Stalin’s Liquidation Game: The Unlikely Case of Oleksandr Shums'kyi, His Survival in Soviet Prison, and His Subsequent Arcane Assassination
Oct 2025 · Harvard University Press
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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 Shums’kyi 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.
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 Shums’kyi 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.
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 usuall...
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About the author
Filip Slaveski is the author of Remaking Ukraine after World War II and The Soviet Occupation of Germany. He is Senior Lecturer in Russian, Soviet, and East European History at the Australian National University.
Yuri Shapoval is Professor at the Institute for Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Filip Slaveski is the author of Remaking Ukraine after World War II and The Soviet Occupation of Germany. He is Senior Lecturer in Russian, Soviet, and East European History at the Australian National University.
Yuri Shapoval is Professor at the Institute for Political and Ethnic Studies of the ...
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