Pavel Petrovich Postyshev (; – 26 February 1939) was a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

politician, state and Communist Party official and party publicist. He was a member of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

's inner circle, before falling victim to the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

. In 2010, a court in Kyiv refused to posthumously rehabilitate Postyshev, citing his complicity in "genocide" because of his part in causing the

Holodomor The Holodomor, also known as the Ukrainian Famine, was a mass famine in Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–193 ...

, mass famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s.Постанова Апеляційного суду м. Києві від 10 січня 2010 року по кримінальній справі № 1-33/2010
// Єдиний державний реєстр судових рішень України

Early career

Postyshev was born in Ivanovo-Voznesensk in Vladimir Governorate to the family of a Russian weaver. He was a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party from 1904, and later joined the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

faction, and worked full-time, illegally, as a party organiser. Arrested on 24 April (old style) 1908, he spent four years in Vladimir Central Prison, and then was deported to the

Irkutsk Irkutsk ( ; rus, Иркутск, p=ɪrˈkutsk; Buryat language, Buryat and , ''Erhüü'', ) is the largest city and administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. With a population of 587,891 Irkutsk is the List of cities and towns in Russ ...

region. During the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

, he played a major role in bringing Irkutsk under Bolshevik control, and then in creating the Far Eastern Republic. In 1923, he was transferred to Ukraine to supervise the organization of the Communist Party committee in the

Kiev Governorate Kiev Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit ('' guberniya'') of the Russian Empire (1796–1917), Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–18; 1918–1921), Ukrainian State (1918), and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (1919–19 ...

''( guberniya)'' in central

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

. In 1925, Postyshev became secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, or CP(b)U. Between 1926 and 1930 he was a member of the Politburo and Organizational Bureau of Ukraine's Communist Party. At the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), in December 1927, he was elected a member of the Central Committee. In July 1930, Postyshev was transferred to Moscow, as the Secretary of the Central Committee, in charge of propaganda and organization. This was a time of upheaval in the countryside across the Soviet Union, as

forced through a policy of driving the peasants onto collective farms. In May 1930, ''

Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, 'Truth') is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most in ...

'' published a signed article by Postyshev castigating party officials in Ukraine who complained that collectivisation was being driven ahead too quickly. In Moscow, he was part of the inner leadership, despite not being a member of the

Politburo A politburo () or political bureau is the highest organ of the central committee in communist parties. The term is also sometimes used to refer to similar organs in socialist and Islamist parties, such as the UK Labour Party's NEC or the Poli ...

. The chairman of the Russian federal government, Sergey Syrtsov, complained in November 1930 that "everything is decided behind the back of the Politburo by a tiny group", which, he said, included Postyshev, while nominally more senior figures such as

Kliment Voroshilov Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov ( ; ), popularly known as Klim Voroshilov (; 4 February 1881 – 2 December 1969), was a prominent Soviet Military of the Soviet Union, military officer and politician during the Stalinism, Stalin era (1924–195 ...

and Janis Rudzutaks were excluded. In December 1932, he was dispatched to the Lower Volga region, where there were particular difficulties enforcing grain collection. When a district official in Balashov complained that "we have nothing left to winnow or thresh", Postyshev sacked him on the spot. On 12 June, the territorial party committee stated that, without Postyshev's help, it would not have met its grain procurement target. The arrests and food shortages caused the population in the territory to fall by about a million over 18 months.

Role in the Holodomor

On 18 September 1932, Postyshev sent a telegram to the Ukrainian party leadership ordering them to meet their quota for exporting grain, in spite of warnings that forced collectivisation was causing mass starvation. This was the first piece of evidence cited by the Kyiv Court of Appeal in finding Postyshev posthumously guilty of genocide. Later that month, he was sent back to Ukraine to enforce grain collection, starting in

Dnipropetrovsk Dnipro is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnieper River, Dnipro River, from which it takes its name. Dnipro is t ...

. On 24 January 1933, Postyshev was appointed Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukraine CP, and first secretary of the

Kharkiv Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.

city and Kharkiv Oblast Party organizations. Though nominally junior to the First Secretary, Stanisław Kosior, he "functioned as Stalin's direct emissary, a kind of governor-general of Ukraine". Postyshev criticized the Ukrainian Communists for their "lack of Bolshevik vigilance" in Stalin's systematic enforcement of increased grain quotas. His party activists conducted a brutal campaign through farms and homes, searching for suspected hiding places and confiscating every bit of grain, with disregard for the starvation they encountered. Millions died in the famine of 1932–33. During his first tour of the Ukrainian countryside, Postyshev took his 18-year-old son Valentin with him. The youth was so distressed by the spectacle of starvation that his father assembled the family when they returned home and ordered them all not to conduct anti-Party conversations at home. Before Postyshev's return, the Communist Party had encouraged, or at least permitted, the use of the

Ukrainian language Ukrainian (, ) is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language, spoken primarily in Ukraine. It is the first language, first (native) language of a large majority of Ukrainians. Written Ukrainian uses the Ukrainian alphabet, a variant of t ...

in schools, and the teaching of Ukrainian history and language in universities. Early efforts by the Bolsheviks encouraging regional autonomy and supporting minority groups were intended to monopolize their support among said groups, and to undermine the burgeoning efforts of anti-Communist nationalists. The university courses were closed down in January 1933, and in June, Postyshev accused the Ukraine People's Commissar for Education

Mykola Skrypnyk Mykola Oleksiiovych Skrypnyk (; – 7 July 1933), was a Ukrainian Bolshevik revolutionary and Communist leader who was a proponent of the Ukrainian Republic's independence, and later led the cultural Ukrainization effort in Soviet Ukraine. Whe ...

of "wrecking" the schools and universities by allowing " Petliurite swine" to gain control – "and you often defended them". Skrypnyk committed suicide soon afterwards. This was the start of a purge of such "nests of nationalist counter-revolutionaries" targeting the commissariats of education, agriculture, and legal workers, not to mention newspapers, journals, encyclopedias and film studios, during which over 15,000 officials were eliminated on charges of "nationalism", and thousands of authors, scholars, philosophers, artists, musicians and editors were exiled to labour camps, executed, or simply disappeared.Subtelny (1988), p 419. The writer Mykhailo Yalovy and the "national communist" Oleksandr Shumsky were among those arrested, while the writer Mykola Khvylovy avoided arrest by committing suicide. Many others avoided being denounced by working according to Moscow dictates. The Ukrainian Communist Party was also targeted. In a prelude to the

, Postyshev forced the sacking of 237 secretaries of district party committees and 249 chairmen of district executive committees. Almost 100,000 members were expelled during his first year in Ukraine and a further 168,000 through 1938. Postyshev wrote in his report that the majority were exiled or shot. The highest ranking were paraded through elaborate show trials. As the purges progressed after 1933, affecting millions throughout the Soviet Union, Postyshev's crackdown spread beyond perceived "Ukrainianizers," "nationalists," and opponents of collectivization. Eventually it came to include the liquidation of entire classes, such as

kulak Kulak ( ; rus, кула́к, r=kulák, p=kʊˈɫak, a=Ru-кулак.ogg; plural: кулаки́, ''kulakí'', 'fist' or 'tight-fisted'), also kurkul () or golchomag (, plural: ), was the term which was used to describe peasants who owned over ...

s, priests, people who had been members of anti-Bolshevik armies, and even ethnic Ukrainians who had travelled abroad or immigrated from Galicia. In February 1934, Postyshev was elected a candidate member of the Politburo. In 1934–37, after the Ukrainian capital had been moved from Kharkov to Kyiv, he was First Secretary of the Kyiv Party Committee. In this role, he oversaw the "socialist reconstruction" of the city, which involved the destruction of churches and monuments, and Orthodox and Jewish cemeteries. Postyshev is known for reviving the

New Year tree New Year's trees are decorated trees similar to Christmas trees that are displayed to specifically celebrate the New Year. They should not be confused with the practice of leaving up a Christmas tree until after New Year's Day (traditionally unt ...

tradition in the Soviet Union. A letter from Postyshev published in ''Pravda'' on December 28, 1935, called for the installation of New Year trees in schools, children's homes, Young Pioneer Palaces, children's clubs, children's theaters, and cinemas.Karen Petrone, ''Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin'', Indiana University Press, 2000,
Google Print, p.85
/ref>

Downfall

At the start of the Great Purge, Postyshev appeared to be well placed to survive and benefit from it. Defendants at the first of the Moscow Show Trials in August 1936 were made to confess to having planned to assassinate eight leading communists, including Stalin, the late

Sergei Kirov Sergei Mironovich Kirov (born Kostrikov; 27 March 1886 – 1 December 1934) was a Russian and Soviet politician and Bolsheviks, Bolshevik revolutionary. Kirov was an early revolutionary in the Russian Empire and a member of the Bolshevik faction ...

, and Postyshev. But in January 1937 he was removed from his post as First Secretary of the Kyiv party organisation, while retaining his other positions. He had purged the party organisation with his normal ruthlessness, but had acquired powerful enemies who accused him of purging good communists while leaving suspected oppositionists in position. During a Central Committee plenum in June 1936, Nikolay Yezhov, whose name would become synonymous with the

, or 'Yezhovschina', accused him of persecuting innocent Communist Party members in Kyiv, without giving details. In November, Stalin took up the case of a woman named Nikolayenko, whom Postyshev had expelled from the Kyiv party for making a series of malicious denunciations. She was reinstated, though she was denounced years later, after Stalin's death, as "one of the worst slanderers." At the critical plenum of the Central Committee in February 1937, which decided the fate of

Nikolai Bukharin Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (; rus, Николай Иванович Бухарин, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪdʑ bʊˈxarʲɪn; – 15 March 1938) was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and Marxist theorist. A prominent Bolshevik ...

and

Alexei Rykov Alexei Ivanovich Rykov (25 February 188115 March 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician and statesman, most prominent as premier of Russia and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Soviet Union from 1924 to 1929 and 1924 t ...

, who had led the opposition to collectivisation, Postyshev continually jeered at them as they tried to defend themselves and voted for both men to be arrested and shot. But when

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...

delivered his ' Secret Speech' to the 20th Party congress in 1956, he said that during the same plenum, Postyshev protested about the recent arrest of a Ukraine-based Communist official named Karpov, who he said had been wrongly accused of being a Trotskyite. In a sharp exchange, Stalin demanded "What are you, actually?" and Postyshev replied: "I am a Bolshevik, comrade Stalin, a Bolshevik". On 17 March 1937, Postyshev was removed from his post in Ukraine, and appointed First Secretary of the Kuibyshev (

Samara Samara, formerly known as Kuybyshev (1935–1991), is the largest city and administrative centre of Samara Oblast in Russia. The city is located at the confluence of the Volga and the Samara (Volga), Samara rivers, with a population of over 1.14 ...

) regional party committee, a drastic demotion that was supposedly his chance to "correct his errors". He was accused of having an "un-Bolshevik style of work", and of allowing Trotskyists to flourish in the Kyiv party organisation. With Postyshev in charge, Kuibyshev "was purged of 'enemies' with a savagery unexampled even in other regions. Postyshev ... changed many of the sentences sent to him for his signature, requiring death where the procurator and investigator thought eight or ten years in confinement were sufficient". He had 3,300 party members expelled and 35 out of 65 district party committees disbanded. In one district, 64 out of 200 Communist Party members were expelled. In January 1938, Postyshev was hauled in front of the Central Committee and accused, for a second time, of persecuting innocent communists. He justified himself on the grounds that "the soviet and party leaderships were in enemy hands, from the regional leadership at the top to the district leadership at the bottom." He was removed from his post in Kuibyshev, and was arrested on February 21, 1938. His arrest came after he was denounced by Lev Mekhlis, who feared that Postyshev's repression might affect him. In prison, Postyshev 'confessed' to having been a spy for Japan since 1920, and to having been part of a 'counter-revolutionary Right-Trotskyist organisation' operating in Ukraine since 1934. The NKVD officer who interrogated him, K.I.Tserpento, later admitted that Postyshev's 'confession' was written by his interrogators and handed to him to sign. Until he saw the document, he did not know what he was expected to confess to. Postyshev was shot in Butyrka prison on 21 February 1939 and buried in Moscow's Donskoye Cemetery.

, along with

Vyacheslav Molotov Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov (; – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician, diplomat, and revolutionary who was a leading figure in the government of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s, as one of Joseph Stalin's closest allies. ...

and

Nikolai Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov ( rus, Николай Иванович Ежов, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ (j)ɪˈʐof; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940), also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet Chekism, secret police official under Joseph Stalin who ...

, were sent to take over Postyshev's post in Ukraine. Khrushchev had to be appointed by Moscow; he could not be elected because, after Postyshev's removal, the entire Central Committee of the CP(b)U "had been purged spotless", according to Khrushchev.

Family

Postyshev wed his first wife Anastasia Konovalova in Siberia. Together they had his first son, Valentin (1916–1938). Valentin, who had initially been so distressed by the plight of the Ukrainian peasants, later enrolled at an aviation school in Yeysk, where he was appointed secretary of the school Komsomol organisation. He reputedly came to copy his father's example for ruthlessness. He was arrested on the same day as his father, 21 February 1938. According to one source, he was shot on 26 August 1938, when he was aged 23, though it has also been reported that he was in a labour camp in

Kolyma Kolyma (, ) or Kolyma Krai () is a historical region in the Russian Far East that includes the basin of Kolyma River and the northern shores of the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as the Kolyma Mountains (the watershed of the two). It is bounded to ...

and was sentenced to death there, for refusing to work, and shot. Postyshev's second wife, Tatiana Semyonovna Postolovskaya (1899–1938) was also an Old Bolshevik and a high ranking Communist Party official. In 1934, she was appointed Secretary of the Party committee of the All-Ukrainian Association of Scientific-Research Marxist–Leninist Institutes. In February 1935, a Communist named M. Garin, whose wife had been expelled from the party at Postolovskaya's instigation, wrote to Stalin complaining that she "is not distinguished either for her intellect or her experience" but exercised "unlimited authority" because she was married to Postyshev. She was expelled from the Communist Party early in 1937. She was arrested on the same day as her husband, and shot on 26 August 1938. They had two more sons. Leonid (1920–2008) was arrested in 1939 and sentenced to ten years in the

gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

, but survived and had his conviction overturned in 1955 and became a prominent economist. Vladimir (born 1922) was 15 or 16 years old when he was arrested, on 22 August 1938. In 1939, he was sentenced to five years in the gulag, as a "socially dangerous person". After he had completed that term, he was rearrested and sentenced to a further ten years. There is a story that when the two surviving brothers met, when their father was being "rehabilitated" in 1955, they did not recognise each other. Vladimir, then in his 30s, died soon afterwards.

Legacy

The city of Pokrovsk was briefly (1934–1938) named Postyshevo (or Postysheve, as rendered in Ukrainian) after him. The name of the city was changed following his removal from power and subsequent execution. A football club in Poltava was briefly named after him as was the factory that owned the club. Postyshev was rehabilitated on 1 June 1955.

Sources

Magocsi, Paul Robert Paul Robert Magocsi (; born January 26, 1945) is an American professor of history, political science, and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto. He has been with the university since 1980 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society ...

(1996). ''A History of Ukraine''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. . * Subtelny, Orest (1988). ''Ukraine: A History'', 1st edition, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. .

References

External links

Postyshev, Pavel
entry in the

Encyclopedia of Ukraine The ''Encyclopedia of Ukraine'' (), published from 1984 to 2001, is a fundamental work of Ukrainian Studies. Development The work was created under the auspices of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Europe (Sarcelles, near Paris). As the ...