Social and Economic Change in Eastern Ukraine

The Example of Zaporizhzhia

Hans van Zon, Andre Batako, Anna Kreslavaska

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429762406
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

First published in 1998, this deeply engaging volume describes the 'great transformation' of our time. While transformation, it is definitely not a transition to the market economy, civil society and democratic rule. Instead, this book maps the growth of the economic jungle, clan society and a corrupted, criminalised state. Capitalists but no capitalism. Watching Warsaw, Prague and Budapest, one should not forget about Zaporizhzhya. After this book, one cannot.

1 The Making of Modern Zaporizhzhya

Alexandrovsk

Zaporizhzhya is built on the wide steppe plains of South-eastern Ukraine, on both sides on the river Dnepr, about 500 km from Kyiv, the capital city. Until 1921, Zaporizhzhya was a small town called Alexandrovsk and located in Ekaterinaslav.

Up to the late 18th century no sedentary agriculture could develop in these borderlands of the Russian empire because they were regularly swept by invasions of nomadic tribes from the East. These borderlands in the steppe of South-eastern Ukraine were then named Zaporizhzhya, which means ‘beyond the rocks’ (in the Dnepr). Up to that time the region had been a stronghold of the Cossack warriors who are credited with defending Russia and Ukraine against the Tartars and Turks.¹ According to the historian Seton Watson, among the Cossacks were

many fugitive serfs, fleeing from their Polish landlords. In the area around the rapids of the Dnepr a considerable military power was established by the Zaporizhzhya Sich, a Cossack community with a primitive social and political organisation of their own, who recognised no other law, and conducted warfare and diplomatic manoeuvres between Poland, Muscovy and Crimea.²

In 1707 - 1708 there was a major conflict between the Cossacks. Under the leadership of Mazepa, ataman of Ukrainian Cossacks and based in what is nowadays Zaporizhzhya, this movement got control over a larger part of Southern Russia. Peter I crushed this revolt with great cruelty.

The Cossacks found, among others, a refuge on the island of Hortitsa, located in the Dnepr in present-day Zaporizhzhya.³

Tsarina Catherine II annexed the Crimea in 1783, subduing Tartar tribes that had prevented the development of sedentary agriculture in Southern Ukraine and who kept Ukraine largely depopulated and insecure. From that time onwards the vast steppes of Southern Ukraine were converted into arable tillage and planted by a stable, sedentary peasant population living on large estates.⁴ Catherine started, and Tsar Paul continued, a policy of colonisation by foreigners, especially Germans. Under Catherine 75,000 foreigners came to Little Russia, having been given four million acres and advanced nearly six million roubles, of which one-third was a gift.⁵

Socially, this clearance of arable land subjugated the once free or semi-free inhabitants to the conditions of the central peasantry, which meant serfdom. Agricultural technology was very primitive. More than half of the peasants had wooden ploughs. Yields were very low. The aristocracy was generally not interested in agricultural management. However, some forward-looking landlords introduced machinery.⁶ Despite the backwardness of agricultural technology, in Ekaterinaslav province 80 per cent of land was for export crops. South-eastern Ukraine became the bread basket of the Empire.

During the nineteenth century, a backward socio-economic system, based on serfdom, developed in the countryside of what is now Zaporizhzhya province.⁷ Although in 1861 serfdom had been abolished and the former serfs could, in principle, buy the land that they cultivated, a labyrinth of traditional forms of extra-economic surplus extraction, embodied in customary rights and dues, continued to prevail on estates in what is now Zaporizhzhya province. Peasants paid the landlords with part of the crop and provided the landlord with various services.

Probably related to the recent nature of its submission, the peasantry was more prone to revolt compared to the peasantry in the heartland of Russia. In the revolutionary upheavals at the end of World War I, the Ukrainian anarchist Makhno, who controlled a considerable part of Ukraine in 1921, had his base in Zaporizhzhya province.⁸

South-eastern Ukraine was one of the more backward regions of the Russian empire. In 1887, 13.6 per cent of the inhabitants of Ukraine were literate (women 3.9 per cent), compared to 29.3 per cent for the Russian empire as a whole (women 13 per cent). This is partly related to the fact that education was in the Russian language.

South-eastern Ukraine was early this century still overwhelmingly agrarian. People were mainly occupied in farming. Handicrafts and trade were poorly developed. Social and economic development was hampered by feudal relations. From the mid-19th century onwards, the absolutist state was the major engine of rapid industrialisation from above. However, this touched the region of what now constitutes Zaporizhzhya only to a very limited extent.

In Tsarist times, the role of the state was overwhelming. The nature of state was absolutist. Even priests of the Orthodox Church were considered as state functionaries. The state furthered the system of anonymous letters accusing fellow citizens and according to which citizens could be convicted. The higher ranks in the extended state bureaucracy were hereditary and linked to the nobility. The state, the landlord class and bureaucracy formed a single unity. The state had integrated feudal hierarchy into the bureaucracy.⁹ Corruption was widespread.¹⁰ In the womb of this feudalism, embryonic capitalist relations developed from the mid-19th century onwards.

Alexandrovsk was created in 1770 around a fortress. The town became an administrative centre for the immediate neighbourhood. In the 19th century, a railway was built that passed through Alexandrovsk. Until the October revolution in 1917, Alexandrovsk was a quiet town. Only a very small minority, mainly Russians and Jews, lived in the towns.

The area of what later became Zaporizhzhya province suffered much during World War I. In 1921, during the civil war, there was a major famine. There were many conflicts in this region due to its strategic nature. Southeastern Ukraine, with its dense concentration of industry, communications and agricultural potential, was of vital importance for Russia. The Bolsheviks were very weak in what is now Zaporizhzhya province.¹¹

The emergence of modern Zaporizhzhya

Under Soviet rule, Alexandrovsk, later renamed Zaporizhzhya, became known as a symbol of Soviet power. The electrification of the country was seen as a main goal of the Soviet government. According to Lenin, socialism meant Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country. A huge dam and hydroelectric power station were built on the Dnepr at Zaporizhzhya in 1932 to further this goal.¹² Soviet literature describes the heroic efforts of the inhabitants of Zaporizhzhya to create the impressive industrial complex and the dam. People from all over the country came to Zaporizhzhya to build a new future. In the eyes of many, the will of masses of mobilised people accomplished a miracle. For many it seemed that a big step in the direction of a bright future had been made. For many all over the Soviet Union, the building of the dam and the building of Zaporozhstal meant that the Soviet people could build the best of all worlds. The people of Zaporizhzhya were proud and nowadays, many families have relics that remind them of those heroic times.

Ukraine

Zaporizhzhya province

Less is known about the hardships people had to undergo. For example, for a long time a larger part of the population had to live under primitive circumstances in barracks.

In the period of pre-war five-year plans, Zaporizhzhya developed into an important industrial centre of the Soviet Union with 63,000 industrial workers. People came from all corners of the Soviet Union, mainly from the countryside. They were mostly poorly educated workers with a peasant background, attracted by the comparatively high wages they could earn in Zaporizhzhya. However, in many cases they were also attracted by the challenge of contributing to a new socialist future.

Generally, South-eastern Ukraine witnessed a rapid development in those years, compared with the rest of Ukraine. The gravity point of industrialisation within Ukraine moved towards the South-east. Especially in the Donetsk basin, east of Zaporizhzhya, many new towns arose. The population of Zaporizhzhya increased from 50,000 inhabitants in 1926 to 275,000 inhabitants in 1939 (425,000 inhabitants in 1959).

Large steel factories, an aluminium plant and a magnesium-titanium plant were built in Zaporizhzhya during the 1930s. The new industrial complex allowed the Soviet Union to become less dependent upon deliveries from the capitalist world. By 1937, Zaporizhzhya was supplying 60 per cent of aluminium produced in the Soviet Union, 100 per cent of manganese and 20 per cent of steel plates.¹³

During the 1920s and 1930s huge efforts were made to eradicate illiteracy, with great success.

During the 1930s a collectivisation campaign, in which private farmers were forced to join collective farms, ravaged the countryside. In the Ukraine, approximately 2.5 million persons died in the famine (1932-1933) that was provoked by the forced confiscation of all grain reserves. Stalin ordered the expropriation of all foodstuffs in the hands of the rural population. The odd thing was that enough food was available and grain was being exported to the West. The province of Zaporizhzhya objected to the imposed quotas for grain delivery. The local party committee told both the Ukrainian central committee and its own district committees that 70-75 per cent of the quota would have to come from poor and middle-income peasants; and this might leave them without sufficient seed and would not leave ‘a single kilogram’ of grain for sale to the local population.¹⁴ Most victims were in the southern belt, in which also Zaporizhzhya province is located.¹⁵

However, the famine struck Zaporizhzhya less hard than Dnipropetrovsk. On the borderlands between Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhya the army prevented starving people from seeking refuge in Zaporizhzhya province. Many died as a consequence of repression and famine. As a result, the population of Ukraine declined between 1926 and 1939 by 10 per cent.¹⁶ Many farmers were deported to Siberia.

The world of heroic efforts to build modern Zaporizhzhya and the world of repression and famine seemed to be two completely different worlds.

During World War II, major battles were fought in and around Zaporizhzhya which was largely destroyed in these battles. During World War II all industries were evacuated to the far east of the Soviet Union. For example, equipment from Zaporozhstal was used to build steel factories in Magnitogorsk and Novosibirsk. ‘Motor Sitch’, producing aircraft engines, was evacuated to Omsk where in three months time production started. To prevent its usefulness to the Germans, Soviet demolition squads destroyed part of the dam across the Dnepr during 1941. In 1943 the Germans shelled and bombed it as they fell back, destroying what remained of the factories. More than 400 factories in the province, 21 of national significance, lay in ruins.

Zaporizhzhya city itself was a wasteland in which 300,000 war-weary, desperately hungry and exhausted people sought to make homes in dugouts, squalid huts and the crumbling shells of what had been apartment houses. No large buildings had survived the war.

The war with Germany has forged a new unity of the people, grouped around the aim to get rid of the invader. Repression was somewhat relaxed and the Orthodox Church rehabilitated by the state. The victory over Germany gave the space for a new big mobilisation campaign to rebuild destroyed Zaporizhzhya.¹⁷ Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was appointed as the first secretary of the provincial party committee. In order to rebuild Zaporizhzhya the best workers were selected from the whole of the former Soviet Union. More than 13,500 people helped to rebuild the hydro-electrical power station and 20,000 workers rebuilt Zaporozhstal. Zaporozhstal started production again in 1947.

After the victory over Nazi Germany, hardships were not over for the population. Stalinist repression again struck hard and illusions were crushed anew. For example, shortly after the war, the secret service took out of every third house one or more people and shot or deported them to Siberia. This arbitrary repression was meant to terrify and discipline the population. Terror was particular severe in Zaporizhzhya. Everyone felt the fear as anyone could become a victim of Stalinist repression. Anonymous letters could send people to death camps. A woman in Zaporizhzhya threatened to accuse a man of disloyalty to the Soviet state unless he married her as she was pregnant. Nevertheless she sent after the marriage a letter to the secret service with the result that he died in a concentration camp. Everybody knew the story of Pavel Morozov who became a hero after he betrayed his parents, accusing them of anti-Sovietism. It was the fear related to this repression that had a lasting impact upon the mentality of Zaporizhzhya citizens.

The party leadership traditionally has seen Zaporizhzhya as a kind of human laboratory. Regularly policy measures were tested in Zaporizhzhya before carried out elsewhere. Social engineering was easier in a new town...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Maps, Figures, Tables and Boxes
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Making of Modern Zaporizhzhya
• 2 The New Economic System
• 3 The Nature of Power
• 4 The Ukrainisation of Zaporizhzhya
• 5 The De-industrialisation of Zaporizhzhya
• 6 The Transformation of the Countryside
• 7 The Disintegration of Public Services
• 8 Social Change
• 9 An Ecological Crisis Zone
• 10 Health in Zaporizhzhya
• 11 A Rapidly Changing World
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index