Kalchenko Nikifor. Ukraine: A Majestic and Impressive Programme

London: Soviet Booklets, 1960. — 44 p. — (The Fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics today and tomorrow)Ukraine is one of Russia's biggest industrial areas. It is well situated geographically, it has inexhaustible resources of coal, iron, manganese ore and many other minerals. Its soil is fertile and its climate is moderate and mild. These factors have always been very favourable for its economic development. However, before the Revolution its economy was lopsided. Priority was given to industries yielding the utmost profit such as sugar, wine and tobacco, while coal-mining and metallurgy were neglected. Everywhere there was a ten- to twelve-hour working day, while backbreaking manual labour dominated throughout. The situation in agriculture was no better. It was backward in its structure, with grain-growing predominant. Industrial crops occupied only about 3 per cent of the sown area, and the tools with which the land was tilled were primitive. The working peasantry suffered great hardship. Before the Revolution, Ukraine was a land of double oppression. On the one hand, the working people were cruelly exploited by their national bourgeoisie and landlords. On the other, they were just as cruelly exploited by the Russian chauvinistic state machine. The tsarist authorities forbade schooling in Ukrainian and suppressed the national culture. The Ukrainians were mostly illiterate. This land, though long called Russia’s granary, could not feed those who worked in its fields and its enterprises, because the lion’s share of the national wealth was owned by tsarist generals, the capitalists and the landlords.The October Revolution of 1917 turned over a new page in the history of Ukraine. It ended once and for all the social and national oppression of the Ukrainians and created the conditions for the rapid advance of the working people’s well-being. Ukraine today is one of the fifteen constituent Republics that make up the voluntary Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It is a socialist state ruled by the workers and peasants. The organs of power are the Soviets of Working People’s Deputies which are elected on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot. All the riches, the land, its natural wealth, the factories, plants and mines, belong to the people. Following the road charted by the Communist Party, the working people of Ukraine have scored splendid economic and cultural achievements.