Volodymyr Vasyliovych Shcherbytsky (17 February 1918 – 16 February 1990) was a Ukrainian Soviet politician who served as First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party from 1972 to 1989. A close ally of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, Shcherbytsky replaced the reformist leader, Petro Shelest, in 1972 as part of a crackdown on the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Under Shcherbytsky's neo-Stalinist rule, Ukraine was subjected to an intensive Russification campaign as well as a rapid shift to nuclear power, which ultimately resulted in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. In 1989, Shcherbytsky was removed amid
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