Western Ukraine and Crimea Do Not Join 'Ukraine'

Malta

What if Kruschev had not assigned the Crimea Oblast to Ukraine and what if the West Ukraine/Galicia Socialist Republic had not joinnned with the Kiev Ukranian Republic?
 
BBadolato

BBadolato

You would probably need someone who wouldn't favor his "native" land, so you need someone other then Kruschev. That being said we would just have more states after a possible break up of the Union, with maybe some tensions involved.
 

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
First of all, someone else has to succeed Stalin who isn't named Khrushchev. Second, Western Ukraine's independence could be achieved if they manage to win against Poland in the Polish-Ukrainian War or if they could force Poland into a war of attrition.
 

David T

Malta said:
What if Kruschev had not assigned the Crimea Oblast to Ukraine and what if the West Ukraine/Galicia Socialist Republic had not joinnned with the Kiev Ukranian Republic?
Click to expand...

On the Galician SSR, an old soc.history.what-if post of mine:


It is difficult for me to see the Galician SSR as lasting, though--even if
the Soviets did a bit better in the Soviet-Polish war and retained control of
Eastern Galicia. [1] (This could have other consequences of course, such as a
common Soviet-Czechoslvak border; see
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/browse_thread/thread/22474cfdd8bbcad
and
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/browse_thread/thread/403aa412084f6b13
for discussions.) The Galician Revolutionary Committee ("The chairman of the
committee was V. Zatonsky and the secretary was I. Nemolovsky - both natives
of eastern Ukraine, unfamiliar with conditions in Galicia" according to the
admittedly biased--but who isn't?--*Encyclopedia of Ukraine*, Volume 2) and
Galician SSR look to me like a temporary arrangement, to get the peoples of
Eastern Galicia (the majority of whom were Ukrainian--especially since the
Galician SSR did not even go as far west as Lwow/L'viv--but with Polish and
Jewish minorities) who had never been a part of any modern Russian state
except for a not exactly happy period [2] during World War I, and who had
briefly been part of the abortive *Western* Ukrainian Republic, to get used
to Soviet rule and eventual incorporation into the Ukrainian SSR.

The two reasons I don't see it as lasting--at least not as a Union Republic--
are that

(1) There was no pretence of there being a separate Galician language--and
every Union Republic had its own titular language. There was no claim made,
AFAIK, that the Galician dialects of Ukrainian were not realy Ukrainian;
rather, Ukrainian was recognized as the language of the republic, along with
Polish and Yiddish.

(Incidentally, the claim that Galician is a "foreign" "Polonized" dialect of
Ukrainian, maybe even not Ukrainian at all, has been made recently by
Russians and pro-Russian Ukrainians, who argue that since 1991, this "alien"
dialect--further corrupted by American and other western influences among the
Galician diaspora--has been forced upon the people of the rest of Ukraine as
standard Ukrainian! See Michael Moser, "Colonial Lingusitic Reflexes in a
Post-Soviet Setting: The Galician Variant of the Ukrainian Language and
Anti-Ukrainian Discourse in Contemporary Internet Sources," chapter 20 of
Larissa M. Zaleska Onyshkevych and Maria G. Rewakowicz, eds., *Contemporary
Ukraine on the Cultural Map of Europe* (2009). But AFAIK the idea of
Galician as a separate language was never put forward by the Bolsheviks in
1920.)

(2) In the 1920's the Soviets did try to appease Ukrainian national
aspirations somewhat, and certainly most Ukrainians, Bolshevik or otherwise,
regarded East Galicia as ethnically Ukrainian, even if for military reasons
in OTL it had to be left with Poland. (Petliura's recognizing Poland's
control of East Galicia in order to get Polish help against the Bolsheviks in
1920 was bitterly resented by many Ukrainian nationalists, despite the
obvious necessity of Polish aid if the Bolsheviks were to be driven from
Ukraine--though in the end even that wasn't enough.) I think the unification
of the Galician SSR with the Ukrainian SSR would be a minimum demand of any
Ukrainian Communists with even the slightest national consciousness (and even
some without it)...

Now of course the fact that it is logically absurd to say that the Galician
dialects aren't really Ukrainian, whereas, say, Volhynian ones are, need not
in itself be decisive. Politics took precedence over logical consistency
where Bolshevik nationalities policy was concerned. A "Galician" language
and nationality could be invented if necessary. But I just don't see any
significant *political* advantages to the Bolsheviks in keeping a Soviet East
Galicia permanently separate from Soviet Ukraine, and I see a major
disadvantage in alienating Ukrainians both in Soviet lands and in the
Ukrainian western diaspora.

I suppose that if the Galician SSR went deeper into Polish territory--yet an
anti-Soviet Poland survived--the more heavily Polish areas in it might form a
Galician ASSR within the Ukrainian SSR, by analogy with the Moldavian ASSR.
But it's hard for me to see the war ending with Poland undefeated, yet the
Soviets controlling more than the easternmost part of Galicia.

[1] If the Soviets win a complete victory, I would expect to see western
Galicia remain with now-Red Poland (whether Red Poland will be inside or at
least nominally outside the future Soviet federation), and eastern Galicia go
to the Ukrainiain SSR. The one thing I am not certain about is whether the
victorious Soviets will insist in 1920--as Stalin did in 1945--on the version
of the Curzon Line which excludes Lwow/L'viv from Poland.

[2] Except for a Russophile minority.
 

whitecrow

Banned
All these "WI Ukraine is split in the past" scenarios seem to ignore the aspirations of Ukrainian nationalists. Apparently, the borders of a Ukrainian state proposed by the Ukrainian delegation at the post-WW1 Paris Peace Conference of 1919 looked something like this:

nfbukraine.gif


As you can see, with the exception of the Kuban region in the Caucasus, the borders of the proposed state look very similar to the borders of what ended up being OTL Ukraine. So I assume if Kruschev doesn't change the borders there will be pressure from Ukrainian nationalists to do so. And who knows, if nothing is done about it maybe you get another Nagorno-Karabakh type conflict in the end :eek:.
 

whitecrow

Banned
David T said:
Politics took precedence over logical consistency where Bolshevik nationalities policy was concerned. A "Galician" language and nationality could be invented if necessary.
Click to expand...
As you can tell from my above post I agree with your assessment of "separate Ukrainian SSRs are unlikely". But I do wonder, in an event where "inventing" a new identity for Western Ukrainian SSR was needed if Rusyn identity and Rusyn language could be promoted and put on the pedestal?
 

snerfuplz

whitecrow said:
All these "WI Ukraine is split in the past" scenarios seem to ignore the aspirations of Ukrainian nationalists. Apparently, the borders of a Ukrainian state proposed by the Ukrainian delegation at the post-WW1 Paris Peace Conference of 1919 looked something like this:

As you can see, with the exception of the Kuban region in the Caucasus, the borders of the proposed state look very similar to the borders of what ended up being OTL Ukraine. So I assume if Kruschev doesn't change the borders there will be pressure from Ukrainian nationalists to do so. And who knows, if nothing is done about it maybe you get another Nagorno-Karabakh type conflict in the end :eek:.
Click to expand...

What the hell where they thinking wanting Kuban :confused:
 
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