The Quest for a New Memory

I he party demand that scholars produce a new Ukrainian history text should be seen in the wider context of the extraordinary proliferation of historical-synthesis projects in the post-war Soviet Union Defying the hardships of the reconstruction period, the state financed dozens of historical surveys, from a multi-volume history of the USSR from ancient times to the present day to one-volume histories of minor Soviet nationalities such as the Buriats and Ossetians.

The official quest for a new historical synthesis reflected the USSR’s new self­identification as the successor of the Russian Empire and as one of the world’s great powers rather than simply the first workers’ state The great Russian people had grown in stature, practically superseding the working class as a historical agent Accordingly, non-Russians needed to revise their historical narratives to confirm their subaltern status as the Russians’ ‘younger brothers ’ Eastern Euro­pean history had to be entirely rewritten from the point of view of both the class struggle and the beneficence of ties with tsarist Russia

Yet the post-war drive for this new historical synthesis produced miserable results In 1950 the Soviet Academy of Sciences reported to the VKP(b) Central Committee that seven of the ten projected volumes of the world history survey and ten of the sixteen projected volumes of the History of the USSR would be ready by 1954 In fact, both targets were reached only in the 1960s By 1953 not a single volume of the History of the USSR had been sent to the printers ⁷ Moscow denounced several non-Russian histories that had been published for ‘nationalist’ mistakes Many other projects bogged down in a lengthy review-and-discussion process aimed at ensuring that they were ideologically irreproachable, but because the party line itself kept mutating and because Moscow could not issue authorita­tive statements on all of the problems and personalities in non-Russian histories, ideologically sound interpretation was often left to local ideologues and historians For them, the hasty publication of a historical survey entailed the danger of being denounced as ‘nationalists,’ while the endless revision process ensured safety

The fate of the Kazakh historical survey reinforced non-Russian ideologues’ reluctance to approve their own national textbooks After the official critique of the first edition in 1943-4, Pankratova and her Kazakh colleagues promptly revised the text, and a second edition of the History of the Kazakh SSR appeared in 1949 The authors softened their interpretation of Kazakhstan’s conquest by the tsarist army to that of a progressive event connecting the Kazakh people to the forward-looking Russian economy and culture The Moscow reviewers neverthe­less noted that the text still considered the anti-tsarist rebellion led by Kenesaiy ‘hberational ’⁸ The book enjoyed moderate success for more than a year until Pravda dismissed Ermukhan Bekmakhanov’s monograph on Kazakhstan in the 1820s to the 1840s for idealizing the ‘reactionary and anti-Russian’ Kenesary uprising The Kazakh party leadership condemned such ‘nationalism’ in history, and the local scholars were forced to prepare a third edition of the Kazakh history’s first volume The new edition’s prospectus maintained that the progressive or reactionary character of all events in Kazakh history would be determined by their relation to Russia ⁹

Moscow taught those who had not yet figured out the direction of change m Soviet historical memory several more public lessons during the early 1950s The first volume of the History of the Armenian People appeared in 1951, but in February 1953 it was discovered that the book ‘idealized’ local feudal rulers and incorrectly described the country’s incorporation into Russia The Central Committees experts found exactly the same errors in the History of Georgia, which had received the Stalin Prize in 1946, as well as in the two-volume History of the Peoples of Uzbekistan (1947-50) The Georgian survey’s main sin lay in presenting national history as the ‘struggle of a united and monolithic Georgian people against foreign aggressors, for the preservation and well-being of the independent Georgian state ’¹⁰ Needless to say, Ukrainian ideologues and historians closely watched the developments in other republics

In January 1948 Ukrainian authors completed the first draft in Russian of what was then called the ‘Short Course on the History of Ukraine ’ Eighty-five review­ers provided detailed comments on this thirty-two-chapter draft, which was then discussed at a special meeting of the republic’s Agitprop In December 1948 the Institute of Ukrainian History published a limited edition of the revised version The second draft circulated widely, and by the spring of 1949 the authors had received over 100 reviews from major research and educational institutions in Ukraine and other republics, all of which were generally positive ¹¹ More impor tant, in December 1948 the Ukrainian Politburo had established a special troika consisting of Lytvyn, Manuilsky, and President Mykhailo Hrechukha to review the second draft On 7 April 1949 the three reported their conclusion to Khrushchev, ‘Pending final editing, the course can be printed in a mass edition by September 1949 ’¹²

Nevertheless, the book did not go to the printers Apparently mindful of Kaganovich’s recent ‘discovery’ of nationalism in Ukrainian historiography, the republic’s leaders sent the text for another round of extensive reviewing On 27 December 1947 Kasymenko, director of the Institute of Ukrainian History, reported to a party meeting at the Academy of Sciences that the work had finally been completed In his words, the Institute had ‘received final instructions to send this material to the printers for issue as a mass edition ’¹³ Just ten days before this announcement, however, Khrushchev left Ukraine for Moscow, leaving Leonid Melnikov in the capacity of first secretary Although the text had been translated into Ukrainian and the proofs printed in both languages, the new party boss ippeared reluctant to take responsibility for such a potentially compromising publication Instead, in June the republic’s authorities ordered that the History of the Ukrainian SSR should be issued in a limited edition for the fourth time 1,500 copies in Ukrainian and 500 in Russian By then, the bulky survey had been divided into two volumes, the first covering pre-1917 history and the second devoted to the Soviet period Given the size of the book, the subtitle ‘Short Course had been dropped ¹⁴

In June 1950 a set of the two-volume, fourth limited edition landed on the desk of the VKP(b) Central Committee secretary Mikhail Suslov The chief Soviet ideologue decided to submit it to yet another examination by Moscow scholars, but since the Institute of the USSR History had already reviewed the book several times, Suslov assigned the text to the Institute of Marx, Engels, and Lenin (IMEL) Meanwhile, work in Ukraine stalled The Moscow specialists on Marxism and party history took five months to study the survey of Ukrainian history On 30 December 1950 they reported to Suslov that the history of Ukraine and its culture was presented in the book ‘in some isolation from Russia ’ The reviewers demanded that the book emphasize the influence of progressive Russian culture in Ukraine and objected to the application of the name ‘Ukraine’ to the Ukrainian lands before the twentieth century¹⁵

A puzzling episode followed Within twelve days, including the New Year holiday, the Ukrainian historians reported to Moscow that they had made all the necessary changes Suslov received the IMEL’s review on 30 December, the authors first saw it on 2 January, and on 11 January the VKP(b) Central Committee functionaries lu Zhdanov and A Mitin related to Suslov that the changes had been made and that volume 1 would soon be published ¹⁶ In all probability, the Ukrainian authors resolved to ignore the principal criticism that they had ‘iso­lated’ Ukrainian history from Russian history, and they limited the changes to replacing the word ‘Ukraine’ with ‘Ukrainian lands’ and the like

This time, volume 1 of the History of the Ukrainian SSR finally made it to press The proofs were signed on 8 February, and printing began in April, but it was suddenly halted in May by the republic’s authorities Possibly having learned about the historians’ reaction to the IMEL criticisms, the KP(b)U Central Committee created a new commission of nine prominent local historians, philosophers, and literary scholars, none of whom was associated with the Institute of Ukrainian History The commission examined volume 1 for two months and made numer­ous critical suggestions, which the authors promptly implemented By early August 1951 they had produced yet another version of the text, but the commis­sion continued to find fault with the book After a meeting with the commission members, Nazarenko concluded that the present draft could not be published ¹⁷

Thus, at a time when the apparatus of the VKP(b) Central Committee in Moscow was reminding them about the need to issue an ideologically sound survey of Ukrainian history,¹⁸ the republic’s functionaries further postponed this project Their decision should be understood in a wider political context On 2 July Pravda unexpectedly published a long editorial, ‘Against Ideological Distor­tions in Literature,’ attacking the alleged nationalist deviations in the work of the Ukrainian poet Volodymyr Sosiura The article caused a comprehensive campaign of criticism in the republic For several months, writers, artists, composers, and journalists publicly repented their nationalist mistakes and/or ideological blind­ness The campaign reached a high point in November, during a three-day plenary meeting of the KP(b)U Central Committee devoted to unmasking ‘nationalism’ in literature and the arts ¹⁹

Nazarenko and the commission members realized that in the late summer and autumn of 1951 the Kremlin and the republic’s leadership would expect the Ukrainian ideologues to carry out a search for ‘nationalism’ in the humanities Publishing a history textbook under such conditions would have been self­destructive In this light, the decision to pursue further revisions appears a wise defensive strategy

At the November 1951 plenary meeting, First Secretary Melnikov criticized the delay in producing a historical survey and claimed that the drafts of volume 1 did not incorporate Stalin’s recent discoveries in the field of historical linguistics Still, compared with Melnikov’s tirades against ‘nationalism’ in literature and the arts, this was benign criticism The first secretary then switched to a more constructive tone and announced ‘Our people very much need a History of Ukraine Everyone needs it, from old men to young children There is no doubt that we can create a good Stalinist textbook on the History of Ukraine ’²⁰