A great martyr for science

These words were spoken by the world-famous scientist during a conversation with me 30 years ago. Even 10 years ago there was no mention of Kravchuk in Ukrainian scientific literature or the press, nor was he ever mentioned by his former colleagues or even the co-authors of his published works.

Kravchuk’s life story is so tragic that it is still not completely understood. History knows no other phenomenon as painful as his. Mykhailo Pylypovych Kravchuk was born in Volyn into a land surveyor’s family. After graduating from the Lutsk gymnasium with honors, he enrolled in the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Volodymyr University in Kyiv, from where he graduated cum laude. After passing his M.A. exams, he obtained the degree of privatdocent (licensed lecturer). He taught mathematics in Ukraine’s newly founded first and second gymnasiums and the Ukrainian People’s University, and was a research associate of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In the early 1920s he became a member of the mathematical terminology commission at the Ukrainian Academy’s Institute of Scientific Language. In Kyiv he taught various courses in mathematics at the university and the Polytechnic, as well as various architectural, veterinary, and agricultural institutes.

Later he brilliantly defended his doctoral thesis entitled “On Quadratic Forms and Linear Transforms.” In 1929 he was elected to the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.

Today we know that Kravchuk’s scholarly works enriched the theory of algebraic equations and analytical functions, the theory of variable real numbers and interpolations, differential and integral equations, mathematical statistics, various sections of analysis, and number theory. Scientists in France, Italy, Germany, and Japan became interested in his work. The talented mathematician was offered jobs by Westinghouse and Stanford University, where he was guaranteed the best conditions for his work.

But Kravchuk was bound heart and soul to Ukraine. He loved it like a faithful son both during tsarist times and the Civil War, and in subsequent years. Nevertheless, an entire generation of Ukrainians knew nothing about him. The academic world was familiar with Kravchuk’s polynomials, formulas, and oscillators, and the fact that his works were instrumental in the development of the world’s first computer. Yet in Ukraine his works were destroyed, burned in the courtyard of the Institute of Mathematics, and withdrawn from library collections.

What happened to this “poet of mute numbers”? On Sept. 14, 1937, the newspaper Komunist published a note entitled “Academician Kravchuk is advertising enemies.” It reads: “In September of this year issue No. 3 of the journal Uspekhi matematicheskikh nauk [Successes of Mathematical Sciences] includes Academician M. P. Kravchuk’s article, which will spark profound anger among all honest Soviet mathematicians.

“In this article the author, with an enthusiasm best applied elsewhere, advertises inveterate enemies of the people, who were long ago exposed by the NKVD organs. It should be noted that the appearance of this article can by no means be described as accidental; Kravchuk had enough time to recall the manuscript from the editorial office or make appropriate corrections to it. He did not do so.

“In addition, Kravchuk was constantly in close contact with these enemies of the people, as he is the co-author of several books written by these filthy fascist traitors.

“Political myopia and carelessness have also been demonstrated by the editorial board of the journal, which published this article.”

[Signed by] “Decorated Academician D. Hrave, director of the Institute of Mathematics at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR; academic secretary K. Breus.”

In October this same newspaper included in its Sunday issue an article signed by V. Cherniavsky and S. Feshchenko, entitled “The Face of ‘Academician’ Kravchuk.” Naturally, after the article that had been written by the decorated academician, these “colleagues” got straight to the point:

“It should be noted,” they write, “that the true face of this individual, who is regarded as an academician, has not been completely exposed. Yet, all of Kravchuk’s actions in the past several years indicate that we are dealing with a concealed bourgeois nationalist, who is cunningly trying to camouflage his anti-Soviet activities...

“Academician Kravchuk’s works should also be called into question. In recent months he has practically done nothing for mathematical science, if one excludes several works by his staff members, which he shamelessly attributed to himself. According to reputable specialists, his previous works are of poor quality...”

This article was discussed by a meeting of the academy’s presidium, during which it was resolved to “censure Kravchuk’s activities as anti-Soviet and bourgeois nationalist; relieve him of his post as departmental head at the Institute of Mathematics; instruct the commission to study Kravchuk’s status as an academician...” (An interesting detail: Feshchenko later became a professor. What is most disgusting is that after Kravchuk’s rehabilitation, Feshchenko offered Kravchuk’s unemployed son Yevhen a job in his department.)

Some people continue to believe that Academician Dmytro Hrave had nothing to do with the first article in Komunist. In fact, his relatives even threatened to sue this reporter for what they claim is inadequate information. So, how does one explain Academician Hrave’s silence at that meeting of the academy’s presidium on Oct. 4, 1937, when Kravchuk was being crucified for his “nationalistic” and “anti-Soviet” activities? How is one to explain that in his memoirs Hrave never wrote a single word of atonement to his pupil?

Hrave’s public accusations were an excruciating blow to Kravchuk, who until recently had been one of his most talented pupils. Kravchuk was arrested on Feb. 21, 1938. The indictment reads: “The Directorate of State Security of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR has exposed and liquidated an anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalist terrorist organization headed by former Borotbists and aimed at overthrowing the Soviet government and restoring the fascist system. The arrestee Kravchuk is one of the active members and leaders of this organization...” (The report of the search of the academician’s home indicates the confiscation of “an Adler typewriter, four volumes of The Notes of the Hrushevsky Historical and Philological Society, and Hrushevsky’s History of Ukraine-Rus’.)

The circuit court of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Kravchuk to 20 years’ imprisonment and stripped him of political rights for five years. After hearing the verdict in Kyiv, Kravchuk spent about half a year in a special ward of Lukianivka Prison. There, on Jan. 17, 1939, he wrote a statement to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, stressing that all his wrongdoings were invented by him or signed by him as demanded by the investigators, under heavy moral and physical duress. “In vain I tried to prove to the investigators that I was innocent,” the scientist declared. “Nevertheless, it turned out that the academic group ‘Moloda Akademiia’ [Young Academy], which existed in 1928-29, became a counterrevolutionary one...What did I know about the existence of some insurgent detachment headed by my fellow conspirators in a nonexistent organization? Pressured by the investigators, I pleaded guilty in court...Whatever destiny befalls me, with this statement I want to unburden myself of the weight of these false testimonies.” (According to Prof. Pavlo Bondarenko, when Kravchuk was brought to a meeting at Kyiv University, he showed signs of having been beaten, and he kept hiding the bruises on his face behind a handkerchief.)

Some time later Kravchuk sent a statement from Lukianivka Prison to the Prosecutor General of the USSR, in which he described acts of violence against him. But Moscow remained silent.

Kravchuk could not have known that in the Soviet capital Stalin, Molotov, and Zhdanov had determined his punishment even before his trial. On Sept. 12, 1938, they signed the sentences for another 633 political prisoners from Ukraine. Kravchuk’s name was second on the list of prisoners whom the Torquemada of the Kremlin condemned to the “first category of punishment”: death by shooting. The same punishment awaited 85 percent of the Ukrainian prisoners on this list.

Kravchuk’s Case File No. 11954 was opened in Lukianivka, with the Italicized inscription NATIONALIST written across the title page. The file included Form No. 2, with professionally made finger and palm prints, and the description of a birthmark on the right temple.

From Kyiv Kravchuk was sent to Novocherkassk. He did not stay in the local prison for long. On April 28, 1939, despite obvious symptoms of cardiac disease and his ruined health, he was recognized as fit for manual labor in the Far North. With this bill of health the Ukrainian martyr for science traveled all the way to Vladivostok and then to Magadan on board the ship Dzhurma, on her fourth run. From there he was sent further north, to the deadly mines of Kolyma.

Case File No. 238943 has a log of the convicted academician’s workdays in Kolyma’s deadliest concentration camp of Maldiak. It reads that he worked for 46 days from July 1 to Oct. 1, with 46 missed days owing to prisoner transport. He was a cutter, and his service record notes his inadequate performance because of heart attacks.

One can imagine what kind of work the prisoners had to do in the conditions in Kolyma, where the temperature reached minus 60 o C, and the miners’ daily output quota was 1.5 tons. Even during tsarist times prisoners in Nerchinsk were not required to produce more than 50 kilos!

Naturally, with his ailing heart Kravchuk could not do the cutter’s job for long. His feet were swollen with myocarditis and on March 26, 1940, even the camp physicians were forced to admit that he was not fit for manual labor and was subject to “transport to the 23rd kilometer.”

Exhausted by ill health and sensing his approaching death, Kravchuk sent a third letter to Moscow, this time to the Chairman of the Supreme Court and the Prosecutor General of the USSR.

In this document, which is not a statement but a complaint, he resolutely denies any involvement in the fabricated crimes that he had allegedly committed, describes the moral and physical tortures that he had suffered during the investigation, and expresses his attitude to the ridiculous court ruling.

“I was stunned by those savage accusations,” writes the exhausted Kravchuk. “But the constant nocturnal interrogations under direct physical duress, in particular total sleep deprivation for 11 days and nights, had an effect. What finally broke me was the threat that my family would be arrested and destroyed unless I admitted to crimes I had never committed.”

Concluding his complaint he writes: “My physical condition relieves me of being personally interested in having my case reviewed. However, restoring the truth is more important per se. Therefore, I request that you review my case by subjecting me to another investigation in conditions that would make it possible to avoid untruthful testimonies.” But Moscow remained silent.

On June 6, 1941, Kravchuk was relieved of his work duty at the mining directorate, and on Feb. 23 he was sent as an invalid for hospital treatment.

Case File No. 238943 includes two fabricated documents: a death certificate issued in the name of prisoner Kravchuk, and a statement attesting to his burial. The world should know how the author of Ukrainian algebraic terminology was buried!

One of the documents reads: “We, the undersigned, Duty Commandant Comrade Kuznetsov, chief of the medical section Comrade Krasovska, and village headman Comrade Borisov, have drawn up this statement to the effect that on March 13 of this year Prisoner Mykhailo P. Kravchuk, who died on March 9 (Case File No. 238943), was buried at a depth of 1.5 meters with his head facing west.”

The last sheet in Case File No. 238943 is another Form No. 2 with the decedent’s fingerprints. The fingerprints that were made in Lukianivka, along with the birthmark on the temple, were probably the only marks that helped identify one of the millions of GULAG victims.

At the time of his death Mykhailo Kravchuk was not even 50 years old. How much more could he have done for the development of Ukrainian and world science! Where are the mathematical sketches that he made even in those inhuman prison camp conditions and submitted to the camp administration? The only consolation is that he was buried with his head facing west, in the direction of his native Dnipro and Mother-Ukraine. This was the only reward that the outstanding Ukrainian academician received from the Soviet government.

Considering today’s realities, I am reluctant to question the integrity of some of Kravchuk’s “colleagues.” Thus, Boris Delone, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, openly referred to Kravchuk as a “Ukrainian nationalist” even 10 years after his rehabilitation. That was enough in those times. This was in fact a personal matter.

An altogether different matter is the attitude of official institutions and their indifference to our national memory. Here a short statement does not suffice. The celebrated mathematician was reinstated as a full member of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine 36 years after his official rehabilitation. Why were his mathematical works published 46 years later — with a print run of only 500 copies? They were available throughout the world but not in any library in Ukraine. Is it not astounding that there is a monument to this great martyr of science on the grounds of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, where he headed a chair, and a lecture hall named after him, whereas there is nothing at Kyiv National University from where he graduated and where he worked as a dean?

The state should not condone this attitude. As Ivan Drach has written:

People lived tough lives.
They headed to the sun
And carried the state of science
on their shoulders.
People cut into the orange
lumps with their pickaxes,
People burned like a forest fire
to keep the day bright.

Let us keep our day bright!