Shelest, Petro

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Shelest, Petro

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Shelest, Petro [Шелест, Петро; Šelest], b 14

February 1908 in Andriivka, Zmiiv county,
Kharkiv gubernia, d 25 January 1996 in
Moscow. (Photo: Petro Shelest.) Communist

party and Soviet government leader. A

graduate of the Mariupol Metallurgical
Institute (1935), from 1940 he worked as a
Party official in defense industries in Kharkiv,
Cheliabinsk, and Saratov, and from 1948 as a
plant director in Leningrad and Kyiv. A
protégé of Nikita Khrushchev and Mykola

Pidhirny, he rose in the Party to the positions

of second secretary of the Kyiv City
Committee (1954), second (1954) and first
(1957) secretary of the Kyiv Oblast
Committee, CC CPU candidate (1954) and
member (1956), CC CPU Presidium candidate
(1960) and member (1961), CC CPSU member
(1961), CC CPU secretary and chief of the CC

CPU Bureau for Industry and Construction (1962), CPU first secretary and
member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR (1963),
CC CPSU Presidium candidate (1963) and member (1964), and CC CPSU and
CC CPU Politburo member and member of the Presidium of the USSR
Supreme Soviet (1966).

As the CPU first secretary Shelest pursued domestic policies that fostered renewed, though
limited, forms of cultural and educational Ukrainization and a measure of autonomous
administration and economic development. To some extent he tolerated the dissident
movement and the activities and patriotic writings of the nationally conscious intelligentsia in
Ukraine. Consequently he came into conflict with Leonid Brezhnev and others in the CPSU
Politburo. In 1970 Shelest published Ukraïno nasha Radians’ka (O Ukraine, Our Soviet [Land]),

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Shelest, Petro

a popular book that mentioned Ukraine's glorious Cossack past and cultural achievements. In
January 1972 the Moscow leadership attacked the ‘national deviations’ in Ukraine by
launching a wave of arrests of Ukrainian dissidents. In May Shelest was abruptly replaced as
first secretary by Volodymyr Shcherbytsky and transferred to Moscow, where he served in
the largely symbolic post of Soviet deputy premier for 11 months. His book was harshly
denounced (May 1973) for its ideological and factual ‘errors,’ including ‘nationalism,’
‘idealization of the past,’ ‘economic autarchism,’ and ‘national narrow-mindedness,’ and he
was rebuked by Shcherbytsky for Party failures in Ukraine. Soon after Shelest’s removal from
the CPSU Politburo his many supporters in the CPU were purged. He himself was made the
director of a defense plant near Moscow.

A collection of Shelest’s speeches, Ideï Lenina peremahaiut’ (Lenin's Ideas Triumph, 1971), came
out just before his downfall. An abridged edition of his diaries (written in Russian with an
occasional admixture of Ukrainian) was published in Russian in Moscow in 1995. A
compilation of Shelest’s memoirs, diary excerpts in Ukrainian translation, and documents
pertaining to his life, edited by Yurii Shapoval, appeared in Kyiv in 2003 as Petro Shelest:
Spravzhnyi sud istoriï shche poperedu (Petro Shelest: The True Judgement of History Still Awaits
Us).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Za shcho usunyly Shelesta?: Dokumenty (Munich 1973)
Bilinsky, Ya. ‘The Communist Party of Ukraine after 1966,’ in Ukraine in the Seventies, ed P.J.
Potichnyj (Oakville, Ontario 1975)
Pelenski, Ja. ‘Shelest and His Period in Soviet Ukraine (1963–1972): A Revival of Controlled
Ukrainian Autonomism,’ in Ukraine in the Seventies, ed P.J. Potichnyj (Oakville, Ontario 1975)
Tillett, L. ‘Ukrainian Nationalism and the Fall of Shelest,’ SR, December 1975
Hodnett, G. ‘The Views of Petro Shelest,’ AUA, 14 (1978–80)
‘Personal’nyi pensioner Petro Shelest: Pohliad na 60–70-ti cherez dva desiatky rokiv,’ Kyïv
1989, no 10
Shapoval, Iu. ‘Dvi richnytsi—odne vidznachennia: Petro Shelest i Volodymyr Shcherbyts’kyi
iak typazhi nomenklatury URSR,’ Den’, 14 February 2003

Vasyl Markus, Roman Senkus

[This aricle was updated in 2007.]

List of related links from Encyclopedia of Ukraine pointing to Shelest, Petro entry:

1 Brezhnev, Leonid
2 Czechoslovakia
3 Dissident movement
4 Dziuba, Ivan

5 History of Ukraine
6 National communism
7 Robitnycha hazeta (Kyiv)
8 Shcherbytsky, Volodymyr

9 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

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Shelest, Petro

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