Petro Shelest
Петро Шелест
Shelest in 1972
First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine
In office
23 June 1963 – 19 May 1972
Preceded byNikolai Podgorny
Succeeded byVolodymyr Shcherbytsky
Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union
In office
19 May 1972 – 7 May 1973
PremierAlexei Kosygin
Full member of the 22nd, 23rd, 24th Politburo
In office
16 November 1964 – 27 April 1973
Personal details
Born(1908-02-14)14 February 1908
Andriivtsi, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire
(now Ukraine)
Died22 January 1996(1996-01-22) (aged 87)
Moscow Oblast, Russia
Resting placeBaikove Cemetery, Kyiv
NationalitySoviet
Ukrainian
Political partyCommunist Party of the Soviet Union (1928–1973)
Signature
Military service
AllegianceSoviet Union
Branch/serviceRed Army
Years of service1936–1937

Petro Yukhymovych Shelest[lower-alpha 1] (14 February [O.S. 1 Feburary] 1908 – 22 January 1996) was a Ukrainian Soviet politician who served as First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party from 1965 until his removal in 1972. Ideologically a social moderate and a national communist, he oversaw a widespread liberalisation of Ukrainian society as part of the Khrushchev Thaw and Sixtier movement that led to increased visibility of the Ukrainian language and culture in public life. Shelest was removed by Leonid Brezhnev in 1972 and replaced with Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, who undid much of Shelest's reforms and oversaw intensive Russification of Ukrainian society.

Early career

Petro Shelest was born in a Ukrainian peasant family in a village near Kharkiv in 1908. He studied engineering in Kharkiv, and held industrial jobs between 1932 and 1936. In 1928 he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and in 1935 graduated from Mariupol Metallurgical Institute. He served in the Red Army from 1936 to 1937, but transferred to working for the Communist Party in 1937, as thousands of its members were caught up in the Great Purge. Between 1943 and 1954, Shelest was a chief manager of several large factories in Leningrad and Kyiv. From 1954 to 1963, he was respectively Second Secretary of the Kyiv city party committee, Second Secretary of the regional committee, and First Secretary of the Kyiv regional party committee.[1]

First Secretary of Ukraine

After Shelest was appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) in 1963, he set out to run Ukraine with a degree of independence from Moscow, and to develop the republic's economy and encourage Ukrainian culture.[2] It was during his tenure that construction began on the four nuclear plants at Chernobyl.

He antagonised the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who publicly upbraided Shelest during a visit to Hungary over late delivery of Ukrainian equipment, then remarked: "Look how glum he is - just as if a hedgehog had been rammed down his throat."[3] In November 1964, when Khrushchev was removed from office, Shelest was promoted to full membership of the Presidium (later renamed the Politburo).

Shelest began his rule at a time of significant cultural shifts in Ukrainian society, as it began to increasingly distance itself from Russia and assert its unique identity.[4] Regarded within the party as a localist,[5] Shelest was viewed by various sectors of the public as either a supporter of increased Ukrainian autonomy within the Soviet Union or a typical Soviet bureaucrat. In a statement later attributed to him by historian Roman Solanchyk, Shelest said that he was "not Lazar Kaganovich" and did not rule under Ukraine in "the times of Stalin," noting himself as an opponent of hardliners.[6] Historian Taras Kuzio has argued that Shelest was the leader of a revived national communist sect of the Communist Party of Ukraine after the group had previously been destroyed in the Great Purge. According to Kuzio, the national communist group was later led by Leonid Kravchuk, who oversaw the transition from Soviet to independent Ukraine.[7]

A supporter of the Sixtier cultural movement and the Khrushchev Thaw, Shelest's policies brought greater prominence to the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture in public life, with the party echelons actively supporting such developments. An ultimately-unrealised 1965 plan, later leaked through samizdat, called for Ukrainian to eventually replace Russian as the language of instruction in higher education. The extent to which Shelest personally was involved in supporting the Sixtiers and other nationally minded Ukrainians, many of whom later formed the core of Ukraine's Soviet dissidents, remains in dispute.[8] Shelest's policy of greater autonomy for Ukraine was also reflected in economic spheres, as he sought to decentralise economic management to the republican level.[9] He also argued for Ukraine to become economically sovereign from the broader Soviet Union in 1965, a move which alarmed Soviet leadership.[10]

The core intention of Shelest's policies was to improve the popularity of the Communist Party among Ukrainians, following the extreme unpopularity of Stalinist rule in Ukraine. Such plans had fruitful results: by 1971 KPU membership was 2.5 million, and annually increasing at double the rate of the Union average.[9]

Geographically, Shelest was associated with the city of Kharkiv, and part of the Kharkiv Clan. This further helped to establish animosity with Leonid Brezhnev and Shelest's eventual successor Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, who were both members of the rival Dnipropetrovsk Mafia. Shelest was the last Ukrainian leader from the Kharkiv Clan, and the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia dominated Ukrainian politics until being replaced by the Donetsk Clan in the 2000s.[11]

Prague Spring

In 1968, Shelest played a major role in deciding how the Soviet government should respond to the Prague Spring, the sudden loosening of political control in communist Czechoslovakia, which created an atmosphere that spilled over into west Ukraine. He was the only other Politburo member beside Leonid Brezhnev to take part in every meeting between Soviet and Czech communist leaders during that year.[12]

Addressing the Central Committee of the CPSU on 17 July 1968, Shelest accused the Czechoslovak communist party leadership of persecuting communists while making no attempt to control "right-wing opportunists". He claimed:

The Czechoslovak comrades babble on about their wholehearted support for “democratic socialism.” But they disregard the fact that our country, the first country in the world in which socialism triumphed, has already been living and prospering for more than 50 years in accordance with socialist laws.[13]

During negotiations on 30 July 1968, he berated the Czechoslovak delegation, complaining that "Your TV shows, your radio programmes, your newspapers and magazines distributed into our regions closest to your borders make our people ask questions which are full of embarrassment". Shelest went on to insult František Kriegel, a senior Czechoslovak communist and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, calling him a "Galician Jew".[12] The Czechoslovak party leader, Alexander Dubček, walked out, and later lodged a complaint about Shelest's comment and tone.

On 3 August, Shelest secretly met the hard-line Slovak communist Vasiľ Biľak, who handed him a letter inviting the Soviet government to send in troops to move to restore the dictatorship. This was used as a pretext for the Warsaw Pact invasion on 20 August.

In 1968, Shelest was awarded the "Hero of Socialist Labor" title.

Removal and later life

By 1972, the Soviet government, under Brezhnev, had grown irritated by Shelest's continued support for Ukrainian culture. Beginning in January, Moscow launched a sweeping crackdown on Ukrainian civil society, including mass arrests. In May, Shelest was removed and replaced by Shcherbytsky as First Secretary.[14] For the next eleven months, Shelest served as Deputy Premier in Moscow before being dismissed again and demoted to leadership of a factory outside the Soviet capital.[5] The public cause of his removal was reported to be health problems.[15]

Western observers originally assumed that he had been sacked because of his hard line views on foreign policy. Reputedly, he vehemently opposed the visit of U.S. President Richard Nixon, who arrived in Moscow on 22 May 1972. But in April 1973, he was publicly attacked by Shcherbytsky, while an unsigned article in the Ukrainian press denounced a book by Shelest, O Ukraine, Our Soviet Land, published in 1970, as containing 'ideological errors', 'factual errors' and 'editorial blunders' that were likely to encourage Ukrainian nationalism.[16]

Shelest himself blamed his downfall on 'intrigues' by Shcherbytsky and Brezhnev. In his memoirs, he criticized their style of government as "autocratic" and "non-communist".

From 1973 to 1985, Shelest worked as a manager of an aircraft design bureau near Moscow. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was able to revisit Ukraine, after an absence of nearly 20 years. He visited Ukraine several times and delivered lectures about his tenure as leader of Ukraine. He died in Moscow in 1996.

Notes

  1. ↑ Ukrainian: Петро Юхимович Шелест
    Russian: Пётр Ефи́мович Ше́лест, romanized: Pyotr Yefimovich Shelest

References

  1. ↑ "Народився Петро Шелест, партійний і державний діяч, перший секретар ЦК КП України". Національна бібліотека України імені В. І. Вернадського. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  2. ↑ Plokhy, Serhii (2016). The Gates of Europe, A History of Ukraine. London: Penguin. p. 304. ISBN 978-0-141-98061-4.
  3. ↑ Tatu, Michel (1969). Power in the Kremlin. London: Collins. p. 420.
  4. ↑ Krawchenko, Bohdan (1983). "Preface". Ukraine After Shelest. Edmonton: University of Alberta. p. 1. ISBN 0-920862-26-8.
  5. 1 2 "Petro Y. Shelest, 87, Ukraine Party Chief Ousted as 'Localist'". The New York Times. 26 January 1996. Archived from the original on 15 February 2020. Retrieved 23 December 2023.
  6. ↑ Krawchenko, Bohdan; Solanchyk, Roman (1983). "Politics and the National Question in the Post-Shelest Period". Ukraine After Shelest. Edmonton: University of Alberta. pp. 1–5. ISBN 0-920862-26-8.
  7. ↑ Kuzio, Taras (12 August 2010). "Russophile agenda rising once again". Kyiv Post. Retrieved 23 December 2023.
  8. ↑ Krawchenko, Bohdan; Solanchyk, Roman (1983). "Politics and the National Question in the Post-Shelest Period". Ukraine After Shelest. Edmonton: University of Alberta. p. 4. ISBN 0-920862-26-8.
  9. 1 2 "Ukraine under Shelest". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 23 December 2023.
  10. ↑ Kuromiya, Hiroaki (January–February 2005). "Political Leadership and Ukrainian Nationalism, 1938-1989". Problems of Post-Communism. 52 (1): 42.
  11. ↑ Musiyezdov, Oleksiy (2 February 2022). "National and Geopolitical Identities and Attitudes to Decommunisation in Dnipro and Kharkiv". E-International Relations. Retrieved 23 December 2023.
  12. 1 2 Veselý, Luboš. "The Ukrainian Factor of the Prague Spring? Petro Shelest and the Czechoslovak Year 1968 in the Light of Documents of the Ukrainian Security Service" (PDF). Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  13. ↑ "July 17, 1968 Speech by P. Shelest at the CPSU CC Plenum" (PDF). Wilson Center digital archive. Retrieved 12 May 2022.
  14. ↑ Markus, Vasyl; Senkus, Roman. "Shelest, Petro". Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Retrieved 23 December 2023.
  15. ↑ "Юрий Яковлевич Фиалков — "Доля правды"". 2 February 2014. Archived from the original on 2 February 2014. Retrieved 6 January 2018.
  16. ↑ Tillett, Lowell (December 1975). "Ukrainian Nationalism and the Fall of Shelest". Slavic Review. 34 (4): 752–768. doi:10.2307/2495726. JSTOR 2495726. S2CID 164168281.
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