Ukraine: A Brief Historical Survey
By J. Rick Pinczuk
Situated on the northern shore of the Black Sea, Ukraine is one of the largest and most populous countries in Europe. With an area larger than France, it has a population of about 50 million.
In 1918, the Ukrainian National Republic was formed in Kyiv. However, by 1920, Bolshevik troops overran a large part of Ukraine, created a communist state and incorporated it into the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the western Ukrainian regions fell under Polish, Czech and Romanian control.
Covering less than 3 percent of the USSR's vast landmass, Ukraine's rich black soil produced more than one-third of the Soviet Union's food requirements; its mines yielded 50 percent of its iron ore and 25 percent of its coal; its factories produced a fifth of the USSR's industrial output.
But Stalin also launched a vicious attack on Ukrainian culture by exterminating a large part of the intelligentsia, and most horrific, unleashed a man-made famine in 1932-33 through the forced collectivization of Ukraine's farming resources, which led to the starvation of over 6 million Ukrainians.
After World War II, as a result of Soviet expansion, most Ukrainians were united within the borders of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Although it possessed some artificial features of statehood, such as, a seat at the United Nations, the Ukrainian republic was actually little more than an administrative unit of the USSR.
Throughout the Cold War period, Ukrainians who had fled communism to find refuge in the Free World, kept their hopes for independence of their homeland alive even though communist leaders in Russia used many forms of persecution to keep those noble hopes from being realized.
Often, when they publicized their nation's quest for freedom, the Western media and many influential political leaders largely dismissed them as hopeless "reactionaries", out of touch with contemporary "political realities".
Meanwhile, large numbers of Russians were encouraged by Moscow to move into the industrial regions of Ukraine where they soon constituted a sizeable minority of some 11 million residents. In the '60s and '70s these policies of Russification gave rise to a courageous, but harshly repressed, Ukrainian dissident movement.
Ironically, increasing numbers of Ukrainian communists became frustrated with Soviet centralized political and economic policies since it became obvious that Ukraine's agricultural and industrial resources were grossly exploited by the imperial centre in Moscow.
Gorbachev's glasnost encouraged this simmering dissatisfaction with the Soviet system to become more outspoken. The crucial turning point occurred after the tragic Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion in 1986.
After the failed August coup, the Ukrainian parliament proclaimed independence on August 24, 1991. In a nation-wide referendum held on December 1, 1991, over 90 percent of the voters indicated their support for that historic decision.
Encouraged by these results, a few days later Ukraine's newly elected president, Leonid Kravchuk, met with Boris Yeltsin of Russia and Shushkevich of Belarus to dissolve the USSR.
During the past ten years Ukraine has experienced many traumatic growing pains as a new democracy.
Leonid Kuchma, recently re-elected to another term of office, has the ominous task to find new ideas and implement western-style economic policies that will lead Ukraine out of the dark ages of communism and into a brighter future in the third millennium.
Ukraine's people
Almost 75 percent of Ukraine's population are ethnic Ukrainians, 21 percent are Russians, while smaller minorities include Poles, Hungarians, Tatars, Jews, Greeks and Romanians.
During the years of communist rule in the Soviet Union, Moscow launched an intensive campaign to "Russify" all of its non-Russian citizens by imposing the Russian language and culture upon them. In Ukraine, as in all other non-Russian republics, this was achieved by requiring the state controlled mass media, schools, colleges, universities and all government offices to communicate only in the "official" Russian language.
Even though the Ukrainian language, under communism, was sometimes forbidden by law to be spoken in public places in Ukraine, it has survived that outrageous humiliation and has been rightfully reinstated today as the official language of all Ukraine.
At present, the Ukrainian people are experiencing profound socio-economic upheavals, political instability, linguistic and cultural conflict and growing religious unrest. With God's help, however, Ukrainians can set their house in order, and with their abundant human and natural resources, finally claim their rightful place in the family of freedom-loving nations.
Religion
A little over 1,000 years ago Prince Volodymyr the Great officially introduced Byzantine Christianity to his Ukrainian State known then as Kyivan Rus'. Since that time, Christianity has increasingly permeated all forms of Ukrainian political, religious, cultural and social life.
Officially, about 53 percent of Ukrainians claim to be Orthodox while 20 percent adhere to the Greek Catholic Church which is active primarily in Western Ukraine. Although Bible-believing Christians have existed for centuries in Ukraine, it is generally held that they include about 1 million evangelical believers of different backgrounds.
Under atheistic communism Christians in Ukraine often suffered intense persecution for their faith. Church buildings were destroyed, used as warehouses or turned into museums. Evangelism was forbidden, as was the religious instruction of minors. Adult believers were publicly harassed or denied promotions at work while many church leaders were given long prison terms, psychologically tortured or even killed.
With the demise of communism and the loosening of former restrictions against religious worship Christianity is again flourishing throughout Ukraine.
Religious beliefs once practiced in secret can now be proclaimed openly in public, educational, medical and even some military institutions. Worship services are often held in football stadiums, clubs, and theatres and even on public streets as more and more Ukrainians express their long-repressed desire to learn about God.
J. Rick Pinczuk is a missionary to Ukraine and the minister of the Shevchecnko Church of Christ in Kyiv. For more information about his ministry, visit his website at www.thesem.com.
