Using the example of the 383rd Rifle ("miner") division, the article examines the socio-psychological aspects of such phenomena as mass heroism and mass desertion demonstrated during the defense of Donbass in the autumn of 1941. The problem is analyzed in the context of the socio-economic and political state of the USSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Donetsk region in the pre-war years and in the first months of the war, in-cluding the evacuation.

The article is devoted to the problem of interaction of national movements of previously repressed peoples (Soviet Germans, Crimean Tatars, Meskhe-tian Turks) and the Soviet state in the second half of the 1960s – early 1980s. Particular attention is paid to the position of the republican ruling eth-nic elites (Kazakh, Ukrainian, Georgian) on the implementation of the requirements of national movements. It was their position that had a serious impact on the attitude of the Brezhnev leadership to the issue, did not allow satisfying the demands of the movements and carrying out a full-scale rehabilitation of these peoples.

The article examines the policy of Nazi Germany in the national and cultural sphere in the occupied territory of the Ukrainian SSR (in its southern and eastern regions). Namely, an attempt to sow discord between Ukrainians and Russians. Ukrainian nationalists were an active promoter of this policy. The reasons for their cooperation with the Germans, their goals, nature and methods of activity are analyzed. The effectiveness of the policy of the German Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists and the reasons for its failure are evaluated.

The article deals with one of the most important aspects of the Ukraine Nazi’s ideology: the so-called «golodomor». Currently it’s the Ukraine name for the starvation of 1932−1933, but it’s not just «starvation». «Golodomor» is an ideological concept, the powerful tool for influencing the mass-consciousness. This arm is used by the Ukraine Nazis and establishment as well as by foreign enemies of the USSR — Russia. These circles present «golodomor» as the ethnocide — the purposeful exterminating of Ukraine people carried out in practice by the Moscow leaders. It came that far that they call it «Ukraine holocaust». According to the ideologists' plan the «golodomor» phenomenon must become the solid ground, on which the still unformed Ukraine nation will strengthen its national idea. The main point of the idea is the statement that Russians and Ukrainians are totally different peoples, alien to each other; the «golodomor» phenomenon is aimed to blacken Russia and accuse it of the oppression of Ukraine. The author shows that the idea of «golodomor» is but the political and ideological myth that has nothing in common with the reality of the past. The starvation of 1932−33 struck all the USSR, caused the sufferings of all the peasants and had nothing to do with any national differentiation. The starvation was caused by totally different social, political and economical reasons and wasn’t the consequence of the Soviet leaders' will to annihilate the Ukrainians as a folk.

The author expresses his doubts about ability of Ukraine to enjoy the genuine, not a fictitious independence. Formation of the Ukrainian nation and «Ukraine» as a national organism has been carried out in opposition to everything Russian. Due to that the Ukrainian ideology from its very inception and onwards has the anti-Russian character. Combination of this peculiarity, predominance of bourgeois relationships, lack of economic prerequisites for independence as well as the fact that at the present time Russia is not a power pole on its own and is looking for ways to incorporate itself into the Western world which has its own system of values leaves no alternative way to Ukraine and pushes it into the West’s orbit.

The article is devoted to one of aspects of the Soviet national policy in Ukraine in 1920s, i.e., to the Jewish agricultural colonization and to the problems which aroused between the immigrants-colonists and the local population. By virtue of the Jewish agricultural colonization the Ukrainian leaders tried to attract Jews to agricultural labor, to involve the Jewish population of the Soviet Union in the construction of socialism and, by improving economic conditions of this population to strengthen its own influence. Besides that, the Bolshevists hoped that this policy would ensure support of the USSR on the part of influential Jewish circles of Europe and the USA. However, due to several reasons rooted in the social-economic factor caused ethnic frictions between the local population and immigrants and the rise of anti-Semitic moods and attitudes in the countryside as well as among the urban dwellers. It is noted that where the interethnic relations were organized properly the frictions became weaker and gave way to good neighbors' relations between representatives of various ethnic groups. Though the Jewish agricultural colonization did not solve all tasks set forth by the USSR leadership it played, on the balance, its role in development of interethnic relations in our country

The author deals with some aspects of the Rusins' national movement in the present day Ukraine. Proceeding from the ethnic peculiarity of the region, its historical, cultural and geographic characteristics the activists of the movement assert that the East Slavonic population of the Trans-Carpathian area and of some adjacent territories of Slovakia, Hungary and Poland is formed not of Ukrainians but with peculiar nation, i.e. Rusins. Being quite serious about this assumption the activists call for a status of ethnic minority for this nation within the contemporary Ukrainian state with all consequences such status will bring about. The Rusins' movement is not a phenomenon which emerged just in the past decade. It has a long history and passed through several phases common for other similar movements. Initially it set only cultural aims and later brought forward political aims up to demands to create an independent state of the Rusins in Carpathian region. It is interesting to note that there are certain intriguing parallels in the ideology, history, development and character of the Ukrainian and the Rusinian national movements. Now the Rusins' movement has the same meaning for contemporary Ukrain as the Ukrainian national movement used to have for Russia. The Rusins' movement provokes a nervous reaction of certain Ukrainian ruling circles as well as of the Ukrainian nationalists and constitutes a serious obstacle on the way to introduce and impose the ethnic concept of the Ukrainian nation’s making and development.