Number of communist transcarpathian centers in the repestroika period.

Abstract

Scientific intelligence reveals the causes, dynamics and effects of the reducing of number of Transcarpathian Regional Committee of the CPSU-CPU communist ranks in the second half of the 80’s – early 90’s of the twentieth century as a result of the national-democratic movement which covered the region in the specified chronological period. The perestroika policy was initiated by the Communist Party leadership of the USSR at the turn of the 1980s. and was aimed at preserving the pro-government status of the ruling CPSU, the political and economic foundations of which were subject to such deformations, which was already impossible to conceal. In the political aspect, this was manifested in the concern of the country’s citizens about the ideological doctrine of communism as a result of numerous crimes of the communist leadership of the past decades. In the economic flow destructive phenomena were expressed in the permanently low material situation of workers and peasants, which were formally declared as the main state and party social support. However, reforms of the restructuring not only did not solve these problems, but also intensified intra-party destructive phenomena and significantly weakened the communist regime on the ground. As a result, in the Ukrainian SSR is rapidly expanding the national liberation movement, which leads to a sharp reduction in the number of local primary communist party cells. One of the regions on the background of which decommunization processes were particularly prominent were the western regions of Soviet Ukraine, which included the multinational Transcarpathia. In the first place, the reduction of the number of Communists covered the most numerous workers and peasants social strata, which vigorously eroded the party ground and deprived the CPSU-KPU of public support. The key causes of voluntary selfdeprivation of membership in the party were political, economic and religious motivations that went against the key postulates of communist ideology.

Scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time in historiography based on unpublished archival documents and periodical materials has been made analysis of causes of the downward dynamics of the number of Transcarpathian communist centers as an illustrator of the rapid deployment of the anticommunist movement caused by the desire of the patriotically-minded Ukrainian public to restore the state’s independence of Ukraine.

In the Transcarpathian region of the Ukrainian SSR in 1988 – 1991, on the wave of a democratic, and later, national liberation movement, Communist Party membership voluntarily deprived 6,806 communists, which was 14% of it’s regional number. Although in 1988 such cases were not officially recorded, in 1989, 76 members of the Communist Party voluntarily lost their membership tickets, in 1990 – 2,430, in 1991 – 4,300. Such a reduction, especially in the working-peasant environment, which was a social base of the ruling party, the regional party cells of Transcarpathia did not know since its creation in 1945. The remaining members of the CPSU-CPU expressed a passive protest, nominally being in the Communist Party, not paying membership dues and not fulfilling party orders, as they put themselves outside the party. This condition should be classified as a bankruptcy of communist doctrine in the region, which was the result of the anti-communist movement of the patriotic-minded people of Transcarpathia, which in the last resort made it possible to restore the state independence of Ukraine.