Thread by @VHarets

«Where are your great minds? - Russia killed them»

Foreigners often think that we are overreacting. But it is they who underestimate the size of the repression.

This is a thread about just one case👇

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In book «The Language-Sword. How the Soviet Empire Spoke» it was called «25 suiciders reform the spelling».



In 1928, 26 linguists was set up to reform the Ukrainian language.

Their fate is horrifying after start of repression by the Soviet regime.

2/24booklion.lviv.ua/en/mova-mech.-…

Serhiy Yefremov, vice president of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

He was arrested in 1929. Died in the Gulag camps in 1939.

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Hryhorii Holoskevych, a prominent dialectologist.

He was arrested in 1929 and died in Tobolsk prison in 1935.

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Vsevolod Hantsov, Ukrainian lexicographer.

Arrested in 1929. He was able to return to Ukraine after 17 (!) years in the Gulag camps.

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Matviy Yavorsky, Ukrainian historian.

He was arrested in 1931 and exiled.

In 1937, he wrote a letter to the Kremlin in which he renounced his right to be released from prison as long as «Stalin and the muscovites rule Ukraine»

In 1937 he was executed.

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Mykola Sulyma, linguist.

He was arrested in 1932 and held in a Kharkiv prison for almost a year.

He was released but arrested again after World War II and died in exile in the Komi Republic in 1955.

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Oleksandr Shumsky, head of the linguists' commission.

He was arrested in 1933. Сommitted suicide (or, according to believable version, was killed by the NKVD) in 1946 in exile.

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Petro Solodub, deputy head of the commission.

He was arrested in 1933 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was executed in 1937.

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Mykola Skrypnyk, People's Commissar for Education in Ukraine.

He was accused of encouraging resistance to collectivisation through his policy of Ukrainisation - just before the Holodomor began.

He committed suicide before his arrest in 1933.

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Mykola Khvylovyi, a famous Ukrainian novelist and poet.

In 1933, he committed suicide after a wave of repression against the Ukrainian intellectuals.

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Andrii Richytskyi, a literature specialist.

He was arrested in 1933 and executed in 1934.

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Serhiy Pylypenko, author and scientist.

He was arrested in 1933 and executed in 1934 after the verdict of the judicial «troika».

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Mykhailo Yalovyi, Ukrainian poet and dramatist.

He was accused of espionage in 1933 and shot dead in Sandarmos in 1937.

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Yevhen Kasianenko, aircraft designer and journalist.

He was arrested and executed in 1937.

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Oleksa Syniavsky, dialectologist.

He was arrested and executed in 1937.

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Mike Johansen, Ukrainian linguist.

He was arrested and executed in 1937.

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Naum Kaliuzhny, political activist.

He was arrested in 1937 and died in prison two months later.

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Volodymyr Koriak, literature specialist.

Arrested and executed in 1937.

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Ivan Sokoliansky, a defectologist.

Semen Kyrychenko, a journalist.

The first was imprisoned for two years, the second for six years. They were rehabilitated only in the 1950s.

(Photo of Ivan Sokolyansky)

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Yevhen Tymchenko, translator.

Olena Kurylo, linguist.

Yevhen, aged 72, was arrested for 5 years. Olena spent 8 years in the Gulag camps.

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Tadei Secunda, a terminology specialist.

Vasyl Butvin, an administrator.

Oleksandr Popiv, a teacher.

All of them were repressed in the 1930s, after which their trail is lost - they probably also received a death sentence.

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Ahatanhel Krymsky, linguist, polyglot (knowing up to 35 languages), literary scholar, folklorist, writer, and translator.

He was arrested in 1941 and died in prison in 1942.

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Of the 26 members of the spelling reform commission, 25 were either arrested or killed.

Only professor Mykola Hrunsky miraculously escaped this fate.

These are true intellectuals who could have created many more outstanding works.

But Russia came to them.

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