View source for Stanisław Kosior

{{Short description|Soviet politician (1889–1939)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2014}}
{{Infobox officeholder
| name                = Stanisław Kosior
| image               = Stanislaw Kosior2.jpg
| caption             = Kosior in 1920
| nationality         = [[Polish people|Polish]]
| citizenship         = [[Russian Empire]] <small>(subject)</small><br>[[Soviet Union]]
| order               = [[First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine|First Secretary]] of the [[Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine]]
| term_start2         = 30 May 1919
| term_end2           = 10 December 1919
| predecessor2        = [[Georgiy Pyatakov]]
| successor2          = [[Rafail Farbman]]
| term_start1         = 25 March 1920
| term_end1           = 17 October 1920
| predecessor1        = [[Nikolay Bestchetvertnoi]]
| successor1          = [[Vyacheslav Molotov]]
| term_start          = 14 July 1928
| term_end            = 27 January 1938
| predecessor         = [[Lazar Kaganovich]]
| successor           = [[Nikita Khrushchev]]
| office3             = Full member of the [[Inner composition elected by the Central Committee of the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)|16th]] and [[Inner composition elected by the Central Committee of the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)|17th]] [[Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Politburo]]
| term_start3         = 13 July 1930
| term_end3           = 3 May 1938
| office4             = Candidate member of the [[15th Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)|15th]] Politburo
| term_start4         = 19 December 1927
| term_end4           = 13 July 1930
| office5             = Full member of the [[14th Politburo and the 14th Secretariat of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)|14th]], [[15th Secretariat of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)|15th]] [[Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Secretariat]]
| term_start5         = 1 January 1926
| term_end5           = 12 July 1928
| birth_name          = Stanislav Vikentyevich Kosior
| birth_date          = {{Birth date|df=yes|1889|11|18}}
| birth_place         = [[Węgrów]], [[Siedlce Governorate]], [[Russian Empire]] (now [[Poland]])
| death_date          = {{death date and age|df=yes|1939|2|26|1889|11|18}}
| death_place         = [[Moscow]], [[Soviet Union]]
| alma_mater          = [[Sulin]] industrial elementary school
| spouse              = Yelizaveta Sergeyevna
| children            = Tamara and Vladimir
| party               = [[Russian Social Democratic Labor Party|RSDLP]] ([[Bolsheviks]]) {{nowrap|(1907–1918)}} <br/>[[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Russian Communist Party]] (1918–1938)
| signature           = Stanislav Kosior Signature 1934.png
| native_name         = {{nobold|Станислав Косиор}}
| native_name_lang    = ru
}}

'''Stanisław Vikentyevich Kosior''' ({{langx|ru|Станислав Викентьевич Косиор}}; 18 November 1889 – 26 February 1939), sometimes spelled '''Kossior''', was a Soviet politician who was [[First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party|First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine]], [[Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union]] and member of the [[Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] (CPSU). He and his wife were both executed during the [[Great Purge]].

==Early career==
Stanisław Kosior was born in 1889 in [[Węgrów]] in the [[Siedlce Governorate]] of the [[Russian Empire]], in the region of [[Podlachia]], to a [[Polish people|Polish]] family of humble factory workers. Because of [[Poverty in Poland|poverty]], he migrated east to [[Yuzovka]] (modern [[Donetsk]]), where he worked at a [[steel mill]]. In 1907 he joined the [[Russian Social Democratic Labour Party]] and quickly became the head of the party's local branch. He was arrested and sacked from his job later that year, and the following year felt obliged to leave the area due to police activity. He used connections to get re-appointed at the Sulin factory in 1909 but was soon arrested again and deported to the Pavlovsk mine.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Haupt |first1=Georges |url=https://archive.org/details/makersofrussianr0000haup/page/149 |title=Makers of the Russian revolution |last2=Marie |first2=Jean-Jacques |publisher=George Allen & Unwin |year=1974 |isbn=0801408091 |location=London |page=[https://archive.org/details/makersofrussianr0000haup/page/149 149] |name-list-style=amp |authorlink1=Georges Haupt}}</ref> In 1913, he was transferred to [[Moscow]] and then to [[Kyiv]] and [[Kharkiv]], where he organized local communist cells. In 1915, he was arrested by the [[Okhrana]], the Russian secret police, and exiled to [[Siberia]].

After the [[February Revolution]] Kosior moved to [[Saint Petersburg|Petrograd]], where he headed the local branch of the [[Bolshevik]]s and the [[Narva]] municipal committee. After the [[October Revolution]] Kosior moved to the German-controlled areas of the [[Ober-Ost]] and Ukraine, where he worked for the Bolshevik cause. After the [[Treaty of Brest-Litovsk]], he moved back to Russia, where in 1920, he became Secretary of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]]. He was head of the Siberian branch of the CPSU from March 1922 to December 1925. In January 1926, he was appointed a [[Secretary of the Central Committee|Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU]], working alongside the General Secretary, [[Joseph Stalin]].

==Holodomor==
In July 1928, Kosior was appointed [[First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine|General Secretary of the Ukrainian SSR Communist Party]]. His return coincided with Stalin's [[Collectivization in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic|decision to drive the peasants onto collective farms]], a policy Kosior supported. Speaking to the [[Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]], in November 1929, he argued that collectivisation was the only way to make progress in [[Agriculture in the Soviet Union|agriculture]]. In February 1930, he declared that Ukraine would be "completely collectivised in the course of the spring sowing campaign."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Davies |first=R.W. |title=The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia, volume 1: The Socialist Offensive, The Collectivisation of Soviet agriculture, 1929–1930 |date=1980 |publisher=Harvard U.P. |isbn=0-674-81480-0 |location=Cambridge, Mass. |pages=165, 242}}</ref>

In July 1930, he was elevated to the [[Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]]. After the harvest in 1931, Kosior knew that collectivisation was causing a catastrophic fall in agricultural output in Ukraine – visiting Moscow in August, he warned Stalin's deputy, [[Lazar Kaganovich]], that there would be a shortfall of 170 million [[pood]]s (nearly three million tons) of grain, but Kaganovich blamed the problem on mass theft by Ukrainian peasants and forced Kosior to follow this opinion.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Snyder |first=Timothy |url=https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.32352 |title=Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin |date=2010 |publisher=Basic Books |hdl=2027/heb.32352 |isbn=978-0-465-03147-4 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Davies |first1=R.W. |last2=Khlevniuk |first2=Oleg V. |last3=Rees |first3=E.A. |title=The Stalin–Kaganovich Correspondence 1931–36 |date=2003 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven |isbn=0-300-09367-5 |page=55}}</ref>

Addressing a plenum of the [[Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] (of which he had been a member since 1926) he blamed the failure on middle ranking officials and party members who listened to the complaints of peasants that the quotas were too high. "Not only did they not fight; not only did they fail to organise the collective farm masses in the struggle for bread against the class enemy, they often followed along with this peasant mood", he said.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Applebaum |first=Anne |title=Red Famine, Stalin's War on Ukraine |date=2018 |publisher=Penguin |isbn=978-0-141-97828-4 |location=London |page=169}}</ref>

On Stalin's orders, Kosior pushed through a decree "On grain procurements" on 15 January 1932, which increased the power of the central government in [[Kharkiv]] to direct the confiscation of grain in the regions. The fact that he imposed this measure, "in spite of starvation in Ukrainian villages", was the first several examples cited by the Kyiv Court of Appeal in its 2010 resolution that judged Kosior to have been complicit in genocide.<ref name="Holodomor">{{Cite web |title=Resolution of the court Ukraine Kyiv Court of Appeal 2-A Solomyanska Street, Kyiv ruling in the name of Ukraine |date=16 October 2019 |url=https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/resolution-of-the-court/ |access-date=5 March 2021 |publisher=Holodomor Museum}}</ref> The court also recorded that on 1 February, he and [[Vlas Chubar]] co-signed a decree "On Seed", directing local committees to deny any seed aid to Ukraine's collective farms; on 17 March he signed a decree "On seed reserves", which led to increased repression of peasants who were resisting the confiscation of grain; and on 29 March, he pushed through a decree "On Polissia", under which 5,000 peasant families were deported from the [[Polesia|Polissia]] region of Ukraine.<ref name="Holodomor" />

In April 1932, after touring the countryside, Kosior wrote to Stalin to say that there had been trouble from hungry peasants refusing to sow grain, and delicately requested that food be sent to Ukraine, which prompted an angry rejection, and seemingly made Stalin suspect that Kosior was not ruthless enough.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Applebaum|first=Anne|title=Red Famine|pages=77–78}}</ref> "The worst aspect of this situation is Kosior's silence," he told Kaganovich, when other leading Ukrainian communists pleaded for help. When Kosior submitted a formal request for relief to the Politburo in Moscow, in June, it was turned down flat, and Kaganovich warned him his "mistakes" would be held as an example to other regional party leaders of how not to do their job. This was because Kosior's attempt to find an accommodation between Moscow's demands and the crisis in the countryside had turned Stalin against him. He told Kaganovich that Kosior was "manoeuvring" and engaging in "rotten diplomacy" and being "criminally frivolous." He considered sacking Kosior and sending Kaganovich in his place.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Stalin–Kaganovich Correspondence|pages=136, 141, 152, 180}}</ref> However, Kosior and his deputy, [[Pavel Postyshev]], met Stalin, who agreed to reduce Ukraine's grain quota. That seemed to settle their differences.

[[File:Lysenko with Stalin.gif|thumb|upright=1.4|right|Stanislav Kosior at [[the Kremlin]] in 1935. From left to right are [[Trofim Lysenko]], Kosior, [[Anastas Mikoyan]], [[Andrey Andreyevich Andreyev|Andrei Andreyev]], and [[Joseph Stalin]]]]

In November, Kosior delivered a speech blaming the trouble in the countryside on Ukrainian nationalists.<ref>{{cite book|last=Applebaum|first=Anne|title=Red Famine|page=289}}</ref> In 1935, he was awarded the [[Order of Lenin]] "for remarkable success in the field of agriculture".<ref>[http://www.knowbysight.info/KKK/05270.asp Guide to the history of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union 1898 – 1991]. knowbysight.info</ref>

==The Great Purge==
Kosior loyally supported [[Joseph Stalin]] at the start of the [[Great Purge]]. He was one of eight Soviet leaders whom the defendants at the first of the [[Moscow trials]], in August 1936, were forced to confess that they plotted to assassinate.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre |date=1936 |publisher=People's Commissariat of Justice of the USSR |location=Moscow |page=37}}</ref> Five of the lists of people to be executed early in the purge were cosigned by him.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Slezkine |first=Yuri |title=The House of Government, A Saga of the Russian Revolution |date=2017 |publisher=Princeton U.P. |isbn=978-0-69119-272-7 |location=Princeton, N.J. |page=755}}</ref> At a plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in December 1936, he delivered a personal attack on [[Nikolai Bukharin]], who had been the leading opponent of collectivisation, calling him a liar. At the next plenum, he called for Bukharin and [[Alexei Rykov]] to be arrested but voted against executing them.<ref>{{Cite book |last=J.Arch Getty |first=and Oleg V.Naumov |title=The Road to Terror, Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks |date=1999 |publisher=Yale U.P. |isbn=0-300-07772-6 |location=New Haven |pages=316–17, 413}}</ref> 

In January 1938 he was recalled to [[Moscow]], and replaced by [[Nikita Khrushchev]], who was told by Stalin that Kosior "wasn't doing a good job". Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that he objected to the transfer, partly because he liked Kosior, whom he described as "a fairly mild-mannered person, pleasant and intelligent", but Stalin overruled him.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Khrushchev |first=Nikita |title=Khrushchev Remembers |date=1971 |publisher=Sphere |pages=29, 76, 88–89}}</ref> Kosior was appointed head of the Soviet Control Office and deputy prime minister of the [[Soviet Union|USSR]].

Kosior was arrested and stripped of all Party posts on 3 May 1938. During Khrushchev's "[[On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences|Secret Speech]]" to the [[20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|20th Party Congress]] in 1956, he disclosed that Kosior's case was handled by [[Boris Rodos]], a particularly notorious torturer employed by the [[NKVD]], who was ordered to force a confession out of him.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Khrushchev |first=Nikita |title=Special Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ("The Secret Speech" |url=https://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/HIS242/Documents/Speech.pdf |access-date=5 March 2021 |website=Khrushchev's Secret Speech – Full Annotated Text}}</ref> Under interrogation, Kosior withstood brutal tortures, including being interrogated for 14 hours at a time,<ref>{{cite web |title=Доклад Комиссии ЦК КПСС Президиуму ЦК КПСС по установлению причин массовых репрессий против членов и кандидатов в члены ЦК ВКП(б), избранных на ХVII съезде партии. 9 февраля 1956 г. |url=https://istmat.org/node/57975 |website=Исторические Материалы |access-date=9 May 2023}}</ref> but cracked when his sixteen-year-old daughter Tamara was brought into the room and [[raped]] in front of him.<ref>Figes, Orlando (2007) ''The Whisperers'', Allen Lane, London, {{ISBN|0312428030}}, p. 248</ref> After he had been broken, he was called to Stalin's office, to confront [[Grigory Petrovsky]], the Chairman of the [[All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee]] (''de jure'' head of state) and the co-Chairman of the [[Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union]], who refused to believe that Kosior was guilty. As Petrovsky described the meeting later:

{{blockquote|They sat Kosior in a chair. He sat there depressed; it was obvious he had been through a lot. "Well talk!" "What can I say?" Kosior replied. "You know I'm a Polish spy." ... Then Stalin remarked triumphantly: "There, you see, Petrovsky, and you didn't believe Kosior became a spy. Now do you believe he's an enemy of the people?"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Medvedev |first=Roy |title=Let History Judge, The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism |date=1976 |publisher=Spokesman |location=Nottingham |page=295}}</ref>|}}

Kosior was sentenced to death on 26 February 1939 by shooting and shot the same day by General [[Vasili Blokhin]].<ref name="Bajanov">{{Cite web |title=Коссиор Станислав Викентьевич (1889–1939) |url=http://www.famhist.ru/famhist/bajanov/00063dbb.htm |access-date=7 March 2021 |website=Семейные истопии}}</ref> After Stalin's death, Kosior was [[Rehabilitation (Soviet)|rehabilitate]]d by the Soviet government on 14 March 1956.

==Family==
Kosior was one of four brothers. The oldest, Vladislav Kosior, and one of his younger brothers, Iosif Kosior, were also active communists. Vladislav was executed during the purges and Joseph died of an illness in 1937. Kosior's wife, Elizaveta, was arrested on 3 March 1938, accused of being the wife of a counter-revolutionary, and shot on 3 August 1938.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Косиор, Елизавета Сергеевич |url=https://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/martirolog/?t=page&id=8086 |access-date=7 March 2021 |website=Память о весправии |publisher=Sakharov Centre}}</ref> Their daughter, Tamara (1922–1938), who was raped in front of her father, committed suicide by throwing herself in front of a train.<ref name="Bajanov" />

Kosior's son, Vladimir Stanislavovich, born in 1922, died in the [[Siege of Leningrad|Battle of Leningrad]] in the early days of December 1942.<ref>in Russian. https://www.geni.com/people/Vladimir-Kosior/6000000074365304972</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* {{Commons category-inline|Stanislaw Kosior}}

{{17th Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)}}
{{16th Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)}}
{{15th Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)}}
{{4th Politburo of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine}}
{{3rd Politburo of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine}}
{{Soviet Ukraine Government (before 1938)}}
{{Communist Party of Ukraine}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kosior, Stanislav}}
[[Category:1889 births]]
[[Category:1939 deaths]]
[[Category:Communist Party of Ukraine (Soviet Union) politicians]]
[[Category:Deputy heads of government of the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Executed people from Masovian Voivodeship]]
[[Category:Great Purge victims from Poland]]
[[Category:People from the Russian Empire of Polish descent]]
[[Category:Left Opposition]]
[[Category:Members of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Old Bolsheviks]]
[[Category:People from Siedlce Governorate]]
[[Category:People from Węgrów County]]
[[Category:People's commissars and ministers of the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Soviet people of Polish descent]]
[[Category:Ukrainian people of Polish descent]]
[[Category:Genocide perpetrators]]
[[Category:Members of the Orgburo of the 14th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]]
[[Category:Members of the Orgburo of the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]]
[[Category:Members of the Secretariat of the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]]
[[Category:Candidates of the Politburo of the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]]
[[Category:Members of the Politburo of the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]]
[[Category:Members of the Politburo of the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]]
[[Category:Candidates of the Central Committee of the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]]
[[Category:Members of the Central Committee of the 13th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]]
[[Category:Members of the Central Committee of the 14th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]]
[[Category:Members of the Central Committee of the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]]
[[Category:Members of the Central Committee of the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]]
[[Category:Members of the Central Committee of the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)]]
[[Category:First secretaries of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Soviet Union)]]
[[Category:Soviet rehabilitations]]