Quick question: first, when besides now and shortly after 1917 has Ukraine ever been a nation? 2. Ukraina and Cossaks, well who exactly populated the vast majority of Ukraina if it wasn't the Cossaks, and what ethnic groups/social classes made up the Cossaks? 3. Who or what occupied all of Southern Ukraine and the Crimea upto the late 1800s. Who built Kharkov, Lughansk, Odessa, Dnepipetrovsk?
'They could break a nation by aligning with its enemies, they could preserve Russia by staying faithful to the czar, but they wanted neither of these. While the Dnieper and the Don Cossacks were Orthodox, they wanted to be an independent power, loyal to the czar by choice, but it was never to be. Simple numbers worked against them. Their population by most estimates never exceeded 250,000 for all the tribes over all of Southern Russia. They were footloose, almost nomadic, and, while some established homesteads, these were the few. These Cossacks, and the nation that might have been theirs, what we now call the Ukraine, had no firm base, no geographical centre around which to form a state. Against this, the static power of the newly energised Muscovy under Peter, and the ever expansionist desires of Poland and other European nations toward Russia, ultimately made the Cossack 'state' merely an ally of convenience, when convenient.''
Look up the history of the Polish 'registry' of Cossacks when you have a spare minute; it WILL repay your reading, I promise you.
You are of course quite right; bar a brief interregnum during/after the chaos of 1917-1918, Ukraina had never been independent until the Soviet government collapsed. Even aside from fighting the 'Whites', Lenin focused inordinate attention on subjugating Ukraina, because he realised that his revolution couldn't possible feed the nation without the chernozyom. Stalin, of course, thought that grain could grow itself, merely by the dedication of sincere Communists, and with Khruschev as his personal deputy engineered the infamous atrocity of forced starvation in Ukraina in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Excellent documentary film of these events, ''Harvest of Despair'', very much worth your attention.