Revolutionary Organization

Russia, on the other hand, had many resources to pour into intelligence gathering and suppression of resistance. Around 1900, Ukraine had only a vestigial resistance network. Coordination of concerned Ukrainians was especially difficult, since 80% of Ukrainians lived in the countryside.

Marxist theory was circulating like wildfire in the Russia and Ukraine of the 1900s. Marx’s idea was that if the conditions for the workers became bad enough, they would inevitably rise in coordinated revolt, and replace their oppressors with more acceptable leadership. In Ukraine, it seemed that communism was a magic key to opening the door of independence—all of Marx’s factors for inevitable revolution were in place: An oppressed proletariat, an oppressive foreign bourgeoisie, and revolutionary cells in place.