At the same time, Postyshev set about decimating the Ukrainian Communist Party itself, on the ironic grounds that it had showed insufficient ‘Bolshevik vigilance’ during collectivisation. By the end of the year, it had lost 100,000 members. As Postyshev’s report to Stalin of November 1933 boasted, ‘almost all the people removed were arrested and put before the firing-squad or exiled’.
