(Re)thinking “Soviet”: Modern Ukrainian Identity and the Legacy of Communism

Readings:

Blauvelt, Timothy K. “From Words to Action! Nationality Policy in Soviet Abkhazia (1921–1938).” In The Making of Modern Georgia, 1918–2012: The First Georgian Republic and Its Successors 1918–2009, edited by Stephen F. Jones, London: Routledge, 2014.

Kaiser, Claire P. Georgian and Soviet: Entitled Nationhood and the Specter of Stalin in the Caucasus. Cornell University Press, 2023. (Introduction)

Readings:

Yurchuk, Yuliya. “Country Report: Ukraine. Memory Nodes Loaded with Potential to Mobilize People.” In CBEES State of the Region Report 2020: Constructions and Instrumentalization of the Past, edited by Ninna Mörner, Stockholm: Elanders, 2021, pp. 55–68.

Yurchuk, Yuliya. “De-Canonization of the Soviet Past: Abject, Kitsch, and Memory.” In De-Commemoration: Making Sense of Contemporary Calls for Tearing Down Statues and Renaming Places, edited by Sarah Gensburger and Jenny Wüstenberg, Berghahn Books, 2023.

Törnquist-Plewa, Barbara, and Yurchuk, Yuliya. “Memory Politics in Contemporary Ukraine: Reflections from the Post-Colonial Perspective.” Memory Studies Journal 2(6), 2019, pp. 699–720.

Primary Sources:

2015 “Decommunization Laws”: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/317-19#Text

Readings:

Bekus, Nelly. “Nationalism and Socialism: ‘Phase D’ in Belarusian Nation-Building.” Nationalities Papers 38(6), 2010, pp. 829–846.

Marples, David. “History, Memory, and the Second World War in Belarus.” Australian Journal of Politics & History 58, 2012, pp. 437–448.

Chernyshova, Natalya. “The Soviet Roots of the 2020 Protests: The Unlikely History of Belarusian Civic Nationalism.” In Belarus in the Twenty-First Century: Between Dictatorship and Democracy, edited by Elena A. Korosteleva, Irina Petrova, and Anastasiia Kudlenko, Routledge, 2023, pp. 33–49.

Primary Sources:

Ogoniok article (1972) on the Belarusian rock band Pesniary: https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1973-2/rock-goes-russian/rock-goes-russian-texts/folk-music-electrified/

Speech by Belarusian poet Ianka Skrygan (1976): https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1973-2/belarus/belarus-texts/ianka-skryhan-on-the-belarusian-language/

1969 Belarusian poster (translation: “For fifty heroic years Soviet Belarus has been tempered in battle and in work!”).

Readings:

Kassymbekova, B. “Humans as Territory: Forced Resettlement and the Making of Soviet Tajikistan, 1920–38.” Central Asian Survey 30(3–4), 2011, pp. 349–370.

Brown, Kate. “Gridded Lives: Why Kazakhstan and Montana Are Nearly the Same Place.” The American Historical Review 106(1), 2001, pp. 17–48.

Discussion Topics:

Timothy Blauvelt: Soviet Nationality Policy and Its Consequences in the South Caucasus

• What role did national identity play in Soviet politics?
• Blauvelt describes the territorialization of nationality as a “zero-sum game.” What does this mean in your interpretation?
• What was the Soviet nationality policy of korenizatsiia (indigenization), and what were its main outcomes?
• Is it possible to de-politicize nationalism within the framework of Soviet or post-Soviet contexts?

Yulia Yurchuk: Transformations in the Politics of Memory in Ukraine (1990s–Present)

• How do the concepts of “memory of regret” and “memory of triumph” apply to Ukraine’s official strategies for addressing its past?
• Who are the “memory warriors,” and what roles do they play in Ukrainian politics and society?
• Can Ukraine be considered a “hybrid space of memory”? Why or why not?
• What is “decanonization,” and how might it relate to Ukraine’s evolving memory politics?

Natalya Chernyshova: The Legacy of Late Socialism in Belarus

• What differences and parallels exist between Belarus and Ukraine regarding their Soviet legacies?
• How did Belarus respond to the policy of Russification compared to Ukraine?
• How have post-Soviet language and cultural policies developed in Belarus versus Ukraine?
• What myth underpinned collective memory and identity in post-war Belarus, and why did this face challenges later?

Botakoz Kassymbekova: The Soviet Empire as a Settler Colonial Empire

• What distinguishes “settler colonialism” from “franchise colonialism”?
• How can these frameworks be applied to the Ukrainian SSR and other Soviet republics?
• Which aspects of these colonial mechanisms continue to impact the region today?
• What parallels and differences exist between Central Asian and Western Soviet republics in their imperial legacies?

General Discussion Questions:

• How relevant is the term “post-Soviet” when applied to the 15 independent republics formed after the USSR’s collapse? Is there a clear “end” to the post-Soviet era?
• What similarities and differences can be observed in how countries such as Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia remember and address their Soviet pasts?
• Is a decolonial approach equally applicable to all former Soviet republics and members of the Socialist Bloc? Why or why not?

Readings:

Pauly, Matthew D. Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923–1934, 2014, pp. 200–234.

Readings:

Yurchak, Alexei. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. Princeton UP, 2005, pp. 14–16 and 47–54.

Billig, Michael. Banal Nationalism. SAGE, 1995. (Introduction)

Yekelchyk, Serhii. Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination.Toronto UP, 2004. (Introduction)

Primary Source:

Liashko, A.P. “V sozvezdii respublik-sester.” Pravda Ukrainy, special issue, 1972, p. 1.

Readings:

Graziosi, Andrea. “The Impact of Holodomor Studies on the Understanding of the USSR.” In Contextualizing the Holodomor: The Impact of Thirty Years of Ukrainian Famine Studies, edited by Andrij Makuch and Frank Sysyn, Toronto: CIUS Press, 2015.

Graziosi, Andrea. “The Kazakh Famine, the Holodomor, and the Soviet Famines of 1930–33.” In Genocide: The Power and Problems of a Concept, edited by Andrea Graziosi and Frank Sysyn, Montreal & Kingston, 2022.

Markevich, Andrei, Natalya Naumenko, and Nancy Qian. “The Causes of Ukrainian Famine Mortality, 1932–33.” The Review of Economic Studies. Accepted Manuscript, published online 11 September 2024.

Primary Sources:

Diary of teacher Oleksandra Radchenko, excerpts in Holodomor Reader, pp. 180–183.

Memoirs by Anastasiia Lysyvets, excerpts in Holodomor Reader, pp. 203–205.

Unpublished letter by Ivan Litvinov to Izvestiia (1932), excerpt in Tragediia sovetskoi derevni (2001), p. 312.

Readings:

Pavlyshyn, Marko. “Aspects of the Literary Process in the USSR: The Politics of Re-Canonization in Ukraine After 1985.” Southern Review 24(1), 1991, pp. 12–25.

Pavlyshyn, Marko. “Literary Canons and National Identities in Contemporary Ukraine.” Canadian American Slavis Studies 40(1), 2006, pp. 5–19.

Aston, Robert J. “Locating the Literary Canon.” In The Role of the Literary Canon in the Teaching of Literature, Routledge, 2020, pp. 1–12.

Primary Reading:

Юрій Андрухович, Віктор Неборак, Андрій Бондар, “Поетичний додаток: Bad Company.”
Published in Критика, Year VI, Issue 12 (62), November 2002, pp. 22–23. Online version.

Readings:

Balashova, Olga, and German, Lizaveta (eds). The Art of Ukrainian Sixties, Kyiv: Osnovy, 2020.

Mokryk, Radomyr. “Cultural Colonialism and the Sixtiers During the Thaw in Ukraine.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies.

German, Lizaveta. “Thickets, Groves, Apartments, and Garages: Informal Exhibitions in Ukraine, 1960s–2022,” Most Magazine. Part I. Most Magazine. And Part II

Yakovlenko, Kateryna. “Pomyslity Kosmos.” YourArt, 2020.