Everything about Pavel Postyshev totally explained
Pavel Petrovich Postyshev (
Ivanovo-Voznesensk,
September 18,
1887 –
February 26,
1939,
Kuibyshev) was a
Soviet politician, seen as a man, who presented Soviet children with
New Year tree in the
Soviet Union and
Russia and as one of the people responsible for the
Holodomor.
Postyshev was a member or
Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party since 1904, then member of Communist Party (
Bolshevik) in
Siberia. In 1923 Postyshev was reassigned from his job in the
Far Eastern Republic to supervise organization of the Communist Party committee in
Kiev Governorate (guberniya) in central
Ukraine. In 1925 Postyshev became secretary of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, the CP(b)U. In 1926–30 he became a member of Politburo and Organizational Bureau of Ukraine's Bolshevik Party.
In his role of secretary of the
Kharkiv Oblast and city Party committees Postyshev organized the purge of
Trotskyists and Ukrainian national-communists as well as
industrialization and
collectivization campaigns in the region. In July 1930 he was promoted to position of secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) in Moscow and put in charge of propaganda and organization.
In January 1933 Postyshev was once again sent to Ukraine as
Stalin's personal representative, along with thousands of political appointees from Russia. Upon Postyshev's arrival in Ukraine he was elected second secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine and first secretary of the
Kharkiv city and Kharkiv Oblast Party organizations. From July 1934 to January 1937 he was in charge of the
Kiev Oblast Party organization. As second secretary he was nominally subordinate to First Secretary
Stanislav Kosior, but his appointment by Stalin effectively gave him supreme power.
Postyshev is known for reviving
New Year tree tradition in the Soviet Union; the famous letter by him was published in
Pravda on
December 28,
1935, where he asked for installing New Year trees in schools, children's homes,
Young Pioneer Palaces, children's clubs, children's theaters and cinema theaters.
Postyshev's mission in Ukraine was to eliminate any remaining opposition to Stalin by purging all traces of 'nationalist deviation' from the Party, to end the cultural policy of
Ukrainization, and to bring collectivization to completion at any cost.
A prominent scapegoat was
Mykola Skrypnyk, the director of Ukrainization, who was removed from his post within a month (he later shot himself rather than face a show trial). The end of Ukrainization was accompanied by an attack on cultural institutions in Ukraine and the new Soviet intelligentsia. Under Postyshev, thousands of authors, scholars, philosophers, artists, musicians, and editors were exiled to labour camps, executed, or simply disappeared. Many others avoided being denounced by working according to the dictates of Moscow. "Nests of nationalist counter-revolutionaries" like the commissariats of education, agriculture, and justice, newspapers, journals, encyclopedias and film studios were purged. On the charge of nationalism, over 15,000 in responsible positions were eliminated.
The Ukrainian Communist Party was targeted too. In a prelude to the
Great Purge, almost 100,000 members were expelled during Postyshev's first year in Ukraine, and a further 168,000 up to 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, eventually affecting millions throughout the Soviet Union, in Ukraine they spread beyond just perceived Ukrainianizers and opponents of collectivization, but eventually to include the liquidation of entire classes such as
kulaks, priests, people who had been members of anti-Bolshevik armies or had even travelled abroad or immigrated from
Galicia.
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 man-made famine of 1932–33, the
Holodomor.
After the famine, Postyshev appears to have begun identifying with Ukraine and have doubts about Stalin—he and the party leadership refused to take the purge as far as Stalin demanded, raising the Soviet leader's suspicions. In August 1937 Postyshev was removed from Ukraine and appointed first secretary of the
Kuibyshev Oblast Party Committee. He was arrested in early 1938 and later shot.
Nikita Khrushchev was sent to take over Postyshev's post in Ukraine, along with
Vyacheslav Molotov and
Nikolai Yezhov. Khrushchev had to be appointed by Moscow—he couldn't be elected because after Postyshev's removal, the entire Central Committee of the CP(b)U "had been purged spotless", in Khrushchev's own words.
Under the influence of Nikita Khrushchev Postyshev was rehabilitated in 1956.
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