Steven L. Guthier Ukrainian Cities during the Revolution and the Interwar Era

Cities have played a pivotal, though not always propitious, role in the modern history of the Ukrainian nation. The urbanization process before the revolution failed to attract a substantial number of Ukrainians to the cities.

This essay examines the impact of the cities on Ukrainian nationalism during the revolutionary and interwar eras. Part one discusses the weakness of the Ukrainian nationality in the cities as a contributory factor in the defeat of the Ukrainian Revolution. Part two considers the extent to which Ukrainians improved their representation in the urban population during the first two decades of Soviet rule. It also analyses the problem of assimilation as an aspect of the urbanization process in Ukraine.

The Cities in the Ukrainian Revolution

The pre-revolutionary cities in Ukraine were islands of alien language and culture in a Ukrainian peasant sea. At the turn of the century urbanization had as yet made little impact on the demographic structure of Ukraine. According to the imperial Russian census of 1897, 13 per cent of the region’s population lived in official towns or goroda∖ a bare 7 per cent lived in cities with 50,000 or more inhabitants.¹ Not only was the level of urbanization low, but Ukrainians were also the least urbanized national group within their ethnic territory.

TABLE 1. DISTRIBUTION OF UKRAINIANS BY TOWN SIZE IN 1897

source: Pervaia Vseobshchaia perepis naseleniia Rossiiskoi imperii 1897 goda. (St. Petersburg, 1897-1905).

These tables show that Ukrainians were considerably underrepresented in those towns that were large enough to have an impact on the upcoming revolutionary struggles in Ukraine. Poltava, a town of very localized social and economic influence, was the only city with over 50,000 inhabitants and the only provincial capital in which Ukrainians constituted a majority.

In the two decades before the revolution, the pace of urbanization accelerated in Ukraine. On the eve of the First World War, there were

TABLE 2. POPULATION OF MAJOR CITIES BY NATIVE LANGUAGE, 1897

source: Pervaia Vseobshchaia perepis naseleniia Rossiiskoi imperii 1897 goda.

^a Katerynoslav in 1897. ^b Ielysavethrad in 1897.

twenty-two cities of over 50,000 in population with a total of three million residents.² The population of Kiev grew two and one-half times in this period; by 1913 it had 600,000 inhabitants and was rivalling Odessa as Ukraine’s largest city. Regionally, the factory towns of the Donets basin and Dnieper industrial districts exhibited extraordinary growth. Between 1897 and 1914 the cities of Katerynoslav (Dnipropetrovske), Luhanske (Voroshylovhrad), Iuzivka (Donetske), Oleksandrivske (Zaporizhzhia) and Kamianske (Dniprodzerzhynske) all at least doubled their populations.

The acceleration of urban growth before the revolution was not paralleled by any significant improvement in the position of the Ukrainian nationality in the cities. This circumstance reflected, on the one hand, the relatively weak flow of migrants from the Ukrainian countryside to the cities, and on the other hand, the inroads of Russification among the Ukrainian urban minority. In the last decades of the Russian empire, rural overpopulation forced hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians out of their native villages. Most of them, however, sought to improve their lot as agricultural colonists in the Kuban and Siberia. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians were peasant farmers, strongly attached to the land and lacking in skills that were readily transferable to urban trades. Migration to the cities meant accepting the most menial jobs. Moreover, the town was perceived as a foreign and intimidating environment. A participant in the Ukrainian Revolution characterized the villagers’ attitude toward the pre-revolutionary city as follows:

The city rules the village and the city is “alien.” The city draws to itself all the wealth and gives the village almost nothing in return. The city extracts taxes which never return to the village in Ukraine. In the city one must pay bribes to be freed from scorn and red tape....

In Ukraine the social gulf separating town and country was significantly widened by ethnic cleavages. This circumstance, combined with the Ukrainian peasants’ attachment to farming, restricted rural migration to the cities.

Those Ukrainians who found themselves in the cities were subjected to powerful assimilatory pressures. Until 1905 Ukrainian language publications were banned in the Russian empire. The removal of this ban stimulated a flurry of Ukrainian-Ianguage publishing activity, and in 1906 almost every town had its own Ukrainian newspaper. By 1908, however, official harassment and financial failures had reduced the field of the Ukrainian popular press to one daily, Rada in Kiev, and a few weeklies of irregular issue.⁴ The Ukrainian communities in the great cities of Odessa, Dnipropetrovske and Mykolaiv were without native-language newspapers in the decade before the revolution; in the same period Kharkiv had two short-lived weeklies.’ Instruction in the Ukrainian language was not permitted in the schools, even at the primary level, until 1917. The discriminatory policies aimed at Ukrainian language and culture were enforced with particular effectiveness in the larger cities, where the unremitting Russian character served to denationalize many urban Ukrainians.

Direct demographic evidence concerning the position of the Ukrainian nationality in the cities at the time of the revolution is available only for Kiev. In September 1917 a census was conducted which collected data on the nationality and occupational distribution of the civilian population. Since Kiev was the centre of nationalist activity both before and during the revolution, Ukrainians were as well if not better placed here than in other cities of Ukraine. Moreover, as noted above, Kiev was one of the most rapidly growing urban centres in Ukraine; the situation in Kiev was characteristic of the impact which urbanization was having on the ethnic structure of the cities.

TABLE 3. POPULATION OF KIEV BY NATIONALITY IN 1917

Steven L. Guthier

source: I. S. Bisk, K voprosu î sotsialnom sostave naseleniia g. Kieva (po dannym perepisi 1917 g.) (Kiev, 1920), 3, 12. note: Nationality was determined by the self-identification of the census respondents.

^a Does not include rabochie.

^b Those older than fourteen and not living at home.

administrative functions to attract large numbers of Russian and Jewish residents. Thus between 1897 and 1917, whereas the Ukrainian population of Kiev increased by 60 per cent, the Russian population doubled and that of Jews tripled; these growth rates far exceeded the natural population increase.

Assimilation further undermined the strength of Ukrainians in Kiev. The 1917 census collected data on nationality (natsionalnost) by self-identification in contrast to the native language criterion applied in 1897. Thus people who had Ukrainian forebears and whose native lan­guage was Ukrainian, would often identify themselves and appear in the later census as Russians. In the absence of accompanying data on native language or ethnic origins for 1917, it is impossible to pinpoint the degree of Russification; however, it was undoubtedly considerable. Because of the nearly exclusive availability of schooling, newspapers and skilled employment in the Russian language, the impact of assimilation should have been felt most strongly in the educated strata. As Table 3 indicates, Ukrainians were significantly underrepresented among professionals and students, even though Kiev had long been a mecca for national-conscious Ukrainian intellectuals.

One other aspect of the results of the 1917 Kiev census should be noted: that over a quarter of the Ukrainians identified themselves as “Little Russians.” The choice of this designation at a time when the most nationalistic layers of Ukrainian society viewed malorossy as a demeaning and even pejorative term, raises serious questions about the political orientation of the “Little Russian” element. One could hypothesize that Little Russians represented poorly educated, unmobilized segments of Ukrainian society with a low level of national consciousness. This appraisal, however, is not supported by any evidence. As Table 4 indicates, there was little difference in the social composition of the malorossy and the ukraintsy, though “Little Russians” were marginally better represented in the upper classes. The existence of a “Little Russian” element in Kiev’s population suggests that decades of official suppression of Ukrainian national consciousness had left some ethnic Ukrainians with no clear attachment to their own political nation.

In the absence of census data for other cities, the results of the election to the Russian Constituent Assembly can help provide a broader picture of the situation of Ukrainians in the cities during the revolution. The democratic election process and the high level of participation make the re­turns an exceptionally useful gauge of popular sentiment and political identity in 1917. Appendix 1 (pp. 173-4) presents detailed results in thirteen major cities while Table 5 indicates the proportion of votes

table 4. ukraintsy and Malorossy in kiev by social status, 1917

source: Bisk, K voprosu, 8.

ⁱSluzhashchie.

^bIncludes students over fourteen years old, not living at home.

received by the Ukrainian national parties and their opponents.

One should emphasize that the Ukrainian totals were exaggerated since a substantial part of the vote in urban areas was cast by the military garrisons,⁷ which contained a large complement of peasant Ukrainian soldiers. The latter, like their civilian counterparts in the villages, gave a high proportion of votes to Ukrainian socialists.* However, the peasant troops represented a transitory force in city politics. War weariness stimulated a high desertion rate and the troops were also anxious to return to the village in order to participate in the spontaneous land reform being carried out by the peasantry. In consequence, large numbers of Ukrainian soldiers returned to the countryside, leaving the national cause in the cities in a more unfavourable position than is suggested by Table 5. Table 6 shows party strength in several cities adjusted to reflect the civilian vote only.

As Tables 5 and 6 indicate, Ukrainian nationalists were outpolled in nearly every city by at least one group which was apathetic or antipathetic toward the Ukrainian cause. In Kiev the Ukrainian bloc was defeated among the civilian electors by the conservative List of Russian Voters headed by the Ukrainophobe Vasilii Shulgin. Only in Poltava did the Ukrainian parties muster a substantial plurality of the vote.

The revolution of 1917 thus found Ukrainian nationalism in a weak po­sition in the cities; the movement had neither the mass support nor the material resources to successfully prosecute the national cause. During 1917 Ukrainian nationalists in Kiev were opposed at every turn by the Russian population in their attempts to Ukrainianize the administrative, cultural and educational institutions of the city.⁹ In Poltava a Ukrainian

source: See Appendix 1.

^a All lists in which Ukrainian parties participated; that includes the UPSR/PSR blocs in Poltava, Kharkiv and Kherson provinces; and the USF/Popular Socialist blocs in Kiev and Chernihiv provinces. See Appendix 1.

^b The Zionist List and Polish List combined polled 40 per cent.

TABLE 6. CIVILIAN VOTE IN MAJOR CITIES (PERCENTAGES)

source: See Table 5 and Appendix 1.

deputy to the City Duma observed that “every kopeck for Ukrainian affairs, every tri∩e had to be extracted from [the Duma] with a struggle.”¹⁰ These unfavourable conditions existed in the two cities with the strongest traditions of Ukrainian nationalism. In other major cities such as Odessa, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovske, local activists confined their efforts almost exclusively to cultural-educational work. Ukrainian influence in the politics of these cities depended upon the nationalist spirit among the troops in the garrisons." When these soldiers departed, the national cause was left with little urban support. The plight of Ukrainian nationalism in Odessa, as described by the Austrian commander in April 1918, was simi­lar to the situation in major cities and factory towns throughout Ukraine.

Odessa is a cosmopolitan city and avidly refuses to acknowledge itself as belonging to the newly-created Ukrainian Republic; Ukrainians in Odessa are no more than 10 per cent [of the population]. The Ukrainian tongue enjoys no usage. They completely disespouse the Kiev Rada here and call it the “Impostor Government.”¹²

The weakness of the Ukrainian nationality in the cities proved a crucial and perhaps decisive factor in the defeat of the Ukrainian Revolution. Despite demonstrative and overwhelming support for Ukrainian nationalism in the villages, the movement foundered in the cities.¹³ Opponents of Ukrainian national aspirations were consistently able to deny Ukrainians access to the industrial resources, communications and transport facilities centred in the towns. This circumstance created insurmountable obstacles to the co-ordination and supply of an all-Ukrainian national effort. Ultimately, the great cities and factory towns provided the Bolsheviks with a decisive foothold in Ukraine from which they were able to reimpose central Russian authority.

The Cities of Soviet Ukraine between the Wars

The revolution and civil war initiated a precipitous population decline in the cities of Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of people sought relief in the countryside from the food shortages, unemployment and political insecurity which plagued the cities from 1918 to 1921. (See Appendix 2 (p. 175) for the population figures of major cities between 1910 and 1939.) The outflow was particularly heavy among Ukrainian nationals, reflecting the fact that it was a generally inauspicious time for them in the cities. Working-class Ukrainians in the towns often had home villages nearby in which they could seek refuge, while this option was not commonly open to urban Russians and Jews in Ukraine. In consequence, the representation of Ukrainians in the cities reached its nadir during the civil war.

The end of the civil war did not immediately arrest this process of “ruralization.” Economic recovery and industrial reconstruction proceeded slowly in the early NEP period, holding down employment opportunities in the cities. This was particularly evident in the metallurgical and mining districts of the Donets basin and Dnieper Bend, where towns continued to suffer population losses after 1920.¹⁴ Odessa was hard hit not only by the dislocation of industry but also by the decline of the Black Sea trade. In 1923 the population of Odessa was barely one-half that of 1914; its subse­quent rate of growth was among the lowest of Ukrainian cities between the wars.

By the mid-1920s cities throughout Ukraine were recouping their earlier population losses as evacuees returned and a new wave of migrants arrived. As Table 7 indicates, the revival of the cities was paralleled by an absolute and relative growth in the ethnically Ukrainian urban population.¹⁵

TABLE 7. UKRAINIANS IN THE URBAN POPULATION, 1920-6

source: Statystyka Ukrainy, no. 28; Naselenie Ukrainy po dannym perepisi 1920 goda (Kharkiv, 1923); Statystyka Ukrainy, no. 77; Naselennia v mislakh Ukrainy za dannymy Vsesoiuznoho miskoho perepysu 15 bereznia 1923 roku (Kharkiv, 1925); Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1926 goda (Moscow, 1928-33), vols. 11-13, Table 6 (hereafter 1926 Census).

Nevertheless, in 1926 Ukrainians still remained significantly underrepresented in the cities. Only one out of nine Ukrainians lived in urban settlements where they constituted 47.3 per cent of the population (against 87.5 per cent of the rural population). As in the pre-revolutionary period, most urban Ukrainians congregated in the smaller towns. Of the 2.5 million Ukrainians in urban communities in 1926, two-thirds lived in towns with less than 50,000 inhabitants.¹⁶ Ukrainian nationals continued to form a minority in the major cities while Russian remained the dominant language of city life. Table 8 presents a breakdown of the urban population by nationality and native language in 1926.

The substantial excess of Russian speakers over Russian nationals in Table 8 suggests that the cities remained powerful Russifying environments. The 1926 census correlated narodnost with native lan­guage.¹⁷ Since the latter determines the national culture to which a person has easiest access, it represents a valuable indicator of assimilation. The

TABLE 8. URBAN POPULATION BY NATIONALITY AND NATIVE LANGUAGE IN 1926 (PERCENTAGES)

source: 1926 Census, vols. 11-13, Table 6.

Steven L. Guthier

tendency of the population to abandon one language for another may signal a long-term reorientation of national identity. The relationship be­tween urbanization and Russification among Ukrainians deserves careful attention, since widespread assimilation in the cities would imply a critical loss of trained and educated cadres for the Ukrainian nationality.

In 1926 a substantial number of Ukrainians in urban centres identified Russian as their native language. Indeed a comparison with the 1897 census data (see p. 158 above) reveals that Ukrainian speakers were scarcely better represented in urban centres in 1926 than three decades earlier. In addition, among Ukrainians in the cities who could read and write, Russian was the most common language. Table 9 groups Ukrainian nationals in the cities according to their native language and language of literacy.

TABLE 9. LANGUAGE USAGE OF UKRAINIAN NATIONALS IN THE CITIES IN 1926 (PERCENTAGES)

source: 1926 Census, vols. 11-13, Tables 6 and 6a.

About one out of four Ukrainians in towns gave Russian as their native language in 1926 against one out of thirty in the countryside. Whereas 80 per cent of literate Ukrainians in the cities could read Russian, only 57 per cent were literate in Ukrainian, leaving over 40 per cent with no reading facility in their national language. Within this context of higher assimilation in urban areas there were certain visible patterns. The largest cities predictably proved to be the strongest Russifying environments. As cities grew in size the number of Russians and the ubiquity of Russian-language education and media increased. Regionally, the Ukrainians in the cities of the Right and Left Banks showed the greatest resistance to Russification. Kiev and Kharkiv had the least Russified Ukrainian populations among the great cities. In Poltava and Vinnytsia 90 per cent of Ukrainians spoke their national tongue and three out of four who were literate read Ukrainian. In these cities the absence of large scale commercial and manufacturing activity (except in Kiev and Kharkiv) had retarded the influx of Russians. Moreover, the Ukrainian peasants here had proven particularly receptive to the nationalist message during the revolution.¹’ The migrants from the villages of the Right and Left Banks after the civil war were likely to be very conscious of their Ukrainian ethnicity. The relative dearth of Russians and the stronger tradition of Ukrainian nationalism here served to moderate the assimilatory impact of the cities.

At the other extreme were the factory towns of the Donets basin subraion where Russification had made disturbingly deep inroads among the Ukrainian population.¹⁹ In the three large and rapidly growing cities of Donetske, Voroshylovhrad and Makiivka 60 per cent of Ukrainians gave Russian as their native language and 75 per cent of the literate Ukrainians could read only in Russian. The mines and metallurgical plants of the Donets basin had long drawn the bulk of their labour from nearby Great Russian provinces.²⁰ In 1926 barely one-third of the industrial workers here were Ukrainian nationals.²¹ Moreover, during the revolution and civil war the Donets basin was a stronghold of Russian socialist activity rather than Ukrainian nationalism.²² As a consequence of close association with a Russian proletarian majority and class mobilization under the direction of Russian socialists, the Ukrainian workers of the Donets basin factory towns had experienced extensive assimilation. Similar circumstances had served to Russify a substantial number of Ukrainians in the industrial cities and ports of the steppe region—Odessa, Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad (Ielysavethrad, Zinovevske), Kherson and Zhdanov (Mariupil).

In Ukraine’s other major industrial area, the Dnipropetrovske region, urban Ukrainians proved more resistant to assimilation. The heavily Ukrainian rural districts along the Dnieper river provided the bulk of the workers for the local factories and mines. Between 1905 and 1916

TABLE 10. POPULATION GROWTH IN UKRAINIAN CITIES, 1926-39

source: 1926 Census, vols. 11-13, Tables 6 and 10; Planovoe khoziaislvo, no. 6 (1939): 14-17.

* City located in Donets basin or Dnieper industrial districts.

Ukrainian nationalists had been active through the Prosvita society in the working-class villages surrounding Dnipropetrovske.²³ During the revolution the USDRP and Ukapisty worked extensively in the Dnieper industrial region. These factors held down the Russification of the Ukrainian proletariat. Only in the older and larger industrial city of Dnipropetrovske was there substantial assimilation of Ukrainians. In Zaporizhzhia, Kryvyi Rih and Dniprodzerzhynske 70-90 per cent of Ukrainians habitually spoke their national tongue in 1926.

In the thirties the pace of urbanization accelerated dramatically in Ukraine. Between the all-union censuses of 1926 and 1939 the urban population grew from 5.4 million to 11.2 million.²⁴ One out of five people in Ukraine lived in a city with over 50,000 inhabitants by 1939, against one in twelve in 1926. Table 10 presents the intercensal growth of the thirty-four cities with 50,000 population on the eve of the Second World War. The introduction of forced draft industrialization via the Five Year Plans was the stimulus behind the breakneck urban growth. Ten new cities, nine of which were centres of industry,²⁵ achieved the 100,000 population plateau during this twelve-year period.

TABLE 11. NATIONAL COMPOSITION OF KHARKIV, 1926 AND 1939

source: 1926 Census, vol. 12, Table 6; M. V. Kurman and I. V. Lebedinsky, Naselenie bolshogo Sotsialisticheskogo goroda (Moscow, 1968), 122.

Because of the emphasis on heavy industry in the planned economy, cities in the eastern mining and metallurgical districts of Ukraine demonstrated extraordinary growth. The population of the eighteen cities located in the Donets basin and Dnieper industrial regions (Table 11) increased by 264 per cent during the intercensal period. Kharkiv doubled its population between 1926 and 1939, and exhibited the largest absolute growth of any Ukrainian city. As a centre of heavy machine construction and the railroad hub of Eastern Ukraine, Kharkiv had strong economic ties to the mining and metallurgical towns of the Donets basin. Kiev, while lagging behind the republic average for urban growth, exhibited an absolute population increase of one-third of a million people. The designation of Kiev as the new capital of the republic in 1934 provided considerable stimulus for growth.

Any characterization of the level of participation of Ukrainians in the accelerated movement to the cities in the 1930s is necessarily sketchy. Detailed results of the 1939 census including nationality profiles of the urban population have not been published. However, the available evidence indicates that the Ukrainian countryside was supplying much of the manpower for the burgeoning industrial cities. The proportion of Ukrainians among metallurgical workers rose from 19.1 per cent in 1925 to 45.9 per cent in 1931, and among miners from 19.4 per cent to 65.0 per cent. The Ukrainian population of Dnipropetrovske rose from 36 per cent in 1926 to 48 per cent in 1933; in Zaporizhzhia the Ukrainian element grew from 48 to 56 per cent in the same period; and in Stalino (Iuzivka, Donetske) from 26 to 31 per cent.²⁶ Thus the the first Five-Year Plan had a significant impact on the national composition of these major cities. The Ukrainian population of Kharkiv rose by about one-quarter of a million between 1926 and 1939 (see Table 11).

The absence of nationality and native language data for 1939 precludes precise observations concerning assimilation among Ukrainians during this period of intensive urbanization. Yet it must be presumed that the propor­tion of Russified Ukrainians in the cities declined in the 1930s. The push of collectivization and the pull of industrialization brought a massive influx of Ukrainian peasants to the cities, whose numbers must have strained the assimilatory capacity of the Russian language schools and press.²⁷ More importantly, the governmental policy of assimilating these urban Ukrainians was temporarily repudiated in the 1930s, and a contrary policy of Ukrainianization in the cities was pursued. Ukrainianization had been decreed as early as 1923, but press developments indicate that urban Ukrainianization was systematically enacted only at the end of the 1920s. In 1929 and 1930 city newspapers were shifted to the Ukrainian language in Kharkiv, Odessa, Dnipropetrovske, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia.²⁸ Ukrainianization of the press was extended even to the heavily Russified factory towns of the Donets basin, though Donetske itself was excluded. By 1938 official sponsorship of Ukrainianization of the cities had been abandoned. But a complete volte-face to a policy of forced assimilation of the urban population was not attempted. While in the Donets basin there was widespread re-Russification of the press before the Second World War, elsewhere the Ukrainian popular newspapers survived the thirties intact.²⁹ Thus during Ukraine’s most intensive period of urbanization, Ukrainian newcomers to the cities entered an environment in which linguistic and cultural manifestations of Ukrainianism were tolerated and at times even encouraged.

The second interwar decade proved to be a watershed of sorts for urban Ukrainians. The events of the 1930s introduced a Ukrainian minority to most cities and the policy of Ukrainianization put a stop to assimilation. Still Ukrainian nationals remained underrepresented and the Ukrainian language under-used in the cities. At the time of the next all-union census in 1959 Ukrainian nationals constituted 62 per cent of the urban population, while Ukrainian speakers comprised 53 per cent.³⁰ However, ultimate control over the cities, investment, employment, education and media, rested with central, Russian, institutions. Thus the potential of the cities as instruments of assimilation persisted.

APPENDIX 1. RUSSIAN CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY RETURNS IN MA

(Continued on following page)

JOR UKRAINIAN CITIES, 1917

Cities: Revolution and Interwar Era

APPENDIX 1—Continued

source: City returns are compiled primarily from newspaper reports in late November-early December 1918; see especially Vlast Naroda, Russkiia Vedomosti, Pravda, Robitnycha Hazeta, and Odesskiia Novosti. For Poltava and Kremenchuk, see M. Sobolev, “Vybory do Vserossiiskykh ta Ukrainskykh UStanovchykh zboriv na Poltavshchyni," Litopys revoliutsii, no. 3 (48) (1931): 48-9; for Zhytomyr, Spirin, 48-9; and for Dnipropetrovske, Bolshevistskie Organizatsii Ukrainy v period UStanovleniia ³ Ukrepleniia sovestkoi vlasti (noiabr 1917- aprel 1918 gg.) (Kiev, 1962), 227. For garrison returns, see Spirin, 422-5; on Kiev, Oleh S. Pidhainy, The Formation of the Ukrainian Republic (New York, 1966), 211-12; for Odessa and Kirovohrad, Odesskiia Novosti, 17 and 21 November 1917.

^aIncludes List of Russian voters-36,602.

^bThree Jewish Nationalist Lists.

^cIneludes Jewish vote.

^dDoes not include garrison vote; some figures calculated from reports in percentages.

^eGarrison total for Kiev includes Ukrainian Bloc and Bolsheviks only. Robitnycha hazeta, 30 November 1917, indicates that these two lists captured 97 per cent of the 5,100 votes cast in the First and Second Military Precincts.

Steven L. Guthier

APPENDIX 2. POPULATION HISTORY OF MAJOR UKRAINIAN CITIES, 1910-39

source: For 1910: Goroda Rossii v 1910 godu (St. Petersburg, 1914); Odessa only, from Thomas S. Fedor, Patterns of Urban Growth in the Russian Empire during the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1975), 202, 215. 1920: Statistika Ukrainy, no. 28. 1923: Statystyka Ukrainy, no. 77. 1926: 1926 Census, vols. 11-13, Tables 6 and 10. 1939: Planovoe khoziaistvo, no. 6 (1939): 14-17; and Itogi Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1959 goda, Ukrainskaia SSR, Table 6 for cities with less than 50,000 population in 1939.

note: List includes twenty-five largest cities in 1910.

^a1911 figure.

Notes

1. Pervaia Vseobshchaia perepis naseleniia Rossiiskoi imperii 1897 goda

(St. Petersburg, 1897-1905) (hereafter 1897 Census). The following volumes covering Ukrainian provinces were used: 8—Volhynia;

13—Katerynoslav; 16—Kiev; 32—Podillia; 33—Poltava; 41—Tavriia; 46—Kharkiv; 47—Kherson; and 48—Chernihiv. For the size of individual towns, see page one in each volume; for breakdown by native tongue, see Table 13. Throughout this paper data refers to the Ukrainian SSR in its 1926 borders and administrative divisions unless otherwise indicated. In terms of 1897 units the territory under consideration closely approximates all the provinces of Katerynoslav, Kiev, Podillia, Poltava, Kharkiv and Kherson; the continental portion of Tavriia; the eleven southernmost counties of Chernihiv; and the Volhynian counties of Zhytomyr, Ovruch, Novohrad-Volynskyi, Zaslav and Starokonstiantyniv.

2. Statesmans Yearbook, 1917 (London, 1917), 1233-4; supplemented by entries for individual cities in Istoriia mist ³ sil Ukrainskoi RSR, 26 vols. (Kiev, 1967-74).

3. V. Shakhrai [V. Skorovstansky], Revoliutsiia ha Ukraine (Saratov, 1919), 7-8, as quoted in H. R. Weinstein, “Land Hunger and Nationalism in the Ukraine, 1905-1917,” Journal of Economic History 2 (May 1942): 31.

4. I. Tyshchenko, Pershi naddniprianski ukrainski masovi politychni hazety (New York, 1952), 2-6.

5. The most complete listing of pre-revolutionary Ukrainian periodicals is V. Ihnatiienko, Bibliohrafiia Ukrainskoi presy, 1816-1916 (reprint State College, Pa., 1968).

6. This decline continued a process in evidence since the last quarter of the nineteenth century when Kiev entered its phase of rapid growth. In 1874 Kiev was 30.3 per cent Ukrainian by native language compared to 22.2 per cent in 1897. See Istoriia mist ³ sil Ukrainskoi RSR. Kyiv (Kiev, 1968), 133.

7. At the time of the February Revolution Odessa had a garrison of over 50,000 troops; Kharkiv, over 40,000; Kiev and Mykolaiv, 35,000 each; Dnipropetrovske, 20,000; and Poltava, 15,000. Smaller garrisons were found in nearly every town. See S. M. Korolivsky, M. A. Rubach and N. I. Suprunenko, Pobeda sovetskoi vlasti na Ukraine (Moscow, 1967), 118.

8. The Third All-Ukrainian Military Congress in Kiev, held 21 October 1917, was notable for its aggressively nationalistic resolutions. The congress was attended by three thousand delegates, mainly Ukrainian SRs, who were elected by nearly three million soldiers at the front and in the garrisons. See Kievskaia my si, 21 and 22 October 1917.

9. J. S. Reshetar, The Ukrainian Revolution, 1917-1920 (Princeton, 1952), 136—8; also Russkoe slovo, 15 November 1917 and Russkiia vedomosti, 8 December 1917.

10. V. Andriievsky, Z mynuloho (1917 rik na Poltavshchyni), 2 vols. (New York, 1963), 1: 110.

11. D. Doroshenko, Istoriia Ukrainy, 1917-1923 rr., 2 vols. (New York, 1954), 1: 61-6; also Volia naroda, 6 June 1917.

12. Doroshenko, 2: 7.

13. In the eight predominantly Ukrainian provinces—Volhynia, Kiev, Podillia, Poltava, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Katerynoslav and Kherson—the Ukrainian SRs and Selianska spilka [Peasant Union] captured about 55 per cent of the rural vote; another 18 per cent went to joint UPSR/PSR slates. For provincial returns to the Constituent Assembly election, see O. H. Radkey, The Election to the Russian Constituent Assembly in 1917 (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), 78-80; and L. M. Spirin, Klassy ³ partii v grazhdanskoi voine V Rossii (1917-1920 gg.) (Moscow, 1968), 416-25. See Steven L. Guthier, “The Popular Base of Ukrainian Nationalism in 1917,” Slavic Review 38, no. 1 (March 1979), 30-47, for an analysis of the regional and class base of the Ukrainian national movement in the light of the return to the Constituent Assembly election.

14. Coal output in 1922, after two years of steady improvement, stood at about one-third of prewar production; in the metal industry, production had regained only one-eighth of prewar levels by 1923. See M. Dobb, Soviet Economic Development since 1917 (New York, 1966), 152-3, 161.

15. It should be noted that the tests for nationality in these three censuses did not correspond. The 1920 and 1923 enumerations questioned respondents on the national group, natsionalnost, with which they identified. By contrast the 1926 census employed the term narodnost. In 1926 census takers were instructed to ensure that respondents understood the nationality question in the sense of “ethnic origin,” plemennoe proiskhozhdenie∖ the narodnost of their forebears was to be considered definitive. Religion, citizenship, residence in a national republic or identification with a nation were not to be substituted for narodnost. For a discussion of the instructions attached to census questions in 1897, 1920, 1923 and 1926, see N. Ia. Vorobev, Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1926 g. (Moscow, 1957), especially 83-104. See also I. Sautin, “Naselenie strany sotsializma,” Bolshevik, no. 10 (1940): 12-22, and R. M. Somerville, “Counting Noses in the Soviet Union: The 1939 Census,” American Quarterly on the Soviet Union 3, nos. 2-3 (1940): 62—4.

The effect of the change in census terms was to enumerate as Ukrainians by narodnost in 1926 those people who by virtue of assimilation or political expediency identified themselves as Russians by natsionalnost in 1920 and 1923. Thus the 1926 data tends to overstate the actual increase in the num­ber of Ukrainian nationals vis-a-vis the earlier censuses. The improving climate in the cities for the Ukrainian language and culture in the early 1920s undoubtedly helped renationalize some assimilated Ukrainians, and may have offset distortions caused by the change in the census terms. To what extent this was the case cannot be determined. Thus while the figures in Table 7 demonstrate steady growth in the proportion of Ukrainians in the cities, one must have reservations about the magnitude of this growth.

16. Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1926 goda, (Moscow, 1928-33), 11-23, Tables 6 and 10.

17. Native language was defined in the instructions as “that which the questionee speaks best of all or in which he usually speaks.” Vorobev, Vsesoiuznaia perepis, 90.

18. The Ukrainian SRs and Ukrainian Peasants’ Union took more than 80 per cent of the rural vote in the Constituent Assembly election in Kiev, Podillia and Poltava provinces. Compare Radkey, Elections, 78-80, with city returns presented above.

19. The level of assimilation in the Donets basin approached the high levels found among Belorussians, who have consistently demonstrated a low level of national consciousness. In 1926 49 per cent of urban Belorussians gave Russian as their native language. See S. L. Guthier, “The Belorussians: National Identification and Assimilation, 1897-1970,” Soviet Studies 29, no. 1 (January 1977), 56.

20. A. G. Rashin, Formirovanie rabochego klassa Rossii (Moscow, 1977): 444-6. 1897 Census, 13, Tables 21 and 22 show that workers in the Donets basin were two-thirds Russian and one-fourth Ukrainian.

21. 1926 Census, 30, Table 1.

22. In the Constituent Assembly election Ukrainian socialists polled less than 5 per cent of the vote in the major Donets basin mines and under 10 per cent in the metallurgical city of Luhanske (Voroshylovhrad). See Pravda, 25 November and 1 December 1917.

23. See Ukrainskaia zhizn, no. 5 (1912): 99-102, and D. Doroshenko, Moi spomyny pro davnie-mynule (1901-1914 roky) (Winnipeg, 1949), 80-9.

24. Izvestiia, 2 June 1939.

25. See C. D. Harris, “The Cities of the Soviet Union,” Geographical Review 35 (January 1945): 107-21. Soviet cities with over 50,000 inhabitants in 1939 are classified according to economic function on pages 114-20.

26. Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopedia, ed. V. KubijovyC, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1963-71), 1: 811.

27. According to Mykola Skrypnyk, 1.3 million new workers arrived in the Donets basin in the first two years of the first Five Year Plan. Members of the CP(B)U who advocated Ukrainianization of the cities, including Skrypnyk, argued that this massive urban influx alone rendered unrealistic any attempt to Russify Ukrainians coming to the cities. See R. S. Sullivant, Soviet Politics and the Ukraine, 1917-1957 (New York, 1962), 172-4, 364 n. 59.

28. I. V. Kuznetsov and E. M. Fingerit₁ Gazetnyi mir Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1917-1970 gg. (Moscow, 1976), 2: 200-37. Kiev already had a Ukrainian newspaper as did most of the non-industrial cities of the Right- and Left-Bank regions. The press there had been Ukrainianized during earlier phases OfUkrainianzation between 1920 and 1925.

29. The campaign of press Ukrainianization was first terminated in those

Donets basin cities where Russification had been most thoroughly imposed—Voroshylovhrad, Zhdanov, Makiivka and Horlivka. Here the Ukrainian papers were re-Russified in the mid-1930s. In contrast, the Ukrainianization of the press remained in force in the burgeoning cities of the Dnieper industrial area—Dnipropetrovske, Kryvyi Rih,

Dniprodzerzhynske, Zaporizhzhia and Nikopol. As noted above the Ukrainian workers of these cities had demonstrated higher resistance to Russification than their counterparts in the Donets basin. The survival of the Ukrainian press here was both a reflection and reinforcement of this tendency. See Kuznetsov and Fingerit, Gazetnyi mir, 200-37, and Ezhegodnik periodicheskikh izdanii v 1938 g., part 2 (Moscow, 1938).

30. Itogi Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1959 goda. Ukrainskaia SSR (Moscow, 1963), Table 53.