Repressions in Ukrainian SSR 1937—1938 Against Former Participants of the Anti-Bolshevik Struggle
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15407/uhj2025.04.079Keywords:
Great Terror, repression, Russian All-Military Union (ROVS) process, UPR Army (Army of Ukrainian People’s Republic, Ukrainian People’s Army), officer corps, insurgent movement.Abstract
The goal is to study documented evidence of repressions in Ukrainian SSR during the Great Terror of 1937—1938 against former active participants in the armed struggle against soviet rule. Based on the discovered documents, we made an approximate count of former fighters of the UPR Army, White Guards, and officers of the Russian Imperial Army, arrested and sentenced to capital punishment.
The methodology is based on the principles of scientificity, historicism, and comprehensive study of archival sources. During the research, problem-based, chronological, comparative, and genealogical methods were used.
Conclusions. Despite a large number of studies and publications about The Great Terror — soviet repressions of 1937—1938, there is no complex study about the intentional elimination of the former active participants in armed struggle against soviet rule. Reports of the NKVD actions that survived in the archives in different regions of Ukrainian SSR, for example, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, and Poltava, show that, among those arrested, the ex-soldiers of armies hostile to soviet rule were around 10 %, 15 % among those sentenced to execution. There were officers and Cossacks of the UPR Army, the White Guards, and officers of the Russian imperial army among them. According to the incomplete data, in-between 1937—1938 the following number of people were re- pressed: 9,339 ex-officers, regular White Guard members, returning emigrants, ROVS members and policemen; 8,353 soldiers of the UPR Army, Hetmanites, rebels and representatives of the Ukrainian national underground; 581 Makhnovists; 100 polish legionaries. The Great Terror period came after repressions of 1921—1922 and 1930—1931 and was the last step in the destruction of the former active opponents of soviet rule, in particular, those who, weapons in hand, fought for Ukrainian independence, but were forced to stay in the home country or return from emigration.
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