How Ukrainian-origin leaders dominated the Soviet Union
“Suffice it to say that Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, whose party biography was most closely associated with Ukraine, led the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) for almost 30 years,” Putin remarked.Poor little Ukraine was not the bastard stepchild you claim it to be. The Ukrainian Soviet Republic was elevated to the catbird seat in the Soviet Union and never looked back until our United State's machinations turned its avaricious and corrupt head.Nikita Khrushchev was born in a Russian village close to the Ukrainian border, but raised in Eastern Ukraine, which is now de facto ruled by pro-Russian rebels backed by Moscow.
In time, Khrushchev became the head of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. After Joseph Stalin's death, he consolidated power and led the Soviet state between 1953 and 1964.
While Khrushchev was ethnically Russian, he fell in love with Ukraine. There is a definite proof of that, which is the transfer of the Crimean Peninsula's regional management from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) to the Ukrainian SSR, which happened under Khrushchev.
"It was somewhat symbolic, somewhat trying to reshuffle the centralized system and also, full disclosure, Nikita Khrushchev was very fond of Ukraine, so I think to some degree it was also a personal gesture toward his favorite republic. He was ethnically Russian, but he really felt great affinity with Ukraine,” said Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of the former Soviet leader.
Leonid Brezhnev was born and raised in central Ukraine. Some official Soviet documents like his passport also listed his ethnicity as Ukrainian - but others believe he was of Russian descent. Brezhnev was one of Khruschev’s proteges and ruled the Soviet state between 1964 and 1982, the second longest-reigning communist leader of the state after Stalin.
Under his leadership, there were several Ukrainians running high offices from the defence ministry to the KGB. During his term, the Soviets reached an equal level with the US in terms of nuclear power and Moscow also gained a lot of leverage over Central and Eastern Europe. While Brezhnev's pragmatic approach helped the Soviets improve their international standing, his anti-reform agenda led to an eventual decline, an era known as Brezhnev Stagnation. After 1975, he mostly withdrew from active politics due to his declining health.
Konstantin Chernenko was another Ukrainian, who also reached the upper echelons of Soviet power. He led the communist state for a brief period from 1984 to 1985.
He rose in the communist party ranks thanks to the help of another Ukrainian, Brezhnev.
Mikhail Gorbachev, whose maternal family had Ukrainian descent and migrated from Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine, succeeded Chernenko as the next general secretary of the ruling Soviet Communist Party.
Gorbachev established the office of the President of the Soviet Union in 1990. He was the first and the last president of the Soviets, overseeing the dissolution of the world's communist superpower. In total, he had ruled the Soviets from 1985 to 1991.
While Gorbachev is liked and praised by many in the Western world and some former Soviet republics for his glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reconstruction) policies, he remains a controversial figure in Russia today. He ran for the presidency in 1996, receiving 0.5 percent of the total vote.
Gorbachev, a reformist and pro-democracy supporter, provided occasional criticism of Putin's policies, describing the president's United Russia party as having "embodied the worst bureaucratic features of the Soviet Communist party".
But he also believes that Putin is the best man for Russia. “I am absolutely convinced that Putin protects Russia's interests better than anyone else,” he said in 2014.
He was also a critic of the West's Russia policy, which was conducted in an attitude of “triumphalism”, according to him. He warned the world that Ukrainian escalations could trigger a new Cold War, pointing out that increasing US-Russia tensions create “great concern”.
Ukraine banned Gorbachev from entering the country after he disclosed his support for Russia's annexation of Crimea.
In other words, I was right. As soon as Stalin was out of the way, Ukrainian and pro Ukrainian leaders undid the damage Stalin inflicted, and the Russian SSR wasn’t the boss of the Ukrainian SSR; the USSR was the boss of both. As the USSR weakened, the friendship between the SSRs improved.
Putin doesn’t like that direction of travel. He preferred the Stalin approach. He only references the thawing of relations between the Republics of Ukraine and Russia (within the USSR) as an excuse to revive the Stalin era attitude towards Ukraine.
As I’ll remind the Putinists here of their own mantra: the Russian Federation is not ACTUALLY the spiritual successor to Stalin’s USSR; it’s the successor to the RFSSR that, like the Ukrainian SSR, got accepted into the UN as an independent state.
They’re correct to say that. Nevertheless, that correction is it’s a 2 way street. Russia only inherited the Soviet Union legacy because the other ex SSRs didn’t lobby to have that legacy split up. Russia didn’t earn that inheritance, and it didn’t deserve that inheritance. Russia wanted to be the de facto successor of the USSR, despite knowing that there were toxic elements to that legacy.
If Putin doesn’t like his New Patriotic War is being compared to Stalin era brutality and the expansion of the USSR at gunpoint, he should maybe act a bit more like Brezhnev and a lot less like Stalin... And maybe explain to all those Russian people waving the hammer and sickle flags that actually Putin’s Russia is not “the USSR reborn”.