Statement Proclaiming Ukraine Anniversary

Party Central Committee, USSR Council of Ministers and Presidium of USSR Supreme Soviet, On the 300th Anniversary of Ukraine’s Reunification with Russia. December 9, 1953

 

Original Source: Izvestiia, 9 December 1953, p. 1.

The Communist Party Central Committee, the USSR Council of Ministers and the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet have adopted a decree calling for widespread observance of the 300th anniversary of the Ukraine’s reunification with Russia, which falls in January, 1954, as an outstanding historical event, a great national holiday of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples and of all peoples of the Soviet Union.

The decree states that this remarkable event was the consummation of the Ukrainian people’s many centuries of struggle against foreign enslavers to reunify with the Russian people in a single Russian state.

The Ukrainian people, who have sprung from a single root of the ancient Russian people, are bound with the Russian people by unity of origin, geographical proximity and a common historical development and have constantly struggled for unification with the fraternal Russian people. For a long time the Ukraine was under the yoke of foreign bondage and suffered terrible ruin and devastation from the aggressive attacks of nomadic hordes of the Turko-Tatar Khans and the oppression of the Polish szlachta. The Ukrainian people, threatened with annihilation, struggled constantly against the oppression of foreign enslavers.

In the 1648-1654 war of liberation the Ukrainian people, under the leadership of Bogdan Khmelnitskii, eminent statesman and military leader, fought heroically to free the Ukraine from the yoke of the Polish szlachta and reunite their country with Russia. Bogdan Khmelnitskii reflected the Ukrainian people’s desire for close union with the Russian people and led the course of the formation of Ukrainian statehood with a correct understanding of its tasks and perspectives, seeing in unification with the Great Russian people the salvation of the Ukrainians. Therein lies his contribution to history.

The oppressed peasantry, fighting to liberate the Ukraine from foreign enslavement and opposing the social yoke of the feudal serf owners, became the main and decisive force in the war of liberation. The Ukrainian people’s struggle against the Polish szlachta found wide response and sympathy among the Polish peasantry, who suffered from the yoke of the Polish feudal lords. The constant help and support of the Russian state and the Russian masses in particular promoted the broad scope of the people’s movement in the war of liberation and to its outstanding successes.

The Pereiaslavl Council’s decision Jan. 8 (18), 1654, to reunify the Ukraine with Russia, was a mighty expression of the will of the freedom-loving Ukrainian people and a manifestation of their age-old desires and hopes and marked a turning point in their life and was the consummation of this nationwide struggle.

The Ukrainian people, who have forever linked their fate with their blood brothers, the fraternal Russian people, whom they have always considered their reliable champions and allies, saved and preserved themselves as a nation by this decision.

The reunification of the Ukraine with Russia, despite the fact that the Tsar and landowners then ruled Russia, had increasing importance in the further political, economic and cultural development of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. Despite the reactionary policy of Tsarism, the Russian and Ukrainian feudal lords and the bourgeoisie, the unification of the two great Slavic peoples drew together the peoples of Russia and the Ukraine, who chose the only correct path in the common struggle against all foreign enemies, against common oppressors, against serf owners and the bourgeoisie, against Tsarism and capitalist slavery.

Despite the reactionary Tsarist policy of brutal national and colonial oppression, the best sons of the Russian people recognized the right of the Ukraine to national independence and, together with advanced representatives of the Ukrainian people, fought against the shameful policy of inciting the Russian peoples against each other, a policy pursued by the Russian and Ukrainian landowners and the bourgeoisie and their myrmidons, the great-power chauvinists and Ukrainian nationalists.

The consanguineous bond and indissoluble friendship between the two great fraternal peoples developed and grew stronger on the basis of common struggle against oppressors and foreign invaders, who encroached on Russian and Ukrainian lands. The great achievements of this friendship clearly and convincingly expose the anti-popular nature of bourgeois nationalist distortions in evaluating the historical importance of the Ukraine’s reunification with Russia and show clearly the futility of all attempts by the bourgeois nationalists to undermine and violate the indissoluble union of the Ukrainian, Russian and other peoples of the Soviet Union.

The appearance on the historical arena of the Russian proletariat, the most revolutionary in the world, and the Communist Party, its militant vanguard, had decisive importance in the further development of the Russian, Ukrainian and all other peoples of Russia.

Under the leadership of the Communist Party, the peoples of Russia, having accomplished the great October socialist revolution, liberated themselves from the chains of capitalist slavery and opened up the path to socialism for the peoples. The Ukrainian peoples were the first to follow the Russian people along the path to socialism and they finally realized their age-old dream: establishing their own national Ukrainian state and beginning a new and truly glorious epoch of their history.

The fraternal union and friendship between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples grew stronger and was tempered in the great October socialist revolution, in the fire of the Civil War against internal counterrevolution and foreign military intervention, in the course of social construction and in the historical battles of the great patriotic war against the German fascist invaders.

As a result of the world-wide historic victories of the peoples of the Soviet Union and thanks to the realization of the Leninist -Stalinist national policy, the Ukrainian people achieved their national rebirth, reuniting all Ukrainian lands into a single Ukraine Soviet socialist state.

Having achieved tremendous successes in economic and cultural construction, the Russian and Ukrainian people, together with all our country’s fraternal peoples, are now advancing along the path to communism under the leadership of the Communist Party.

The inviolable and eternal friendship of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples and of all peoples of the Soviet Union is a guarantee of national independence and freedom and of the flowering of the Ukrainian people’s national culture and prosperity, as well as of other peoples of the Soviet Union.

The decree of the Party Central Committee, USSR Council of Ministers and Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet requires that local Party and Soviet organizations extensively observe this notable historic event–the 300th anniversary of the Ukraine’s reunification with Russia–as a great national holiday and organize lectures, reports and talks devoted to this important event in the history of our fatherland and to further strengthening friendship among the peoples of the Soviet Union.

Source: Current Digest of the Soviet Press. Vol. V, No. 49 (1954), p. 10

 

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