Encyclopedia of Russian History

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of Ukrainian territory. In Lviv on June 30, 1941,

the OUN(B) attempted the proclamation of a

Ukrainian state, but the Gestapo soon began

arresting the leading Banderites. The German ad-

ministration divided Ukraine into several adminis-

trative entities and discouraged Ukrainian national

aspirations. The economy was exploited and the

population brutalized. The Nazis exterminated be-

tween 600,000 and 900,000 Ukrainian Jews, in-

cluding 34,000 who were machine-gunned during

a two-day massacre in the ravine of Babi Yar in

Kiev (September 1941). The Red Army began the

liberation of Ukraine in mid-1943, and completed

it by October 1944. In Western Ukraine, Soviet

troops encountered fierce resistance from the

Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which continued its

guerilla war in the region until the early 1950s. In

1945 Czechoslovakia ceded Transcarpathia to the

Soviet Union, thus completing the unification of all

Ukrainian ethnic lands within the Ukrainian SSR.

The first postwar decade was characterized by

economic reconstruction and the Sovietization of

Western Ukraine. In 1946 the authorities forcibly

dissolved the Uniate Church, the national insti-

tution of Galician Ukrainians. In Ukraine, the

Zhdanovshchina (Zhdanov’s time) campaign from

1946 to 1948 was aimed primarily at real and

imaginary manifestations of Ukrainian national-

ism, and to reinstall in Soviet culture Bolshevik val-

ues. In 1949 the long-serving first secretary of the

CP(b)U, Nikita Khrushchev, left for a higher posi-

tion in Moscow, but continued to consider the re-

public as his power base. Therefore, his ascendancy

to power in the Kremlin after Stalin’s death sig-

naled the Ukrainians’ promotion to the status of

the Russians’ junior partner in running the USSR.

This change was sealed by the celebrations in 1954

of the tercentenary of Ukraine’s “reunification”

with Russia and the transfer of the Crimea from

Russia to Ukraine. By 1959 ethnic Ukrainians con-

stituted more than 60 percent of the membership

of the Communist Party of Ukraine (renamed the

CPU in 1952) and dominated its Central Commit-

tee and Politburo. Following a long line of non-

Ukrainian party leaders, after 1953 all first

secretaries were Ukrainian. In particular, Petro She-

lest, who headed the CPU from 1963 to 1972, dis-

tinguished himself as a defender of the republic’s

economic interests and culture until his removal on

charges of being soft on nationalism.

His replacement and Leonid Brezhnev’s faithful

client, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky (1972–1989) be-

gan his rule with a purge of patriotic intellectuals.

From the late 1950s Ukraine was a hotbed of the

dissident movement. In addition to human rights

issues, Ukrainian dissidents focused on the defense

of the Ukrainian language and culture. In 1975 the

movement acquired more political coloration, when

the writer Mykola Rudenko founded a Helsinki

Watch Group. However, by the late 1970s the KGB

succeeded in breaking up organized dissent in the

republic. The Shcherbytsky regime promoted Rus-

sification and consumerism, but could do nothing

to halt the deterioration of the economy. The cri-

sis was brought home by the world’s worst nu-

clear accident, at Chernobyl power plant near Kiev

in April of 1986.

Glasnost was slow to develop in Ukraine due

to Shcherbytsky’s perseverance in his post, but the

first mass demonstrations in Lviv and Kiev took

place in 1988. The next year saw the emergence of

a mass popular front, Rukh (Movement), and the

defeats of many prominent party leaders in free

elections. The elections to the Ukrainian Parliament

in 1990 broke the Communist Party’s hold on po-

litical power, while Rukh openly proclaimed inde-

pendence as its ultimate aim.

INDEPENDENT UKRAINE

In the wake of a failed coup in Moscow, on Au-

gust 24, 1991, the Ukrainian Parliament pro-

claimed the republic’s full independence, an act

endorsed by more than 90 percent of voters in a

referendum in December 1991. Under President

Leonid Kravchuk (1991–1994), Ukraine experi-

enced hyperinflation and a sharp drop in the gross

national product. The state promoted Ukrainiza-

tion of education and culture and in foreign affairs

sought to develop closer ties with the West. In the

elections of 1994 Kravchuk lost to Leonid Kuchma,

who advocated economic reform and the restora-

tion of Ukraine’s special relationship with Russia.

By dividing the Black Sea Fleet between Russia and

Ukraine (1995), Kuchma resolved the tension be-

tween the two countries. In 1997 he signed a com-

prehensive friendship treaty with Russia. Kuchma

was re-elected in 1999 and, after a long period of

decline, the economy began to recover during Vic-

tor Yushchenko’s tenure as prime minister from

1999 to 2001. For most of the 1990s Ukraine was

among the largest recipients of U.S. financial aid.

Relations between the West and Kuchma’s admin-

istration cooled in 2001 and 2002 due to rampant

corruption in Ukraine, as well as the president’s al-

leged involvement in a journalist’s murder and the

sale of a sophisticated radar system to Iraq.

UKRAINE AND UKRAINIANS

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

See also: BOROTBISTY; COSSACKS; CRIMEA; CRIMEAN

TATARS; CYRIL AND METHODIUS SOCIETY; ENSERF-

MENT; KRAVCHUK, LEONID MAKAROVICH; MUSCOVY;

ROMANOV DYNASTY; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET;

NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; SKRYPNYK, MYKOLA

OLEKSIIOVYCH; UNIATE CHURCH; WORLD WAR I;

WORLD WAR II

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Armstrong, John A. (1990). Ukrainian Nationalism, 3rd

ed. Englewood, NJ: Ukrainian Academic Press.

D’Anieri, Paul; Kravchuk, Robert S.; and Kuzio, Taras.

(1999). Politics and Society in Ukraine. Boulder, CO:

Westview.

Dyczok, Marta. (2000). Ukraine: Movement without

Change, Change without Movement. Amsterdam: Har-

wood Academic Publishers.

Harasymiw, Bodhan. (2002). Post-Communist Ukraine.

Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies

Press.

Himka, John-Paul. (1988). Galician Villagers and the

Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Cen-

tury. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian

Studies Press.

Kappeler, Andreas. (1994). Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine.

Munich: C. H. Beck.

Kappeler, Andreas; Kohut, Zenon E.; Sysysn, Frank E.;

and Von Hagen, Mark L., eds. (2003). Culture, Na-

tion, and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter,

1600–1945. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of

Ukrainian Studies Press.

Kuzio, Taras. (1997). Ukraine under Kuchma: Political Re-

form, Economic Transformation, and Security Policy in

Independent Ukraine. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Kuzio, Taras. (1998). Ukraine: State and Nation Building.

New York: Routledge.

Kuzio, Taras, and Wilson, Andrew. (1994). Ukraine: Per-

estroika to Independence. New York: St. Martin’s

Press.

Kuromiya, Hiroaki. (1998). Freedom and Terror in the Don-

bas: A Ukrainian-Russian Borderland, 1870s-1990s.

New York: Cambridge University Press.

Magocsi, Paul R. (1985). Ukraine: A Historical Atlas.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Magocsi, Paul R. (1996). A History of Ukraine. Toronto:

University of Toronto Press.

Marples, David. (1991). Ukraine under Perestroika: Ecol-

ogy, Economics and the Workers’ Revolt. New York: St.

Martin’s Press.

Motyl, Alexander J. (1993). Dilemmas of Independence:

Ukraine after Totalitarianism. New York: Council on

Foreign Relations Press.

Potichnyj, Peter J., and Aster, Howard, eds. (1987).

Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective.

Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies

Press.

Potichnyj, Peter J.; Raeff, Marc; Pelenski, Jaroslaw; and

Zekulin, Gleb N., eds. (1992). Ukraine and Russia in

their Historical Encounter. Edmonton: Canadian In-

stitute of Ukrainian Studies Press.

Rudnytsky, Ivan L. (1987). Essays in Modern Ukrainian

History. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian

Studies Press.

Shkandrij, Miroslav. (2001). Russia and Ukraine: Litera-

ture and the Discourse of Empire from Napoleonic to

Postcolonial Times. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Uni-

versity Press.

Subtelny, Orest. (2000). Ukraine: A History, 3rd ed.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Szporluk, Roman. (1982). Ukraine: A Brief History, 2nd

ed. Detroit: Ukrainian Festival Committee.

Szporluk, Roman. (2000). Russia, Ukraine, and the

Breakup of the Soviet Union. Stanford: Hoover Insti-

tution Press.

Wilson, Andrew. (2000). The Ukrainians: Unexpected Na-

tion. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Yekelchyk, Serhy. (2003). Stalin’s Empire of Memory:

Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical

Imagination. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

ERHY

EKELCHYK

ULOZHENIE OF 1649 See LAW CODE OF 1649.

UNIATE CHURCH

The traditional name for Eastern or Byzantine rite

churches in communion with the Roman Catholic

Church.

The largest church within the Uniate Church

is Ukrainian Catholic Church, which emerged as a

result of the church union of Berestia (Brest-

Litovsk) in 1596. Of the Soviet successor states,

smaller pockets of Byzantine-rite Catholics also ex-

ist in Belarus. Although the historic term “Uniates”

is still widely used in Russia, Ukrainian Catholics

in the early twenty-first century considered it im-

precise and pejorative.

By the end of the sixteenth century, a crisis

within the Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian and

Belarusian lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Com-

monwealth, combined with pressure from Polish

UNIATE CHURCH

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

authorities, prompted some Orthodox bishops to

advocate union with Rome. Part of their motivation

was to ensure the equal treatment of Orthodox be-

lievers and clergy in the Catholic Commonwealth.

Having received assurances that the Byzantine

liturgy, rites, and entitlement of priests to marry

would be respected, in 1595 four Orthodox bish-

ops and the metropolitan of Kiev agreed to recog-

nize the pope’s supreme authority in matters of

faith and dogma. Following the approval of Pope

Clement VIII, the union was proclaimed in October

1596 at a synod in Berestia.

Opposition from other bishops within the Kiev

metropoly and the Orthodox nobility sparked a

fierce religious polemic. The Ukrainian Cossacks

proved themselves to be staunch opponents of

the union. During the Cossack-Polish wars of

1648–1657, the Cossacks often massacred Uniates

en masse. The Cossack state under Bohdan Khmel-

nytsky dissolved the Uniate Church, but it contin-

ued to exist in Poland. The partitions of Poland at

the end of the eighteenth century split the Uniate

church between the Russian and Austrian empires.

Russian tsars encouraged the conversion of Uniates

to Orthodoxy until 1839, when Nicholas I declared

the Union of Berestia null and void, thus forcing

all Uniates into the fold of the Russian Orthodox

Church.

In contrast, the Uniate Church in Austria was

granted equal status with the Roman Catholic

Church. In 1807 Pope Pius VII created the Uniate

metropoly of Halych with its see in Lviv, the cap-

ital of Galicia. Austrian rulers established educa-

tional institutions and provided support for the

clergy of what they renamed the Ruthenian Greek

Catholic Church. During the nineteenth century it

became the national church of Galicia’s Ukrainians,

culminating in the long tenure of Metropolitan An-

drei Sheptytsky (1900–1944), who achieved the

stature of a national symbol. In 1939 the church

had some 5.5 million faithful.

In April 1945, with Western Ukraine under So-

viet control, Stalin ordered the entire Ukrainian

Catholic hierarchy imprisoned. In March 1946 the

authorities convened in Lviv a spurious sobor

(church council), which reunited the Uniates with

the Orthodox Church. However, the Uniate Church

continued to exist underground, as well as in the

Ukrainian diaspora. A mass movement to restore

the Ukrainian Catholic Church began during the

glasnost period and culminated in the church’s le-

galization in December 1989. It quickly regained

its position as a dominant church in Western

Ukraine. As of 2003, the Ukrainian Catholic

Church had 3,317 parishes in Ukraine and was

headed by Major Archbishop Lubomyr Cardinal

Husar.

See also: CATHOLICISM; ORTHODOXY; UKRAINE AND

UKRAINIANS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bociurkiw, Bohdan R. (1996). The Ukrainian Greek

Catholic Church and the Soviet State, 1939–1950. Ed-

monton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies

Press.

Halecki, Oskar. (1958). From Florence to Brest (1439–1596).

New York: Fordham University Press.

Himka, John-Paul. (1999). Religion and Nationality in

Western Ukraine: The Greek Catholic Church and

Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia, 1867–1900.

Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

ERHY

EKELCHYK

UNION OF RIGHT FORCES

The Union of Right Forces (Soyuz Pravykh Sil, or

SPS) was a political party that grew out of an as-

sociation, geared toward the 1999 Duma elections,

of a number of leaders’ structures, not one of which

was able to enter the previous Duma on its own.

The SPS included: the democratic bloc “A Just

Cause”; the bloc “Voice of Russia,” founded as a

gubernatorial bloc; and the movement “New Force”

of the ex-premier Sergei Kiriyenko. “A Just Cause”

brought a number of groups together around the

party Russia’s Democratic Choice: the movement

“Forward, Russia!,” “Common Cause,” the move-

ment “Democratic Russia,” the party “Democratic

Russia,” and an array of smaller organizations. In

“Voice of Russia,” which originally consisted of

seven organizations, only two, with Samara gov-

ernor Konstantin Titov at the head, joined with the

SPS; the others entered “All Russia.” “A Just Cause”

had less severe losses at the time of the association:

it only lost “Forward, Russia!” with Boris Fyo-

dorov, who joined with Our Home Is Russia (NDR).

The SPS list was headed by reformers from the

second wave: Kiriyenko (“New Force”), ex-deputy

prime minister and former Nizhegorod governor

Boris Nemtsov (Russia’s Democratic Choice), and

ex-minister Irina Khakamada (“Common Cause”).

In the organization of the campaign and the elab-

oration of the program, a leading role was played

UNION OF RIGHT FORCES

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

by veteran reformers Anatoly Chubais and Yegor

Gaidar.

The SPS leaders, presenting themselves as lib-

eral statists, unequivocally supported the incipient

war in Chechnya and entered into a full-format

union with the Kremlin, using the patriotic senti-

ment in society and the growing popularity of pre-

mier Vladimir Putin (the campaign slogan was

“Putin for president, Kiriyenko in the Duma!”).

Alongside massive stadium shows as part of the

“You’re Right!” campaign aimed at youth, the

SPS advertised with a collection of signatures in

support of a referendum to be held with four ques-

tions: concerning the protection of private prop-

erty, the removal of immunity from the deputies

of the Federal Assembly, limitation of military par-

ticipation to those in service or under contract, and

limitations on the president’s right to dismiss mem-

bers of the government. After the elections, the Cen-

tral Electoral Commission rejected almost one

million of the 3.6 million signatures collected and

refused to hold the referendum. The SPS candidates

balloted in sixty-five majority districts and won in

five, winners including Nemtsov and Khakamada.

The original count was small (thirty-two dele-

gates), but the experienced SPS did not become head

of the pro-government coalition. Although in the

second half of the term it gained control of several

important committees, the SPS, under the leader-

ship of Nemtsov (in May 2000, Kiriyenko, the orig-

inal leader, was appointed plenipotientary to the

president in the Privolga federal district), started to

move in a highly oppositional direction. The SPS

political council included Gaidar and Chubais, as

well as Nemtsov, Khakamada, and Kiriyenko, who

had suspended his membership.

Deeming the years of activity of the govern-

ment formed in 2000 as a time of squandered pos-

sibilities, the SPS proposed a formula for success

consisting of three components: a strong and ef-

fective state, a private competitive economy, and

individual freedom. The SPS considered the follow-

ing tasks of primary importance: (1) the defense of

federalism (prohibition of a third term for gover-

nors, nationwide elections of the members of the

Soviet Federation, and guaranteed funds for local

self-government); (2) the creation of conditions for

the attraction of capital and the return of emigrés

to Russia; (3) immediate realization of the follow-

ing constitutional rights of citizens: the right to

ownership of land, the right to move and to choose

one’s place of residence, the right to information,

which presupposes the defense of the independence

of the media organizations (SMI), and the right to

an independent and fair trial; (4) the introduction

of a cumulative pension system, liberalization of

labor relations, and effective restructurings in the

Residential-Communal Management (ZhKKh)

sphere; (5) guarantee of equal access to education,

introduction of a single exam into the VUZy (insti-

tutions of higher learning); (6) creation of political

conditions for full-scale regulation in Chechnya;

and (7) military reform, providing for six-month

service and transition to a contracted army no later

than 2005.

Positioning itself as the mouthpiece of business

interests, the SPS had an array of serious sponsors

(including the energetic monopolist RAO UES of

Russia, headed by the unofficial leader of the SPS,

Anatoly Chubais, “Alpha-Group,” “Interros,” and

so forth), allowing it to act with relative indepen-

dence.

See also: CHUBAIS, ANATOLY BORISOVICH; DUMA; GAIDAR,

YEGOR TIMUROVICH; KIRIYENKO, SERGEI VLADILEN-

OVICH; NEMTSOV, BORIS IVANOVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

McFaul, Michael. (2001). Russia’s Unfinished Revolution:

Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press.

McFaul, Michael, and Markov, Sergei. (1993). The Trou-

bled Birth of Russian Democracy: Parties, Personalities,

and Programs. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution

Press.

McFaul, Michael; Petrov, Nikolai; and Ryabov, Andrei,

eds. (1999). Primer on Russia’s 1999 Duma Elections.

Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for Interna-

tional Peace.

Reddaway, Peter, and Glinski, Dmitri. (2001). The Tragedy

of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democ-

racry. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press.

IKOLAI

ETROV

UNION OF SOVEREIGN STATES

Gorbachev’s last effort to reconfigure and maintain

the territorial integrity of the USSR.

During 1990 and 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev led

efforts to reconfigure center-periphery relations in

the USSR. He sought a new Union Treaty that

would give more autonomy to the union republics

and make the Soviet Union an actual functioning

UNION OF SOVEREIGN STATES

1607

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

federation. Working with the recently elected pres-

idents of the union republics, Gorbachev fashioned

a Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics. However, six

republics (Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia,

Lithuania, and Moldova) refused to participate in

the treaty negotiations and announced that they

were seeking outright independence.

The nine remaining union republics reached

agreement on June 17, 1991. A Party plenum ap-

proved the new treaty and scheduled a signing cer-

emony for August 20. But on August 19,

hard-liners staged a coup in order to prevent the

imminent demise of the USSR. When the coup

failed, Gorbachev attempted to save some sem-

blance of union. As an interim solution, a State

Council, consisting of Gorbachev and the presidents

of the remaining republics, was announced on Sep-

tember 5. Ten republics attended the first State

Council session on September 6 and voted to rec-

ognize the independence of Estonia, Latvia, and

Lithuania. Georgia and Moldova did not attend.

In mid-September, the USSR Congress of Peo-

ple’s Deputies voted to work toward forming a

Union of Sovereign States. The republics would re-

ceive much greater autonomy, while currency, de-

fense, and foreign affairs would remain centrally

controlled. There would be a USSR president and

prime minister, but with fewer powers than under

the Soviet system.

Gradually, Boris Yeltsin took the initiative

away from Gorbachev. Yeltsin dissolved many

USSR structures and reassigned others to Russian

control. At a November 25 State Council meeting,

he argued for a confederal structure in which the

members conducted their own diplomacy and could

form their own militaries. Outraged, Gorbachev

stormed out of the room. Most republic leaders had

been stalling until Ukraine’s referendum on inde-

pendence, scheduled for December 1. When Ukraine

voted for independence, the union’s fate was sealed.

Meeting in the Belovezh forest on December 8,

Yeltsin, Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk, and

Belarusian parliamentary chair Stanislav Shushke-

vich nullified the 1922 USSR Union Treaty. The re-

maining republics were caught by surprise, but

they quickly signed onto the Commonwealth of In-

dependent States (CIS) structure formed by the

Belovezh Accords. Gorbachev was left out of the

discussion and not invited to the first CIS meeting

on December 21. Faced with the inevitable, Gor-

bachev resigned on December 25. Barely 40 of the

173 Council of Republic deputies reported to work

on December 26, where they formally voted to dis-

solve the USSR. The Soviet Union was no more.

See also: AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH; UNION TREATY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beissinger, Mark R. (1991). “The Deconstruction of the

USSR and the Search for a Post-Soviet Community.”

Problems of Communism 40(6):27–35.

Brown, Archie. (1996). The Gorbachev Factor. New York:

Oxford University Press.

Dunlop, John B. (1993). The Rise of Russia and the Fall

of the Soviet Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-

versity Press.

Matlock, Jack F., Jr. (1995). Autopsy on an Empire. New

York: Random House.

E. R

OBERTSON

UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

Although the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in

November 1917, it was not until 1922 that the

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was

formed. At that time there were only four Soviet

republics—the Russian republic (officially called

the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic or

RSFSR), Ukraine, Belorussia, and Transcaucasia.

The name, USSR, was chosen deliberately to avoid

that of any particular nation or country, since the

hope of its founders was that, gradually, more and

more countries throughout the world would join

its ranks.

The USSR came to embrace almost every part

of the Russian Empire at its most expansive. The

Baltic states were forcibly incorporated in 1940,

and in the post-World War II Soviet Union there

were fifteen Union Republics. Some of them con-

tained so-called Autonomous Republics which, like

the Union Republics, were named after a national-

ity for which that territory was a traditional home-

land.

According to the Soviet Constitution the USSR

was a federation, but in reality many of the basic

features of a federal system were lacking. The

deficits included the lack of a clear definition of

what lay within the jurisdiction of the component

parts of the federation and what was the sole re-

sponsibility of the central authorities, the lack of

any real autonomy for the fifteen republics, and

the absence of an independent judicial body that

UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

1608

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

could adjudicate in cases of dispute between the re-

publics and Moscow. Moreover, the doctrine of de-

mocratic centralism that governed relations within

the Communist Party (and in Brezhnev’s time was

made a principle of the organization of the entire

Soviet state) made a mockery of the federal princi-

ple. Democratic centralism was interpreted by So-

viet communists to mean that the decisions of

higher party organs were unconditionally binding

on lower party bodies, and that they applied to the

subjects of the federation, such as Ukraine, Kaza-

khstan, or Latvia, just as much as to a Russian

province.

In practice, the degree to which the nationals

of the various Soviet republics ran their republics,

and the extent to which they were given some lat-

itude to introduce local variation, changed over

time. It was, however, only during the perestroika

period that the federal forms gained legitimacy.

Pressure grew from below, burgeoning from ar-

guments in favor of a genuine federalism to press

for a loose confederation and culminated in de-

mands for complete independence. With the liber-

alization and partial democratization of the Soviet

system after 1985, the fact that the Soviet Union

had been divided administratively along national-

territorial lines gained immense significance. Insti-

tutions that had made modest concessions to

national consciousness in the case of nations of long

standing (such as Armenia) and had contributed,

unwittingly, to a process of nation-building in

parts of Soviet Central Asia, began to use the re-

sources at their disposal to pose fundamental chal-

lenges to the federal authorities in Moscow.

Not all the republics demanded independence,

however, the three Baltic republics of Lithuania,

Latvia, and Estonia were in the vanguard of the in-

dependence movement, and separatist sentiments

also grew in Georgia. Ukraine was divided and only

later fully embraced independent statehood. The

Central Asian republics had independence virtually

thrust upon them when Boris Yeltsin joined the

leaders of Ukraine and Belorussia in December 1991

to proclaim that the USSR would cease to exist.

Surveys of public opinion in Russia both before and

after 1991 showed a majority of Russians in favor

of preserving the Union, but in the aftermath of

the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev of Au-

gust 1991, Yeltsin chose to assert Russia’s inde-

pendence from the USSR. Since Russia comprised

approximately three-quarters of the territory of the

USSR and roughly half of its population, this was

the final blow to the state. The flag of the Union

was lowered from the Kremlin on December 25,

1991, and replaced by the Russian tricolor. By the

end of the month the USSR had ceased to exist.

A distinction can be drawn between the dis-

mantling or transformation of the Soviet system,

and the disintegration of the USSR. From the stand-

point of democracy, the former was a necessity.

The breakup of the Soviet Union was more am-

biguous in respect of democratic developments.

Some of the republics—notably the three Baltic

states—became relatively successful democracies

once they had gained their independence. A num-

ber of other successor states to the USSR became

more authoritarian than they were in the last years

of the Soviet Union.

During most of its existence the USSR was a

major player on the international stage. While

maintaining a highly authoritarian regime—except

for the years of high Stalinism, when it is more

appropriately termed totalitarianism, and the per-

estroika period that saw the development of polit-

ical pluralism—the Soviet state was able to project

its power and influence abroad. Its success in do-

ing so depended more upon military might than

on its economic achievements or political attrac-

tiveness.

Nevertheless, the USSR played the major part

in the defeat of Nazi Germany in Europe in World

War II and earned the gratitude of many citizens

of Western Europe. The Soviet “liberation” of East-

ern Europe, by contrast, led to the imposition of

Soviet-style dictatorial regimes in that half of the

continent and the suppression of freedom within

East-Central Europe for another four decades. The

interaction between the Soviet Union and what was

known as the Communist bloc led ultimately,

however, to important two-way influence once se-

rious reform got underway in Moscow in

1987–1988. The changes in the USSR emboldened

reformers and advocates of national independence

in East-Central Europe. The fact that Soviet troops

stayed in their barracks as the countries in the East-

ern part of the continent broke free of Soviet tute-

lage in 1989 encouraged the most disaffected

nationalities within the USSR itself, with the

Lithuanians in the vanguard, to demand no less for

themselves than had been attained by Poles, Hun-

garians, and Czechs. Thus, the Soviet control over

Eastern Europe that had once seemed a source of

strength of the USSR turned out, in the last years

of the Soviet regime, to add to its own entropic

pressures.

UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

1609

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Following the disintegration of the Union, the

permanent place on the United Nations Security

Council, which had belonged to the USSR since the

formation of the United Nations, passed to the

largest of the Soviet successor states, Russia.

See also: BOLSHEVISM; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SO-

VIET UNION; ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; NATION-

ALISM IN THE SOVIET UNION; UNION OF SOVEREIGN

STATES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kotkin, Stephen. (2001). Armageddon Averted: The Soviet

Collapse 1970–2000. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

McAuley, Mary. (1992). Soviet Politics 1917–1991. Ox-

ford: Oxford University Press.

Nove, Alec. (1993). An Economic History of the USSR

1917–1991. New York: Penguin.

Schapiro, Leonard. (1971). The Communist Party of the So-

viet Union, 2nd ed. New York: Random House.

Service, Robert. (1998). The History of Twentieth Century

Russia. New York: Penguin.

Suny, Ronald G. (1994). The Revenge of the Past: Nation-

alism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

RCHIE

ROWN

UNION OF SOVIET WRITERS

The Union of Soviet Writers (Soiuz sovetskikh

pisatelei) was the first creative union organized by

the Communist Party to solidify its influence on

the arts. The Party leadership considered literature

and other arts to be potent weapons which could

work for or against them. For almost sixty years,

the Union employed a mixture of enticements to

mobilize writers behind the Party’s agenda, and

punishments to discipline those believed to have

transgressed.

The Union’s creation marked the final step in

the politicization of Soviet literature. It replaced the

less-inclusive Russian Association of Proletarian

Writers (RAPP), which was dissolved in 1932. The

new Union was open to all loyal Soviet writers. Al-

though the Union’s creation was announced in

May 1932, its founding Congress did not occur un-

til August 1934. In the interim, an Organizational

Committee dominated by Party officials developed

the vaguely defined aesthetic doctrine of Socialist

Realism, which became the guiding tenet of Soviet

literature. Maxim Gorky was also involved in the

Union’s creation, though scholars disagree about

his actual role. The Union’s First Congress was a

widely publicized event, with speeches by leading

writers and prominent political figures.

The Union had chapters at the All-Union, re-

public, regional, and city level; however, there was

no Russian Republic chapter until 1955. In theory,

the Union’s activities were funded by membership

fees; in reality it was heavily subsidized by the So-

viet state. The Union’s controlling body was

known at different times as the Presidium, Secre-

tariat, or Litburo (Literary Bureau). Appointments

to this body were controlled by the Communist

Party’s Central Committee. Union leaders, who

were often little-known writers, were expected to

ensure the implementation of Party policies in lit-

erature. By having writers police one another, the

Central Committee created the illusion of peer re-

view and undermined group solidarity.

The Union oversaw Soviet literary journals and

ran its own publishing house, Sovetskii pisatel. It

organized meetings where writers were encouraged

to discuss themes favored by the Party, and local

chapters sometimes held preliminary readings of

members’ works. Its main task, however, was to

reward or punish writers, depending on their level

of cooperation with the Party’s agenda. The Union

controlled many aspects of its members’ everyday

lives, from housing, medical care, and vacations, to

access to consumer goods; the quality and extent

of these benefits depended on writers’ cooperation.

Rewards could be considerable. As a result, election

to the Union was a coveted prize.

On the other hand, the Union could publicly

censure members or prevent the publication of their

work. Under Stalin, Union leaders were expected to

sanction members’ arrest or execution. After 1953,

however, the Union’s worst sanction was expul-

sion from its ranks. Not only were expelled mem-

bers deprived of access to Union resources, but they

could no longer publish in the Soviet Union. Only

Union members could engage in writing as their

main profession. The poet Joseph Brodsky, who

was not a Union member, was arrested in 1964 as

a social parasite.

The Writers’ Union provided the template for

other creative unions, such as those for composers,

filmmakers, and artists. The Union’s influence

ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, though

some branches have reconstituted themselves. The

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Russian Federation branch has become a bastion of

extreme nationalism.

See also: BRODSKY, JOSEPH ALEXANDROVICH; GORKY,

MAXIM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, Edward J. (1982). Russian Literature Since the Rev-

olution, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press.

Garrard, John and Carol. (1990). Inside the Soviet Writ-

ers’ Union. New York: The Free Press.

Soviet Writers’ Congress. (1934). The Debate on Realism

and Modernism in the Soviet Union. London: Lawrence

and Wishart, Ltd.

RIAN

ASSOF

UNION OF STRUGGLE FOR THE

EMANCIPATION OF LABOR

Although preceded by several smaller groups, the

Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the

Working Class was the first important Marxist rev-

olutionary organization founded inside Russia in

the 1890s. Established in 1895 in St. Petersburg, it

adopted its permanent name in December of that

year. Its twenty or so members, mainly students

and student-age intellectuals, included future lead-

ers of Social Democracy, the movement that gave

birth to Bolshevism, Menshevism, and the October

Revolution. Among them were Vladimir Ulyanov

(Lenin), the future Bolshevik, and Iuly Tsederbaum

(Martov), the future Menshevik. Some workers

were associated with the Union, but not with mem-

bership rights.

During its first years the Union’s most note-

worthy activity was the distribution of agitational

leaflets to Petersburg workers in support of their

strike actions. As a matter of caution, the Union

tended to avoid leaflets that were overtly political

or revolutionary, but because strikes were still il-

legal, even leaflets confined to workers’ economic

grievances were treated as acts of rebellion by the

police. In the winter of 1895–1896 and again that

summer, the Union was weakened by arrests, an-

ticipating many more arrests and hence frequent

turnovers in its membership and a weakening of

its effectiveness. Nevertheless, it continued func-

tioning, and in early summer 1896 and January

1897 it played a major role in supporting the mil-

itant textile strikes that forced the government to

recognize the power of workers and to reduce the

length of the workday (law of June 2, 1897). Dur-

ing this period the Union spawned similar organi-

zations in other cities and maintained contact with

revolutionaries abroad.

In 1896 and 1897 the successes of the Peters-

burg workers’ movement precipitated conflicts

within the Union. Younger members (molodye) be-

lieved that the time was ripe to open the organi-

zation’s ranks to worker representatives chosen by

participants in the grassroots labor movement,

while the somewhat older “veterans” (stariki), in-

cluding exiled founders of the Union such as Lenin,

while not opposing the admission of individual

workers who met their political and ideological

standards, balked at the admission of workers cho-

sen by worker groups lest their presence dilute the

Union’s political ideology. Tensions over this issue

persisted, but as Lenin and the stariki became less

influential, the organization became increasingly

worker-friendly. From 1898 to 1902 it was run

mainly by worker-phile Marxists whose position

was subjected to intense and exaggerated criticism

by Lenin, Martov, and others, who accused it of

economism. Although the influence of the Union

waxed and waned, it managed to survive this pe-

riod of internal disagreement, rivalry, and frag-

mentation among Russia’s Marxists, remaining a

focal point of organized Social Democracy in St. Pe-

tersburg. Until the summer of 1902, when it

briefly and tentatively adhered to the organization

“Iskra”—then dominated by Leninist fears of

worker spontaneity—the Union was mainly a close

ally of workers’ organizations. By 1903, however,

its independent identity was lost, as its niche in the

organizational life of Russian Marxism became in-

distinguishable from that of the Petersburg Com-

mittee of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’

Party.

See also: BOLSHEVISM; MENSHEVIKS; SOCIAL DEMOCRA-

TIC WORKERS’ PARTY; WORKERS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Frankel, Jonathan, ed. (1969). Vladimir Akimov on the

Dilemmas of Russian Marxism, 1895–1903. Cam-

bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Haimson, Leopold H. (1955). The Russian Marxists and

the Origins of Bolshevism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

Keep, John L. H. (1963). The Rise of Social Democracy in

Russia. London: Oxford University Press.

UNION OF STRUGGLE FOR THE EMANCIPATION OF LABOR

1611

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Pipes, Richard. (1963). Social Democracy and the St. Pe-

tersburg Labor Movement, 1885–1897. Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press.

Wildman, Allan K. (1967). The Making of a Workers’ Rev-

olution: Russian Social Democracy, 1891–1903.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

EGINALD

E. Z

ELNIK

UNION TREATY

The Union Treaty, often referred to as the new

Union Treaty, represented an attempt by Soviet

party leader and president Mikhail Gorbachev to

renegotiate the terms of the original treaty that es-

tablished the USSR in December 1922 in the hope

of precluding the disintegration of the country. The

first of several drafts of the new treaty was made

public in November 1990, but it was never signed.

The notion that a new Union Treaty was nec-

essary to redress the balance between the central

authorities in Moscow and the fifteen constituent

republics of the USSR was first advanced in the

Baltic republics in 1988. By early 1990 even the

conservative party leadership in Ukraine recognized

that a new Union treaty would be required. Ini-

tially Gorbachev and his team resisted demands for

a new basic document that would give the republics

more rights and prerogatives within the Soviet fed-

eration. At the long awaited plenum of the Central

Committee of the CPSU, convened in September

1989 to discuss interethnic relations, the platform

adopted by the party on nationalities policy specif-

ically rejected the need for a new Union treaty, ar-

guing that the Soviet constitution itself was a

treaty document and that it was sufficient to guar-

antee the rights of the republics.

Secessionist pressures in the republics, how-

ever, particularly in the Baltic states, forced Gor-

bachev to change his course. In February 1990 both

Estonia and Lithuania demanded that bilateral ne-

gotiations begin to restore their independence. In

March Lithuania declared outright that it had

reestablished independence.

The first indication that Moscow was prepared

to consider a new federative arrangement came at

the February 1990 plenum of the Central Com-

mittee of the CPSU. In his report to the plenum,

Gorbachev, although not conceding that a new doc-

ument should be drawn up, referred to the need for

a further development of the treaty principle and

suggested that different constitutional arrange-

ments were possible with individual republics. But

it was not until mid-June of that year that the

USSR Council of the Federation—a body created the

previous March and initially composed of the pres-

idents or parliamentary chairmen of the fifteen

Union republics—decided to set up a working

group of representatives from the Union republics

to draft the treaty. Toward the end of the month

the working group held its first session.

The decision to begin work on a new Union

Treaty was prompted by the belated realization that

the relatively democratic parliamentary elections

held in the republics in the spring would result in

legislative bodies that would be much more force-

ful in defending their national rights and much less

willing to compromise with Moscow than their

predecessors. Interestingly the Council of the Fed-

eration acted on the same day (June 12) that the

Russian republic proclaimed its sovereignty. In the

meantime, pressure had been building in the re-

publics, most of which were no longer satisfied

with a looser federation and were now insisting on

confederation. The Baltic representatives, for their

part, refused to even participate in the working

group.

The first draft of the new Union Treaty was

made public at the end of November 1990. It con-

sisted of a brief introduction and three sections

devoted to (1) fundamental principles, (2) the struc-

ture of the Union, and (3) the organs of power and

administration. The draft omitted references to so-

cialism and proposed that the country be renamed

the Union of Sovereign Soviet Republics. It en-

hanced the role of the Council of the Federation,

which was upgraded from a consultative body to

a policymaking organ with the power to make de-

cisions, and abolished the USSR Congress of Peo-

ple’s Deputies. Although the document contained

some concessions to the republics that had been leg-

islated earlier in the year, it fell far short of the ex-

pectations that had already been voiced by almost

all of the republics. Most importantly the draft was

completely out of step with the sovereignty decla-

rations of the republics and it continued to retain

the federative principle. It also upgraded the status

of the autonomous units, most of which were in

the Russian republic. This was seen as a calculated

step directed against the Union republics. In sum,

the new draft treaty was very much a product of

decisions made by the central leadership rather than

an agreement between the republics and the cen-

ter.

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

By the end of 1990 the three Baltic republics,

Armenia, and Georgia had either declared their in-

dependence or stated that they would regain inde-

pendence after a transitional period—that is, they

were not prepared to sign the new Union Treaty

under any circumstances. Most of the autonomous

formations had declared sovereignty. In Ukraine

student demonstrations in October brought down

the government and resulted in a parliamentary de-

cision not to sign a new Union treaty until the po-

litical and economic situation in the republic was

stabilized and a new constitution was adopted. In

practice this meant indefinite postponement. Once

again Gorbachev was offering too little, too late.

Gorbachev seems not to have understood the na-

ture of the national mobilization that was rapidly

gaining momentum throughout the Soviet Union,

confidently predicting that the new Union Treaty

would be signed by the end of the year. In Decem-

ber he gained approval from the Congress of Peo-

ple’s Deputies to hold a referendum on a renewed

federation on March 17, 1991, the results of which

he hoped would pressure the republics into signing

a new treaty.

A second draft of the treaty, which gave more

rights to the republics but still retained the federal

structure, was published in early March and sent

to the republics for approval. It was the product of

negotiations among eight Union republics (the

RSFSR, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,

Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan), over a

dozen autonomous units, and representatives of the

center; Azerbaijan participated as an observer. The

document was immediately dismissed by the Russ-

ian and Ukrainian leaders, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid

Kravchuk. Although the referendum yielded a 76

percent majority in favor of a renewed federation

(the Baltic states, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova

boycotted the vote), negotiations on the new Union

Treaty remained stalled. In response Gorbachev

convened a meeting in Novo-Ogarevo outside of

Moscow on April 23 with representatives of the

nine Union republics that took part in the referen-

dum. The result, a five-point statement known as

the 9+1 agreement, was considered to be a major

breakthrough to the extent that it recognized the

sovereignty of the republics and recognized the need

for a cardinal increase in their role. In the final

analysis, however, it was nothing more than an

agreement about the need for an agreement. In June

the Ukrainian parliament ruled that it would post-

pone negotiations until after mid-September. The

ensuing negotiations throughout the summer in

Novo-Ogarevo, commonly referred to as the Novo-

Ogarevo process, were difficult and contradictory,

but an agreement was finally reached that five re-

publics (the RSFSR, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbek-

istan, and Tajikistan) would initial the draft treaty

on August 20; Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turk-

menistan said they would sign in September. The

abortive coup in Moscow on August 19, whose or-

ganizers wanted to forestall the signing of the

treaty, effectively brought the Novo-Ogarevo process

to an end.

In the radically transformed political situation

after the attempted coup, with Gorbachev’s stand-

ing severely diminished and one after another of

the republics declaring their full independence,

prospects for a new Union Treaty seemed remote.

In particular, Ukraine’s declaration of independence

on August 24 stunned observers both within and

outside the USSR. Thereafter, Ukraine refused to

partake in any discussions about the future of the

country until after its referendum on independence

scheduled for December 1. Nevertheless, Gorbachev

pressed ahead, threatening to resign and predicting

global catastrophe if a new treaty was not signed.

In October he and the leaders of eight republics, in-

cluding Yeltsin, issued an appeal to the Ukrainian

parliament to reconsider. Ukrainian lawmakers re-

sponded that they would not entertain the prospect

of being included in another country. By Novem-

ber Kravchuk was saying that a new Union Treaty

was nonsense.

Russia, in contrast, continued to support the

idea of some kind of union until the very end. In

mid-November it agreed in principle (along with

Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan,

Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan) to sign the latest ver-

sion of the treaty, which now foresaw a confeder-

ation called the Union of Sovereign States. The text

was published by Izvestia on November 25. On the

same day, seven republics met again with Gor-

bachev—this time Azerbaijan was absent but

Uzbekistan was present—who expected the draft to

be signed by those attending. Instead the session

broke up in rancor and the representatives of the

republics revised the text once again, without Gor-

bachev.

After December 1, 1991, when more than 90

percent of Ukraine’s voters endorsed their parlia-

ment’s independence declaration, discussion about

a new Union treaty became irrelevant. The follow-

ing week the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

See also: AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH; UNION OF SOVEREIGN

STATES

UNION TREATY

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY