1925
3 March
The Ukrainian Communist Party (UKP) is disbanded, and its members “join” the CP(b)U.
March
Beginning of the “literary discussion,” in fact an attempt to determine the development of Ukrainian literature; the publication of the writer Mykola Khvylovy's pamphlets.
10 July
The Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR ratifies the Telegraphic Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS).
25 July
The head of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR Vsevolod Balitsky sends the CC CP(b)U a memorandum entitled “About the Activity of Zionist Groupings,” considering the spread of Zionist groupings throughout Ukraine. He notes: “Taking the above into consideration, in order to paralyze the activity of Zionist groupings in Balta, Katerynoslav, Poltava, and the Donbas, we consider it crucial to carry out at various times an operation to remove the leadership of organizations: from 12 to 15 persons in Katerynoslav; in Baltaup to 10; in Poltavaup to 20 and in the Donbas - 25 persons.”
27 July
The Central Executive Committee of the USSR and the Soviet government pass a resolution entitled “About Recogni-zing the Russian Academy of Sciences As the Highest Institu-tion of Learning in the USSR.” The academy is named the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.”
11 September
According to a report, an “operation to disarm and remove the heads of counterrevolution and the bandit element” ends in Chechnya. The operation was launched on 23 August by the troops of the North Caucasian Military District, led by Yeronim Uborevich and the GPU. The armies of the former consisted of 4,840 infantrymen; 2,017 cavalrymen; 130 heavy machine guns; 102 light machine guns; 8 planes, etc. In order to force the population to hand over the leaders of Chechen formations resisting the Soviet government, the practice of taking hostages “from among the venerable old” was implemented, as well as air cannonades and aerial bombings of villages. Similar, smaller operations were carried out in Chechnya in December 1929 and April 1930 (a revolt against collectivization), March 1932, October 1941, and summer 1942.
30 October
A resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Sovnarkom USSR creates the Central Escort Troops Admini-stration responsible for guarding places of imprisonment and transport of convicts.
2 December
The Central Executive Committee and Radnarkom of the Ukrainian SSR pass a decision about the permanent represen-tation of Soviet Ukraine within the Soviet government.
1926
27 February
The publication of Joseph Stalin's collected works entitled Voprosy leninizma [Concerning Questions of Leninism], which will become the obligatory textbook for millions of Soviet citizens for the next thirty years.
26 April
In a special letter to Politburo members of the CC CP(b)U Stalin condemns the “nationalist deviation” of Mykola Khvylovy and the People's Commissar of Education Oleksandr Shumsky.
25 May
In Paris, on the rue Racine, Sholom Schwarzbard (according to documents of the Balta municipal administration, dated 3 December 1891, his name was Shulim Schwarzburd), shoots Symon Petliura, one of the leaders of the Ukrainian national revolution and head of the UNR government in exile. In autumn 1927 a Paris jury finds Schwarzbard, who served in the French Foreign Legion during WWI and was awarded the Medaille Militaire [Military Medal], innocent of all charges, thereby declaring that no crime was committed. The assassination was described as an act of revenge for the mass destruction of Jews, including fifteen members of Schwarzbard's own family. This unjust decision has never been overturned. Petliura was not an anti-Semite, although his government was powerless to stem the pogroms.
May
General Secretary of the CC CP(b)U Lazar Kaganovich accuses Oleksandr Shumsky of “nationalist deviation.” The conflict between Kaganovich and the former “Borotbist” [member of left faction of the Ukrainian Party of Socialists Revolutionaries] was more than a clash of personalities. In autumn 1925 Shumsky met with Stalin, declaring that the “CC CP(b)U should control and lead national and cultural processes…in Ukraine, but workers who do not understand Ukrainian national issues are being sent to Ukraine from Moscow.” In another principled statement he stated: “Ukrainian Communists have matured and can elect party and government leaders by themselves.” These two demands will never be permitted by the Stalinist regime.
June
The Central Executive Committee of the Ukrainian SSR passes a resolution entitled “About the Specification of Functions of the Organs of the State Political Administration.” On a par with other organs, central and local GPU organs are formally responsible for applying measures designed to prevent and implement a struggle against bureaucratic and economic crimes, the theft of state and public property, and counterfeiting of money and other valuable papers.
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Continued from column 1:
4 September
The deputy head of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR Karl Karlson, the assistant to the Secret Department head Osher Abugov, and interim head of the 1st Section of the Secret Department Bory Kozelsky sign an official circular entitled “About Ukrainian Separatism.” This important document was oriented toward the collection of a wide variety of information about supporters of “Ukrainization,” primarily representatives of the “right” Ukrainian intelligentsia, i.e., the Ukrainian intellectual milieu, in particular those who had returned (or wished to return) to Ukraine as a result of the policy of “Ukrainization.” The letter named the most dangerous (in the eyes of the GPU) centers of Ukrainian activism, including the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church [UAPTs], “a mighty bastion of nationalism and a wonderful agitation tool,” and the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences [VUAN], which “had gathered around itself a compact mass of former prominent members of the UNR.”
The situation in the rural areas, the conditions of early industrialization, and tendencies within the Ukrainian immigra-tion milieu were all minutely analyzed, leading to the conclu-sion that “it is crucial to pay the most serious attention to the work connected with the Ukrainian community” and to empha-size the increase in the activity of “social and political strata that are hostile to us.”
Thus, long before an open offensive was launched against “Ukrainization” and despite the official declarations of party leaders, the GPU was unfolding its own counter-Ukrainization, gathering compromising materials against all those whom the Chekists considered “dangerous.”
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The “Shakhty case” was the prologue to an attack on the Ukrainian intelligentsia, and its methods for fabricating eviden-ce was later used to prepare a case against the “Union for the Liberation of Ukraine [SVU],” the alleged leader of which was the academician Serhii Yefremov.
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In the late 1920s Stalin and his followers crushed the internal party opposition, which in particular had harshly criticized his economic policies. Economic difficulties, in particular the drop in grain purchases in 1927-1928 (called the “grain crisis”) were used by Stalin and his milieu to formulate the thesis of intensifying the “class struggle” and to abolish the NEP. It became necessary to explain the causes of the government's current economic failures, which coincided with the start of a search for “hostile elements” and “saboteurs”, primarily members of the old intelligentsia.
The open show trial of the fabricated “Shakhty case” took place in Moscow from 18 May to 6 July 1928. A total of 53 engineers and mining technicians arrested in March 1928 in the Shakhty district of the Donbas on charges of sabotage, criminal ties with former mine owners, and membership in a “counterrevolutionary organization” were sentenced. A Kharkiv “branch” of this case was also “exposed.” In summer 1928 at the Plenum of the CC CPSU Stalin called for the detection of “Shakhty saboteurs” in all spheres of society. In November-December 1930 a trial took place in Moscow in connection with another fabricated case the “Industrial Party.”
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Fragments from academician Serhii Yefremov's journal.
22 February 1928:
“Communist circles are very displeased with the grain-collection campaign. The old fellows are not giving grain. When they are told [to do this] voluntarily, they usually reply: 'Well, then let the Hevrews [Hebrews] give: they have a better life.' The Communists complain: 'No patriotism (!) is perceived.”
13 June 1929:
“Was in Zvonkova. Heard a lot of things. Mostly about grain collection. The peasants are complaining bitterly, even the “poor peasants,” it seems. They have seen that everything has been taken away from those who had [property], but they have received nothing in return...They are recounting a whole slew of facts: that man hung himself after being robbed, in that village a homesteader set a fire so that no one would get anything that remains; there, people are even relinquishing their land: what's the point of tending it, if it's going to be taken away from them in the end... There has never been such a despairing mood among the peasants.”
2 July 1929:
“Terrible news from the villages: robbery, terror. No one understands who needs this and why. They are destroying the “kurkul,” and at the same time they are destroying the general well-being. What sadistic madness.”
Serhii O. Yefremov, Shchodennyky,
1923-1929 [Journals], Kyiv, 1997, pp. 593, 774, 777.
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