Ukraine during the after-war period (1945-1985).

Plan• 1. Post-war reconstruction of Ukraine.• 2. Destalinization. • 3. Dissident movement.• 4. Social and economic development in

60-80th years. • 5. Chornobyl.

Post-war reconstruction of Ukraine

• Four years of war had a harmful effect on the Ukrainian economy;

• Reconstruction of the hard industry swallowed up 85 percent of all investments, but it was successful.

• In 1950 Ukraine again became one from the leading industrial countries in Europe;

• The life level of people improved very slowly;

• The currency reform of 1947 devaluated karbovanets;

• Started in 1954, project on development the lands of Kazakhstan required the use of huge labor and material resources, and the big part of those expenses took Ukraine.

• Though this program gave some positive results, it exhausted resources of Ukraine and weakened agricultural production of the republic.

• The government did not manage to reach so quick growing of agricultural production as it was planned;

• The officials in the far Moscow continued to decide, what cultures should cultivate collective farms, how to sow them;

1918 50 karbovantsiv banknote

1942 5 karbovantsiv banknote

1991 5 karbovantsiv kupon

Destalinization

• After the death of Stalin in 1953 new government tried to receive wider support among the nonrussian nations and especially among Ukrainians;

• Intelligentsia, students, workers and even partial officials – all repeated that the special status of the Russian language in the USSR did not mean, than the Ukrainian language should be discriminated;

• Many million of Ukrainians jailed in the Siberian camps of forced labor, received amnesty and the permission to come back home;

• This partly liquidation of gigantic system of concentration camp was precipitated by the row of camp revolts.

• For youth became unbearable the monotone of the soviet life, old-fashioned manner to dress and very ideological system of studying.

Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev

• Ceded Crimea from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1955.

• Met with U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower at Camp David, Maryland in September 1959. He was the first Soviet leader to visit the United States in a diplomatic capacity.

• Coping with housing crisis by quickly building millions of apartments according to simplified floor plans (khrushchovkas).

• Created a minimum wage in 1956.

The Khrushchev era saw increased construction of rapidly built, prefabricated apartment complexes.

Leonid Brezhnev

• During 1960 the part of Ukrainians, living in cities, reached 55 percent.

• In Ukraine grew the quantity of specialists with higher education;

• Censorship continued strictly regulation of all, that were allowed to read, to see and to hear;

• Communist party retained absolute monopoly on the politic power.

Dissident movement

• A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established policy.

• The term “dissident” was used in the USSR during the period of 1965-1985 for citizens who criticized the authority of the Communist party.

• An important part of the activity of dissidents was informing society about human rights.

• The first demonstration of this movement took place at the end 1950th – the beginning of 1960th, when in the Western Ukraine it was organized several small secret groups.

• They called to execution of the legal right of Ukraine on going out of the Soviet Union.

• After disclosure of these groups their participants were sentenced to the long period imprisonment.

Social and economic development in 60-80th

years• In 1976-1980 five-year plan, in Ukraine real

income per man increased by 15 %.

• Putting in order the automate machines and equipment lines promoted intensive development of hard industry, building, transport field, agriculture and power industry. Actively developed airplane building and motor-car industry.

• Ukraine became food donor for all the USSR.

• Implementation of compulsory general secondary education, enlargement of the system of secondary-special and higher educational institutions in Ukraine.

• The field of functioning of the Ukrainian language greatly narrowed.

• At the low level was social development of villages.

• During 1966-1985 years 4,6 people, mostly youth left Ukrainian villages.

• But in spite of all Ukrainian culture became firmly established.

• Also impressed the achievements of the Ukrainian sportsmen, who appeared on the international arena under the soviet flag.

DneproGES hydro-electric power plant, one of the symbols of Soviet economic power

Soviet Soyuz rockets like the one pictured above were the first reliable means to transport objects into Earth orbit.

“Dynamo Kyiv” -- the Cup Winners.

Oleh Blokhin -- the Best European player 1975.

Chornobyl• Chornobyl was a city in nothern Ukraine in the

Kyiv Oblast near the border with Belarus.

• Prior to its evacuation the city was inhabited by about 15000 residents.

• On April 26, 1986 the fourth reactor of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded at 01:23 AM.

• Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a “cloud” of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere.

• Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

• The “cloud” drifted over extensive parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern, Western and Northern Europe and eastern North America.

• Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation of over 336 000 people.

• It is difficult to accurately tell the number of deaths caused by the events at Chornobyl.

• The Soviet government hid the lists of victims and later forbade doctors to write “radiation” on deaths certificates.

• The overall costs of the disaster is estimated at $200 billion. This places the Chornobyl disaster as the costliest disaster in modern history.

• The Zone of Alienation is the 30km exclusion zone around the site of the Chornobyl nuclear reactor disaster.

• Now Chornobyl is a home to more than 500 residents.