Seventy Years as a Soviet Republic, and Japan During Those Years

On the famine that struck Ukraine in 1932–33 (the Holodomor), a demographic paper published in 2015 in the peer-reviewed journal Canadian Studies in Population (four of its five authors affiliated with the Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies in Kyiv) estimates excess deaths in Ukraine in 1932–34 at 3.9 million and lost births at 600,000. This counts the entire population of the territory then known as Soviet Ukraine, not a figure broken down by ethnicity. The same paper also states that demographic estimates range from 2.6 million to 5 million, so this is not a settled figure. In the same 1932–33, Japan, according to the National Archives of Japan’s chronology, notified its withdrawal from the League of Nations in March 1933.

The “seventy years” in the title refers to the period during which the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was a constituent republic of the USSR. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine’s (published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, CIUS, at the University of Alberta; hereafter IEU) entry on the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (whose print edition first appeared in Volume 5, 1993), this republic joined the USSR on 30 December 1922 and ceased to exist on 24 August 1991, when its Supreme Council declared Ukraine’s independence.

Every Figure Comes With Who Counted It

The period covered by this article involves several very large numbers. Each time one appears, it is necessary to state who counted it and how.

On Babyn Yar on the outskirts of Kyiv, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) describes what happened there on 29–30 September 1941 as one of the largest mass shootings in German-occupied Europe. Of the widely cited figure of 33,771, the museum states explicitly that it comes “according to a report sent to Einsatzgruppen headquarters in Berlin.” This is a figure the perpetrators themselves reported to headquarters, not an independently verified count. The museum also records that killings continued at this site — of Jews and, among others, Roma — until shortly before Soviet forces retook Kyiv in 1943.

On the forced deportation of the Crimean Tatars, Britannica records that Stalin accused about 200,000 Crimean Tatars of collaboration with Germany and had them collectively deported to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, that use of the Tatar language was banned in the places they were resettled, and that Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization in 1956 restored their civil rights but did not permit their return to Crimea. It was not until the early 1990s that many were actually able to return.

Crimea in 1954, and Japan at the Same Time

According to Britannica’s entry on the Crimean Tatars, Crimea was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954.

For Japan around the same 1954, the National Archives of Japan’s chronology records that the Treaty of San Francisco and the Japan-US Security Treaty were signed in September 1951, and that the Japan-Soviet Joint Declaration was signed in October 1956, normalizing diplomatic relations.

According to the United Nations’ published list of the growth in its membership, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic is listed separately from the USSR among the 51 original member states in 1945. Japan joined in 1956, in December of that year according to the National Archives of Japan’s chronology.

A Postwar Chronology of Japan

According to the National Archives of Japan’s chronology: in March 1945 came the great air raid on Tokyo; in August, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration; in September, the signing of the instrument of surrender; and in December, revision of the House of Representatives Election Law to grant women’s suffrage. The Constitution of Japan was promulgated in November 1946; the Labor Standards Act, the Antimonopoly Act, and the Local Autonomy Act were enacted in April 1947, and the first National Diet convened in May of that year.

1964 was the year Japan joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in April and the Tōkaidō Shinkansen opened in October. Okinawa was returned to Japan in May 1972.

The Economic Planning Agency’s Annual Economic Report for 1969 (Shōwa 44) states that Japan’s gross national product in 1968 was a preliminary US$141.9 billion, making it, by this measure, the second-largest in the free world after the United States, surpassing West Germany. The same report also notes that, by per-capita national income in 1968 (US$1,110), Japan still ranked around 20th.

26 April 1986

According to IEU’s entry on Chornobyl (updated 2017), the town of Chornobyl had a population of 12,500 in 1986 and served as a district center in Kyiv Oblast. The same entry records that, after the Chornobyl nuclear power plant accident on 26 April 1986, most of the population evacuated and the town became a ghost town. Britannica also gives 26 April 1986 as the date of the accident.

From 16 July 1990 to 1 December 1991

According to Britannica, the legislature of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic declared sovereignty on 16 July 1990 and declared independence on 24 August 1991. This was confirmed by a referendum on 1 December 1991. Ukraine gained full independence with the dissolution of the USSR that same December.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan’s “Ukraine: Basic Data,” Japan recognized Ukraine as a state on 28 December 1991 and established diplomatic relations on 26 January 1992.

At the same time, Britannica notes that a fully independent Ukraine did not emerge until the very end of the 20th century, that it had long been under the rule of Poland-Lithuania, Russia, and the Soviet Union before that, that there was a brief period of independence in 1918–20, and that in the interwar period parts of the west were under Polish, Romanian, and Czechoslovak rule.

Events Lined Up by Year

What Simply Lining Things Up Cannot Tell You

The Japan column of this table is drawn from the National Archives of Japan’s chronology; the column for Ukraine is drawn from entries in Britannica, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and IEU. The fact that the Japan column lists mostly treaties, laws, and institutions, while the column for Ukraine lists mostly famine, mass shootings, forced deportation, and the nuclear accident, is partly a reflection of which sources and entries this article chose for each column. No conclusion about the difference between the two societies can be drawn from this table. A blank cell does not mean nothing happened in that place that year.