;i6 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
Postyschev as an "intrigue" in the interests of foreign capits
md to the counter-revolutionary activities of emigres.
But most significant of all are Postyschev's remarks o:
Skrypnik's own department, the Commissariat for Educatior
md the whole system of education in the Ukraine. "For years,
tie says, "the representatives of all kinds of Ukrainian countei
revolutionary tendencies held numerous posts in this depari
nxent." According to him all that they did was "to bring aboi
by propaganda a breach between the Ukrainian peasants an
workers and the workers of other nationalities, especially tt
workers of Russian nationality employed in the collecti\
farms"—a most striking admission of the dimensions attained
by the movement of protest and resistance in the Ukraine. It
ought, by the way, to be clear that the growing antagonism in
the Ukraine to Great Russian Communist workers imported
from outside was, with men dying in multitudes, an inevitable
and uncontrollable phenomenon. "All these elements," Posty-
schev continued, "attempted at the same time to promote
disaffection against the Soviet power among teachers, students
and others."
These words of the dictator reveal the position in the Ukraine
in a vivid light. So the widest circles of the Ukrainian intelli-
gentsia had entered the struggle; teachers, students, Soviet
officials, all thought it their duty to protest against a further
sucking dry of the country. Future historians will have to
admit that in its campaign against the Ukrainians, during the
spring and summer of 1933^ the Soviet regime was faced by a
united people, a solid front, including everyone, from the
highest Soviet officials down to the poorest peasant. (In view of
these facts it is surely grotesque that M. Herriot and others
should have adopted the Moscow catch-phrase about the
whole of the trouble being due to separatist'machinations
instigated by foreign influences.
It seems to be the fact that this national movement of
protest was headed by the All-Ukrainian Academy of Science^
where, according to Postyschev, "a considerable number of