What does the future hold for the people of the Ukraine? As is evident with events in Lithuania, the process of change and of national self-assertion will, indeed, be difficult.
The Ukraine, a republic of 52 million people, was subjected to a variety of historical experiences that nearly tore it apart. Except for a brief period of self-rule from 1917 to 1921 (and on limited territory at that), the Ukraine has been under a foreign rule for the last 250 years. The western portion of the Ukraine was rules first by the Poles and, after the first partition of Poland in 1772, by the Austrians. The Ukraine was gradually annexed by Russia which, with its autocratic system, converted an autonomous Ukrainian state into a number of imperial provinces. As a centralist state, the Russian Empire sought to introduce uniformity at the expense of national cultures and languages. The policy of Russification introduced by Peter I remains a landmark of Moscow's approach to the numerous minorities who found themselves within the empire. The Ukrainians were among the victims of this policy.
The Polish and, subsequently, Austrian rule were more benign. Particularly since the middle of the nineteenth century, the Galician Ukrainians were able to develop institutions that provided an organizational framework for their cultural, economic, and, ultimately, political activity. It was essentially within the pluralist system of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that the Western Ukrainians developed a sense of national consciousness and political assertiveness. Hence, the Ukrainians entered the twentieth century divided not only by the borders of the Russian and the Austro-Hungarian empires but, even more importantly, by their knowledge, understanding, and attitude toward their past and, to some extent, their national identity. The Russian Empire, which prohibited even the use of the Ukrainian language and crushed every appearance of Ukrainian political aspiration, largely reduced the Ukrainian population to the status of an ethnic minority.
The events of World War I and its aftermath provided an opportunity for the Ukrainians to express their political aspirations. This they did, establishing Ukrainian governments both on the East and West Ukrainian territories, which on January 22, 1919, were united into one Sovereign Ukrainian Republic. Obviously, the sense of common culture and common historical heritage was stronger than the artificial borders created by the two empires.
When the Bolsheviks conquered the territory and incorporated it into the Soviet Union the Ukraine was already an identifiable entity. After a short period of national revival in the 1920s, the Ukraine was subjected by Stalin to horrendous repression and genocidal famine in 1932-33; as a result, some 10 million people perished. Now even the Soviet authorities admit that a famine of such unheard-of proportions actually did occur.
World War II brought the people of the Ukraine suffering and devastation of epic proportions. As a result, the country lost some 14.5 million people, 7.5 million of whom were killed. (The others never returned.) After these losses, enough to break the spirit of most nations, the Soviet government under Stalin's successors unleashed an all-out effort against the national cultures, ostensibly trying to achieve intranationalism.
Off to a slow
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