Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
The Donbass area was given to the Ukrainian ASSR in such a gesture, in the 1950s.
As a result it ended up in the modern nation of Ukraine, despite being historically Rusisan.
I have to correct you. Donbass as well as Black Sea coast regions (Odessa, Nikolayev and Kherson) and also Ekaterinoslav (modern Dnepropetrovsk) region along with Kharkov region were given to Ukraine by Lenin in 1920s. The reason of that was his Marxist logic. Ukraine proper (or Malorossia) was historically agrarian region mostly populated by peasants. According to Marx peasants are very conservative and non-progressive class and can't be the leading force of socialist revolution. Only factory workers can be such a force. And all these regions incorporated into new-created Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had relatively developed industry and a significant worker population. So one of the main reasons was to make Ukrainian Soviet Republic more proletarian and less agrarian. And the reason of creation of Ukrainian SSR as long as other republics and to make new socialist state look like a union of different states was in Lenin's main goal. His main goal was not only to build communism in former Russian Empire. It was only one of first steps. His main goal was a world proletarian revolution and to make the whole planet a huge socialist republic. It could sound insane if you don't familiar with history of Russian revolution but it's true. So when in 1922 the Soviet Union was created it was made to look like a union of socialist countries, not just one country to give other possible countries where socialist revolution may happen a beacon to move at. At that time there was not any visible border line between ethnic Russian and ethnic Ukrainian regions, people just spoke various Russian and Malorussian dialects using more Russian words at the east and more Ukrainian or Polish words at the west. But since Ukrainian Socialist republic was created the modern Ukrainian language (they took one of the western dialects as official language to make it look more separate from Russian) was made official there to make the new created republic look more like a separate state (the same story with Belorussia). Crimea was transfered from Russian SSR to Ukrainian SSR much later in 1954 and the reasons of that were different.
Also to better understand modern conflict in Ukraine one should bear in mind that the western part of the country never was even in Russian Empire, it was a part of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and later a part of Austria-Hungarian Empire. Also note that Ukrainians in western part are not even Russian Orthodox, their Orthodox church was forced to subordinate to Pope while they were ruled by Catholic Poles. Stalin annexed it in 1939 after Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. So the state that appeared on the map in 1991 after collapse of Soviet Union consisted of 3 major parts (Ukraine proper or Malorossia, mostly Russian Donbass+Novorossia (the regions along Black Sea cost) and western Galicia. Also minor parts: Crimea which was almost completely Russian, Ukrainian language wasn't even taught in schools there until 1991 (Tatar minority just started to return from exile in Middle Asia then), Uzhgorod region inhabited by Rusyns, Hungarians and Slovaks and Chernovcy and at some extend Budjak which are partially Romanian/Moldavian. I think that the only way to keep such artificial country whole was to make it a federation, let people at least on regional level to use officially the languages that historically were used in that areas and to provide very balanced policy towards both neighboring major powers: Russia and EU. But idiots who was and especially is in charge in Ukraine make their stake on a strong monoethnic unitarian Ukrainian state and confrontation with Russia. With such a policy it's only a matter of time when modern state of Ukraine will cease to exist.