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Stalin's Liquidation Game: The Unlikely Case of Oleksandr Shums'kyi, His Survival in Soviet Prison, and His Subsequent Arcane Assassination
Paperback
Series: Harvard Ukrainian Studies
ISBN13: 9780674292550
Publisher: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
Published: Oct 14 2025
Pages: 300
Weight: 1.00
Height: 0.80 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Millions of innocent people were arrested in Stalin's Soviet Union during the 1930s in different waves of mass repression. Under violent interrogation, many were forced to confess to crimes they did not commit. Rather than save their lives, as the interrogators had promised, confession was usually the last step to their execution. Very few of those arrested eventually refused to confess.
Oleksandr Shums kyi, the Ukrainian Marxist revolutionary, was one of the most important but least known of them. He not only refused to confess but sustained for over a decade a massive protest against his repression and the Stalinist attack on his country, Ukraine. Stalin punished him mercilessly in response, paralyzing him in jail and murdering his wife, but refrained from assassinating him for more than ten years. This book unravels the Shum skyi riddle to explain why. In doing so, it opens a new window into understanding the history of Soviet repression and the Russian pathologies toward Ukrainian independence, which help us understand Russia's current war against Ukraine.1 different editions
Also available
Stalin's Liquidation Game: The Unlikely Case of Oleksandr Shums'kyi, His Survival in Soviet Prison, and His Subsequent Arcane Assassination
Slaveski, Filip
Shapoval, Yuri
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Also from
Slaveski, Filip
Stalin's Liquidation Game: The Unlikely Case of Oleksandr Shums'kyi, His Survival in Soviet Prison, and His Subsequent Arcane Assassination
Slaveski, Filip
Shapoval, Yuri
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