This is relatively familiar ground, but there is Country Email List also the question of Ukraine's role in Soviet politics and government in the post-Stalin period. During the writing of my latest book, The Shortest History of the Soviet UnionI was quite interested in Country Email List this topic. The post-Stalin period, especially from the 1960s, was much easier for Ukraine. Nikita Khrushchev, a Russian born in the Ukraine, had been the head of the Party in that region at the end Country Email List of the Stalin period, and when he rose to higher echelons in Moscow.
He kept many Ukrainian friends, who of Country Email List course did very well under his leadership. mandate. At that time, the leaders of the Ukrainian Party, although appointed by Moscow, were always ethnic Ukrainians; and Ukrainian representation in the Country Email List Politburo increased and remained important during the Leonid Brezhnev period. During the late Soviet period, Ukraine seemed to be one of the most successful republics, it was doing quite well, and compared to other republics of the ussrShe felt quite pleased with herself. Although a Country Email List dissident nationalist movement existed, it was relatively small at the time.
This makes it easier to understand the fact Country Email List that, when Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika failed and the question of republican sovereignty and separation entered the agenda of the leaders of the Soviet republics, Ukraine was not in the first line. The Country Email List Baltic states were the ones that really wanted to get out the fastest and the ones that had a popular opinion that strongly supported the separatist leaders. The leaders of Georgia Country Email List and Armenia were also moving toward exit in 1990-1991, with the support of public opinion in their republics. But that was not the case in Ukraine.