Shelest, former Communist leader in Ukraine, dead at 87 (02/04/96)

Shelest, former Communist leader in Ukraine, dead at 87

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - Petro Shelest, the leader of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR ousted in 1972 for nationalistic tendencies as a result of his defense of the Ukrainian language and culture in that Soviet republic, died in Moscow on January 25. He was 87.

Mr. Shelest's death was announced in Moscow by the Embassy of Ukraine. Reuters quoted Petro Tolochko, vice-president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, as saying of the former Communist Party leader: "Shelest was one of the first in the Soviet era to lay the cornerstone for Ukrainian statehood."

"He was a party man in the Soviet mold, but in his heart he felt where Ukraine's interests lay and acted in favor of this national development as much as this was permitted," Mr. Tolochko added.

Petro Shelest was born on February 14, 1908, in Andriyivka, Zmiyiv county, in the Kharkiv gubemia of Ukraine. He graduated from the Mariupil Metallurgical Institute in 1935, and from 1940 worked as a party official in defense industries located in Kharkiv, Cheliabinsk and Saratov. From 1948 he worked as a plant director in Leningrad and Kyiv.

A protege of Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Podgorny, and a doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist, he rose in the party ranks to positions on the city, then oblast levels. He was second secretary (1954) of the Kyiv City Committee, and second and first secretary ( 1954 and 1957, respectively) of the Kyiv Oblast Committee.

Next he rose to republic and all-union party positions. In 1954 he became a candidate member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CC CPU), a member in 1956. He became a candidate member of the CC CPU Presidium in 1960 and a member a year later.

Mr. Shelest became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1961, and secretary of the CC CPU and chief of its Bureau for Industry and Construction in 1962. He was named first secretary of the CPU as well as a member of the Presidium of the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet in 1963, the same year he became a candidate member of the CC CPSU Presidium. A year later he was voted a full member of the CC CPSU Presidium.

In 1966 he was elected to membership in the Politburos of both the CPU and CPSU Central Committees, and became a member of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet.

Mr. Shelest served as first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1963-1972. In that post, according to the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, he pursued domestic policies that encouraged cultural and educational Ukrainization and a measure of autonomous administration and economic development. To some extent, the encyclopedia notes, Mr. Shelest tolerated the dissident movement, and the activities and patriotic writings of the nationally conscious intelligentsia in Ukraine.

As a result of his pro-Ukrainian policies he came into conflict with Leonid Brezhnev and other members of the CPSU Politburo, who saw his activity as detrimental to the interests of the Soviet Union as a whole. In 1970 Mr. Shelest published a book, "Ukraino Nasha Radianska" (Our Soviet Ukraine), a popular publication that noted Ukraine's glorious Kozak past and its cultural achievements.

In 1972 Moscow attacked so-called "national deviations" in Ukraine, launching a wave of arrests of Ukrainian dissidents. Mr. Shelest was ousted in May of that year and replaced by one of his adversaries, hard-liner Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, who promoted an identity for the "Soviet people" and implemented policies of Russification. Mr. Shcherbytsky remained first secretary until 1989, when he was removed by Mikhail Gorbachev.

Transferred to Moscow, Mr. Shelest held the largely symbolic post of Soviet deputy premier for 11 months. He was rebuked for party failures in Ukraine and his book was denounced for its ideological and factual "errors," including "nationalism," "idealization of the past," "economic autarchism" and "national narrow-mindedness."

He was removed from the CPSU Politburoj and many of his supporters were purged from the Communist Party of Ukraine. Mr. Shelest was named director of a defense enterprise near Moscow, where he worked until retirement.

A collection of Shelest's speeches, "Ideyi Lenina Peremahayut" (Lenin's Ideas Triumph) came out in 1971.

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