Filmmakers and Artists Imagine the Past

The ideology of High Stalinism, that history was a series of events initiated and controlled by great men, caused the genre of film biography to proliferate during the post-war decade Between 1946 and 1953 the Soviet film industry produced seventeen full-length movies about great military leaders, scientists, composers, and writers ³³ It is significant that not all of these great men were Russians, the list of seventeen films included Paints (dir lu Raizman, Riga, 1949), Taras Shevchenko (dir I Savchenko, Kiev, 1951), and Dzhambul (dir le Dzigan, Alma-Ata, 1952), in which Stalinist ideologues sought to provide officially sanctioned fictionalized ‘biographies’ of three revered figures in Latvian, Ukrainian, and Kazakh letters, respectively Unlike pre-war films, such as Bohdan Khmelnytsky, these post-war projects were designed to reflect the new official memory and highlight the Russian elder brothers historical patronage

By the late 1940s a canonical film biography of Ukraine’s ‘father of the nation’ was long overdue A previous version, the 1926 Taras Shevchenko (dir P Chardynin, Odessa Film Studios) had been produced at the height of the Ukrainization campaign and reflected the contemporary nationalizing and anti-colomahst ethos In 1937, the authorities had denounced the film as counter-revolutionary, fascist, and nationalistic ³⁴ A new biography of Shevchenko was the first major project that the Kiev Film Studios contemplated after the war

Ilchenko wrote a provisional screenplay, basing it on his novel St Petersburg Autumn, and the director I Annensky began filming Taras Shevchenko in the summer of 1947 As the crusade against nationalism in the humanities unfolded, however, Ukrainian ideologues rejected biographical vignettes of the poet’s life in St Petersburg in favour of a wider panorama of nineteenth-century Ukraine showcasing social oppression, peasant rebellions, and the Russian revolutionaries’ tutelage ³⁵ The authorities then appointed Savchenko to take charge of the film as its director and scriptwriter He promptly produced a new script portraying Shevchenko as more of a social activist and student of the Russian revolutionaries, and in early 1949 the KP(b)U Central Committee authorized Savchenko to begin filming ³⁶

By June 1950, when the Central Committee had organized a discussion of the film’s first cut, the campaign against ‘nationalism’ in the arts had long since petered out While some participants followed the earlier party directives in demanding further emphasis on class struggle and vilification of contemporary ‘bourgeois nationalists,’ others dared to oppose it When the literary historian Novikov branded Kostomarov a ‘scholar in quotation marks,’ Kornuchuk intervened to defend the nineteenth-century historian who had ‘understood many things cor­rectly’ Anatol Petrytsky, Ukraine’s leading theatre set designer, took the floor to ridicule the never-ending calls for the inclusion of additional ideological state­ments ‘Even Repin complained that audiences often expected more from his paintings than these works could possibly have contained For instance, say the artist is painting a canvas depicting the Zaporozhian Cossacks He captures only the single moment when they are writing the letter to the Turkish Sultan But no, that is not enough Some begin demanding that he also portray the emergence of the Zaporozhian Host, what happened to it, how Catherine was involved, and so on (Laughter, applause) They even want to see the Zaporozhians beyond the Danube (More laughter)’³⁷ The poet Maksym Rylsky, the artist Oleksandr Pashchenko, and the writer Wanda Wasilewska all praised the director’s cut Then, Nazarenko and the Central Committee expert Oleksn Rumiantsev returned to the earlier criticisms (During the meeting, Savchenko suffered a mild heart attack and had to rest on a couch in an adjoining room ) Although the discussion ended inconclusively, Nazarenko ordered the conformist literary critic Ilha Stebun and the head of Agitprop, Davyd Kopytsia, to write critical reviews of the film Both commentators requested that the portrayal of Shevchenko’s ties to the Russian ‘revolutionary democrats’ be improved As well, Stebun suggested including Shevchenko’s positive remark about Khmelnytsky and a condemnation of Mazepa ³⁸

Armed with these reviews, the Ukrainian Politburo established a commission to supervise the film’s editing that included President Hrechukha, Central Commit­tee secretaries Nazarenko and Ivan Senin, Minister of Culture Lytvyn, and Kopytsia On 1 July 1950 members of the Politburo watched the film and proposed further improvements In particular, Second Secretary Kyrychenko requested the depic­tion of the poet’s warm meeting with the Russian revolutionary democrats after his return from exile ’ First Secretary Melnikov acknowledged, ‘Our people and our intelligentsia are so permeated with the deepest love for Shevchenko that they would have accepted enthusiastically even an imperfect film about him ’³⁹ Yet the commission proceeded to attempt to bring the screenplay to perfection Nazarenko suggested downplaying the role of the Polish revolutionary Zygmunt Sierakowski, since otherwise the ‘Ukrainian-Polish connection would appear more prominent than the Ukrainian-Russian one, which was in reality decisive both in Shevchenko’s life and in history’ The ideologues proposed a number of other minor improve­ments with which Savchenko disagreed strongly ⁴⁰

The director was hoping for support from Moscow Although in mid-July the Kievan bureaucrats were still reporting on their ‘work’ on the film to their direct superiors on the VKP(b) Central Committee, the initiative now passed to Ivan Bolshakov, the minister of cinema and Stalin’s confidant, who organized a new discussion of Taras Shevchenko in Moscow Many comments paralleled those made in Kiev, but the participants were generally approving and their criticisms con-

41 structive

Although Moscow had assumed responsibility for the film, Ukrainian ideo­logues did not relent Perceiving the interpretation of the Ukrainian past as the prerogative of the republic’s functionaries, Nazarenko bombarded Bolshakov with telegrams during October and November 1950 He repeatedly suggested adding an episode about the ‘progressive Russian people buying Shevchenko out of serfdom,’ enquired whether the beautiful Ukrainian landscapes were represented properly in the new version, and requested a new musical score Bolshakov ignored these appeals from Ukraine.

Aside from feeling excluded, Ukrainian ideologues had little reason to com­plain The Moscow-approved new scenes included Shevchenko’s fiery speech inciting the peasants to rebel, the Russian revolutionaries’ discussion of how to bring Shevchenko back from exile, and the Ukrainian poet’s cordial meeting with Chernyshevsky (None of these episodes had any basis in reality) As well, Chernyshevsky referred to Kulish in passing as ‘that pig good only for lard,’ and Sierakowski no longer participated in the movie’s closing scene ⁴³ Filming of the additional episodes began in December 1950, but it is not clear whether Savchenko ever agreed to implement the revisions on 14 December the forty-five-year-old director died of a heart attack Kornnchuk prepared the final version of the screenplay, while several of Savchenko’s students at the Institute of Cinema took over the filming of the new scenes

In July 1950 I Mazepa, the new Ukrainian minister of cinema, related to First Secretary Melnikov ‘I hereby report that, according to the information from the USSR Minister of Cinema, Comrade Bolshakov, a private government screening of the full-length colour film Taras Shevchenko took place in Moscow after the completion of revisions and the film was approved without further revisions ’⁴⁴ Stalin and his inner circle, which now included Khrushchev, did not even bother to ask the republic’s leaders what they thought of this latest representation of Ukraine’s national icon Soon after the film was released, Ukrainian ideologues made one last, weak attempt to reclaim their right to interpret Shevchenko When the writer Marietta Shagmian asserted in her Izvesttta review of the film that the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood had been a nationalist group, which Shevchenko had joined by accident and which had taken advantage of his talent, Nazarenko initially ordered the preparation of a refutation and a letter of protest to Suslov, but the matter was eventually dropped ⁴⁵

The authorities staged the simultaneous release of Taras Shevchenko in Ukrain­ian and Russian in December 1951 as a major event in Ukraine’s cultural life The largest theatres displayed exhibitions on the poet’s life, inviting scholars to give lectures about Shevchenko before the screening The newspapers hailed the film as a great success, a ‘work of enormous impact’ that created a ‘majestic image of the immortal poet-fighter ’ In March 1952 the film won the Stalin Prize, First Class - the first post-war work by the Kiev Film Studios to earn this most prestigious Soviet accolade ⁴⁶

A grandiose undertaking on a scale comparable to that of the History of the Ukrainian SSR, Taras Shevchenko drained the republic’s financial and human resources, making the simultaneous production of another historical film impos­sible Thus, the triumph of Stalinist ideology in the much-edited Taras precipi­tated Soviet Ukraine’s failure to produce a new, ideologically correct historical film in time for the tercentenary of Pereiaslav The republic’s ideologues realized that the changes in the official politics of memory over the last decade generated the need for a vision of the Khmelnytsky Uprising very different from that offered in the 1941 Bohdan Khmelnytsky Yet the revisions to Taras Shevchenko prevented them from addressing this problem In 1951 the Kiev Film Studios considered beginning work on the film The Pereiaslav Council, possibly based on Rybak’s novel, but the apparatus of the KP(b)U Central Committee did not even discuss this idea until mid-1952, when it was shelved for lack of financing ⁴⁷

In March 1953, with the jubilee looming large, the desperate Ukrainian bureau­crats began exploring a cheaper option remaking the old Bohdan Khmelnytsky in colour, with some revisions Kornnchuk suggesting the following changes show ing the tsar receiving the hetman’s ambassadors, portraying the Pereiaslav Council, and refilming the Battle at Batih after adding the Russian Don Cossacks to the scene An ideologically acceptable script was ready by mid-1954, in which Kornnchuk emphasized Russia’s role throughout and inserted scenes showing that from the very beginning of the war, Ukrainians had dreamt of uniting with Muscovy As a final coup, he completely rewrote Khmelnytsky’s speech at the Pereiaslav Council, making the hetman say that union with Russia was something our grandfathers and great-grandfathers had wished’ and having him express the Ukrainians’ desire to be ‘forever united with their [Russian] brethren in one state, great Russia ’⁴⁸

For all these achievements in historical fiction, the actual filming still had not started one month before the May 1954 celebrations In desperation, the republic’s Ministry of Cinema petitioned the KP(b)U Central Committee to allow a quick, low-cost filming of Dmyterko’s play Together Forever·, otherwise Ukrainian cinema would have nothing to present The Kievan bureaucrats, however, decided against simultaneously undertaking two similar projects ⁴⁹

Filming of the new Bohdan Khmelnytsky, ncsN provisionally called The Great Brotherhood, did not start until August 1954, well after the tercentenary celebra­tions Kornnchuk secured the Russian director Vladimir Petrov, who had pro­duced the celebrated historical movie, Peter the First (Leningrad Film Studios, Parts I and II, 1937-8), for the project Petrov made a majestic and expensive film, parts of which were shot in the Kremlin and which took almost two years to complete The Soviet film industry released the movie as Three Centuries Ago in the autumn of 1956, when the country’s political and cultural life was no longer the same as it had been under Stalin ⁵⁰

For the purposes of the everyday politics of memory, this delay meant a fiasco that was not immediately obvious and that went unnoticed by the public Already in 1953 Nazarenko had reported to Pospelov, the new secretary of the VKP(b) Central Committee in charge of propaganda and culture, that the republic needed more copies of the 1941 Bohdan Khmelnytsky The movie was still very much in demand, and the Ukrainian film circulation division had only 54 copies left (24 of them had ‘worn out’) The Ukrainian ideologue placed an order for 250 new copies ⁵¹ To mark the tercentenary, during the spring and summer of 1954, all 4,009 of the republic’s cinemas and all 3,823 mobile film projectors showed a series of 30 Soviet films, opening with Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Taras Shevchenko For this purpose, the authorities ordered an additional 200 copies of the former and 347 of the latter Radtanska osvita advised teachers to take their classes to see Bohdan and Taras as a part of the history curriculum ⁵² The post-war generation of Ukrainians thus became exposed to Bohdan s 1941 patriotic vision of the Cossack past

In contrast to the film industry, the development of the historical genre in art was not dependent on large investments from the state, nor was it possible for party ideologues to supervise the drafting of every historical painting or sculpture As a result, the trajectory of changing artistic representations of the past was considerably more complicated

Ukrainian artists were the first among the republic’s cultural elite to recover after the ideological purges of 1946-7 As explained in chapter 4, Hryhorn Mehkhov’s award-winning canvas Young Taras Shevchenko Visiting the Artist KP Briullov (1947) perfectly illustrated the new official vision of Ukrainians as having always been guided by the Russian elder brother ’ Other artists emulated Mehkhov and portrayed Russian historical figures tutoring their Ukrainian contemporaries or, at least, visiting Ukraine Notable among works on this topic were the following paintings M Dobronravov’s Peter the First in Lviv (1947), H Svitlytsky’s The Composer PI Tchaikovsky m Ukraine (1947), K Trokhymenko’s Gorky Read­ing Shevchenko to the Peasants (1949), M Khaertinov’s After the Battle at Poltava (1950), V Puteiko’s Maxim Gorky and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky on the Island of Capri (1951), P Parkhet’s The Assault on Khadzhibei (1953), V Zabashta’s PI Tchaikovsky andM V Lysenko (1953), and F Shostak’s The Printer Ivan Fedorov m Lviv (1954) Graphic artists and sculptors also produced numerous works on the topic of Russian-Ukrainian friendship, such as O Kulchytska’s lithograph Ivan Fedorov among the Townspeople of Lviv (1949), M Vronsky’s sculpture TH Shevchenko and NG Chernyshevsky (1954), and S Besedins drawings Pushkin in Ukraine, TH Shevchenko among Progressive Russian Cultural Figures, and PI Tchaikovsky Visiting M V Lysenko (all 1954) ⁵³

While stressing Ukraine’s historical connection to Russia, artists shied away from portrayals of their nations ‘separate’ heroic past Until 1954, when S Adamovych displayed his canvas Danylo ofHalych at the Tercentenary Exhibition, no painter dared to work on the history of the Gahcian-Volhynian Principality Adamovych himself came under harsh criticism Depicting the prince on the battlefield after his victory over the Teutonic knights, his painting did not develop the theme of Russian-Ukrainian friendship and was soon dismissed in the press as ‘pointless’ (bezzmistovne) ⁵⁴ The rehabilitation of Cossack glory as a legitimate topic also proved difficult After the critics condemned Mykhailo Derehus’s series on the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1946), the artist concentrated on illustrating historical novels, including Gogol’s Taras Bulba and Rybak’s The Pereiaslav Coun cil During the dekada of Ukrainian art in Moscow in June 1951 Derehus finally brought his Cossack heroes back into the mainstream of official art with his large painting The Pereiaslav Council (on which he was assisted by S Repin and V Savenkov) ⁵⁵ Although mildly criticized for its lack of action and dramatic tension, the work’s timely subject probably protected Derehus during the ensuing purge of ‘nationalist errors’ in Ukrainian culture

Later in 1951 young Mykhailo Khmelko, who had already earned two Stalin Prizes for paintings on Soviet topics, presented his monumental canvas Forever with Moscow, Forever with the Russian People This large, magnificent painting portrayed Khmelnytsky and the Russian ambassador addressing a cheering crowd in front of the cathedral in Pereiaslav Khmelko put the Cossack colonels, Musco vite boyars, and bishops in the foreground, including every detail of their decora­tive garments and gonfalons ⁵⁶ However, the republic’s artistic community, apparently upset with the success of Khmelko’s decorative monumentahsm during a time when lyrical and genre works on Ukrainian subjects were dismissed as untopical, used the language of class to attack the authorities’ favourite When the painting was first exhibited in Moscow, Ukrainian critics accused Khmelko of indulging in ‘excessive theatrical splendor ’ Soon Lidna Popova published a more damaging objection, namely, that the artist had ignored the ‘representatives of the common people’ During the artists’ conference in 1952, Serhu Hryhonev lec­tured Khmelko that a historical painting ‘should depict not a farce or parade, but the drama of history ’⁵⁷

In January 1953 the newspaper of the Artists’ Union, Radianske mystetstvo, went as far as publishing ironic verses critical of Khmelko

Rubies steel enamel, and cut glass,

Satin, brocade, and a sledge with fretwork

This is all good but one thing is unfortunate,

That the people are in the background ⁵⁸

The critic Valentyna Kuryltseva concluded that Khmelko had not studied history thoroughly enough ⁵⁹ For lack of another magnificent depiction of the act of union, in 1953 the authorities adopted the unsophisticated Pereiaslav Council by Derehus, Repin, and Savenkov as the principal official image of reunification, later to be reproduced on stamps, tapestries, and vases in massive numbers ⁶⁰

Nevertheless, the critics’ sympathies went to three new, artistically superior works by young Ukrainian artists Oleksandr Khmelnytsky’s dynamic Together Forever (1953) portrayed the robust and almost unruly Ukrainian and Russian masses rejoicing outside the cathedral in Pereiaslav, V Zadorozhnyi’s unusual Bohdan Khmelnytsky Leaves His Son Tymish as a Hostage with the Crimean Khan (1954) depicted the human side of the hetman, and Mykhailo Kryvenko’s lyrical When the Cossack Went to War (1954) illustrated a folksong about a girl bidding farewell to a young Cossack ⁶¹ The gradual rehabilitation of the Cossacks as part of Ukrainian historical memory led Derehus to rework one of his illustrations to Taras Bulba, the result being the painting Taras at the Head of the Army (1952) The graphic artist Oleksandr Danchenko produced a remarkable and highly acclaimed series of etchings with a title reminiscent of Derehus’s 1946 series, ‘The Ukrainian People’s War ofLiberation (1648-1654) ’ The centrepiece of the series, The Feat of Three Hundred at Berestechko, glorified the heroism of the nation’s great ancestors with an enthusiasm unseen since the war years ⁶²

In early 1954 the industrious Khmelko presented a new variant of his Forever with Moscow and, taking advantage of his position as the party-appointed chair­man of the Artists’ Union, used the tercentenary celebrations to manoeuvre his monumental painting back into the official canon The changes were purely cosmetic dressing some personages in dark clothes instead of gold-embroidered garments, making the colours less bright, and adding an old peasant bard in rags in the foreground Although the revised painting was not praised as the definitive account of the council or nominated for any prizes, the authorities ensured that it was widely exhibited during the celebrations In addition, Khmelko secured publication of the work on postcards, with a print run of 50,000 ⁶³ At the insistence of Central Committee functionaries, a colour reproduction of the painting was included in the History of the Ukrainian SSR, over the objections of the distinguished artist Vasyl Kasnan, who punned that this canvas ‘had not received an appraisal warranting it a place in history [nor in the History] ’⁶⁴

Together with other contemporary histone tl paintings, Khmelko’s work was also displayed at a jubilee exhibition in the State Museum of Ukrainian Art in Kiev The archives preserve the book of visitors’ comments from this exhibition, and, although some entries have been blackened with ink, the remaining remarks shed an interesting light on the popular reception of the historical genre Hidden among numerous ideologically correct notes (many of them signed by officially organized groups of visitors, including schoolchildren and soldiers), one finds the unorthodox opinions of individual spectators In particular, many visitors were disappointed with Khmelko, whose work, in the words of one, ‘looked better on postcards ’ Another anonymous observer noted ‘The more I look at Khmelko, the more I like Velazquez ’ The visitors Koptilov and Koptilova suggested ‘Many paintings depicting Bohdan Khmelnytsky would have benefited if he had been dressed more modestly ’ Another spectator, with an illegible signature, found le Bilostotsky’s bust of the hetman scandalous because the facial features were not those of a great national hero ‘Why, then, all these radio programs'¹ A stupid expression and a weak-willed lower lip The spirit of history is totally absent ’ Several visitors singled out Kryvenko’s lyrical painting, When the Cossack Went to War, as a work into which the author had ‘put his heart ’⁽’⁵

Even more important than some visitors’ independent readings of historical images was the fact that this mammoth exhibition included frescoes from Kievan Rus’, icons from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Cossack portraits, Shevchenko’s historical drawings, as well as pre-revolutionary historical paintings that had previously been deemed ideologically harmful Feodosii Krasytsky s Guest from the Zaporozhian Host (1901, variants 1910 and 1916) andO Murashko’s The Funeral of the Chieftain (1900) By exhibiting these works together with numerous Soviet paintings on subjects from the Ukrainian past, particularly from the Cossack times, the authorities were de facto making an important acknowledgement The display recognized the continuity of Ukraine’s cultural development through the ages, as well as the succession of artistic traditions in the portrayal of the national past Embodied in pre-revolutionary historical paintings, Ukrainian national mythology was now implicitly, if selectively, accepted as part of Soviet Ukrainian historical memory