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The Winding Down of Ukrainization in Crimea

Concise summary: the process of the systematic refusal of the Kremlin and the republican party leadership to ensure the national-cultural and linguistic-educational rights of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian settlers in Crimea, the winding down of short-lived imitative and genuine Ukrainization initiatives (1954–1961) and the subsequent total russification of the peninsula.

Overview

After the deportation of the indigenous Crimean Tatar population and the mass resettlement of Ukrainians to Crimea Oblast, the Soviet authorities regarded Ukrainian peasants exclusively as a labor resource for rebuilding the agricultural and economic sectors. All government and party resolutions (from 1944 to the 1980s) ignored the national, educational and cultural needs of Ukrainians. Despite Crimea's incorporation into the UkrSSR in 1954, the Kremlin leadership deliberately pursued a course toward forging a russian-speaking "Soviet people." The brief period of active Ukrainization initiatives under First Secretary of the Crimean Regional Committee Vasyl Komiakov (1955–1961) came under pressure from Soviet special services and party officials and ended with the complete winding down of Ukrainian schools, media and theater in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Key Details / Subtopics

  • Policy of assimilation of the settlers (1944–1954): Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, brought to Crimea in whole villages and collective farms, were deprived of the opportunity to educate their children in their native language. The authorities did not create a single Ukrainian-language school or class. The settlers, who had survived the Holodomor of 1932–1933 and the repressions, feared making any demands of the authorities.
  • Provocation at the XXV Party Conference (March 1954): During the speech of Second Secretary of the CC CPU Mykola Pidhornyi, special-service agents with Ukrainian surnames (in particular Sushchenko) voiced concerns about switching Crimea's record-keeping to the Ukrainian language. Pidhornyi assured the audience that education and record-keeping would remain russian-language, citing the russified Stalino and Voroshylovhrad Oblasts as examples.
  • Kyiv's forced compromises (1954–1955): Under pressure from the Ukrainian diaspora abroad, the CC CPU on July 6, 1954 adopted decision No. 49 on expanding the supply of Ukrainian publications and tours by creative collectives. Duplication of the newspaper "Krymskyi komsomolets" in Ukrainian was also launched (the first resolution on such duplication appeared as early as April 1, 1941), and the newspaper "Radyanskyy Krym" was founded. On August 2, 1955, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the UkrSSR Mykhailo Hrechukha held a meeting on introducing the study of the Ukrainian language in Crimean schools.
  • Vasyl Komiakov's Ukrainization course (1955–1961): After the removal of the chauvinistically minded Dmytro Polyanskyy, the new oblast committee secretary Vasyl Komiakov renewed the cadres, called for communicating with peasants in the Ukrainian language, developed Ukrainian-language school education, increased the circulation of the newspaper "Radyanskyy Krym" and promoted the rise of the agricultural sector.
  • Resistance of the special services and the winding down of Ukrainization: In the late 1950s, after KGB-initiated complaints by a small group of parents and a meeting of the bureau of the Crimean Regional Committee, Komiakov was subjected to pressure. The holding of plenums in the Ukrainian language was discontinued. In 1961 Komiakov was squeezed out of Crimea to the Poltava region.
  • Manipulation of the 1959 census and the humanitarian decline: According to the 1959 All-Union census, russians were declared the dominant group even in most Ukrainian rural districts, which became a formal pretext for closing Ukrainian schools, liquidating publications and switching the Crimean theater to the russian language. By 1991 Crimea approached without a single Ukrainian-language school or Ukrainian media.