page_title: Pavel Postyshev
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Pavel Postyshev / Career
caption_attribution_description: Soviet politican Lev Mehlis signature (1937). Русский: Мехлис - Записка Жданову: "Смотрел с помощью увеличительного стекла значки, о которых пишет т. Постышев. Не вижу никакой свастики. Постышев не там ищет врагов, где они имеются". 25.11.1937.
context_page_description: Pavel Petrovich Postyshev was a Soviet politician, state and party leader and party publicist.
context_section_description: Postyshev was born in Ivanovo-Voznesensk in Vladimir Governorate.
  He was a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party from 1904, then a member of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) in Siberia.  In 1923 he was reassigned  from his position 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, or CP(b)U. In 1926–30 he became a member of the Politburo and Organizational Bureau of Ukraine's Bolshevik Party.
  As 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 the office 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'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 Moscow dictates.  "Nests of nationalist counter-revolutionaries" like the commissariats of education, agriculture, and justice, newspapers, journals, encyclopedias and film studios were purged.  Over 15,000 officials were eliminated on charges of "nationalism."
  
  The Ukrainian Communist Party was also targeted. 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 through 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, affecting millions throughout the Soviet Union, Postyshev's crackdown spread beyond perceived "Ukrainianizers," "nationalists," and opponents of collectivization. Eventually it came to include the liquidation of entire classes such as kulaks, priests, people who had been members of anti-Bolshevik armies, and even ethnic Ukrainians who had 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 famine of 1932–33.  
  After the famine, Postyshev was removed from Ukraine and appointed first secretary of the Kuibyshev Oblast Party Committee. There during the Great Purge, he launched an extensive hunt for "enemies of the people". He was noteworthy for promoting the practice of the New Year tree after publishing a fam
caption: Lev Mekhlis letter to Zhdanov: "Postyshev searches enemies not where they really are"
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