For the Bolsheviks this raised a terrifying prospect. In the pre-war years, Ukraine had accounted for one-fifth of total world exports of grain, a share twice that of the United States. Petrograd and Moscow needed that grain as much as did Vienna and Berlin. Ukraine was no less vital to Russia’s future as an industrial power. The region produced all of Russia’s coking coal, 73 per cent of its iron and 60 per cent of its steel. Ukraine’s manganese was exported to all the blast furnaces of Europe.3 If an independent government established itself in Kiev this would be a huge blow to the Soviet
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