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Dmytro Polyanskyy

Brief summary: a Soviet and russian party and state figure, chairman of the Crimean Oblast Executive Committee, later First Secretary of the Crimean Regional Committee of the CPU (1954–1955), who obstructed Kyiv's humanitarian and agrarian policy in Crimea and was removed from office at the end of 1955.

Overview

Dmytro Stepanovych Polyanskyy (1917–2001) headed the Crimean Oblast Executive Committee and later the Crimean Regional Committee of the CPU directly during and after the transfer of the Crimean Oblast from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. A product of the Moscow apparatus, he covertly resisted the Ukrainocentric course of the Ukrainian SSR leadership, delayed the launch of Ukrainian-language publications (the newspaper "Soviet Crimea"), and allowed a catastrophic failure in the construction of housing for settlers. For this, at the end of 1955, the republican bodies of the Ukrainian SSR stripped him of his position in Crimea and transferred him as First Secretary of the Orenburg Regional Committee of the RSFSR.

Key Details / Subtopics

  • Plenum at the end of 1953 and the ouster of Pavlo Tytov: Overseeing agriculture in the Crimean Regional Committee, Polyanskyy, as chairman of the Oblast Executive Committee, shifted all the blame for the catastrophic state of the agrarian sector onto First Secretary Pavlo Tytov at a plenum at the end of 1953. As a result, Tytov was removed, and Polyanskyy took his place in January 1954.
  • Demand for resettlement by whole collective farms (1953): As chairman of the Crimean Oblast Executive Committee, in a letter to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR Demyan Korotchenko, he insisted that the most effective approach was to resettle Ukrainians exclusively in whole collective farms and brigades, since this prevented peasants from fleeing back home. Unable to ensure departure by whole collective farms, Polyanskyy refused to accept 1,400 families from Transcarpathia, shifting the resettlement plan onto Vinnytsia, Sumy, and Chernihiv oblasts.
  • Leadership of the Crimean Regional Committee of the CPU (1954–1955): Appointed to head the oblast during the socio-political transformations of 1954. Formally he signed appeals and decisions to Kyiv, but in practice he stalled their implementation in the humanitarian sphere.
  • Audit by the Central Committee of the CPU (September 1954): An audit by the Central Committee of the CPU led by inspector O. Nikitin revealed that under Polyanskyy's leadership, enterprises in Sevastopol, Simferopol, and 14 districts failed to fulfill economic plans, water supply, and improvement works, while the regional committee governed superficially and detached itself from local organizations.
  • Sabotage of the Ukrainization of the information space: Covertly blocked the decision of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPU to establish the Ukrainian-language oblast newspaper "Soviet Crimea", the preparation of a Ukrainian-language edition of the newspaper "Krymsky komsomolets", and the expansion of Ukrainian-language publications.
  • Failure of the village repopulation program: In 1954, under his leadership, only 28% of the annual housing construction plan for settlers from Ukraine was fulfilled (802 houses out of 2,880), which led to the mass departure of peasants back to the mainland and the dissatisfaction of the Kyiv leadership.
  • Demotion and dismissal (end of 1955): Due to the sabotage of humanitarian decisions and economic failures, the Central Committee of the CPU dismissed Polyanskyy at the end of 1955 and appointed him head of the Orenburg Regional Committee of the RSFSR. Polyanskyy's successor in Crimea was Vasyl Komyakov.