Mykola Oleksiiovych Skrypnyk (; – 7 July 1933), was a Ukrainian Bolshevik revolutionary and Communist leader who was a proponent of the Ukrainian Republic's independence, and later led the cultural Ukrainization effort in Soviet Ukraine. When the policy was reversed and he was removed from his position, he committed suicide rather than be forced to recant his policies in a show trial. He also was the Head of the Ukrainian People's Commissariat, equivalent to the modern-day position of Prime Minister of Ukraine. Early life and career Skrypnyk was born in the village Yasynuvata of Bakhmut uyezd, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire in the family of a railway telegraph operator, assistant to the chief of the railway station; his mother worked as a midwife in the Zemstvo hospital. At first he studied at the Barvinkove elementary school, then realschules of the cities Izium, from which he was expelled for revolutionary activities, and Kursk, which he graduated from in 1890. During his studies he became acquainted with Ukrainian history and literature, in particular with the works of Taras Shevchenko and Panteleimon Kulish. Originally a member of the Saint Petersburg Hromada society, Skrypnyk became a member of "Workers' Banner", part of the Marxist social democratic movement, in 1897. Skrypnyk joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ("RSDLP") in 1898. While studying at Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology in 1901, he was arrested on political charges, prompting him to become a full-time revolutionary. Skrypnyk was eventually expelled from the Institute. He was arrested between fifteen and seventeen times, exiled seven times, and at one point was sentenced to death. He escaped from his first exile in the Yakut region, then worked as a social-democratic organizer and propagandist in Tsaritsyn (1902), Saratov (1902-1903), Samara and Yekaterinburg (1903), Odesa (1903-1904) and Katerynoslav (1904), from which he was exiled for five years to the Kem district of the Arkhangelsk Governate. Skrypnyk escaped on the way to his exile and moved to Odesa. In 1905, he was a party organizer of the Nevsky District of St. Petersburg, then the secretary of the Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP. He was elected as a delegate to the 3rd London Congress of the RSDLP in that year. In October 1905, he became a member of the Riga Committee of the RSDLP. At the end of December 1905, he moved to Yaroslavl, where he was arrested and exiled for five years to