The Bolshevik between revolution and the industrial plan
January 1937, in the dock at the second Moscow trial. The German writer Lion Feuchtwanger recorded: "I shall never forget how Georgy Pyatakov, a gentleman of medium height, middle-aged, with a small bald patch and a reddish, old-fashioned, trembling pointed beard, stood before the microphone and calmly, diligently narrated how he had wrecked the industry entrusted to him. He explained, pointing with an outstretched finger, like a university lecturer — a historian delivering a report on the life and deeds of a long-dead man named Pyatakov, striving to clarify every detail, seized by the single desire that his listeners and students should understand everything correctly."
A Bolshevik revolutionary and the first head of Soviet Ukraine. As a Left Communist, he fiercely opposed Lenin over the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the national question, and was one of only six Bolsheviks named in Lenin's Testament. Expelled as a Left Oppositionist, he recanted and returned to drive the Five-Year Plans as Deputy Commissar of Heavy Industry, before becoming chief defendant at the second Moscow show trial and being executed in 1937.
Career timeline
1910–1917Joined Bolsheviks, Kiev underground, exile and emigration
1917–1918Kiev chairman, State Bank seizure, Left Communist faction
1918–1920CP(b)U Central Committee secretary, head of Ukraine government, GRU chief
1920–1927Donbas, Gosplan & VSNKh deputy chairman, Left Opposition
1928–1930Readmitted to party, Gosbank chairman, credit reform
1930–1936Deputy & 1st Deputy Commissar of Heavy Industry, Five-Year Plans
1936–1937Arrested, chief defendant at second Moscow trial, executed
Pioneer of Ukrainian national communism, the original 'Shumskyism'
In April 1926, Shumsky met Stalin privately in Moscow for over two hours, demanding Kaganovich's replacement by Ukrainian Vlas Chubar and accelerated Ukrainization. Stalin's resulting Politburo letter condemned 'Shumskyism' as nationalist deviation — a watershed in the suppression of Ukrainian national communism.
A symbol of Ukrainian national communism and the prototype of 'Shumskyism': the demand for substantive republican autonomy against Moscow's centralism. A Borotbist who rose to the CP(b)U Politburo, he drove the de-Russification of Ukraine's cities and proletariat and the promotion of Ukrainian cadres as People's Commissar of Education (1924–1927). His 1926 confrontation with Stalin led to his condemnation for 'nationalist deviation' and removal from all posts; his name became shorthand for the suppression of Ukrainian autonomy within the Soviet system. Arrested in 1933, he endured the Solovki camps and Krasnoyarsk exile before the NKVD murdered him upon release in 1946; rehabilitated in 1958.
Career timeline
1908Joined the Ukrainian Social Democratic Spilka
1917–1919Left-wing UPSR leader, then Borotbist Central Committee member
1919People's Commissar of Education, Ukrainian SSR (first term)
1920Led Borotbist merger into CP(b)U; Politburo & Orgburo member, Comintern ECCI member
1921–1923Plenipotentiary of the Ukrainian SSR to Poland
1924–1927People's Commissar of Education (second term); led Ukrainization drive
1927Condemned for 'Shumskyism'; rector in Leningrad
1933–1946Arrested, imprisoned, exiled; killed by NKVD upon release (rehabilitated 1958)
Ukrainian otaman who took Odesa for the Reds, then turned to revolt and pogrom
Proclaiming revolt in his May 1919 Universaл, he cried: "Ukrainian people! Take power into your own hands. Let there be no dictatorship of any one man or any one party."
The Ukrainian otaman who took Odesa for the Soviets in the spring of 1919, he rose against them in May and his troops massacred Jews at Yelysavethrad and elsewhere. He was shot by Makhno's men in July.
Career timeline
1901–1907Volunteered for the imperial army, fought in the Russo-Japanese War, and won three Crosses of St George.
1914–1916Served as an officer on the Southwestern Front in World War I, rising to staff-captain.
1918Led peasant partisans in Kherson province against the Austro-German occupiers and the Hetmanate.
1918–1919Served as chief of the Kherson Division of the Ukrainian People's Republic (Directory).
1919.02Went over to the Red Army, commanding the 1st Zadniprovska Brigade and then the 6th Ukrainian Soviet Division, and took Odesa in April.
1919.05Led the Hryhoriv uprising against the Red Army in May.
