Away from Russia? History Writing Before, During, and After the War (original) (raw)

My first book Making Ukraine Soviet: Literature and Cultural Policies under Lenin and Stalin examines the non-linear process of cultural Sovietization of Ukraine in the interwar period, and the ambivalent role of Ukrainian writers and cultural managers in the process of consolidating the Soviet rule in Ukraine. 1 In the centre of the book is the so-called Literary Discussion of 1925-28, waged by artists, art officials, and politicians on the issues of proletarian art, the audience and literature's social role, as well as the artistic orientation of the new proletarian literature. It was in this context that Ukrainian writer and an undisputable leader of the 1920s artistic generation Mykola Khvyl'ovyi called upon Soviet Ukrainian writers to 'flee as quickly as possible from Russian literature and its styles'. By questioning the cultural and political relationship between Ukraine and Russia, this debate quickly acquired a political aspect, involving even Stalin himself. 2 When I submitted the manuscript for the publisher's evaluation back in 2018, one of the suggestions from the anonymous reviewer was to account for the role of Russia in determining cultural production in Ukraine. While Russia went through similar processes during the 1920s, it was Moscow that kickstarted many of those artistic debates, the reviewer implied. So why would I not speak of Russia in the first place? Nonetheless, following those recommendations would mean undermining the very argument I was trying to makein the cultural sphere, and to a lesser extent in the political realm, Ukraine in the 1920s followed its own course, which was informed by Ukraine's pre-Soviet experiences. One can think of Ukrainian modernism, the Ukrainian Revolution, and Ukraine's own communist movement, which opposed the Bolshevik ideological monopoly and its exclusive right to represent the Ukrainian working class. Indeed, Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union in 1922, but until Stalin's 'Great Break' in 1928, the Ukrainian government, although receiving directives from Moscow, interpreted and implemented those policies more or less independently. 3 Take the Soviet nationalities policy of korenizatsiia (indigenization), launched in 1923 Union-wide for instance. In my book, I argue that Moscow and Kharkiv (the then capital of Soviet Ukraine) had very different understandings of this policy's goals. While both parties equally aimed to cope with the imperial legacies of Russification, Moscow used korenizatsiia to overcome deep distrust of central institutions and fight illiteracy (political illiteracy most importantly) with the help of native languages. At the same time, Ukrainian communist elites strove to free Soviet Ukraine of cultural and economic dependency on Russia and thereby transform it from Malorossiathe