122 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
agricultural policy. "This period" (i.e. that of collectivization),
he stated, "was characterized by an immediate intensification
of the nationalist counter-revolutionary activity.53
The famine, which was now reaching its climax in the
death of millions of persons, had brought even the most loyal
Ukrainian Communists to revolt against Moscow and Posty-
schev. Skrypnik was still alive and was in a position to make a
last stand. Indeed, Moscow and Postyschev were fully aware
that the victory was still incomplete so long as Skrypnik held
his post at the head of the devoted Ukrainians.
The clash between Postyschev and Skrypnik^ the hand-to-
hand fight, took place on June 10, 1933, the day °n which the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine
met at Kharkov. For the last time the proconsul from Moscow,
backed by the entire power of the Soviet Union, and the
champion of the Ukrainian people, who on this occasion was
appearing in this capacity and not as the exponent of Com-
munist ideas, stood face to face. But the issue was already
decided. Postyschev had the task of publicly denouncing
Skrypnik as an enemy of the State and as the cause of every
difficulty, in order to justify his expulsion. Skrypnik's mission
was to express, however vainly, the protest of the Ukrainians
against the ruin of their land, the death of their countrymen
and the suppression of every cultural movement in the Ukraine.
He was the first to speak. The text of his speech has not been
published and is not likely to be. But Postyschev's reply has
been reported in the Soviet press and affords a clue to Skrypnik's
arguments. He seems above all to have denied the assertion
that disaffected Ukrainian Communists were acting as enemies
of the State and tools of anti-Soviet movements, and to have
urged that the new situation brought about by the methods of
force and exploitation employed against the people could only
lead to protests against the policy of Moscow on the part of
those intellectuals and Communists now being charged with
nationalism. He further showed that the chief reason for the