Continuation: beginning of the article Colonial backbones of Russia: Ukraine (beginning).
Revolutionary leapfrog
After the February Revolution of 1917, in all the provinces of the Russian Empire, swallowing the air of unlimited freedom (from which many were dizzy), they began to talk and argue about self-determination….
All bodies of the tsarist power in Ukraine were liquidated. The newly elected Central Rada of Ukraine was approved as the supreme authority. At the very first meeting, after a short dispute, it was decided (by a majority vote) to form a national-territorial autonomy of Ukraine within Russia.
The Provisional Government agreed to transfer to the Central Rada only five provinces - Kiev, Volyn, Podolsk, Poltava and part of Chernigov. Everything would have ended there, but here the October Revolution of the Bolshevik Party intervened. In the South of Russia, the Bolsheviks then had practically no weight and their coup was received with hostility.
Petliurites 1918.
It should be especially noted that Donbass flatly refused to obey Kiev and declared that it belonged to Russia and was subordinate to Petrograd. Against the background of all these events, the Donetsk Republic (DKR) was formed.
Promotional video:
In December 1917, the Ukrainian Bolsheviks rejected by the Rada, who found support in the industrial Donbass, proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian SSR in Kharkov. This is how dual power arose. It did not last long - the Bolshevik troops, by January 1918, reached Kiev, where the revolutionary government (Sovnarkom) moved. But even they did not stay there for a long time - according to the Brest-Litovsk Peace, Ukraine was transferred to the jurisdiction of Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Ukrainian political constructor.
All against all
In early March 1918, the Germans, having received permission from the Central Rada (which considered the Donbass their region), entered the territory of the DKR. They were opposed by mobilized detachments of workers and soldiers. They were not enough to stop the Germans, but they were able to slow down the enemy advance. On April 7, 1918, Austro-German troops occupied Kharkov, and the DKR government moved to Lugansk. When the Germans entered Lugansk on April 28, the leadership of the republic was forced to retreat beyond the Don to Tsaritsyn.
After the revolution in Germany, in the fall of 1918, the Bolsheviks resumed their offensive in the eastern regions of Ukraine. And in November of the same year, the Ukrainian Revolutionary Military Council was approved under the leadership of I. Stalin, which stated:
In Ukraine, everyone fought against everyone: Makhno against Denikin, the latter against the Reds and everyone against Petliura, and the Poles, and besides, the general bandit freemen … complete chaos.
Still from the film * Nine Lives of Nestor Makhno *.
Since 1920, the new Ukrainian (Soviet) "hetmans", against the backdrop of this chaos, have deployed large-scale pressure on the central Soviet government in order to tear off "sweeter pieces" from Russian territories. They tried to claim everything they could reach - it can be said without exaggeration that NOT ONE Soviet REPUBLIC HAS BEEN SUCH AGGRESSIVE!
Already then (!) The artificial Ukrainization of the population began, to which (to the great surprise of the "new lords") the local population had an extremely negative attitude. Many simply did not want to recognize themselves as Ukrainians! An attempt to teach in Ukrainian at schools also failed: the peasants stopped sending their children there, and there were not enough teachers with knowledge of Ukrainian (!). The same happened with the translation of office work into Ukrainian.
The revolutionary painted Ukrainians got everyone so bad that some parts of the Russian provinces were handed over to them, and later the territories in the south-west reconquered by the USSR …
So this artificial state was filled with territories.
Thus: Ukraine is an artificially created state, half consisting of pieces of the territories of other countries that have never had any direct relation to the (borderline / Ukrainian) Cossacks.
Now the Soviet government was faced with the task of developing industrial production (at the expense of Russian regions) in this traditionally agrarian territory … read about what the Soviet government gave Ukraine (except for statehood and foreign territories) in the next part.