TOPIC 7
WORLD WAR II

Soviet Policy in Western Ukraine

The Second World War started on 1 September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Before this on 23 August Stalin and Hitler concluded the so-called Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. It contained a secret protocol in which the dictators agreed to divide Eastern Europe into spheres of influence and occupation. According to this arrangement, Stalin was supposed to gain Finland, the three Baltic republics, Western Belarus, Western Ukraine, and Bessarabia. On 17 September, when the Polish army was almost defeated, the Soviet troops invaded Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. This invasion was part of a secret Nazi-Soviet plan on the division of Poland. On 22 September a combined Soviet-German military parade in Brest marked the end of Poland. Thus, the Second World War was started by Hitler and Stalin. The Soviet Union was Nazi Germany’s ally and helped the Third Reich with important strategic materials (coal, oil, ore, etc) until June 22, 1941.

Western Ukraine was attached to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Soviet policy in Western Ukraine was contradictory. Some measures of the Soviet government were welcomed by West Ukrainians. The lands of the Polish landlords were expropriated and distributed among the peasants. All spheres of life were Ukrainized (educational system, state bureaucracy, judicial system, etc). Jan Casimir Lviv University, a bastion of Polish culture for centuries, was renamed after Ivan Franko and adopted Ukrainian as the language of instruction. Poles were replaced by Ukrainians in the administrative apparatus. The health care system was improved radically in cities and villages. Enterprises were nationalized. Unemployment disappeared. On the other hand, many measures were unwelcome. All political parties, independent newspapers, and cultural organizations including Prosvita were closed since the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state tried to place all ideological spheres under strict party control. Many nationally-minded intellectuals were repressed. The Greek Catholic Church, a hallmark of West Ukrainian uniqueness, was persecuted. Collectivization campaign started in the village. Hundreds of thousands of Poles and Ukrainians were deported to the cold regions of the USSR.¹

German invasion of Soviet Ukraine

On 22 June 1941 Germany attacked the USSR. The attack was a complete surprise for Stalin. He could not believe that Hitler would attack him leaving the unconquered Great Britain behind.² Though the Red Army was very huge (it had more planes and tanks than Germany, Japan, Italy, Romania, and Finland taken together), it lacked competent leaders after mass repressions (44,000 officers were repressed). After the repressions only 7 percent of the Red Army’s commanders had higher education. The fear of repressions killed initiative in many Soviet commanders who decided now to wait for instructions at the time when the situation demanded a quick reaction. Practically all Soviet defensive fortifications were destroyed since it was believed that the mighty Red Army would wage war in enemy territory.

Despite its smaller size the German army was much better organized and had a two-year military experience. The factor of a surprise attack also played a major role in Germany’s initial success. As a result, a considerable part of the Red Army was destroyed during the first few days. For example, about 800 Soviet planes were destroyed during the first day of the war on aerodromes.

Ukraine was invaded by a group of armies called the “South” (which included, besides German armies, the armies of their Romanian, Italian, Slovakian and Hungarian satellites) under the command of field-marshal von Rundstedt. The fighting in Ukraine was heavy. The defense of Odessa lasted for 73 days. More than two months lasted the defense of Kyiv. Stalin gave an order to hold Kyiv “at any price.” The Soviet troops under the command of General M. Kyrponos were forbidden to retreat. That was a serious tactical mistake. In September the Germans managed to encircle that large army, kill 616,304 and take 665,000 prisoners. Hitler triumphantly called the Kyiv operation “the largest battle in world history.” The Kyiv catastrophe opened the way to Kharkiv, Donbass, and Crimea for the Germans. In October almost all of Ukraine was under German occupation.

Using the advantages of the highly centralized totalitarian system, the Communists managed to organize evacuation of important industries with their workers to the eastern parts of the USSR. Millions of Ukrainian workers, scientists and engineers worked at the evacuated factories, plants and research institutes day and night. They made significant contribution to the victory over fascism.

Stalin ordered to apply a scorched-earth strategy (тактика спаленої землі), according to which everything that could not be evacuated was to be destroyed. Factories, plants, railway stations and bridges were blown up, crops were burnt. Important public buildings in cities were mined and later blown up, killing some Germans. Kyiv lost many of its finest architectural masterpieces as a result of such actions. Paradoxically, the Germans saved dozens of historical buildings in the city when they cleared them of mines for safety reasons.

The scorch-earth strategy also touched numerous convicts, many of whom got to prisons for political reasons (the so-called enemies of the people). Thousands of convicts were brutally killed in prisons as the Communists did not want them to be “liberated” by the Germans.

The attitude of Ukraine’s civilian population to Germans was not hostile at first. In Western Ukraine, where Soviet rule was especially unpopular, Germans were often welcomed as liberators. It is partly explained by the fact that the German nation (Austrians in fact are Germans) ruled Western Ukraine from the end of the 18^th century till 1918. (Hitler himself was born and raised in Austria). Ukrainians enjoyed wide political rights in the Austrian empire. In Eastern Ukraine the general reaction to the Germans was more cautious, but many people believed that German rule would be better than Soviet one. Many East Ukrainians had positive recollections of Germans who had established order and brought the Skoropadsky regime to power in 1918. Some peasants believed that Germans would abolish collective farms and met them with bread and salt. Most of East Ukrainians, however, remained neutral and adopted a wait-and-see-attitude.

The unpopularity of Soviet regime in Ukraine was reflected in the fact that Soviet authorities had problems with mobilization in the republic. For example, only one-third of the draftees came to the enlistment offices in Kharkiv and one-fifth in Voroshylovgrad (Luhansk).

In the first six months of the war, millions of Red Army men had surrendered, many willingly, to the Germans.³ They did not have much desire to fight for Stalin and hoped to survive in captivity till the end of the war. They did not expect that Nazi treatment of Soviet prisoners of war would be inhuman. Nazi authorities kept the prisoners in open-air camps encircled by barbed wire where they died of climatic conditions, disease, and hunger. Often they simply executed their captives. Consequently, by the end of the war, of the 5.8 million Soviet prisoners who had fallen into German hands, about 3.3 million had perished. About 1.3 million of them died in Ukraine. Another explanation to the horrible fate of Soviet military prisoners was Hitler’s unwillingness to feed such a large number of people. He was furious when he learned that Stalin had not asked the International Red Cross to help Soviet prisoners with food and medicine. Such treatment of prisoners was not only inhuman, but also stupid. It gave Soviet soldiers, many of whom had little or no enthusiasm for Stalinism, a good incentive to fight harder. As they understood that it was almost impossible to survive in German captivity, their resistance strengthened and German casualties rose.

To stiffen resistance of Soviet soldiers Stalin organized special units which were located behind the fighting troops and killed them if they retreated. Thus, it became more dangerous to retreat than to attack.

On Stalin’s orders Soviet prisoners were called traitors and their families often could not receive food cards.⁴