Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:04:21.019Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rehabilitating a Mythology: The Ukrainian SSR’s Foundational Myth After Stalin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2019

Markian Dobczansky
Markian Dobczansky*
Affiliation:
Harriman Institute, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article looks at the rehabilitation of the early history of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Ukrainian SSR during the Thaw. It argues that the post-Stalin political moment offered the Ukrainian Party and academic establishments the opportunity to revalorize their republic’s founding narrative. In order to popularize this narrative, they produced publications on the revolution in Ukraine and early party history, rehabilitated Ukrainian Communists from the 1920s who had fallen victim to repressions, and constructed a set of monuments that embodied the new historical paradigm. These efforts aimed to de-Stalinize the country’s history as well as promote a Soviet Ukrainian patriotism that would make Ukrainians feel more integrated into the Soviet whole. Based on archival research, newspapers, and memoirs, the article suggests that rehabilitating this narrative was a strategy for the legitimization of the party within Ukraine.

Keywords

UkrainememorynationalismSoviet Union
Type
Special Issue on Ukrainian Statehood
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , May 2019 , pp. 366 - 378
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Artizov, A., Iu. Sigachev, I. Shevchuk, and V. Khlopov, eds. 2000. Reabilitatsiia: Kak eto bylo. Mart 1953–fevral’ 1956. Moscow: MFD.Google Scholar
Artizov, A., Iu. Sigachev, I. Shevchuk, and V. Khlopov, eds. 2003. Reabilitatsiia: Kak eto bylo. Fevral’ 1956-nachalo 80-kh godov. Moscow: MFD.Google Scholar
Babko, Iurii Vasyl’ovych. 1962. Soldat partiï: pro M.O. Skrypnyka. Kyiv: Derzhavne vydavnytstvo politychnoï literatury.Google Scholar
Babko, Iurii Vasyl’ovych, and Bilokobyl’skyi, I.. 1967. Mykola Oleksiiovych Skrypnyk. Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo politychnoï literatury.Google Scholar
Bertelsen, Olga, and Shkandrij, Myroslav. 2014. “The Secret Police and the Campaign Against Galicians in Soviet Ukraine, 1929–1934.” Nationalities Papers 42 (1): 37–62.Google Scholar
Bittner, Stephen V. 2008. The Many Lives of Khrushchev’s Thaw: Experience and Memory in Moscow’s Arbat. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Bludov, Ia. 1962. “Nikolai Alekseevich Skrypnik.” Krasnoe znamia, January 27.Google Scholar
Bludov, Ia. 1967. “Veteran Leninskoi gvardii.” Krasnoe znamia, January 25.Google Scholar
Bulankina, N. I., ed. 2004. Akademik Ivan Nikolaevich Bulankin. Kharkiv, Ukraine: Avtoenergiia.Google Scholar
Corney, Frederick C. 2004. Telling October: Memory and the Making of the Bolshevik Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Dobson, Miriam, . 2009. Khrushchev’s Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform after Stalin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Donovan, Victoria. 2015. “‘How Well Do You Know Your Krai?’ The Kraevedenie Revival and Patriotic Politics in Late Khrushchev-Era Russia.” Slavic Review 74 (3): 464–483.Google Scholar
Dziuba, Ivan. 2010. Internatsionalizm chy rusyfikatsiia? Kyiv: Kyievo-Mohylians’ka Akademiia.Google Scholar
Farmer, Kenneth C. 1980. Ukrainian Nationalism in the Post-Stalin Era: Myth, Symbols, and Ideology in Soviet Nationalities Policy. Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Gilley, Christopher. 2009. The “Change of the Signposts” in the Ukrainian Emigration: A Contribution to the History of Sovietophilism in the 1920s. Stuttgart, Germany: Ibidem-Verlag.Google Scholar
Gorlizki, Yoram, and Khlevniuk, Oleg. 2004. Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gross, Jan T. 2002. Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Rev. ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Polly, ed. 2006. The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jones, Polly. 2013. Myth, Memory, Trauma: Rethinking the Stalinist Past in the Soviet Union, 1953–70. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Korolivskii, Stepan. 1967. “Velikii Oktiabr’ na Ukraine.” Krasnoe znamia, December 9.Google Scholar
Kostiuk, Hryhory. 1960. Stalinist Rule in the Ukraine: A Study of the Decade of Mass Terror, 1929–39. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Kozlov, Denis. 2001. “The Historical Turn in Late Soviet Culture: Retrospectivism, Factography, Doubt, 1953–91.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 2 (3): 577–600.Google Scholar
Krasovitskii, Boris Markovich. 2004. “Polveka tomu nazad.” Visnyk kharkivs’koho natsional’noho universytetu (626): 41–43.Google Scholar
Kysla, Iuliia. 2018. “Rethinking the Postwar Era: Soviet Ukrainian Writers under Late Stalinism, 1945–1949.” Ph.D. diss., University of Alberta.Google Scholar
Leibfreid, A. Iu., V. A. Reusov, and A. A. Tits, eds. 1987. Khar’kov. Arkhitektura, pamiatniki, novostroiki. Putevoditel’. 2nd ed. Kharkiv, Ukraine: Prapor.Google Scholar
Lewytzkyj, Borys. 1964. Die Sowjetukraine 1944–1963. Cologne, Germany: Kiepenhauer and Witsch.Google Scholar
Liber, George O. 2002. Alexander Dovzhenko: A Life in Soviet Film. London: British Film Institute.Google Scholar
Mace, James E. 1983. Communism and the Dilemmas of National Liberation: National Communism in Soviet Ukraine, 1918–1933. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.Google Scholar
Martin, Terry. 2001. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Melekhin, I. 1967. “K 80-leiiu so dnia rozhdeniia: Pavel Petrovich Postyshev.” Krasnoe znamia, September 17.Google Scholar
Mykhailyk, O. F. 1956. Kharkovu—300 rokiv. Korotkyi istoryko-ekonomichnyi narys. Kharkiv, Ukraine: Kharkivs’ke oblasne vydavnytstvo.Google Scholar
Nazarenko, Ivan D. 1943. Spivets’ svobody slov”ians’kykh narodiv. Moscow, Russia: Ukrvydav TsKP(b)U.Google Scholar
“Pamiati, P. P. Postysheva.” 1967. Krasnoe znamia, September 16.Google Scholar
Pidhornyi, M. V. 1958. 40 rokiv Komunistychnoï partiï Ukraïny—boiovoho zahonu KPRS. Kyiv: Derzhpolitvydav.Google Scholar
Podgornyi, N. V. 1958. 40 let Kommunisticheskoi partii Ukrainy—boevogo otriada KPSS. Kyiv: Gospolitizdat.Google Scholar
Rybalka, Ivan. 1957. “Rozkvit Radians’koï Ukraïny v bratnii sim”ï narodiv SRSR.” Sotsialistychna Kharkivshchyna, December 18.Google Scholar
Shelest, Petr. 1995. …Da ne sudimy budete. Dnevnikovye zapisi, vospominaniia chlena Politbiuro TsK KPSS. Moscow: edition q.Google Scholar
Slezkine, Yuri. 1994. “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism.” Slavic Review 53 (2): 414–452.Google Scholar
“Sovetskoi Ukraine---45 let.” 1962. Krasnoe znamia, December 25.Google Scholar
“Stoikii Leninist, K 75-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia P.P. Postysheva.” 1962. Pravda, September 18.Google Scholar
Titov, Vitalii N. 1957. Khar’kovshchina na kanune sorokaletiia Velikogo Oktiabria. Materialy v pomoshch propagandistam i agitatoram. Kharkiv, Ukraine: Khar’kovskoe oblastnoe izdatel’stvo.Google Scholar
Tron’ko, P. T., ed. 1987. Pamiatniki istorii i kul’tury Ukrainskoi SSR. Katalog-spravochnik. Kyiv: Naukova dumka.Google Scholar
“V sim”ï vil’nii, novii.” 1962. Sotsialistychna Kharkivshchyna, December 25.Google Scholar
“Vid redaktsiinoï kolehiï.” 1957. Ukraïns’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal 1 (1): 3–9.Google Scholar
Weiner, Amir. 2001. Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Yekelchyk, Serhy. 2004. Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Yekelchyk, Serhy. 2003. “When Stalin’s Nations Sang: Writing the Soviet Ukrainian Anthem (1944–1949).” Nationalities Papers 31 (3): 309–326.Google Scholar