Intellectual Ferment

In 1961 Khrushchev launched a new wave of de-Stalinization that culminated in the removal of the dictator’s tomb from the Kremlin mausoleum. An attack on Stalin was always good news to the Ukrainians.

In Ukraine, the cultural elite, and most notably the writers, renewed their efforts to use de-Stalinization as a means of broadening the limits of creative self-expression. Again they emphasized the great harm that Stalin had inflicted on Ukrainian culture. For example, in 1962 the author Oles Honchar declared that Stalinism did more than shackle creativity: “Another reason why the memories of these days weigh heavily on us is that, at the time, some deep wounds were inflicted on us and our culture by the physical annihilation of a number of gifted artists.”⁴ Writers of the older generation continued to press for the rehabilitation of their persecuted colleagues. Thus, Korniichuk called for the publication of a “Library of the Great 1920s” to popularize the works of Blakytny, Kulish, Kurbas, and other victims of the purges. Others wished to do the same for the victims of Kaganovich in the late 1940s.

But most noteworthy was the emergence of a new generation of writers, critics, and poets, such as Vasyl Symonenko, Lina Kostenko, Ievhen Sverstiuk, Ivan Dziuba, Ivan Drach, Mykola Vinhranovsky, and Dmytro Pavlychko, who demanded a correction of the “errors” committed by Stalin in the past and assurances that their nation’s cultural development would not be stifled in the future. In their view, these goals could best be achieved by emphasizing a “return to the truth.” Impatient with the wavering and inconsistent progress of de-Stalinization, these young writers demanded the end of the party’s meddling in art and literature, the right to experiment with various styles, and the recognition of the central role of the Ukrainian language in education and cultural activity of the republic. By the early 1960s members of this new literary generation, which came to be called the “sixtiers,” rejected not only the interference of party bureaucrats but denounced the hypocrisy, opportunism, and caution of their older colleagues. Rejection of their elders bristled in Vinhranovsky’s short ephithet:

Enough, Enough! I am weary from shame for the apes who learned to speak, slowly, dully, dumbly, presumptuously Who speculated with our age’s name!⁵

The rebelliousness of these talented young people, directed against both party controls and the behavior of their elder colleagues, was clearly pushing far beyond the bounds of liberalization that Khrushchev had established. Moreover, support for this new literary cohort was significant and growing, especially among the young intelligentsia.