the collapsing

Russian Empire incredibly precarious, the Central Rada chose a careful way of proceeding with their

demands of self-rule for Ukraine. In June 1917, they declared their First Universal,

where the Central Rada proclaimed that “from now on we alone will create our life.” They added

that Ukraine was not separating from Russia, but nevertheless, they were going to govern

themselves from then on. This proclamation caused concern in the Russian provisional government,

but at the time, it was dealing with significant political turmoil inside the country and defeats

on the eastern front. Hence, they were not in a position to alienate the Ukrainians, and

they struck a compromise with the Central Rada. Per this compromise, the provisional government

of Russia recognized the Central Rada and other Ukrainian governing bodies and agreed to the

creation of all Ukrainian units within the Russian army. In contrast, the Ukrainian authorities

agreed not to proceed with autonomy without the agreement of the provisional government. It seemed