Stanisław Vikentyevich Kosior (; 18 November 1889 – 26 February 1939), sometimes spelled Kossior, was a Soviet politician who was

First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine First most commonly refers to: * First, the ordinal form of the number 1 First or 1st may also refer to: Acronyms * Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array * Far Infrared a ...

Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union This is a list of all deputy premiers of the Soviet Union. List Deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars * Lev Kamenev (July 6, 1923 - January 16, 1926) * Alexei Rykov (July 6, 1923 - February 2, 1924) * Alexander Tsiurupa (Jul ...

and member of the

Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated as Politburo, was the de facto highest executive authority in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). While elected by and formally a ...

(CPSU). He and his wife were both executed during the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

Early career

Stanisław Kosior was born in 1889 in

Węgrów Węgrów (; ) is a town in eastern Poland with 12,796 inhabitants (2013), capital of Węgrów County in the Masovian Voivodeship. History First mentioned in historical records in 1414, Węgrów received its city charter in 1441. Between 16th ...

in the

Siedlce Governorate Siedlce Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit ('' guberniya'') of Congress Poland of the Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the p ...

of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

, in the region of

Podlachia Podlachia, also known by its Polish name Podlasie (; ; ), is a historical region in north-eastern Poland. Its largest city is Białystok, whereas the historical capital is Drohiczyn. Similarly to several other historical regions of Poland, e.g ...

, to a Polish family of humble factory workers. Because of

poverty Poverty is a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living. Poverty can have diverse Biophysical environmen ...

, he migrated east to Yuzovka (modern

Donetsk Donetsk ( , ; ; ), formerly known as Aleksandrovka, Yuzivka (or Hughesovka), Stalin, and Stalino, is an industrial city in eastern Ukraine located on the Kalmius River in Donetsk Oblast, which is currently occupied by Russia as the capita ...

), where he worked at a

steel mill A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel. It may be an integrated steel works carrying out all steps of steelmaking from smelting iron ore to rolled product, but may also be a plant where steel semi-fini ...

. In 1907 he joined the

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSDWP) or the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDP), was a socialist political party founded in 1898 in Minsk, Russian Empire. The ...

and quickly became the head of the party's local branch. He was arrested and sacked from his job later that year, and the following year felt obliged to leave the area due to police activity. He used connections to get re-appointed at the Sulin factory in 1909 but was soon arrested again and deported to the Pavlovsk mine. In 1913, he was transferred to

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

and then to

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

and

Kharkiv Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.

, where he organized local communist cells. In 1915, he was arrested by the

Okhrana The Department for the Protection of Public Safety and Order (), usually called the Guard Department () and commonly abbreviated in modern English sources as the Okhrana ( rus , Охрана, p=ɐˈxranə, a=Ru-охрана.ogg, t= The Guard) w ...

, the Russian secret police, and exiled to

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. After the

February Revolution The February Revolution (), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and sometimes as the March Revolution or February Coup was the first of Russian Revolution, two revolutions which took place in Russia ...

Kosior moved to

Petrograd Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

, where he headed the local branch of the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

s and the

Narva Narva is a municipality and city in Estonia. It is located in the Ida-Viru County, at the Extreme points of Estonia, eastern extreme point of Estonia, on the west bank of the Narva (river), Narva river which forms the Estonia–Russia border, E ...

municipal committee. After the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

Kosior moved to the German-controlled areas of the Ober-Ost and Ukraine, where he worked for the Bolshevik cause. After the

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a separate peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria), by which Russia withdrew from World War I. The treaty, whi ...

, he moved back to Russia, where in 1920, he became Secretary of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...

. He was head of the Siberian branch of the CPSU from March 1922 to December 1925. In January 1926, he was appointed a Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, working alongside the General Secretary,

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

Holodomor

In July 1928, Kosior was appointed General Secretary of the Ukrainian SSR Communist Party. His return coincided with Stalin's decision to drive the peasants onto collective farms, a policy Kosior supported. Speaking to the

Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the Central committee, highest organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) between Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Congresses. Elected by the ...

, in November 1929, he argued that collectivisation was the only way to make progress in

agriculture Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...

. In February 1930, he declared that Ukraine would be "completely collectivised in the course of the spring sowing campaign." In July 1930, he was elevated to the

. After the harvest in 1931, Kosior knew that collectivisation was causing a catastrophic fall in agricultural output in Ukraine – visiting Moscow in August, he warned Stalin's deputy,

Lazar Kaganovich Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (; – 25 July 1991) was a Soviet politician and one of Joseph Stalin's closest associates. Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine, Kaganovich worked as a shoemaker and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ...

, that there would be a shortfall of 170 million

pood ''Pood'' ( rus, пуд, r=pud, p=put, plural: or ) is a unit of mass equal to 40 Funt (mass), ''funt'' (, Russian pound). Since 1899 it is set to approximately 16.38 kilograms (36.11 pound (mass), pounds). It was used in Russia, Belarus, and Ukr ...

s (nearly three million tons) of grain, but Kaganovich blamed the problem on mass theft by Ukrainian peasants and forced Kosior to follow this opinion. Addressing a plenum of the

(of which he had been a member since 1926) he blamed the failure on middle ranking officials and party members who listened to the complaints of peasants that the quotas were too high. "Not only did they not fight; not only did they fail to organise the collective farm masses in the struggle for bread against the class enemy, they often followed along with this peasant mood", he said. On Stalin's orders, Kosior pushed through a decree "On grain procurements" on 15 January 1932, which increased the power of the central government in

Kharkiv Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.

to direct the confiscation of grain in the regions. The fact that he imposed this measure, "in spite of starvation in Ukrainian villages", was the first several examples cited by the Kyiv Court of Appeal in its 2010 resolution that judged Kosior to have been complicit in genocide. The court also recorded that on 1 February, he and

Vlas Chubar Vlas Yakovlevich Chubar (, ; – 26 February 1939) was a Ukrainian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician. Chubar was arrested during the Great Terror of 1937–38 and executed early in 1939. The top Communist Party official in Ukrai ...

co-signed a decree "On Seed", directing local committees to deny any seed aid to Ukraine's collective farms; on 17 March he signed a decree "On seed reserves", which led to increased repression of peasants who were resisting the confiscation of grain; and on 29 March, he pushed through a decree "On Polissia", under which 5,000 peasant families were deported from the Polissia region of Ukraine. In April 1932, after touring the countryside, Kosior wrote to Stalin to say that there had been trouble from hungry peasants refusing to sow grain, and delicately requested that food be sent to Ukraine, which prompted an angry rejection, and seemingly made Stalin suspect that Kosior was not ruthless enough. "The worst aspect of this situation is Kosior's silence," he told Kaganovich, when other leading Ukrainian communists pleaded for help. When Kosior submitted a formal request for relief to the Politburo in Moscow, in June, it was turned down flat, and Kaganovich warned him his "mistakes" would be held as an example to other regional party leaders of how not to do their job. This was because Kosior's attempt to find an accommodation between Moscow's demands and the crisis in the countryside had turned Stalin against him. He told Kaganovich that Kosior was "manoeuvring" and engaging in "rotten diplomacy" and being "criminally frivolous." He considered sacking Kosior and sending Kaganovich in his place. However, Kosior and his deputy,

Pavel Postyshev Pavel Petrovich Postyshev (; – 26 February 1939) was a Soviet politician, state and Communist Party official and party publicist. He was a member of Joseph Stalin's inner circle, before falling victim to the Great Purge. In 2010, a court in K ...

, met Stalin, who agreed to reduce Ukraine's grain quota. That seemed to settle their differences. Lysenko with Stalin

In November, Kosior delivered a speech blaming the trouble in the countryside on Ukrainian nationalists. In 1935, he was awarded the

Order of Lenin The Order of Lenin (, ) was an award named after Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the October Revolution. It was established by the Central Executive Committee on 6 April 1930. The order was the highest civilian decoration bestowed by the Soviet ...

"for remarkable success in the field of agriculture".

The Great Purge

Kosior loyally supported

at the start of the

. He was one of eight Soviet leaders whom the defendants at the first of the Moscow trials, in August 1936, were forced to confess that they plotted to assassinate. Five of the lists of people to be executed early in the purge were cosigned by him. At a plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in December 1936, he delivered a personal attack on

Nikolai Bukharin Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (; rus, Николай Иванович Бухарин, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪdʑ bʊˈxarʲɪn; – 15 March 1938) was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and Marxist theorist. A prominent Bolshevik ...

, who had been the leading opponent of collectivisation, calling him a liar. At the next plenum, he called for Bukharin and

Alexei Rykov Alexei Ivanovich Rykov (25 February 188115 March 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician and statesman, most prominent as premier of Russia and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Soviet Union from 1924 to 1929 and 1924 t ...

to be arrested but voted against executing them. In January 1938 he was recalled to

, and replaced by

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...

, who was told by Stalin that Kosior "wasn't doing a good job". Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that he objected to the transfer, partly because he liked Kosior, whom he described as "a fairly mild-mannered person, pleasant and intelligent", but Stalin overruled him. Kosior was appointed head of the Soviet Control Office and deputy prime minister of the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. Kosior was arrested and stripped of all Party posts on 3 May 1938. During Khrushchev's "

Secret Speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" () was a report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 Februa ...

" to the 20th Party Congress in 1956, he disclosed that Kosior's case was handled by Boris Rodos, a particularly notorious torturer employed by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

, who was ordered to force a confession out of him. Under interrogation, Kosior withstood brutal tortures, including being interrogated for 14 hours at a time, but cracked when his sixteen-year-old daughter Tamara was brought into the room and

raped Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse, or other forms of sexual penetration, carried out against a person without consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person w ...

in front of him. After he had been broken, he was called to Stalin's office, to confront

Grigory Petrovsky Grigory Ivanovich Petrovsky (, ; 4 February 1878 – 10 January 1958) was a Ukrainian Soviet politician and Old Bolshevik. He participated in signing the Treaty on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Treaty of Brest-L ...

, the Chairman of the

All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee () was a representative body of the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets. It was the supreme legislative, administrative, executive controlling state power of Soviet Ukraine (Ukrainian SSR) between the sessi ...

(''de jure'' head of state) and the co-Chairman of the

Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union The Central Executive Committee of the USSR (), which may be abbreviated as the CEC (), was the supreme governing body of the USSR in between sessions of the All-Union Congress of Soviets from 1922 to 1938. The Central Executive Committee elec ...

, who refused to believe that Kosior was guilty. As Petrovsky described the meeting later: Kosior was sentenced to death on 26 February 1939 by shooting and shot the same day by General Vasili Blokhin. After Stalin's death, Kosior was rehabilitated by the Soviet government on 14 March 1956.

Family

Kosior was one of four brothers. The oldest, Vladislav Kosior, and one of his younger brothers, Iosif Kosior, were also active communists. Vladislav was executed during the purges and Joseph died of an illness in 1937. Kosior's wife, Elizaveta, was arrested on 3 March 1938, accused of being the wife of a counter-revolutionary, and shot on 3 August 1938. Their daughter, Tamara (1922–1938), who was raped in front of her father, committed suicide by throwing herself in front of a train. Kosior's son, Vladimir Stanislavovich, born in 1922, died in the

Battle of Leningrad The siege of Leningrad was a Siege, military blockade undertaken by the Axis powers against the city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front (World War II), Eastern Front of World War II from 1941 t ...

in the early days of December 1942.in Russian. https://www.geni.com/people/Vladimir-Kosior/6000000074365304972

References

External links