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→Fascist insurgency: 1944-1954
===Fascist insurgency: 1944-1954===
===Fascist insurgency: 1944-1954===
In the June 1944, when Canadian, British and American soldiers were landing on the beaches of Normandy, their Soviet allies rolled into the German-occupied Western Ukraine. The Red Army soldiers and officers quickly noticed a stark contrast in the attitude of locals compared to other recently liberated regions of the Soviet Union. Instead of cheering crowds of peasant women and children who would offer them water and the traditional Slavic greeting of bread and salt, there was an eerie silence in many villages, and few locals would even talk to the new arrivals. Soon, chilling rumors started about murdered Red Army soldiers found hanged or decapitated in the woods. Rumors were soon followed by orders issued to troops stationed in the allegedly safe rear, far behind the frontline, to increase their vigilance, never to venture anywhere alone or unarmed, and to look out for “bandits” hiding in the forests. The [[NKVD]] (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs – as the law enforcement agency of the Soviet Union between 1934 and 1946 was known) units that followed close behind the Red Army quickly proceeded with their routine practice of rounding up numerous suspected Nazi collaborators, as well as members of the Polish anti-Nazi underground, in Lviv and other west Ukrainian cities. However, a number of feared Soviet secret policemen were soon found dead in Ukrainian villages and Galician forests, and in some areas of the countryside those who dared to venture there had to be heavily armed and in large numbers. This was the start of a brutal insurgency that lasted almost ten years in rural Western Ukraine and resulted in one of the toughest counterinsurgency challenges the Soviets ever faced.
In 1948, the CIA report NSC 20/1, section 4: “US objectives with respect to Russia” warned that separating Ukraine from Russia will not work.<ref>http://www.sakva.ru/Nick/NSC_20_1.html</ref>
Reconstruction proceeded rapidly in the late 1940s and the 1950s, as the Soviets needed the food and raw materials of Ukraine. Political repression of nationally conscious Ukrainians also intensified. The widespread acculturation and assimilation of the Soviet Jews by the 1930s led Stalin to consider the "Jewish question" as settled; he now viewed the Jews as a national rather than a religious group. With the influx of Jews into the Ukraine and Russia from Poland, the Baltic states, Bessarabia, and Bukovina following the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, there followed an intensification of Jewish religious activity, and the reopening of many synagogues. However, political unrest preceding the creation of the state of Israel unleashed Stalin's massive repression against Jews during the "black years" of 1948-53. Suspected of Zionism and cosmopolitanism, Jews were systematically removed from positions of leadership in culture, science, medicine, politics, and economics. The anti-Semitic campaign ended only with the death of Stalin in March 1953.
Reconstruction proceeded rapidly in the late 1940s and the 1950s, as the Soviets needed the food and raw materials of Ukraine. Political repression of nationally conscious Ukrainians also intensified. The widespread acculturation and assimilation of the Soviet Jews by the 1930s led Stalin to consider the "Jewish question" as settled; he now viewed the Jews as a national rather than a religious group. With the influx of Jews into the Ukraine and Russia from Poland, the Baltic states, Bessarabia, and Bukovina following the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, there followed an intensification of Jewish religious activity, and the reopening of many synagogues. However, political unrest preceding the creation of the state of Israel unleashed Stalin's massive repression against Jews during the "black years" of 1948-53. Suspected of Zionism and cosmopolitanism, Jews were systematically removed from positions of leadership in culture, science, medicine, politics, and economics. The anti-Semitic campaign ended only with the death of Stalin in March 1953.
===Denazificatrion and reconstruction: 1954 to 1991===
===Denazificatrion and reconstruction: 1954 to 1991===