1924

1924 19 January
VIII All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets approves a draft of the Constitution of the USSR.
31 January
II Congress of Soviets of the USSR confirms the Con-stitution of the USSR.
8 March
Mykhailo Hrushevsky returns from emigration to Kyiv. The distinguished historian was classified as “unreliable” on 20 July 1924, i.e., shortly after his return to Ukraine, al-though he was put under surveillance immediately after his arrival in Kyiv. For the next ten years, until his death, he was under constant surveillance. In his immediate milieu were many secret informants who diligently submitted reports on his moods, conversations, plans, political sympathies and antipathies, and relationships with other public figures.
28 March
The Central Executive Committee of the USSR appro-ves the “Regulation about the Rights of the OGPU in the Section of Administrative Expulsions, Deportations, and Imprisonment in Concentration Camps.” Responsibility for handing down decisions about expulsion was given to a special conclave consisting of three members of the Colle-gium of the GPU, “named by the GPU head, combined with the obligatory participation of the supervision by the Public Prosecutor.” In the union republics the approval of such decisions rested on the same kinds of conclaves consisting of members of the Collegium of the GPU, which were headed by an OGPU representative. In time, extra-judicial organs and so-called troikas [triumvirates of judges] and dvoikas [pairs of judges], comprised of leaders of party and Soviet organs, and the GPU began to operate on a broader scale. Like the Special Conclave, they approved decisions that essentially made secret changes to court sentences, based on which a “trial” without due process would take place, i.e., people were punished without the benefit of a legally reasoned accusation and without providing motives and proof.
March
ВУЦВК і Раднарком УСРР ухвалили постанову "Про заборону соціально-небезпечним громадянам перебу-вання у певних місцевостях УСРР". Невдовзі Наркомат юстиції, НКВД і ГПУ УСРР затвердили і розіслали інст-рукцію для губернських і окружних виконкомів, якою зобов'язували ці органи оголосити регістрацію осіб, які були піддані висилці за постановами судової чи адмі-ністративної влади. Виявлення, регістрація і висилка "соціально-небезпечних громадян" покладалася на органи зовнішньої міліції. Реєстрація здійснювалась шляхом виповнення анкет згаданими громадянами, які повинні були не лише давати правдиві відомості, а й переселятись у вказані для них місця не пізніше вста-новленого для них терміну. Згодом для всього СРСР буде створено єдину систему "режимних місцевостей " 1 і 2-ї категорії і буде регламентовано категорії осіб, які не могли мешкати в цих місцевостях.
13 August
The All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee and the Sovnarkom of the USSR approve the resolution “About the Ban Forbidding Socially Dangerous Citizens to Reside in Certain Localities of the Ukrainian SSR.” Shortly after, the People's Commissariat of Justice, the NKVD, and the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR ratified and circulated instructions to gubernial and district executive committees, ordering these organs to announce a registration of individuals slated for expulsion according to decisions handed down by court or administrative authorities. The organs of the ex-ternal militia were responsible for the exposure, registra-tion, and expulsion of “socially dangerous citizens.” The registration process required questionnaires to be filled out by such citizens, who were obliged to provide not only correct information, but also move to the places assigned to them by a designated deadline. Eventually the Soviet government would create a single system of “off-limits areas” of the 1st and 2nd categories and establish categories of individuals who were banned from living in such areas.
October
The first radio station in Ukraine opens in Kharkiv.
12 October
The Moldavian ASSR is created as part of the Ukrainian SSR.

Lenin, the founder of the Bolshevik totalitarian state, dies on 21 January 1924. At the time control of the party was concen-trated in the hands of Stalin, the General Secretary of the All-Union Communist Party Stalin, who on Lenin's instructions had long been in charge of “Ukrainian affairs.”

The USSR significantly increased its purchases of Western technology for industrialization, financing them by pumping money from light industries and the food-producing industry; levying taxes; contracting forcible loans (in 1927-1929 three state loans for industrialization were drawn up, requiring the population of the Ukrainian SSR to “voluntarily” sign for a sum in excess of 325 million karbovantsi); circulating paper money uguaranteed by gold; expanding the sale of vodka (in 1927 the sale of alcohol generated more than 500 million karbovantsi for the state treasury; in 1930-2.6 billion); increasing exports of petroleum, lumber, furs, and grain; exploiting the peasantry and working class in an unparalleled manner; and exploiting forcible labor.

In April 1929 the XVI Conference of the All-Union Communist Party app-roved the optimal plan to implement industrialization. However, that month the newspaper Pravda published Sta-lin's article entitled “The Year of the Great Turn,” announcing forcible industrialization.

In 1922 Lenin personally formulated an article to the Criminal Code of the RSFSR concerning counterrevolutionary crimes necessitating the highest degree of punishment for counterre-volutionary acts that in his opinion included anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. In a note to the People's Commissar of Justice Dmitrii Kursky, Lenin demanded that “a fundamental and politi-cally correct [and not merely a legally narrow] regulation that inspires the essence and justification of terror, its necessity and limits be openly presented. The court must not abolish terror; to promise this would be deception or self-deception, but must ground and legalize it in a principled, clear fashion, without hy-pocrisy and without embellishments.” It was also proposed that the highest degree of punishment, such as execution by firing squad, be expanded, with the possibility of commutation by expulsion from the country
(V. I. Lenin, Povne zibrannia tvoriv, [Complete Collection of Works], vol. 45, pp. 179-80).

Stalin consistently implemented this Leninist instruction and others concerning the use of terror, including during the pro-cess of socioeconomic transformations.