Stalin's terror envoy called the 'hangman of Ukraine', himself felled by a bullet
In Pravda on December 28, 1935, Postyshev wrote: "Let's organize a good New Year tree for the children!" With that single line, the banned fir tree returned, and the children's New Year celebration with Ded Moroz became the Soviet Union's most cherished tradition.
The son of a weaver in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, he joined the Bolsheviks in 1904. After Civil War work in Siberia and the Far East, he was dispatched to Ukraine as Stalin's grain-requisition plenipotentiary during the famine in late 1932. As Ukrainian Party Second Secretary from 1933, he wielded de facto power exceeding that of First Secretary Kosior, purging opposition to collectivisation and crushing the intelligentsia, earning the epithet 'hangman of Ukraine.' In 1935 his Pravda letter restored the New Year tree tradition. Demoted to Kuibyshev Oblast First Secretary in 1937, he zealously executed the Great Terror until his own arrest in 1938 and execution in 1939.
Career Timeline
- 1904–1917Underground Bolshevik in Ivanovo-Voznesensk and Irkutsk; participated in 1905 Ivanovo strike, multiple arrests and Siberian exile
- 1917–1922Deputy chairman of Irkutsk Soviet, chairman of Revolutionary Tribunal, Centrosibir member, military commissar in Far Eastern Republic
- 1924–1930Secretary of Kiev and Kharkov party committees, Secretary of CC CP(b)U
- 1930–1933Secretary of CC VKP(b), head of Organizational-Instructional Department
- 1932.11–12Stalin's special plenipotentiary to Lower Volga and Ukraine for grain requisitions during the famine
- 1933–1937Second Secretary CC CP(b)U — real power behind Kosior; directed mass purges and Russification, expelled ~100,000 from the party
- 1934–1938Candidate member of Politburo CC VKP(b)
- 1937–1939Demoted to First Secretary of Kuibyshev Oblast; arrested Feb 1938, shot 26 Feb 1939
Related historical events
- 1905–1907The Revolution of 1905participated in Ivanovo strike
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionMilitary commissar of the Far Eastern Republic and Siberian party leader
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationUkraine second secretarySent to Ukraine in early 1933 with Moscow's plenipotentiary authority, he directed procurement enforcement and the overhaul of the party organization.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeEnforcer turned targetA Stalin envoy who drove the Ukrainian purge and was himself executed in 1939.
January 1933, Plenipotentiary Powers Sent to Kharkiv
Pavel Postyshev was a worker-revolutionary, born into a weaver's family in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, who joined the party in 1904. After exile, underground work, and the civil war in the Far East, he worked in the Ukrainian party in the 1920s and from 1930 served as a secretary of the all-union Central Committee. In January 1933, as the procurement crisis and the famine reached their peak, he was sent to Ukraine as second secretary of the republican party. Formally the number two, he arrived retaining his all-union secretaryship and was in effect Moscow's plenipotentiary.
Postyshev's mandate was twofold: to complete the grain procurement and sowing campaigns, and to purge the Ukrainian party apparatus of "nationalist deviation". He kept up the procurement pressure while famine swept the countryside, and at the same time directed the distribution of seed loans and relief. Skrypnyk, the symbol of the Ukrainization policy, killed himself in July 1933 amid the denunciation campaign Postyshev led. The research of Davies and Wheatcroft and of Terry Martin documents how in these months Postyshev performed both roles at once, manager of crisis relief and executor of a political purge.
From 1934 he presided over the transfer of the republican capital to Kiev, its reconstruction, and the completion of industrialization, ruling as the republic's de facto master. The fact that he was the man sent to Ukraine in the famine year cannot be detached from his name, and the responsibility of these months must be recorded exactly as the archives confirm it.
December 28, 1935: the Letter That Brought Back the Yolka
On December 28, 1935 Pravda carried a short letter from Postyshev proposing that the New Year fir tree (yolka), banned as a religious survival, be given back to the children. Within days of the letter, "Let's organize a good yolka for the children", fir trees stood in schools and palaces of culture across the country, and the New Year holiday with Ded Moroz and Snegurochka became one of the most beloved customs of Soviet life. To tens of millions of Soviet children, Postyshev was the unnamed benefactor of the New Year.
But the same man had another face. In March 1937, following the Nikolaenko affair, he was recalled from Ukraine and transferred to Kuibyshev as first secretary of the oblast, where he became one of the most zealous executors of the Great Terror. He declared dozens of district party committees "nests of enemies" and dissolved them wholesale, driving thousands of members to expulsion. At the January 1938 Central Committee plenum it was precisely these "excesses" that Malenkov attacked him for, and Postyshev was removed from candidate membership of the Politburo. A month later he was arrested; on February 26, 1939 he was shot, on the same day as Kosior and Chubar.
Postyshev was rehabilitated in 1955. The plenipotentiary of the famine year, the author of the letter that revived the yolka, the frenzy of the Kuibyshev purge, and the victim of fabricated charges: all four are facts about the same man, and archive-based history records every one of them without erasure.