THE  STRUGGLE OF THE NATIONALITIES	in
possession of a separate government, but not of a separate
territory. In my view such tendencies should be vigorously
opposed." In other words, Skrypnik wished the Soviet Union
to be really a federation of independent peoples with territories
of their own, and not a structure of states autonomous only in
name.
Another utterance of Skrypnik's well illustrates this stand-
point of the Ukrainian Communists. "I protest/' he declared,
"against the foundation of an all-Russian Agricultural College,
i.e. an agricultural college for the entire Soviet Union. There
is not an atom of sense in creating such a college, for the time
has come to depart from a policy which would make this college
an all-Soviet institute." (It is significant that, after Skrypnik's
death, the agricultural college at Kiev was radically reorganized
by Postyschev.)
Postyschev, in his speech in December 1933, characterized
the attitude of Skrypnik and his Communist adherents in the
Ukraine as follows: "Skrypnik resisted all totalitarian move-
ments literally with the bayonet. In the Union of Soviet
Republics he saw a kind of league of nations, where people
would meet from time to time and talk, but which was to have
no real influence on the life and work of the various constituent
republics. Local nationalism does not see what unites and
brings together the working masses of the nationalities of the
Soviet Union, but what separates them."
Skrypnik and his friends represented what may be called a
Ukrainian brand of Communism, combined with a strong
insistence on regional and national interests. Whether such an
attitude is in the long run compatible with the principles of
the Soviet State is another question. It may be assumed that
even without the famine a conflict between the Ukrainians
and the Russian Communists would have come and that the
.famine only accelerated it. In any case the way in which the
Moscow Communists looked upon Skrypnik and his friends
is characteristic.