Ideological control of the Stalinist regime over the intelligentsia in the Ukrainian SSR: 1945 – 1953

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Ideological control of the Stalinist regime over the intelligentsia in the Ukrainian SSR: 1945 - 1953

Volodymyr Baran

Abstract

The article focuses on the analysis of the content, main forms and methods of ideological control over the intelligentsia, which was carried out by the Stalinist regime in the Ukrainian SSR in 1945 - 1953.. The purpose of the work is to find out the role of censorship bodies and public exposing campaigns, called "Zhdanovshchyna", in establishing a strict political and ideological control over literature, art and science in the USSR, creative and scientific intelligentsia of the Republic. The methodology of the research: the article is based on the theory of totalitarianism and the principles formulated by Karl Friedrich; traditional general and special historical methods have been used. The scientific novelty of the article consists in involvement of original documentary material from the central state archives of Ukraine and the Russian Federation. The Conclusion. Ideological control was one of the basic features of the Soviet totalitarianism, an effective tool of government control over the creative and scientific intelligentsia, all public life. Analysis of archival documents shows that censorship remained a key element in the system of ideological control, blocking official channels of mass communication and preventing any deviations from accepted ideological standards. At the same time, during the first postwar years, the Stalinist regime carried out numerous exposing campaigns, essentially political and ideological purges in literature, art, and science, accusing the Ukrainian artists and scholars of "national limitations" and "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism". Such control over the activities of the intelligentsia, over all spheres of a spiritual life ensured the ideological monopoly of the Communist Party in the society.

Key words: the USSR, Stalinist regime, censorship authorities, ideological campaigns, "Zhdanovshchyna".

Володимир БАРАН

доктор історичних наук, професор, завідувач кафедри історії України та археології, Волинський національний університет імені Лесі Українки, вул. Шопена, 24, м. Луцьк, Україна

ІДЕОЛОГІЧНИЙ КОНТРОЛЬ СТАЛІНСЬКОГО РЕЖИМУ ЗА ІНТЕЛІГЕНЦІЄЮ В УКРАЇНСЬКІЙ РСР: 1945 - 1953 рр.

Анотація. У статті проаналізовано зміст, головні форми і методи ідеологічного контролю за інтелігенцією,, що здійснювався сталінським режимом в Українській РСР у 1945 - 1953 рр. Мета статті - з 'ясувати роль органів цензури і публічних викривальних кампаній, що отримали назву "ждановщини", у встановленні жорсткого політико-ідеологічного контролю за літературою, мистецтвом і наукою в УРСР, за діяльністю творчої та наукової інтелігенції республіки. Методологія: стаття базується на теорії тоталітаризму та принципах, сформульованих Карлом Фрідріхом; у ній використовуються традиційні загальнонаукові та спеціальні історичні методи (історико-генетичний, історико-системний, історико-порівняльний, історико-типологічний), принципи авторської об'єктивності, історизму, верифікації. Наукова новизна полягає у залученні оригінального документального матеріалу з центральних державних архівів України та Російської Федерації. Висновки. Ідеологічний контроль був однією з базових ознак радянського тоталітаризму, дієвим інструментом контролю влади за творчою і науковою інтелігенцією, усім суспільним життям. Аналіз архівних документів свідчить, що ключовою ланкою у системі ідеологічного контролю залишалася цензура, яка блокувала офіційні канали масової комунікації і не допускала жодних відхилень від прийнятих ідейних стандартів. Також у перші післявоєнні роки сталінський режим проводив численні викривальні кампанії, по суті - політико-ідеологічні чистки в літературі, мистецтві й науці, звинувачуючи українських митців і вчених у "національній обмеженості", в "українському буржуазному націоналізмі". Такий контроль за діяльністю інтелігенції, за всіма сферами духовного життя забезпечував ідеологічну монополію комуністичної партії в суспільстві.

Ключові слова:УРСР, сталінський режим, органи цензури, ідеологічні кампанії, "ждановщина".

The Problem Statement

One of the key means of functioning of the Soviet totalitarianism was a strict political and ideological control. It covered various spheres of the society, the main areas of the Republic's scientific, literary and artistic life, encroached on the basic spiritual values of people, their religious beliefs and denominational affiliation. Such general control by the authorities ensured the monopoly position of the Marxist ideology and thereby - the inviolability of the ruling Soviet party-political system. stalinist regime zhdanovschina censorship authority

The purpose of the article is to find out the role of censorship bodies and public denunciative campaigns, which were called “Zhdanovshchyna”, in establishing a strict political and ideological control over literature, art and science in the Ukrainian SSR, over the activities of the Republic's creative and scientific intelligentsia.

The Analysis of Recent Research Papers and Publications

There are number of profound publications, written both by domestic researchers - V Danylenko, H. Kasianov, S. Kulchytsky, V. Ovcharenko, M. Tymoshyk, O. Fedotova, V Chentsov, Yu. Shapoval, and by foreign scholars - A. Blum, A. Horcheva, T. Horyiayeva, M. Zelenov, M. Fox, and the others.

The Results of the Research

In a strict political and ideological control, the Soviet government not only continued, but also deepened and expanded the practice of the times of the Russian Empire, eradicating free thought, manifestations of national consciousness and identity, applying even more large-scale and brutal methods of pressure on the society. Some authors explain such a strict, meticulous control over of science, literature and art as “an impressive fetishization of the word” (“Literaturnyy front”, 1994, p. 3). At the beginning of the 1920s, one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks, A. Lunacharsky, even claimed that the word acquired the same meaning as a revolver or a machine gun.

After World War II, a political and ideological control was strengthened in the Ukrainian SSR. It is clear that to a large extent this was explained by the need “to neutralize” the influence of the so-called hostile, bourgeois ideology on the population, because the entire territory of Ukraine was under the Nazi occupation during the war. At the same time, the special, most vigilant attention of the party and state bodies of the Republic was focused on working with the intelligentsia, who, according to the authorities, occupied an unstable position, showed ideological instability, and therefore needed a constant “educational influence”.

On the first days of the Soviet power, the Bolsheviks used censorship widely as a tool for controlling a public opinion, as a tool for direct influence on public consciousness, including the purpose of manipulating it and imposing their own ideological and political values. In August of 1922, by resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the UkrSSR, the Central Department for Press Affairs was established under the People's Commissariat for Education of the Republic. In July of 1946, the Main Directorate for Literature and Publishing under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, or, in other words, the Holovlit (Directorate for Literature) of the Ukrainian SSR, was established.

The authorities carried out a thorough, systematic control over science, art, literature, museums and theaters, the press and radio broadcasting, etc., monitoring the ideological and political orientation of their activities, the appropriate “ideological purity”. Censorship control also extended to all kinds of ideological trifles, including printed posters, announcements, programmes of various events of the party, state bodies, public organizations, in particular the Komsomol and trade unions, leaving no possibility for a free spiritual life.

The Main Repertoire Committee of the Committee on Arts Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, abbreviated as the Main Repertoire Committee, also worked in parallel with the Main Directorate for Literature of the USSR. Both bodies oversaw museums, exhibitions, painting and mass sculpture, but often made conflicting decisions, creating confusion in relations with art organizations. Therefore, the Head of the Committee for the Arts, M. Khrapchenko, raised the issue and formulated it to the Head of the Department of Propaganda and Agitation of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) H. Aleksandrov about a clear demarcation of the functions of the specified bodies. The suggested idea of a clear demarcation of the functions was not accepted, because, in the opinion of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), it could do harm to “the state political control” (RSASPH, f. 17, d. 125, c. 442, pp. 115, 116).

In June of 1947, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a decree on the preservation of state secrets, which intensified the work of censorship bodies. In March of 1947, the Council of Ministers of the USSR approved the “List of Information on the State Secret”. On the basis of this document, the ministries and other central institutions of the USSR compiled detailed departmental lists, which were systematized by the Main Directorate for Literature and Publishing of the USSR and in January of 1949 were embodied in the “List of Information, Prohibited for Publishing the Press”, which provided for even stricter restrictions on the content of published press.

The authorities paid considerable attention to the secrecy of information of an economic nature, as well as materials on the development of the Soviet science and technology. It was forbidden to publish reviews and summary data on the amount and technical level of the main and power equipment, information on the project capacity, the size of capital investments in the enterprises of the Soviet Union and republican subordination in the main branches of industry. Open publications about the development of the Arctic and the Far East, about institutions dealing with the problems of atomic energy, rocket technology, etc., were completely banned (RSASPH, f. 17, d. 132, c. 149, pp. 61-64).

However, without any doubt, the main role was assigned by the authorities to control the ideological and political content of literature, works of art, and materials of radio broadcasts. As early as in 1922, in big libraries of the USSR, including those of the UkrSSR, there were closed, special funds (“special funds”), designed to store all kinds of “harmful” publications. After the war, the main part of the so-called trophy literature, exported from the eastern part of Germany, got there. It was not accurately recorded, the total number of such literature was several million copies. For example, only the Lenin Library in Moscow received 760,000 copies, and Moscow University received 13 wagons of this kind of literature.

On the instructions of the Agitprop of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), the Main Directorate for Literature and Publishing of the USSR introduced a new regulation on special literature funds, which accelerated the inspection and “cleansing” of book funds significantly. After the war, a consolidated list of “politically harmful” literature was issued, which included 7,000 titles of books to be removed from public libraries. Regularly the censorship bodies issued additional lists for removal, which included the works of numerous authors who became victims of repression or ideological campaigns - against “the Ukrainian nationalists”, “bourgeois cosmopolitans”, “anti-patriotic critics”, “reborns” in history, philosophy, literature and art, geneticists, etc.

Books by emigrants, repressed authors, publications of religious content, books with photographs, quotations from works or positive characteristics of “enemies of the people” were confiscated. In such cases, the censors wrote: “the book is littered with positive references to the enemies of the people...” From the manuscripts department of the Lviv branch of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, archival documents from tsarist times, which related to the activities of the Bolsheviks, anarchists and Socialist-Revolutionaries, were confiscated. The so-called nationalist literature, in particular the works of M. Hrushevsky and V Vynnychenko, were removed from public libraries and the trade network of Ukraine (RSARH, f. 5, d. 33, c. 158, p. 2; RSASPH, f. 17, d. 132, c. 97, pp. 1, 2, 83, 121; c. 149, pp. 65, 66, 94; Kulturne zhyttia v Ukraini, 1995, pp. 365, 366).

During the second half of the 1940s, the apparatus of censorship bodies grew both centrally and locally. In 1946 - 1949, the total number of employees of the central apparatus of the USSR Central Committee increased from 219 to 311 people, including censors - from 109 to 196 people (including people with higher education diploma - from 82 to 172 people). During the same period, the total number of employees of local censorship bodies increased from 2,031 to 2,101 people, including censors - from 1,159 to 1,630 people (of them with higher education diploma - from 268 to 373). It is obvious that the quality of censors in the field, i.e. the main part of the Main Directorate for Literature and Publishing of the USSR employees, remained quite low: only a quarter of them had a higher education diploma (RSASPH, f. 17, d. 132, c. 149, pp. 72, 73).

The Main Directorate for Literature and Publishing under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, which was established in the summer of 1946 by the resolution of the Central Committee of the CP(b)U and the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, as well as its local bodies, the so-called obllites (regional directorates for Literature and Publishing), carried out censorship control of the open press and radio broadcasting; foreign literature entering the Republic; printed publications, which were exported abroad; materials of foreign correspondents who worked in the Ukrainian SSR (on the basis of a special provision). All printed editions of bodies and institutions of the Armed Forces of the USSR were controlled by the Military Censorship Office of the General Staff of the USSR Ministry for Foreign Affairs (RSASPH, f. 17, d. 132, c. 149, p. 60).

Censorship clerks checked manuscripts of scientific and literary works, movie scripts, theater productions, museum exhibits, etc. If censors detected certain deviations from ideological standards, any mistakes or “perversions” of an ideological and political nature, they informed the central and local party bodies, and they took appropriate measures, including disciplinary ones. Censors carried out not only preliminary control of all manuscripts being prepared for publication, but also the so-called subsequent control, checking already published works, but they did such control in a selective manner.

At the bginning of the 1950s, the ideological control was carried out on a scale typical of the USSR. In March of 1953, for example, the head of the Main Directorate for Literature and Publishing of the Ukrainian SSR issued Order No. 5, according to which more than 70 publications were to be withdrawn from public libraries and retail network. Among the books listed there were the books of H. Aleksandrenko “The Soviet State System”, S. Holovanivsky “Boot of Europe. Literary Report”, V. Kistiakovsky “Geography Workbook. Part One. Local History and Geography of the Ukrainian SSR”, O. Kurylo “Course of the Ukrainian Spelling. Textbook for Schools and Self-study”, several issues of “Methodical Developments in Ukrainian Studies”, etc. (CSAAMU, f. 4605, d. 1, c. 49, pp. 2, 3).

In 1953, at the end of the period under analysis, 395 people worked in the censorship bodies of the Ukrainian SSR, of whom 295 were managers and censors. There were 50 employees in the central apparatus, of whom - 35 were managers and censors. There were 4 departments: preliminary censorship, subsequent censorship, foreign censorship and control of works of art. The staff list of local censorship bodies of the Republic included 345 people, of whom 260 were managers and censors. Among the regional departments, the largest were the following ones: Stalinske (33 people), Kyiv and Kharkiv (24 people in each), Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk (18 people in each) (CSAAMU, f. 17, d. 132, c. 97, pp. 139, 140; CSAAMU, f. 4605, d. 1, c. 49, pp. 9-17; c. 51, pp. 7-9, 36-39, 54-63).

Censorship bodies had a wide range ofwork. They checked published works (Fedotova, 2009, pp. 185-204), film and radio materials, theatre and philharmonic repertoire. They supervised the work of second-hand book shops, the content of museum expositions and exhibitions. To facilitate such supervision, the instruction on the procedure for preparation and opening of museum exhibits and exhibitions required that visitors feedback books consist of sheets that are removable and not numbered. Censorship bodies also controlled the content of invitations, reports of factories to relevant ministries, reports of the Komsomol organizations to rallies and congresses, which were reproduced in two to five copies (CSAAMU, f. 4605, d. 1, c. 127, p. 35; c. 154, p. 36 (the note); SARF, f. 9425, d. 2, c. 532, p. 46; c. 563, p. 12; c. 717, p. 16).

It is known from declassified archival documents that the authorities of the Soviet Union carried out secret control over information transmitted by foreign correspondents abroad in order to deploy effective counter-propaganda in a timely manner. Considerable work was carried out to jam foreign radio stations that reported the truth about the policy of the Soviet leadership, about life in the USSR and around the world. An extensive network of jamming stations functioned: there were radio centres of the so-called long-range and local protection (the latter created obstacles to Western radio broadcasting within a radius of several tens of kilometers). In the 50s of the 20th century, about 1.4 thousand radio stations were used just for this purpose in the Soviet Union, but the “quality of jamming” of enemy transmissions was not high enough (RSARH, f. 89, d. 2, c. 14, p. 12; f. 5, d. 33, c. 106, pp. 3, 24, 25, 41, 42, 48, 77; CSAPAU, f. 1, d. 16, c. 150, pp. 15-17).

Along with this strict systematic control carried out by censorship bodies, during the postwar period the Stalinist regime also carried out a number of high-profile political and ideological campaigns, which became an integral part of the spiritual life of the USSR and every Union Republic. J. Stalin entrusted the management of the campaigns to A. Zhdanov, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party of Ukraine (b) for ideological issues, who followed the instructions of the leader and the directives of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) carefully. The aforementioned campaigns were focused on various areas of literary, artistic, and scientific life, and in fact they were a kind of cleaning among creative and scientific intelligentsia, including Ukraine.

The beginning of these ideological actions was the resolution of Central Committee of the CPSU(b) concerning the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad” (August of 1946). In it, the creative work of a famous satirist, humorist M. Zoshchenko and an outstanding poetess A. Akhmatova was severely criticized. Thus, M. Zoshchenko was accused of allegedly slandering socialist reality, mocking the Soviet people, and in fact of taking a false political position, of being anti-Soviet. A. Akhmatova was criticized differently: her works were considered “empty”, “idealless”, she was called a “salon poetess” who avoided social topics, a supporter of “art for art's sake”, which contradicted the class approach to literature and art formulated by V. Lenin, the party principle of literature defined by him.

Subsequently, the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) adopted a series of resolutions related to the development of cinema, theatre, musical art, etc., and the Central Committees of the Communist Parties of the Union Republics, in turn, adopted similar resolutions in which they criticized, so to speak, their own, local, national figures of literature and art. At the same time, Ukrainian writers and artists were accused primarily of “national narrowness”, “bourgeois nationalism”, because any manifestation of love for the native land by the Ukrainians was interpreted by the ideologues of the Central Committee of the the CPSU(b) as a retreat from the so-called proletarian internationalism, as an attempt on unbreakable unity of the USSR peoples, a hidden desire to separate Ukraine from Russia.

O. Dovzhenko was especially harshly criticized for writing the screenplay of the film story “Ukraine on Fire” (RSASPH, f. 17, d. 125, c. 293, pp. 1, 6-35), M. Rylsky - for writing the poem “Journey to Youth”, Yu. Yanovsky - for writing the novel “Alive Water”, I. Senchenko - for writing the novel “His Generation”. P. Karmansky, M. Rudnytsky, and A. Patrus- Karpatsky were expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers of Ukraine, who were accused of "Ukrainian Bourgeois Nationalism". Individual works by Y. Smolych, L. Pervomaisky,

L. Smiliansky, T. Masenko, A. Shyian, I. Vyrhan, V. Cherednychenko and the others were called “vicious”, “harmful writings”. The editors of the magazines “Perets”, “Vitchyzna”, “Dnipro”, “Soviet Lviv” were criticized, who, according to the party ideologues, published “harmful, nationalist works...” (Baran, 2005, pp. 81-84).

The authors of the work “Essay on the History of Ukrainian Literature”, edited by E. Kyryliuk and S. Maslov, were criticized. They were accused of not illustrating great influence of the Russian culture on the Ukrainian literature, “giving a decisive role in the development of writers' creativity to the national moment”, and thereby trying to “extend the nationalist concepts” of M. Hrushevsky and S. Yefremov. M. Vozniak, A. Shamray, I. Borshchahovsky and L. Bulakhovsky were criticized for “manifestations of the bourgeois- nationalist line”, who “deliberately ignored the connection of the Ukrainian culture with the culture of the great Russian people” (RSASPH, f. 17, d. 122, c. 285, pp. 157, 158).

From the same positions, “political mistakes” in the work of the Institute of the History of Ukraine of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR were “debunked” and the works written by the leading scholars of this institute - S. Bilousov, K. Huslyst, M. Petrovsky,

M.Suprunenko, F. Yastrebov, in particular, were recognized as erroneous “Short Course in the History of Ukraine”, “Essay on the History of Ukraine”, as well as the first volume of “History of Ukraine” edited by M. Petrovsky. Lviv historians I. Krypiakevych, O. Terletsky, and the others who worked at the Lviv branch of the Institute of History of Ukraine of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and who were called “bourgeois nationalists” were criticized much. The works published by these scholars during the years of the German occupation were qualified as “counter-revolutionary”, “pogrom-fascist” (RSASPH, f. 17, d. 125, c. 310, pp. 20-24).

In July - August of 1948, a session of the All-Union Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences was held in Moscow (the so-called August session of VASGNIL), at which Genetics pogrom campaign was launched. At the session, President VASGNIL T Lysenko made a report, previously approved by J. Stalin, in which he called genetics a “bourgeois pseudoscience”. After the session, leading genetic scientists were fired in Ukraine, including M. Hryshka, S. Gershenzon, L. Delaunay, L. Kalianova, R. Chebotariov, and the others, teaching of Genetics and related Biology courses at schools, special secondary schools and higher educational institutions was discontinued. The Ukrainian scientists dealing with cybernetics, physiology, philosophy, linguistics, and political economy also suffered ideological persecution.

In 1949, a campaign was organized against the so-called cosmopolitans, which primarily affected art and literary critics accused of “bowing down to the West”. At the plenum of the board of the Union of Soviet Writers of Ukraine in March of 1949, it was said that in the Republic “the cosmopolitan critics Stebun (Katsnelson), Sanov (Smulson), Adelheim, Gordon... did their malicious work for a long time”. Moreover, it was noted that it was a matter of “serious sabotage” and that the above mentioned people were apparently “united on the basis of subversive work”. At the same time, an investigation began in the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which ended with a brutal massacre of its leaders.

In July of 1951, the newspaper “Pravda” published the article “Against Ideological Distortions in Literature”, in which there was criticized V. Sosiura's poem “Love Ukraine” (the poem was written in 1944). In the article it was emphasized that V Sosiura did not sing the praises of Soviet or socialist Ukraine, but “some kind of old Ukraine, Ukraine in general”. The article gave impetus to another wave of attacks on Ukrainian writers: individual works of I. Wilde, H. Tiutiunnyk, Yu. Yanovsky, L. Zabashta, P. Voronek, I. Vyrhan and the others were called “vicious”. In the same year, in the newspaper “Pravda” there were published two more articles directed against Ukrainian culture, in which the authors criticized K. Dankevych's opera “Bohdan Khmelnytsky” and H. Zhukovsky's opera “From the Heart”, which caused a campaign of an ideological cleansing in music (Baran, 2005, pp. 85-100).

The Conclusion

Ideological control was one ofthe basic features ofthe Soviet totalitarianism, an effective tool of government control over creative and scientific intelligentsia, all social life. The analysis results of archival documents show that the key link in the system of ideological control remained censorship, which blocked official channels of mass communication and did not allow any deviations from accepted ideological standards. Along with censorship, during the first post-war years, the Stalinist regime carried out numerous denunciation campaigns, in fact - political and ideological cleancing in literature, art and science, accusing the Ukrainian artists and scientists of “national limitations” and “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism”. Such control over the activities of intelligentsia, over all spheres of spiritual life ensured the ideological monopoly of the Communist Party in the society.

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