Crimean party administrator who helped protect Massandra
During the anti-alcohol campaign, he joined Shcherbitsky in intervening to protect Massandra and its enoteca.
Viktor Makarenko was a Soviet Ukrainian party administrator who rose from factory work to regional leadership. In Sevastopol and Crimea he coordinated industry, agriculture, and tourism while navigating tensions between central directives and local production and cultural institutions. During the 1980s anti-alcohol campaign, he joined Vladimir Shcherbitsky in protecting the Massandra winery and its enoteca. His memoir-based recollections illuminate how late Soviet regional governance could mediate, rather than simply transmit, central policy.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1947Worker, district housing administration, Kryvyi Rih
- 1955Graduated Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute; joined Kryvorizhstal
- 1967–1969Second secretary, Kryvyi Rih City Committee
- 1969–1972Inspector, Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine
- 1972–1977First secretary, Sevastopol City Committee
- 1977–1987First secretary, Crimean Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine
- 1982–1989Member, CPSU Central Committee
- 1987–2007Retirement and memoir writing
Related historical events
The 1985 anti-alcohol campaign and the preservation of Massandra
Launched in 1985, the anti-alcohol campaign called for sharp reductions in alcohol production and sales. Yakov Pogrebnyak, a former secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, recalled that intervention by Viktor Makarenko, then first secretary of the Crimean regional committee, and Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, first secretary of the Ukrainian party, saved the Massandra winery from destruction. Makarenko likewise confirmed Pogrebnyak’s account, saying that Yegor Ligachyov had demanded the destruction of vineyards and the famous Massandra enoteca, or wine collection, and that only Shcherbytsky’s personal intervention saved the collection. Ligachyov, however, denied in a 2010 interview that he had visited Massandra or closed the winery. These conflicting accounts show both how the anti-alcohol policy collided with regional industrial and cultural assets and how accounts of their preservation differed.