Ukrainian Sudzha, Taganrog, Voronezh, and Kuban. How and when ethnic Ukrainian lands became Russian
Did you know that at one time Voronezh universities taught in Ukrainian? And that Currently, the city in the Rostov region of RussiaTaganrog and Currently, the center of the coal industry in the Rostov region of Russia, 155 km from LuhanskShakhty of Rostov region were officially part of Soviet Ukraine? And, besides In 1918, the city of Sudzha was the capital of Soviet Ukraine for almost a monthSudzha, Belgorod was also once the capital of Ukraine?
Administrative division in the Russian Empire never took into account the ethnic factor. Governorates were created and delimited for economic or political reasons. The only exceptions were the Kingdom of Poland and the Principality of Finland, whose borders were determined precisely by the nationality of their inhabitants.
“In 1917, the The Ukrainian Central Rada was the parliament of Ukraine from March 17, 1917, to April 29, 1918.Central Rada proclaimed the creation of an autonomous Ukraine as one of its main tasks. Therefore, it had to answer the question for itself and for the world: which territories of the former Russian Empire are Ukraine? Starting with the Central Rada, all Ukrainian governments in the next decade had disputes with Russia over our border.
The Ukrainian-Russian land border, as it was as of 1991, was finally established in 1925. As a result, many territories in the north and east, where the majority of the population was Ukrainian, were not included in Ukraine,” says Hennadii Yefimenko, a senior researcher at the Institute of History of Ukraine.
With the help of a scientist, hromadske found out how the border between Russia and Ukraine was formed and why many Ukrainians found themselves on its Russian side.
Attempts of the Central Rada
The logic of the Ukrainian Central Rada was simple: Ukraine is a territory inhabited by Ukrainians, and Ukrainians are those for whom Ukrainian is their native language.
The Central Rada had statistical information: back in 1897, the Russian Empire conducted an all-Russian census, which, among other things, for the first time revealed what language was spoken in a particular administrative unit.
At that time, Ukrainian speakers prevailed in each of the counties of 7 governorates: Volyn, Katerynoslav, Podillia, Kyiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, and Kherson. And there were governorates where Ukrainians were the majority in some counties. The Voronezh governorate had the most such counties: for example, Ukrainians accounted for more than 90% of the population in Ostrogozhsk County was an administrative-territorial unit within the Voronezh province that existed in 1727-1928. The county seat is Ostrogozhsk.Ostrogozhsk county, more than 80% in Bohuchar county, and about 70% in Biryuchan county.
But The war lasted from July 28, 1914, to November 11, 1918. It involved 38 countries with a population of 1.5 billion people.World War I was still going on, and Ukraine's leaders had no time for changes in the administrative structure. And the Central Rada took the following position: let the The Provisional Government of Russia ruled the territory of the former Russian Empire between the February Revolution, which overthrew the autocratic rule of the Tsar, and the Bolshevik coup, from March 2 (15) to October 25 (November 7), 1917.Provisional Government recognize the territory of only those governorates where Ukrainians were in the majority. This meant the seven governorates listed above, plus Chernihiv and The Tavria province was an administrative-territorial unit of the Russian Empire that existed until October 18, 1921. The administrative center was Simferopol. The governorate covered the entire Crimean peninsula and a part of Steppe Ukraine with a Ukrainian majority.Tavria (along with Crimea). The rest of the Ukrainian territories, they said, would be clarified and annexed after the war ended and the The All-Russian Constituent Assembly was an elected representative institution that was entrusted by various political forces of the Russian republic with the task of finally resolving the issue of the state structure of Russia after the liquidation of the monarchy. It was dispersed by the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution.All-Russian Constituent Assembly was convened.
“The Central Rada sent a delegation to This is how St. Petersburg was known in Russia at the outbreak of the World War I.Petrograd with these proposals, but the Provisional Government ignored them. In its The document was adopted on June 23 (10), 1917.First Universal, the Central Rada proclaimed the autonomy of Ukraine. In response, a delegation of the Provisional Government arrived in Kyiv. The talks were already about ‘10 indisputable governorates’ within Ukraine — in addition to the 9 we had asked for, they planned to give us The Bessarabian Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit of the Russian Empire centered in ChisinauBessarabia.
But in the end, the Provisional Government recognized only four and a half governorates for Ukraine: Kyiv, Volyn, Poltava, Today, it is mainly the territory of Khmelnytskyi, Vinnytsia, and partially Odesa, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv regions and Moldova.Podillia, and Chernihiv without the northern four counties of Starodubsk, Surazh, Novyzybka, and Mhlynsk,” explains Hennadii Yefimenko.
Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government. The Central Rada proclaimed the A state legal act adopted on November 20 (7), 1917, after the October Revolution in Petrograd and the overthrow of the Provisional Government. It proclaimed the Ukrainian People's Republic, which maintained a federal relationship with the Russian Republic.Third Universal, which stated that the Ukrainian People's Republic would be established within the boundaries of the 9 governorates already named (but Tavriia now didn’t include Crimea). It was noted that other territories with a Ukrainian majority would later be added to the UPR. Just a few days later, the Central Rada passed a law on elections to the An elected legislative body tasked with establishing the constitution of the Ukrainian state. It was never convenedUkrainian Constituent Assembly, which were to include the population of those counties of Kursk and Voronezh where Ukrainians constituted an absolute majority. Although these counties were not formally part of the UPR.
All of the Central Rada's attempts to define Ukraine's borders took place at a very uncertain time: World War I was going on, a civil war broke out in the former Russian Empire, and the liberation struggle was raging in Ukraine.
Skoropadskyi between the Germans and the Bolsheviks
In 1918, the On April 29, 1918, the Central Rada was removed from power in Ukraine. Pavlo Skoropadskyi was proclaimed Hetman of the Ukrainian State. The Hetmanate in Ukraine lasted until December 14, 1918.Hetmanate of Skoropadskyi replaced the Central Rada in Kyiv. As opposed to the General Secretariat, the government of the UPR, the Bolsheviks created the People's Secretariat, the Soviet government of Ukraine, in December 1917. The issue of borders was now resolved in this triangle.
Mykhailo Hrushevsky was the Chairman of the Central Rada of the Ukrainian People's RepublicHrushevsky and Skoropadskyi sought to unite all ethnic Ukrainian lands, up to the Kuban, Taganrog, Zelenyi Klyn is the historical Ukrainian name for the territory of the Amur region, the southern part of the Far East, in the lower part of the Amur River and above the Pacific Ocean, with an area of about 1 million square kilometers. It was inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians. Largest cities: Khabarovsk, VladivostokZelenyi Klyn, and certain territories of Siberia. But when the The troops of Kaiser Germany, who occupied Ukraine during the World War I, were the guarantor of Pavlo Skoropadsky's power in UkraineGerman and Hetman's troops began to move beyond the territories declared in the Third Universal, the Kremlin began to shove this Universal into the Central Rada and Hetman Skoropadskyi’s faces and got the Germans to stop bringing their army into the Ukrainian counties of Voronezh.
In early May 1918, negotiations began between Skoropadskyi's The Ukrainian State covered the territory of Northern, Central, Eastern (except for a small part of Donetsk and Luhansk regions) and Southern Ukraine (except for Southern Bessarabia and Crimea), as well as the adjacent Ukrainian ethnic lands that covered most of the present-day Brest and Gomel regions of Belarus, the territory of Transnistria and some areas in northern Moldova, most of the Bryansk (Starodubshchyna), Belgorod and Voronezh (de facto only the west and south), and southern Kursk regions of Russia, as well as the Kholm region and part of Podlasie in modern Poland (de facto controlled by Austrian troops), with its capital in Kyiv from April 29 to December 14, 1918. It replaced the Ukrainian People's Republic as a result of a hetman's coup. It was led by Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi.Ukrainian State and Soviet Russia. Three months later, the accession of several counties in the Kursk region and one in the Voronezh region to the Ukrainian state was administratively formalized. These were the counties that were either under the full control of the Hetman's army or constituted a “neutral zone”: in particular, Putivl, Rylsk, Sudzha, Hraivoron, Bilhorod, Korochany, and Valuiky.
“In fact, some of these territories were not controlled by anyone. But even the Bolsheviks marked these territories on their maps as Ukrainian. That is why they established the Soviet government of Ukraine in Sudzha in November 1918. Later, this government was transferred to Belgorod for a few days, and only in January 1919, with the help of the German garrison, did it gain a foothold in Kharkiv,” the scholar says.
According to Hennadii Yefimenko, Lenin's government took into account Ukraine's desire to retain the territories of Kursk and Belgorod, where German and Ukrainian troops had managed to advance under Skoropadskyi. At the same time, while the Kuban and Don were in the hands of the White Guards, Ukrainians did not raise the fate of the Ukrainian territories there in negotiations with the Kremlin.
And Ukraine has not ratified Moscow's decision
The Directorate of the Ukrainian People's Republic was the highest state authority of the Ukrainian People's Republic, which operated from November 14, 1918, to November 10, 1920. It was headed by Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Symon Petliura.Petliura's Directorate ended the Hetmanate of Skoropadskyi. However, Petliura lost the battle for Ukraine to the Bolsheviks. Control of most of Ukraine passed to the Ukrainian Soviet government in Kharkiv. Formally, Ukraine was an independent Soviet republic. In reality, it was in the hands of Moscow.
“At the beginning of 1919, the Kremlin took the lands of the then Kursk region that had been annexed to the Ukrainian state, such as Hraivoron, Belgorod, etc. A representative of Soviet Russia at the border negotiations explained that if Ukraine suddenly left Russia's orbit, the Kursk and Belgorod black earth districts would not add anything to it. Ukraine is rich in food without them. But Russia will have a hard time without these areas. At the same time, four northern districts of Chernihiv governorate — Mglin, Surazh, Starodub, and Novozybkiv — were being bitten off from Ukraine. Since then, they have been lost to Ukraine,” says Mr. Yefimenko.
But in 1920, new political realities again prompted Moscow to change the Russian-Ukrainian border. It was then that the Bolsheviks defeated the White Movement in the The Don region is an ethno-cultural region within modern Russia, where a significant number of Ukrainians lived from the 18th century to the first half of the 20th century. The region got its name from the Don Army Region, an administrative-territorial unit of the Russian Empire. The Don region includes the lands of a large part of the modern Rostov region, as well as certain districts of the Volgograd region, the Republic of Kalmykia and the Krasnodar region of the Russian Federation. Separate regions of the historical Donbas include the Don Pryazovia (with the cities of Rostov-on-Don, Taganrog, and Azov) and Eastern Donbas (Shakhty, Kamiansk-Shakhtynsky, and Russian Donetsk). The historical center of the Don region is the city of Rostov Don region. And they decided to administratively unite the entire Donbas in Ukraine. According to the resolution of the The Presidium of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee (VUCVK) was a collegial body of state power in the Ukrainian SSR (USSR) in 1919-1938, elected by the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee and acting on its behalf.Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the Russian Central Executive Committee “On the Establishment of the Boundaries and Composition of the Donetsk Governorate” of April 16, 1920, Ukraine included part of the present-day Rostov region of Russia — in particular, the city of Shakhty and the Taganrog district, which was supposed to supply food to Donetsk industrial settlements.
“That means that the Bolsheviks were guided by economic and administrative factors, not ethnic ones. For example, more than 80% of the population of Stanytsia Luhanska is a settlement in Ukraine, the administrative center of the settlement community of the same name in the Shchastia district of the Luhansk region.Stanytsia Luhanska was Russian-speaking, but the settlement was located near Luhansk, the then center of Donetsk governorate. Therefore, it was transferred to Ukraine. And the Ukrainian-speaking Kuban was not included in Ukraine because it was separated by the The Don Region was a territorial unit of the RSFSR in 1920-1924. It was formed from the Bolshevik liquidated Don Grand Army Region.Don region with its center in Rostov, which was part of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet RepublicRSFSR,” notes Hennadii Yefimenko.
When the USSR was created in July 1923, Ukraine was included in it, along with Shakhty and Taganrog, which are now part of the Rostov region.,
Moscow decided that the borders between the newly formed Soviet republics within the USSR would be the pre-revolutionary borders between the respective governorates. That is, the ethnic factor was again not taken into account.
Although the Ukrainian Soviet government had to follow Moscow's instructions, it often disagreed with them. For example, in 1924, during the work of the The Central Executive Committee of the USSR was the highest executive body of state power in the USSR in the period between the All-Union Congresses of Soviets, which operated from the founding of the USSR in 1922 until the beginning of the powers of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the first convocation in 1938.USSR Central Executive Committee's commission on defining the border, Ukrainians made an appeal that Ukraine's administrative borders did not coincide with ethnographic ones, and this issue should be resolved “in full”.
The Ukrainian side proposed to annex to Soviet Ukraine a part of the Kursk and Voronezh governorates with a population of 2,050,956 people, 69% of whom were Ukrainians. The USSR Central Election Commission made a compromise decision to annex territories with a total population of 1,019,230 people, 58.1% of whom were Ukrainians. Among the territories to be annexed were the Belgorod and Graivoron districts of the Kursk governorate.
“But the Bolshevik leaders canceled the commission's decision! They also ignored the The Communist International (Comintern) was an international organization of communist parties aimed at bringing about a world proletarian revolution. It was founded in 1919 in Moscow on the initiative of Lenin. In 1943, Stalin dissolved the Comintern at the request of the leadership of the USSR's allies in World War II, the United States and Great Britain. Ukrainian communists appealed to the Comintern to help them reach an agreement with Moscow on border issuesComintern's resolution of December 24, 1924, which stated that the borders between Ukraine and Russia should take into account the ethnographic principle,” says historian Yefimenko.
In the end, in 1925, the Moscow authorities transferred only the Putivl district and some small territories of Kursk and Voronezh regions to Ukraine and took away Shakhty and Taganrog from Ukraine. This is how the border between Ukraine and Soviet Russia was finally formed.
“In 1925, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR adopted a resolution of October 16, On the Settlement of the Borders of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet RepublicUkrainian SSR with the BSSR and RSFSR. The resolution was then to be ratified by the All-Ukrainian Congress of Deputies. Because the issue of changing territories was within its competence. But the issue of ratification was not even raised in Ukraine. Formally, the procedure did not take place. Although in fact the borders have changed,” says Hennadii Yefimenko.
In order not to offend the Russians
Could it be that Ukrainians did not ratify Moscow's decree because they fundamentally disagreed with it? In June 1926, the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of UkraineCentral Committee of the CP(B)U “On the Results of Ukrainianization” even instructed the Central Committee's The Political Bureau is the governing body of communist partiesPolitburo: “Continue to work on the unification of all territories with a Ukrainian majority bordering the Ukrainian SSR and being part of the Soviet Union.”
The results of the all-Union census conducted in December 1926 added to the acuteness of the issue. It showed that a huge number of people who identified themselves as Ukrainians during the census lived on the lands that Russia had taken away. In the Kursk and Voronezh regions, for example, there were 26 districts dominated by Ukrainians. And in the North Caucasus (Kuban and Rostov region), there were as many as 37!
According to Hennadii Yefimenko, in May 1928, Mykola Skrypnyk, People's Commissar of Education of the Ukrainian SSR, addressed the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine with an official proposal to change the borders of Ukraine. The Politburo approved the request to transfer to Ukraine the districts of the Kursk and Voronezh governorates, which were inhabited mostly by Ukrainians. Lazar Kahanovych, the head of the CP(B)U, addressed this proposal to the Kremlin. But Moscow did not want to hear the Ukrainian Politburo. The borders remained unchanged.
At a meeting with Stalin in 1929, Ukrainian writers raised the issue of borders. “In the Central Committee, we studied the issue twice and left it without consequences. We must be especially careful, because such changes provoke enormous resistance from some Russians,” Stalin replied to the writers.
The maximum that Ukrainians managed to achieve from Moscow was the Ukrainization of education in those areas outside of Ukraine where Ukrainians were the majority of the population. Mykola Skrypnyk organized 500 Ukrainian schools in Russia and Ukrainian departments at universities in Voronezh, Kuban, and even in the Omsk region. Later, Moscow would call this “Petliurism”, and Skrypnyk would be labeled a counterrevolutionary for his pro-Ukrainian position. He would shoot himself in 1933.
“Lenin once noted that each ethnic group should be left with a minimum of its national territory. Stalin had no single approach to solving this issue. He pinched off as much as possible from Ukraine. Moldova, on the other hand, was created as a union republic within its ethnic territories. Apparently, the less threatening a certain ethnic group was to the authorities, the more territory it could be allocated,” Hennadii Yefimenko summarizes the conversation.
