МАСОВІ РЕПРЕСІЇ ПРОТИ ПОЛЬСЬКОЇ НАЦІОНАЛЬНОЇ МЕНШИНИ УКРАЇНИ В 1937–1938 РР.

Abstract

The article is devoted to the fact that in 1937-1938 Stalin's totalitarian regime began mass repressions against the multi-ethnic population of Ukraine, including Poles. This period went down in history under the name of the years of "the great purge or the great terror", when the state security bodies, guided by the decisions of the higher party bodies, in particular the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), carried out mass repressions on the territory of the USSR and the union republics. The February-March plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) in 1937 became the ideological basis for the implementation of repressions. The national direction of political repressions began to be carried out by the relevant orders and directive letters. In particular, the operational order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 00485 of August 11, 1937 initiated the deployment of the "Polish operation". Repression affected various social strata of the Polish population of Ukraine: peasants, workers, civil servants, representatives of the intelligentsia, leaders of the party-state apparatus. The NKVD authorities accused the Poles of various types of hostile activities: participation in counter-revolutionary activities, espionage for the benefit of Poland and other countries, treason, terror, sabotage, vandalism, counter-revolutionary insurgent activities, anti-Soviet agitation, membership in the ranks of the Polish military organization. The NKVD investigators sought testimony from the arrested Poles with the help of moral and psychological pressure and torture. All the arrested Poles received long terms of imprisonment in correctional labor camps or were sentenced to the highest degree of punishment - execution. 267,579 thousand people became victims of Stalin's terror against the Polish national minority in the Ukrainian SSR.