The secret police and the campaign against Galicians in Soviet Ukraine, 1929–1934

Abstract

In 1929–1934 Galician intellectuals who emigrated to Soviet Ukraine from abroad were subject to mass repression. This article demonstrates how the party and the Soviet secret police discredited and eliminated this intelligentsia. Leading party officials perceived Galicians as possessing a strong sense of national identity and internal unity, and therefore an obstacle to plans for homogenizing Soviet Ukraine. The research draws on Ukrainian periodicals published in the early 1930s, on files relating to two major group criminal cases that were conducted in the early 1930s and that are now available to scholars in the Security Service archives of Ukraine (the former Soviet secret police archives), and on recent scholarship in the field. The archival evidence demonstrates that the cases were fabricated and the charges against Galicians were constructed as part of a planned “anti-nationalist” campaign.

Keywords:

• Ukrainian nationalism
• Galician intellectuals
• Soviet repression
• 1930s

Acknowledgments

We owe a large debt of gratitude to the Ukrainian archives and archivists who helped us collect materials for this study. Among them are the Sectoral State Archive of the Ukrainian Security Service – HDA SBU (Kyiv, Ukraine), and the Archive of the Ukrainian Security Service in Kharkiv oblast – AU SBUKhO (Kharkiv, Ukraine), and also the State Archive of Kharkiv oblast – DAKhO (Kharkiv, Ukraine), and the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art in Ukraine – TsDAMLIMU (Kyiv, Ukraine). We are also grateful to the director of the Korolenko State Scientific Library (Kharkiv, Ukraine) V. D. Rakitians'ka and her assistant N. K. Firsova, and to L. I. Mukha, Head of the Scientific and Informational Department in the Institute of Ukrainian History of the National Academy of Science (Kyiv, Ukraine), who provided access to a great wealth of materials about Soviet repression of Galicians during the 1920s–1930s in Soviet Ukraine.

Notes

1 Quoted in the memoirs by the Galician Panteleimon Vasylevs'kyi (Tsvetkov 1993, 1:151).

2 Pavlo Khrystiuk (1890–1941), one of the founders of the UPSR, a member of the Ukrainian Central Rada, a Minister of Internal Affairs in the UNR (Ukrains'ka Narodna Respublika – Ukrainian People's Republic), worked for the Ukrainian State Publishing House, the People's Commissariat of Finances, and the Shevchenko Institute of Literature in Soviet Ukraine. Vasyl’ Mazurenko (1887–1937), an economist and a member of the Central Rada, worked for the Ukrainian Office of Measures and Weights, and was a member of the editorial board in the journal Naukovo-tekhnichnyi visnyk in Kharkiv. Mykola Shrah (1894–1970) was one of the leaders of the UPSR, assistant to the head of the Central Rada Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi. Mykola Chechel’ (1891–1937), a member of the Central Rada and an associate of Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi, taught in the Technological Institute in Kharkiv, and also worked for the State Planning Administration (Derzhplan).

3 Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi, a historian and head of the Central Rada in 1917–1918, was arrested in 1931 as the leader of the UNTs (Ukrains'kyi Natsional'nyi Tsentr – Ukrainian National Center). After interrogation, he was released and lived in Moscow under the watchful eye of the GPU/NKVD. In 1934, he died from sepsis under mysterious circumstances (for more on Hrushevs'kyi, see Prystaiko and Shapoval 1996; Plokhy 2005; Shapoval and Verba 2005; Gilley 2009, 163–220; Plokhii 2011).

4 For details about the Ukrainization campaign, see e.g. Martin (2001).

5 On Ukrainian Sovietophilism and its transformation in the 1920s, see Gilley (2009, 93, 94). Gilley argued that those in the Ukrainian emigration who envisioned Ukrainian statehood within a federation with Russia went against the prevailing attitudes of Ukrainian emigrants. The term ‘Galicia’ here and throughout refers to the predominantly Ukrainian (ethnically and linguistically) territory that was known as ‘Eastern Galicia’ under Austro-Hungarian rule. Western Galicia constituted a core Polish territory. For more details on the Western and Eastern Ukrainian-Polish front at the turn of 1918–1919, on the Paris Peace Conference and the Polish-Ukrainian War for Eastern Galicia, and on the Western boundary of Eastern Galicia according to Paris draft statute, see Kuchabsky (2009, 114–249).

6 The Ukrainian scholar Makarchuk estimated that the Ukrainian population in Galicia in the late 1920s was 3,226,546 (59.09%), according to the 1931 Polish census (2004, 105).

7 See Rubl'ov (2004, 88–89) on discrimination practices in higher education.

8 According to Pelens'kyi, from 1920 to 1939 approximately 120,000 Ukrainians left Galicia (1974, 510). Both Pelens'kyi and Makarchuk used data from the 1921 Polish census which were flawed because a deliberate attempt was made to reduce numbers for the Ukrainian population. Magocsi has posited that during the interwar period 150,000 Ukrainians emigrated from Poland (1998, 586). According to Kacharba, who used data from the 1931 Polish census, the population growth in Eastern Galicia was 14.36% (2003, 24).

9 The prices for travel by ship to the USA or Canada rose quickly; in 1933 they went from US$ 117 to US$ 125 (Kacharba 2003, 110).

10 Rubl'ov gives the figure of 60,000 people (2004, 131).

11 For more details on the CPWU, see Shkandrij (1992, 116–125).

12 On groups of Western Ukrainians who emigrated to the Ukrainian SSR in the 1930s, see Marynych (2008, 197–198); on the illegal emigration of Galicians from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania, see Rubl'ov (2004, 101). Some Galicians who were soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army were captured by the Russians and began to work for the Bolsheviks in the early 1920s, others when the UGA joined the Red Army in February 1920 after the defeat of Denikin's army (Gilley 2009, 291–292). On various Sovietophile groups, see Gilley (2009, 19–34, 399–413).

13 Cheka (1917–1923) is the term for the first Soviet secret police (an acronym for the VChK or All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage). After a number of organizational changes, on 15 October 1923 it became the OGPU or GPU (United State Political Administration, 1923–1934). The NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, 1917–1946) took over the secret police in 1934. In 1946 the secret police became the MGB (an acronym for Ministry of State Security) and from 1954 until 1991 it became the KGB. Because Russian acronyms for the Soviet secret police are more recognizable, they are used here. The Ukrainian forms are DPU and NKVS. The secret police in Ukraine (VUChK) had never been independent. It was founded on 3 December 1918, but was dissolved on 23 July 1919 and the central organ VChK in Moscow took complete control of Ukraine. On 13 August 1924 Moscow issued a law stipulated that the head of the Ukrainian GPU had to be a plenipotentiary (povnovazhnyi) of the OGPU in the USSR, and the agency's operational activities were then supervised and directed by the OGPU in Moscow (Shapoval, Prystaiko, and Zolotar'ov 1997, 8–10).

14 For a discussion concerning the image of the enemy cultivated by Soviet authorities, see Baberowski (2007, 90–111), Figes and Kolonitskii (1999, 167–186) and Bonnell (1997, 207–221).

15 Kosior's speech was delivered in the Russian language and also officially marked the change of course on Ukrainization by the ACP(b). Kosior called the policy conducted until then “a Petliurite Ukrainization”. The ACP(b) – or All-Union Communist Party of the Bolsheviks (1925–1952), known as VKP(b) – in 1952 became the CPSS (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) (1952–1991).

16 When the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic was defeated by the Poles, its veterans and officers in the Sich Riflemen continued the struggle for independence. In July−August 1920 they created an underground revolutionary organization – the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO). Ievhen Konovalets' was appointed its head in 1921. The organization operated mainly in Galicia and was responsible for arsons, “expropriations” (bank robberies) and some high-profile assassinations. After a wave of arrests conducted by the Polish government, it moved its leadership to Berlin while retaining a home command in Lviv. For more details on the UVO in Eastern Galicia and abroad, see Boiko (1974, 237–255) and Mirchuk (2007, 499–537). In February 1929 at the First Congress of Ukrainian nationalists in Vienna, the UVO became one of the founding groups of the OUN (Boidunyk 1974, 370; Knysh 1974, 289). There is little evidence that branches of this OUN existed in Soviet Ukraine. Archival materials recently declassified in Ukraine suggest that all Ukrainian “nationalist” organizations were fabricated by the secret police in the 1930s. Surveillance by the GPU minimized opportunities for real UVO or OUN members to move legally to Soviet Ukraine and organize national resistance (Rubl'ov 2004, 100, 102). On the possibility of an underground nationalist movement operating in Soviet Ukraine, see Snyder (2005, 23–59), Boiko (1974, 577–617), Mirchuk (2007, 169–172) and Martynets’ (1949). Martynets' mentions how amazed émigrés were that the GPU accused people who had nothing to do with the “real” OUN and failed to identify those who did (1949, 305). On the failure of Western Ukrainians to create a Ukrainian state, see Kuchabsky (2009).

17 Seksoty refers to sekretnye sotrudniki, a Russian term for GPU/NKVD/KGB agents, recruited from the civilian population.

18 For historical details and a concise geographical description of the region, see Magocsi (1998, 18, 525; 2002, ix–x, 3–4, 15–25).

19 On Galician “national spirit” and political developments, see also Wilson (2000, 110, 129).

20 Mykhailo Lebedynets' (1889–1934), a former borot'bist (a member of an indigenous Ukrainian communist party) and a writer who before his arrest worked for the staff of the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia (URE), was among 28 people who were shot on 17 December 1934 (Conquest 1990, 44; Shapoval, Prystaiko, and Zolotar'ov 1997, 57).

21 Skrypnyk also played a crucial role in creating the Association of Political Refugees from Western Ukraine and in supporting the literary association “Zakhidna Ukraina” (Western Ukraine) and the Berezil’ theater.

22 In 1934, out of 128 applications to the USSR's Lviv consulate, only 14 families received permission to immigrate (Holos Ukrainy, 12 June 2010).

23 Stalin considered that the Ukrainization campaign launched in 1923 had spun out of control and had produced a dangerous phenomenon, a Ukrainian intelligentsia that “looked” to the West and spoke of a culturally independent Ukraine (Stalin 1954, 149–154). See Stalin's text in Luckyj's translation (1990, 66–68).

24 At the same time, many halychany wanted to assimilate linguistically: they viewed the language of Eastern Ukrainian as the standard and Galician Ukrainian as a Polonized, “impure” variant. One of their tasks was to purify it, while creating a new phenomenon – Ukrainian Soviet culture (Shevel'ov 2009, 230–231).

25 The group criminal case called SVU is presented in 239 volumes. Today there is a consensus among historians that the SVU never existed in Soviet Ukraine but was entirely a GPU fabrication. For more on the SVU case, see also Shapoval (1990, 84–87), Prystaiko (1994, 70–88) and Prystaiko and Shapoval (1995).

26 Solomon Bruk (1896–1938) was arrested on 11 July 1937 and shot in Moscow in February 1938 as a member of a terrorist organization (Shapoval, Prystaiko, and Zolotar'ov 1997, 40, 160–161, 445).

27 Hryhorii Kossak (1882–1937), a colonel of the UGA and an active participant of the Ukrainian−Polish War of 1918–1919, returned to Soviet Ukraine in 1924. He taught the Ukrainian language and literature, and military tactics and strategy in the School of Red Officers in Kharkiv. Arrested as a UNTs member, but under unclear circumstances, Kossak survived the purge of 1931 to perish during the Great Terror.

28 Matvii Iavors'kyi (1885–1937) was a lawyer, political figure, writer, academic in the Ukrainian Academy of Science, and the major theoretician of Ukrainian Marxist historiography in the 1920s. For more details on him see Mace (1983, 232–263), and Plokhii (2011, 353–364, 368–371, 380–382, 384–393, 395–397, 552–555, 557–559, 561–564). Vsevolod Holubovych (1885–1939) was an engineer and head of the Council of the People's Ministry and a Minister of Foreign Affairs in the UNR in 1918. He worked in the Department of Building in Soviet Ukraine. Serhii Ostapenko (1887–1937) was an economist and head of the Council of the People's Ministry in the UNR in 1919, a member of the editorial board of Chervonyi Shliakh and a professor of the Kyiv Agricultural Institute. All were arrested as UNTs members and exiled to labor camps where all except Shrah perished (Prystaiko 1994, 80–88; Mirchuk 2007, 168). For details about Shrah, see Demchenko and Kuras (2004).

29 A plausible explanation for the secrecy surrounding the OUN and UVO operations is provided in Martynets's book (1949), excerpts from which the Soviet secret police photocopied and attached to Ivan Krushel'nyts'kyi's group criminal file (HDA SBU, f.6, spr.69860fp, t.8, ark.211 [blue envelop]). For a possible explanation of the secrecy surrounding the UNTs and Hrushevs'kyi's criminal file, see Shapoval and Verba (2005, 322–323, 325–326, 330–331). In April 1931, Genrikh Iagoda instructed the Ukrainian GPU to expedite the creation and prosecution of the UNTs case. On 15 April 1931 in Moscow Hrushevs'kyi rejected all accusations, and in September 1931 he wrote a letter to Stalin explaining how GPU associates extracted an initial confession from him.

30 Iavors'kii wrote this protest in Solovky on 30 November 1936. See also the 4 November 1932 operational report on Iavors'kyi's views about Stalin's collectivization policies in Drach et al. (1998, vol. 2, 174–175).

31 For more details on the atmosphere of suspicion in the 1930s that produced new conspiracy theories and new criminal cases against “oppositionists”, see Baberowski (2007, 128, 130).

32 Oleksandr Badan-Iavorenko (born in 1894 in the village Vil'ky, Eastern Galicia), a professor of history and head of the dictionary department in the URE, was arrested on 19 February 1933 as an UVO member and on 2 September 1933 was sentenced to 10 years in labor camps. Mykola Ersteniuk (born in 1892 in the village Pererisl’ in Stanislaviv oblast), a lawyer and Mykola Skrypnyk's personal secretary, was arrested as an UVO member on 19 February 1933, and on 23 September 1933 was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

33 In 1937 both Balyts'kyi and Oleksandrovs'kyi were accused of conducting anti-Soviet conspiracy in the secret organs; they were executed in 1937 and 1938, respectively. Absurdly, they were accused of plotting a conspiracy against the Soviet government together with the Ukrainian intelligentsia, the very people whom they had systematically executed and exiled for a decade (Vedeneev and Shevchenko 2001, 160, 163).

34 Mykhailo Biliach (1891–1937), a former officer of the UGA, worked as a journalist for the newspaper Khar'kovskii Proletarii in Kharkiv. All those mentioned in Biliach's deposition were later rehabilitated; their criminal cases proved to be complete fabrications.

35 For details on Biliach, see Vyshnia (1989, 110).

36 On Stalin's views about Ukraine, see his 11 August 1932 letter to Kaganovich in Davies et al. (2003, 180).

37 See, for instance, the Galician Mykhailo Boichuk's criminal case, which contains a newspaper article by M. Solomonov characterizing the artists Boichuk, Padalka and Sedliar as “enemies of the people” who “distorted our Soviet realities and impeded the development of Ukrainian Soviet art”.

38 UNDO is the Ukrainian National Democratic Association. Created in 1925 it was the most widely supported Ukrainian political party in Galicia and regularly winning seats during elections to the Polish Sejm (parliament). In 1926 the Sovietophile wing within the association was defeated. Subsequent crises in Soviet Ukraine (collectivization, terror, famine) strengthened anti-Soviet attitudes within the association. Roman Turians'kyi (Kuz'ma) (born in 1894 in the village Stryivka, Ternopil’ oblast) was an active member of the CPWU who protested Soviet policies in Ukraine. He was excluded from the party but repented and came to work in Moscow. In February 1933 he was arrested as an UVO member and sentenced to 5 years in labor camps. In February 1940 the case was reopened, and Turians'kyi was shot as a German and Polish spy. Iosyp Krylyk-Vasyl'kiv (born in 1989 in Krakovets', Galicia), head of the Holovlit [Chief Administration of Literary and Publishing Affairs, a state censorship organization], was arrested on 23 April 1933, and was sentenced on 23 September 1933 to 10 years in labor camps.

39 On the preliminary attack on Hirchak see Literaturna hazeta, 22 April 1933. Ievhen Hirchak, an assistant to the head of the People's Commissariat of Education, was arrested on 16 December 1934 and sentenced to 10 years in labor camps as an UVO member. For details on campaigns in the press, and Ievhen Hirchak, see Marochko and Hillig (2003, 6–9, 86, 135). The critics Maistrenko (brother of Ivan Maistrenko and secretary of the party journal Bil'shovyk Ukrainy) and Hirchak were themselves eventually arrested as Ukrainian nationalists.

40 “Kurkul” is the Ukrainian word for “kulak”.

41 Volodymyr Gzhyts'kyi (born in 1895 in the village Ostrivets', Ternopil’ oblast) was a Ukrainian writer and member of the literary associations “Pluh” and “Zakhidna Ukraina”. He was arrested on 7 December 1933 and sentenced to 10 years in labor camps. He survived the camps, and resided in Lviv where he died in 1973.

42 Ovcharov was editor of the journal Krytyka and from 1931 to 1933 worked as a scientific secretary in the People's Commissariat of Education. On 5 December 1934, he, a Russian, was arrested as a Ukrainian nationalist and sentenced to three years in labor camps, which survived. Along with Gzhyts'kyi, the Ukrainian writers Todos' Os'machka, Valerian Polishchuk and Kost’ Burevii were identified as “kurkul’ bards” and nationalists (Literaturna hazeta, 30 April 1933).

43 Karl Maksymovych (Savrych) (born in 1892 in the village Konkol'nyky, Eastern Galicia), one of the leaders of the CPWU and a supporter of Shums'kyi in Ukraine, worked as the chief inspector of “Zagotzerno” before his arrest. (In the early 1930s, Moscow governed the bread procurement process through the centralized state office Soiuzkhleb which soon became Zagotzerno.) He was arrested on 9 January 1933 and on 5 September 1933 was sentenced to 10 years in labor camps. In 1934 he committed suicide in the NKVD White-Sea Baltic camp. Hryhorii Hryn'ko (1890–1938) was in charge of the People's Commissariat of Education in 1920–1922. In 1922–1926 he was one of the leaders of Derzhplan, the state planning agency, in the Ukrainian SSR, later becoming the chief assistant to the head of Derzhplan in the USSR. From 1930 he was the People's Commissar of Finance in the USSR. Petro Solodub worked in the Ukrainian Council of the People's Commissariat, the highest organ of executive power in Ukraine. Before his arrest he was in charge of the planning sector in the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry in Moscow. Serhii Kopach-Kholodnyi (born in 1897 in the village Grushevo, Poland) was a journalist and a former member of the CPWU. Before his arrest he worked as an inspector of the foreign department of the Holovlit. He was arrested on 21 February 1933. He confessed that he was recruited to the UVO in Prague in 1922, and helped send the UVO cadres to Soviet Ukraine. On 23 September 1933 he was sentenced to 10 years in labor camps (HDA SBU, f.6, spr.69860fp, t.8, ark.268–272).

44 Myroslav Irchan (real name Andrii Bab'iuk) (born in 1897 in the village P'iadyky, Ivano-Frankivs'k oblast), a writer, translator, journalist, the leader of the literary association “Zakhidna Ukraina”, was arrested on 28 December 1933 and sentenced to 10 years in Solovky. On 3 November 1937 he was shot in Sandarmokh (Karelia) together with many other Ukrainian writers. Mechyslav Hasko (born in 1907 in Luts'k), a poet and a member of “Zakhidna Ukraina”, was arrested in summer 1933 and sentenced to 6 years in labor camps. He survived the camps and returned to Kyiv where he died in 1996. Mykhailo Ialovyi (pen name Iulian Shpol) (born in 1895 in the village Dar-Nadezhda, Poltava oblast), a writer, journalist and editor, was arrested on 12 May 1933 and sentenced to 10 years in prison camps. He was shot on 3 November 1937 in Sandarmokh. Ivan Tkachuk (born in 1891 in the village P'iadyky, Ivano-Frankivs'k oblast), a writer and journalist, was arrested on 7 December 1933 and was sentenced to 5 years in labor camps. He was released in 1939, and returned to Lviv where he died in 1948. Vasyl’ Atamaniuk (born in 1897 in the town of Iabloniv, Eastern Galicia), a writer, was arrested on 31 January 1933, and on 1 October 1934 was sentenced to 5 years in labor camps. Dmytro Zahul (born in 1890 in the village Milieve, Vyzhnyts'kyi region, Chernivets'ka oblast), a poet, literary critic, journalist, educator, was arrested in February 1933, and in May 1933 was sentenced to 10 years in labor camps. Iakiv Strukhmanchuk (born in 1884 in the village Rosokhuvatets', Ternopil’ oblast), an artist and member of “Zakhidna Ukraina”, was arrested in 1933 and sentenced to 10 years in Solovky. He was executed on 2 December 1937. For biographical details about these writers, see Ushkalov and Ushkalov (2010).

45 Mykhailo Datskiv (born in 1893 in the village Horodnytsia, Galicia) was arrested on 3 November 1933, and sentenced to 10 years in labor camps. Petro Demchuk (born in 1900 in the village Horodenka, Galicia), a philosopher and professor of the VUAMLIN, was arrested in May 1933 for his membership in the UVO, and on 23 September 1933 was sentenced to 5 years in labor camps. Iosyp Hirniak (born in1895 in Strusov, Galicia), a former soldier of the UGA, and at the moment of arrest an actor of the Franko Theatre, was arrested on 27 December 1933 as an UVO member, and on 21 May 1934 was sentenced to 3 years in labor camps. Ostap Sorochan (born in 1903 in Ternopil’, Galicia) was arrested first in early 1933 as a member of the UVO but because of his work for the GPU since 1929 was not exiled. However, on 16 August 1937 he was again arrested and sentenced to death. Mykhailo Chychkevych was arrested on 3 November 1933 and sentenced to death. Ievhen Cherniak (born in 1895 in Galicia), assistant to the director of the Institute of Ukrainian Culture, was arrested as an UVO member and sentenced to 10 years in labor camps. Ianuarii Bortnyk (born in 1897), a former director of the Khakiv Revolution Theatre, was arrested for his alleged membership in the UVO.

46 On individual histories of these people, see Marochko and Hillig (2003) and Drach et al. (3 vols, 1997–1999).

47 Stepan Rudnyts'kyi (1877–1937), a well-known scientist in Europe, returned to Soviet Ukraine in October 1926. He was executed in Sandarmokh on 3 November 1937. In 1929 Rudnyts'kyi signed a collective protest against the Ukrainian intelligentsia who were supposedly members of the SVU; it congratulated the GPU with uncovering this bourgeois nationalist organization (Visti VUTsVK, 25 November 1929, 2). For more details on Rudnyts'kyi, see Babak, Danylenko, and Plekan (2007) and Gilley (2009, 352–355).

48 Most of them originated in or had connections with Galicia. All “members” of this imaginary organization were rehabilitated in the 1950s, 1980s and 1990s.

49 Bilen'kyi-Berezyns'kyi (born in 1897 in Lviv) was a former member of the CPWU, who in 1927–1928 was a secretary of the Bureau of its Central Committee in Danzig (later Gdans'k in Poland). In June 1928, together with Iakiv Voitiuk, the former deputy of the Polish Sejm, Bilen'kyi-Berezyns'kyi arrived in Kharkiv. Iakiv Voitiuk (born in 1894 in the village Sel'tsi, Kholms'kyi district, Liublin hubernia, Poland) was a professor at the Medical and Cooperative Institutes in Kharkiv before his arrest. On 1 October 1933, as an UVO member, he was sentenced to 10 years in labor camps (AU SBUKhO, spr. 035183, ark.16; Rubl'ov and Fel'baba (2000); on Voitiuk see HDA SBU, f.6, spr.36546fp, t.11, ark.109–110).

50 The halychanyn and professor Volodymyr Iurynets', a former member of the Ukrainian Academy of Science, was on the payroll of the GPU. He denounced hundreds of Ukrainian intellectuals who were arrested in 1933; most were shot in November 1937. Iurynets' was also arrested in 1933 and shot on 4 October 1937 (HDA SBU, f.6, spr.36546fp, t.11, ark.72–73).

51 Serhii Pustovoitov was shot in September 1937; on 2 January 1936 Borys Kozel's'kyi committed suicide in his office in Kyiv; Semen Dolyns'kyi (Hlazberg) was arrested in August 1937 and was shot in February 1938 (Shapoval, Prystaiko, and Zolotar'ov 1997, 63–64, 463, 490–491; Drach et al. 1998, vol. 2, 130).

52 His wife survived the terror.

53 Antin Krushel'nyts'kyi (born in 1878 in the Austrian province of Galicia in Łańcut) was a writer, journalists and teacher. Iulian Bachyns'kyi (born in 1870 in the village Novosilka, Galicia) was a journalist and political figure, and worked on the staff of the URE. In 1927 he asked for Pilsudski's support and collaboration against the Soviet Union. However, influential Ukrainian circles in Poland blocked Bachyns'kyi's efforts and excluded him from the Ukrainian National Democratic Party (HDA SBU, f.6, spr.69860fp, t.8, ark.284–85). Persuaded by Soviet propaganda, he, together with his daughter, left Berlin and returned to Soviet Ukraine on 26 November 1933. On 6 November 1934 he was arrested, and on 28 March 1935 he was sentenced to 10 years in labor camps. Roman Skazyns'kyi (born in 1901 in the town of Hrabkovets', Zborovs'k region, lived in Lviv) was a journalist and editor of the Natsmenshvydav Publishing House. After Skazyns'kyi was shot, his wife Sof'ia Skazyns'ka began to work for the Polish intelligence service to avenge her husband's death (HDA SBU, f.6, spr.69860fp, t.8, ark.282). For more details about Bachyns'kyi and Antin Krushel'nyts'kyi, see Gilley (2009, 370–388).

54 Recent studies confirm that the Soviet secret police did indeed undertake a number of operations to lure the Ukrainian intelligentsia to Soviet Ukraine. For instance, in 1923 Mykhailo Skuhar-Skvars'kyi was sent to Czechoslovakia to uncover the anti-Soviet activity of local Ukrainian immigrants and to persuade them to return to Soviet Ukraine (Vedeneev and Shevchenko 2001, 139).

55 On 1 December 1934 Sergei Kirov, a prominent Bolshevik, was assassinated. Kirov's murder was an officially announced reason for increasing vigilance and a hunt for enemies.

56 The members of the Krushel'nyts'kyi family were posthumously rehabilitated in the late 1950s. The interrogators Hrushevs'kyi and Pustovoitov who “investigated” their cases were accused of counterrevolutionary conspiracy in the secret organs and were shot in 1937 (Drach et al. 1999, vol. 3, 295.).

57 Even according to imprecise data from 1948, 75% of Ukrainian intellectuals and professionals in Western Ukraine, Carpathian Ukraine and Bukovina were “brutally exterminated by the Russians”. See also Naimark (2010).

58 Not all the arrested were sentenced to various terms in labor camps or to death. Of 183,343 people arrested, 136,892 people suffered this fate. By 16 January 1938 the NKVD still continued to investigate 611 “Ukrainian nationalists”, as indicated in the report. Lazar’ Munvez (1895–?) was a member of the NKVD troika in the Ukrainian SSR, the head of the communication department of the NKVD in the Ukrainian SSR. He was arrested on 29 May 1936 and was sentenced to death (Shapoval et al. 2009, 508–509).

59 On Soviet post-war repression in Galicia, see also Krushel'nyts'ka (2001).