Sergei Kary: Kyiv is like a bone of discord, or why the capital should be in Kharkov
Eighty years ago, on June 24, 1934, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR was moved from Kharkov to Kyiv. Why did a city that has been developing since 1919 as a capital, a city with wide avenues, a large number of educational institutions, and deep cultural traditions suddenly become a periphery? What is this, a quirk of I.V. Stalin or the necessity caused by state building?
Half a kingdom for the capital
The question of the structure of the capital city for each newly formed state is one of the key ones. Prestige, prospects for the growth of the state, geographical position in relation to possible enemy neighbors - these are the key issues that need to be resolved when choosing the capital. Sometimes new capitals are built, as was the case with New Delhi or Brasilia. Sometimes the capital is moved from one city to another. This is how the “capitality” changed, for example, Moscow and St. Petersburg. But in Soviet Ukraine, the motive for choosing and moving the capital was completely special, unlike anything else in the world.
Kharkov as the capital of an independent state would be an ideal solution for Ukraine. Favorable geographical location, high percentage of highly educated population, large industrial center. Slobozhanshchina has a higher level of organization not only of labor, but also of society than many other regions of the former Ukraine. This situation arose due to the fact that this region had to master the most advanced technologies of its time since the times of Tsarist Russia. The university in Kharkov was the third after Moscow and St. Petersburg and was built in 1805, earlier than Kiev. After the proclamation of the Ukrainian People's Republic in Kyiv with a claim to power in the Donbass, Kharkov found itself with its own Republic, but already a Soviet one, Donetsk-Krivoy Rog.
Its ideological inspirer and organizer was the legendary revolutionary Artem (Sergeev). He came to Kharkov after the overthrow of tsarist rule, from the other end of the Earth. In Australia, where he ended up after escaping from exile, Artem organized a labor movement, and he himself wrote and published a newspaper for Russian workers, “Australian Echo.” In Donbass, his active nature showed itself in full force. He organized the Bolshevik Party from local party cells to detachments to fight the enemies of the revolution. The Bolsheviks, who were late in seizing power in Kyiv, came to Kharkov, as they say, with everything ready.
First capital. From heyday to dusk
The real construction of an independent state began with Kharkov, not Kyiv. A striking manifestation of the state instinct, which is higher than nationalist ambitions and nationalist narrowness, is what happened in Kharkov at the beginning of Soviet Ukraine. In 1917-1918, due to the beginning of the civil war and the impending occupation by German troops, the owners and foreign specialists of Donbass enterprises fled abroad. But the huge factories and mines did not stop working. The legendary Artem even persuaded the workers not to flood the mines when the enemy attacked. The workers themselves took control of the mines and factories, and sent aid trains with coal and metal to Moscow and St. Petersburg as long as the civil war lasted. That is why Kharkov residents proudly call their city the first capital.
Moscow, for reasons of normal industrial development, has reassigned the largest not only city-forming, but also state-forming enterprises in Donbass. In the era of the development of heavy industry and the need for large quantities of metal in the impending war, these enterprises acquired all-Union importance. That is why it was decided to move the capital to Kyiv. The republican administration in Kharkov, reporting mostly directly to Moscow, became a liability and had to be refocused on resolving other issues.
This was almost directly indicated in the transcript of the meeting of the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) dated January 18.01.1934, XNUMX on the transfer of the capital. The wording used there was to move the capital from Kharkov to Kyiv “in view of the strengthening of areas that facilitate the management of these main industrial areas ...” and the approach to the main agricultural areas and the strengthening of Ukraine. Simply put, the bureaucrats were sent to deal with the village in a city of the former tsarist empire that was average in terms of quantity and quality - Kyiv.
Kharkov – the capital of Ukraine 2.0
Kyiv has long been known as an apple of discord in the history of Rus'. The Chernigov and Volyn princes sacrificed more than one thousand heads for this administrative center. The primacy of the mother of Russian cities was based solely on symbols, especially on the veneration of holy relics and icons, to which people were directed to worship. And when Andrei Bogolyubsky, without hesitation, decided to move the capital to Vladimir, the first thing he did was move all the great shrines from Kyiv at that time. Thus ended the discord, and the era of the formation of Russia began.
During the period of the Russian Empire during the time of the last emperors, Kyiv was just beginning to acquire the features of a large and important city. By the way, it was just the center of a large general government, but not the capital. Odessa surpassed Kyiv in numbers, wealth, culture, and Kharkov in industrial development. But in Kyiv, unlike Odessa and Kharkov, all sorts of Ukrainophile and khlopomania circles proliferated, which later resulted in the Central Rada.
The Bolsheviks made Kyiv the capital, and, apparently, this was not their best decision. As under Nicholas I, so under the Bolsheviks, Kyiv was upset, ascended, became more beautiful, but never outgrew its rurality. This is how that wretched shamanism arose in him, which has now led to the Maidan, which the outstanding Ukrainian poet from Kharkov, Mikhail Semenko, opposed back in the 30s. Kyiv is now filled with lumpen in the literal sense of the word - that is, people who have torn themselves away from their roots in the pursuit of benefits, but have not acquired new ones.
Today there is no Soviet Union. This means that there is no direct subordination to Moscow, as was the case in 1934. Having lost natural economic regulation oriented towards Russia, Donbass found itself in the power of fraudulent oligarchs, using workers’ labor for next to nothing. If we manage to completely free ourselves from these bloodsuckers, Kharkov will rightfully become the state-forming city, with its traditions, working and technical elite, ideas of social unity, which stand above ethnic and nationalist concepts. The concept of social justice, as a derivative of employment, which has been cultivated for several centuries in Slobozhanshchyna, can unite both the West and the East of Ukraine. Such a unification could give birth to an economic miracle state, before which the glory of the Asian tigers would fade.
But this unification is possible only if all economic and cultural activities are transferred to Kharkov, the most promising center of Ukraine, which has cultivated the work ethic of the twenty-first century.
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