Khmelnytskyi in the Literature of Ukrainian Nationalists During the 1930s and 1940s1

Myroslav Shkandrij

Interwar Ukrainian literature frequently portrayed Bohdan Khmelnytskyi in the light of a discourse that argued the importance of force in the modern world. At this time, Ukrainians who lived in Western Ukraine (today’s Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia) and in emigre com­munities throughout Europe emphasized the threat to national survival.

The drift in the 1930s was from the majority creed of the national dem­ocrats, who were primarily represented by the UNDO party (Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance) and the newspaper Dilo (Deed), toward the integral nationalism of the OUN, and finally to the xenophobic version of this nationalism represented by Dontsovism. However, all three currents shared some common features, which are abundantly evident in interwar poetry and fiction: an attraction to strong charac­ters, the ideals of masculine virility and endurance, and a contempt for weakness, cowardice, and indecisiveness. These writings favored certain mythical or metaphorical structures. Typical among them was the depic­tion of national rebirth, or of a character who undergoes a psychological transformation, the image of Ukraine as a new Rome, or of resolute and competent men replacing corrupt and effete leaders. In interwar years, historical fiction was particularly fascinated by the periods of Kyivan Rus and Cossackdom, and it was primarily in these two “golden ages” that nationalist writers found strong protagonists—among whom none was more iconic than Bohdan Khmelnytskyi.

Dmytro Dontsov’s Natsionalizm (Nationalism, 1926) is generally viewed as signaling the arrival of the new, authoritarian current of “integral nationalism” that regarded the nation as an organic whole and demanded the unconditional subordination of the individual to the interests of his or her nation.² However, Dontsov’s text also elevates the will over intel­lect, action over contemplation, and instinct over logic. It rejects what he perceives to be the age’s timid rationalism in favor of faith, desire, and the irrational drive. In this book, Dontsov states:

For a healthy species the willful instinct has no limits. The affirma­tion of the right to life, of the genus’ continuity carries an axiomatic character; it is primary. It [the healthy species] elevates the nation’s eternal, arational right to life above everything temporary, phenom­enal, ephemeral, rational—above the life of a given individual, the blood and death of thousands, the wellbeing of a given generation, abstract mental calculations, “general human” ethics, and intellectu­ally elaborated concepts of good and evil.

(Dontsov 1926, 29)

From this moment on, Dontsov consistently attacked liberalism, democ­racy, and humanism—all of which, in his view, affirmed the primacy of the individual against the collective and state. He, in contrast, champi­oned the rights of the state over the individual.

In Natsionalizm, he expresses support for the cult of the fallen sol­dier who has given his life for “a great idea,” and he laments the lack of great patriotic books that would show not only war’s tragedy, but also its glamor and excitement: “The great crusades of chosen people have led to the creation of mighty monuments to human genius, such as the British Empire, the Europeanization of Africa, the cultivation of India” (ibid., 33-34). Admiration is shown for the settlement of the American West, the Russian conquest of Siberia, the Ukrainian “liberation of the Steppe from nomads,” and the “eternal urge among strong races to extend the

The Cult of Strength 89 boundaries of their dominions” (ibid., 36-37). At the same time, disdain is expressed for the lower classes, who, in Dontsov’s view, fail to under­stand the national imperative.

He recommends ecstatic, passionate, and frenzied forms of expression, a preference for “chaos, uncertainty, the abyss” (ibid., 115); calls for a new, daring writing that embraces myths and legends of struggle; and lauds forms of modernist experimentation such as futurism and expres­sionism. In place of an aesthetics of harmony, balance, and classical restraint, he calls for an expressionist probing of the irrational in the human soul, a “blind dynamism” that he understands to be a mysterious creative principle allied not to the conscious mind, but to instincts and irrational forces (ibid., 161). The literary hero, he writes, should express this willfulness either by imposing himself on the environment, or by rejecting it. On no account should his will be broken; he must perish rather than accept a foreign power over himself. Dontsov advises devel­oping an instinctive desire for conquest, expansion and struggle—signs, for him, of a healthy organism.

In the interwar years, Dontsov increasingly aligned his political and aesthetic views with fascism. The world, he argued, was both imagined and created by strong personalities. In his introduction to Mykhailo Ostroverkha’s book on Benito Mussolini, published by the Vistnyk library in 1934, he lauded the Italian dictator’s concept of creative “lead­ership” over the amorphous mass (Ostroverkha 1934, 4). In Patriotyzm (Patriotism, 1936) he wrote admiringly of the transformation of Japan within two generations, and the raising of fascist Italy from a plebeian to a master nation by a fascist-inspired spiritual and psychological transfor­mation. Naturally, Khmelnytskyi became for him a symbol of the kind of strong ruler he admired.

Although Dontsov’s support for irrationality and his cult of dictators clashed with the Galician habits of patient community building (as repre­sented by the dominant national democratic current), his views were also criticized by figures in the emigre leadership of the OUN. Nonetheless, he found substantial support among Galician youth, where, according to one account, Natsionalizm was debated by Lviv’s students for months (Martynets 1949, 286). Many of these young readers were inspired by the challenge to exercise their will and to treat passivity and cowardice with contempt. Others, however, rejected Dontsov’s amorality and argued for an ethical politics based on love of nation. Although they recognized him as their “spiritual father” and his Natsionalizm as their “gospel,” they recoiled from the cult of negativity, the promotion of motiveless self­assertion, and the disdain for Ukrainian history (Rebet 1974, 492).

Interwar literature in Western Ukraine and the emigration might there­fore be seen as a force field in which three kinds of nationalism—the democratic, authoritarian, and Dontsovian—struggled for dominance. Writers were caught in this force field; as their views evolved, they found

themselves negotiating between the currents, and sometimes shifting positions.

Take, for example, the writings of Yurii Lypa. His Kozaky v Moskovii: Roman z XVII-ho Stolittia (Cossacks in Muscovy: A Novel Set in the XVII Century, 1934) at first glance appears to be aligned with Dontso- vism. However, a closer look at this novel in the light of Lypa’s views reveals a fundamental disagreement with Dontsov. Lypa was, in fact, one of Dontsov’s competitors for intellectual leadership of the nationalist movement and even attempted to establish publications that would chal­lenge Dontsov’s Vistnyk (Herald).

Kozaky v Moskovii describes the adventures of an enterprising group of Cossacks who visit Muscovy during Khmelnytskyi’s reign. Their knightly ethos is contrasted with tsarism’s brutality and xenophobia. Lypa demon­strates that Latin was not only part of the elite culture of Kyiv at the time but penetrated the world of ordinary Cossacks and produced what he calls elsewhere “a fusion of the Rus and Roman spirit” (Lypa 1997, 114). The author had an expert knowledge of the Cossack state’s literary lan­guage with its strong admixture of Latin terms, and used this language in this novel to popularize archaic or seldom-used words and phrases. This was not a form of embellishment or ornamentation (his writing is laconic and direct), but an attempt at giving “authenticity” to his recreation of the past. Malaniuk dubbed the book “the discovery of an entire epoch in the historical-linguistic process” (Malaniuk 2009, 622).

Eventually, the travelers gratefully return to Ukraine, where individual and collective liberties are valued. In the final scene, which takes place in 1650, the group witnesses Khmelnytskyi holding court. He is at the height of his power and is enveloped in an aura of majesty. Many of the szlachta (gentry) have come over to his side. He has renewed his alliance with the Sultan of Turkey, and his rule appears impregnable. Khmelnytskyi is repeatedly described as “a Great Prince, Ucrainae Rex, God’s gift!” One protagonist calls him “a great horseman” with a firm hand under whom the land “trembles like a horse, and dances, and proudly bears the lord Bohdan.” He says: “I see a prince of our glory, ambitions, and knightly deeds—and I will not raise my hand against him” (Lypa 1934, 216).

It also offers an “ecstatic” moment. An old Zaporozhian turns to Khmelnytskyi and asks him to lead the people as a “Dux et Praefectus” and a hereditary ruler. All listeners are deeply moved during the ensuing church service to God’s glory and the “emperor of the great Rus,” the “great Caesar” (ibid., 232). As he listens, one of the Cossack group, Hry- horii, falls in an ecstatic fit, then rises, sensing immediately that at that

The Cult of Strength 91 moment, all bitterness has left him. Transformed, he swells with patriotic pride, and instantly feels an enormous power entering his breast. As the “Caesar of Ukraine” faces him at the front of the church, Hryhorii has a vision of an enormous Cossack lion with its head above the clouds. It roars and stretches its “iron paw over its rich land” (ibid., 234). The image symbolizes a powerful country unified under monarchical rule; it is meant to reassure readers that their national identity is strong and capable of dealing with any threat from the north.

The narrative might be interpreted as adhering to Dontsov’s prescrip­tions for literature. However, Lypa’s myths and legends of struggle were not the same as Dontsov’s. Whereas Dontsov had by the thirties become an unashamed admirer of both Mussolini and Hitler, Lypa explicitly rejected “myths of the German type,” by which he meant Nazi racism (Lypa 1953, 184). In order to survive what he perceived to be the threat from Nazi Germany, he urged Ukrainians to develop their own sense of mission and rely on their own stock of myths. His works attempt to pro­vide the required national mythology and sense of historical mission. In his best-known historical-political tract, Pryznachennia Ukrainy (Destiny of Ukraine, 1938), he suggests that in the future, alongside the Anglo- Saxon, Roman, and Germanic, a fourth great “race” will arise in Europe, “the Pontic Ukrainian” (ibid., 300). The term race is used to describe a political, not a biological, identity. It represents a method of thinking and feeling, an attachment to a collective past. “Race,” he says, “is a great spiritual community in the moral and emotional dimension” (ibid., 125). Lypa believed that Ukrainians were able to recover from oppressive rule because they shared core values and a resilient psychology. He also felt that there was wisdom in the passive resistance of common people; it was based on a confidence that they would outlive invaders. Dontsov, of course, had no such faith in the masses.

Lypa interpreted the myth of Japheth, who is mentioned in the Book of Genesis, as Cossackdom’s myth of origins. This myth had been used in Inokentii Gisel’s seventeenth-century Synopsis and can be seen as the ideological justification for Cossack expansionism. Gisel portrayed the Cossack elite as descendants of Japheth and inheritors of a great military tradition. Lypa also focused on another myth of origins, one that dates back to the earliest days of Christianity in Ukraine and is recorded in the first written chronicles produced in Rus. This is the story of St. Andrew planting a cross on the hills of Kyiv and prophesying that a great city would arise there. In Lypa’s interpretation, it is a demonstration of the desire felt by the people, even in the age of Kyivan Rus, “to have their own dialogue with God,” to possess “a mystery for their race alone” and a church that could spread unity and love among the people (ibid., 294, 298). Lypa counterposes this kind of positive myth to Dontsov’s stress on the passivity of the Ukrainian masses. Dontsov’s Natsionalizm (National­ism, 1926), he says, offers no deeper synthesis of Ukrainian thought. Like

Bolshevism, it is driven by hatred and a need to bring about “the race’s internal destruction” (ibid., 259). According to Lypa, Dontsov is unable to play a constructive role because he fails to understand that the Ukrai­nian people have their own historical character. The Vistnyk editor sees them as a hybrid species, a mixture of Polish and Muscovite elements, a bastard nation—and therefore he wants to sever himself from their ancestral traditions, which he finds “defeatist” (ibid., 278). The problem, argues Lypa, is that Dontsov is incapable of treating Ukraine as a devel­oping historical organism. He can only envisage driving the population to political action through a series of forced marches.

In his Ukrainska doba (The Ukrainian Age, 1936), Lypa criticized Dontsov for both his hatred of foreigners and his contempt for Ukrainian traditions. Dontsov responded by declaring sarcastically that a “loving heart” had placed Lypa in the enemy camp (Dontsov 1936, 384). Accord­ing to Dontsov, the age demanded “the sharp sword of criticism, so that the rotten might be severed from the healthy, the old from the new, the puny from the strong” (ibid., 358).

Lypa’s most extensive critique of Dontsovism is in his Pryznachannia Ukrainy, in which the masses are praised for their stolid resistance to Bol­shevism during the struggle for independence in the years 1917-20. Lypa was, on the whole, favorably disposed toward spontaneous revolts and had an optimistic faith in the population’s capacity for self-organization, whereas Vistnyk writers like Olena Teliha, Oleh Olzhych, and Yevhen Malaniuk felt strongly that anarchy, individualism, and political immatu­rity had been the bane of Ukraine’s history.

Moreover, the Ukrainian masses, in Lypa’s view, had always exhibited a remarkably strong sense of belonging to a collective and over the centuries had demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for self-organization. Like the Jews, they had maintained a sense of their enduring presence in this world and an awareness of their distinctive, deeply rooted identity. The people’s moral conservatism and faith in its myths were cause for optimism. Moral conservatism, according to Lypa, was a good thing insofar as it strength­ened resistance to the inhuman social experimentation of both Nazis and Bolsheviks. A Vistnyk writer once lamented that “Ukrainians have no inclination for Baltic or Ural mysticism, and it is not easy to ‘shift them from their place’” (Lypa 1953, 197). Lypa, on the other hand, viewed this immovability as a strength. He insisted that the “Nietzschean bombast” of Malaniuk and Teliha, and the desire to discredit the past in favor of the present, had proven ineffective (ibid., 21, 242). From this perspective, the Cossack group in his novel Kozaky v Moskovii can be seen as embodying the message of inborn group solidarity and resilience. They exhibit a strong group spirit, rely on their different talents to get them through adventures, and instinctively recoil from the despotic traditions of Muscovy.

The Cossack group also demonstrates the opposition to regimentation that, in Lypa’s view, had always been the Ukrainian strength. Popular

The Cult of Strength 93 solidarity had expressed itself in economic organizations (such as coop­eratives, and the chumak trading convoys), in education (the Prosvita society, Cossack brotherhoods), and in the military. In Pryznachennia Ukrainy, Lypa contrasts this spirit with the approach of Vistnyk writers, whose “frenzied intolerance toward others shows how far they are from understanding real individualism” (ibid., 188).

Unlike Dontsov, he does not dismiss the many nineteenth-century intel­lectuals who devoted themselves to nation building, a process he describes as guided by an “antlike” instinct of construction that was stubborn and admirable (ibid., 211). Accordingly, the socialists, in his view, should not simply be blamed for the defeat of 1917-20, but praised for the struggle they put up: “Many who died for Ukrainian socialism were strong char­acters who can only be treated with respect.” Moreover, he reminds read­ers that socialist and collectivist myths have played a role in Christianity and the humanist renaissance. It was the “perversity of Marxism” that injected class hatred into these myths (ibid., 257-58). With these con­siderations in mind, the images of Khmelnytskyi and the lion in the final pages of Kozaky should be seen not as a simple capitulation to authori­tarianism, but rather as an expression of faith in a collective identity.

Yurii Kosach is another important historical novelist of this period. His fiction also presents a critique of Dontsovism by expressing profound concern with authoritarian rule and unbridled violence. During the thir­ties, he celebrated the man of action, but his Rubikon Khmelnytskoho (Khmelnytskyhs Rubicon, begun in 1936 and published in 1943), which reconstructs the atmosphere of a past age and shows the birth of a “hero­leader” (heroi-vozhd), is an ambiguous portrait of Khmelnytskyi (Kosach 1943, 4). Based on a reading of French, German, and other sources, the novel is set in the year 1646, during which Khmelnytskyi’s Cossacks fought in Flanders on the side of the French against the Spanish. The location is Danzig (Gdansk), where they arrive after winning a victory at Dunkirk, and where they rest before returning to Ukraine. This city of political intrigues is a crossroads of “empires and kingdoms” (ibid., 21). It is clear that another conflict is brewing among the great powers, one in which Ukraine will play a major role. Khmelnytskyi has consciously developed his Cossacks into one of the best fighting forces in Europe; they have learned from Beauplan’s engineering techniques and have been hardened through fighting in European wars. Khmelnytskyi himself has won a reputation as “one of the best warriors of the century” (ibid., 43) and is described by Beauplan as “the most dangerous man in the East” (ibid., 78). Cardinal Mazarin hopes that he will play a role in the Euro­pean coalition that is being organized. Poland, however, has thus far pre­vented the appearance of a “Cossack Caesar” on the territory of Ukraine (ibid., 48).

Khmelnytskyi’s virtues are apparent to all who meet him. He is a consummate diplomat, who knows how to talk to kings and generals;

an excellent judge of people, who is able to gather talented individuals around himself; and a man of great foresight. He has used the Flanders campaign to train his troops in modern warfare. The young men who had until then known only brigandage in the Steppe have now been hardened in combat. More than one coward and deserter has been exe­cuted. Ammunition makers, sappers, and engineers have been educated. Khmelnytskyi realizes that he can raise the chern (rabble) in the Steppe, instantly creating an army of 150,000. However, he is aware that he needs qualifed engineers, cavalry officers, and cannon makers. The West­ern diplomats realize that he is a remarkable personality with a burning thirst for action, and they indicate to him that “war, a holy war” will break the chains that hold Ukraine in bondage and present it with an outlet to the Black Sea and the West (ibid., 67). The scene is therefore set for a cooperation of West and East in a revolution that will liberate Ukraine.

Khmelnytskyi loves the Polish king, who has, unfortunately, fallen under the control of magnate princes and whose spirit has been broken by them. With this awareness, Khmelnytskyi makes the decision to “cross the Rubicon,” to declare himself Ukraine’s ruler and throw off the Pol­ish overlords. He reads Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War, then returns to Ukraine with his powerful legion, metaphorically crossing the river on the other side of which lies power and glory (ibid., 125). His Western ally, Achilles, encourages him, whispering that the time has come for his land’s rebirth: “I believe in this in the same way as you believe in your country, captain, because you suffer for it, torture yourself for it. There is a ruler, who will show Germany the path to glory.” When he asks who this is, Khmelnytskyi receives the reply: “Friedrich Wilhelm, the Elector of Brandenburg” (ibid., 135).

The novel’s narrator reminds the reader that the state-building Goths once passed through what is today Ukraine. Since then, Gothic hard­ness has “dissolved itself in Scythian softness, in quicksands.” Once in a thousand years, however, the warrior Goth awakens. After he removes “the blindness from his eyes, throwing off his sleepiness and laziness, he looks into the distance like a Steppe pirate, a builder of the future” (ibid., 170). Khmelnytskyi is clearly such a reborn Goth. He is repeatedly called the new Caesar of the East, and is compared to Attila, Tamer­lane, and Genghis Khan (ibid., 263). The Western observers believe that not only a new leader, but a new people, have appeared in the place of the former slaves who populated Ukraine (ibid., 264). Achilles, the Ger­man soldier and diplomat, realizes that his own country is growing in strength but still needs Khmelnytskyi as an ally in order to hold in check the ambitions of France, Sweden, and Poland (ibid., 243). The East, says Achilles, “is our New World, our America,” and there will be no peace on German lands “until the gates of the East are opened to the German

The Cult of Strength 95 soldier, merchant and artisan” (ibid., 228). In his estimation, the people of Roxolania (Ukraine) can become the legions of a Third Rome, since they have already produced the kind of man who only appears once in 300 years (ibid., 237).

It is more than tempting, of course, to read into this text a commentary on the situation that existed at the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, and a reflection of the temptation offered to some Ukrainian nationalists on the eve of Operation Barbarossa. Kosach indicates that the book was completed in 1941-42, although it appeared in 1943 during the Ger­man occupation of Ukraine. The characters are, however, ambiguous. Although richly suggestive of the dilemmas of the time, the book eludes an allegorical reading. It is, however, illustrative of the fascination with strong personalities and forceful leaders.

In the 1930s, Kosach, like Lypa, wrote for periodicals that challenged Vistnyk. His postwar works are violently anti-Dontsovian. In particular, his Enei i zhyttia inshykh (Aeneas and the Life of Others, 1946), Diistvo pro Iuriia Peremozhtsia (A Play About Yurii the Conqueror, 1947), and Den Hnivu: Povist pro 1648 rik (Day of Anger: A Novel About 1648, 1947-48) represent explicit challenges to authoritarian ideologies, and Dontsovism in particular. The structure of characterization in the first two novels implies a rejection of all fanaticism and tendentiousness, and especially of the megalomaniac or mad leader. The first book, according to Yurii Sherekh, played a programmatic role in the attack by postwar Ukrainian writers on the Vistnyk ideology. In his 1952 essay “Proshchan- nia z uchora” (Goodbye to Yesterday, 1952) Sherekh interprets the novel as a rejection of wartime violence with all its “bestiality and Machiavel­lianism” (Sherekh 2003, 220).

In fact, many writers of historical fiction challenged Dontsovian ideas in the interwar years. Semen Ordivskyi, whose real name was Hryhorii Luzhnytskyi, was a founding member of Logos, an organization of Ukrai­nian Catholic writers centered in Lviv. In the twenties, he studied in Graal and Prague and became editor of the Lviv journal Postup (Progress, 1921­31), which popularized the works of Catholic writers from around the world. His novels were aimed at younger readers and highlight the need for civic-minded figures committed to state building.³ These works contain a defense of Ukraine’s right to an independent existence and depict Mus­covy’s encroachments upon Cossack rights. However, the chern (rabble) is described as an anarchic, destructive force that is often motivated by greed, personal gain, and jealousy of riches and privileges. Its communist­sounding rhetoric is only a cover for the desire to plunder. The reader is led to understand that Ukraine needs a ruling class—one that understands the importance of state government. In Sribnyi cherep: Istorychna povist (Silver Scull: A Historical Novel, 1938/1942), Khmelnytskyi, it is said, should immediately have created a “leading strata.” Without such an elite,

the chern is easily bought and manipulated by external powers. At the end of the book, one protagonist makes the message clear:

I am not saying that the chern is everything worst, basest, that it is exclusively a destructive force. No, it has its good sides, especially when it has reins, when it is guided properly, in the manner of the late hetman Bohdan. But I condemn the chern for its disobedience, revolt, desire for power, mutual contempt, lack of faith in its own................................................................................................. These

are the characteristics of the chern and I see that it will for a long time be the cause of our fatherland’s downfall.

(Ordivskyi 1942, 120)

This sentiment is not so much an expression of support for autocratic or authoritarian rule as a fear of disorder. A stable social order would in fact lessen the need for a charismatic ruler. The portrayal in this novel of a weak Khmelnytskyi at the end of his life, and of rising internal strife, conveys a craving for stability. Its message clashes with the Vistnykite apotheosis of headstrong conquistadores sweeping all before them. Ordi- vskyi’s work therefore represents a form of Catholic conservatism rather than authoritarianism or integral nationalism. It is more aligned with the national democratic current.

A similar fear of the chern and its proclivity for violence is expressed in Panas Fedenko’s 1942 Homonila Ukraina... Epopeia z doby Bohdana Khmelnytskoho (Ukraine Made Noise: An Epic from the Era of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi), which shows Khmelnytskyi being challenged by Kryvo- nis, his chief lieutenant and the man who goes against orders by raising the chern.⁴ As in Ordivskyi’s narrative, this does not represent a defense of authoritarianism, but rather a fear of the amoral instincts that Dontsov had celebrated. Fedenko was a member of the Ukrainian Social Demo­cratic Workers Party (USDRP). In the years 1917-18 he served in the Ukrainian Central Rada and then emigrated to Prague. After the Second World War, he moved to Munich and headed the USDRP, which was renamed the Ukrainian Socialist Party.

Harsh attitudes and the cult of martial virtues were widespread at the time. It is important to recall that they also dominated Soviet his­torical fiction. Soviet novels produced in the years 1939-41 express a particularly violent attitude toward Poles, Catholics, and Uniates. Yakiv Kachura’s Ivan Bohun (1940) and Ivan Le’s Severyn Nalyvaiko (1940) can serve as examples. At this time, the Soviet Union, after allying itself with Germany, had partitioned the Polish state in accordance with the Hitler-Stalin pact. Tens of thousands of Poles were arrested and exiled in the newly acquired territory of Galicia, along with thousands of Ukrai­nians. The novels were written in part to whip up anti-Polish feelings.⁵ They stress the personal charisma, military prowess, and diplomatic skills of Khmelnytskyi. However, whereas novels produced outside the

The Cult of Strength 97 Soviet Union treat Muscovy as an enemy of Ukraine’s state aspirations, those written in Soviet Ukraine suggest that help “from the North” can be relied on—that it is in fact required for the Ukrainian state’s protec­tion and stability. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, the Western Ukrai­nian and emigre “nationalist” writers are less motivated by animosity toward Poles than these Soviet authors. They differ from their Soviet counterparts most obviously in the focus on statehood. Khmelnytskyi, in the interpretation of “nationalist” writers, is focused on building a state, whereas the Soviet texts present him as motivated by anger at injustices committed against the people. However, whether written from a Soviet or anti-Soviet perspective, the novels of the 1930s and 1940s share an obsession with courage and strength, and a belief that willpower can bring about political change.

This focus on “masculine virtues” reflects the tenor of the time. For example, futurist writings on both the left and right of the political spec­trum admired primitive energy and virility, and expressed a fascination with violence. Jack London and Rudyard Kipling were popular in the interwar years; D. H. Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway wrote their own versions of masculinity into literature; and popular cinema enjoyed its romance with the feral child Tarzan, and with cowboys and pirates who provided a seemingly endless supply of athletic action heroes. Meanwhile in Soviet Ukraine, authors such as Yurii Yanovskyi, Oleksa Vlyzko and Arkadii Liubchenko produced narratives of the strong hero, and a liter­ary current that represented militant Bolshevism glorified men of steel: unbreakable Chekists and hardened party leaders. The nationalist por­trayals of Khmelnytskyi are part of this cult of strength; they employ much of the same imagery but also incorporate the contemporary dis­course around authoritarianism, popular revolution, and statehood.

Notes

1. Originally published in Myroslav Shkandrij, “The Cult of Strength: Khmel­nytskyi in the Literature of Ukrainian Nationalists During the 1930s and 1940s,” in Stories of Bohdan Khmelnytsky: Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack Uprising, edited by Amelia M. Glaser (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), 153-168. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

2. For a recent discussion of Ukrainian integral nationalism, see Zaitsev (2013).

3. Ordivskyi’s novels are Chorna ihumenia: Istorychna povist z XVII st. (The Black Abbess: A Historical Novel of the XVII century, 1939), Sribnyi cherep: Istorychna povist (Silver Scull: A Historical Novel, 1938, 1942) and Bahri- anyi khrest: Istorychna povist iz 1657 roku (Red Cross: A Historical Novel of 1657, 1941).

4. In the novel, although Khmelnytskyi wins the three key victories, it is Kryvonis who sacks towns and slaughters the Poles and Jews. Khmelnytskyi says he does not believe in the chern, but only in a disciplined army that is ready to fight in winter and in summer. In the end, however, he forgives the insubordi­nation of Kryvonis.

5. Ivan Le’s book was published by the Politvydav (Political Publishers) of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, with per­mission to proceed granted on 23 November 1940. It not only contains blood­thirsty scenes (members of the Polish szlachta are decapitated and their heads displayed on stakes), but the popular uprising is portrayed as justified by the cruelty of Polish oppression, and the role of Ukrainian priests is denounced, as are attempts to negotiate with the Poles.

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