Turning the pages back...

September 20, 1989

Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, was ousted from the USSR Politburo on September 20, 1989, in what was widely characterized as a major purge of the Communist Party leadership effected by President Mikhail Gorbachev. Mr. Shcherbytsky, whose "imminent" removal had been rumored for years and had been the subject of countless analyses by Sovietologists, had been a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union since 1971. He was one of the last holdovers from the "stagnant" era of Leonid Brezhnev.

Mr. Shcherbytsky, along with several other Soviet officials, was dismissed at the conclusion of a two-day closed session of the Communist Party's Central Committee. The ousters were seen as the most significant party shake-up in the four and a half years since Mr. Gorbachev came to power. The purge came in the wake of a warning issued by the Soviet leader a couple of months earlier when he said that it appeared the Communist Party was losing the initiative in implementing perestroika and in dealing with ethnic unrest.

There had been many calls emanating from Ukraine for Mr. Shcherbytsky's ouster. The most recent of them had come at the founding meeting of the Popular Movement of Ukraine for Perebudova, where the suggestion was greeted by congress delegates with cheers.

Source: "Shcherbytsky ousted from Politburo," The Ukrainian Weekly, September 24, 1989, Vol. LVII, No. 40.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, September 18, 2005, No. 38, Vol. LXXIII

| Home Page |