The Stolypin Agrarian Reform

In 1906 the Russian government under the leadership of Piotr Stolypin started an agrarian reform. Prime Minister P. Stolypin wanted to move land-poor peasants from over-populated areas of European part of the Russian Empire (mostly from Ukraine) to under-populated eastern areas (Siberia, the Urals, Northern Kazakhstan, the Far East, etc). Besides new lands, peasants were given some money to start farm enterprise. Several million Ukrainian peasants took advantage of the opportunity and settled in eastern parts of the empire. The reform also made it easier for peasants to sell and buy lands. In general, the reform greatly stimulated business activity in agriculture and made it more productive and market oriented.

Stolypin was a Russian patriot and monarchist, and thus he actively tried to suppress all activities aimed at disintegration of the empire or changing its social system. On his orders many socialist-revolutionaries were hung. His government was against creation nationalist organizations (including Ukrainian ones) in the empire. During his premiership a number of Ukrainian periodicals and cultural organiza­tions were closed. In 1911 Stolypin was killed in the Kyiv Opera House by a revolutionary. Stolypin is buried in the territory of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra.

Ukrainians in the First World War

In 1914 a great war started in Europe which involved many countries in the world. Two powerful military blocks – the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria) and the Entente (Great Britain, France, Russia, and others) – tried to redraw the map of the world. The warring sides had different plans concerning Ukraine. Russia planned to attach Western Ukraine, Austria planned to get Right-Bank Ukraine, and Germany planned to obtain Left-Bank Ukraine.

For Ukraine this war was especially tragic as Ukrainian soldiers had to kill each other (3.5 million Ukrainians fought in the Russian army and 250,000 served in the Austrian army). The Ukrainian intelligentsia on both sides of the conflict decided to support their governments, Russian and Austrian respectively.¹

In the beginning the war went well for Russia. When Russia occupied Western Ukraine in September 1914 it decided to eradicate the Ukrainian national movement there. The tsarist government proclaimed Western Ukraine to be an “ancient Russian land” that finally “reunited with Mother Russia”. All Ukrainian cultural institutions and periodicals were shut down. Russification policy was introduced in schools. Russian officials and Russophiles (Moskvophiles) replaced the old bureaucracy. The Greek Catholic church, a hallmark of West Ukrainian uniqueness, was persecuted. Hundreds of Greek Catholic priests were exiled to Russia. Orthodox priests filled the vacant positions and urged peasants to convert to Orthodoxy. As a result, about 200 Greek Catholic parishes² were converted into Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Church was widely used as means of Russification and assimilation by the Russian government throughout centuries.

By the fall of 1915 the Russian armies were pushed out from Western Ukraine. In June 1916, however, they regained a considerable part of the lost territories.