The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (; ), abbreviated as the Ukrainian SSR, UkSSR, and also known as Soviet Ukraine or just Ukraine, was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991. Under the Soviet one-party model, the Ukrainian SSR was governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union through its republican branch, the Communist Party of Ukraine.
The first iterations of the Ukrainian SSR were established during the Russian Revolution, particularly after the Bolshevik Revolution. The outbreak of the Ukrainian–Soviet War in the former Russian Empire saw the Bolsheviks defeat the independent Ukrainian People's Republic, during the conflict against which they founded the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets, which was governed by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), in December 1917; it was later succeeded by the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1918, also under the Russian SFSR. Simultaneously with the Russian Civil War, the Ukrainian War of Independence was being fought among the different Ukrainian republics founded by Ukrainian nationalists, Ukrainian anarchists, and Ukrainian separatists – primarily against Soviet Russia and the Ukrainian SSR, with either help or opposition from neighbouring states. As a Soviet quasi-state, the newly established Ukrainian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations in 1945 alongside the Byelorussian SSR, in spite of the fact that they were legally represented by the Soviet Union in foreign affairs. In 1922, it was one of four Soviet republics (with the Russian SFSR, the Byelorussian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR) that signed the Treaty on the Creation of the Soviet Union. Upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Ukrainian SSR emerged as the present-day independent state of Ukraine, although the modified Soviet constitution remained in use until the adoption of the modern Ukrainian constitution in June 1996.
Throughout its 72-year history, the republic's borders changed many times, with a significant portion of what is now western Ukraine having been acquired via the Soviet-German Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, with the annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia in 1939, significant portions of Romania in 1940, alongside another annexation of territory in 1945 from Carpathian Ruthenia in Czechoslovakia. From the 1919 establishment of the Ukrainian SSR until 1934, the city of Kharkov served as its capital; however, the republic's seat of government was subsequently relocated in 1934 to the city of Kiev, the historic Ukrainian capital, and remained at Kiev for the remainder of its existence.
Geographically, the Ukrainian SSR was situated in Eastern Europe, to the north of the Black Sea, and was bordered by the Soviet republics of Moldavia (since 1940), Byelorussia, and Russia, and the countries of Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. The republic's border with Czechoslovakia formed the Soviet Union's westernmost border point. According to the 1989 Soviet census, the republic of Ukraine had a population of 51,706,746 (second after Russia), which fell sharply after the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991 due to high emigration rates, environmental pollution caused by the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and male alcoholism.
Name
Its original names in 1919 were both Ukraine and Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (, abbreviated ). After the ratification of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, full official names of all Soviet republics were changed, transposing the second (socialist) and third (sovietskaya in Russian or radianska in Ukrainian) words. In accordance, on 5 December 1936, the 8th Extraordinary Congress Soviets in Soviet Union changed the name of the republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was ratified by the 14th Extraordinary Congress of Soviets in Ukrainian SSR on 31 January 1937.
The name Ukraine () is a subject of debate. It is often perceived as being derived from the Slavic word "okraina", meaning "border land". It was first used to define part of the territory of Kievan Rus' (Ruthenia) in the 12th century, at which point Kiev (now Kyiv) was the capital of Rus'. The name has been used in a variety of ways since the twelfth century. For example, Zaporozhian Cossacks called their hetmanate "Ukraine".
Within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the name carried unofficial status for larger part of Kiev Voivodeship.