At the Kremlin reception for victorious Soviet military commanders on 24 May 1945, Stalin raised his glass and made the following announcement

I would like to propose a toast to our Soviet people, and, first of all to the health of the Russian people (Loud, continuous applause, shouts of ‘hurrah ’)

I drink first of all to the health of the Russian people because they are the leading nation of all the nations of the Soviet Union

I propose a toast to the health of the Russian people because in this war, they earned general recognition as the Soviet Union’s guiding force among all the peoples of our country

I propose a toast to the health of the Russian people not just because they are the leading people, but also because they have a clear mind, a firm character, and patience ¹

Stalin’s toast, which the Ukrainian artist Mykhailo Khmelko portrayed in his monumental painting To the Great Russian People' (1947, 3m x 5,15m, Stalin Prize, Second Class, for 1947), inaugurated a celebration of Russian national greatness that knew no bounds Russian chauvinism and messianism had been an increasing presence in the official discourse since the mid-1930s, but they mushroomed after May 1945 The Soviet media waxed rhapsodic about the Russians’ having always been the greatest, wisest, bravest, and most virtuous of all nations ²

Developments in Ukraine reflected the general Soviet ideological transfigura­tion Radianska Ukraina greeted the news of Stalin’s toast in a servile editorial, ‘Eternal Glory to You, the Great Russian People¹’ In the years that followed, similar articles appeared regularly in the Ukrainian press ³ The republic’s publishing houses duly translated and released two editions of the new canonical survey of Russian historical achievements, Anna Pankratovas The Great Russian People ⁴ Generally, the obligatory paeans to Russian glory occupied a prominent place in the Ukrainian public discourse of the first post-war decade, not least in the works of Ukrainian historians In history, the notion of Russian superiority modified the ‘friendship of peoples’ paradigm into one of ‘guidance relationships’ between the dominant nation and its younger brothers ’ Stalinist ideologues, historians, and writers presented the Russian Empire’s foreign and domestic policies in a positive light as the predecessor of the mighty Russian-dominated, multinational Soviet state

Although the ideological campaign against ‘nationalism’ in Ukrainian histori­ography died out after Kaganovich returned to Moscow in December 1947, his pronouncements were not rescinded The Sixteenth Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine praised the party’s successes in fighting ‘symptoms of national­ism’ in the humanities In his report to the congress, Khrushchev stressed

The KP(b)U Central Committee is paying special attention to the struggle against manifestations of bourgeois nationalism the most harmful and tenacious capitalist remnant in the consciousness of some of our people It is known that nationalist errors and distortions appeared in the works of some Ukrainian scholars, particularly historians and literary scholars The VKP(b) and KP(b)U Central Committees uncovered and strongly condemned these mistakes Measures have been taken to strengthen the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences Institute of Ukrainian History and the Institute of the History of Ukrainian Literature Now the researchers at the Institute of Ukrainian History are working diligently to produce a Short Course on the History of Ukraine ⁵

Thus, the official denunciations of 1947 remained in force, and Khrushchev continued to use the same anti-nationalist rhetoric as Kaganovich, yet the republic’s leaders were clearly embarking on a new course in emphasizing that the past problems had been eliminated and that the intellectuals were now engaged in useful, error-free work