The Soviet Regime’s National Operations in Ukraine, 1929–1934

Abstract

This article makes use of documents from secret police archives to show that the Soviet secret police in Ukraine, the GPU (State Political Administration— Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie), together with the centre in Moscow, played a crucial role in the national operations of 1929–1934. These documents contradict the views of historians who argue that the regime’s key power centres—Moscow and the secret police—were sincere in promoting Ukrainian culture and language. Instead, the archival materials indicate that a counter-Ukrainization was already being planned in the mid-1920s. The article argues that trials of “nationalists” were organized in order to prevent the crystallization of a political opposition in Ukraine at a time of crisis brought about by collectivization and famine. The repression of Ukrainians had a national component, was inspired by the centre, carefully organized by the secret police, and implemented through a steady flow of group criminal cases. Protocols from the interrogation rooms, testimonies by interrogators themselves, and scholarly literature on the topic are used to reconstruct the motivation of the GPU men who fabricated the criminal cases. The article demonstrates that all the cases were constructed according to a master narrative and presents a case for why torture was used: to legitimize the widespread use of terror in Ukraine, the regime required that the victims confess to being Ukrainian nationalists and members of anti-Soviet organizations whose goal was separatism.