What were the Soviet policies in Ukraine during the postwar period?

As one of the major battlefields of World War II, Ukraine suffered the nearly complete destruction of its industries and major cities. Postwar reconstruction focused on heavy industry and mining, but by the 1960s the Soviet authorities finally began paying some attention to the consumer needs of the modern, urban society Ukraine had become.

Party decrees during the postwar period never referred to Ukrainization; rather, ideologists organized periodic campaigns against vaguely defined manifestations of Ukrainian nationalism in culture. The party line called for the glorification of Russian- Ukrainian friendship and unity. The number of Ukrainian books, newspapers, and schools decreased gradually and were replaced by Russian ones. The authorities never formally decreed assimilation into Russian culture, but their policies clearly promoted it. By the end of the Soviet period, most cities in eastern and central Ukraine became Russophone again, thus undoing the bilingualism achieved during prewar Ukrainization. Industrial areas in the east, although Ukrainian in ethnic composition, never really became Ukrainian­speaking, because the Soviet policies did not give modern Ukrainian culture a chance to take root there. As was the case under the tsars, peasants coming to work in the Donbas assimilated into the dom­inant Russian culture. The Ukrainian language held its ground in western Ukraine and in villages of the central region. In the 1950s and 1960s it was also the official language of the Ukrainian SSR, the language of party speeches and government decrees. Beginning in the 1970s, however, the party and state apparatus in the republic ex­panded the use of Russian in official capacities.

Official Soviet ideology saw Ukrainians as junior partners of the Russians in running the Soviet Union. Individual Ukrainians could make outstanding careers in the party and the government anywhere in the Soviet Union, but the state impinged upon their group rights as a nation. Party bureaucracy promoted assimilation into Russian culture, and the Ukrainian SSR's sovereignty was nothing but a for­mality, with all important decisions dictated from the Kremlin.