Подолання суспільного страху як один із чинників боротьби за незалежність України

Abstract

The article defines the concepts of „public fear” and „Russian Bolshevism”. After the Russian Bolsheviks seized power in Ukraine, the Ukrainian SSR was proclaimed with the aim of subduing the public space of Ukraine and penetrating the territories of neighbouring countries where Ukrainians lived, for subversive purposes. A criminal body, the All-Ukrainian Extraordinary Commission, was established to subdue the Ukrainian population and take over its economy. The main methods used in the struggle against the Ukrainian population were the introduction of the institution of ‘hostage-taking’; the institution of denunciation; extrajudicial executions; evictions from Ukrainian territory; the fragmentation of the population on social and national grounds; the physical destruction of opponents and those who resisted the regime; the use of a genocidal system of punishment such as the Holodomor against the Ukrainian peasantry, resulting in the deaths of millions of people. The systemic crisis in the USSR, access to education, the resistance of the Ukrainian intelligentsia to Russification and the fragmentation of society and access to information were the main factors in overcoming social fear. The combined efforts of internal opposition to the Soviet regime and Ukrainian political emigration led to the collapse of the USSR and the restoration of Ukrainian independence.