HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

A Century of Moscow-UkraineEconomic Relations: An Interpretation*I. S. KOROPECKYJIntroductionThe Ukraine was integrated politically and economically into theRussian Empire in the middle of the eighteenth century. From thattime up to the Revolution of 1917, the Moscow government treatedthe Ukraine as just another region of the empire. Since the Revolution,the Ukraine has been organized into a constituent union republicof the USSR, and the Kiev government has nominally possessedextensive political and economic prerogatives. In reality, however, alldecision-making powers have been concentrated in the hands of theunion government in Moscow. Consequently, the economic interestsof the Ukraine were subordinated first to those of the entire RussianEmpire and subsequently to those of the USSR, as perceived by theauthorities in Moscow. An important question that arises is whethertsarist Russia and the Soviet Union have differed in their treatment ofthe Ukraine. In addressing this question, the present discussion coversapproximately the last one hundred years, with the Revolution of 1917being the divide between the tsarist and Soviet eras.In the manifold economic relationships that exist between any tworegions of the same country, the transfer of national income, budgetaryrelations, trade, flow of resources, and institutional influences areprobably the most important elements. The discussion of all suchrelations between the Ukraine and the rest of the Russian Empire/USSR over one hundred years is beyond the scope of one article. The* I am grateful to Frederic L. Pryor and two anonymous referees for helpfulcomments on an earlier draft of this paper.