Repressions

Repressions as a whole are typical trait of a totalitarian regime. In fact, it cannot exist without them. One of the major aims of repressions of the Stalinist regime was to create an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. When a person lives in fear he is much easier to control. Even high governmental positions did not guarantee safety. The majority of high-ranking party officials in Moscow as well as in all other Soviet republics were repressed. For example, of 1966 deputies of the USSR Supreme Council 1931 (more than 90%) were repressed in the middle of the 1930s. Of 66 members of Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine 55 were repressed. Of 11 members of Ukrainian Politburo[6] 10 were repressed. In 1938 all the Ukrainian government (17 ministers) were arrested and shot. The Prime Minister P. Liubchenko committed suicide. (Before killing himself he killed his wife to save her from tortures by the political police and from a horrible life in the Gulag). In general, 37% of Ukrainian Communists (170,000) were repressed. By the late 1930s, the limited self-government that Ukrainians (and other non-Russians in their republics) had possessed earlier was almost totally destroyed.

A lot of intellectuals (because they could think critically and understand the nature of the regime) in all republics were repressed. Many ordinary Soviet citizens perished in prisons or were shot. Millions political prisoners worked in the Gulag in extremely difficult conditions. The food ratio of a Gulag victim was less than the food ratio of a dog that guarded the Gulag. In the Soviet Union nobody could feel secure and many people could not trust each other (there were millions of informants). Under such conditions the forming of any kind of opposition was impossible. Thus, through repressions, Stalin consolidated his rule in the USSR.

One of the main targets of repressions in Ukraine was the old Ukrainian intelligentsia, especially those who had been associated with the national governments and non-Bolshevik parties of 1917-20 and who were prominent in areas of culture. After fabricating “secret anti-Soviet organizations,” the NKVD (political police) forced its victims, by means of physical and psychological torture, to admit membership in them. Victims were usually asked two questions “Who recruited you?” and “Whom did you recruit?” Then under physical tortures or threats to repress close relatives the victims usually pointed at any people they knew. Writers, historians, philosophers, editors, and many other intellectuals were accused of spying or terrorism and then shot or sent to labor camps in Siberia. In all, some four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite was repressed in the course of the 1930s. The Ukrainian Autocephalous (Independent) Orthodox Church was banned and many of its priests were sent to prisons. Practically all Ukrainian kobzari (folk musicians and singers of poems about the Cossacks[7]) were invited to a congress, then arrested and shot. By eradicating Ukrainian religious and cultural differences Stalin planned to make his empire more unified. The same policy was adopted in other Soviet republics.

All those who were repressed were officially called “enemies of the people”. The NKVD even had plans how many people were to be repressed within a certain time. For example, 268 950 Soviet citizens were to be repressed from August till December of 1937. Of that number 75 500 were to be executed immediately.

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