In the House of History

In early 1950 Ukrainian authorities turned their attention to the sites where ordinary citizens encountered the past the republic’s museums The government decreed a total audit of all existing museums and an ideological revision of their expositions, which were henceforth to be approved by special commissions The edict expected historical museums to ‘display the heroic history of the Ukrainian people in connection with the history of the great Russian people and other fraternal peoples of the USSR ’ It instructed Western Ukrainian museums to ‘stress the common origins and historical unity of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian peoples’ and required that all historical museums open separate sections devoted to the Soviet period The document specifically demanded the construction of a museum in Poltava commemorating the Russian victory over the Swedish army and the ‘traitor’ Hetman Mazepa in 1709 ²⁷

In June lakiv Sirchenko, the head of the Committee on Cultural and Educa­tional Institutions, reported to Nazarenko on the measures that the museums had taken in response to the decree Although the minister prepared this memo to show how the decree had changed the work of the museums, his report unwit­tingly portrayed the field in a state of total disarray Museums reported on whatever they had accomplished recently rather than on how they had imple­mented the official directive The Dnipropetrovsk Historical Museum described the development of its section on the Zaporozhian Host ‘and its importance for the Ukrainian people’s struggle for liberation ’ The Lviv Historical Museum boasted of its new archaeological section, which ‘proved that the Slavs were autochthonous settlers of Western Ukrainian lands ’ Although the Dnipropetrovsk museum planned on creating a separate Soviet history section, its Lviv counterpart did not even have a display on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Moreover, the KP(b)U Central Committee inspectors found that the materials on the earlier times neither uncovered the reactionary role of the Uniate Church nor highlighted the region’s historical ties with Russia The republic’s ideologues focused their attention on the shortcomings of museum work in Western Ukraine, although museums in the East also were not reporting impressive achievements The only breakthrough seemed to be the accelerated construction of the Museum of the Battle at Poltava ²⁸

What is more, the 1950 decree and subsequent reports neglected to mention a disturbing fact looming large in archival correspondence In mid-1950 the Central Committee apparatus presented to First Secretary Melnikov statistical data on museum attendance showing that the Kievan Caves Monastery was the most popular historical museum in Ukraine In 1949 it registered 110,700 visitors, compared with 73,100 at the Shevchenko Museum in Kiev and 70,200 at the new Museum of the Defence of Odessa During the first ten months of 1950 the Caves Monastery reported 137,000 visitors, compared with 80,000 at the Shevchenko Museum and 49,835 at the State Historical Museum m Kiev, which ranked third that year ²⁹

The Kievan Caves Monastery was more than simply a cluster of museums or a ‘historical-cultural preserve ’ Occupying a picturesque site in a park high up in the Dnieper hills, the golden-domed churches of this eleventh century monastery represented a vivid material link to Kievan Rus', whose first known chronicler, artist, and doctor were monks in the Kievan Caves The monastery’s many other monuments attested to the vitality of Ukrainian early modern culture, particularly the development of printing and higher learning For centuries, the Kievan Caves Monastery, with its relics and tombs of the holy hermits, had served as one of the most popular places of pilgrimage in the Russian Empire Soviet authorities used its buildings to house the museums of Historical Treasures (primarily church antiquities provided with materialistic interpretations), of the Book and Book Printing, of the Theatre, of the Ukrainian Decorative Folk Arts, and others

Visitors, however, were attracted primarily to the historical site itself Some complained that none of the museums featured a coherent display on the history of the Kievan Caves Monastery, others regretted the absence of postcards with views of the monastery’s golden domes ³⁰ To complicate matters further, the wartime rapprochement between the Soviet state and the Orthodox Church had enabled a small community of monks to return to the Kievan Caves Purely religious pilgrimages resumed as well, to the consternation of Ukrainian ideo­logues In one curious episode, in 1952 a rumour spreading among pilgrims put the KP(b)U Central Committee on alert The monks allegedly were telling visitors that the hermit Archbishop Antonn, who was buried at the entrance to the Near Caves, had been Comrade Stalin’s teacher at the Gon Church Seminary and until the end of his life had corresponded with the Soviet leader ³¹ Public interest in the Kievan Caves forced Ukrainian functionaries to pay special attention to this museum complex, which was, ideologically, not high on their list of priorities The official correspondence of the time shows considerable concern about the mainte­nance and renovation of the Kievan Caves Historical-Cultural Preserve ³²

Ukrainian authorities realized that, as a historical site, the Kievan Caves Monas­tery embodied Kiev’s past religious glory and that visitors were motivated by this ‘holy city’s’ traditional place in Ukrainian and Russian historical memory.

Triggered by Pravda’s editorial ‘Against Ideological Distortions in Literature’ in July 1951, the ideological purge of Ukrainian culture did not affect the museums until the late autumn. On 13 September Pravda’s Lviv correspondent M. Odinets initiated the critique with his article ‘What Do Lviv’s Museums Popularize?’ The authoritative newspaper’s envoy announced that the Lviv Historical Museum had indulged in undue glorification of princes, lords, sultans, Cossack colonels, and bishops. Most disturbing, the display on Kievan Rus' featured an unidentified twelfth-century princely skull on a stand with a glass case. In general, the exposi­tion allegedly downplayed major themes such as class struggle and the Ukrainian people’s efforts to reunite with their Russian brethren. The Lviv State Museum of Ukrainian Art emphasized the old Ukrainian artistic tradition over the achieve­ments of the Soviet period. The Lviv Art Gallery featured an impressive collection of Polish, German, Austrian, Italian, and Dutch paintings ‘in splendid frames,’ but a mere thirty-two works out of five hundred represented the Russian nineteenth­century classics. Worse, the gallery had no more than a dozen Soviet paintings.³⁵

The Pravda article resulted in heightened attention being paid to Ukrainian museums in the latter phase of the ideological purge during October and Novem­ber 1951. On 15 November the KP(b)U Central Committee decreed that muse­ums improve their portrayal of the friendship of peoples, class struggle, and Soviet achievements. Kiev party authorities reacted by firing several employees at the State Historical Museum who had remained in the city under Nazi occupation, had been POWs, or had relatives in the Gulag. The Kherson provincial committee requested that the local historical museum create a display on the ancient Slavs, add more materials on the union with Russia, and drastically improve the display on Soviet history.

It is not surprising that Ukrainian ideologues paid special attention to the errors of the Lviv museums. At the November 1951 plenary meeting of the Central Committee, Sirchenko stated that ‘it would not be enough to merely put away the princely skull and the lords’ portraits,’ and that the Lviv Historical Museum needed a radical review of its entire exposition.³⁷ The museum did not close its doors, receiving more than 55,000 visitors during 1951. At the same time, its staff proceeded to create a new exhibition on prehistoric times, to dismantle a display on Greek and Scythian cities along the Black Sea coast, and to prepare a new exhibition on Kievan Rus’. Given the Pravda critique, the museum submitted the new plan of its Kievan Rus’ section to the KP(b)U Central Committee for approval. The museum’s staff also revised the display on the early modern period to highlight cultural ties with Muscovy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centu­ries and started working on exhibitions devoted to the periods of Capitalism and Socialism. However, these displays were not ready until late in 1954.³⁸

Before historians at the Lviv Historical Museums began preparing new displays, the local functionaries had ‘removed documents and exhibits distorting the history of the Ukrainian people, as well as reviewed the whole exposition and cleared rubbish (khlam) from it.’³⁹ During 1952 the authorities continued a similar purge of expositions in other Ukrainian museums under the guise of ‘removing exhibits without historical value.’ These included artefacts that did not fit into the Soviet version of Ukrainian historical memory. For instance, the regional historical museum in Poltava destroyed the engravings of Hetman Mazepa, photos of Ukrainian icons, and portraits of nineteenth-century ‘nationalists’ such as Kulish and Pavlo Chubynsky.

In a case typical for the Western provinces, in February 1952 Rivne party bureaucrats reviewed the exposition of the local historical museum. They criticized the pre-Soviet painting Pope Innocent III in 1206Asks Prince Roman ofHalych to Accept Catholicism as reflecting the influence of Polish bourgeois historical con­cepts, complete with ‘diminishing Russia’s historic role.’ The museum did not sufficiently highlight the emergence of Moscow, paid too much attention to the 1569 union between Poland and Lithuania, and did not show Shevchenko’s ties to Russian revolutionary democrats. Following the audit, museum workers set about correcting the exposition.⁴¹

By March 1952 major historical museums in Kiev, Kharkiv, and Chernivtsi reported the completion of their revisions, while others were still restructuring their displays. In July the KP(b)U Central Committee reiterated the same direc­tives in another decree on museums and in 1953 ordered one more survey of the museums’ compliance.⁴²

At least in some cases, the party’s ideological regimentation of Ukrainian museums led to ambiguous results. Before the campaigns of the early 1950s the State Museum of Ukrainian Art in Kiev had no exhibition on Kievan Rus', the exposition began with sixteenth-century Ukrainian folk art and icons The State Museum of Russian Art in Kiev, however, boasted a collection of ancient Kievan icons, including the famous thirteenth-century image of Saints Borys and Hhb ⁴³ In early 1951 the Museum of Ukrainian Art closed its doors for renovations and exposition restructuring aimed at demonstrating the ‘beneficial influence’ of Russian art In practice, this reorganization resulted in an imposing display of ancient Kievan art as part of the Ukrainian cultural heritage The authorities transferred numerous ceramic bowls and jewellery to the museum from the Archaeological Museum as well as bas-relief carvings of Samson and Delilah from the Kievan Caves Monastery While reviewing the new exposition in 1952, the government commission’s members recommended ‘collecting more Kievan Rus art ’ The press also suggested building up the Kievan Rus' section ⁴⁴

The artist Mykhailo Derehus, who was known for his work on the Cossack epoch and who had just assumed the museum’s directorship, proposed that the portrait of the Russian imperial bureaucrat Prince Dolgorukn, painted in the characteristic Cossack style of the early eighteenth century, be removed from the exhibition because it was ‘not of significant interest ’ The commission members supported Derehus’s suggestion to display a ‘unique’ portrait of the Cossack nobleman Myklashevsky in its stead First Secretary Melnikov himself demanded the inclusion of more ‘Ukrainian classical painting ’⁴⁵ As a result of such restruc­turing, the new exposition claimed the art of Kievan Rus for Ukrainian historical memory and boosted national pride by presenting a comprehensive display of Ukrainian artistic accomplishments during the Cossack period and the age of national revival

The republic’s authorities never seemed satisfied with the role of memorial museums devoted to the Ukrainian classical writers On the one hand, the Stalinist notion of nationhood included the commemoration of the creators of national culture On the other, during the post-war decade Ukrainian ideologues felt the need to modify the solemnization of the Ukrainian heritage by stressing both historical Russian guidance and the resulting Soviet present In 1952 the Commit­tee on Cultural and Educational Institutions reported to the Ukrainian party leadership that the ongoing restructuring of expositions in literary memorial museums was ‘directed at portraying more profoundly the ideological content of a writer’s works, a writer’s role in the development of progressive Ukrainian litera­ture, [a writer’s] struggle for the social and national liberation of the Ukrainian people, working for the friendship with the great Russian people and against the enemies of the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists ’⁴⁶ The question remained whether this interpretation would sufficiently modify the pri maty symbolic role of classical writers as the great builders of the national culture.

Kotliarevsky, who was the first to write literary works in the peasant vernacular, could not be cast as a ‘revolutionary of any kind, but in 1950 the authorities opened a museum in his Poltava house Second Secretary Kyrychenko deemed it appropriate to pay homage to the museum during his visit to the city in January 19 5 3 ⁴⁷ Shevchenko, Franko, and Lesia Ukrainka could, with varying degrees of success, be presented as revolutionaries and friends of Russia, but many of their mentors and comrades-in-arms were nationalists ’ Although plans existed to open a Lesia Ukrainka Museum in Kiev, the governments lack of financing did not allow for this during the post-war decade The Franko Museum in Lviv had been in operation since 1946, and during the museum audit of early 1950 it successfully revised its exposition ‘in the spirit of Soviet literary scholarship ’ In contrast, the local ideologues deemed the display in a small memorial museum in Frankos native village ‘unacceptable ’ After extensive renovations and restructuring of the exposition, the museum reopened its doors in 1951 ⁴⁸

In addition to the museums in Shevchenko’s native village, the poet’s tomb in Kaniv, and his house in Kiev, the State Shevchenko Museum was solemnly opened in the capital in April 1949 As noted earlier, it soon became the second most attended historical museum in the republic after the Kievan Caves Monastery Between 1949 and 1954 more than 542,000 people visited the museum⁴⁹ Ukrainian ideologues, meanwhile, were constantly concerned that Shevchenko be properly represented in the museum’s exposition In 1953 the Central Committee apparatus did not allow the museum to commission a painting entitled TH Shevchenko among the Members of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood because such a canvas would inevitably have portrayed the ‘nationalists’ Kuhsh and Kostomarov as the great poet’s comrades-in-arms ⁵⁰ After all the ideological audits of the early 1950s, the KP(b)U Central Committee concluded in 1954 that the museum’s presentation of Shevchenko as revolutionary and its depiction of his ties with Russia were not ‘sufficient ’⁵¹

Mindful of the forthcoming tercentenary of the 1654 union with Russia, Ukrainian functionaries and museum workers became obsessed with exhibitions on the Early Modern period During 1952—3, the republic’s museums acquired and put on display hundreds of exhibits pertaming to the Cossack period The new expositions ostensibly highlighted the friendship of peoples and the Ukrainians’ desire to unite with their Russian brethren, but they also restored the Cossack glory, somewhat suppressed after the campaigns of 1947 and 1951, to its previous place in official national memory The Kiev Historical Museum bought three original decrees by Khmelnytsky The Chernihiv museum displayed its rich collection of Cossack artefacts, including Khmelnytsky’s sabre, numerous histori­cal documents, and authentic Cossack clothing and arms The government up­graded the status of the Pereiaslav-Khmelnytsky regional museum to republican and provided it with spare Cossack arms from the Moscow Historical Museum as well as with enough money to purchase Derehus’s monumental painting The Pereiaslav Council.