Overview
Following the Second World War, the territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was expanded to include territories annexed from pre-war Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. Crimea was later transferred to the Ukrainian SSR from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1954, after the death of Josef Stalin. Following Stalin's death, two Soviet leaders from Ukraine and brought up through the Ukrainian party system, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, dominated Soviet politics from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s. Ukraine was rebuilt from the devastation of the war, maintaining its status as the agricultural breadbasket of the Soviet Union and developing a significant industrial sector during the postwar period.
A significant event for Ukraine, the Soviet Union, and the entire world occurred in 1986, when reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant melted down and exploded. This led to airborne radioactive contamination that spread from the reactor, the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from their homes, and the creation of an exclusion zone that is still present today. Chernobyl became a symbol for the problems of the latter Soviet period and a symptom of its decline.
For brief account of the history of postwar Soviet Ukraine, navigate to the section on "History of Ukraine," beginning on page 190 and ending on page 193, from:
Kubijovyč, Volodymyr, ed. “H.” In Encyclopedia of Ukraine: Volume II: G-K, 108–293. University of Toronto Press, 1988. http://ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/login?url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt15jvz0h.3.
For a brief overview of the Chernobyl disaster, see:
“UNSCEAR Assessments of the Chernobyl Accident.” Accessed March 15, 2022. https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html.
Ukraine: Perestroika to Independence, 2nd ed. by Call Number: DK508.84 .K89 2000ISBN: 9780312216740Publication Date: 2000The Ukrainian vote for independence in December 1991 effectively ended the existence of the Soviet Union, with the Ukraine being the second largest republic to have emerged from the ruins of the USSR. This country the same size as France in land and population will play an increasingly important role in regional and world affairs as a new military and potential economic power. The main focus of this book is the transition in Ukraine from the policies ofperestroikaandglasnost, first introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev, to the ultimate break with Moscow which brought an end to both the Soviet Union and Gorbachev's own career. This second edition is expanded and updated to include greater detail of developments within Ukraine and within a broader Soviet context.
Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe by Call Number: TK1362.U38 P555 2018ISBN: 9781541617094Publication Date: 2018On the morning of April 26, 1986, Europe witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. Dozens died of radiation poisoning, fallout contaminated half the continent, and thousands fell ill.
In Chernobyl, Serhii Plokhy draws on new sources to tell the dramatic stories of the firefighters, scientists, and soldiers who heroically extinguished the nuclear inferno. He lays bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry, tracing the disaster to the authoritarian character of the Communist party rule, the regime's control over scientific information, and its emphasis on economic development over all else.
Today, the risk of another Chernobyl looms in the mismanagement of nuclear power in the developing world. A moving and definitive account, Chernobyl is also an urgent call to action
Remaking Ukraine after World War II: The Clash of Local and Central Soviet Power by ISBN: 9781108879293Publication Date: 2021Ukraine was liberated from German wartime occupation by 1944 but remained prisoner to its consequences for much longer. In this long aftermath of war, local Soviet authorities in Ukraine challenged central authorities in post-WWII Ukraine over land, food and power for the sake of rebuilding their decimated country. Most challenging for local Soviet authorities in reconstructing central Ukraine was feeding the rapidly growing urban populations in what remained of Ukraine's war-torn cities. With little help from central authorities in Moscow to meet this challenge, local authorities wrested control over local food supplies by dismantling collective farms designed to fund the entire Soviet economy and transformed rural areas under Moscow's control to urban ones under theirs. They undermined the Stalinist policies they were supposed to implement. Local authorities rank insubordination to Moscow stopped only when the collective farmers, whom the local authorities had evicted from their land, finally enlisted Moscow's support in their long fight to recover it. This book shows that the consequences of this battle shaped post-war reconstruction and continue to resonate in the contemporary rural landscape of central Ukraine, especially in the people it hurt the most
Russia, Ukraine and the Breakup of the Soviet Union by Call Number: DK67.5 .U38 S98 2000ISBN: 9780817995423Publication Date: 2000Focusing on the critical relationship between Ukraine and Russia, renowned scholar Roman Szporluk chronicles the final two decades in the history of the Soviet Union and presents a story that is often lost in the standard interpretations of the collapse of communism.
The Near Abroad: Socialist Eastern Europe and Soviet Patriotism in Ukraine, 1956-1985 by ISBN: 9781442631069Publication Date: 2017From the Soviet perspective, Eastern Europe was the near abroad - more accessible than the capitalist West, yet also unambiguously foreign. Observing their western neighbours, citizens of the USSR developed new ideas about the role of states, borders, and national identities in the Soviet empire.
In The Near Abroad, Zbigniew Wojnowski traces how Soviet Ukrainian identities developed in dialogue and confrontation with the USSR's neighbours in Eastern Europe. The author aptly challenges the dominant chronologies of late Soviet history by arguing that patriotism framed heated debates about the future of the Soviet state even amongst the rising tide of cynicism and disengagement from public life. Wojnowski's insightful analysis illuminates the mental geographies that continue to shape relations and conflicts between Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe to this very day. Unlike most other histories of Ukraine, The Near Abroad does not reduce Ukrainian nationalism to anti-Soviet views and behaviours.
