ABSTRACT
The USSR's official historiography divided the time after the Ukrainian War of Independence and before World War Two in June of 1941 into the following periods: the period of the restoration of national industry, the period of the establishment of the basis of socialism, the period of the completion of the socialist reconstruction of national industry, and the period before the Great Patriotic War. These impressive, positive-sounding words mask the drastic, violent and often bloody transformation of public life in every sphere, from culture in its broadest sense to industry and railways. After the War of Independence from 1918 to 1920 when, after all attempts, the Ukrainians failed to defend their own independent state, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was established in the Ukrainian part of the former Russian empire. In 1920, about 80 per cent of the railway network was damaged. At the end of 1920s and in 1930s, waves of repression engulfed by the Ukrainian railways.
