Rethinking the Postwar Era: Soviet Ukrainian Writers Under Late Stalinism, 1945-1949 by Iuliia Kysla A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Department of History and Classics University of Alberta © Iuliia Kysla, 2018 Abstract This dissertation advances the study of late Stalinism, which has until recently been regarded as a bizarre appendage to Stalin’s rule, and aims to answer the question of whether late Stalinism was a rupture with or continuation of its prewar precursor. I analyze the reintegration of Ukrainian writers into the postwar Soviet polity and their adaptation to the new realities following the dramatic upheavals of war. Focusing on two parallel case studies, Lviv and Kyiv, this study explores how the Soviet regime worked with members of the intelligentsia in these two cities after 1945, at a time when both sides were engaged in “identification games.” This dissertation demonstrates that, despite the regime’s obsession with control, there was some room for independent action on the part of Ukrainian writers and other intellectuals. Authors exploited gaps in Soviet discourse to reclaim agency, which they used as a vehicle to promote their own cultural agendas. Unlike the 1930s, when all official writers had to internalize the tropes of Soviet culture, in the postwar years there was some flexibility in an author’s ability to accept or reject the Soviet system. Moreover, this dissertation suggests that Stalin’s postwar cultural policy—unlike the strategies of the 1930s, which relied predominantly on coercive tactics—was defined mainly by discipline by humiliation, which often involved bullying and threatening members of the creative intelligentsia. His postwar control over culture aimed to restore the visible unity of the Soviet symbolic collective, primarily by securing more control over the representation of the Soviet present and the non-Russian past. In this sense, Andrei Zhdanov’s postwar purges in literature and history were imperative to the symbolic codification of Soviet Ukraine as a “national periphery,” which, in practice, meant the de facto dominance of Russian culture and an impaired image of Ukraine’s past and present, wedged within boundaries of the official narrative of the Friendship of the Peoples. ii Preface This thesis is an original work by Iuliia Kysla. No part of this thesis has been previously published. iii To the memory of my dear friend, Mykhailo Shults (1982-2015) who died on 25 January 2015 from a sniper’s bullet at the Russo-Ukrainian front near Olenivka village, Donetsk region iv Acknowledgements My deepest gratitude goes to my supervisor, John-Paul Himka, for his inspiring ideas, stimulating discussions, and intellectual guidance during these years. It is difficult to overstate his contribution to my academic and personal development. It was a great honour, but also an immense responsibility to be his last doctoral student. I would also like to thank David Marples, who agreed to step in as a co-supervisor, for his thoughtful insights and help in improving my academic prose. Special thanks are due to Heather Coleman, who was so welcoming and gracious when I first arrived in Edmonton, for her valuable advice and friendly support; and all my colleagues in the East Europeanists’ Circle, who provided a stimulating environment in which my ideas were discussed and further elaborated. Before I came to Alberta, I benefited from the support and guidance of my teachers at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy National University, Natalia Yakovenko and Georgiy Kasianov, who nurtured a whole cohort of young historians, me included, by teaching them that history is about interpretation and not just collecting facts. I am especially grateful to Yaroslav Hrytsak, who encouraged me to deepen my interest in authors and literature, and who reminded me that a dissertation is just a first step towards academic freedom. I am also thankful to Serhy Yekelchyk for his valuable advice and thought-provoking conversations; Jeffrey Burds, for sharing his thoughts and materials with me; Fred Mills and Caroline Lieffers, for making my prose more animated and text much more readable; my fellow students and long-standing friends Oksana Vynnyk, Larysa Bilous, Lizaveta Kasmach, for making this common PhD journey more enjoyable; and Chrystia Chomiak, Eva and Mykhailo Himka for warmly welcoming my family into their lively community in Edmonton. v Over the years of research and writing, I have been fortunate to receive generous financial support from the University of Alberta, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, the Government of Alberta, and the Canadian Foundation of Ukrainian Studies, which facilitated research in Ukrainian archives and allowed me to complete my dissertation. I am honoured to have been awarded the University of Alberta Recruitment Scholarship, the Alberta Ukrainian Centennial Commemorative Scholarship, the Helen Darcovich Memorial Doctoral Fellowship, the Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky Memorial Doctoral Fellowship, the Neporany Doctoral Fellowship, and the Beryl Steel Travel Award. Finally, I have been fortunate to enjoy the constant love of my family, especially my husband, Oleksiy Kachmar, whose boundless patience and support helped shepherd this dissertation to completion. This doctoral project could hardly have been possible without his constant encouragement and trust in my capacity to cope with various challenges. I also want to express my gratitude to my grandmother, Valentyna Obukhova, and my parents, Olha and Oleksandr Kysly, who always supported my educational endeavours and shared my interest in history; to my brother and sister, Serhii and Anna, for their unwavering belief in me and my academic pursuits; and to my mother-in-law, Liubov Kachmar, for traveling all the way from Ukraine to help care for my daughter Darynka, born in 2016. My child’s smile, health, and merciful ability to sleep for extended periods of time inspired and helped me survive these last two Alberta winters, making this work possible. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………..ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………v List of Figures and Illustrations………………………………………………………..……....ix List of Abbreviations and Non-English Terms………………………………………………...x A Note on Transliteration……………………………………………………………………...xii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter One: Literature with a Purpose: The Ukrainian Writer as State Agent, 1923-1953………………………………………………………………………………………..22 1.1. From “National Literatures” to the “Literatures of the Peoples of the Soviet Union”....25 1.2. Artists in Uniform: Neither Prophets, Nor Leaders, But Workers……………………..54 1.3. Accolades and Rewards………………………………………………………………...65 Chapter Two: Purges in Literature of the Immediate Postwar Years. The Ukrainian Zhdanovshchina as a Battlefield for the ‘Only Correct Understanding’ of the Past……….82 2.1. The View from the Soviet Periphery……………………………...…………………....84 2.2. Purging Oneself of the “Harmful Remnants of the Past”: The Late Stalinist Writer in the Making………………….……………………………………………………...…………...90 2.3. Stalin’s Spectacles of Belief…………………………………………………...……...102 Chapter Three: Kaganovich’s Redux, or the 1947 Unfinished Ideological Slaughter in Ukrainian Literature………………………………………………………………………….127 3.1 The New ‘Old’ Leader of Ukraine…………………………………….……………….133 3.2. The Rylsky Affair: Making a Nationalist…………………………………….……….140 Chapter Four: Between Past and Present: Making of a Soviet Intelligentsia in the West…………………………………………………………………………………………….169 vii 4.1. Getting to Know Each Other All Over Again……………………………………….....174 4.2. Act One. The Anti-Hrushevsky Campaign of 1946……………………………………182 4.3. Act Two. The Ideological Pacification of 1947………………………………………..206 Chapter Five: The State-Sponsored “Pogrom” in Ukrainian Literature: the “Black Years” of 1948-1953 Reconsidered…………………………………………………….………...…....221 5.1. The Creeping Growth of Anti-Semitism………………………………….…………….231 5.2. The Struggle with the “Excess of Jewish Patriotism” ……………………………….…247 5.3. Balancing Forces: Return to Equilibrium………………………………………………254 Chapter Six: “The Decisive Defeat of the Armed Guerrilla Movement” and the Halan Campaign in Lviv: Court Trials as Means of Sovietization..…………………………...….280 6.1. Making Sense of War: The Barvinsky Trial of 1948………………………...…………282 6.2. The Writer as Ideological Soldier: Yaroslav Halan………………………………….....303 6.3. The Autumn Attentat in Lviv and the Halan Campaign……………………………..…320 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………………….339 Bibliography………………………………………………………………...…………………354 Appendices………...……………………………………...……………………………………377 viii List of Figures and Illustrations Figure 1.1. From left to right: Pavlo Tychyna, Oleksandr Dovzhenko, Maksym Rylsky. 3 August 1942, Saratov. Figure 1.2. Ukrainian literary purges under Stalin, 1929-1953. Chart 1. Number of people arrested per year. Chart 2. Outcome of arrest. Figure 1.3. The Krushelnytsky family. Sitting (left to right): Volodymyra, Taras, Maria (mother), Larysa and Antin (father). Standing: Ostap, Halyna (Ivan’s wife), Ivan, Natalia (Bohdan’s wife), Bohdan. Figure 3.1. Young literati, participants in the Republican Conference of Young Writers. Oles Honchar (far left) and Mykola Rudenko (far right). Figure 4.1. Film stills with subtitles. From the Soviet spy thriller “This Must Not Be Forgotten” (Ob etom zabyvat’ nel’zia, 1954, Leonid Lukov). Figure 4.2. Lviv writers visiting their Kyiv colleagues for Pavlo Tychyna’s 50th