This book is a good source of the information about the political developments in the Ukraine and the relationship between Ukrainian Communists and the Stalin and his lieutenants in the 30s. Although book is lacking many documents due to unavailability of them in 50s (and even today), author was able, in my opinion, describe and give an interpretation of the situation in the Ukraine in 30s very accurate and in the very readable manner.

The book covers, as the title suggests, the time period between 1929 and 1939, that is time of the acceptance of the optimum variant of the First Five-Year Plan and the beginning of the collectivization in 1929; terrible famine of 1932-1933; mass physical liquidation of the opposition in the Communist Party of the Ukraine, professors and scholars, writers, artists, non-Communist political leaders and closure of theaters, institutes, universities publishing houses in 1933; elimination of the entire Ukrainian government and leaders of the Communist Party of the Ukraine in 1937-1938. The book presents the methods, motives, and results of the Stalin's plan to centralize the USSR and to consolidate the power in his hands and the will of the Ukrainian people, including their communists political leader to achieve true independence of Ukraine from Kremlin. Author also gives the background for almost every person or political party, organization, or movement involved in the events, described in the book. The events are put in the chronological order, but time periods are divided into the different topics; so the organization of the whole book is chronological and topical.

The author was born in the Ukraine in 1902. He studied the philosophy and the history of literature in the University of Kiev. Then until 1935 he taught the history of literature in the Lugansk Institute. In the November of 1935 he was arrested and sentenced to five years in a concentration camp for the "counterrevolutionary activities". After his released he lived in the Ukraine until 1944, when he was deported into the Germany as a slave labor. In 1952 he emigrated to USA. It is possible to assume, that authors perspective can be influenced by his personal experiences, but strangely that is not the case in this book. It is hard to establish author's political views from this book or his emotion towards the described events and people. It seems to me, that author was determined to give the chronological truthful facts about the events and people in the Ukraine in that decade, since the Soviet reports about the that, as Trotsky said, was the "collection of falsifications", and not to condemn the Soviet system or Stalin and his lieutenant in the Ukraine (Postyshev, Khrushev, Kosior and others) personally.

Since the research was done in the early 50s, before the famous speech of Khrushev on the 20th Congress of the All-union Communist Party in 1956, there are a lot of the material, that was not available then. The primary sources for this research were the Soviet newspapers and Soviet official reports, from which author took the facts, but gave his own interpretations; the published on the West memories of the survived victims and participants, who emigrated to the West, helped to explain many events differently from the Soviet official versions; the personal conversations with the participants in the different concentration camps and prisons, where author was held. The lack of the different documents (Cheka/NKVD records, not published resolutions of the Central Committee, speeches of the party and the government officials and so on) made it hard to develop the whole picture, but the author was able to collect enough material and used them very thoughtfully, so he could make a connections between different pieces of information very precisely. The logic of the arguments is clear and sounds plausible. Author showed not only the understanding of the situation in the USSR in 1930s, but also the knowledge of the political and the cultural history of the Ukraine and Russia; the knowledge of the biographies and believes of the key people in the Ukraine and the USSR in 30s.

The author puts most of his attention to the political developments in the Ukraine and their influence on the other sphere of life in the Ukraine in the indicated period. The decisions of the Ukrainian government and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine are examined and the author's own interpretations are presented and compared to the official Soviet interpretations. So we may say, that this book is a political history of the terror in the Ukraine in the 30s and the response of the Ukrainians to it.

Using the available documents the author came to conclusion, that every event in the Ukraine in 30s was the product of the Stalin's plan to centralize the Soviet Union and to concentrate the power in his hands. To do so, as author said, he had to destroy any opposition in the largest after Russia republic Ukraine. But for Stalin, any intellectual was an opposition and the threat, that is why all Ukrainian scholars, political and military leaders (even Communists) were destroyed. Another threat was the Ukrainian independent peasants, who owned the land. But Stalin also took care of them: mass collectivization of 1920-1933 and the famine as a consequence of it took lives of several millions people. At the end of 30s the Ukrainians were put on their knees, but ,as author noted, "the Kremlin found it impossible to kill the idea of Ukrainian independence."

That was my first book of this kind (historical research, not a text book) on this subject. So it is hard (impossible) for me to compare author's theses to someone else's. But the logic and the presented evidence made me acknowledge, that the research has a lot of truth in it and is worth studying.