120 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
In this connection the purge of the party centre of the All-
Ukrainian Academy of Science at Kiev offers an instructive
example. This, the most important Ukrainian institute, was to
have been converted into a bulwark of national-bourgeois
"science." All the sworn apologists of Nationalism (there
follows a long list of names) had wormed their way into the
party and tried to sabotage Socialist reconstruction by falsifying
or misinterpreting the theory of Marx and Lenin. Certain
Communist leaders, selected by the party to supervise the
work of the Academy, succumbed to the insidious work of the
Nationalists, who, supported by the reactionary elements
within the Academy, were working eagerly to hamper or
destroy the work of loyal and zealous members. Equally
instructive evidence of the sabotage due to hostile elements
possessing the party card was furnished by the purge in the
Wynitsa district.
The extent of the purge in the Ukraine appears from a
second statement in the same issue of the Communist. "In
four districts in the Ukraine, the Donetz, Kiev, Odessa and
Wynitsa, the purge of the party organizations is in progress.
The first results prove the political importance of this measure,
whose sole object is to increase and secure the fighting capacity
of the party. It is the object of the Ukrainian Party organization
not only to strengthen the party machinery, but also to make
an end of the eternal lagging behind of the Ukraine in the
sphere of agriculture." The purge continued until late autumn,
and on October 25 it was reported from Kiev that the Govern-
ment had published the names of certain high officials of the
Ukrainian Communist Party, Zaslavsky, Karatchevsky and
Rybak, who had had the courage openly to protest against the
ruinous system of taxes (deliveries in kind) employed against
their countrymen. They were immediately relieved of their
posts and accused of Trotskyism and counter-revolution.
Numbers of other officials had to follow them.
Always the same! Whether in White Russia, the Ukraiae or