Welcome everyone! Travel throughout the Ukraine at Ukrainetrek.com where you will find the latest information and pictures about Ukraine.

Central Ukraine | Western Ukraine | Eastern Ukraine | Southern Ukraine

• Ukraine history - The beginning
• Ukraine history - Russian Empire
• Ukraine history - Soviet Union
• Ukraine history - independent Ukraine

After the Russian Revolution of February 1917, Ukrainian and Bolshevik forces struggled for control of Ukraine until 1921, when the Soviet government emerged victorious. In 1924 the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic became one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union. Northwestern Ukraine (including Galicia and part of Volhynia) remained in the hands of Poland, which had fought against the Bolsheviks with some degree of success in 1919-1920.

Ukraine history - Soviet Union period symbol

Beginning in the 1930s, the Soviet government under Joseph Stalin carried out a policy of rapid industrialization and collectivization of agriculture in the Ukrainian S.S.R. Collectivization met with peasant resistance, which in turn prompted the confiscation of grain from Ukrainian farmers by Soviet authorities, with the result that a famine in the early 1930s took an estimated five million lives. In that same decade, the Soviet regime tightened its control over Ukrainian cultural life, and any remaining manifestations of Ukrainian nationalism were suppressed.

Ukraine history - Soviet Union period symbol of friendship between Ukraine and Russia

The German-Soviet Treaty of Nonaggression (1939) that extinguished independent Poland brought the territories of eastern Galicia and western Volhynia into the Ukrainian S.S.R.

Ukraine history - Soviet Union period postcard

Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union (1941) and its rapid conquest of Ukraine initially found some local support. But the Germans' ruthless exploitation of Ukrainian agriculture and labor to meet their own needs soon provoked guerrilla resistance.

Ukraine history - Soviet Union period streets

After the defeat of the Germans in 1945, all the ethnically Ukrainian lands that had been part of Poland, Romania, or Czechoslovakia between the World Wars were taken by the Soviet Union, with most of them going to the Ukrainian S.S.R. In 1945 it became a founding member of the United Nations. The Crimea was transferred from the Russian Federated Republic to Ukraine in 1954 as an act of "friendship".

Ukraine history - Soviet Union period Kiev streets

During the 1960s and 1970s a dissident movement emerged that was critical of Soviet policies toward Ukraine. Intellectuals played a leading role in dissent, and Soviet authorities imprisoned thousands of dissidents.

The April 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station near Kiev caused a major radiation fallout in Ukraine and neighboring countries. Recent estimates by Ukrainian experts state that 6,000 to 8,000 people have died as a result of the Chernobyl accident and its aftermath. Cancer and other health problems have grown among the populace.

Ukraine history - Soviet Union period Pripyat city near Chernobyl nuclear power station