Stalin's Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination / Edition 2

by Serhy Yekelchyk

Overview

The Stalinist Soviet Union, in constructing its multinational state, exhibited a number of imperial characteristics, including the tendency to homogenize and essentialize discourses for ruling subject areas such as the Ukraine, useful for defining the area to be ruled and for indigenous elites to claim a broad domain to govern, according to Yekelchyk (Germanic and Russian Studies, U. of Victoria, Canada). Yet, this was not a one-way process. This work examines Stalinist-era construction of nationalist ideologies through historical narrative, particularly focusing on how the center (the Kremlin) was constantly engaged in a contested process of ideological definition with the imperial periphery (Ukrainian intellectuals). Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802088086
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Publication date:	03/28/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	230
Product dimensions:	6.23(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.98(d)

About the Author

Serhy Yekelchyk is an associate professor in the Departments of Germanic and Russian Studies and the Department of History at the University of Victoria.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Abbreviations xiii

Introduction 3

Empire and Its Nations 3

Communities of Memory 6

Stalin's Ukrainians 9

1 Soviet National Patriots 13

Between Class and Nation 15

Remembering the Nation 19

The Great Ukrainian People 24

2 The Unbreakable Union 33

The Unifying Past 34

Ranking Friends and Brothers 39

Ukraine Reunited 47

3 Reinventing Ideological Orthodoxy 53

Confusing Signals from Above 54

The Ukrainian Zhdanovshchina 62

Fashioning an Acceptable Past 66

4 The Unfinished Crusade of 1947 72

The Enforced Dialogue 73

The Attack on Historians 77

The Campaign's Nationalist Echoes 84

5 Writing A 'Stalinist History of Ukraine' 88

The Quest for a New Memory 89

Defining the Ancient Past 93

Remembering the Empire 96

Narrating the Nation 102

6 Defining the National Heritage 108

The Ukrainian Classics 109

In the House of History 114

Sites of Remembrance 120

7 Empire and Nation in the Artistic Imagination 129

Writers' Licence 130

Filmmakers and Artists Imagine the Past 137

History at the Opera 145

Epilogue 153

The Last Stalinist Festival 154

After Stalin 159

Notes 163

Bibliography 199

Index 217

What People are Saying About This

Peter Solomon

'Yekelchyk has written a wonderful book that offers a wholly original, well-researched, sophisticated, and balanced account of an important subject. The focus is the struggle between Soviet political leaders, ideologists and cultural tastemakers on the one hand, and Ukrainian historians, cultural figures and their political supervisors on the other... This book represents a highly significant contribution to scholarship.'

Hiroaki Kuromiya

'This is an excellent book ... Yekelchyk demonstrates the critical importance of the politics of memory for the study of empires in general and of the Soviet Union in particular. At the cutting edge of Ukrainian and Russian studies as well as cultural and postcolonial studies, it will have a significant impact.'

Editorial Reviews

Yekelchyk’s account is a model of archival research and clear exposition.

American Historical Review - Timothy Snyder

By masterfully integrating theories of collective memory with archival research and by detailing the party’s compromises with the past, Yekelchyk has produced a rich and thought-provoking assessment of the politics of memory in Soviet Ukraine.

Journal of Modern History - George O. Liber

Yekelchyk’s investigation of the ‘creation’ of Soviet Ukraine is nothing less than an interdisciplinary tour de force that supplies fascinating insight into the party’s accidental role in the formation of the USSR’s successor states.

Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d'histoire - David Brandenberger

Of significant interest to the broader scholarly audience interested in problems of nationalism, colonialism, and imperialism, as well as to college students beginning to explore these issues.

Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue canadienne des slavistes - Denis Kozlov