Harvest All Articles

THE BREADBASKET OF EUROPE

The “breadbasket of Europe” refers to the fertile lands of Ukraine. The chornozem (black earth) of the Ukrainian steppes, combined with the climate of the region, is uniquely suited to the growth of agricultural crops and grain in particular.

In Soviet times, the Ukrainian SSR produced 25% of the Soviet Union’s agricultural output, despite the fact that its territory was about 2% of the area of the USSR. In the 20th century, the battle for control over the fertile lands of Ukraine saw the country and its people ravaged by WWI, the Civil War, the Holodomor, and finally, Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in WWII.

CARDINAL THEODORE INNITZER

b. 25 December 1875, Neugerschrei, Northern Bohemia, d. 9 October 1955, Vienna.

Innitzer was the Archbishop of Vienna and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. The son of factory worker, he became a priest in 1902, received his doctorate in theology in 1906, and from 1929 to 1930 served as Minister of Social Affairs in the Austrian government of Chancellor Johann Schober. In 1932 he became Archbishop of Vienna.

In his role as Archbishop of Vienna, Innitzer attempted to organize relief for the starving peasantry during the Ukrainian Famine. However, as the Soviet government vehemently denied the existence of any Famine on its territory, Innitzer was not allowed to provide any aid.

Innitzer’s role in Austrian history remains controversial, as the Archbishop supported the 1938 Anschluss with Germany. However, soon after the Anschluss, when the Nazi assault on the Catholic Church began, Innitzer became critical of the regime – in October 1938 he stated in a sermon “There is just one Fuhrer – Jesus Christ.” During the war, Innitzer was critical of the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazis, but openly supported the war effort against the USSR.

COMMUNIST YOUTH LEAGUE

The Communist Youth League (Kommunisticheskyi Soyuz Molodiozhi – commonly known as the Komsomol) was the mass organization of youth of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The Komsomol was founded in 1918. Its structure was an exact replica of the structure of the CPSU. Komsomol cells were established in factories, military units and places of learning. In the first years of its existence, the Komsomol was driven by the revolutionary enthusiasm of Soviet youth. The realities of Soviet life, however, soon dulled this exuberance.

Joining the Komsomol became an important prerequisite for a career either in the state bureaucracy, Party or in academia. Admission to universities was much easier for members of the Komsomol. The corridors of power within the Party were open only to those who had been in the Komsomol.

Part of the activity of the Komsomol was sending its membership to the countryside to assist with the harvests; as such, Komsomol activists played an important part in the machinery of the Famine. They were sent to the villages to take in the harvest; often Komsomol members were used to go through peasants’ homes to check for hidden food. They were also active in agitating for collectivization amongst the peasantry.

The first six leaders of the Komsomol perished in Stalin’s purges. Later leaders fared better – both Andropov and Gorbachev were Komsomol leaders in their early careers. The Brezhnev era saw an increasing alienation of Soviet youth from the Komsomol; in the last decades of the existence of the USSR, the Komsomol was viewed even by most of its membership as simply a cynical tool for advancing careers.

COMPULSORY COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE

The compulsory (or forced) collectivization of agriculture began in the USSR with the First Five-Year Plan, announced in 1928 and completed in 1932. In order to pay for the unprecedented industrialization undertaken at break-neck speed in the USSR, the Soviet government had to have control of the grain crop – the export of grain was to be used to pay for investment in industrialization projects. In order to gain control over the grain crop, the Soviet government announced the forced collectivization of agriculture.

Resistance to collectivization was fierce; many peasants slaughtered livestock and burned crops rather than give it to the collective farms. This resistance, however, was soon broken by brutally repressive measures undertaken by the Soviet state. In order to force the peasantry onto collective farms, taxes on farmers who refused to join collectives were raised to a rate that was impossible to pay. In order to break the resistance to collectivization led by the most prosperous peasants, the policy of dekulakization was implemented. The most well to do peasants, and soon, any peasants that opposed collectivization, were declared to be kulaks, their property expropriated, and families were deported by the thousands to remote regions of the USSR.

Dekulakization and heightened taxation proved effective in breaking the resistance of the peasants to collectivization. The vast majority of peasants joined the collective farms in the first years of the First Five-Year Plan. Thereafter, the Soviet state, and not the peasant who worked the land, would have control over the grain grown in the country.

DENIKIN’S WHITE ARMY

The Russian Civil War, 1917-21, saw several different forces fighting for control of Ukrainian territory. The two largest forces fighting in Ukraine were the Red Army, under War Commissar Leon Trotsky, and the White Army, under General Anton Denikin.

Properly understood, the White Army, which is usually viewed as the monarchist force that fought the Bolshevik Red Army, was in reality a loose confederation of several counter-revolutionary forces. Furthermore, many of the forces fighting under the White Army banner were not monarchist – they were simply anti-Bolshevik. Denikin, for example, was not a monarchist – he was dedicated to the establishment of a democratic regime in the former Russian Empire.

In 1919, Denikin, as commander of the Southern forcers of the White Army, led an assault on Moscow. His army, however, was overextended, and was soundly defeated by the Red Army at Orel in October 1919. His forces, which at the time held Kyiv, retreated and by March 1920 were forced all the way back to the Crimea. As Denikin’s army retreated, the Red Army occupied territory that would eventually become the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. After the defeat of his army, Denikin went into exile and died in 1947 in the United States.

EDOUARD HERRIOT

b. 5 July 1872, Troyes, France, d. 26 March 1957, Lyon, France.

Herriot served as Prime Minister of the Third French Republic three times – from June 1924 to April 1925, in July 1926 and from June-December 1932. A member of the Radical party, during his third term as PM Herriot visited the USSR. As part of the disinformation campaign about the Famine in Ukraine, the Soviet government took him on a tour of Ukraine.

The entire expedition was staged – the streets of Kyiv through which Herriot drove were cleaned and he was taken to collective farms at which farmers told him that everything was fine. It is probable that the farmers with whom he spoke were actors, or alternately, had been intimidated into lying about the actual conditions in the countryside.

Upon returning from the USSR, Herriot reported that accounts of the famine raging in the Ukrainian countryside were false, that the harvest had been good and that the peasants had plenty to eat. His testimony was influential in forming public opinion in the West that reports of Famine were simply anti-Soviet provocations.

The staging of Herriot’s tour was but one of several concerted efforts by the Soviet government to cover up the Famine that they themselves had created. In large part, the campaign of disinformation carried out by the Soviet authorities was effective; the Soviet government itself did not admit to the Famine until the years of perestroika, and many Soviet sympathizers in the West continued until that time to believe that there had been no Famine at all.

ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

“Enemy of the People” was a term summarily applied to any opponent, real or imagined, of the Soviet regime. The very vagueness of the term made it suitable for political infighting and intrigues because it could be widely applied. An “enemy of the people” was simply anyone so designated by the Soviet authorities.

Most of those designated enemies of the people were sentenced under Article 58 of the Soviet criminal code. The code covered such charges as “wrecking,” “sabotage,” “espionage,” “treason,” and “anti-Soviet agitation,” which was the least serious of the charges since it did not involve planned conspiracy. Sentences for these “crimes” ranged from ten to twenty-five years of forced labor, or execution, which was most prevalent during the Great Terror of 1936-8 and the war years.

The term “enemy of the people” was first applied to “counterrevolutionaries” – the Kadets (Constitutional Democrats), Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists were all declared “enemies of the people.” Before and during the Famine in Ukraine anyone who spoke against collectivization or tried to resist grain expropriations was declared an “enemy of the people,” as were peasants caught “hoarding” (i.e., hiding food so that their families would not starve). The withholding or theft of grain was declared, in the summer of 1932, to be a crime against the Soviet state, and therefore an act of political sabotage.

During the Great Terror of 1936-8, the Soviet apparat fought mercilessly against “enemies” within its own ranks. Popular and loyal Bolshevik leaders such as Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin were declared to be spies for the bourgeois capitalist states, and at their show trials they admitted to ridiculous charges of anti-Soviet activities. Much of the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as well as of the Soviet republics’ leaders, were declared to be “enemies of the people” and shot.

The term “enemy of the people” carried with it a stigma for the families of those declared as such. Wives and husbands of “enemies” were removed from their places of employment and residence, expelled from the Party and often also arrested. Children of “enemies” were denied entry into schools and universities and generally could find only the worst kinds of employment. Despite Stalin’s famous saying, in the USSR a son indeed did pay for the “sins” of his father.

FIVE-YEAR PLAN

Five-year plans were the model of economic development and investment adopted by the Soviet government. Economic output, growth and investment were planned out for increments of five years.

With Stalin’s ascendancy to power, the program of “socialism in one country” was adopted and the New Economic Policy was abandoned in favor of a planned, centrally controlled economy. The first five-year plan was adopted on 1 October 1928 and declared completed in four and a quarter years – on 31 December 1932. This five-year plan saw investment in industry on an unprecedented scale – mainly in the capital goods industries. The second five-year plan (1933-37) saw the consolidation and broadening of this program. The USSR, it was argued, had to catch up to the developed economies of North America and Western Europe or risk being destroyed by capitalist countries.

The achievements in industry of the USSR in this time were immense – industrial production in 1928-37 increased by 12-18 percent a year, mass unemployment was eliminated and illiterate or poorly-qualified peasants were trained in industrial skills. The first two five-year plans also saw the production on a mass scale of military materiel, which later assisted the USSR in defending itself against the German invasion.

However, the costs of the first two five-year plans were incalculable. In order to pay for the technology needed for rapid industrialization and to invest massively in the development of industry, the USSR exported its most important commodity – grain. The first five-year plan saw the introduction of the forced collectivization of agriculture. Thereafter, peasants would be wage-laborers on state land. Between seven and ten million people starved to death in Ukraine in 1932-3 as grain was being expropriated to pay for industrialization.

The achievements of Soviet industry in the 1930s were remarkable. However, the price for this development was paid for with the blood of millions of Soviet citizens – the 1932-3 Famine ravaged Ukraine, millions of citizens toiled at forced labor in abominable conditions in the Gulag, and millions of others were repressed for resisting the new social order being created through terror.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

b. 26 July 1856, Dublin, Ireland, d. 2 November 1950, Hertfordshire, England.

Shaw was a world-renowned playwright, novelist, literary critic, and political activist. He is the only person ever to have won both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award. Shaw became an ardent socialist in the late 19th century because of what he saw as the decay of the democratic system and its exploitation of the working class.

Shaw visited the USSR in the early 1930s, and after meeting Stalin, became an ardent supporter of the Stalinist USSR. He wrote an open letter to the Manchester Guardian in 1933 in which he denounced reports of the Famine as slanderous, and condemned accounts of the exploitation of workers. In the letter, he wrote about his recent trip to the USSR: “Particularly offensive and ridiculous is the revival of the old attempts to represent the condition of Russian workers as one of slavery and starvation… Everywhere we saw a hopeful and enthusiastic working-class.”

Shaw also attempted, in his play On the Rocks (1933), to justify the campaign of terror carried out by the OGPU. There is no evidence that Shaw was in the pay of the USSR – it seems, rather, that he was an exceptionally naïve and myopic person who, because of his position of respect and authority, did much to ensure that the real truth about the Stalinist system was repressed and that Stalinist lies spread throughout the free world.

KULAK

Kulak (Ukrainian: kurkul) was the term used to denote rural entrepreneurs possessing land or commercial assets. In reality, anyone who was opposed to collectivization was denounced as being a kulak. In Russian, the term “kulak” means fist – a tightly closed hand that is often associated with notions of selfishness and greed.

Entrepreneurship was encouraged in the countryside during the New Economic Policy (NEP), which lasted from 1921 to 1927. This policy brought remarkable results – by 1922 the famine due to the conditions of the Civil War in the USSR had ended and the country could export grain again. However, the development of an independent class of relatively affluent peasants was seen as a threat to Soviet power, and in 1929, as part of the First Five-Year Plan, the Soviet leadership moved from a policy of restricting the activities of the kulaks to eliminating them as a class.

Beginning in 1929, as a result of dekulakization, millions of peasant families lost their lives or were exiled. Obviously, it was not only actual kulaks who suffered but also poor peasants who had managed, through hard work, to acquire a few head of livestock and a decent hut. Since it was difficult to define who precisely was a kulak, quotas were set for regions as to what percentage of the peasantry was to be expropriated. Eager to show their “revolutionary consciousness,” regional party activists often exceeded these quotas.

The first goal of dekulakization was to use the expropriated property as the material base for the establishment of collective farms. The second, and probably more important goal, was to break the spirit of resistance in the peasantry by decapitating the peasants’ leadership. The third goal was to deliver a warning to anyone thinking of disagreeing with the authorities, showing any independence and resisting enrollment in a collective farm. The process of dekulakization was a precursor to the man-made Famine that killed one-quarter of the population of Soviet Ukraine.

LAW TO PROTECT STATE PROPERTY

On 7 August and 22 August 1932 decrees were issued on “socialized property,” and the “struggle against profiteering,” respectively. Together these two decrees became the Law to Protect State Property. This law defined collective farm, cooperative and railroad freight as state property. Henceforth, theft or misuse of this property was to be regarded as a political crime against the state.

The law defined the minimum penalty for theft or misuse of state property at ten years imprisonment, but in practice, the most common penalty was death by shooting. The law was a response to increased theft of food, which supposedly had an organized character and was directed by kulaks. Under these new measures, peasants who stole or hid food were now committing a counterrevolutionary act against Soviet power, and were subject to the most draconian measures. It was this law that doomed the Ukrainian peasantry to death by starvation in 1932-3. Responsibility for its enforcement was placed on the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), and its secret police wing, the OGPU.

LEAGUE OF NATIONS

The League of Nations was established in the aftermath of WWI, as part of the Treaty of Versailles, in 1919. The aim of the League was the preservation of world peace through a system of collective security and the promotion of cooperation between member states. The government of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) attempted to gain admission for Ukraine into the League, but was rebuffed in 1920. A number of states that occupied Ukrainian territory – Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia and, from 1934-9, the USSR – were members of the League.

The League was responsible for ensuring that the rights of national minorities guaranteed by member states were observed. Thus, when Ukrainian national rights were violated, especially on Polish territory, Ukrainian leaders protested to the League. The League proved uninterested in guaranteeing the rights of minorities, and no action was taken against the Polish government for the violations. Only once did the League discuss Soviet Ukrainian affairs – in a secret Council meeting on the Famine in 1933. Once again the League did not act, and admitted the USSR into its ranks a year after the Famine ended.

Largely because the United States did not participate in the League, the organization proved mostly toothless; numerous resolutions were passed condemning German and Italian aggression in the interwar years. Although the countries were expelled from the League, no further action was taken against their misdeeds. The League was dissolved in 1946, a year before the establishment of the United Nations.

LENIN’S RED ARMY

The Red Army (in Russian – Krasnaya Armiya, in Ukrainian – Chervona Armiya) was established by a decree of the Soviet government on 28 January 1918 out of Red Guard detachments. Its full name was the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. The vast majority of troops in the Red Army that brought Ukraine under Soviet control during the Civil War of 1918-20 were of Russian nationality. However, they did receive support from Ukrainian military units – the Red Cossacks, the Tarashcha Division and the Bohun Regiment were composed mostly of Ukrainian troops.

The Red Army was under the control of Leon Trotsky, who was the War Commissar during the Civil War. The Communist commander of the Red Army’s Ukrainian front, Volodymyr Antonov-Osviienko answered not to the Ukrainian Bolshevik government in Kharkiv but to the government in Moscow and to Trotsky personally. The Peoples’ Commissariat for Military Affairs in Kharkiv had no real power and was abolished in 1919.

After the Civil War, the Red Army became a more multinational force, with all republics represented in its ranks. In 1937 Russian became the official language of command in the Red Army, and old tsarist traditions – decorations, insignia, and an officer corps – were reintroduced in the same year. In 1946 the name of the Red Army was changed to the Soviet Army.

METROPOLITAN ANDRIY SHEPTYTSKY

b. 29 July 1865, Prylbuchi, Yavoriv county, Galicia, d. 1 November 1944, Lviv.

Sheptytsky was a prominent church leader, as well as a civic and cultural activist. He was the Metropolitan of Halych and the Archbishop of Lviv. Born into a noble Ukrainian-Polish family, he completed his studies in 1894 at the University of Krakow with a PhD in law, and studied theology and philosophy at the Jesuit seminary in Krakow.

Sheptytsky was ordained and moved quickly through the ranks of the Greek Catholic Church; in 1899 he was enthroned Metropolitan of Halych and Archbishop of Lviv. He also became a member of the Galician Diet and in 1903 a member of the Austrian House of Lords and Imperial Ministerial Council. He often argued for increased rights for Ukrainians in Galicia and for the establishment of Ukrainian schools and a university. His activism earned him great support among the Ukrainian population.

In the interwar years, Sheptystsky was an active supporter of the Ukrainian independence movement, and spoke out against the Pacification campaign carried out in Galicia in 1930 by the Polish government. However, he often criticized the Ukrainian nationalist camp as well, particularly the use of violence and terrorism. Pro-Soviet forces in Western Ukraine denounced him, particularly for his strong condemnation of the Famine in 1932-33 and the ‘godlessness’ of communism.

During the first Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine (1939-41), Sheptytsky exhorted the faithful not to abandon the Church for the atheism imposed by the regime. The Soviet authorities did not harm Sheptytsky because of his prominence; his arrest would surely have brought about a severe backlash. Sheptytsky initially believed that the German invasion of the USSR would provide for the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state. When he witnessed the cruelty of the German regime towards the local population and the Jews in particular, Sheptytsky, in early 1942, sent a letter to Heinrich Himmler denouncing the atrocities being committed.

Sheptytsky began to provide refuge to Jews and instructed his monasteries and convents to do the same. He remained active throughout the war in political and church affairs, despite his advancing age and failing health. His death in 1944 marked the beginning of widespread persecution of the Greek Catholic Church in Western Ukraine by Soviet authorities. After his death, owing to his tireless work on behalf of the Church and his brave stand against both Nazi and Soviet imperialism, a movement to have him beatified began. In 1968, the first phase of this process was completed, when Pope Paul VI proclaimed Sheptytsky a “Servant of God.”

Despite the vilification of Sheptytsky by Soviet propaganda, his status was not diminished among the Western Ukrainian population; since the re-emergence of the Ukrainian Catholic Church he has attained great popularity in Ukraine.

METROPOLITAN MSTYSLAV

b. 10 April 1898, Poltava, d. 11 June 1993, Grimsby, Ontario, Canada.

Born Stepan Skrypnyk, Metropolitan Mstyslav was a nephew of Symon Petliura. He served with the Ukrainian National Republic Army, and after WWI lived in Galicia and Volyn. In 1930-39 he served in the Polish Sejm, where he worked to protect the rights of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. He organized assistance for the victims of the Famine in the Ukrainian SSR, but the Soviet authorities blocked his efforts.

Mstyslav was made bishop of Pereyaslav in 1942, and faced persecution by the Gestapo. In 1944 he fled to Germany. After WWII he emigrated to Canada and from 1947-49 was acting bishop of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada. In 1950 he became head of the consistory and deputy metropolitan of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the USA. In 1969 he became metropolitan of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in Western Europe, and in 1971 – metropolitan of the church in the United States. In 1990, with the reinstatement of the UAOC in Ukraine, Skrypnyk was installed as its patriarch.

METROPOLITAN VASYL LYPKIVSKY

b. 19 March 1864, Kyiv gubernia, d. 27 November 1937

Lypkivksy was the first Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Ordained in 1891, he began lecturing on canon law in the Kiev Church Teachers’ School but was dismissed for his support of a separate Ukrainian Church. After the 1917 Revolution he led the struggle for an independent Ukrainian Church. He celebrated the first Liturgy in the Ukrainian language in May 1919, for which the Russian Orthodox Church defrocked him. In summer 1919 he became parish priest of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv.

After the All-Ukrainian Church Council established the UAOC in October 1921, Lypkivsky was elected Metropolitan. Despite the Russian Orthodox Church’s refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the UAOC and its constant vilification of Lypkivksy, he worked tirelessly in establishing the new independent Church, for which he gained much popularity. His prestige was seen as a threat by the Soviet authorities, and he was placed under house arrest in 1927; soon after, the Soviet authorities forced the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Council to dismiss him. He lived under house arrest and in poverty in Kyiv from 1927 until 1937. The NKVD arrested Lypkivsky in November 1937, at the height of the Great Terror. He was charged with anti-Soviet activity and summarily executed on 27 November 1937. Much of the hierarchy and clergy of the UAOC met with a similar fate as Soviet authorities attempted to control spiritual life in the USSR through the Russian Orthodox Church.

MYKOLA KHVYLOVYJ

b. 14 December 1893 Trostianets, Kharkiv gubernia, d. 13 May 1933 Kharkiv

Khvylovyj (born Mykola Fitilev) was a leading writer and publicist during the Ukrainian cultural renaissance of the 1920s. After graduating from the Bohodukhiv Gymnasium in 1916, he joined the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine [CP(b)U]. In 1921, along with Sosiura and Yohansen, Khvylovyj signed the literary manifesto “Our Universal to the Ukrainian Workers and Ukrainian Proletarian Artists.” His poetry collection Molodist (Youth) was published in the same year.

Khvylovyj influenced a generation of Ukrainian writers. He focused his creative talents on depicting the socialist revolution in Ukraine and the first signs of the degeneration of the revolution. Many of his later works, for example, stories such as Redaktor Kark (Editor Kark) were biting satires of the transformation of former revolutionaries into bureaucrats and parasites. Khvylovyj was very active and influential in the life of literary circles and organizations. In 1923 he became one of the founding members of the proletarian-writers’ group Hart.

An outspoken critic of the Russification that began to permeate Soviet culture in the late 1920s, Khvylovyj was an important member of the nationally conscious opposition within the CP(b)U. He called on the Ukrainian intelligentsia to model itself after progressive elements in Europe. His slogan “Away from Moscow!” was seen as a dangerous threat by the Soviet leadership, which was exhibiting more and more the Russian chauvinism prevalent in pre-revolutionary days. From 1927 Khvylovyj was subject to relentless harassment and persecution by the Soviet authorities.

By the first years of the 1930s it became almost impossible for Khvylovyj to work. Already in 1928, he was forced to renounce his slogan “Away from Moscow!” Denounced as a bourgeois nationalist, he was increasingly marginalized and every opportunity was used to fight his ideas. As the Famine and the Postyshev terror swept Ukraine, Khvylovyj had only one way left to protest – in May 1933 he committed suicide as a symbol of his concern for his nation. During the Khrushchev thaw, many writers of the 1920s were rehabilitated – the works of Khvylovyj, however, remained banned in the USSR.

MYKOLA SKRYPNYK

b. 25 January 1872, Yasynutava, Katerynoslav gubernia, d. 7 July 1933 Kharkiv.

Skrypnyk was a Bolshevik leader and a Ukrainian politician and statesman. In 1901, Skrypnyk left his studies at the St. Petersburg Technological Institute and became a full-time Marxist revolutionary. By the time of the Revolution, Skrypnyk had been arrested more than a dozen times and exiled some seven times. During the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd in November 1917, Skrypnyk was a member of the command of the military-revolutionary committee.

Until January 1919, Skrypnyk was a member of the Cheka (Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution), a predecessor of the OGPU and the NKVD. In 1920 he returned to Ukraine and served as commissar for internal affairs (1921-2), justice (1922-27), general procurator (1922-27), and education (1927-33). He became a member of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine [CP(b)U] in 1925 and a member of the Politburo of the CPU (b) in the same year. He was an outspoken supporter of Ukrainization, and as commissar of education played a vital role in ukrainianizing the press, secondary and higher education.

While Skrypnyk remained a staunch Leninist and condemned opposition to Soviet rule, he remained a defender of Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian sovereignty and opposed the increasing centralization of Soviet rule during the first years of Stalinist dictatorship. He saw Ukraine as an equal partner in the Soviet state and fought in defense of her political and economic rights. In January 1933, Stalin sent Pavel Postyshev to Ukraine to establish stronger control over the republic; Skrypnyk’s policies were denounced and he was removed as commissar of education. Foreseeing his inevitable liquidation as an opponent of Stalin, Skrypnyk committed suicide in July 1933.

NATIONAL REVIVAL

In the first years after the victory of the Communist Revolution, a policy of indigenization, or korenizatsiya, was introduced in the USSR. The general idea of the policy was to promote the development of the titular nations of the Soviet republics. Members of titular nations and national minorities were promoted to positions of authority within the bureaucracy of the national republics, and the local languages were introduced in schools, culture, government and the Communist Party. In part, the policy of korenizatsiya was a reaction to the assimilationist and chauvinist policies of the tsarist empire, and was an attempt to gain adherents to Soviet power.

In Soviet Ukraine, the policy of korenizatsiya led to an impressive Ukrainization of the republic. Ukrainian was introduced as the language of instruction in schools – by 1927 over 97% of high-school students were obtaining their education in Ukrainian. The rates of literacy in the countryside were raised dramatically, and the membership of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine [CP(b)U] became more Ukrainian. In 1922 only 23 % of the members of the Party were Ukrainians – by 1927 Ukrainians made up 52% of the Party membership.

Ukrainization also saw a revival in national culture. The number of books, newspapers and journals published in Ukrainian rose exponentially. Literature and art adhered to the concept of “socialist in content, national in form.” As a result much of the art and literature of this time focused on reviving the Ukrainian cultural heritage within the Soviet context. Poets and writers of the 19th century such as Taras Shevchenko, who criticized the Tsarist Empire and called for the self-determination of the Ukrainian people, enjoyed a renewed popularity, and young socialist Ukrainian writers were allowed to express themselves. These activities saw a renaissance in Ukrainian culture.

After the consolidation of Stalin’s regime, however, the policy of korenizatsya was reversed. Politicians who called for greater autonomy for the Ukrainian SSR and equal relations with Moscow were accused of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism and ruthlessly purged. Writers and artists who expounded similar ideas through literature and art met similar fates. Ukrainizatio was reversed in 1931 and replaced with a massive policy of Russification – in the 1930s approximately four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite, writers, artists and clergy were executed or imprisoned. Ukraine’s cultural and national revival of the 1920s became known as “the executed renaissance” (rozstrilyane vidrodzhennya).

NEW ECONOMIC POLICY

The New Economic Policy (NEP) was a series of economic reforms carried out by the Soviet government. NEP was in effect from the 10th Party Congress (March 1921) until 1927. The reforms of NEP represented a pragmatic retreat from the tenets of Marxism-Leninism, in an attempt to overcome the serious economic crisis facing the USSR.

A worldwide proletarian revolution and the immediate establishment of Communism, which Lenin predicted would happen after the ‘chain of imperialist capitalism’ was broken at ‘its weakest link’ (Tsarist Russia), had not materialized. The USSR was faced with famine, the destruction of the infrastructure of both agriculture and industry, and an economic crisis that threatened the existence of the Bolshevik regime. The policy of War Communism had virtually destroyed the Soviet economy. In response, the government took a “step backward” – Communist ideas lost their monopoly and some forms of capitalism were reintroduced.

The expropriation of grain and other agricultural products was curtailed; under NEP the state introduced a tax. This allowed the peasantry to sell or use whatever was left over after the tax was paid. Small and medium-sized industries were re-privatized; private trade was permitted. Money returned to wide circulation and the tsarist class structure was partially restored.

NEP revitalized the Soviet economy. The existence of private property provided incentives for both the peasantry and the urban class; by 1924 agricultural production rose to 80% of the pre-war level. The most impressive growth was in small industry, which did not require capital investment. The crisis in the economy was reversed.

During NEP, however, corruption in the ruling bureaucratic apparat reached epic proportions. Partially in response to this and partially to facilitate the construction of “socialism in one country,” the Soviet government reverted to the use of terror and violence. And, in order to pay for the large-scale industrialization that Stalin, upon his ascendancy to power, had ordered, the countryside was collectivized. Five-Year Plans were introduced; hereafter there would be no room for private initiative within the Soviet economy, which became totally controlled by the state.

PAVEL POSTYSHEV

b. 18 September 1887, Vladimir gubernia, Russia, d. 26 February 1939, Kuibyshev, Russia.

Postyshev was a close ally of Josef Stalin and in the 1930s headed a Terror in Ukraine that earned him the sobriquet “hangman of Ukraine.” In 1925 Postyshev became secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine [CP(b)U] and secretary of the Kharkiv (which at that time was the capital of Soviet Ukraine) district and city Party committees. In this position he played a leading role in the purge of Trotskyites and Ukrainian national communists.

In 1930, Postyshev became a secretary of the CC of the All-Union Communist Party (CPSU) and put in charge of propaganda and organization. He served Stalin loyally as the latter was destroying all intra-Party opposition to his rule. In January 1933 he was sent back to Ukraine with thousands of Russian party cadres with the task of stamping out the last remaining opposition to Stalin’s rule in the republic. He was elected second secretary of the CC of the CP(b)U and as Stalin’s emissary, was the real power behind the Ukrainian Party, overshadowing first secretary Stanislav Kosior.

As the Famine raged in Ukraine, Postyshev was charged with eliminating all opposition to collectivization within the CP(b)U As part of this role, he oversaw the Russification of both the Party and cultural and educational institutions in Ukraine. In the terror organized by Postyshev, more than 100 000 members of the CP(b)U were purged – many of these were arrested and executed.

Postyshev, however, soon ran afoul of Stalin. He attempted to build up his own power base in Ukraine in 1935-36 by making some concessions to Ukrainian national sentiments. As a result, in January 1937 he was removed from Ukraine and appointed first secretary of the Kuibyshev Oblast Party Committee. He was arrested in January 1938 during the Great Terror and shot a year later, meeting the same fate to which he had condemned many thousands of others.

RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest autocephalous Orthodox Church in the world. Officially, the Church traces its history to the introduction of Christianity in Rus' by Volodymyr the Great. However, in reality the existence of the Church dates from the sacking of Kyiv by the Mongols in 1240; at that time the Kyivan metropoly was transferred from Kyiv to Vladimir on the Kliazma. During the expansion of the Russian Empire from the 16th century onward, the Church served as an agent of Russification; this was particularly true in Ukraine, where the Kyiv metropoly was banned from cultivating its traditional liturgical style and language, and forced to conform to Russian rituals.

During Soviet times, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union controlled the Church closely. There was a Council on Religious Affairs at the Council of Ministers of the USSR and similar councils in all the Soviet republics, through which the activities of the Church were controlled. When other churches were banned, as, for example, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in the 1930s and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in 1946, the Russian Orthodox Church absorbed their priests, property and parishes. Starting in Stalinist times, then, the Russian Orthodox Church became another tool of control used by the Soviet regime.

After the collapse of the USSR and the re-establishment of the Greek Catholic and Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, the Russian Orthodox Church lost many parishioners. All the same it remains the largest single church in Ukraine today.

SOVIET SECRET POLICE

Although the Soviet secret police went through several incarnations during the existence of the USSR, its role remained the same through seven decades of Soviet power. The most important responsibilities of the secret police were to identify and root out those hostile to the Soviet regime on their own territory, to combat ‘enemies’ of the regime abroad, and foreign espionage. As such the secret police was the primary apparat of political and cultural repression on Soviet territory.

During the Revolution and Civil War, the Soviet secret police was the Cheka, (Chrezvychaynaya Komissia – Extraordinary Committee to Combat Counterrevolution and Sabotage), and was the organ primarily responsible for implementing the Red Terror in the first years of established Soviet power. In 1922, the NKVD – (Narodniy kommissariat vnutrishnykh del – Peoples’ Commissariat of Internal Affairs) was formed, and the GPU – (Gosudarstvennoe politycheske upravlinnye – State Political Directorate) – the secret police, was subordinated to the NKVD. In 1923 the GPU was reorganized into the OGPU (Obyednannie gosudarstvennoe politycheske upravlinnye – Unified State Political Directorate).

The secret police played an important role during the first years of Soviet power, combating real, perceived, imagined and often fictitious enemies of the regime. However, with the rise of Joseph Stalin, the repressive organs of the state became perhaps the most important state institution. The OGPU and the NKVD were responsible for running what became, by the early 1930s, a vast economic enterprise – the GULAG network of camps. During the Famine, secret police and NKVD troops played a key role, first rounding up and dispossessing kulaks, and in 1932-33, ensuring that peasants were not hiding any grain or other food. Thus, while responsibility for the planning of the Famine must be put on the highest levels of the Communist Party leadership, responsibility for its execution and implementation rests squarely on the OGPU and the NKVD.

In 1934, the OGPU became the GUGB (Glavnoe upravlinnie gosudarstvennoe bezopastnosti – Main Directorate for State Security), under the NKVD. The GUGB and the NKVD were the state organs responsible for carrying out the Great Terror (1936-38) and countless repressions, deportations and murders during the Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine (1939-41) and WWII. In 1946, People’s Commissariats were reorganized into ministries, and the MGB – (Ministerstvo gosudarstvennoe bezopastnosti – Ministry for State Security), to which the KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoe bezopasnosti – Committee for State Security), was subordinated. The KGB remained the Soviet secret police until the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

STANISLAV KOSIOR

b. 18 November, 1889, Wegrow, Poland, d. 26 February 1939.

Kosior was a Soviet state and party official. He served as first secretary of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine [CP(b)U] during the Famine. Before the Revolution, Kosior was active in the Communist underground in Donetsk. In 1917 he became a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee.

In 1928, after a stint in Moscow, he returned to Ukraine and was general secretary (1928-34) and then first secretary (1934-38) of the CP(b)U. During his time in power, Ukraine was ravaged by the man-made Famine and by the Postyshev terror. Under his administration, the policy of Ukrainization was reversed and intensive Russification was implemented. Kosior, however, wielded little real power, as it was concentrated in the hands of Pavel Postyshev, Stalin’s emissary in Ukraine.

In 1938 Kosior was removed from his posts in Ukraine and transferred to Moscow. In February 1939, at the tail end of the Great Terror, he was shot. He was posthumously rehabilitated in the 1960s.

SVU – (Spilka vyzvolennia Ukrainy, or Union for the Liberation of Ukraine)

The SVU was a fictitious political organization, trumped up by the OGPU in order to create a pretense to end the policy of Ukrainization. The SVU was supposedly made up of 45 Ukrainian intellectuals, who were subjected to a show trial in Kharkiv in March-April 1930.

The members of the SVU were charged with plotting to overthrow the Soviet regime and restoring capitalism in Ukraine through a fascist dictatorship under the leadership of academician Serhii Yefremov. The revolt was to be headed by an armed uprising by kulaks and other “class enemies.” The prosecution claimed to have uncovered cells of the SVU in the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, the school system and the management of rural cooperatives.

All 45 defendants were convicted. However they received fairly light sentences – from 3 to 10 years in prison. Almost all were rearrested in the following few years and died in prisons or the Gulag.

The show trial of the supposed members of the SVU was a political maneuver by the leadership of the USSR to create a pretense to end Ukrainization and the demands for more cultural and political autonomy by Communist leaders in the Ukrainian SSR. By linking the Ukrainian educational system, the Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and the rural cooperative movement to subversion against Soviet power, leaders in Moscow had a reason to begin the total subjugation of the Ukrainian SSR to the central Soviet leadership. In 1989, the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR admitted that the charges against the 45 defendants in the SVU show trial were groundless, and all the defendants were rehabilitated.

SVU – (Spilka vyzvolennia Ukrainy, or Union for the Liberation of Ukraine)

UKRAINIAN AUTOCEPHALOUS ORTHODOX CHURCH

The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (Ukraiinska Aftokefalna Pravoslavna Tserkva – UAPTs) was formed on Ukrainian territory after the 1917 Revolution; the Moscow Patriarchate had dominated the Orthodox Church in Ukraine for centuries previously. With the rebirth of the Ukrainian state in 1918, efforts were made to set up an independent Church as well. The All-Ukrainian Church Council set up an independent organizational structure for the Church, and in May 1920 the Council declared autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church. In 1921 Vasyl Lypkivsky was consecrated as the Church’s first metropolitan.

In the following years, the Church experienced rapid growth; at its height the Church had more than 6 million followers. The Church played a fundamental role in the national and cultural revival experienced in Ukraine during the Revolution and the 1920s. The Church played an important role in raising national consciousness; it was also committed to the social reforms of the Ukrainian National Republic governments.

The UAPTs adopted several tenets that separated it from the Russian Orthodox Church. Perhaps the most important was the separation of church and state, which had not existed in tsarist times. Furthermore, the UAPTs stressed the need for the decentralization and democratization of Church life, and the inclusion of the laity in the decision making process. The UAPTs also replaced Church Slavonic with the vernacular Ukrainian in its services.

Because the UAPTs supported Ukrainian independence and cultural and political revival, it was seen as a major threat to Soviet rule in Ukraine. Soviet authorities sought to reincorporate the UAOC into the Russian Orthodox Church, over which the Soviet government had established control by the late 1920s. The first repressions of the Church began in 1926, when Lypkivsky was arrested; after a brief respite, the Church saw massive repression return in 1929 with the adoption of collectivization. In January 1930, the Church was officially abolished; most of its clergy and hierarchy were either executed or sent to labor camps where many perished.

While the UAPTs was virtually eliminated in Soviet Ukraine, it survived in Ukrainian territories under Polish occupation. When Germany invaded the USSR in 1941 and the Wehrmacht swept through Ukraine, the UAOC was reestablished on former Soviet Ukrainian territories; by 1942 there were some 500 parishes in the former Soviet Ukraine. By mid-1944 all of Ukraine had been re-occupied by the Red Army; UAPTs clergy and many faithful fled west and by 1947 the Church had 71 parishes in Western Europe, and was established in all places to where Ukrainians emigrated after the War. During the perestroika years the UAPTs was reestablished in Ukraine. By 1991 the Church had over 900 parishes in Ukraine.

UKRAINIAN COMMUNIST PARTY

The Ukrainian Communist Party, properly named the Communist Party of Ukraine (Komunistychna Partiya Ukrainy – CPU), was known until 1952 as the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine [CP(b)U]. In April 1918, Mykola Skrypnyk, with the support of the Kyiv Bolsheviks, overcame opposition from the Russian membership and succeeded in setting up the CP(b)U as an independent party with no organizational subordination to the Russian Communist Party . At the Party’s congress in July 1918 this resolution was revoked and the CP(b)U declared itself to be an integral part of the Russian Communist Party and subject to its Central Committee.

The CP(b)U established its dominance over Ukraine only with the help of the Red Army; the party was neither large nor popular. In 1926 only 19 percent of its membership was Ukrainian. The party’s grip on power became total only during the NEP period (1921-27). A conflict soon developed with Moscow and within the party over the policy of Ukrainization; the pro-Russian wing of the party eventually won out. With the defeat of Trotsky and then Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin, Stalin assumed dictatorship over the CPSU and the Soviet state. Members of the CP(b)U who supported more autonomy from Moscow were accused of nationalism, removed from the party and either sentenced to labor camps or shot. During the first half of the 1930s, as famine raged in Soviet Ukraine, 46 percent of the Party’s membership was expelled and repressed, as was 49 percent of its Central Committee.

In 1936-38 the CP(b)U, as part of the Great Terror that swept the USSR, underwent another great purge. This time even the membership loyal to Stalin was not spared. In 1937 almost the entire membership of the Central Committee of the CP(b)U and the government of the Ukrainian SSR were shot. In 1938, Nikita Khrushchev and a large group of Russian cadres came from Moscow to take over the leadership of the party. By this time the CP(b)U was simply an instrument for the extension of Stalin’s will in Soviet Ukraine.

1917 – UKRAINIANS GRASP THEIR CHANCE TO RECLAIM INDEPENDENCE

On 20 November 1917, amid the chaos of the eastern front in WWI and the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, the Central Rada, which in April 1917 became the revolutionary parliament that presided over the movement for an independent Ukrainian state, declared the Ukrainian National Republic (also known as the Ukrainian People’s Republic – UNR), which maintained ties with Russia. On 22 January 1918 the Central Rada issued the Fourth Universal, which proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state. Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky was declared president of the new state.

In the chaotic conditions, the Central Rada was unable to maintain order and a German-backed coup led by Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky seized power. Austro-Hungary and Germany occupied much of the territory of Ukraine and supported the Hetman, who cooperated with them. His policies of grain requisition and restoration of land to wealthy landowners made his government unpopular, and in December 1918 the Directory took Kyiv and forced Skoropadsky into exile. The Directory, led by Symon Petliura, re-established the UNR.

Major hostilities in Ukraine broke out again in January 1919, and the armies of the UNR had to fight the Bolsheviks and the White Army from the east, and the Poles, Germans and Romanians from the west. After signing a treaty with the new Polish state in April 1920, the UNR armies and Polish forces retook Kyiv from the Bolsheviks. A Red Army counteroffensive in the summer forced the Ukrainians and Poles into retreat, and an armistice was signed between Poland and Soviet Russia in late 1920. In the Treaty of Riga (March 1921), Poland was given the lands of Galicia and a large part of Volyn, while central, eastern and southern Ukrainian lands became part of Soviet Ukraine. Left to fight the Red Army on its own, the armies of the UNR were defeated and in 1922, Soviet Ukraine joined the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

WORLDWIDE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION

In the 19th century political thinker Karl Marx predicted that, as capitalism reached its developed stages, the driving force behind it, the bourgeois class (most simply understood as the property-owning class) would become a reactionary force and would exploit the proletariat (laboring classes) more and more. In response to this the proletariat would revolt and establish a system of communal ownership of the means of production.

Lenin modified this theory – saying that imperialist capitalism must be broken at its “weakest link” – Tsarist Russia. Even though the Russian Empire did not have a strong and developed proletarian class – most subjects of the Empire were peasants – a strong, conspiratorial Party could seize power in the name of communism. Once a communist regime had seized power, the developed proletariat class of Europe would revolt against the capitalist system and establish communal ownership of the means of production. Particular hope was placed on the massive working class of Germany.

In the first years of Soviet power, the Red Army, under Leon Trotsky, tried to export the revolution; it was, however, driven back from Poland. Although in the early 1920s a proletarian revolution was indeed possible in Germany, because of several factors it did not materialize. Nevertheless, until 1927, the USSR actively supported the fomenting of revolution in Europe through the Communist International and through aid to the various Communist Parties active in European states.

With the adoption of the Stalinist doctrine of “socialism in one country” (simply put, the USSR would build socialism on its own territory, and this shining example would be taken by the rest of the world as a superior economic system and would thus encourage socialist revolutions in the developed countries of Europe), active support for revolution in Europe gradually slowed and the hopes for a worldwide revolution faded.