#5 The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR)
During WWII, Stalin came to an agreement with Hitler and invaded Poland in 1939 to incorporate the old Ukrainian lands into the Ukrainian SSR, which the Bolsheviks lost to Poland. At the end of the war, in 1945, Churchill and Roosevelt came to an agreement with Stalin and let him keep these territories as part of the Ukrainian SSR. After, Stalin pressured Czechoslovakia to hand over the last “Rus” lands that were in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.
This ended up enlarging the Ukrainian SSR, connecting almost all the lands that held an ethnic Ukrainian majority. The ruler at the time, Nikita Khrushchev, achieved the long-awaited aim of the Ukrainian patriots of uniting all the Ukrainian lands. However, Khrushchev started a policy of assimilating with Russia, something that upset all the nationalists. The resistance to Soviet rule continued well into the 1950s.
