Petro Shelest | |
|---|---|
| |
.jpg) Shelest,c. 1960s-1970s | |
| First Secretary of theCommunist Party of Ukraine | |
| In office 23 June 1963 – 19 May 1972 | |
| Preceded by | Nikolai Podgorny |
| Succeeded by | Volodymyr Shcherbytsky |
| Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union | |
| In office 19 May 1972 – 7 May 1973 | |
| Premier | Alexei Kosygin |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1908-02-14)14 February 1908 |
| Died | 22 January 1996(1996-01-22) (aged 87) |
| Resting place | Baikove Cemetery,Kyiv |
| Nationality | Soviet Ukrainian |
| Political party | Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1928–1973) |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | Soviet Union |
| Branch/service | Red Army |
| Years of service | 1936–1937 |
Central institution membership | |
Petro Yukhymovych Shelest[a] (14 February [O.S. 1 February] 1908 – 22 January 1996) was a Ukrainian Soviet politician who served asFirst Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party from 1965 until his removal in 1972. Ideologically a social moderate and anational communist, he oversaw a widespread liberalisation of Ukrainian society as part of theKhrushchev Thaw andSixtier movement that led to increased visibility of the Ukrainian language and culture in public life. In 1972, Shelest was removed byLeonid Brezhnev and replaced withVolodymyr Shcherbytsky, who undid much of Shelest's reforms and oversaw intensiveRussification of Ukrainian society.
Petro Shelest was born in a Ukrainian peasant family in a village nearKharkiv in 1908. He studied engineering in Kharkiv, and held industrial jobs between 1932 and 1936. In 1928 he joined theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and in 1935 graduated fromMariupol Metallurgical Institute. He served in theRed Army from 1936 to 1937, but transferred to working for the Communist Party in 1937, as thousands of its members were caught up in theGreat Purge. Between 1943 and 1954, Shelest was a chief manager of several large factories inLeningrad andKyiv. 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]
After Shelest was appointedFirst 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 atChernobyl.
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 thePolitburo).
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 "notLazar Kaganovich" and did not rule under Ukraine in "the times of Stalin," noting himself as an opponent of hardliners.[6] HistorianTaras Kuzio has argued that Shelest was the leader of a revivednational communist sect of the Communist Party of Ukraine after the group had previously been destroyed in theGreat Purge. According to Kuzio, the national communist group was later led byLeonid Kravchuk, who oversaw the transition from Soviet to independent Ukraine.[7]
A supporter of theSixtier cultural movement and theKhrushchev 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 throughsamizdat, 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'sSoviet 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] However, he was criticised by Ukrainian intellectuals such asViacheslav Chornovil for his role in the1965–1966 Ukrainian purge, which led to the arrest of several Sixtiers.[11]
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 ofKharkiv, and part of theKharkiv Clan. This further helped to establish animosity withLeonid Brezhnev and Shelest's eventual successorVolodymyr Shcherbytsky, who were both members of the rivalDnipropetrovsk Mafia. Shelest was the last Ukrainian leader from the Kharkiv Clan, and the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia dominated Ukrainian politics until being replaced by theDonetsk Clan in the 2000s.[12]
In 1968, Shelest played a major role in deciding how the Soviet government should respond to thePrague 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 besideLeonid Brezhnev to take part in every meeting between Soviet and Czech communist leaders during that year.[13]
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.[14]
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 insultFrantišek Kriegel, a senior Czechoslovak communist and veteran of theSpanish Civil War, calling him a "Galician Jew".[13] 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 communistVasiľ 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 theWarsaw Pact invasion on 20 August.
In 1968, Shelest was awarded the "Hero of Socialist Labor" title.
By 1972, the Soviet government, under Brezhnev, had grown irritated by Shelest's continued support for Ukrainian culture. Beginning in January, Moscow launched asweeping crackdown on Ukrainian civil society, including mass arrests. In May, Shelest was removed and replaced by Shcherbytsky as First Secretary.[15] For the next eleven months, Shelest served asDeputy 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.[16]
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. PresidentRichard 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.[17]
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.
| Party political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | 1st Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine 1963–1972 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | 1st Secretary of the Communist Party of Kyiv Oblast 1957–1962 | Succeeded by Vasyl Drozdenko |
