Authors

Discussion

By the time the Bolsheviks secured control over eight Ukrainian provinces, they were compelled to retreat from war communism and restore elements of capitalism. As a result, the Ukrainians avoided the most severe impacts of war communism. However, after 1921, they did not regain their economic freedoms. The young Soviet state embarked on an experiment with socialism. The New Economic Policy combined free entrepreneurship with state control over large-scale industry, banking, and foreign trade. Meanwhile, four Ukrainian provinces that became part of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania continued to live under various forms of capitalism until 1945, when they were incorporated into Soviet Ukraine. Although these provinces belonged to different states with distinct economic systems, all were predominantly agricultural. For each of these states, the Ukrainian lands were on the periphery of their economic interests. All viewed the Ukrainian provinces primarily as regions for the extraction of material and human resources. This paper aims to outline the similarities and differences in the institutional settings that defined ‘capitalism’ in the Ukrainian territories at the beginning of the 20^th century. It pays particular attention to the protection of property rights and the circulation of private capital. The paper seeks to assess the extent to which the trajectories of the Ukrainian lands diverged following their division among four states after World War I.