Social and/or national revolution? Ukrainian communisms in the revolution and civil war

The article examines the main political and ideological rivals of the revolutionary period of 1917-1920 in Ukraine. It is argued that at the time parallel visions of Ukraine's sovereignty and political autonomy developed, which corresponded to two dominant political horizons: the pan-imperial attitudes of the Russian parties in Ukraine and the separatist orientation of Ukraine's nationally-oriented socialist organisations. The competition between these two political cultures led to the crystallisation of national communism, an ideological current, whose representatives continued to challenge the Bolsheviks throughout the civil war period. The definitive victory of the Bolshevik party in Ukraine in 1920 is explained by the fact that the Bolshevik leaders were able to embrace the popular nationalist discourse, articulated by diverse Ukraine-oriented left forces, and use this national factor to mobilise the population after the civil war was over

Between Moscow, Warsaw and the Holy See: The Case of Father Andrzej Fedukowicz Amidst the Early Soviet Anti-Catholic Campaign

This article offers a micro-history of Soviet anti-religious actions during the mid-1920s through a reconstruction of the investigation of Father Andrzej Fedukowicz and his forced collaboration with the Soviet secret services. In November 1924, Fedukowicz was forced to sign a letter to Pope Pius XI and a year later committed suicide to avoid the humiliation caused by his actions. This article reveals how elaborate the Soviet secret services' techniques for dealing with uncontrolled religious allegiances had become during the seemingly religiously tolerant NEP era which replaced the overly repressive measures of the Civil War period. It aims to challenge the conventional impression of powerful and effective Soviet secret services. Detailed analysis of the process of fabrication used by the secret services shows how often the rudimentary methods of the secret police could easily threaten the success of the entire operation. In this regard, the limited results the secret services had achieved by relying on individual assets led to toughening of mass repression and a more aggressive anti-religious campaign after 1929

Becoming Soviet: lost cultural alternatives in Ukraine, 1917-1933

This doctoral thesis investigates the complex and multi-faceted process of the cultural sovietisation of Ukraine. The study argues that different political and cultural projects of a Soviet Ukraine were put to the test during the 1920s. These projects were developed and executed by representatives of two ideological factions within the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Ukraine: one originating in the pre-war Ukrainian socialist and communist movements, and another with a clear centripetal orientation towards Moscow. The representatives of these two ideological horizons endorsed different approaches to defining Soviet culture. The unified Soviet canon in Ukraine was an amalgamation of at least two different Soviet cultural projects: Soviet Ukrainian culture and Soviet culture in the Ukrainian language. These two visions of Soviet culture are examined through a biographical study of two literary protagonists: the Ukrainian poet Pavlo Tychyna (1891-1967) and the writer Mykola Khvyl'ovyi (1893-1933). Overall, three equally important components, contributing to Ukraine’s sovietisation, are discussed: the power struggle among the Ukrainian communist elites; the manipulation of the tastes and expectations of the audience; and the ideological and aesthetic evolution of Ukraine’s writers in view of the first two components. At the same time, the study explores those cultural, and often political, alternatives which Soviet Ukraine had lost once the interaction between local political actors and art creators was constrained by a strictly defined channel, fully determined by a centralist cultural strategy. It also examines the rationale for the Soviet nationalities policy and identifies the determinant role of the Ukrainian communists in implementing and adjusting all-Soviet policies within the republic. Ultimately, this study of cultural sovietisation significantly enhances our understanding of the complex process of establishing and consolidating the Soviet regime in Ukraine.

Reading in Ukrainian: the working class and mass literature in early Soviet Ukraine

This article examines the working-class audience in Soviet Ukraine and the changes in its reading appetites during the 1920s. Under the Soviet nationalities policy of korenizatsiia introduced in 1923, the print-runs of Ukrainian-language literary products increased significantly. Nonetheless, as this article argues, those numerous publications often did not reach Ukrainian readers and if they did, they could hardly satisfy the interest appetites of an ever-growing Ukrainian audience. As the book reviews collected in the second half of the 1920s showed, the worker readers were interested in a certain type of literature – entertaining, easy to comprehend, dealing with contemporary issues and characters – that was not yet available in Ukrainian. Nevertheless, once that literature began to emerge in the late 1920s, the interest in contemporary books in Ukrainian increased. By examining every aspect of reading in Ukrainian – production, dissemination and consumption of the printed word – this article highlights the decisive role of Soviet readership in determining future official Soviet Ukrainian literature. The case of Soviet Ukraine emphasises regional specifics and introduces an important language component to the Bolshevik reading revolution of the 1920s-early 1930s, largely ignored in the scholarship

‘Poles of the World Unite’: the transnational history of the 1929 World Congress of Poles abroad in the context of interwar Soviet-Polish rivalries

By investigating the information and propaganda campaign surrounding the election of delegates to the 1929 Congress of Poles Abroad, this article seeks to elucidate a complex interplay between foreign policy considerations, security concerns and minority policies of the Polish and Soviet governments. It aims to examine the role of national minorities in the Soviet modernisation project, as well as in the on-going Polish-Soviet rivalry of the interwar period. The focused case study of the information campaign, and the public discussion surrounding the election process to the Congress contributes also to the debates on mass political culture in the interwar Soviet Union. Party communication, intelligence and secret reports compiled during the local elections and conferences provide a unique source for sampling public opinion of the Polish population regarding the Soviet regime in the early years of Stalin’s First Five-Year plan. This paper argues that despite considerable efforts of the party to define and promote Polish identity and thus shift their loyalties closer to the Soviet state, the Polish population in Soviet Ukraine even at the end of the 1920s continued to express persistent nonconformity and a lack of faith in the Soviet government

Mykola Khvyl’ovyi and the making of Soviet Ukrainian literature

The October Revolution brought about a radical shift in the cultural sphere. A new generation of artists and writers was formed. Their orientation towards the future and critical attitude to the past initiated a new chapter of revolutionary and proletarian culture. In Soviet Ukraine, this new artistic cohort in addition embraced national sentiments advancing a culture that was both Soviet and Ukrainian. This article examines the artistic and ideological development of Mykola Khvyl’ovyy (1893–1933), a writer and publicist who championed the ideological struggle for the autonomous project of a Soviet Ukrainian literature to be developed independently from Russian patterns. In this article, Khvyl’ovyy’s ideas as presented in his early prose and pamphlets, written during the so-called Literary Discussion of 1925–1928, are used to outline the writer’s vision of Soviet Ukrainian culture. These ideas are examined against the backdrop of the political developments of the decade characterised by the gradual toughening of the political and ideological climate Union-wide. It is argued that, during the 1920s, an autonomous cultural project in Soviet Ukraine was developed on a par with the centrally endorsed canon of all-Soviet culture implemented in every Soviet republic as a by-product of the korenizatsiya (indigenisation) campaign introduced in 1923. By the early 1930s, the all-Soviet canon gained prominence, whereas the project of an autonomous Soviet Ukrainian culture vanished together with its main representatives, who, in most cases, were physically annihilated. Khvyl’ovyy’s suicide in May 1933 symbolically drew a line under the 1920s decade of transition, with its relative ideological and political tolerance as well as its artistic experimentation

Constructing identities, ascribing nationalities: the Polish minority in Ukraine during late-imperial and early-Soviet rule

This article investigates underlying state intentions behind the counting and standardizing minority populations in view of the dire need to modernize the country. It takes a close look at the statistics regarding the Polish minority provided by the 1897 Imperial and 1926 Soviet censuses to understand how, within a span of only thirty years, the abstract figures of language, religion, and social status came to represent rigidly ascribed and hereditary national categories. The article also explores how the category of “nationality” was understood and how its meaning, political, and economic significance changed in the decades between these two censuses

Debating the early Soviet Nationalities Policy: the case of Soviet Ukraine

Book synopsis: How did a regime that promised utopian-style freedom end up delivering terror and tyranny? For some, the Bolsheviks were totalitarian and the descent was inevitable; for others, Stalin was responsible; for others still, this period in Russian history was a microcosm of the Cold War. The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution reasons that these arguments are too simplistic. Rather, the journey from Bolshevik liberation to totalitarianism was riddled with unsuccessful experiments, compromises, confusion, panic, self-interest and over-optimism. As this book reveals, the emergence (and persistence) of the Bolshevik dictatorship was, in fact, the complicated product of a failed democratic transition. Drawing on long-ignored archival sources and original research, this fascinating volume brings together an international team of leading scholars to reconsider one of the most important and controversial questions of 20th-century history: how to explain the rise of the repressive Stalinist dictatorship