124 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
later, the news of Skrypnik's suicide sped through the world.
The report of his death was published at Moscow in a com-
munique (July 8,1933) saying that he had become the "victim
of bourgeois and nationalist elements/' who, under the cloak
of formal party membership, had gained his confidence and
misused his name for their anti-Soviet and nationalistic aims.
Skrypnik had fallen into their toils and committed a series of
political errors. When he recognized these errors he had
taken his life.
For ten long months Postyschev fought with the starving
population of the Ukraine to collect bread and extirpate every
national movement. The population replied by the one means
at its disposal—passive resistance, which only too often meant
death. An Austrian engineer who witnessed these events
declared that the attitude of these Ukrainian peasants, who
refused to surrender their nationality and their attachment to
the soil, revealed a silent heroism.
Skrypnik had been removed and the last obstacle in Moscow's
fight against the Ukraine was gone. Moscow could now be as
ruthless as it pleased. Further measures were taken which
severely restricted Ukrainian autonomy in the legal sphere.
Also on July 21, 1933, a few days after Skrypnik's death, a
decree was issued appointing one public prosecutor for the
whole Soviet Union—the coup de grace to the autonomy of the
judicial system. A communique issued in this connection con-
tains the following passage: "The Central Committee has
created the new office of a public prosecutor of the Union,
to whom the Ogpu, the militia, and all the organs of justice
will be subordinated." Thus by this decree the entire judicial
system and even the fate of the individual Ukrainian State
officials was made to depend directly on Moscow.
Towards the end of the summer of 1933 conditions in the
country, as at Kiev and Kharkov, were terrible. But Postyschev
declined to diverge a hair's breadth from the prescribed line.
He proudly proclaimed that he did not know the meaning of