Chapter 2

Leadership

In post–World War I conditions, collective violence set in. A decisive victory was achieved on the “first front”—military—when GPU detachments, with the support of the Red Army, suppressed anti-Bolshevik resistance in Ukraine. On the “second front”—economy—Bolshevik leaders retreated. The Russian Communist Party formally adopted the New Economic Policy (NEP) at the Tenth Congress in March 1921, but it could not become effective because of the famine that lasted three years. While the outside world provided humanitarian relief and assumed the communists were returning to a civilized policy, the economic recovery was temporary as Moscow began gathering controlling power into its own hands in all branches of life.¹ Bolsheviks engaged in battles on the “third front”—culture. The “cultural revolution” started with restructuring of society in Soviet Ukraine. Teachers were turned into propagandists of Bolshevik policies in towns and especially villages, where they enjoyed considerable respect and trust of the local population. The creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, during the last year of Lenin’s life, meant to showcase to the world the fulfillment of a principle of self-determination for national minorities. From 1923 to 1926, a flood of decrees and activities spurred hopes for a national renaissance not only in Ukraine itself but wherever Ukrainians were living in the entire Soviet Union.² Soon after, on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution, Ukrainian separatism was proclaimed a great danger to the Soviet empire, and Bolshevik leaders set out plans to fight this tendency, which resulted in a crisis.

INTELLIGENTSIA IN THE FIGHT FOR SOCIALISM

In his political pamphlet What Is to Be Done? Lenin wrote that a revolution could only be achieved by strong leadership of the masses by one person, or by a very select few.³ The pamphlet, written in 1901 and published in Germany in 1902, helped to precipitate Bolsheviks’ split from the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party at its Second Party Congress in 1903 in Brussels.⁴ When the Mensheviks made an alliance with the Jewish Bund, Bolsheviks found themselves in a minority. Bolsheviks were a radical, far-left, Marxist faction. As World War I was raging on, Lenin’s Bolsheviks organized an armed uprising involving no more than 10,000 people.⁵ They directed their coup d’état not against the Provisional Government but against the main soviet in the capital, which was dominated by more moderate socialists. Once in power in early 1918, Bolsheviks renamed themselves the Communist Party as they attempted to forcefully march to socialism and, eventually, to history’s final stage—communism. The putsch by the radical left has been promoted throughout seventy years of Soviet historiography as the Great October Socialist Revolution despite the fact that it had no mass support. Examination of their leadership is essential to our understanding of how a sect of the few, who in the name of the people established a dictatorship, could control vast resources, both human and material, and could manipulate public opinion, using modern technologies of radio, cinema, and press, to do its bidding and gain prestige on the global stage of history.

Although intelligentsia did not fit into a “classless society” of workers and peasants, Bolsheviks realized that they had to rely on teachers for several reasons, not least because teachers carried political and civic weight.⁶ First, teachers were instrumental in establishing the “melding between town and country” (so-called zmychka) by serving as propagandists of Bolshevik policies in towns and especially villages, where they traditionally enjoyed considerable respect and trust of local populations. Second, teachers were heralds of modernity because they educated the younger generation of builders of a new Soviet civilization. Third, Bolsheviks realized that they could not achieve both purposes, maintaining their political power and modernizing the state, without creating a new social order. Teachers were indispensable for the Bolshevik program of molding a new society because teachers influenced other people’s ideas and everyday behavior. A new type of Soviet species and a new culture had to be created. As German historian Stefan Plaggenborg put it, the regime “acted as a teacher,”⁷ and, at first, had to “teach” its values to professional educators and, through them, to the masses.⁸

“A teacher,” Anatoly Lunacharsky wrote, “is a reliable link with the future generations and thus guarantees for us our tomorrow.”⁹ To guarantee their tomorrow, Bolsheviks had to win teachers over to their side. Some teachers at first had difficulty understanding social changes and stayed on the sidelines. The process of Soviet ideological indoctrination was a challenging one because of “bad influence” on the teachers’ consciousness of competing “bourgeois nationalist” parties and groups. Following Lenin’s advice, Bolsheviks had to patiently explain to teachers their role in educating and acculturating new generations for the young Soviet state.

Lenin outlined a program on how to work with teachers in his speech at the First Congress of Internationalist Teachers in 1918:

The army of teachers must set themselves tremendous tasks in the educational sphere . . . The teachers must not confine themselves to narrow pedagogical duties. They must join forces with the entire body of the embattled working people. The task of the new pedagogy is to link up teaching activities with the socialist organization of society.¹⁰

The Bolshevik leader understood that teachers who inherited “capitalist” culture could not be communist but could not be alienated either and had to be recruited to carry out educational and political activities because teachers possessed knowledge crucial to achieving the goal of societal transformation. The Communist Party’s proclaimed goals included the elimination of national, class, social, religious, and other barriers in education, the separation of church from state and school from church, and the creation of a new school bureaucracy.

In the aftermath of the struggle for national liberation, every village was trying to establish a school and hire a teacher.¹¹ Bolshevik leader Christian Rakovsky, in one of his speeches in 1920, reported: “People everywhere demand schools. Peasants refurbish former landlords’ estates into schools. In one of the districts in the Zhytomyr region villagers collected 3 million karbovantsi to build a school.”¹² A village teacher’s social position remained prominent because beyond classroom teaching, a teacher was a valuable conduit of knowledge and indispensable to the transmission of culture. For this reason, teaching became the only outlet for intellectuals to freely participate in the life of society, when political activities were curtailed following the dissolution of opposition parties and civic organizations that Bolsheviks could not control directly.¹³

Among teachers who took the lead in the revival of Ukrainian culture was Varvara Dibert, the daughter of an Orthodox priest, from the Cherkasy region, birthplace of Ukraine’s national poet Taras Shevchenko. At the age of seventeen, after completing seventh grade, Varvara became a teacher. She taught in a school in Kaharlyk, a small town near Kyïv. World War I interrupted her plans to pursue higher education as most universities were evacuated. Varvara was the youngest among eleven teachers in her school, the eldest being twenty-five years old. The school was in the hands of women. Varvara Dibert taught seventy-six pupils in the first grade. Her elder brother and cousin served as guards helping to evacuate Hrushevs′kyi’s government from Kyïv. In 1922, she married a school principal, who formerly fought on Petliura’s side. Varvara Dibert described Ukrainization of schools as a grassroots effort:

We elected a school council right there on the spot and decided to Ukrainize the school. We did it without any official directives from Kiev.

At the time we had no other textbooks except [Shevchenko’s] Kobzar and perhaps a few other small books here and there. But we were determined to Ukrainize the primary school immediately. And we began to copy excerpts from the Kobzar.¹⁴

Varvara Dibert recalled that schools had no paper, pens, or pencils, so the teachers used thick paper, normally used for wrapping sugar cubes, to write. One side of the paper was dark blue and the other white. “We would use it to copy passages from the Kobzar, which we would hang up on the walls in the classroom.” The lack of Ukrainian-language textbooks that she described was coupled with a pedagogical innovation, “a program for progressive education,” borrowed from John Dewey.¹⁵ In the absence of teaching materials, it was innovative as it was child-centered and integrated learning around specific, usually local, themes. Even anti-Russian motives in Shevchenko’s poetry were tolerated.

The lack of paper was due to the occupation of western border regions after the armistice was signed at the end of World War I. Before the war, the Russian Empire produced 24 million puds of paper; however, the Soviet empire could produce only 11 million.¹⁶ The German occupation of Ukraine during the second year of the war led to a 40 percent loss in paper production. A shipment of cellulose and timber from Finland saved the industry from a catastrophic collapse, but soon the shipments stopped, when in 1918, Finland declared independence from the Russian Empire.¹⁷ The paper industry reached its nadir in 1921, dropping to 2 million puds. Ironically, between October 1919 and April 1921, the printing press of the Bolshevik Western Front published 35 million copies of propaganda materials in seven languages. Between April and October of 1920, the First Cavalry, while marching from the North Caucasus to reoccupy Ukraine, was able to print 1,336,960 posters and leaflets as well as 21,000 propaganda brochures.¹⁸ Such incessant propaganda subverted efforts of the Ukrainian national government which lacked resources to inform the masses about its policies.¹⁹

Teachers like Varvara Dibert were among thousands who, in the harsh conditions of Bolshevik onslaught, survived and maintained their national identity. However, as soon as Ukraine lost its struggle for national liberation, the Communist Party purged all political parties and cultural organizations, appropriated assets of the Ukrainian cooperative unions, and dissolved the “counter-revolutionary bourgeois-nationalist” All-Ukrainian Teachers’ Union, obligating teachers to join another professional union controlled by Bolsheviks.²⁰

A New Teachers’ Union

The new teachers’ union was not a voluntary professional organization. It did not protect the interests of the profession, but served as a tool of control by the Bolshevik regime. Between 1922 and 1924, the number of teachers in Ukraine sharply decreased. Statistical sources fail to explain the causes. Historians argue that the famine of 1921–1923 was the reason for a decrease in the number of teachers in southern and eastern regions of Soviet Ukraine. At the same time, in northern and western regions of Soviet Ukraine, teachers were dismissed for political reasons.²¹

Ideological subversion of the population started with a campaign to undermine teachers’ economic well-being and social standing in the eyes of the local community. Archival documents reveal that in 1921, a teacher’s salary in the Kam’ianets′-Podil′s′kyi school district in the Vinnytsia province, bordering Poland, could support only one individual, not the entire family, with 95 percent of the salary spent on food. A representative from the school district described local teachers as “naked” and “barefoot” because during the previous year they had received no cash payments, and half the grain supplement was chaff rather than kernels.²² Out of desperation, having no means to survive, some teachers from the province crossed the border into Poland in search of provisions. Others vented their frustration on students by increasing the difficulty of class assignments. This way, teachers could earn extra money (or bread) by private tutoring. Instead of relief, a local party committee organized a teachers’ conference on May 4–9, 1921, and accused the teachers of “sabotage”; as a “preventive measure,” a great number of teachers were arrested for alleged “anti-Soviet propaganda.”²³ Despite protests from school district authorities, in June 1922, eighty-two teachers were dismissed from their jobs, including F. Pryimak, the school district’s leader, accused of being Petliura’s follower.²⁴

The prominence of village teachers in the enlightenment among the masses had to be harnessed if Bolsheviks wanted to conquer the countryside and bring it in line with the urban “proletarian culture.” All publications, decrees, and instructions emphasized: “The Soviet authorities treat new teachers with special attention and care because they are the providers of not only general education, but communist enlightenment among the masses.”²⁵ Despite lofty pronouncements, until 1923, Bolsheviks allocated a tiny 3 percent of the state budget to education.²⁶ To put it into perspective, the education budget allocation for Soviet Ukraine in 1922–1923 amounted to 6 million golden rubles, an average of 24 kopeks per citizen, which was twenty-two times less than a comparable allocation in Switzerland in 1904, according to one of the leading educational periodicals.²⁷

Lenin’s essay “Pages from a Diary” (Stranichki iz dnevnika), published in 1923, was the Communist Party’s programmatic document that laid foundations for the “cultural revolution” in schools, with an emphasis on the training of new teachers and retraining the old cadres. In response, 300 teachers of the Bila Tserkva region, who gathered at a conference, sent their greetings to Lenin wishing him speedy recovery.²⁸ They wrote, “We would like to assure you, the leader of the proletariat, that temporary material difficulties experienced by the educators will not weaken their work in the direction dictated by the party.”²⁹ The Ukrainian teachers assured Lenin that his words gave them strength to continue the fight.

A collective letter with an expression of support might have reflected teachers’ concerns for the health of the Bolshevik leader, who frequently suffered from strokes that left him paralyzed after an unsuccessful assassination attempt in 1918, by Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan, rather than an affirmation of his program. Bolsheviks started the program to reeducate teachers with the propaganda campaign in the press, followed by purges of politically unreliable teachers. To stir up enthusiasm, Soviet educational periodicals published theses presented by Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, at the Thirteenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) explaining the role of village teachers as liquidators of illiteracy and as propagandists of Bolshevik policies in the countryside.³⁰

When soft tactics failed to produce desirable behaviors, harsher measures were initiated. In the border province of Volyn′, in 1923, authorities liquidated a group of 106 teachers: 25 were sentenced to death, 56 sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, and 25 dismissed from the job.³¹ Protocols of the regional party conference described village teachers’ sentiments as negative, characterizing teachers in the “enemy camp” as “politically illiterate,” stating that “such cadres could hardly be relied upon to conduct political and cultural activities in the village.”³² In August of that year, the regional GPU put 128 “unreliable” teachers under surveillance, along with 60 doctors and 48 engineers.³³

Over the summer of 1923, Bolshevik authorities launched a campaign to test teachers’ political literacy. Results of the campaign for political reeducation in Soviet Ukraine revealed that among 40,998 teachers, who were required to take tests for political literacy, 34,718 passed it; among them 57.2 percent in the first category, 38.5 percent in the second, and 4.3 percent in the third category. The first category included politically literate teachers, who understood party policies and goals of labor school. The second category included teachers who needed political reeducation. The third category were undesirables, candidates for laying off with potential physical consequences. The coercive campaign achieved its goal of raising political proficiency and improving teachers’ ideological qualification. The sole criterion for one’s qualification was loyalty to the Soviet regime.³⁴

In early 1924, Mykhailo Myronenko reported on the pages of Radians′ka osvita (Soviet Education), a periodical published by the People’s Commissariat of Education of the Ukrainian SSR, that results of the ideological reeducation campaign were palpable. For instance, in the Poltava region, teachers gathered informally in groups to study party publications, invited party propagandists to present lectures, traveled to other villages to take part in political discussions, joined local village committees, and participated in setting up libraries. The review of the campaign on political literacy concluded with praise for teachers as “the only cultural force in the village.” Village correspondent Myronenko also noted that, in addition to teaching, teachers had to work in a village cooperative, attend meetings of the village soviet, work at the library, and serve as clerks on various committees or executive councils. “Whenever land has to be redistributed, or surplus needs to be requisitioned from the kurkuli, or census of the population to be completed, teachers are always called upon.”³⁵

Bolsheviks needed teachers to educate future fighters for communism. Thus, a new term “red pedagogue” was coined. During the first week of October 1924, addressing 150 delegates of the Third All-Ukrainian Conference on Teacher Education held in Kharkiv, in the presence of guests from Moscow, the commissar of education of the Ukrainian SSR laid out four characteristics required of the “red pedagogues”:

1. the theoretical training had to be combined with practicum in labor schools;

2. the focus of education had to be on the study of children as members of a collective so that they become future fighters for communism;

3. teachers had to master the basics of the children’s communist movement based on materialism as conceptualized by Marx, and scientific pedagogy as envisioned by Lenin;

4. teachers had to become civic activists who would model new norms of thinking and behaving in the new society.³⁶

Beginning in 1924, the reeducation of teachers became systematic. In its resolution of October 10, 1924, the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee (Vseukraїns′kyi tsentral′nyi vykonavchyi komitet or VUTsVK) reported an “end of the retreat on the school front” as one of its achievements.³⁷ The trend toward recovery was accompanied by expansion of “reeducation” activities that became institutionalized through short-term courses for improving teachers’ qualifications, mainly political rather than methodological. For instance, within one year, the Poltava region trained 85 percent of teachers who were subject to political reeducation, 50 percent of whom satisfied the requirements.³⁸ At the same time, in a directive issued in August 1923, the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine (TsK KP(b)U) advised all regional and district party organizations that political reeducation should not be interpreted as a purge; those who failed tests should be demoted but not fired.³⁹ The political reeducation of teachers reshaped the composition of school cadres. Old (prerevolution) pro-Ukrainian intelligentsia were pushed out of schools or learned to “love” political literacy courses, conferences, and tests out of fear of losing their jobs. School cadres became more proletarian and pro-communist.

From 1925, with a shift in the composition of school cadres, teachers took an increasingly active role in the construction of Soviet society. In addition to teaching, 69 percent of teachers in the republic participated in various political campaigns. For instance, in 1925, in the Kyїv region, the percentage of teachers as members of district and village soviets grew from 19 to 36 and as members of committees of non-wealthy (Komitety nezamozhnykh selian or KNS) from 7 to 15, respectively.⁴⁰ These were the cadres that Bolsheviks relied on for implementing their propaganda, collectivization, and grain requisition campaigns throughout the 1930s.

The turning point occurred on January 5, 1925, when delegates gathered for the First All-Ukrainian Teachers Congress in Kharkiv (see Figure 2.1). Among the registered, 69.7 percent were teachers from rural schools (267 out of 363 delegates) and 30.3 percent teachers from big and small cities of Ukraine (116 out of 363). Most of them were non-Communist Party members (314 or 82 percent). The largely rural delegates demonstrated their support for Communist Party leadership. In terms of teacher’s own educational background, 49.8 percent had primary education, 35 percent had specialized secondary education, and only 15.7 percent attained higher education.⁴¹ At the time, Soviet Ukraine had 16,018 schools with 1,844,863 students.⁴²

Figure 2.1 A group of delegates from the Kharkiv region at the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Teachers, Kharkiv, 1925. In the center of the third row, with the goatee, is the Ukrainian People’s commissar of education Oleksandr Shums′kyi. Source: From Pershyi Vseukraïns′kyi uchytel′s′kyi z’ïzd v Kharkovi (Kharkiv: Derzhavne vydavnytstvo Ukraïny, 1925), xxx. Courtesy of TsDKFFAU, od. obl. 0-171971.

Congress delegates, during one week of sessions, were presented reports about goals of the Soviet government and the “national question” in schools. Greeting the delegates on opening day, an editorial in the newspaper Kommunist declared: “Our people’s teachers are foremost village teachers. In distant villages, for millions of people teachers are a rare source of culture and knowledge. It is paramount that village teachers work closely with Soviet authorities and the Communist Party.”⁴³

In his opening remarks, entitled “On the Third Front,” Soviet Ukraine’s commissar of education Oleksandr Shums′kyi⁴⁴ urged teachers to internalize “the philosophy of proletariat—historical materialism” and adopt “a dialectical method of inquiry” to become “passionate propagandists of ideas of communism on the cultural front . . . among the toiling masses, and especially the younger generation.”⁴⁵ Education became the third front, after Bolshevik victories on the first front (military) and the second front (economy). Shums′kyi acknowledged that Bolsheviks were too weak and had no allies among teachers to allow them to succeed in their struggle, but expressed the hope that newly recruited cadres would enable Bolsheviks, with minimum resources and maximum enthusiasm, “to implement a motto of our social education: children belong to the state, and the state has to wrestle the responsibility for their upbringing from the family.” Breakthrough on this front was also supposed to free women from their household duties that impeded their active participation in the labor force.

Among speakers at the Congress were Sokolians′kyi, who spoke about the social upbringing of children, and Zatons′kyi, who addressed the national question in schools, whereas Mizernyts′kyi⁴⁶ reported about the Union’s work on behalf of teachers.⁴⁷ Out of 500,000 members in the All-Soviet Teachers’ Union, nearly one-fifth, or 98,000 teachers, worked in Soviet Ukraine. Of the Teachers’ Union members who worked in Soviet Ukraine, 57.7 percent were ethnically Ukrainian, 24.9 percent Russian, and 12 percent Jewish.⁴⁸ The main issue that the Congress focused on was the liquidation of illiteracy because as the Commissar of Education admitted, three-quarters of school-age children remained illiterate seven years after the October Socialist Revolution. Another issue was that adults lacked political literacy. Thus, teachers were mobilized to assist Bolsheviks in achieving victory on the third front (education).

“People’s teachers are ours,” declared P. Solodub⁴⁹ in his speech on the revolution and the role of teachers. He admitted that Bolsheviks had to overcome opposition in Ukraine:

“‘Historically, Ukraine has had a series of bandit formations, led by people’s teachers: Zelenyi, Sokolovs′kyi, Tiutiunnyk,’⁵⁰ and numerous others who took up arms against workers and peasants to drown the revolution in blood.”⁵¹

Thus, Solodub openly acknowledged that the Soviet regime had no support among the local population. He enumerated “bandit formations” led by “people’s teachers,” recognizing that teachers were the force to reckon with because they could organize opposition to the Soviet regime, especially in the villages. Hence, Bolsheviks won teachers over with allotments of bread rations during the famine of 1922, firewood, renovations, and supplies for schools in 1923, and salary increases in 1924.⁵² At the conclusion of Congress, delegates adopted a resolution and forwarded it to the TsK KP(b)U, stating “a thousand-strong army of teachers in the republic was standing firmly under the banner of the October Revolution.”⁵³

Teachers’ support was echoed in a resolution passed during a teacher conference in Pavlohrad in response to the First All-Ukrainian Teachers’ Congress in January 1925: “This Congress drew a red line underneath the past, when teachers did not realize the role of the proletariat in the construction of a new civilization and walked a different path, obstructing its grand project.”⁵⁴ Thus, 1925 marked a turning point, when teachers “realized” the role of the Communist Party, and their ranks grew in towns as well as villages.

The prolonged fight on all the fronts—military, economic, and cultural—left teachers in poor health. The lack of nutritious food, or outright starvation, and unsanitary working conditions due to intermittent supply of water or heating, led to weakening of the immune system, frequent colds and infections. Wave after wave of mass epidemics of typhus, tuberculosis, the Spanish flu, and cholera swept through Ukraine during and after World War I, the struggle for national liberation, and the famine of 1921–1923. As a result, a general medical checkup of educational employees in Soviet Ukraine in the late fall 1924, through early spring of 1925, revealed that 27 percent of intellectuals older than fifty had cardiovascular diseases and 25 percent had digestive disorders.⁵⁵ One-fifth of intellectuals suffered not only from physical exhaustion but from mild to severe nervous system disorders, such as depression, neurasthenia, suicidal tendencies, and phobias. For example, a medical commission in Poltava found that one of four intelligentsia members suffered from headaches, dizziness, obsessive fears, irritability, fatigue, and insomnia.⁵⁶ From 1925, the Commissariat of Education in Soviet Ukraine was given the responsibility to take care of the well-being of the intelligentsia by distributing perks, vacations, and bonuses to employees under strict Communist Party control.⁵⁷

In November 1927, the Tenth Congress of the KP(b)U summed up the results of a decade of cultural achievements in Soviet Ukraine. The republic built 1,619 new schools (1,570 of these in rural areas) to accommodate 100,000 children.⁵⁸ The face of the teaching profession changed over the decade. Their ranks were renewed by 40–45 percent compared to the prerevolution period.⁵⁹

Industrial modernization and urbanization, however, did not draw teachers into cities in large numbers; most of them still worked in public schools in rural areas. Over 70 percent of teachers in Soviet Ukraine worked in rural schools.⁶⁰ Working conditions in rural schools were different from urban schools. Class sizes in rural schools were larger. During 1925–1926, an average ratio was 47 schoolchildren per teacher, but as a result of the purges, which depleted teachers ranks, and with simultaneous increases in enrollments, the ratio reached 70, 90, or even 150 in some schools.⁶¹ Teacher shortages even spurred calls for volunteers to teach in schools.⁶² In Luhans′k, unemployed urban teachers were recruited to work in rural schools.⁶³ Male teachers could also delay their military conscription if they agreed to teach in the classroom. Gender parity in the teaching profession remained relatively constant before, as well as the decade after, World War I: the proportion of women increased slightly from 49.3 percent in 1914 to 55.8 percent in 1927.⁶⁴ In 1927, an urban teacher had twenty-seven pupils, whereas a rural teacher thirty-seven. It was an improvement from 1925, when a rural teacher could have as many as forty-seven schoolchildren as compared to an urban teacher who had thirty schoolchildren per class. Not only did rural teachers carry a heavier teaching load, they were also required to engage in various campaigns in the community outside school duties. The head of the Teachers’ Union of Soviet Ukraine, Mizernyts′kyi, emphasized this fact in his speech in the spring of 1925.⁶⁵ Additionally, the disparity in pay further contributed to the lowering of living standards among teachers in rural areas.⁶⁶

A teachers’ ethnic background also influenced their disposition. A school census, conducted in 1927, counted 76.7 percent Ukrainian teachers, with the remaining 10.4 percent Russian, 6 percent Jewish, 2.2 percent German, 1.2 percent Polish, 0.9 percent Greek, 0.6 percent each Belarussian and Bulgarian, 0.4 percent each Moldovan and Tatar, and 1.1 percent other.⁶⁷ In primary schools, the number of Ukrainian teachers was higher (79.7 percent), whereas in secondary schools, where each subject required specialty training, their number was lower (65.2 percent). Most of the teachers in primary schools taught in Ukrainian (80.1 percent), whereas only 60.4 percent taught in Ukrainian in secondary schools. In other words, by the end of 1927, the percentage of primary schools (grades 1 through 4) that used Ukrainian reflected the percentage of Ukrainians in the total population in the republic (80.1 percent),⁶⁸ the exception being secondary schools (grades 5 through 7).⁶⁹ At the time, secondary school was not compulsory. Ukrainians were the majority among teachers in the republic, and Bolsheviks used this fact to coerce teachers into carrying out various propaganda campaigns.

Children’s Communes

In 1920, the Soviet government established a benevolent society, Children’s Friends, with branches in all cities and villages of the republic, and special orphanages to educate and shelter orphaned children. The Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR led the effort.⁷⁰ In 1921, there were 806 orphanages and, in 1923, their number increased to 1,928; they housed 114,000 orphans.⁷¹ Often homes confiscated from intelligentsia were converted into orphanages after a decree of 1918 abolished private ownership of real estate property.⁷²

In the autumn of 1925, there were still 40,000 homeless children in the Ukrainian SSR, most of them from other republics, who tried to escape from famine-ravaged areas, mostly from Russia.⁷³ This estimated number shifted from day to day. Approximately half of these homeless traveled on trains from city to city; the remaining half, who lost parents and homes during the famine, were in need of shelter and food.⁷⁴ In 1924–1925, the Central Commission to Aid Children, which was established to coordinate the fight against child homelessness, had a budget of 3.5 to 4 million rubles.⁷⁵ On November 4, 1925, the KP(b)U urged their counterparts in the Russian SFSR to allocate financial assistance to Ukraine to help return 16,000 children home to the republics they came from (mostly from Russia) and to take 5,000 children off the railroads. Ukrainian authorities requested 1.3 million rubles, but central authorities in Moscow allocated 446,000 rubles instead, and the remaining 854,000 had to come from Ukraine’s own budget.⁷⁶ As evident from reports and resolutions, hastily drafted throughout October 1925, when a new tax policy was introduced, the matter became urgent in the face of the upcoming winter; yet, funds had to be raised elsewhere because sources of revenue for the Commission were dwindling.⁷⁷

By 1925, the Ukrainian SSR had a shortfall of 2.9 million rubles to take care of existing orphanages and children’s shelters.⁷⁸ The proposed budget allocation of 2.8 million rubles was apportioned to repatriate 2,595 children (purchase railroad tickets at discounted prices plus food rations), to provide patronage to 6,978 homeless children (accommodate with families or relatives), and to place 10,588 homeless children in orphanages and shelters.⁷⁹ Even if urgent calls to expedite the process were heeded, the insufficient funds could cover only half of Ukraine’s financial capacity to deal with the problem of child homelessness long after the revolution, war, and famine subsided.

Homeless adolescents were placed in juvenile detention centers (koloniї or children’s communes), which became experimental laboratories for Soviet upbringing methods. In collaboration with the GPU, Anton Makarenko established several such communes; one named after the chief of the Soviet secret police, Felix Dzerzhinsky, is shown in Figure 2.2.⁸⁰ Makarenko’s collectivist method of education, combined with labor training, was lauded as a humanistic method of upbringing for children who would otherwise join the ranks of criminals under a capitalist system. He depicted his work with orphans in Pedagogical Poem (Pedagogicheskaia poema, better known in the West under its English title, Road to Life). His autobiographical novel Flags on the Battlements (Flagi na bashniakh, translated into English as Learning to Live) formed the “golden fund” of Soviet pedagogical science.⁸¹ The other side of the story has remained hidden because select teachers who worked in the GPU-run communes and orphanages signed nondisclosure agreements.⁸²

Figure 2.2 A formation of pioneers of the F. E. Dzerzhinsky Commune, headed by A. S. Makarenko, at a ceremony dedicated to the launching of the reconstructed machine-building factory named after S. Ordzhonikidze in Kramators′k, Kramators′k district, 1931. Source: From TsDKFFAU, od. obl. 2-68381.

Teachers who cooperated with the GPU, like the Russified Ukrainian Anton Makarenko, became heroes and role models. Teachers like Oleksandr Zaluzhnyi,⁸³ the author of the concept of children’s collective upbringing, or Hryhorii Vashchenko,⁸⁴ also a proponent of this theory, were either purged or exiled abroad. Vashchenko, who often met Makarenko during conferences, offered a scathing critique of Makarenko’s pedagogy. First, he noted that Makarenko had shallow knowledge of pedagogical theory; he was the source of his own pedagogy. Second, Makarenko’s methods practiced in his children’s communes incorporated purely militaristic elements and disciplinary punishments. Third, Makarenko appeared to be strong-willed, egotistical, and condescending toward his colleagues. He was particularly attracted to communism, either a “fanatic Bolshevik” or a careerist. Vashchenko wrote,

Seems like in his pedagogical practice he should be guided by feelings, especially compassion toward orphans, toward their privations endured in harsh circumstances of the USSR. But in reality he had none of these. Makarenko was a person with a strong will, and in his work he was guided by his reason rather than passion. Besides, he was extremely egocentric. Such people have difficulty showing sympathy. Their own ego is paramount. Their actions are the realization of their own views, and they are less inclined to compromise their actions because they pose a threat to their self-image. There is no need to view Makarenko as a “dreamer” or compare him to Pestalozzi, who was guided in his work by deep sympathy toward unfortunate orphans.⁸⁵

Makarenko was lionized as a preeminent Soviet pedagogical theorist and teachers, who made a moral choice to serve the Soviet regime, were awarded a medal named after him.⁸⁶ In the absence of democratic freedoms, in the atmosphere of fear and suspicion, generations of teachers and students, grew up with a psychological syndrome of a “small person” or being a passive “cog” in the collectivist system.⁸⁷

This upbringing, despite its slogans of proletarian internationalism and class solidarity, was at its core subordinated to the communist doctrine, which did not consider human beings as entitled to certain rights. A human being was the object of Soviet experimentation: a robot, a Soviet patriot, a soldier, an agent, or some other entity useful to the Communist Party.⁸⁸ Orphans, who were reared in institutions for homeless children, became ideal recruits for the political police.⁸⁹ Soviet educator Anton Makarenko, an authority on communist upbringing, wrote in his Book for Parents:

A lot of rudiments of old lifestyle are still present within us, old relations, old traditional moral principles. Without noticing it, we in our day-to-day life repeat many mistakes and falsehoods of the history of humankind. Many of us subconsciously exaggerate the importance of so-called love, others are still harboring the faith in so-called freedom.⁹⁰

Bolshevism could not stand “so-called love” and “so-called freedom” because these two humanist notions were incompatible with communist doctrine. Makarenko’s principles were in tune with the ideology of one of the leading specialists of the Central Institute of Labor, O. K. Gastev, a proponent of Taylorism in labor education, whose slogan, “We have to create automatons from the nerves and muscles,” meant none other than the need to control human behavior.⁹¹ The result of this social engineering was an authoritarian, pedantic type of teacher, who served the interests of the Communist Party and Soviet state.

Political Enlightenment

Teachers were indispensable to Bolsheviks in the struggle to liquidate political illiteracy. On December 26, 1919, Lenin signed a decree requiring all eight- to fifty-year-olds learn how to read and write to be able to fully participate in the political life of the state. In May 1921, the government of the Ukrainian SSR issued a decree on the liquidation of illiteracy. An All-Ukrainian Extraordinary Committee on the Liquidation of Illiteracy was in charge of implementing the decree.⁹²

The campaign for the liquidation of illiteracy was launched amid economic devastation and the famine of 1921–1923 that led to a sharp decrease in the number of schools in Soviet Ukraine. Because of economic collapse, the responsibility for school funding was transferred to local communities. A turning point came in 1923.⁹³ That year, May Day was declared the Day of Literacy. Reading materials included the ABC of Communism, with Lenin’s motto on the cover: “Education! Education! Education!”⁹⁴ Soviet Ukraine’s commissar of education Zatons′kyi reported at the Fourth Plenum of the VUTsVK early in 1924, that among eighteen- to thirty-five-year-olds in urban areas, 43 percent were illiterate (36 percent men, 49 percent women), whereas in rural areas 72 percent were illiterate (60 percent men, 82 percent women).⁹⁵ The goal of the campaign was to fulfill Lenin’s testament: “It would be a shame if by the tenth anniversary of Red October not all of our masses will be able to read its great slogans.”⁹⁶

The All-Ukrainian Extraordinary Committee on the Liquidation of Illiteracy engaged volunteers who could teach literacy and established literacy centers and schools. During the 1923–1924 academic year, as many as 3,838 such schools and centers were opened. By 1924–1925, their number tripled to 11,538.⁹⁷ They planned to liquidate illiteracy among 4 million of the republic’s active workforce, eighteen- to thirty-five-year-olds.⁹⁸ The chairman of VUTsVK Hryhorii Petrovs′kyi led a newly created volunteer society under the slogan “Down with Illiteracy!” (Het′ nepys′mennist′!) which contributed to the success of the campaign. To raise funds, VUTsVK secretary Butsenko called for “voluntary contributions” of produce from farmers and “donations” from soldiers and workers’ organizations to pay liquidators’ salaries.⁹⁹

Mass mobilization to liquidate illiteracy by the Communist Party and Komsomol (Communist Youth League) bore fruits. By 1929, the campaign for literacy engaged 2.8 million adults, among them 1.6 million women.¹⁰⁰ The percentage of literate adults in the Ukrainian SSR grew to 74 percent in cities and up to 53 percent in villages. However, the 1939 census revealed that every fifth citizen of Soviet Ukraine ten years or older was still illiterate.¹⁰¹ Despite laudatory reports about the fulfillment of plans, the problem of illiteracy was not solved even after two decades of Soviet rule.

Teachers were also recruited to work in a special type of school created for political enlightenment of the general population with the goal of indoctrinating the illiterate masses to Marxist ideology. The method of indoctrination took the form of clubs. Bolsheviks organized political clubs in factories, industrial plants, shops, and military barracks. Education authorities established traveling railroad libraries filled with propaganda materials and organized lectures to “enlighten” the population. The Commissariat of Education coordinated the activities of these clubs, including libraries, literacy centers and schools, museums, sports clubs, and art centers, with all their local and regional branches.¹⁰² A two-year course of political education was required for training cadres.¹⁰³ In Ukraine, 75.8 percent of teachers participated in these political enlightenment activities, with 69.5 percent working as librarians, 56.9 percent as lecturers, and 50 percent as literacy instructors.¹⁰⁴ Participation was not a matter of choice, but a means of survival.

In rural areas, political enlightenment assumed a different shape via the so-called “village house” (sil′s′kyi budynok or sil′bud).¹⁰⁵ It was an information hub, a way station with a repair shop, and more. There rural residents could read newspapers, learn about government decrees, get an address of any government agency, listen to lectures by party propagandists, or watch stage shows. These “village houses” recruited chettsi (readers) to read local and regional newspapers to illiterate masses. Comrade Zemlianyi reported that, in 1923 in the Uman′ region, about 1,085 such “readers” were recruited, on average from 3 to 40 per village.¹⁰⁶ Their role was to politically enlighten rural masses about Soviet policies.

These Soviet-style sil′budy faced strong opposition from “Prosvita” (Enlightenment) societies that had been established by the Ukrainian intelligentsia since 1905 to liquidate illiteracy in rural areas. In 1921–1922, despite harsh conditions of famine, the number of these societies increased from 4,000 to 4,500.¹⁰⁷ In February 1922, Soviet education authorities characterized these societies as “a dangerous enemy of the proletariat.”¹⁰⁸ Soviet Ukraine’s commissar of education Hryhorii Hryn′ko disparaged these long-established “Prosvita” societies because they had exercised an enormous influence on Ukrainian village life:

During a long period of their existence, a certain ideology of prosvitianstvo and a certain type of a prosvitianyn has emerged. The so-called “Ukrainian idea,” the petit bourgeois national state—the central axis of this ideology. Intolerance toward everything non-Ukrainian (first and foremost Russian) as foreign—a characteristic psychological feature of the prosvitianyn. An inerasable stamp of prosperous village democracy is affixed to this entire movement.¹⁰⁹

The Ukrainian national aspiration to achieve state sovereignty was incompatible with the Bolshevik intent; thus, “Prosvita” societies had to be subordinated, turned “red,” or eliminated. By early 1923, only 573 such societies remained in rural areas throughout the republic.¹¹⁰ The Soviet policy of korenizatsiia was instituted to supplant national-patriotic ideals with the Bolshevik ideology.¹¹¹ Teachers in Soviet Ukraine had no choice but to serve the Communist Party as propagandists of Bolshevik policies or face persecution for supporting the national idea. Teachers lost not only their high social standing, due to extreme impoverishment brought by the famine, but also respect of their compatriots, due to a swift metamorphosis in their ideological orientation. In turn, the conscious manipulation of society by Bolsheviks became possible because repressions and total control discouraged critical thinking and opposition, and led to fatalistic acceptance of the new reality among the less educated, who learned to conform and wait for better times to come.

SOVIET NATIONALITY POLICY

The nationality policy toward Ukraine was outlined in resolutions of the Tenth (1921) and Twelfth (1923) Party Congresses of the RKP(b), or Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). In between two congresses, formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was announced by delegates at the First Congress of Soviets in Moscow on December 30, 1922. It was “a voluntary union” of “equal nations,” which consolidated Russian takeover of Ukraine and other non-Russian republics. The final text of the declaration and the union agreement, however, took months to negotiate. A proposal by the Ukrainian delegation to establish a bicameral parliament with a Council of Nationalities, that would safeguard rights of constituent national republics, was overruled by Stalin. On July 6, 1923, the Soviet Union was officially born. The day became an official Soviet holiday, celebrated as the Day of the USSR or Constitution Day.¹¹²

In Ukraine, nationality policy, known as korenizatsiia, was given the name “Ukrainization.” Ukrainians, however, already spoke their native language, so for whom was the policy designed? A grassroots movement after the revolution led to opening of Ukrainian-language schools for Ukrainian-speaking students and schools for other minorities in Ukraine to afford them education in their mother tongue. Why did the Russian Communist Party concern itself with the nationality policy toward Ukraine? The main thrust of the policy was directed toward Ukrainian titular nationality. It was accompanied by similar policies toward minority populations in Soviet Ukraine and in other republics of the Soviet Union. As James Mace stated, “Ukrainization went much further than the others simply because 40 percent of all non-Russians in the USSR in this period were Ukrainians and they outnumbered the next largest group by 6.5 to 1. So the nationality problem was very largely a Ukrainian problem.”¹¹³

When the national question was discussed at the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921, Stalin, then People’s Commissar of Nationalities, clashed with his critics from the national republics. Among them were two Ukrainians: Volodymyr Zatons′kyi, who spoke of the Russian “colonizing element” in Ukraine with its belief in “one indivisible” Russia,¹¹⁴ and Mykola Skrypnyk, who stated that in Stalin’s report the national question “had not been resolved in the least.”¹¹⁵ In August 1921, the Council of People’s Commissars (Rada narodnykh komisariv or RNK) in Soviet Ukraine signed a decree “On the Introduction of the Ukrainian Language in Schools and Soviet Institutions.” It polarized the leadership: some like the Commissar of Education Hryn′ko argued that Soviet schools must educate students, while taking into consideration their national distinctiveness, whereas others opposed the existence of Ukraine as a separate nation. The latter made unsubstantiated accusations that schools were in the hands of “Petliura’s intelligentsia” and that employees of the Commissariat of Education were heavily influenced by “national chauvinism.”¹¹⁶

The position of the republic’s leadership on this issue became clear at the October 1922 plenum of the TsK KP(b)U. Whereas Ukraine’s Communist Party secretary Lebed′ and head of the RNK Rakovsky recognized the equality of Ukrainian and Russian languages, their position was that “without consistent efforts to Sovietize national schools, they will inevitably remain citadels of Ukrainian nationalism.” Hence, the decision was made to test teachers for political loyalty. Hryn′ko was dismissed and replaced with Zatons′kyi.¹¹⁷

The Twelfth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), on June 22, 1923, issued a decree which provided for intensified Ukrainization of all state and party organizations.¹¹⁸ Another decree by the RNK in Ukraine followed on July 27; it mandated the use of Ukrainian language in schools. It instructed education authorities to train new pedagogical cadres who would be fluent in the Ukrainian language and to train new cohorts of professors who would know the Ukrainian language well enough to conduct scientific research.¹¹⁹ In August, the VUTsVK in its decree affirmed this policy, requiring Ukrainian-language instruction in primary and secondary schools, and expanded it to all levels of government.¹²⁰ In September, the VUTsVK and RNK in Soviet Ukraine outlined measures to assist with the implementation of the decree. One way to strengthen the Ukrainian language was to establish Ukrainian-language schools in proportion to the Ukrainian population in the area. Another way to assure the implementation of the decree was to train teachers of the Ukrainian language.¹²¹

To implement the nationality policy, special Soviet administrative and educational institutions were set up. On the administrative level, sections that were in charge of implementing the policy were integrated into GPU and Communist Party apparatuses as well as the VUTsVK. As the initial thrust of this policy, a system of village councils was created to promote education and publication of materials in the languages of national minority groups.¹²² By 1926–1927, a dozen national minority areas of settlement were established, among them were seven German areas.¹²³ Within these areas, 872 village councils were created, including 292 Russian, 237 German, 139 Polish, 57 Moldovan, 56 Jewish, 45 Bulgarian, 30 Greek, 13 Czech, 2 Belarusian, and 1 Swedish. Often within one area several ethnic village councils coexisted. For instance, the Pulinsky German ethnic area included two Polish, a Russian, a Jewish, and several Ukrainian village councils. A shared space required a certain political culture of tolerance. In theory, the use of minority languages in daily interaction was promoted, yet in practice the language used in village council offices was Russian.¹²⁴

Soviet Ukrainization, 1923

Although 96 percent of teachers were not Communist Party members (pozapartiini in Ukrainian), “all were captives of revolutionary romanticism.”¹²⁵ The Ukrainian Revolution, more precisely the war for independence of 1917–1921, aimed at establishing a democratic government that would guarantee rights to all national minorities, not just the titular nationality. On December 30, 1922, communist Russia formalized its occupation of Ukraine by creating the USSR. Once the Union was created, Bolsheviks pursued the policy of educating local elites loyal to the regime (korenizatsiia in Russian, meaning indigenization). In his study of the Soviet language policy in the Ukrainian SSR from 1923 through 1934, Matthew Pauly of Michigan State University has argued that “the Communist Party meant Ukrainization as a means of integrating the bulk of the rural population into the Soviet order.”¹²⁶ It was through the national language, promoted by school teachers in Ukraine that the Soviet ideal was to be realized.

Rather than being an “affirmative action”¹²⁷ as Matthew Pauly, Terry Martin, and other Western historians argue, the policy was a concession of central authorities in Moscow made under pressure from the republic. Historians in Ukraine and the diaspora, as well as in Russia, challenge the view that Moscow consciously promoted and supported Ukrainian language and culture, and demonstrate that the policy of “Ukrainization” was introduced in 1923 to appease national communists in Ukraine.¹²⁸ Like a temporary retreat under the NEP, it was the NEP in the cultural sphere. Ukrainization was not a policy Moscow wanted. Behind the seemingly idyllic façade, allowing Ukrainian statehood within the Soviet Union with trappings of the “Ukrainian Renaissance,” Moscow was preparing for an offensive. The beginning of the “offensive” in 1928 was also the end of the NEP.¹²⁹ Stalin’s hasty termination of the NEP, and elimination of the most active participants of Ukrainization as “counterrevolutionaries,” was not a betrayal of Lenin in any sense, but a logical continuation of the political practice of his predecessor.¹³⁰

It is no coincidence that Stalin was appointed People’s Commissar of Nationalities under Lenin from 1917 until 1922. Stalin considered himself Russian of Georgian origin. Stalin “had many roots in the Russian past,” noted James H. Billington of Princeton University. This American historian of Russian culture further observed,

His addiction to mass armies overbalanced with artillery follows a long tradition leading back to Ivan the Terrible; his xenophobic and disciplinarian conception of education is reminiscent of … Nicholas I, and Pobedonostsev . . . ; his passion for material innovation and war-supporting technology echoes Peter the Great.¹³¹

Robert Tucker, professor of politics at Princeton University, noted, “To identify himself with Russia was to take as his revolutionary arena not simply little Georgia but the whole of a great empire covering a sixth of the world.” Tucker further argued that the mental process of Russification of the “future prophet of socialism in one country” exhibited Stalin’s penchant for bigness.¹³²

To integrate Ukraine under a new guise as a constituent republic within the Soviet Union into its “mother country,” Russia, Bolshevik authorities had several policy options: pursue either accommodation or assimilation of local elites. Robert Conquest noted that Stalin clearly understood that “the essence of Ukrainian nationhood was contained in the intelligentsia who articulated it” but also in the rural masses “who had sustained it over the centuries.” The “decapitation” of the nation by removing its spokesmen was essential in Stalin’s mind once he realized that “only a mass terror throughout the body of the nation”—that is, the land tillers who embodied the traditional culture of Ukraine, “could really reduce the country to submission.”¹³³

What was the real goal behind the requirement for Ukrainization decreed by the RNK on July 27, 1923, to the Commissariat of Education and its local organs? The requirement to correlate a targeted number of Ukrainian-language schools with a proportion of local Ukrainian population deviated from Lenin’s views on education for national minorities. More worrisome, by 1932–1933, the number of Ukrainian-language schools rose to 88 percent, in excess of the ethnic-Ukrainian proportion of the republic’s population.¹³⁴ Although the RNK decree further required study of the Ukrainian language in all non-Ukrainian schools, Russian remained an obligatory subject. The decree specified that Russian was “a common state language” that “connects the Ukrainian people to the culture of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”¹³⁵

The Ukrainization policy seemed to be progressing well. Between 1927 and 1929, the number of schools with instruction in Ukrainian language increased from 79 to 81 percent; in institutes, the use of Ukrainian language also increased from 28 to 30 percent.¹³⁶ For Jewish, German, Bulgarian, Belarusian, Moldavian, and Greek minorities in Soviet Ukraine, instruction was in their native tongue. Professors and lecturers in institutions of higher education were required to lecture in Ukrainian. Enrollment in postgraduate studies was open only to individuals who could speak and write in Ukrainian.¹³⁷ However, the policy was a mixed success; it was resisted by Russian-speaking parents and government officials, who were not Ukrainian, but appointed by Moscow.¹³⁸ While Moscow gradually embraced Ukrainization as policy, its own leaders resisted it because they did not want to learn Ukrainian.

Alongside schools for ethnic Ukrainians, there were 1,214 schools for Russian-speaking minority students, 625 German, 457 Jewish, 337 Polish, and dozens of schools with instruction in languages of other national minority populations. Considering the ratio of eight- to fourteen-year-old children of respective nationality to the number of minority schools, German settlements had four times the number of Polish and six times the number of Jewish language schools.¹³⁹ Not only had the German settlements more schools than other national minorities in Ukraine, but they also received substantial financial aid from Mennonites in North America and later Hitler’s government during the famine of 1933.¹⁴⁰ The absence of actual famine conditions in many German settlements proved to be significant factors that contributed to the lower tallies of Mennonite deaths due to starvation than those often cited for the Ukrainian population.¹⁴¹ A photo of a lesson in the German seven-year school in the Sinel′nykivs′kyi district, Dnipropetrovs′k region, was taken during the famine of 1933 (see Figure 2.3). No comparable photos of conditions in Ukrainian rural schools have been preserved in the archives, because in some schools there were no students or teachers as entire villages died out.

Figure 2.3 Schoolchildren attending lessons in a German seven-year school, Sinel′nykivs′kyi district, Dnipropetrovs′k region, 1933. Source: From TsDKFFAU, od. obl. 2-13577.

Was this a progressive policy or a propaganda campaign to win diverse groups over to the Bolshevik cause? While proclaiming the need to educate children in their native tongue, the Communist Party forbade schooling in minority languages. The “artificially created” national minority areas of settlement and respective village councils, as well as schools in minority languages, were liquidated in 1939 when Russification became the official policy.¹⁴²

The reduction of the use of Russian language in schools was never accepted by the Russian minority. Some continued to regard Ukrainian as a mere dialect and expressed open contempt or hostility. The following dialogue between two officials captures the unpleasant experiences of those who failed to learn the Ukrainian language:

· –Is Ukrainian a language or a dialect?

· –Neither. It is an excuse to dismiss a person from his position.¹⁴³

Before dark clouds began to gather on the horizon, Skrypnyk intensified the process of introduction of education in the native tongue to Ukrainian children beyond Soviet Ukraine’s borders in the Russian SFSR. The Ukrainian national awakening touched all areas where Ukrainians settled over the centuries: Kuban′, Central Black Earth, Lower Volga, Western Siberia, and the Far East.¹⁴⁴ Territories of Kursk and Voronezh Governorates on the border with Ukraine were incorporated into the republic for a brief period in 1918–1920, but after the establishment of the Soviet Union were transferred to the Russian SFSR.¹⁴⁵ Kuban′, with over 3 million Ukrainians, and the Far Eastern Republic, with over 300,000 Ukrainians, enjoyed national-cultural autonomy. However, as of 1924, for over 7 million Ukrainians in the Russian SFSR, there were only 150 schools.¹⁴⁶ These schools had 40 primary and 22 secondary school teachers in urban areas and 1,487 primary and 36 secondary school teachers in rural settlements where ethnic Ukrainians lived.¹⁴⁷ These schools often lacked literature, textbooks, and classrooms.

New Ukrainian-language schools sprang up in the Kuban area in the North Caucasus, where descendants from Cossacks had settled centuries before. One of the first teacher training colleges with Ukrainian-language instruction was established in stanytsia Poltavs′ka (a Cossack settlement) in the North Caucasus. On July 15, 1924, it boasted twenty-nine new “red pedagogues,” who graduated from the college after completing a three-year course of study.¹⁴⁸ In the Far East, Ukrainian sections were established in local education districts. Two pedagogical technical colleges in Valuis′k and Ostrohrad made Ukrainian studies mandatory. So did pedagogical faculty at the Voronizh University, where a Ukrainian studies department was established.¹⁴⁹ These teachers were a tuning fork for national consciousness. They transmitted knowledge about Ukrainian history and culture, served as guardians of national memory and mythology, and shaped their students’ ethnic identity. Precisely for these reasons, the curtailment of Ukrainization started outside Soviet Ukraine first, followed by policies to eradicate Ukrainian “bourgeois nationalism” inside Soviet Ukraine.

Overall, the goal of the ambiguous Soviet policy of Ukrainization was to overcome resistance to Bolshevik economic policy and engage the republic’s population in construction of the Soviet state.¹⁵⁰ Another goal, to increase the number of Ukrainians in the Communist Party ranks as well as in government offices, was not meant to give the republic’s representatives more power in deciding matters of their concern, but to assure they were loyal servants of the central authorities in Moscow. The use of Ukrainian language in the public sphere was limited; the official language of communication was Ukrainian, but the de facto language, spoken in schools, institutes of higher education, and offices, was Russian.

THE CRISIS OF 1926

In 1926, at the Fifteenth Party Congress, Stalin indicated that there would be more emphasis on communist ideals, which meant less autonomy, either economic or cultural.¹⁵¹ To strengthen central authority, Stalin brought all commissariats in Soviet republics under the control of Moscow. The intensive drive against private commerce, coupled with plans to collectivize agriculture, led to a gradual reduction of living standards due to loss of exports as the world economic crisis began to unfold.¹⁵²

The declared goal of the Bolshevik nationality policy in Ukraine was “to raise the cultural development of the nation so it can join workers in the fight for socialism.”¹⁵³ To secure leadership of the Communist Party, Bolsheviks began to recruit Ukrainian cadres to local, district, and regional committees rather than increasing the overall number of Ukrainians in the party. Three years after the policy was introduced, in 1926, comrade Fedor Korniushin, secretary of the TsK KP(b)U, reported that “the link between the Communist Party and the Ukrainian workers, peasants, and loyal revolutionary Ukrainian intelligentsia has strengthened.” As is evident from his statistics, the growth of party membership in the republic was slow: it increased by only 3.7 percent in 1925 (from 33.3 to 37 percent), and slightly doubled to 6.7 percent in 1926 (from 37 to 43.7 percent).¹⁵⁴ Only after nine years of the formation of the Ukrainian SSR, did ethnic Ukrainians constitute a majority in the republic’s Communist Party.¹⁵⁵ A journalist, who worked in Kharkiv in the 1930s, observed that the national composition of rank-and-file members was misleading as a measure of Ukrainization because even Jews and people with Ukrainian names, who did not regard themselves as Ukrainians, were listed as Ukrainians. Also, nearly 70 percent of the candidate members were from urban centers, mostly workers and intelligentsia, mostly Russian-speaking, and very few were engaged in agriculture. Importantly, secretaries of regional Communist Party organizations were not Ukrainian. The recruitment of “Ukrainian cadres” was “a purely formal thing” as it was “just a matter of loyalty to the regime, that was the chief criterion,” not the fact of being Ukrainian.¹⁵⁶

Although the number and percentage of Ukrainians among the Communist Party cadres increased, less than a quarter (an average of 23 percent) could speak the Ukrainian language.¹⁵⁷ The percentage was higher in the center (55 percent in the Kyїv region, outside Kyїv), but in the single digits in the east (only 4.5 percent in the Kharkiv region). Korniushin explained that “it was not the fault of the proletariat and its party that have to raise and develop the culture that has been suppressed by tsarism for hundreds of years.”¹⁵⁸ Using typical Bolshevik propaganda, he claimed that exploiters, non-Russian foreign capitalist owners, accommodated to the repressive language policy of the imperial Russian regime. Korniushin further argued that, in their mutual struggle against foreign capitalism and Russian tsarism, the exploited Ukrainians joined the Russian proletariat and acquired its culture and language because “the Russian culture was more advanced.” After introducing his unifying theory, based on the superiority of the Russian language and culture, Korniushin concluded that the policy of forcing proletariat to learn Ukrainian was “inadmissible.”¹⁵⁹

The struggle between the Great Russian chauvinism and local Ukrainian nationalism became apparent during the Twelfth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on April 17–25, 1923. One of the leading Bolshevik leaders, Nikolai Bukharin, told the audience:

In Ukraine, for instance, where the party constituency is Russian-Jewish, our main task is to work among Ukrainians, and it is because of this a number of our comrades in Ukraine are fighting against Ukrainian nationalism very energetically, with hatred. To implement this policy correctly they have to be reeducated.¹⁶⁰

However, neither the first secretary of the KP(b)U Emmanuil Kviring (1888–1937) nor the second secretary Dmitrii Lebed′ (1893–1937), the ideologue behind the “theory of two cultures,” were willing to be “re-educated.” Lebed′, in his article on the national question, published in Kommunist on March 17, 1926, argued that

theoretically, the struggle between the two cultures is inevitable. In Ukraine, due to historical circumstances, the culture of the city is Russian, but the culture of the village is Ukrainian. Not a single communist or a real Marxist could say that “I believe in the victory of the Ukrainian culture,” if this culture will impede our progressive movement.¹⁶¹

Ukrainization of schools did not accelerate until Oleksandr Shums′kyi, a former Borot′bist, who joined the Communist Party in 1920, assumed leadership of the Commissariat of Education. Shums′kyi advocated for rapid and total Ukrainization of all aspects of life and opposed appointments of non-Ukrainians to fill government and party positions. Shums′kyi offered a Marxist critique of comrade Lebed’s theory. He argued that “proletariat will never allow any struggle with the peasantry over the cultural expression—language” because this would mean giving the “bourgeois nationalists” a green light to unify the masses under their leadership. Shums′kyi suspected that some communists from the intelligentsia, such as poets, professors, writers, or teachers, might have harbored such views.¹⁶² In response, Lebed′ gave Shums′kyi a lesson in eliminating political illiteracy, quoting Lenin’s theory from Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.¹⁶³ The two comrades were well versed in Bolshevik propaganda; both became victims of party purges and paid with their lives for their blind faith in the Soviet regime.

Seemingly, the policy of Ukrainization was given a boost with the appointment of a Jew from Ukraine, Lazar Kaganovich, as the KP(b)U secretary general from 1925 to 1928. Kaganovich, who was born in Kyїv Governorate and worked as a tailor, studied the Ukrainian language and promoted its use among “red” bureaucrats. Although the Communist Party became more Ukrainian in terms of numbers, the leaders appointed to the republic were not of Ukrainian heritage and did not speak Ukrainian. Ukrainian language was a requirement to get a government job, yet “red” bureaucrats continued to communicate among themselves in Russian. Officials from other republics, who were dispatched to work in Ukraine, were exempt from learning the language. Language testing among party cadres was postponed several times, and eventually abandoned. Kaganovich ran into conflict with Shums′kyi when, as the secretary general, he used the struggle with “nationalist inclinations” as an effective method to establish his authoritarian rule. Half a year after the appointment of Kaganovich, Shums′kyi approached Stalin and demanded to replace the leader of the KP(b)U with Vlas Chubar, a Ukrainian who had joined the Bolsheviks in 1907.

It was under these circumstances that Stalin wrote a letter to “Comrade Kaganovich and other members of the Politburo of the TsK KP(b)U,” warning them about the “national deviationism” (referring to Mykola Khvyl′ovyi’s slogan “Away from Moscow!”).¹⁶⁴ Mykola Khvyl′ovyi¹⁶⁵ articulated his thesis that the question of Ukrainian literature should be separated from that of Russian literature on the grounds that Ukrainian literature had been more influenced by European culture than by Moscow at a communist faction meeting during the First Congress of Proletarian Writers in 1925. Khvyl′ovyi eventually had to submit to party discipline, but his words did not go unnoticed. Stalin, in a conversation with Shums′kyi, agreed with some of the arguments, but in writing he gave a political “carte blanche” to his emissary in Ukraine. Kaganovich skillfully used Stalin’s method of “double-bookkeeping” to deal with the opposition.¹⁶⁶ Kaganovich, supported by Stalin, began a campaign of vilification against his opponents and dismissed Shums′kyi in March 1927.

In his place, a staunch communist Mykola Skrypnyk was appointed, no less a supporter of the Ukrainization policy (see Figure 2.4). Skrypnyk was a man of influence and prestige. In his speech at the Tenth Congress of the KP(b)U in November 1927, Kaganovich referred to Skrypnyk as one of “the best of Old Bolsheviks.”¹⁶⁷ The son of a railroad worker Skrypnyk became interested in the revolutionary movement while studying in Kharkiv. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party in 1897 and dedicated the rest of his life to the revolutionary movement. Skrypnyk was arrested fifteen times, sentenced to a total of thirty-four years of imprisonment, exiled seven times, and on one occasion was sentenced to death. On Lenin’s suggestion, Skrypnyk was dispatched to Ukraine as a representative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Skrypnyk at various times held the Ukrainian posts of secretary of Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, attorney-general, People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, Justice, and Education, vice-chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, and chairman of the State Planning Commission.¹⁶⁸

Figure 2.4 Pioneer of Bolshevism in Ukraine and Shums′kyi’s successor as the People’s Commissar of Education, comrade Mykola Skrypnyk, speaks at a meeting of the Communist Children’s Movement (Young Pioneers), Kharkiv, 1930. Source: From TsDKFFAU, od. obl. 0-97364.

Skrypnyk was also a member of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (TsK RKP(b)) and the Executive Committee of the Communist International, six times a delegate to Communist International congresses and leader of the Ukrainian delegation. In the inner-party struggles, he supported Stalin against the opposition. In recognition of his prolific literary contribution, Skrypnyk was made a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. He also edited one of the leading journals for educators in Ukraine. Skrypnyk, who became a vocal critic of “national deviationism,” ended up committing suicide the same year, in 1933, two months after Mykola Khvyl′ovyi, whose death marked the beginning of an era so poignantly described by Polish publicist, Jerzy Giedroyc, in his letter to Ukrainian literature researcher Iurii Lavrinenko, who later used it as the title for a collection of that generation’s best literary works—Executed Renaissance.¹⁶⁸ Despite being its vocal critic, Skrypnyk became a scapegoat, and the Soviet campaign for Ukrainization was permanently linked to his name.

James Mace related what was achieved during the era of Ukrainization:

Ukrainian schools were opened. The Ukrainian language was being transformed into a vehicle of sophisticated literary and scientific expression. And there was also a tremendous outburst of literary, scholarly activity. The market was flooded with new books in Ukrainian. It seemed at some times that virtually every peasant wanted to be a poet. The leading Soviet Ukrainian writer, the one who was most read was Mykola Khvyl′ovyi. And Khvyl′ovyi, the most popular writer said: “Let’s build a world-class Ukrainian culture. Let’s have a Ukrainian culture that is on a par with French literature, with English literature, with German literature. The way to do this is to learn those literatures. We have to face Western Europe and interact directly with European culture; not through the medium of Russian culture as we have hitherto done.”¹⁷⁰

In the 1930s, with the intensification of the struggle against “nationalist deviationism,” “anti-Soviet,” and “fascist” elements seeping into Ukrainian, German, and Polish schools, ethnic territorial settlements and their educational institutions were gradually restructured, then eliminated altogether.¹⁷¹

Antin Lak, who taught in the Donbas during the period of Ukrainization, recalled:

It was a very interesting period in the cultural development of the Ukrainian people. The Commissar of Education Skrypnyk believed that Ukrainian governmental institutions should use Ukrainian rather than Russian. People also must speak the native language not only in their day-to-day private communication but also in government offices. He believed that the government should introduce this policy in the interests of the people and of the state. But later the process was reversed and the Ukrainization was nipped in the bud and Russification started anew.¹⁷²

The most controversial issue was orthography. In 1926, a proposal was made for a new Ukrainian orthography.¹⁷³ It was prepared by the State Commission for the Regulation of Ukrainian Orthography of the People’s Commissariat of Education.¹⁷⁴ Known as the Kharkiv orthography, or Skrypnykivka, it was formally approved in September 1928 by Skrypnyk. It was the first universally recognized standard Ukrainian orthography. Subsequently it was reformed in 1933 because of its alleged embrace of “nationalist deviation.”¹⁷⁵ Skrypnyk’s refusal to pattern Ukrainian on the Russian model was one of the chief reasons for his overthrow in 1933.¹⁷⁶ One of the most vehement charges pressed against him was that he had helped introduce new symbols into Ukrainian orthography.¹⁷⁷ This was criticized as bourgeois in 1932, but in 1933 was equated with counterrevolution and “assistance to the annexationist plans of the Polish landlords.”¹⁷⁸ Tetiana Kardynalovs′ka in her memoirs, Persistent Past, wrote how her husband, Serhii Pylypenko, was upset about the work on this project and the persecution of people who worked on it.¹⁷⁹

On pages of his émigré journal Tryzub (Trident), published in Paris, Symon Petliura, the leader of the Ukrainian national government-in-exile, offered a scathing critique of Skrypnyk and Ukrainian communists, Petrovs′kyi and Zatons′kyi. Petliura wrote that the dictatorship of the proletariat, indeed, had clear class and national characteristics: The Ukrainian majority is ruled by the Russian minority who occupy influential posts in the administrative bureaucracy and the military. Comparing the Bolsheviks to the Conquistadors, Petliura characterized Soviet “Ukrainization” as a typical colonial policy, where colonizers are required to master the indigenous language of the colonized to create an illusion that rapacious extraction of resources is carried out not by the foreign power, but by the “brothers” who “speak our language.”¹⁸⁰ Deconstructing Chubar’s speech addressed to the Communist Youth League in April 1926, Petliura summed up Soviet nationality policy as a failure. Articulating his idea that the pro-Moscow orientation means political and cultural suicide for Ukraine, Petliura dubbed the Bolsheviks’ policy “catching of Ukrainian souls.” He warned: “The [Soviet] government can transport trainloads of Ukrainian bread, sugar, coal, all of Ukraine’s riches, except her Ukrainian soul.”¹⁸¹ Petliura called Chubar a representative of the illegal occupational regime and his speech aimed at the younger generation of Ukrainians as an attempt to train new Janissaries. The following month, on May 25, 1926, Petliura was assassinated by an agent of the Soviet security police on his way to a meeting of Ukrainian émigré organizations in Paris.

One leader, endowed with limitless power, was implicit in the very foundations of Lenin’s Communist Party.¹⁸² The process of achieving an ideal of a unified state organism, cemented by party and security police, meant utter destruction of civil society. All forms of human activity were allowed, and imposed, only if they were at the service of the state. The All-Ukrainian Teachers’ Union was dissolved, and the teachers were forced to join a union that guided their actions in the direction aligned with the goals of the Communist Party. The language of the Marxist ideology was a tool of social engineering that shaped the consciousness of the intelligentsia who were at work to bring about an autocratic society. Teachers who resisted or failed to pass political loyalty tests were punished with arrests, dismissals from their jobs, and untimely death. The youth, too, had to become one with the minds of their leaders. Ukrainian communists, after a decade of futile attempts to blend the two ideologies, of nationalism and socialism, weathered a storm in 1926. The calm did not last long. The Bolshevik ideal of a unitary state meant the inevitable destruction of any vestiges of Ukrainian national identity or state sovereignty. Such aspirations clouded the minds of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, the Ukrainian Orthodox clergy, and teachers who were the sons and daughters of the priests, as well as toiling masses who tilled their land that provided them with a sense of dignity and economic security. Thus, the state had devised a multipronged attack on these targeted groups.

NOTES

1. Communist Takeover and Occupation of Ukraine, 14.

2. Ibid., 15–16.

3. V. I. Lenin, Essential Works of Lenin: “What Is to Be Done?” and Other Writings, ed. Henry M. Christman (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1987); Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 106.

4. “even such a meaningless and ugly term as ‘Bolshevik’ will ‘pass muster,’ although it expresses nothing but purely accidental fact that at the Brussels-London Congress of 1903 we were in the majority,” wrote Lenin in his “The State and Revolution”; quoted in Essential Works of Lenin, 332.

5. Stephen Kotkin, “Communism: A Global Reckoning,” Wall Street Journal, November 4–5, 2017, C2.

6. Iefimenko, “Sotsial′ne oblychchia vchytel′stva,” 138–39.

7. “By educating the workers’ party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat which is capable of assuming power and of leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new order, of being the teacher, guide and leader, of all the toiling and exploited in the task of building up their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie,” wrote Lenin in “The State and Revolution”; quoted in Essential Works of Lenin, 288.

8. Stefan Plaggenborg, Revoliutsiia i kul′tura: Kul′turnye orientiry v period mezhdu Oktiabr′skoi revoliutsyei i epokhoi stalinizma (St. Petersburg: Zhurnal “Neva,” 2000), 29.

9. A. V. Lunacharsky, O narodnom obrazovanii (Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii Pedagogicheskikh Nauk RSFSR, 1958), 292.

10. V. I. Lenin, “Speech Delivered at the First All-Russia Congress of Internationalist Teachers,” June 5, 1918, a report published on June 6, 1918, in Izvestiia, no. 114; reprinted in Collected Works, 4th English edition, vol. 27 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), 445–46, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/jun/05.htm.

11. Stepan Siropolko, “Narodnia osvita na ukraїns′kykh zemliakh i v koloniiakh,” in Ukraїns′ka kul′tura: Lektsiї, ed. D. Antonovych (Kyїv: Lybid′, 1993); reprinted in Izbornyk,http://izbornyk.org.ua/cultur/cult06.htm.

12. Sovetskoe stroitel′stvo na Ukraine (po dokladam otdelov Gubispolkomov): Itogi odnoi poezdki (Kharkov, 1920), 44; cited in Iefimenko, “Sotsial′ne oblychchia vchytel′stva,” 148.

13. Solovey, Golgota Ukraïny, 49.

14. “Case History SW1: Varvara Dibert, b. 1898, Zvenyhorod, Cherkasy,” in Oral History Project, vol. 2, 710, 714; English version in Report to Congress, 373.

15. Pauly, Breaking the Tongue, 45.

16. Bolezni nashego pechatnogo dela po dannym obsledovanii TsKK i NKRKI (Moscow, 1924), 38; cited in Plaggenborg, Revoliutsiia i kul′tura, 131.

17. A. I. Nazarov, Oktiabr′ i kniga: Sozdanie sovetskikh izdatel′stv i formirovanie massovogo chitatelia, 1917–1923 (Moscow, 1968); quoted in Plaggenborg, 131.

18. A. A. Marinov, V stroiu zashchitnikov Oktiabria: Voenno-politicheskaia kniga 1918–1925 g. (Moscow: Nauka, 1982), 29–32.

19. Mazepa, Ukraïna v ohni i buri revoliutsiï, 120.

20. Solovey, Golgota Ukraïny, 31, 32, 39, 42.

21. Iefimenko, “Sotsial′ne oblychchia vchytel′stva,” 145.

22. Derzhavnyi arkhiv Vinnyts′koï oblasti (DAVO), f. R-510, op. 1, spr. 129, ark. 28; quoted in Koliastruk, Intelihentsiia USRR u 1920-ti roky, 223.

23. I. I. Nikolina, “Vchytel′stvo Podillia u 1920-kh – 30-kh rr. XX st.,” in Vinnychyna: mynule ta s′ohodennia. Kraieznavchi doslidzhennia, ed. M. M. Kravets′ (Vinnytsia: DP DKF, 2005), 157.

24. V. A. Nesterenko, “Ukraїns′ke vchytel′stvo Podillia v 1920–1930-ti roky: suspil′no-politychnyi portret,” in Osvita, nauka i kul′tura na Podilli: Zbirnyk naukovykh prats′, no. 3 (2003): 157–58.

25. M. O. Avdiienko, Narodna osvita na Ukraїni (Kharkiv: TsSU, 1927), 15.

26. Lunacharsky, O narodnom obrazovanii, 227.

27. F. Tagin, “Shkola sotsvosa na Ukraine i perspektivy narodnogo obrazovaniia,” Put′ prosveshcheniia, no. 1 (1924); quoted in Radians′ka osvita 2, no. 3–4 (1924): 97.

28. Lenin’s health never recovered from an attempt on his life made by a Browning pistol-toting Socialist Revolutionary, Fanny Kaplan (born Feiga Haimovna Roitblat), in August 1918. Four years later he suffered a series of strokes, the last of which killed him on January 21, 1924.

29. G. M. Shevchuk, Kulʹturnoe stroitelʹstvo na Ukraine v 1921–1925 gg (Kiev: Iz-vo AN Ukrainian SSR, 1963), 184.

30. M. Baran, “Rolia i zavdannia sil′s′koho vchytelia v osvitlenni XIII-ho partiinoho z’ïzdu,” Radians′ka osvita 2, no. 7 (1924): 5.

31. O. Loiko, “Intelihentsiia Podillia v umovakh nepu,” in Tezy dopovidei 15-oї Vinnyts′koї oblasnoї istoryko-kraieznavchoї konferentsiї (Vinnytsia, 1996), 61–62.

32. DAVO, f. P-1, op. 1, spr. 3, ark. 23.

33. I. P. Mel′nychuk, V. I. Petrenko, and P. M. Kravchenko, “Dokumenty derzhavnoho arkhivu Vinnyts′koï oblasti pro nastroï sil′s′koï intelihestiï Podillia v 1920-h rr.,” in Naukovi zapysky Vinnyts′koho derzhavnoho pedahohichnoho universytetu im. Mykhaila Kotsiubyns′koho, ed. P. S. Hryhorchuk (Vinnytsia: VDPU im. Mykhaila Kotsiubyns′koho, 2006), vyp. 11, 341.

34. Klitsakov, Pedahohichni kadry Ukraïny, 73, 78–79.

35. Mykhailo Myronenko, “Z zhyttia sil′s′koï shkoly ta vchytel′stva,” Radians′ka osvita 2, no. 3–4 (1924): 61.

36. Hr. Ivanytsia, “Tretia Vseukraïns′ka konferentsiia po pedosviti,” Radians′ka osvita 2, no. 9–10 (1924): 88–89.

37. Zbirnyk uzakonen′ ta rozporiadzhen′ robitnycho-selians′koho uriadu Ukraїny, section 43, no. 272 (Kharkiv: Drukarnia UVO im. M. Frunze, 1924), 795–818, http://irbis-nbuv.gov.ua/dlib/item/0000128.

38. “Iz otcheta Agitpropa Poltavskogo Gubkoma s marta 1923 po mart 1924 g.,” Izvestiia Poltavskogo Gubkoma KP(b)U, no. 15 (1924), 121–22; quoted in Klitsakov, Pedahohichni kadry Ukraïny, 76.

39. TsDAVOU, f. 2717, op. 1, spr. 70, ark. 28.

40. V. Nagornyi, “Obshchestvenno-politicheskaia rabota sel′skogo uchitelia,” Proletarskaia pravda, January 4, 1925.

41. V. V. Protsenko, “Osvitians′ka Profspilka USRR v seredyni 1920-kh rr.: Stanovyshche, zavdannia, problemy (za materialamy Pershoho Vseukraïns′koho vchytel′s′koho z’ïzdu v Kharkovi),” Hileia, no. 116 (2017): 43.

42. Narodne hospodarstvo USRR (statystychnyi dovidnyk), ed. Oleksandr Asatkin (Kyїv: Narodne hospodarstvo ta oblik, 1935), Table 1, 546–47.

43. “Privet sovetskomu uchiteliu,” Kommunist, January 4, 1925.

44. For a biography of Oleksandr Shums′kyi, see Iurii Shapoval, “Ne samohubets′!” in Liudyna i systema: shtrykhy do portreta totalitarnoï doby v Ukraïni (Kyїv: Instytut natsional′nykh vidnosyn i politolohiï NAN Ukraïny, 1994), 134–52; see also Bilokin′, “Dolia chleniv Tsentral′noï Rady.”

45. Oleksandr Shums′kyi, “Na tretiomu fronti (do uchytel′s′koho z’ïzdu), Radians′ka osvita 3, no. 1 (1925): 2–9.

46. For a biography of Oleksandr Mizernyts′kyi, see Marochko and Hillig, Represovani pedahohy Ukraїny, 64–69; see also Pauly, Breaking the Tongue, 76, 377n39.

47. Pershyi Vseukraïns′kyi uchytel′s′kyi z’ïzd v Kharkovi vid 5 do 11 sichnia 1925 r.: Stenohrafichnyi zvit (Kharkiv: Derzhavne vydavnytstvo Ukraïny, 1925), 3–4; see also Protsenko, “Osvitians′ka Profspilka,” 44.

48. Protsenko, “Osvitians′ka Profspilka,” 44.

49. In July 1925, P. Solodub was appointed a member of the state commission to oversee drafting of a new Ukrainian orthography, known as the Kharkiv orthography. The commission was chaired by Oleksandr Shums′kyi, then Commissar of Education in Soviet Ukraine. See Ukraїns′kyi pravopys (Proiekt) (Kharkiv: DVU, 1926).

50. For more on how the Bolsheviks lured UNR general Iurii Tiutiunnyk to Soviet Ukraine, used his knowledge and connections, and later executed him as “spent material,” see Yaroslav Faizulin, “Unwilling Instrument of the State,” Ukrainian Week, October 14, 2011, https://ukrainianweek.com/History/33007.

51. P. Solodub, “Revoliutsiia i narodnyi uchytel′,” Radians′ka osvita 3, no. 1 (January 1925): 10.

52. Solodub, “Revoliutsiia i narodnyi uchytel′,” 11.

53. Klitsakov, Pedahohichni kadry Ukraïny, 133.

54. TsDAVOU, f. 2717, op. 2, spr. 29, ark. 7 (1923); TsDAVOU, f. 2717, op. 2, spr. 35, ark. 14 (1925).

55. TsDAVOU, f. 539, op. 1, spr. 273, ark. 1.

56. TsDAVOU, f. 331, op. 1, spr. 158, ark. 9, 10.

57. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 6, spr. 121, ark. 99.

58. “Ukrainskaia SSR,” in Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, 332.

59. V. K. Maiboroda, “Osoblyvosti rozvytku systemy vyshchoï pedahohichnoï osvity v URSR (1917–1941 rr.),” Ukraïns′kyi istorychnyi zhurnal, no. 11 (1990): 62.

60. TsDAVOU, f. 318, op. 1, spr. 1403, ark. 10–11.

61. “Shkola na seli,” Visti VUTsVK, October 21, 1925.

62. “7,000 uchyteliv (Peredova),” Visti VUTsVK, July 31, 1925.

63. Klitsakov, Pedahohichni kadry Ukraïny, 92.

64. Ukraïna: Statystychnyi shchorichnyk (Kharkiv: TsSU, 1929), 8; see also Iefimenko, “Sotsial′ne oblychchia vchytel′stva,” 153.

65. O. Mizernyts′kyi, “Do II Plenumu VUTsP Robos: Pershyi etap,” Robitnyk osvity 3–4, no. 5–6 (1925): 4.

66. Comrade Polenko reported at the Third Session of the VUTsVK about a “crocodile jaws” (“scissors”) gap in salary increases between urban teachers as being 50 percent higher than that of rural teachers. See “Na bizhuchi temy,” Radians′ka osvita 2, no. 9–10 (1924): 83.

67. Ukraїna: Statystychnyi shchorichnyk, 85.

68. Korotki pidsumky perepysu naselennia Ukraїny 17 hrudnia roku 1926: Natsional′nyi i vikovyi sklad, ridna mova ta pysemnist′ naselennia (Kharkiv, 1928), 4.

69. Iefimenko, “Sotsial′ne oblychchia vchytel′stva,” 153.

70. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 156.

71. “Ukrainskaia SSR,” in Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, 327.

72. Koliastruk, Intelihentsiia USRR u 1920-ti roky, 256.

73. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 2023, ark. 25, 28.

74. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 2023, ark. 27.

75. “Pershyi vseukraïns′kyi z’ïzd robitnykiv dopomohy ditiam,” Radians′ka osvita 2, no. 9–10 (1924): 94.

76. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 2023, ark. 26.

77. Ibid.

78. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 2023, ark. 27.

79. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 2023, ark. 33.

80. From 1920 to 1926, Makarenko was in charge of the children’s commune named after Maxim Gorky in the village Kovalivka near Poltava. From May 1926 to September 1928, he was in charge of the labor commune named after Maxim Gorky in the village of Kuriazh near Kharkiv. From October 1927 to June 1935, he was the head of the labor commune named after Felix Dzerzhinsky near Kharkiv under the umbrella of the GPU. Makarenko omitted from his writings how these children were used as forced labor on assembly lines. Makarenko wrote his books in Russian. Archives in Kharkiv can shed light on obscure life in this children’s commune. For a reevaluation of Makarenko’s legacy as the author of the “pedagogical poem” about the upbringing of the children of the “enemies of the people,” see Götz Hillig, “Makarenko and Stalinism: Comments and Reflections,” East/West Education 15, no. 2 (1994): 103–16; Götz Hillig, V poiskakh istinnogo Makarenko: russkoiazychnye publikatsii (1976–2014) (Poltava: Izdatelʹ Shevchenko R. V., 2014). See also Dietmar Waterkamp, “Götz Hillig and His Search for the True Makarenko. What Did He Find?” IDE-Online Journal (International Dialogues on Education: Past and Present) 5, no. 2 (2018), http://www.ide-journal.org/article/2018-volume-5-number-2-gotz-hillig-and-his-search-for-the-true-makarenko-what-did-he-find/.

81. “Ukrainskaia SSR,” 328.

82. From the diary of Iurii Sambros, HDA SBU, f. 6, spr. 68805-FP, zoshyt no. 6, ark. 953–1052.

83. For a detailed biography of Oleksandr Zaluzhnyi and a list of publications, see Pedagogical Museum of Ukraine, http://pmu.in.ua/virtual-exhibitions/juvilei_pedagogiv/130_rokiv_zalychnii/.

84. For a detailed biography of Hryhorii Vashchenko and a list of his publications, see Pedagogical Museum of Ukraine, http://pmu.in.ua/virtual-exhibitions/.

85. Götz Hillig, “‘Mazepynets′’ Vashchenko pro ‘ianychara’ Makarenka: vzaiemyny vidomykh ukraïns′kykh pedahohiv,” Ridna shkola, no. 6 (1995): 74.

86. In September 1964, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR established a medal to commemorate Anton Makarenko. The medal was awarded to several dozen education theorists, school principals, and teachers, among them three women.

87. Klitsakov, Pedahohichni kadry Ukraïny, 246.

88. Ibid., 27.

89. Margaret Mead, Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Problems of Soviet Character (New York: McGraw Hill, 1951), 92.

90. A. S. Makarenko, Kniga dlia roditelei (Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1950), 358. Out of the four planned books, only the first was published in 1937 in Krasnaia nov′, nos. 7–10; full text of the book is available from http://jorigami.ru/PP_corner/Classics/Makarenko/Makarenko_A_Book_for_Parents/Makarenko_A_Book_for_Parents.html#_Toc196398223.

91. Plaggenborg, Revoliutsiia i kul′tura, 58.

92. “Ukrainskaia SSR,” 328.

93. Narodnoe obrazovanie v SSSR, 75.

94. Het′ nepysemnist′, no. 1 (1924): 1.

95. Het′ nepysemnist′, no. 1 (1924): 4.

96. A. Butsenko, “Cherhovi zavdannia v spravi likvidatsiï nepys′mennosti,” Radians′ka osvita 2, no. 9–10 (1924): 22.

97. “Ukrainskaia SSR,” 329.

98. “Het′ nepys′mennist′!” Radians′ka osvita 2, no. 9–10 (1924): 96–97.

99. Butsenko, “Cherhovi zavdannia,” 21.

100. “Ukrainskaia SSR,” 329.

101. Klitsakov, Pedahohichni kadry Ukraïny, 261.

102. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 161.

103. “Organizatsiia dvokhrichnykh politosvitnikh kursiv,” Radians′ka osvita 2, no. 7 (1924): 104.

104. Soiuz rabotnikov prosveshcheniia na Ukraine (Otchet Ukrburo TsK Rabotpros I-mu Vseukrainskomu s′′ezdu, oktiabr′ 1923—oktiabr′ 1924 gg.) (Kharkov: Ukrburo TsK Rabotpros, 1924), 119.

105. Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 162.

106. Lemar, “Instytut chettsiv,” Radians′ka osvita 2, no. 3–4 (1924): 58.

107. Kas′ianov, Ukraïns′ka intelihentsiia 1920-kh – 1930-kh rokiv, 74.

108. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 6, spr. 32, ark. 75.

109. G. Grin′ko, “Ocherk istorii i sistemy politprosveta,” Put′ prosveshcheniia, no. 2 (1922): 26; quoted in Sukhomlyns′ka, Narysy, 162.

110. Kas′ianov, Ukraïns′ka intelihentsiia 1920-kh – 1930-kh rokiv, 75.

111. Koliastruk, Intelihentsiia USRR u 1920-ti roky, 226.

112. Hennadii Iefimenko, “Stvorennia SRSR,” Tsei den′ v istoriї, July 5, 2018, https://www.jnsm.com.ua/h/0706U/.

113. James Mace’s testimony, 26; quoted in Holodomor, eds. Luciuk and Grekul, 320.

114. Desiatyi s′′ezd RKP(b), Mart 1921 goda (stenographic report) (Moscow, 1963), 202, 204; quoted in John Kolasky, Education in Soviet Ukraine (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates, 1968), 4. John Kolasky, a Canadian communist of Ukrainian extraction, lived and studied in Ukraine from 1963 to 1965.

115. Ibid., 210; quoted in Kolasky, Education in Soviet Ukraine, 4.

116. V. V. Masnenko and I. F. Sharov, “Vchytel′stvo ta stanovlennia radians′koï shkoly na Ukraïni v pershii polovyni 20-kh rokiv,” Ukraïns′kyi istorychnyi zhurnal, no. 12 (1990): 102.

117. Masnenko and Sharov, “Vchytel′stvo,” 103.

118. Kul′turne budivnytstvo v Ukraїns′kii RSR: Vazhlyvishi rishennia komunistychnoї partiї i radians′koho uriadu, 1917–1959 rr., vol. I, 1917– June 1941 (Kiev: Ministerstvo kul′tury URSR, 1959), 229–32; quoted in Kolasky, Education in Soviet Ukraine, 13.

119. Kul′turne budivnytsvo v Ukraїns′kii RSR, vol. I, 239–41; quoted in Kolasky, Education in Soviet Ukraine, 13.

120. Pauly, Breaking the Tongue, 64–65.

121. Kul′turne budivnytstvo v Ukraїns′kii RSR, vol. I, 240; quoted in Kolasky, Education in Soviet Ukraine, 13.

122. According to the 1926 census, the main ethnic groups in Ukraine included 23.2 million Ukrainians, 2.6 million Russians, 1.5 million Jews, 476,000 Poles, 393,000 Germans, 257,000 Moldovans, and 104,000 Greeks among others (Bulgarians, Turks, Czechs, Armenians, Hungarians, Romanians, Serbs, and Swedes).

123. B. V. Chirko, “Nemetskaia natsional′naia gruppa v Ukraine v kontekste gosudarstvennoi etnopolitiki 20–30-kh gg. XX st.,” in Voprosy germanskoi istorii, ed. S. I. Bobyleva (Dnepropetrovsk: “Porogi,” 2007), 205.

124. TsDAVOU, f. 1, op. 4, spr. 606, ark. 61, 218.

125. Marochko and Hillig, Represovani pedahohy Ukraïny, 251.

126. Pauly, Breaking the Tongue, 5.

127. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); Yuri Slezkine, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (1994): 414–52; Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin, eds., A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

128. See Elena Borisenok, Fenomen sovetskoi ukrainizatsii, 1920–1930-e gody (Moscow: “Evropa,” 2006); Konstantin Drozdov, “Ukrainizatsia v Tsentral′nom Chernozem′ie RSFSR v 1923–1928 gg.: K voprosu ob osobennostiakh natsional′noi politiki bol′shevikov v gody NEPa,” The NEP Era, no. 4 (2010): 43–59; Hryshko, “The Origins of Soviet Genocide,” 56–57; Shkandrij and Bertelsen, “The Soviet Regime’s National Operations in Ukraine,” 420.

129. Hryshko, “The Origins of Soviet Genocide,” 67.

130. Ibid., 68.

131. James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 532–40, 544–45.

132. Robert C. Tucker, “The Change of National Identity,” in Stalin as Revolutionary, 137–43. An employee of the U.S. Embassy, Tucker lived in Moscow from 1945 to 1953 and had a Russian-speaking wife.

133. Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, 219.

134. Pauly, Breaking the Tongue, 4.

135. M. Iu. Vyhovs′kyi, Nomenklatura systemy osvity v USRR 1920–1930-kh rokiv: sotsial′ne pokhodzhennia, personal′nyi sklad ta funksiï (Kyїv: Heneza, 2006), 196; quoted in Pauly, Breaking the Tongue, 376.

136. Kolasky, Education in Soviet Ukraine, 16–17.

137. Ibid., 15.

138. Pauly, Breaking the Tongue, 68; see also Mykola Doroshko, Nomenklatura: kerivna verkhivka radians′koï Ukraïny (1917–1938 rr.) (Kyïv: Nika-Tsentr, 2012).

139. Chirko, “Nemetskaia natsional′naia gruppa v Ukraine,” 206.

140. Colin Peter Neufeldt’s presentation on “Hitler, Mennonites, and the Holodomor: Nazi Germany and Its Impact on Life of Mennonites in 1932–1933,” at the Holodomor Research and Education Center’s international scientific conference “Natsional′ni menshyny Radians′koï Ukraïny v epokhu Holodomoru: vtraty, travma, pam’iat′,” December 15, 2020, http://history.org.ua/uk/post/45380.

141. See Colin Peter Neufeldt, “The Fate of Mennonites in Ukraine and the Crimea during Soviet Collectivization and the Famine (1930–1933)” (doctoral thesis, University of Alberta, 1999). This work challenges the applicability of the genocide concept to many of the regions populated by Mennonites in Ukraine.

142. On March 5, 1939, the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine (TsK KP(b) U) adopted the decree “On the liquidation and reconstruction of the artificially created national minority regions and village councils in Ukraine.” It did not touch the Russians in Ukraine; since 1936, propagandists referred to them as the “Great Russian people.” See L. D. Iakubova, “National′ne administratyvno-terytorial′ne budivnytstvo v USRR/URSR, 1924–1940” in Entsyklopediia istoriï Ukraïny, ed. V. A. Smolii et al., vol. 7 (Kyїv: “Naukova dumka,” 2010), http://www.history.org.ua/?termin=Natsionalni_rajony.

143. This is an abridged version of a dialogue, written by Ostap Vyshnia, under the title “(Popular) History of the Ukrainian Language” for a special issue on Ukrainization in a satirical biweekly magazine Chervonyi perets′ (Red Pepper), no. 3 (February 1927), 3. Ostap Vyshnia was a pen name of Pavlo Hubenko, a satirist and humorist, who was arrested in the 1920s, released, then rearrested in 1933 and spent a decade in concentration camps in the Far North in Russia.

144. Drozdov, “Ukrainizatsiia v Tsentral′nom Chernozem′ie RSFSR,” 44–45.

145. From 1.5 to 2 million Ukrainians lived in the Central Black Earth region of the Russian SFSR, but they had only thirteen schools where their children could learn their mother tongue. Approximately 1.1 million Ukrainians lived in the Voronezh region. In 1922, there were nine Ukrainian-language primary schools. To meet the demand for opening additional schools, authorities surveyed teachers to identify those willing to teach in Ukrainian. A further inspection revealed that local education departments were indifferent or ignorant of the directive to identify teachers willing to teach Ukrainians in schools in their mother tongue. About 600,000 Ukrainians lived in the Kursk region. There were only four schools to meet their needs, three government funded and one privately funded. See Drozdov, “Ukrainizatsiia v Tsentral′nom Chernozem′ie RSFSR,” 50–52.

146. “Zadovolennia osvitnikh potreb ukraïntsiv RRFSR,” Radians′ka osvita 2, no. 7 (1924): 104.

147. Klitsakov, Pedahohichni kadry Ukraїny, 111.

148. K. Kravchenko, “Dytyna Zhovtnia (Ukraїns′kyi Pedahohichnyi Tekhnikum na Kubanshchyni),” Radians′ka osvita 2, no. 9–10 (1924): 64.

149. “Zadovolennia osvitnikh potreb ukraïntsiv RRFSR,” 104.

150. V. S. Lozyts′kyi, “Polityka ukraïnizatsiï v 20–30-kh rokakh: istoriia, problemy, uroky,” Ukraïns′kyi istorychnyi zhurnal, no. 3 (1989): 47.

151. Communist Takeover and Occupation of Ukraine, 16.

152. Gantt, “A Medical Review,” 19.

153. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 2255, ark. 1.

154. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 2255, ark. 1.

155. Jurij Borys, “Political Parties in the Ukraine,” in The Ukraine, 1917–1921: A Study in Revolution, ed. Taras Hunczak (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1977), 148.

156. Case 67 (interviewer J. R.), Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System Online, Schedule B, vol. 7 (Slavic Division, Widener Library, Harvard University), 22; available at https://library.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/static/collections/hpsss/index.html.

157. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 2255, ark. 6, 8.

158. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 2255, ark. 6.

159. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 2255, ark. 7.

160. Hryhorii Hryn′ko reported that the ethnic composition of the KP(b)U in 1923 was 23 percent Ukrainian, 13 percent Jewish, and 57 percent Russian, whereas commissariats were 12 percent Ukrainian, 26 percent Jewish, and 47 percent Russian. See Chetvertoe soveshchanie TsK RKP s otvetstvennymi rabotnikami natsional′nykh respublik i oblastei v Moskve 9–12 iunia 1923 g.: Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1923), 221; quoted in Iu. I. Shapoval, “Stalinizm i Ukraїna,” Ukraїns′kyi istorychnyi zhurnal, no. 4 (1991): 48.

161. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 2255, ark. 12.

162. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 2255, ark. 18–19.

163. TsDAHOU, f. 1, op. 20, spr. 2255, ark. 20–26.

164. Joseph Stalin, “Tov. Kaganovychu ta inshym chlenam PB TsK KP(b)U,” in Mykola Khvyl′ovyi: Tvory v 5 tomakh, ed. Hryhorii Kostiuk (New York: “Smoloskyp,” 1986), 485–89.

165. For a detailed biography, see O. Han, Trahediia Mykoly Khvyl′ovoho (Prague: Vyd-vo “Prometei,” 1947), 26.

166. Shapoval, “Stalinizm i Ukraїna,” 50.

167. X z’ïzd KP(b)U, 20–29 lystopada 1927 r.: Sten. zvit, 522; quoted in Shapoval, “Stalinizm i Ukraїna,” 50.

168. Kolasky, Education in Soviet Ukraine, 14.

169. 169.Iurii Lavrinenko, Rozstriliane vidrodzhennia: Antolohiia, 1917–1933 (Kyïv: Smoloskyp, 2004).

170.

171. 169

172. James Mace’s testimony, 27–29; quoted in Holodomor, eds. Luciuk and Grekul, 319.

173. Chirko, “Nemetskaia natsional′naia gruppa v Ukraine,” 207.

174. “Case History SW3: Antin Lak, b. 1910, Poltava region,” Oral History Project, vol. 2, 731.

175. Ukraïns′kyi pravopys (Proiekt) (Kharkiv: Derzhavne Vyd-vo Ukraïny, 1926).

176. The chair of the commission was People’s Commissar for Education O. Shums′kyi and members of the commission included Comrades P. Solodub, M. Iavors′kyi, A. Kryms′kyi, O. Syniavs′kyi, S. Pylypenko, O. Kurylova (Kurilo), E. Tymchenko, G. Holoskevych, M. Johansen, E. Kasianenko, A. Richyts′kyi, N. Kaliuzhnyi, M. Ialovyi, O. Popov, M. Gruns′kyi, V. Hantsov, M. Sulima, V. Butvin, V. Koriak, M. Khvyl′ovyi, S. Iefremov, T. Sekunda, S. Kyrychenko, I. Sokolians′kyi, and O. Skrypnyk.

177. Serhii Vakulenko, “1933 in History of Ukrainian Language: Current Norm and Spelling Practice (an Example of Editorial Policy of Newspaper Komunist),” paper presented at the American Association for Slavic Studies Conference in Philadelphia, PA on November 22, 2008; see Ukrainian version “1933-ii rik v istoriї ukraїns′koї movy: chynna norma ta pravopysna praktyka (na prykladi redaktsiinoї polityky hazety “Komunist”), Historians, December 3, 2012, http://www.historians.in.ua/index.php/en/ukrayinska-mova/488-cerhiy-vakulenko-1933-ii-rik-v-istorii-ukrainskoi-movy-chynna-norma-ta-pravopysna-praktyka-na-prykladi-redaktsiinoi-polityky-hazety-komunist.

178. See Pauly, Breaking the Tongue, 338, 354.

179. The Ukrainian letter ґ (hard g) and the phonetic combinations of the palatalized letter l with a soft sign or vowel ль, льо, ля for transliteration of foreign words were eliminated, and Russian etymological forms were reintroduced. The letter ґ was banned in Soviet Ukraine from 1933 to 1990.

180. Visti, June 22, 1933; quoted in Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, 268.

181. Tetiana Kardynalovs′ka, Nevidstupne mynule (Kyïv: Vyd-vo M. P. Kots′, 1992).

182. Symon Petliura, “‘Rosiis′ka menshist′’ na Ukraïni (z pryvodu dyskusiï na ostannii sesiï VTsIK-a),” Tryzub 2, no. 30, May 9, 1926; reprinted in Symon Petliura, 378–83, esp. 383. Petliura started publishing the Tryzub (Trident), named after the heraldic coat of arms of the Ukrainian National Republic, when he settled in Paris in 1924.

183. Symon Petliura, “Lovtsi dush,” Tryzub 2, no. 26–27, April 18, 1926; reprinted in Symon Petliura, 364–74.

184. Kołakowski has argued that Trotsky’s often-quoted prophecy of 1903 was soon forgotten by the prophet himself. See Kołakowski, “The Marxist Roots of Stalinism,” 163.