- Joined
- Jun 18, 2018
- Messages
- 80,335
- Reaction score
- 84,967
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Progressive
...the Kremlin handed Crimea to Ukraine not out of benevolence but because a decade of disastrous Soviet policies had left the territory an economic and humanitarian disaster. As University of Cambridge professor Rory Finnin notes, “The transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was no mistake. It was a rescue.” During a visit to Crimea in October 1953, Khrushchev witnessed the devastation firsthand. Driving through the peninsula with his son-in-law, Aleksey Adzhubey — editor-in-chief of Izvestia and one of the Soviet Union’s most influential journalists — Khrushchev encountered not only the ruins of the Crimean Tatar Bakhchysaray Palace but also vast stretches of barren land strewn with abandoned military hardware.
Khrushchev understood that Crimea’s salvation depended on reconnecting it to Ukraine’s southern steppes and the life-giving Dnipro River, ties that had sustained the peninsula for millennia. ...First, the Presidium of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic passed a resolution proposing the transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR. Then the USSR’s central government — the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet — ratified the transfer on Feb.19, 1954, citing “the integral character of the economy, the territorial proximity, and the close economic and cultural ties between Crimea Province and the Ukrainian SSR.” Two months later, the Supreme Soviet amended the Soviet Constitution, officially transferring the Crimean Oblast from Russia to Ukraine. Ukraine’s Communist leadership, under pressure from Moscow, agreed to the transfer — along with the immense burden of reviving the devastated region.
Over the next decades, Ukraine poured resources into developing Crimea. In 1957, it launched the construction of the North Crimean Canal, completed in 1971, to bring water from the Dnipro River to the arid peninsula. Ukraine invested heavily in infrastructure, agriculture and tourism, building reservoirs, irrigating fields, establishing resorts and creating economic opportunities. Between 1954 and 1990, Ukraine invested close to five times more per capita in Crimea than in comparable regions elsewhere in the republic. These efforts bore fruit. By the time of Ukraine’s 1991 independence referendum, 54 percent of Crimean voters — including 57 percent in Sevastopol — chose to remain part of an independent Ukraine. A subsequent poll by Baltic Surveys/Gallup showed 65 percent of respondents favoring Crimea’s autonomy within Ukraine, with only 23 percent preferring union with Russia.
Link
Now you know the rest of the story.
Khrushchev understood that Crimea’s salvation depended on reconnecting it to Ukraine’s southern steppes and the life-giving Dnipro River, ties that had sustained the peninsula for millennia. ...First, the Presidium of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic passed a resolution proposing the transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR. Then the USSR’s central government — the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet — ratified the transfer on Feb.19, 1954, citing “the integral character of the economy, the territorial proximity, and the close economic and cultural ties between Crimea Province and the Ukrainian SSR.” Two months later, the Supreme Soviet amended the Soviet Constitution, officially transferring the Crimean Oblast from Russia to Ukraine. Ukraine’s Communist leadership, under pressure from Moscow, agreed to the transfer — along with the immense burden of reviving the devastated region.
Over the next decades, Ukraine poured resources into developing Crimea. In 1957, it launched the construction of the North Crimean Canal, completed in 1971, to bring water from the Dnipro River to the arid peninsula. Ukraine invested heavily in infrastructure, agriculture and tourism, building reservoirs, irrigating fields, establishing resorts and creating economic opportunities. Between 1954 and 1990, Ukraine invested close to five times more per capita in Crimea than in comparable regions elsewhere in the republic. These efforts bore fruit. By the time of Ukraine’s 1991 independence referendum, 54 percent of Crimean voters — including 57 percent in Sevastopol — chose to remain part of an independent Ukraine. A subsequent poll by Baltic Surveys/Gallup showed 65 percent of respondents favoring Crimea’s autonomy within Ukraine, with only 23 percent preferring union with Russia.
Link
Now you know the rest of the story.