Stalins Liquidation Game - The Unlikely Case of Oleksandr Shums kyi, His Survival in Soviet

Millions of innocent people were arrested in Stalin's Soviet Union during the 1930s in different waves of mass repression. Under violent interrogation, many were forced to confess to crimes they did not commit. Rather than save their lives, as the interrogators had promised, confession was usually the last step to their execution. Very few of those arrested eventually refused to confess.

Oleksandr Shums'kyi, the Ukrainian Marxist revolutionary, was one of the most important but least known of them. He not only refused to confess but sustained for over a decade a massive protest against his repression and the Stalinist attack on his country, Ukraine. Stalin punished him mercilessly in response, paralyzing him in jail and murdering his wife, but refrained from assassinating him for more than ten years.

This book unravels the Shums'kyi riddle to explain why. In doing so, it opens a new window into understanding the history of Soviet repression and the Russian pathologies toward Ukrainian independence, which help us understand Russia's current war against Ukraine.

About the author

Filip Slaveski is the author of Remaking Ukraine after World War II and The Soviet Occupation of Germany. He is Senior Lecturer in Russian, Soviet, and East European History at the Australian National University.Yuri Shapoval is Professor at the Institute for Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Summary

Millions of innocent people were arrested in Stalin’s Soviet Union during the 1930s and forced to confess to crimes they did not commit. Oleksandr Shums´kyi, the Ukrainian Marxist revolutionary, was one of the few to have refused and to protest. Stalin’s Liquidation Game opens a window into understanding Soviet repression in the Ukraine.

Product details

• Authors: Yuri Shapoval, Filip Slaveski, Filip Shapoval Slaveski, Slaveski Filip
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 11.04.2023
• EAN: 9780674291591
• ISBN: 978-0-674-29159-1
• No. of pages: 350
• Series: Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > History > Biographies, autobiographies; European History, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Political, Biography: historical, political & military, HISTORY / Europe / Eastern, Prisoners of War, c 1919 to c 1939 (Inter-war period), c 1918 to c 1939 (Inter-war period), Biography: historical, political and military, Former Soviet Union, USSR (Europe), USSR, Soviet Union, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century / Cold War, HISTORY / Russia / Soviet Era, HISTORY / Europe / Ukraine, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Cultural & Regional