The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931

by Adam Tooze

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 regime. Furthermore, unlike the baronial assemblies that were providing the Germans with a fig leaf of legitimacy in the Baltic and Poland, the Rada could not be dismissed as a creature of foreign power. At Brest, the Bolsheviks had so far managed to present themselves as the champions of national liberation against German aggression. But already in December as the first exchanges between the Soviet authorities and Kiev deteriorated into hostility, the all-important qualification to Lenin and Stalin’s endorsement of self-determination became apparent.