Moreover, whatever ideas they had about Ukraine’s economic development were also quickly overwhelmed by another priority. No considerations of Marxist theory, no arguments about nationalism or sovereignty, mattered as much to the Bolsheviks in that year as the need to feed the workers of Moscow and Petrograd. By 1919, Lenin’s telegram—“For God’s sake, use all energy and all revolutionary measures to send grain, grain and more grain!!!”—had become the single most important description of Bolshevik attitudes and practice in Ukraine.
