--- title: The struggle of 1917–21 and the Holodomor — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The struggle of 1917–21 and the Holodomor», a lesson of the history course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Those years were like a playground where five bigger kids fight over one ball at once: Bolsheviks, White Russian armies, Ukraini --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/) / The struggle of 1917–21 and the Holodo… # The struggle of 1917–21 and the Holodomor Lesson 46 of the history course of Mova's primary school: 12 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/1/) — Those years were like a playground where five bigger kids fight over one ball at once: Bolsheviks, White Russian armies, Ukrainian governments, Polish troops and peasant armies like Nestor Makhno's all fought over the land (the Bolsheviks were Lenin's Communists, who had taken power in Russia), and in the end most of Ukraine became a Soviet republic. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/2/) — Danylo's stories made heroes and villains simple, but the real people were mixed: Hetman Skoropadsky depended on German troops yet founded the Academy of Sciences, and Petliura is honoured by many while historians still argue about pogroms (violent attacks on Jews) by troops under his command. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/5/) — After the Russian revolution of 1917 the Central Rada in Kyiv, led by Mykhailo Hrushevsky, proclaimed the Ukrainian People's Republic in November 1917 and full independence on 22 January 1918, though the country was split and many forces fought over it. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/6/) — At Kruty in January 1918 a few hundred defenders, among them student volunteers, fought a much larger Bolshevik force; many young men died, the advance was delayed only briefly, and the battle became a symbol of sacrifice. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/7/) — In April 1918 Pavlo Skoropadsky took power as Hetman with German support; his Hetmanate founded the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, which still exists, and fell in December 1918. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/8/) — On 22 January 1919 the Ukrainian People's Republic and the West Ukrainian People's Republic (in Galicia, with Lviv) proclaimed unity in Kyiv, but war split them again; 22 January is now celebrated as the Day of Unity. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/9/) — Symon Petliura led the Ukrainian People's Republic's army and government in 1919–1920; in the civil war many forces carried out pogroms against Jews, including troops nominally (on paper) under his command, and historians still debate his responsibility. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/10/) — Nestor Makhno led an anarchist (against any government) peasant army in southern Ukraine from 1918 to 1921, used the tachanka, a horse cart with a machine gun, fought several sides and was finally defeated by the Bolsheviks; he died in Paris. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/12/) — In 1932–1933 millions died in Soviet Ukraine in a famine caused by Soviet policy: forced collectivisation (making farmers give their land and animals to big state farms), impossible grain quotas (amounts each village had to hand over), seizing food and blocking starving peasants from leaving; Ukraine and many other countries recognise it as genocide (an attempt to destroy a people), while some historians debate the legal label. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/13/) — Population experts (demographers) estimate about 3.5 to 5 million Holodomor deaths in Soviet Ukraine; older figures like 7 or 10 million are not supported by most demographers. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/14/) — In 1937–1938, in the Great Terror (also called the purges), the Soviet secret police arrested and shot huge numbers of people across the USSR; in Ukraine writers, teachers, priests and Communist leaders were among them, and many lie in the mass graves at Bykivnia near Kyiv. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/46-the-struggle-of-1917-21-and-the-holodomor/15/) — Between 1919 and 1939 Galicia (with Lviv) and Volhynia were in Poland, Bukovyna in Romania and Transcarpathia in Czechoslovakia; Ukrainians there had parties and cooperatives but were pressed to assimilate (give up their own language and ways), and Carpatho-Ukraine declared independence for one day in March 1939. - ← previous: [Two empires and Shevchenko](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/45-two-empires-and-shevchenko/) - next →: [Ukraine in the Second World War](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/47-ukraine-in-the-second-world-war/) - ↑ back to [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/)