Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
much of Eastern Europe at the end of WWII helped the USSR hold onto it in the postwar
period.
The Battle for Chernobyl
is an in-depth documentary which tells the story of the world's
worst nuclear accident and the truth about the clear up.
Postwar Period
For most, WWII ended in 1945. However, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) contin-
ued a guerrilla existence well into the 1950s, taking pot shots at the Soviet authorities,
especially in the Carpathian region. A government in exile was led by former partisan
Stepan Bandera, until he was assassinated in Munich in 1959.
Elsewhere, Ukraine rapidly developed into an important cog in the Soviet machine.
Eastern regions became highly industrialised, with coal and iron-ore mining around Don-
etsk, arms and missile industries in Dnipropetrovsk, and Dniproges, a huge hydroelectric
dam near Zaporizhzhya.
Ukraine acquired strategic technological and military importance during this era, and
at least one Ukrainian rose to become Soviet leader. Leonid Brezhnev graduated from
metallurgy engineer to Communist Party General Secretary from 1964 to 1982. Brezh-
nev's predecessor, Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet leader from 1953 to 1964) was born just
outside Ukraine but lived there from adolescence and styled himself as a Ukrainian.
Khrushchev's post-Stalin reformist agenda led him to create the Autonomous Crimean
Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954, and transfer legislative control over Crimea to the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
It's generally agreed that Winston Churchill was saved from execution during the Boer
War by Ukrainian writer and journalist Yury Budyak, though neither man mentions the in-
cident in their memoirs.
Nationalism Reappears
The rotten underbelly of Soviet high-tech was cruelly exposed by the nuclear disaster at
the power plant Chornobyl on 26 April 1986. Ukrainians weren't just killed and injured
by the radioactive material that spewed over their countryside, but also appalled by the
way the authorities attempted to cover up the accident. The first Kremlin announcement
wasn't made until two days after the event - and only then at the prompting of Swedish
authorities, who detected abnormal radiation levels over their own country. However, by
