Alexander Shumsky

Alexander Yakovlevich Shumsky or Oleksandr Yakovych Shumskyi (Ukrainian: Олександр Якович Шумський, Russian: Александр Яковлевич Шумский; 2 December 1890 – 18 September 1946) was a Ukrainian communist and activist. He was one of the leaders of the national communism movement in Ukraine and actively supported Ukrainization. He was one of the victims of the Stalinist regime, being arrested and killed by the NKVD in 1946. He was rehabilitated in 1958, during the period of De-Stalinization.

Biography

Early life and 1905 Revolution

Shumsky was born in the village of Turchynka,

Shumsky himself wrote that he was born in a family of "batrak" (poor farmer-serfs).[4]^[5] Yuriy Shapoval indicates that Shumsky was not fully truthful about his origins, possibly due to the practice of characterising oneself in early Soviet history as coming from the lower class.^[4] In reality Shumsky's father Yakiv Danylovych, who worked as a forester for the landowner Mikhail Muravyov,^[4] had noble origins. Shumsky's grandfather Danylo Yakovych was a second generation priest, who had been assigned to the village of Turchynka in 1862.^[4]

He finished school in 1906, either at a village school^[3] or a two-year church parish school.^[4][5] After school, he worked at a sawmill and from 1908 as a land surveyor's assistant in the land reclamation commission.^[3]

In 1908 he joined the workers' movement and the Ukrainian Social Democratic League ("Spilka").^[3][b] In 1909, he participated in a strike at a local sawmill.^[5]

In 1911 Shumsky began night school at the

On 29 January [O.S. 16 January] 1918 Shumsky was arrested after he, with a group of left Ukrainian SRs and Social-Democrats, attempted a coup d'état to dissolve the parliament, but was freed as Red Russian detachments of Muravyov's troops descended on, and eventually sacked, Kyiv.^[3]

At the Fourth Congress of UPSR in May 1918, after his active support, the party's left wing announced liquidation of the party and transferring it underground.

From Spring of 1919 to March 1920 Shumsky was a leader of the Ukrainian Communist Party (Borotbists).^[3] His attempt to create a national communist party that would have been associated with the Russian Bolsheviks through the Communist International and become alternative to the Party-Soviet system that was developing failed because of its rejection by the leadership of the RKP(b) and personally by Vladimir Lenin.^[3]

Following establishment of the

Shumsky came into conflict with the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, Lazar Kaganovich, who was appointed back in April 1925, over these issues of Ukrainization. Shumsky sought to replace Kaganovich with Vlas Chubar, who had earlier opposed the appointment of Vyacheslav Molotov as secretary of the Ukrainian communist party.^[3]

Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), intervened on the side of his ally Kaganovich in a letter to members of Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine accusing Shumsky of spreading anti-Russian sentiments in Ukraine.^[3] In May 1926 at a plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, Shumsky was forced to officially recognize his mistake, but it did not save him.^[3]

In 1927 he was removed from office after being accused of engaging in disruptive activities in the People's Commissariat of Education of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic.^[3] In February–March 1927 the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine declared Shumsky guilty of "national deviation", which was labeled "Shumkism".^[3] Shumsky's removal was hotly debated in the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, which led to its split into "Shumskists" and supporters of the Stalinist position and the eventual dissolution of the party.^[3] After that, Shumsky was forced to leave Ukraine.^[3]

Exile and further persecution

From 1927 to 1933 he was a rector of the Leningrad Institute of National Economy, Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, a deputy head of the mass agitation department of the Central Committee of All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), a head of the Central Committee of Trade Union of Education officials, and a Presidium member of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions.^[3]

Shumsky expected to return to Ukraine, but he continued to be the object of political attacks in Ukraine. In 1930 at the 11th Congress of the CP(b)U the defeat of "Shumskism" was acclaimed, while at the November 1933 party plenum speakers denounced the anti-party Shumsky group and the "counterrevolutionary" essence of its national deviation.^[3]

On 13 May 1933 he was arrested on fabricated charges in the 1933 "UVO case" and sentenced to ten years in prison.^[3] After spending two years in Solovki prison camp of special assignment, by decision of a Special meeting of the NKVD of the Soviet Union on 10 December 1935 he was sentenced on charges of leadership of a "counterrevolutionary borotbist organization" to ten years exile to Krasnoyarsk.^[3]

In 1936, demanding acquittal, Shumsky announced a hunger strike.^[3] In October 1937 he was accused in belonging to another nationalist organization of former Borotbists and was arrested in the place of his exile.^[3] Only in November 1939 was the case closed due to lack of evidence -- but which did not lead to his acquittal.^[3]

After the end of his sentence on 13 May 1943, Shumsky was left in

In 1946 Shumsky twice unsuccessfully tried to end his life in suicide.[3] In September 1946, on the way from Saratov to Kyiv, he died, allegedly by special group of the Ministry of State Security of the Soviet Union under the direction of Pavel Sudoplatov and Grigory Mairanovsky, at the hands of the personal orders of Stalin, Khrushchev and Kaganovich.^[3]

On 11 September 1958 Shumsky was rehabilitated.^[3]

Notes