Volodymyr Shcherbytsky

Volodymyr Vasyliovych Shcherbytsky (17 February 1918 – 16 February 1990) was a Ukrainian Soviet politician who served as First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party from 1972 to 1989.

Shcherbytsky was born in Verkhnodniprovsk on 17 February 1918 to Vasily Grigorievich Shcherbytsky (1890–1949) and Tatyana Ivanovna Shcherbitskaya (1898–1990), just two weeks after the Soviet takeover of the city during the Ukrainian–Soviet War.

During his school years, he worked as an activist and a member of the Komsomol from 1931.

In 1934, while still in school, he became an instructor and agitator for the district committee of the Komsomol.

After graduation, Shcherbytsky was appointed head of the chemical unit within the 34th Infantry Regiment of the 473rd Infantry Division in the Transcaucasian Front.

In 1936, he entered the Faculty of Mechanics at the Dnipropetrovsk Chemical Technology Institute.

During his training, he worked as a draftsman, designer and compressor driver at the factories in Dnipropetrovsk.

Shcherbytsky graduated from the Dnipropetrovsk Chemical Technology Institute in 1941 and in the same year became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Shcherbytsky was mobilized into the ranks of the Red Army.

Because he was a graduate with a major in chemical equipment and machinery, he was sent to attend short term courses at the Military Academy of Chemical Protection named after Voroshilov, which was evacuated from Moscow to Samarkand in Uzbek SSR.

In November 1941, the division was formed in the cities of Baku and Sumgayit in Azerbaijan SSR.

On 8 January 1942, the division was renamed as 75th Rifle Division, and in April of the same year, Shcherbytsky and the division took part in the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran.

On the same year, he served in a tank brigade.

In March 1943, Shcherbytsky was transferred to the chemical department at the headquarters of the Transcaucasian Front, where he served until the end of the war.

In August 1945, the Transcaucasian Front was reorganized into the Tbilisi Military District and Shcherbytsky's last military assignment was as an assistant chief of the chemistry department of the district headquarters for combat training.

In December 1945, he left the military service at the rank of captain.

After World War II, he worked as an engineer in Dniprodzerzhynsk (now Kamianske).

From 1948 Shcherbytsky was a party functionary in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

In 1948, he was appointed Second Secretary of Dniprodzerhynsk city communist party committee, soon after Leonid Brezhnev had taken over the First Secretary of the regional party committee.

He succeeded Brezhnev as regional party boss in November 1955.

In December 1957, he was appointed a Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine.

In February 1961, he was appointed chairman of the Ukrainian Council of Ministers, the second highest post in the republic, but in June 1963, just after Petro Shelest had been appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Shcherbytysky was shifted to the lesser job of First Secretary of the Dnipropetrovsk regional party committee.

On 16 October 1965, after Brezhnev had risen to the supreme position as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Shcherbytsky was restored to his former position at the head of the Ukrainian government.

A close ally of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, Shcherbytsky replaced reformist leader Petro Shelest in 1972 as part of a crackdown on the Ukrainian intelligentsia.

In May 1972, Shelest was recalled from his post as head of the Ukrainian government, as part of a broader attack on the nationally-minded Ukrainian intelligentsia by the central Soviet government that had begun in January.

He was instead transferred to Moscow and elected to be the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union.

As a result of this development, the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party elected Shcherbytysky as their new First Secretary; this was the highest political office in the Ukrainian SSR.

While Shelest had pushed for increased Ukrainian autonomy from Moscow, and had been a supporter of increased Ukrainian cultural identification, Shcherbytsky was unfailingly loyal to Brezhnev, and conducted policy accordingly.

Shcherbytsky's appointment was both a victory for the Soviet government and a personal victory for Brezhnev; Shcherbytsky was a member of Brezhnev's political clan, the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia, which was opposed to Shelest's Kharkiv Clan.

In government, Shcherbytsky relied on a group of party cadres from both the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia and emerging Donetsk Clan, both of whom were more supportive of Russification than other political clans in Ukraine.

The Kharkiv Clan was pushed out of government and marginalised.

Ideologically, Shcherbytsky was a neo-Stalinist and hardline conservative.

The first year of his rule was marked by a wide-reaching purge of the KPU and Ukrainian civil society.

As a result of the purge, which was co-orchestrated by Valentyn Malanchuk, 5% of the KPU's members were removed, and several leading Ukrainian intellectuals, among them anti-communist leaders Viacheslav Chornovil, Ivan Svitlychnyi, and Yevhen Sverstiuk, were arrested.

Described by Peter Reddaway as the "heaviest single KGB assault", the intelligentsia interpreted the purge as an effort to undo Shelest's rule and reestablish Russian control over Ukraine.

Ivan Dziuba's book Internationalism or Russification?, which was critical of the role the Russian language played in the Soviet Union, was harshly criticised and suppressed by the Ukrainian government.

Dziuba himself was later arrested and sentenced to five years of hard labour.

Arrested dissidents were linked to the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, then operating abroad.

Shcherbytsky ruled as a neo-Stalinist, overseeing Russification of Ukrainian society as well as a rapid shift to nuclear power, ultimately resulting in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Shcherbytsky was removed in 1989 amidst widespread protests against his rule, and died months later.