NATIONALISM IN SOVIET UKRAINE(Classified) AUGUST 1975

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86T00608R000600170006-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 17
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 25, 1999
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: August 1, 1975
• Content Type: REPORT

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Nationalism in Soviet Ukraine
25X1A9a
August 1975
The Soviet Union is a multi-national state in an age of
nationalism. Of the three great European land empires of the
nineteenth century -the Austrian, Turkish, and Russian -- only
the Russian is still intact. Although the vital signs of the
soviet empire remain strong, many of its national minorities
-- which number over 100, and make up almost half of the Soviet
population -- continue to resist the "melting pot" process,
and some of them are becoming more rather than less assertive.
Accordingly, the nationalities problem is one of the most per-
sistent and vexing do~aestic problems cu;.ironting Soviet author-
ities today. This paper, a distillation of a research study,
"Nationalism i7 Soviet Ukraine," examines nationalist tendencies
among the largest and most influential Soviet national minority.
It estimates the extent to which centrifugal and destabilizing
forces are at work in the Ukraine, and evaluates Moscow's
efforts to contain them.
Forces of Integration and Forces of Se aration
Many factors contribute to the vitality of Ukrainian
SUBJECT TO GENERAL DECLASSIFICATIVN
SCHEDULE OF E. 0. 11E~52, AiJ'IntNATICALL'Y
DECLASSIFIED IN AUGUST 1981
PR 75-111M
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national feeling and tend to stiffen Ukrainian resistance to
Russification:
-- They have a rich cultural k~eritage and retain
a degree of pride that they are more "European"
than the Russians.
-- They occupy an area of great economic significance,
which serves both as a granary and as a major
mineral producer of the Soviet Union.
-- The sheer weight of their numbers (Ukrainians make up
17 percent of the Soviet population) adds to their
strength.
Yet, these centrifugal tendencies may be diluted by other forces:
-- Ethnically and linguistically the Ukrainians have
considerable affinity to the Russians, who are also
members of the East Slav fa;nily.
-- The eastern part of the Ukraine --- which contains
most of the republic's popula~,tion, resources, and
industry -- has belonged to the Russian or Soviet
empire during most of the modern period. East
Ukrainians are close to the Russians in c;~ltural
and religious background.
-- Soviet authorities tend to accept Ukrainians,
fellow Slavs, on an almost equal footing with
Russians in elite recruitment.
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-- Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, both of whom rose
through the Ukrainian Communist Party, the
Ukrainian Party has enjoyed a privileged position.
'Phe Ukrainians are more completely integrated into the Soviet
system than most other Soviet national minorities, and the system
has been relatively good to them. Their similarity to the
Russians may give central c,uthorities some grounds for hope that
assimilation may ultimately solve the Ukrainian problem.
Russification in the Ukraine
A survey of linguistic and demographic trends suggests
that time may indeed be on the side of the forces of assimilation
in East Ukraine. The process is slow, but the Russian element in
*.he cities of East ;Jkraine is growing, through assimilation of
Ukrainians and migration of Russians. T~inguist is Russification
there is proceeding steadily. In the urban areas of East Ukraine
today the number of ethnic Russians and linguistically Russifie6
Ukrainians (those who claim Russian as their native tongue)
roughly equals the number of unassimilated Ukrainians.
In West Ukraine the statistics tell a somewhat different
story. West Ukraine has morE than held its own against Russian
encroachments. This fact points to an important dimension of
the Ukrainian problem. While East Ukraine shares much of its
long history with Russia, the Soviet annexation of West Ukraine,
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occurring only during World War II, introduced into the Soviet
system an alien and generally hostile population which can be
Russified, if at ali, only through a massive and prolonged
effort.
While assimilation is gradually taking place in Cast
Ukraine, this does nit preclude the possibility that Ukrainian
opposition to Russian rule may be increasing, partly because
of the West Ukrainian infection. The two tendencies would not
necessarily be incompatible. Tl~e very forces of urbanization,
social mobilization, and mass education, which work to efface
national differences in the long run, may simultaneously
heighten consciousness of those differences in the short run.
The typical Ukrainian dissident is an urban intellectual of
peasant stock, the person most aware both of the Ukrainian
identity and of the forces working to weaken this identit~;+,
The protests of Ukrainian nationalists in the cities are ~.ri
part provoked by the very success of Russification, by t1!e~
gradual assimilation of Ukrainians, the demeaning of the
indigenous culture, and the competition for jobs between.
Russians and Ukrainians.
Nationalist Dissent in the Ukraine
Nationalism in the Ukraine does appear to be growing, or
at least becoming more vocal. During the last several decades
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Ukrainian dissent has undergone aii evolution -- from the armed,
anti-Soviet resistance of World War II, to the formation of
conspit~atorial groups in the 1950s, to the flourishing of open
protest in the 1960s. The period of the late 1960s witnessed
the emergence of a new type of dissent, avowedly Marxist in
orientation, which appealed to new Soviet elites for whom
traditional Ukrainian nationalism seemed outdated. Dissidents
since then have been less organized and more fragmented, less
clandestine and more overt, less single-minded in their guest
for national sovereignty and more variegated, less militant
but perhaps more geographica~.ly widespread. Overt dissent
probably reached its peak between 1966 and 1970, in the wake
of the invasion of Czechoslovakia and. during the period when
Petr Shelest, then First Secretary of the Ukrainian Party, was
permitting dissident writers a measure of latitude. Since
Shelest's removal in 1972, his successor's campaign for ideological
conformity has put the dissidents on the defensive, but they have
not been completely silenced and the reintroduction of more
dracanian measures may have radicalized them.
A geographical and sociological breakdown of dissidents
rEVeals that dissent is not completely confine