Poloz, Mykhailo

Poloz, Mykhailo or Polozov [Полоз, Михайло], b 24 December 1891 in Kharkiv, d 3 November 1937 in Sandarmokh, Karelia, RSFSR. Political figure. A leading member of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, in 1917 he sat on the Central Rada and served as its representative at the war ministry of the Provisional Government. In 1918 he attended the Peace Conference in Brest-Litovsk (see Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk) with the Ukrainian delegation and helped organize an abortive left Socialist-Revolutionary coup against the Central Rada. An advocate of collaboration with the Bolsheviks, he joined Khristian Rakovsky’s government in 1919 and served as chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy. As one of the founders of the Ukrainian Communist party (of Borotbists), he opposed its dissolution and absorption in the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine. On Vladimir Lenin’s recommendation he was appointed representative of the Soviet Ukrainian government to the Russian Soviet government, and then served as Ukraine’s people's commissar of finance. He was elected to the CC CP(B)U in 1927 and 1930. He was arrested for allegedly belonging to the Ukrainian Nationalist Organization (1930) and tried for plotting with the Bukharin opposition to separate Ukraine from the USSR. He was imprisoned in the Solovets Islands in 1934 and shot a few years later.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]