This book analyzes the precarious relationship between Soviet legitimacy building and the consequences of rapid industrial development in the Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic during the 1920s and 1930s. George Liber traces the impact of rapid urban growth on the implementation of Soviet preferential policies, korenizatsiia. He shows how the interplay among industrialization, urbanization and korenizatsiia produced a modern, urban Ukranian identity, and he argues that this explains why the Stalinist leadership changed its course on the nationality question in the 1930s.