KHRUSHCHEV COUNTS THOUSANDS OF VICTIMS IN UKRAINE (09/17/60)

KHRUSHCHEV COUNTS THOUSANDS OF VICTIMS IN UKRAINE

Editor's Note: Following are excerpts from a series written on Nikita S. Khrushchev by John Lewis and Eckert Goodman for The Daily News last year. His criminal persecution and execution of Ukrainian patriots is detailed in the Sept. 10, 1960 issue of The Daily News, from which this article is reprinted:

By 1937, Khrushchev had a strangely anomalous position in Soviet politics. He was among the Kremlin's 15 top Communist leaders, but Stalin had failed to appoint him to such select ruling bodies as the Politburo (now Presidium) and the Secretariat.

Just as Lenin had never completely trusted Stalin, his successor evidently lacked faith in the loyalty of the rapidly oncoming young party member from Ukraine.

At this point, Khrushchev learned the hard was how tough the Soviet regime could be. The great purge trials he had helped to bring about were on. Henrikh Yagoda, head of the GPU secret police was one of his close friends, and he had both praised and commended him.

The Most Efficient Executioner Vanishes

Yagoda disappeared and Nikolai Yezhov replaced him as head of the former GPU, by now named NKVD. Yezhov killed every regional party boss in the USSR except Khrushchev, Andrei Zhdanov in Leningrad and Lavrenti P. Beria (his successor, whom Khrushchev ordered executed in 1953) in Georgia.

Khrushchev put in good words for Yezhov, but he too disappeared later after winning renown as the Soviet's most efficient and impersonal executioner between 1937 and 1939. Since that time Yezhov's name has been expunged from Soviet encyclopaedias.

In 1937, when the historic mass purges of Ukrainian patriots were under way, Khrushchev was dispatched into the area with unlimited powers from Stalin to take over as chief of the party organization.

Accompanied by Vyacheslav Molotov and Yezhov, who brought with him a pose of NKVD secret police, Khrushchev's mission was "to crush Stalinist opposition and purge Ukraine of bourgeois nationalists."

The patriotic, independent, nationalistic feeling of 40 million Ukrainians had been plaguing Stalin and the Kremlin top brass as much as it had the Czars before them.

Ukraine, about the size of France, with its own language and the most advanced industrial and agricultural development in middle Europe, had for generations longed only to "be free."

Leader - A Suicide, Others - Liquidated

When the discontented Ukrainian Reds stubbornly refused to accept his suggestion, Molotov invited members of the local government to his headquarters, then ordered it encircled by Yezhov's NKVD.

Lubchenko, arriving late, noted the encirclement and fled. The following day, following their arrest, the other Ukrainian officials were liquidated. Many died never knowing why, after their loyal Communist party efforts in hunting down separatist Ukrainians they had become victims of Stalinist vindictiveness.

Lubchenko, foreseeing what was in store for him, went into the bedroom of his home and, with his wife, committed suicide.

For his efficiency in conducting his first Ukrainian purge, Khrushchev was rewarded by Stalin with full membership in the Politburo - the party's hierarchy. Remaining at Kiev, he told delegates to a local party congress in June 1938, - "We will smash their heads in once and for all."

Nazi Invaders Found Atrocities In Ukraine

It wasn't until 1943, however, that the world discovered how monstrous Khrushchev's mailed-fist rule of the freedom-loving Ukraine had actually been.

German troops which invaded the USSR overran Vynnytsia, a Ukrainian town about 100 miles east of the old Soviet border. They uncovered a mass-murder atrocity comparable with anything the Nazis were guilty of in their infamous concentration camps.

What's more, the place was only a symbolic example of a dozen similar ones later discovered in the province.

Soon after Khrushchev took over as Soviet boss of the area, Yezhov's NKVD seized an orchard on the town's Lityn St. People living near the area were forced to move, and a high board fence was built around it.

For months afterward, the sound of digging within the walls could be heard until late at night. Townsfolk guessed that all sorts of secret work must be going on, but were assured by Red guards that a new athletic stadium was being built.

Discover the Graves of 10,000 Ukrainians

The same thing happened in an old park in the city's heart. Citizens were told that a cultural project was being put up, and sure enough, a few months later, as "Park of Culture" was opened, replete with a dance hall, outdoor theatre, playfields and a target range.

Then one day, there was a sickening odor around the two areas. When the Germans occupied the town, the natives implored them to excavate the grounds.

What they ultimately discovered was 95 mass graves containing the bodies of almost 10,000 purged Ukrainians.

Investigation disclosed that the victims had been shot in the back of their necks with up to four or five small-caliber bullets.

They had been executed in a garage area, behind the NKVD officers, and racing truck engines had been used to muffle the sound of the pistol shots. A specially-built sewer for flowing blood was also uncovered.

The Full Number Will Never Be Known

Earth found in the mouths, throats and digestive tracks of many of the dead indicated that they had been buried alive.

Among the victims were not only local Communist officials but long-missing relatives and friends of townspeople, who had been informed by local Soviet authorities that nothing was known about their kins' whereabouts, or that they had been taken into "protective custody" and would soon be released.

Just how many Ukrainians died in Khrushchev's 1937-39 prewar purge of the province will never be known. Exiles and refugees from the area insist that the total is in tens of thousands.

One thing is irrefutable: - 9,432 corpses were disinterred and identified as purge victims in Vynnytsia.

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