You're reading: In 2002, Yanukovych as Donetsk Oblast governor endorsed book glorifying Stalin-era secret police

President Viktor Yanukovych’s views on nation’s traumatic past have been controversial.

While President Viktor Yanukovych joined his three predecessors last month in commemorating the millions of innocent victims of Soviet atrocities, he expressed admiration for Josef Stalin-era repression only nine years ago.

As governor of Donetsk Oblast in 2002, Yanukovych endorsed a book that praises Soviet secret police and their tactics. “Donbas Chekists [members of the Soviet secret police] under any conditions have done and do their high duty with honor,” he wrote.

Yanukovych’s published foreword is included in a book entitled “State Security Agencies in the Donetsk Region.”

The book is written by two former KGB officers. In a two-page signed essay, Yanukovych wrote that the Soviet KGB and its predecessor services – Stalin’s NKVD and the earlier Cheka – have “firmly stood on guard over the interests of our people and the state.” Yanukovych praised them for launching “a struggle against political extremism, sabotage and criminal activities.”

Responding to the Kyiv Post’s inquiry, Yanukovych’s press service wrote that the president “does not approve of crimes of the KGB and their predecessors in Soviet times,” but did not clarify why he endorsed the book.

The book in question is apologetic about the KGB, praising its successes and that of its predecessor agency in carrying out the state policy of collectivized agriculture, a key step in Stalin’s forced famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932-33. Yanukovych last month paid homage to victims of the Holodomor, or death by starvation.

The cruel measures were part of Stalin’s drive to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union.

Besides separating agrarian Ukrainians from their private land plots, historians believe the record shows that Stalin also wanted to kill Ukrainian nationalistic sentiment along with the millions of innocent people who perished.

Estimates of Holodomor victims range from two to seven million people.


The cover of the book “State Security Agencies in the Donetsk Region.”

The authors also praise the attempts by the NKVD and KGB to fight the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or OUN-UPA, whose forces fought for Ukrainian independence from the USSR.

In the 1960s, during the less-repressive Soviet eras of Stalin successors Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, the KGB created a department in charge of punishing intellectuals who criticized totalitarian rule. The authors justified the KGB initiative by blaming dissidents for sabotaging the country.

Volodymyr Vyatrovych, a historian who under President Viktor Yushchenko was in charge of declassifying some of the KGB archives in Ukraine, says that if a similar book praising the crimes of East Germany’s Stasi or the Nazi-era Gestapo police was published with a politician’s endorsement, it would have created a huge scandal.

But such a situation is unlikely in Ukraine. Vyatrovych said that many Ukrainians are no longer deeply aware of Soviet atrocities. Moreover, the Soviet communist elite became part of the political elite in independent Ukraine.

As a result, there has been no lustration. Ex-President Viktor Yushchenko made a concerted effort to highlight Soviet crimes during his presidency, but his unpopularity undermined his message.

Yanukovych’s views on the Soviet Union, and its murderous record, have long been a subject of controversy and shifting positions.
In 2003, then Prime Minister Yanukovych supported then President Leonid Kuchma’s position that the Holodomor famine was genocide against Ukrainians.

But seven years later, he altered his position. During his visit to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in April 2010, Yanukovych denied that the Holodomor was genocide.

Those views run counter to Ukrainian law that recognizes the 20th-century tragedy as an attempt to wipe out Ukraine as a nation.
“Recognizing Holodomor as genocide of a people is wrong and unfair. It was a common tragedy of people, republics within the Soviet Union,” Yanukovych said at the time.

Stanislav Kulchytsky, a renowned Ukrainian historian, suspects that Yanukovych softened his stance under pressure from Russian leaders, who have denied that the tragedy was man-made and aimed at Ukrainians.

However, after devoting little attention to these issues, Yanukovych as president is steadily taking up the mantle of his predecessors in recognizing the nation’s tragic past.

Josef Stalin

Unlike his 2002 preface, Yanukovych on the Nov. 26 Holodomor Remembrance Day called the years of Soviet rule “terrible years of totalitarianism,” reminding the nation that “almost every Ukrainian family suffered” then.

Vyatrovych says that Yanukovych appears not to be well-versed in history, which may explain his flip-flops and evolution. “He adjusts his vision of Ukraine’s history to a particular political context,” added Vyatrovych.

Kulchytsky also believes that the shift towards greater sensitivity and awareness is a political move to appeal to voters. “All politicians are dependent on their electorate,” Kulchytsky said.

Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected].