Lenin's attempts to assuage Ukrainian nationalism through a measure of
cultural autonomy were abandoned by Stalin, who also imposed
agricultural collectivization on Ukraine and requisitioned all grain
for export. Millions of Ukrainians died in the resulting famine. Mykola
Skrypnyk and other Ukrainian Communist leaders who opposed Stalinist
measures were purged and executed. During World War II, many Ukrainians
at first welcomed the Germans as liberators and collaborated with them
against the USSR. However, the Nazis' scorn for all Slavs and their
harsh occupation (1941–44) of Ukraine turned many Ukrainians into
anti-German guerrilla fighters.
The republic suffered severe wartime devastation, esp. as a
battleground both in 1941–42 (the German advance) and 1943–44 (the
Russian advance). Most of Ukraine's 1.5 million Jews were killed by the
Nazis during the war; many were shot outright in 1941, at such sites as
Babi Yar. Several major territorial changes occurred in Ukraine during
this period. South Bessarabia, recovered from Romania in 1940, was
incorporated into Ukraine, while the former Moldavian ASSR was detached
from the republic and merged with central Bessarabia as the Moldavian
SSR. The northern parts of Bukovina and Bessarabia were added to
Ukraine, as was E Galicia, including Lviv, formally ceded by Poland in
1945. Transcarpathian Region, which had been part of Czechoslovakia
since 1919, was also ceded in 1945, thus completing the process by
which all Ukrainian lands were united into a single republic. Crimea
was annexed to Ukraine in 1954. Although Russification intensified in
Ukraine (as in other Soviet republics) after World War II, Ukrainian
nationalism remained strong.
During the 1960s, Ukrainians emerged as tacit junior partners of the
Russians in governing the Soviet Union. Leonid Brezhnev was born in
Ukraine and held important party posts there before being called to
Moscow. Former Soviet ruler Nikita Khrushchev, although a Russian by
birth, served as first secretary of the Ukrainian Communist party
during the 1930s and carried out the Stalinist purges in Ukraine. In
1986 one of the reactors of the Chernobyl nuclear power station
exploded, contaminating a wide area of Ukraine.
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