Ivan Maistrenko was a Ukrainian revolutionary. He became a communist partisan during the Ukrainian Civil War of 1918-20. He became a journalist and by 1831 was deputy director of the All-Ukrainian Communist Institute of Journalism. As an opponent of Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

 he was arrested but survived the gulag

Gulag

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

 becoming a post-war refugee in West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

. He was a prominent member of the Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party

Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party

The Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party was a Ukrainian revolutionary socialist organisation founded by emigres following the Second World War. They published Vpred edited by Ivan Maistrenko....

 and edited their anti-Stalinist workers paper Vpered. He also wrote a book Borotbism about the movement of that name

Borotbists

The Borotba Party was a peasant based left-nationalist political party in Ukraine. It arose in May 1918 after the split in the Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party on the basis of supporting Soviet power in Ukraine. Similar to Russian Left-SR it got its name from the central organ of the...

.