The Great Terror

There is no doubt that Skrypnik and his genuine feeling of resistance to Moscow represented a powerful trend among the rank and file of the Party. But the rest of the leadership were in a different position. Stalin’s war on the peasantry had truly placed them in a position in which, in Lenin’s phrase, “who-whom?” was the only immediate question. Whatever their hidden reservations and whatever they may have thought of the plans which had led to the crisis, they could no more be expected to indulge them than a general fighting a desperate battle can spend time arguing about the strategic errors of the High Command.

But still, they seem to have become shaken and exhausted by the loyal fulfillment of Stalin’s collectivization orders.

On 24 January 1933 a resolution of the All-Union Central Committee attacked the Ukrainian Party: “The Party organs in the Ukraine have not succeeded in carrying out the Party charges entrusted to them in the areas of organization of grain storage and completion of the plan for grain collection.”

This heralded the climax of the fearful terror-famine which reached its peak in March and April 1933, leaving millions dead in the Ukraine.⁷³ Three of the seven Provincial Secretaries were censured and removed, together with three members of the local Politburo and Secretariat. And Postyshev, hitherto Secretary of the All-Union Central Committee, was sent to the Republic as Second Secretary, with plenary powers. Throughout 1933, non-Ukrainian Party workers of more unquestionable loyalty were transferred into the Republic from Russia. (It is estimated that there were some 5,000 of these.)⁷⁴

From 8 to 11 June 1933 Skrypnik was strongly attacked. He refused to recant, and was violently rebuked by Postyshev for his attitude. Other attacks followed in the press, and on 7 July he committed suicide. His example may have been the Ukrainian writer Khvylovy, who had just done the same when accused of excessive Ukrainian feeling.

Skrypnik had been one of the three representatives of underground organizations who had gone to the conference of Bolshevik leaders in Paris in 1909. The day after Skrypnik’s suicide, Pravda described it as “an act of cowardice”: Skrypnik, “an unworthy member of the Central Committee,” had fallen prey to bourgeois–nationalist mistakes. And, as Petrovsky said, “It was not easy for us to ward off these nationalist attacks, since the chief aggressor was an Old Bolshevik, Slcrypnik.”

⁷⁵ However, Petrovsky added, Moscow had helped “by sending well-known Party members to aid us.”

Skrypnik’s supporters were disposed of by the unmasking of a “Ukrainian Military Organization” consisting mainly of the post-1930 generation of academic leaders in the Institute of Linguistics, the State Publishing House, the School of Marxist Philosophy, and the Shevchenko Institute of Literary Scholarship. Many further trials of intellectuals followed. But after Skrypnik’s death, there were no major attacks on the Party cadres of the Ukraine until Postyshev’s fall in early 1937. When Chubar was called to Moscow to be All-Union Vice Premier, he was replaced as Chairman of the Ukrainian Council of People’s Commissars by Panas Lyubchenko, a former Borotbist, who shared his views—a slight and light-bearded figure with a sensitive, intellectual face, who had given satisfaction by his firmness in the collectivization struggle.

But there were long-standing feuds and factions in the Ukrainian Party. By the time the purges started, Postyshev and the Head of the Ukrainian NKVD, Balitsky, were working against Lyubchenko. They were later joined by M. M. Popov, Third Secretary of the Ukrainian Central Committee, who around the end of 1936 fabricated a “case” and went to Stalin and Kossior to demand Lyubchenko’s dismissal and arrest as a “Borotbist” plotter.⁷⁶

But Stalin, as we have seen, was now turning against Postyshev. And after the February–March plenum not only Postyshev, but also Balitsky and Popov were transferred from the Ukrainian Party, and a purge swept the Party officials at the provincial and local level. With the defeat of the Postyshev-Balitsky-Popov group, it looked as though Lyubchenko and the remainder of the leadership were in a strong position. But, in fact, both factions were destined to destruction.

A Politburo commission from Moscow, which included Molotov and Yezhov, is reported in Kiev about this time, seeking further changes but meeting with some resistance.⁷⁷ At any rate, a new offensive was soon prepared, and a new NKVD People’s Commissar for the Ukraine was named: I. M. Leplevsky, fresh from his triumphs in the Tukhachevsky investigation. He brought with him a large force of new NKVD men.⁷⁸ And Kossior, who had earlier shown some signs of resistance to the purge, was now put under strong pressure, and saved himself temporarily by accepting and implementing Moscow’s directives.