Counter-Ukrainization
The Twelfth Congress of the RCP(B) had in April 1923 proclaimed a policy of indigenization (korenizatsiia) in order to draw into the state apparatus the population of each republic of the newly created USSR.
The Central Committee of the CP(B)U declared a policy of Ukrainization in June, and on 1 August 1923 announced measures to develop the use of the Ukrainian language in public institutions, law courts, schools, and higher education. Yet already on 23 November 1923, a secret circular entitled “About the Anti-Soviet Movement among the Intelligentsia” was issued by the GPU. It provides evidence that a clandestine counterUkrainization was being initiated.8 A similar GPU circular, filled with anti-Ukrainian sentiment, was issued on 4 September 1926. Entitled “About Ukrainian Separatism,” it identified the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) as the most dangerous centers of Ukrainization. At this point, the secret police and central state organs began viewing Ukrainization as synonymous with political separatism.9In 1928, when a new attempt to collectivize the Ukrainian peasantry was accompanied by the seizure of grain and foodstuffs, it produced protests that gradually developed into violent mass resistance by early 1930. The GPU data indicates that in that year, more than 4,000 rebellions occurred, with the participation of 1 million people. At this time, Soviet power was completely demolished in parts of the country (Ber- telsen 2018, 51).10 Mass resistance in the Ukrainian countryside triggered fears that opposition to collectivization could assume the character of a national revolution. As a result, the GPU unleashed an attack on intellectuals in order to curtail all organized forms of opposition and to prevent the fusion of the national question with the agrarian.11 The GPU leadership was aware that there was no coherent, functioning liberation movement. Its agents merely described criticisms voiced against Soviet
Fabrication of Nationalist Plots, 1929-34 31 power and its use of terror in Ukraine. However, this evidence was sufficient for Stalin to believe that some individuals might in the future decide to change the political regime in Ukraine. Fierce peasant resistance had already occurred in 1928. Fearing that this would spread further and engage the intelligentsia and workers, the signal was given from Moscow to create group criminal cases as a prophylactic measure.12
More on the topic Counter-Ukrainization:
- Chapter 20 Communism and Nationalism
- From 1918, when the Bolsheviks created secret organs to identify and neutralize enemies, Ukraine’s intellectual elite received special attention, partly because of the country’s geopolitical and economic significance, but also because Soviet leaders viewed the independence movement, which was finally crushed only in 1920, as a dangerous threat.
- Bolshevik Victory
- Index
- Index