A century ago, imperial dreams were common among major nations of the world -- Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and even the United States all had them.Most evaporated in the traumas of World War II and its aftermath. Yet the Soviet Union's multinational empire, subordinating peoples of more than a dozen distinct nationalities to ethnic Russian rule, lived on, until the Soviet collapse of 1991.The jewel of that Soviet empire was Ukraine, a vast and abundant breadbasket inhabited by more than 40 million people, generating over 10 percent of the world's exports of feed grains.With formidable …READ FULL ARTICLE
