RUSSIA’S current aggression towards Ukraine is driven by their shared history. Understanding this is essential to understanding the current crisis.

This photo essay was made in 1991 when I travelled to Ukraine as it emerged from the wreckage of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) which was dominated by Russians, and as it declared itself an independent nation, a decision that precipitated the collapse of the USSR itself.

My images explore Ukraine’s contested history, showing how memories of life under Soviet oppression helped build an independent nation and continue to shape its ongoing commitment to resist Russia reasserting control over a prized part of its former empire.

Within living memory the occupation of Ukraine by Soviet Russia, alongside the carnage of the Second World War, demanded a huge price in human lives. Many Ukrainians died due to a Soviet man-made famine during the 1930s and the imposition of President Josef Stalin’s regime known the ‘Great Terror’. Between 1930 and Stalin’s death in 1953 historians estimate that famine, war, repression, mass execution and nationalist struggle caused the deaths of over 15 million Ukrainians. Another half a million people were deported to the labour and prison camps of the Soviet gulag. Many disappeared simply for practicing their religion, for writing in the Ukrainian language or having been denounced for their ‘anti-Soviet’ views. Millions more were dispersed abroad.

Many came to live in Britain, having been displaced by the Second World War they considered it too dangerous to return to a life under the rule of Stalin. At one time Bradford was home to the largest community of Ukrainians in Western Europe. Most were recruited to work in textiles, and they went on to create a vibrant community in exile, establishing their own clubs, churches and Saturday school. They also protested against and publicised the repression of Ukrainians by the Soviet system.

It was my long involvement with this community that led me to travel to Ukraine at a pivotal moment in its history. I was there in late 1991, in the lead up to a referendum that confirmed its independence from the USSR. This marked a fundamental divide between Ukraine and Russia, but Putin’s recent and repeated assertions that Ukrainians and Russians are “One People” gives voice to his view that Ukraine’s assertion of its statehood and its western aspirations ever since are a historic error. His yearning for an era when the USSR was a great power and his lack of reconciliation to the loss of its former republics is especially true of Ukraine, once the second-most powerful republic in the Soviet Union.

My photographs from 1991 explore Ukraine’s 20th Century history from a Ukrainian perspective. The run up to Ukrainian independence was an extraordinary time to be there. Despite official opposition and a chaotic transport system I and Rob Perks, an oral historian who had established the Bradford Heritage Recording Unit, travelled across the country. We recorded the emergence of Ukrainian nationalism, fuelled by the exposure of the crimes of the Soviet system and most graphically illustrated by the exhumation of mass graves of the victims of the Soviet secret police, the KGB and their predecessors the NKVD. (Putin is a former KGB officer.) I was witness to political debate on the streets of cities such as Kyiv and Lviv, when one of the main platforms for the nationalists was Ukraine’s ambition to integrate with Europe. I photographed the collapse of collective farms and the dismantling of the statue of Lenin that towered over Kyiv’s main square, then the Square of the October Revolution and now renamed Independence Square.

I photographed how Ukrainian language, literature and religion, brutally suppressed by the Soviet authorities, flowered as they emerged from underground. Millions of Ukrainians, many of whom were former deportees to Soviet labour camps, felt able to speak publicly for the first time. Ukraine’s forbidden history was being newly told.

On my return I, together with colleagues and British Ukrainians, played a small part in sharing this history by creating an exhibition that toured Britain. We also published a book, Ukraine’s Forbidden History, that sold internationally.

In 1991 over 92per cent of Ukrainians voted for independence, despite having to contend with industrial and agricultural collapse, food shortages, rampant inflation, unemployment and crime. The country may still be trying to make sense of itself as a new nation, and struggles continue for many, but memories of past suffering and an empire dominated by Russia also endure. Conscious of its own history and identity, Ukraine will not give up its independence without a fight.

* Visit timsmithphotos@btinternet.com