The Stalinist retreat from proletarian internationalism reached its climax in December 1943, when the Kremlin dropped the ‘Internationale’ as the Soviet anthem.
Reflecting the new official blend of Russian and Soviet patriotism, the new anthem began with the line, ‘Great Rus' forever joined together the unbreakable union of free republics.’ Significantly, the non-Russian republics soon proceeded to create their own anthems.
As early as 21 February 1944 the Ukrainian authorities announced a competition for the best text and music. Most entries were variations of the all-Union anthem with two or three local themes added: the great and free Ukraine, the Ukrainians’ reunification in one state, and their historical friendship with the Russians. Tychyna contributed a poem with the refrain: ‘Glory to brotherhood! Glory to freedom! I The Ukrainian land is reunited again. I In concord with the fraternal Russian people I The Ukrainian people have achieved happiness.’ The first stanza of Bazhan’s entry read: ‘Live, O Ukraine, blossoming and mighty / In the union of fraternal Soviet peoples. / Equal among equals, free among free, / Live, O Ukraine, forever and ever.’1Increasingly wary of allowing the excessive glorification of Ukraine, however, the republic’s bureaucrats dragged the competition out until mid-1946, when they finally submitted the text and music to Moscow for approval. With the first signs of the post-war ideological freeze already in the air, Georgii Aleksandrov, the head of Agitprop, suggested that the anthem should ‘show more clearly that Ukraine is a Soviet socialist republic.’ Only after the purge of Soviet literature and the arts abated in 1948 did the Ukrainian ideologues inaugurate the republic’s anthem with a text co-authored by Tychyna and Bazhan.2
Another official announcement in early 1944 was even more groundbreaking than separate anthems for the republics. On 1 February amendments to the Soviet Constitution gave the union republics the right to establish their own armies and to maintain diplomatic relations with foreign states.
The most likely motivation for this metamorphosis was Stalin’s intention to claim seats at the United Nations for each republic, although eventually he had to settle for three seats for the Union itself, Ukraine, and Belarus 3 Nevertheless, recent studies by Ukrainian scholars reveal that the republic’s establishment took the constitutional amendments very seriously Local newspapers interpreted the announcement as a ‘new step in Ukrainian state-building ’ While the other republics established only tiny People’s Commissariats of Foreign Affairs, Ukraine created its own Commissariat of Defence In the summer of 1944 Khrushchev and the people’s commissar of defence, Lt-General VP Herasymenko, developed a plan for a full-fledged ministry with impressive prerogatives and power The ministry, however, was quietly disbanded soon after the war The first commissar of foreign affairs, the writer Oleksandr Kornnchuk, likewise began building a bona fide ministry before being replaced by Dmytro Manuilsky in July 1944 4 The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry existed in an emasculated, rudimentary form until the end of the Soviet UnionIn November 1944 Ukrainian authorities announced another major nation- building project, the preparation of a twenty-volume Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia Manuilsky, the designated editor-in-chief, cleared this local initiative with Moscow, through ‘Comrade Aleksandrov, who expressed not only his opinion but also the opinion of Comrade Malenkov that such a Ukrainian Soviet encyclopedia was needed ’5 A joint decree of the Ukrainian party and government directed that the encyclopedia ‘portray comprehensively the heroic past and the cultural heritage’ of Ukrainians, as well as highlight ‘the unbreakable union of the Russian and Ukrainian people ’ The republic’s bureaucrats developed an ambitious plan to complete the twenty volumes by 1955, but they had to discontinue the project in 1947 because of a lack of financing from Moscow6 (The encyclopedia was subsequently issued in seventeen volumes from 1959 to 1965 )
These three enterprises illustrate how patriotic projects conceived or developed locally during the war suffered serious, if not always fatal, setbacks during the mid- to late 1940s More important, they demonstrate how local initiatives, ambiguous signals from above, and changing interpretations of the party line all influenced Stalinist ‘nation-building’ in Ukraine The emerging official version of national memory was likewise produced by the interaction between the centre and the periphery, when the Ukrainian ideologues and intellectuals attempted to reconcile their people’s historical mythology with the imperial grand narrative of Russian guidance