17 Facts About Petro Shelest

Petro Shelest was born in a Ukrainian peasant family in a village near Kharkiv in 1908.

Petro Shelest studied engineering in Kharkiv, and held industrial jobs between 1932 and 1936.

Petro Shelest served in the Red Army from 1936 to 1937, but transferred to working for the Communist Party in 1937, as thousands of its members were caught up in the Great Purge.

Between 1943 and 1954, Petro Shelest was a chief manager of several large factories in Leningrad and Kyiv.

Petro Shelest began his rule at a time of significant cultural shifts in Ukrainian society, as it began to increasingly distance itself from Russia and assert its unique identity.

Historian Taras Kuzio has argued that Petro Shelest was the leader of a revived national communist sect of the Communist Party of Ukraine after the group had previously been destroyed in the Great Purge.

The extent to which Petro Shelest personally was involved in supporting the Sixtiers and other nationally minded Ukrainians, many of whom later formed the core of Ukraine's Soviet dissidents, remains in dispute.

Petro Shelest argued for Ukraine to become economically sovereign from the broader Soviet Union in 1965, a move which alarmed Soviet leadership.

The core intention of Petro Shelest's policies was to improve the popularity of the Communist Party among Ukrainians, following the extreme unpopularity of Stalinist rule in Ukraine.

Geographically, Petro Shelest was associated with the city of Kharkiv, and part of the Kharkiv Clan.

In 1968, Petro Shelest played a major role in deciding how the Soviet government should respond to the Prague Spring, the sudden loosening of political control in communist Czechoslovakia, which created an atmosphere that spilled over into west Ukraine.

Petro Shelest was the only other Politburo member beside Leonid Brezhnev to take part in every meeting between Soviet and Czech communist leaders during that year.

Petro Shelest went on to insult Frantisek Kriegel, a senior Czechoslovak communist and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, calling him a "Galician Jew".

In 1968, Petro Shelest was awarded the "Hero of Socialist Labor" title.

Petro Shelest himself blamed his downfall on 'intrigues' by Shcherbytsky and Brezhnev.

From 1973 to 1985, Petro Shelest worked as a manager of an aircraft design bureau near Moscow.

Petro Shelest visited Ukraine several times and delivered lectures about his tenure as leader of Ukraine.