Pervomaiskyi

There was a second kind of revolutionary enthusiast at the time, one who regretted the use of terror but considered it necessary. Not a hard­ened moral nihilist, this individual resolved to shoulder the burden of history, to carry out history’s dirty work, so that future generations would be absolved from doing so.

Leonid Pervomaiskyi belongs to this category. In this period, he wrote several notorious poems that whipped up anger against the rural popula­tion. “Trypilska trahediia” (Trypillian Tragedy, 1929) describes the death of Komsomol members during a battle with an anti-Bolshevik force near Trypillia in 1919. It refers to the “duped village” and the “Greens” who had cried “glory” as they participated in “frenzied uprisings” against Soviet rule (Pervomaiskyi 1947, 77).

There is an irony in this recollection of the past. In August 1920 during the fight against the Ukrainian peasantry Lenin had passed a handwrit­ten note to Trotsky’s deputy on the Revolutionary War Council, Sklian- skii: “A beautiful plan. Finish it off together with Dzerzhinskyi. Under the guise of ‘Greens’ (we’ll pin it on them later) we shall go forward for 10-20 versts and hang the kulaks, priests and landowners. Bounty: 100,000 roubles for each man hanged” (quoted in Leggett 1981, 168). This plan was calculated to annihilate some of the strongest opponents of Bolshevism on the Polish front, and to blame the atrocities on the “Greens” (village partisan bands) who opposed Soviet rule. Now, in 1929, the same call for terror was again being applied to the countryside, the same language was being revived, and the blame was once more being directed against recalcitrant peasants.

Three years later, during the Holodomor, Pervomaiskyi wrote “lamby” (Iambs, 1933), which focuses on the need for severity in emotion and conduct.

At this time the poet also wrote “Lyst z Kyieva” (Letter from Kyiv, 1933), which is a glorification of the special troops who had been sent into the countryside to put down resistance. It contrasts the village, which is associated with religious feelings and lamentation, and the storm troops of the Osnaz (Special Operations), who are associated with the violent birth of a new system:

When I arrived in Kyiv I was met by spring.

The Autocephalous savior’s lean face was cracking.

The Chekists smiled at me. I saw: their eyes reflected the country’s hum, its division and cleavage. The songs of streetcars thundered. Sparrows chirped. They had bathed to their heart’s content in the milk of spring. And my mood was vernal, an Osnaz mood, because I was preparing for battle and had heard something about treason.

I am not afraid of the complexities and urgencies of life.

I am not afraid of tedious frog-like wailing.

I have only one road. There is no turning back.

I know firmly what I want, and in action act purposefully.

I believe in my country, and have no other,

never did and never will. I am she.

And why do you look at me from your Petliurite foxholes?

We will travel our path in spite of all treachery.

I know your nature—in feeble, farmstead nights

Stolypinites fashioned you with your kurkul women cozy by the stove.

And then you grew up and returned to your dark corners, after completing commercial and agro-veterinary institutes. And then at Trypillia you killed my brothers... But we stuffed your guts with devils all the same!

I saw countless heroes everywhere I went

and you’re not worth a speck of dust from under our strong soles.

I am its soldier in poetry, an ordinary rank-and-filer. And I couldn’t care less that couplet doesn’t rhyme, because my line will inspire Bolshevik boys to fight.

(Ibid., 223-25)

The “lean” and “cracked” face of the “savior” refers to the banned Auto­cephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the icons of Christ. The fact that they are called lean and cracked suggests a refusal to show pity toward a famished population. In a similar way, “frog-like wailing” sug­gests not only contempt for singing during religious services, but a hard­hearted rejection of pleas for pity. History is enlisted in the references to Petliura, the war for independence, and the pre-revolutionary reforms of Stolypin, which were aimed at creating a successful class of independent peasants. The poem attempts to combat the widespread perception that the Bolsheviks were destroying the best farmers, precisely those individu­als that tsarist reforms had tried to support, and who had been the back­bone of Ukrainian state building throughout the period of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the New Economic Policy of 1921-28. It denigrates this successful rural community by associating it with feeble farmsteads, the kurkul, dark corners, village isolation, sleepy comfort, and women. The last is probably an indirect reference to the massive revolts by farm women that took place throughout Ukraine during collectivization. The new Soviet man, on the other hand, is associated with Chekists, Spring, change, purposeful action, marching ranks, Bolshevik youth, revolvers, cogs, heroes, songs, and strength. Osnaz troops were sometimes recruited from the Komsomol and sent to support the GPU, the Committees of Poor Peasants, and the soldiers who were deporting farm families and conducting grain requisitioning.³ This was because GPU leaders were cautious about relying on local law-enforcement during these operation, knowing that there would be widespread resistance, even among local police and party officials (Shearer 2009, 112-113).

Pervomaiskyi wrote “Syn partii” (The Party’s Son, 1933) as a self­justification. It is an autobiographical poem that reveals the mind of someone who supports the party line and the violence it entails. The young party man is part of the “rigidly planned columns” that are “united into one will.”

This will has thrown the columns into battle, into tempering by decisive advances. This will has exploded in the severe wisdom of decrees. Its name is the Communist Party. It led the country and forged paths, and placed its sons on guard, the best ones. It charged them

with watching over the ineffable greatness

of its ideas, of its task—the first time ever!—

of turning the virgin lands, of ploughing over boundaries and destroying savage sentiments—

the thirst for possessions, the thirst for accumulation,

the thirst: give! me! mine! don’t dare!— the thirst to live at another’s expense, on the backs of others!—to live in the swamp of eternal rural idiocy,

divided by the craving for riches:

as long as it’s mine, marked by a boundary, even if it’s a swamp, at least it’s mine! [...]

Stalin’s decree

opened the new decade.

Plow the boundaries and turn the virgin lands!

Combine the maps and tracts of land into boundless indivisible masses.

This youth is faithful to the leader, understanding that he is the party’s “sincere and stern” son:

He knew that he had been given the difficult assignment of overcoming the savage and stupid desire for ownership that had entered deeply into the peasant’s age-old nature, like a sharp shard into an unhealable wound.

He had to graft onto the peasant

the worker’s mind—the mind of the collective.

He knew that his assignment was difficult, but he had long learned never to retreat.

The party had taught him this. It had become

part of his being. It had become the law of struggle and victory.

(Pervomaiskyi 1947, 226-229)

The peasantry is associated with rural idiocy and the cravings for riches and private ownership.

These poems identify the primary enemy as the peasantry, recall a past when this enemy opposed Bolshevik rule, and associate the rural with ancient prejudices, primitive emotions (such as avarice and possessive­ness), savagery, and stupidity. Those throwing farmers off the land, while simultaneously confiscating their grain and food are, on the other hand, associated with military discipline, confidence, willpower, sternness, and a far-sighted party leadership.

After Stalin’s death, Tychyna never expressed repentance for his atti­tude in these years, nor did he produce poetry that approached his earlier brilliance, especially of the post-1917 years. Pervomaiskyi, on the other hand, later showed profound regret for his poems of 1932-34. In the late 1940s, during Stalin’s “anti-cosmopolitan” campaign, he himself became a victim of antisemitic persecution. Hounded as both as a Jew and a Ukrainian writer, he was driven to attempting suicide. In the 1960s and 1970s, he produced his best poetry, which was devoted to love, faith in nature’s wisdom and power of rebirth.