HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

PIATAKOV: A MIRROR OF SOVIET HISTORY 145regard to Stalin meant that they could find common understanding, overcomingthe great divide between those who had dealt with city and industryand those who crushed peasants and nationalities. And, indeed, withKirov's death and Ordzhonikidze's suicide, Postyshev, who had perhapsthought of an alliance with the latter, was the head of the last opposition ofany importance of the 1930s. His elimination, as well as that of most of theleadership of the KP(b)U, which we have seen fighting Piatakov and joiningStalinism in 1918-1919, marked the end of yet another phase in the relationshipbetween the center and Ukraine.VI. THE WEST (GERMANY)I will try now to outline the evolution of the significance of the term "theWest" and of relations with the West as they appear to us through the stagesof Piatakov's life. I have already defined Piatakov's education and culturein a general way as "Western." Looked at closely, however, the environmentin which he grew up was, to be specific, part of that German-centeredsystem which then existed, demarcated by very clearly defined boundaries,within the Western universe and which was so important before the GreatWar and also, to a lesser extent, after it.To the young Piatakov the West was "Germany" (in its widest sense),and he was influenced by it through various channels: the musical activityof his mother, for example, who also taught him to play the piano ably; thebusiness of his father, an inzhener-tekhnolog whose work was regulated bythe Ukrainian sugar cartel and its links with its German counterpart; and hisstudies at the Kiev real'noe uchilishche {real Schule). Later on, this "German"influence was strengthened by his years at the Faculty of Law at St.Petersburg University and, above all, by his adherence to Marxism, mediatedby the works of Kautsky, Renner, and Hilferding.Even during his years in exile spent, after a brief stop-over in the UnitedStates, in Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway, Piatakov continued to movewithin this German-centered galaxy. This remained true in 1917-1918,which he spent looking toward Petrograd but also toward Berlin, Vienna,and Budapest.From a certain standpoint, therefore, Piatakov may also be considered aprotagonist—though a lesser and marginal one—in the crisis of that systemwhich had Germany at its center. This crisis, triggered by the First WorldWar but which dragged on over the following decades, was in fact acutelyfelt by Piatakov, who often summed it up in the expression "Evropa—etovulkan," where by "Europe" he meant the above-mentioned system. If thatis so, then, the expression, in addition to revealing the limits of Piatakov'svision, gained an irresistible ring of truth, although clearly it was not to be