The Reaction
The alarming restlessness that spread through Soviet society worried Khrushchev and his associates in the Kremlin. In December 1962 he called in a group of leading Russian writers and warned them not to push liberalization too far.
Several months later, several Russian intellectuals were subjected to a vicious attack in the press. It was clear that the regime was about to launch a crackdown against the liberal intelligentsia. Taking their cue from Moscow, party officials in Kiev prepared to rein in the “immature elements” in the Ukrainian literary community.In spring 1963, Andrii Skaba, the Ukrainian party official responsible for ideological purity, launched the attack by harshly criticizing the work of such literary critics as Sverstiuk, Svitlychny, and especially Dziuba. Soon afterward, the party journal Komunist Ukrainy declared that “only a weakening of political vigilance can explain why our literary and artistic criticism did not provide a timely evaluation of these false and ideologically immature works … Some of our newpapers … as well as publishing houses and theatres neglected the principles and demands of the party. This also contributed to the propagation in art of works that were of no use to the people.”6
Valentyn Malanchuk, the ideological watchdog in Western Ukraine, warned against young and inexperienced writers who slipped into the “role of foremost fighters against the [Stalin] personality cult, paid excessive attention to the negative phenomenon of this [Stalin] period and, furthermore, praised the works of Western authors.”7 Besides sounding the obligatory call to struggle against all manifestations of Ukrainian “bourgeois nationalism,” he proudly announced his successes in the antireligion campaign – the number of church weddings in his region had decreased – and promised to replace religious feast days with such Soviet “holidays” as the “Day of the Hammer and Sickle” and the “Evenings of Workers’ Glory.”
Another indication that certain aspects of Stalinism were making a comeback was the appearance of several semiofficial anti-Semitic publications.
The most notable of these was the tract by T.K. Kichko, Judaism without Embellishment, published in 1964 by the Ukrainian Academy of Science, most likely on instructions from Moscow. As in the final days of Stalin, the propaganda apparatus churned out materials that attempted to show intimate links and close cooperation between Ukrainian nationalists and Zionists. The liberal Ukrainian intelligentsia severely criticized the Kichko book. But in May 1964 its indignation reached a high point when word spread that the library of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, which housed thousands of invaluable books and documents dealing with Ukrainian history and culture, had burned down. The self-confessed arsonist who was responsible for this “felony without parallel in the history of world culture” was a psychotic Russophile named Pohruzhalsky, who apparently wanted to destroy the major monuments of Ukrainian cultural identity. Suspicions that the arsonist was linked to the security organs were widespread.These events were a telling indication of Khrushchev’s determination to restore discipline among the intelligentsia. However, the new get-tough policy came too late. A series of foreign and domestic setbacks, which included the Cuban missile debacle, the split with China, the disorganization caused by the reforms, and the disastrous harvest of 1963, fatally weakened the Soviet leader’s position. In October 1964 his colleagues lost patience with Khrushchev and forced him to resign. An era of reform, experimentation, and liberalization came to an end.
The era of Khrushchev was clearly a transitional phase in Soviet history. Despite the numerous setbacks, disappointments, and unexpected results that his experiments and reforms elicited, they did succeed in transforming Soviet society from one ruled by the terror and draconian measures of Stalin to a more rational, managerial system attuned to an advanced industrial society. This transition was deeply felt in Ukraine, where Stalinism had reached its worst extremes.
What changed and, of equal importance, what did not during the Khrushchev years? Most obvious was the discontinuation of the mass arrests, terror tactics, and purges. The secret police, with its prerogatives limited, now called in “dangerous elements” for a “heart-to-heart” talk, and usually threatened them with the loss of a job or curtailment of educational opportunities for their children. Only if these confrontations did not have the desired effect did arrests (but no executions) follow. Discipline in the workplace became far less rigorous. The standard of living slowly improved. Writers, poets, and other cultural figures obtained, for a time, more leeway in expressing themselves. In Ukraine, in addition to the above-mentioned developments, there was a rise in the self-assertiveness of the republic’s Communist leadership and a recognition of Ukraine’s economic importance within the USSR. But most striking, especially in view of the terrible losses suffered by the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the 1930s, was the emergence of a new, promising generation of cultural activists.
Many basic features of Soviet life remained unchanged, however. Censorship continued to limit severely what one could read, see, and hear. The Communist party retained an absolute monopoly on political power. Despite the reforms, the economy was still directed by bureaucrats, while everyone worked in government enterprises and institutions and shopped in government stores. Improvements in Ukraine’s relative importance in the USSR or the political successes of individual Ukrainians did not alter the fact that Ukrainian interests were completely subordinated to those of the Soviet empire as a whole.