Joseph Stalin, the successor to Vladimir Lenin, viewed the growth of the Ukrainian national identity that had been tolerated by his predecessor after the first famine of 1921 with increasing alarm. The loss of Russian influence was unacceptable to him.

” A meeting of the Politburo viewed a report that the students in Kiev no longer know how to speak Russian. Everyone was shocked, ‘How can that be?’ they asked.”

~Ivan Majstrenko, Former Marxist Instructor of Journalism in Ukraine

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In the 1920s during Ukraine's cultural renaissance, Russian was treated like French, German or any other foreign language in Ukrainian schools. Stalin viewed this as a direct threat that Kiev could become the capital of an Independent Ukraine.

Thousands of Ukrainian language parishes sprung up across the country. For the first time since the 17th century, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church established independence from the Moscow Patriarchate.

In the arts, Ukraine began to model itself after Western influences rather than Russian ones. Ukrainian poets and writers created literature that was uniquely Ukrainian. Mykola Oleksiyovych Skrypnyk, the head of the Ukrainian Soviet Government, viewed himself as an equal to Stalin and that the USSR was a sort of “League of Nations” instead of a single whole. Whenever he would go to Moscow, he would bring a translator along despite speaking fluent Russian. He even with some success managed to establish a cultural protectorate over Ukrainian communities in Russia, even calling for direct annexation of the majority of Ukrainian border areas.

By 1928, Stalin had become the law of the Soviet system. All effective resistance within the Politburo has been eliminated and the dream of a world communist revolution never materialized. As he strengthens communism within his borders, he also injects increasing amounts of Russian nationalism into his rhetoric and policies. Ukrainian individuality is no longer tolerated.

1929, Stalin strikes at Ukraine's heart and mind, the church and intelligentsia. Over the next few years, systematic liquidation of Ukrainian intellectuals would take place perpetrated by the Bolshevik Communist Regime. 5,000 Scholars, scientists, poets, and artists who were prominent during Ukraine's independence are arrested for allegedly belonging to the SVU, a secret organization the Soviets claim was preparing for armed counter-revolution. Only forty-five would see a public trial, no evidence is considered necessary. Thousands upon thousands would be imprisoned, deported and then executed as arrests continued throughout the thirties, even the church is accused of being involved in this alleged plot.

” Many Priests were arrested, many sent to Siberian concentration camps, many shot. My father was one of them, he never came back. I know this from personal experience, thirty Bishops were murdered, thousands of Priests perished, hundreds of thousands of faithful were liquidated”

~ Alexander Bykovetz, Survivor from Poltava

” The church was full of people, some communists rode inside on horseback and ordered me to undress. It was March, there was snow outside. The snow was melting and I walked in water up to my knees while they rode on horseback. They interrogated me, but I didn’t answer their questions. For this, I was awarded with pistol blows across my back.”

~ Fedot Shpachenko, Survivor from Kiev

” They began taking down the icons and smashing them on the ground. The people wanted to go inside the church, but they didn’t let them. They ruined everything, smashed everything in the church and the people stood outside crying because they couldn’t do anything. When a man went up to remove the bell and that bell fell to the ground and rang out, all the people wept and said goodbye to the bell because that was the last time that bell rang.”

~ Alexandra Kowalska, Wife of Priest from Poltava

By 1930, only the Russian Orthodox Church remained.

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In October 1928, Stalin introduced a drastic five-year plan to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union and transform it from a backwards rural society to a self-sufficient, fully industrialized empire virtually overnight. Military defence took priority, socialism had to be protected from all future enemies. Western technology was urgently needed and to pay for it, Stalin used the only exportable resource he could use as timber had been embargoed by the West after it was revealed the Soviets were using concentration camp labour for forestry. Grain.

Stalin decreed to compulsory collectivization of agriculture and henceforth, all tools, livestock and private land will become the property of the State. The farmer will work as a labourer for pay, like a factory worker in the city. One of the intriguing elements brought about by this was that it brought together both the peasant question as well as the nationality question in a way that was somewhat different than in other areas because, in Ukraine, Ukrainians tended to concentrate in rural areas and the city areas, particularly in eastern Ukraine, it was Russian and Jewish populations that dominated. So any policies that the Bolsheviks adopted toward the peasants had an obvious impact on Ukrainians very directly.

With the destruction of intellectuals and the church well underway, Stalin focused on breaking the farmers, the backbone of the nation. Anticipating fierce resistance, he orders the liquidation of the Kulaks as a class.