Comparative Analysis of the Policy of Ukrainization in the 1920s – 1930s in the SouthEastern Areas of the Ukrainian SSR and in the Kuban Area of the North Caucasus Territory of the RSFSR

Abstract

 The nationality policy that was implemented in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) in the 1920s and 1930s led to major changes in the field of culture and education. However, this policy had not always been successful in the Ukrainian SSR and some other regions of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), e.g. in the south-eastern areas of the Ukrainian SSR and in the Kuban Area of the North Caucasus Territory of the RSFSR. In this regard, the purpose of thе article was to perform a comparative analysis of the content, directions and results of the policy of Ukrainization in the south-eastern areas of the Ukrainian SSR and in the Kuban Area of the North Caucasus Territory. In the course of the research, the author studied the historiography of Ukrainization in general: articles,
monographs of modern Russian and Ukrainian scholars, as well as the periodical press published in the Ukrainian SSR between 1925 and 1933. Based on the data obtained, the author concludes that, in spite of the rapid and successful Ukrainization in these regions, it was implemented through administrative pressure, which formed a negative attitude towards this kind of ethno-cultural transformations on the ground, in particular, in some south-eastern areas of the Ukrainian SSR and in the Kuban Area of the North Caucasus Territory of the RSFSR, whose population differed significantly from the Ukrainian ethnic group in terms of language and self-consciousness. In the Kuban Area, neither the local population nor local authorities were interested in this policy, which slowed the process of Ukrainization and made the mechanisms for its implementation rather ineffective, even compared to the south-east of the Ukrainian SSR. As a result, the population in the south of the RSFSR became part of the Russian nation.