Petro Yukhymovych Shelest russian: Пётр Ефи́мович Ше́лест, translit=Pyotr Yefimovich Shelest (14 February 190822 January 1996) was a Ukrainian Soviet politician. First Secretary of the
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...
Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR
The Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR (Ukrainian: Верховна Рада Української РСР, tr. ''Verkhovna Rada Ukrayins'koyi RSR''; Russian: Верховный Совет Украинской ССР, tr. ''Verkhovnyy Sovet U ...
.
Early career
Petro Shelest was born in a Ukrainian peasant family in a village near
Kharkiv
Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and in 1935 graduated from
Mariupol
Mariupol (, ; uk, Маріу́поль ; russian: Мариу́поль) is a city in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. It is situated on the northern coast ( Pryazovia) of the Sea of Azov, at the mouth of the Kalmius River. Prior to the 2022 Russia ...
Metallurgical Institute. He served in the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...
from 1936 to 1937, but transferred to working for the Communist Party in 1937, as thousands of its members were caught up in the
Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...
. Between 1943 and 1954, Shelest was a chief manager of several large factories in
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
and
Kyiv
Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe.
Kyi ...
. From 1954 to 1963, he was respectively Second Secretary of the Kyiv city party committee, Second Secretary of the regional committee, and First Secretary of the Kyiv regional party committee.
First Secretary of Ukraine
After Shelest was appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1963, he set out to run Ukraine with a degree of independence from Moscow, and to develop the republic's economy and encourage Ukrainian culture. It was during his tenure that construction began on the four nuclear plants at
Chernobyl
Chernobyl ( , ; russian: Чернобыль, ) or Chornobyl ( uk, Чорнобиль, ) is a partially abandoned city in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, situated in the Vyshhorod Raion of northern Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. Chernobyl is about no ...
.
He antagonised the Soviet leader,
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
, who publicly upbraided Shelest during a visit to Hungary over late delivery of Ukrainian equipment, then remarked: "Look how glum he is - just as if a hedgehog had been rammed down his throat."
In November 1964, when Khrushchev was removed from office, Shelest was promoted to full membership of the Presidium (later renamed the Politburo)
Prague Spring
In 1968, Shelest played a major role in deciding how the Soviet government should respond to the Prague Spring, the sudden loosening of political control in communist Czechoslovakia, which created an atmosphere that spilled over into west Ukraine. He was the only other Politburo member beside
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev; uk, links= no, Леонід Ілліч Брежнєв, . (19 December 1906– 10 November 1982) was a Soviet politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between 1964 and ...
to take part in every meeting between Soviet and Czech communist leaders during that year.
Addressing the Central Committee of the CPSU on 17 July 1968, Shelest accused the Czechoslovak communist party leadership of persecuting communists while making no attempt to control "right-wing opportunists". He claimed:
During negotiations on 30 July 1968, he berated the Czechoslovak delegation, complaining that "Your TV shows, your radio programmes, your newspapers and magazines distributed into our regions closest to your borders make our people ask questions which are full of embarrassment". Shelest went on to insult František Kriegel, a senior Czechoslovak communist and veteran of the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...
, calling him a "Galician Jew". The Czechoslovak party leader,
Alexander Dubček
Alexander Dubček (; 27 November 1921 – 7 November 1992) was a Slovak politician who served as the First Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) (''de facto'' leader of Czechoslovak ...
, walked out, and later lodged a complaint about Shelest's comment and tone.
On 3 August, Shelest secretly met the hard-line Czech communist
Vasiľ Biľak
RSDr. Vasiľ Biľak (11 August 1917 – 6 February 2014) was a Slovak Communist politician and leader of Rusyn origin.
Vasiľ Biľak was born in Krajná Bystrá ( hu, Bátorhegy), in the Sáros County of the Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Slova ...
, who handed him a letter inviting the Soviet government to send in troops to move to restore the dictatorship. This was used as a pretext for the Warsaw Pact invasion on 20 August.
In 1968, Shelest was awarded the "
Hero of Socialist Labor
The Hero of Socialist Labour (russian: links=no, Герой Социалистического Труда, Geroy Sotsialisticheskogo Truda) was an honorific title in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries from 1938 to 1991. It repre ...
" title.
Later career
In May 1972, Shelest was suddenly dismissed and called to Moscow, where for a time he was a deputy chairman of the Sovmin (USSR Council of Ministers), a comparatively junior role for a Politburo member. In April 1973, he was removed from the Politburo and in May was reported to have resigned because of health problems.
Western observers originally assumed that he had been sacked because of his hard line views on foreign policy. Reputedly, he vehemently opposed the visit of U.S. President
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
, who arrived in Moscow on 22 May 1972. But in April 1973, he was publicly attacked by his successor in Ukraine,
Volodymyr Shcherbytsky
Volodymyr Vasylyovych Shcherbytsky, russian: Влади́мир Васи́льевич Щерби́цкий; ''Vladimir Vasilyevich Shcherbitsky'', (17 February 1918 — 16 February 1990) was a Ukrainian Soviet politician. He was First Secr ...
, while an unsigned article in the Ukrainian press denounced a book by Shelest, ''O Ukraine, Our Soviet Land'', published in 1970, as containing 'ideological errors', 'factual errors' and 'editorial blunders' that were likely to encourage Ukrainian nationalism.
Shelest himself blamed his downfall on 'intrigues' by Shcherbytsky and Brezhnev. In his memoirs, he criticized their style of government as "autocratic" and "non-communist".
From 1973 to 1985, Shelest worked as a manager of an aircraft design bureau near Moscow. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was able to revisit Ukraine, after an absence of nearly 20 years. He visited Ukraine several times and delivered lectures about his tenure as leader of Ukraine. He died in Moscow in 1996.