Posted by AF on December 29, 1999 at 12:21:03:
The answer to your question depends on the perspective of what is meant by "critical". If you relate that to the concept of identity and future nationhood, then unquestionable the single most important event is, ironically, the formation of the USSR. After all, without the development of an administrative structure which formed individuals Soviet republics based on national identity--however artificial or perverted that consept later became--there would never have been the critical mass of "Ukraine" as a political entity which so easily slipped out from under Soviet hegemony. It is after all, the concept of a Ukraine that allowed Stalin to annex Halychyna and Bukovina, and to force onto the world Ukraine's "membership" in the UN. Without all of those preexisting elements, I'm afraid that Ukraine would be nothing more than a region in a convoluted part of the world.