With the arrival of Stalin’s new viceroy, Pavel Postyshev, in January 1933, the purges intensified. Postyshev denounced korenizatsiya as a ‘cultural counter-revolution’ whose aim was to fan ‘national enmity’ and ‘isolate Ukrainian workers from the positive influence of Russian culture’.7 Entire commissariats, judicial boards, university faculties, editorial departments, theatre groups and film studios were duly arrested and sent to their deaths. Several hundred of Ukraine’s wandering bards, the kobzars, were summoned to a conference and never seen again.
