Conclusion

The “nationalist” cases succeeded in terrorizing much of the Ukrainian intelligentsia by creating an atmosphere in which any criticism of the party could be linked to nationalism, fascism, and invasion from abroad.

The files provide no evidence that real underground organizations, assassination plots, or links with enemy powers were uncovered. It is likely that very few people worked for foreign intelligence services or were linked to the real UVO or OUN directed by Yevhen Konovalets. The point was not to find enemies but to create them, so as to provide Stalin with the cover and license to act. The conspiracies were invoked, for example, to arrest almost everyone who had served in Soviet Ukrainian diplomatic missions abroad. Most of the accused considered themselves loyal sub­jects of Soviet Ukraine, and many had worked for the revolutionary cause. Their arrests undermined faith in both the Ukrainization policy and the regime.

By 1934, Stalin had destroyed much of the Ukrainian peasantry and the most important figures in Ukrainian cultural life. In this respect, the nationalist cases of 1929-34 served one of his ultimate goals—preventing the consolidation of a competing power center in Ukraine.

Notes

1. This article is a modified version of Myroslav Shkandrij and Olga Bertelsen’s, “The Soviet Regime’s National Operations in Ukraine, 1929-34,” which appeared in Canadian Slavonic Papers 55.3-4 (2013): 417-48, Taylor & Francis. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd, www.tandfonline.com).

2. The Cheka was the original name for the Bolshevik secret police. In Ukraine from 1923, it was called the GPU. The central organization headquartered in Moscow was officially known as the OGPU (United State Political Admin­istration).

3. For a list of central and local offices (including those of the GPU) that required a resolution of the CC RCP(B) for all personnel appointments and reassignments, see Koenker and Bachman (1997), 352-59.

4. Balytskyi was the first head of the GPU in Ukraine, serving from 1 September 1923 to 31 July1931. He also headed the GPU/NKVD in Ukraine from 20 February 1933 to 17 May 1937.

5. Many individual criminal cases, including the secret police’s operational materials, can be found in the HDA SBU (Branch State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine—Haluzevyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Sluzhby Bez- peky Ukrainy), which has an estimated 800,000 case files, the TsDAHOU (Central State Archive of Civic Organizations of Ukraine—Tsentralnyi Der- zhavnyi Arkhiv Hromadskykh Obiednan Ukrainy), TsDAVOU (Central State Archives of the Higher Organs of the State—Tsentralnyi Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Vyshchykh Orhaniv Vlady), the AU SBUKhO (Archive of the Security Ser­vice of Ukraine of Kharkiv Oblast—Arkhiv Upravlinnia Sluzhby Bezpeky Ukrainy Kharkivskoi Oblasti), and the DAKhO (State Archive of Kharkiv Oblast—Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Kharkivskoi Oblasti).

6. See, for example, Lytvyn (2003); Pyrih (2007); Danylenko and Kokin (2009); Kokin and Iunge (2010); Bohunov (2009); Danylenko (2012).

7. The People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs sent a letter to the Central Committee of the CP(B)U explaining that the Ukrainian intelligentsia was essentially Petliurite and, if allowed to leave, would consolidate the anti­Soviet Ukrainian emigration (Danylenko 2012, 19-20).

8. The 1923 circular was sent to Ukraine from Moscow, and was signed by the head of the Secret Operational Administration of the OGPU Menzhynskyi, the deputy of the Secret Department Deribas and the head of the Special Bureau Agranov (Danylenko 2012, 21).

9. It informed that Ukrainian nationalists had not changed their ideology, only their tactics, and were infiltrating the state:

The “cultural struggle” has gained immense popularity and has attracted into the ranks of its followers the overwhelming majority of the most prominent representatives of the Ukrainian counterrevolution. [... ] Ukrainization is being used to group supporters of nationalist ideas in all vital parts of the state organism.

From this moment, according to Shapoval, the GPU moved against “nation­alists” and Ukrainization, and began gathering compromising materials on politically and culturally active individuals that would be used to fabricate the nationalist conspiracies (Shapoval 1994, 286, 293). For the text of the 1926 circular, see: Shapoval et al. (1997, 254-267).

10. The Pavlohrad rebellion, one of the largest, was suppressed by the authorities on 5-6 October 1930 (Vasiliev (2002, 171-172); Danylenko (2009).

11. In Kulchytskyi’s opinion, post-Soviet historiography has stressed the transfor­mation of an agrarian into an industrial economy (achieved at the expense of peasant households), but underemphasized the Kremlin’s need for an “obedi­ent” country in which every citizen was dependent on the state (Kulchytskyi 2008, 32). Khlevniuk has written that one of the terror’s most important functions was “ensuring that society was kept in a state of submissiveness, suppressing dissent and opposition, and solidifying the sole authority of the leader” (Khlevniuk 2009, 168).

12. On the pandemic of violence in the countryside beginning in 1928, see Bertelsen (2018, 44-51), and the interview with Liudmyla Hrynevych in Solodko (2011). Although the possibility of real attempts by Ukrainians to organize cannot be excluded, the files overwhelmingly deal only with intentions, even when planning the creation of organizations to promote Ukraine’s national interests. This suggests that the organized liberation movement in Ukraine had been exterminated at its root by the secret police, and had still not assumed organizational forms.

Fabrication of Nationalist Plots, 1929-34 39 allow contemporary historians to investigate this problem fully (Hrynevych 2012, 145).

13. The All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee issued an amnesty for regu­lar soldiers on 30 November 1921, and a general amnesty for emigres on 12 April 1923. There is evidence that the amnesties were a tactical move to legitimize the Kharkiv government in the eyes of Ukrainians abroad and to divide the emigration (Rublov 2004, 96). On Stalin’s beliefs that “heretics abounded in the country,” see Kuromiya (2007, 8).

14. All but one of those who had served as Skrypnyk’s secretaries from March 1927 to February 1933 were arrested, along with most of the Commissariat’s staff, and almost all were executed. Skrypnyk’s Commissariat was liquidated in 1933 and early 1934.

15. For more details about the Literary Discussion, see Luckyj (1990) and Shkan- drij (1992).

16. For the careers of these four, see Zolotarov (2007).

17. The entirely fictitious OUN (Association of Ukrainian Nationalists— Obiednannia Ukrainskykh Natsionalistiv) conspiracy fabricated by the NKVD in Soviet Ukraine should not be confused with the real OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—Orhanizatsiia Ukrainskykh Natsionalistiv) cre­ated in Western Ukraine in 1929.

18. In 1937, Yurynets testified that the GPU operative Sherstov told him about the existence of a Jewish and Polish conspiracy in the summer of 1933, and asked Yurynets to fabricate several reports about anti-Soviet activities of the alleged organization. See HDA SBU, f.6, spr.36546fp, t.11, ark.82.

19. On the repression of Zionist political parties, see Bertelsen (2013); on the “anti-German operation,” see Shapoval, “‘Velykyi teror’ v Ukraini: etapy, osoblyvosti, naslidky,” in Bohunov et al. (2009, 18).

20. On national operations during the Great Terror, see Kuromiya (2007); Weissberg (1951, 354); on the secret prosecution of Jews, see Bohunov et al.

21. See the 10 March 1933 directive by the Politburo of the CC of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) in Shapoval et al. (1997, 296).

22. A lawyer by training, Kozoris had worked for the Western Ukrainian Peo­ple’s Republic, then moved to Kharkiv, where he became a researcher for the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) and a member of the Zakhidna Ukraina group.

23. See DAKhO, f.R6452, op.2, spr.2583, t.2, ark.48; HDA SBU, f.6, spr.36546fp, t.3, ark.31-32.

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