head of Education. In June, he and his "nefarious" policies were publicly discredited and his followers condemned as "wrecking, counterrevolutionary nationalist elements". Rather than recant, on 7 July he shot himself at his desk at his apartment in Derzhprom at Dzerzhynsky Square (Dzerzhynsky Municipal Raion of Kharkiv city). During the remainder of the 1930s, Skrypnyk's "forced Ukrainization" was reversed. He was rehabilitated in 1962. Personal life His first wife Maria Skrypnyk (maiden name Mezhova; 1883 - 1968) was a Bolshevik from pre-revolutionary times, a member of the Krasnoyarsk organization of the RSDLP, where they met. At the end of 1917 - the beginning of 1918, she worked as the secretary of the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR Vladimir Lenin, in 1919-1920; she later served as a member of the collegium of the People's Commissariat of Land Affairs and the People's Commissariat of Social Security of the USSR, then worked as a teacher and authored her memoirs about Lenin. They separated in the 1920s, at which point she moved to Moscow, while he stayed in Kharkiv. His second wife was Raisa Leonidivna Khavina (born in 1904, Gomel, in some sources her last name is given as Petrova), much younger than her husband. After Skrypnyk's death, she was arrested, but soon released. She moved to Moscow, where she worked as an engineer of the prescription commission of "Aniltrest". In 1938, she was arrested again and executed on August 20, 1938, and her son Mykola was sent to an orphanage; he died at the front during the war. See also People's Secretariat, the first government of the Soviet Ukraine Notes Further reading Includes a concise biography of Skrypnyk in annotation no. 25. 1872 births 1933 deaths People from Yasynuvata People from Yekaterinoslav Governorate Ukrainian people in the Russian Empire Old Bolsheviks Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology alumni Hromada (society) members Russian Social Democratic Labour Party members Directors of the State Planning Committee of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Communist Party of Ukraine (Soviet Union) politicians Politicians of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Cheka Russian revolutionaries Ukrainian revolutionaries Deaths by firearm in Ukraine General Prosecutors of Ukraine Soviet justice ministers of Ukraine Ukrainian diplomats Soviet foreign ministers of Ukraine Soviet interior ministers of Ukraine Chairpersons of the Council of Ministers of Ukraine Institute of History of the Party (Ukraine) directors Soviet labor ministers of Ukraine Education ministers of