Stalin's Citizens: Everyday Politics in the Wake of Total War 0199378444, 9780199378449

Table of contents :
Cover
Stalin’s Citizens
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Stalinist Political Rites
1 The Civic Duty to Hate
2 Stalinism as Celebration
3 A Refresher Course in Sovietness
4 The Toilers’ Patriotic Duty
5 Comrade Agitator
6 Election Day
Epilogue: “Good” Stalinist Citizens
Notes
Index

Citation preview

Stalin’s Citizens

Stalin’s Citizens Everyday Politics in the Wake of Total War

xwx Serhy Yekelchyk

1

3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland  Cape Town  Dar es Salaam  Hong Kong  Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yekelchyk, Serhy. Stalin’s citizens : everyday politics in the wake of total war / Serhy Yekelchyk. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–937844–9 (hardback : acid-free paper)  1.  Kiev (Ukraine)—Politics and government—20th century.  2.  Kiev (Ukraine)—Social life and customs—20th century.  3.  Citizenship— Social aspects—Ukraine—Kiev—History—20th century.  4.  Political participation—Ukraine—Kiev— History—20th century.  5.  Political customs and rites—Ukraine—Kiev—History—20th century.  6.  Group identity—Ukraine—Kiev—History—20th century.  7.  Communism—Social aspects—Ukraine—Kiev— History—20th century.  8.  Patriotism—Social aspects—Ukraine—Kiev—History—20th century.  9.  World War, 1939–1945—Influence.  10.  Citizenship—Soviet Union—Case studies.  I.  Title. DK508.935.Y45 2014 947.084’2—dc23 2014000011 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

To my mother and father, Olena and Oleksandr Yekelchyk— a book about the city of their youth

CON T E N T S

Preface  ix Introduction: Stalinist Political Rites   1 1. The Civic Duty to Hate   9 2. Stalinism as Celebration   34 3. A Refresher Course in Sovietness   68 4. The Toilers’ Patriotic Duty   103 5. Comrade Agitator   141 6. Election Day   179 Epilogue: “Good” Stalinist Citizens   218 Notes  227 Index  263

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PR E FAC E

As someone who grew up in the Soviet Union, I did not always have a purely academic interest in the everydayness of political life under state socialism. The political rituals that I analyze in this book are not alien territory to me; I marched in parades, voted for Communist Party candidates, served as an agitator, subscribed to state loans, and protested against American imperialism. Admittedly, my brief personal experience of political participation under socialism reflects the realities of the late Soviet period with its widespread cynicism and dissimulation as well as the state’s formal, almost statistical, approach to citizen involvement in politics. This book, however, is about the period when the system of Soviet mass political rituals was being established in its most developed form under Stalin or, more precisely, reestablished after the years of Nazi occupation. I came to be interested in the immediate postwar years because they best demonstrate how the formulaic rituals could create space for the people to express their concerns, fears, and prejudices, as well as their eagerness to be viewed as citizens in good standing. It was also toward the end of the Stalin period that the Soviet state and its citizens settled for a more ossified routine of political participation, which persisted until the Soviet Union’s collapse. There was another, more personal, reason for me to try and understand the everydayness of politics in the last decade of Stalinist rule. This book is about the era when my parents came of age in the very city that serves as a setting for my narrative. They tried, unsuccessfully, to find themselves in some of the photographs used as illustrations in this book:  they were convinced that they were somewhere in those crowds of marchers, mourners, or onlookers. This sense of their being living links to the late-Stalinist society was indispensable to me, and the many now obscure, small details of political rituals or workplace duties were easy for me to clarify just by asking Mom or Dad, who laughed at my viewing the year 1948 as “history.” I dedicate this book to my parents in appreciation of their unfailing love and support, as well as their service as history’s witnesses.

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( x )  Preface

This book was long in the making. Over the years my research was supported by the three-year Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and a one-year Internal Research Grant from the University of Victoria. Interim results were presented at various conferences, including several conventions of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, as well as at invited talks at the University of Toronto (twice), Harvard University, Lviv University, Miami University of Ohio, Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of Alberta, the University of Michigan, and the University of Washington. A  number of colleagues in the field provided invaluable advice and encouragement over the years, in particular Martin J. Blackwell, David Brandenberger, Michael David-Fox, John-Paul Himka, Peter Holquist, Hiroaki Kuromiya, Lynne Viola, and Amir Weiner. I greatly appreciate the friendship and support of my colleagues at the University of Victoria, both in the Department of History and the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies. I must also mention our excellent students at UVic, who have always been a great source of inspiration in my teaching and research activities. My research would have been impossible without the kind assistance of many Ukrainian archivists and librarians. I am particularly thankful to Raisa O.  Kuhno and Olha I.  Bielaia at the State Archive of Kyiv Oblast; Larysa V.  Batrak and Iryna L.  Komarova at the Ukrainian Central State Archive of Civic Organizations (former archive of the Communist Party of Ukraine); and Liudmyla M.  Hutnyk at the Arts Division of the V.  I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. My Montreal-based language editor, Marta D. Olynyk, confirmed her reputation as a paragon of efficiency in correcting my English over and over again on short notice. In her capacity as a graduate research assistant at UVic, Julie Ruch also helped improve the narrative flow in some chapters. At Oxford University Press, I felt privileged to work again with Susan Ferber—a mentor, a guru of word crafting, and an inspiration in my never-ending search for the next book’s topic. I also thank Patti Brecht for her careful copyediting of the final text. Parts of this book previously appeared in a different form and are reprinted here with the kind permission of the following publishers:  “The Leader, the Victory, and the Nation:  Public Celebrations in Soviet Ukraine under Stalin (Kiev, 1943–1953),” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 54, no. 1 (2006): 3–19, © Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 2006; “A Communal Model of Citizenship in Stalinist Politics: Agitators and Voters in Postwar Electoral Campaigns (Kyiv, 1946–1953),” Ab Imperio, no.  2 (2010):  93–120, © Ab Imperio quarterly, 2010. In addition, one chapter is a revised and expanded version of my article “The Civic Duty to Hate: Stalinist Citizenship as Political Practice and Civic

Preface  ( xi )

Emotion (Kiev, 1943–1953),” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 7, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 529–556, © 2006 by Serhy Yekelchyk. During the ten years or so that I worked on this book, I accumulated a number of intellectual debts and obligations of friendship, but none is greater than the one I owe to Olga Pressitch, my colleague and life partner, who for some time even shared my office on the second floor of Clearihue Building, until she was assigned her own office next door. She helped me in innumerable ways to see this project through to completion. I am tempted to believe that moving my computer desk to the kitchen next to her work station—and the family hearth—was a crucial factor during the final push to finish the manuscript.

Stalin’s Citizens

Introduction Stalinist Political Rites

O

n 6 November 1943 children at an orphanage in the Kyivan suburb of Vorzel anxiously awaited the outcome of fighting in the city. They did not yet know that in the end the Germans, fearing encirclement, would put up little resistance in Kyiv, the largest Soviet city to change hands during the war and the one they had been prepared to defend with utmost determination. The truth dawned on the children only when the last of the German soldiers ran away into a nearby forest, and in their place arrived people wearing different uniforms. Yet, the appearance of these newcomers caused confusion. Although they spoke Russian, the soldiers and officers wore epaulets, which the prewar Red Army had not used out of a desire to break with the tsarist tradition. Were these newcomers perhaps with General Andrei Vlasov’s pro-German Russian Liberation Army? The uncertainty among the children and the staff persisted until a female orphanage attendant came up with a brilliant idea: to ask what time it was. “Twenty-two hundred hours Moscow time,” reported an officer, at once removing all doubts; the Germans and their collaborators followed a different time zone. A celebration began at once. The orphanage staff laid a table with borscht and vodka, while the children sang Soviet songs. If the future historian of wartime Kyiv, Dmytro Malakov, had not been there himself as one of those children, he would have dismissed this story as the product of Soviet propaganda, but “this is just the way it was.” The next day, Sunday, 7 November, the orphanage marked Revolution Day, the first Soviet holiday ( 1 )

( 2 )  Stalin’s Citizens

to be celebrated in Kyiv in more than two years. To Malakov and his brother, who rejoiced with the others, even the most “standard slogans of Soviet propaganda seemed so dear, so ‘ours.’ ”1 In its depiction of perennial anxiety about identifying Sovietness in others and careful consideration of what it meant to behave like a Soviet person on the personal level, this vignette reveals much about the world of Stalin’s citizens. Relations between the Stalinist state and its citizens were structured by familiar political rituals of celebration and thanking, rites that required both political awareness and a demonstrable emotional response, and thus went to the very heart of the Stalinist concept of citizenship. It is through this prism that the episode at the orphanage perfectly illustrates the main theme of this book: examining Soviet citizenship through everyday practices of expressing Soviet identity in the public space.

CIVIC EMOTIONS

Although citizenship has been viewed as a privileged status for a certain category of persons, present-day scholars understand it as a set of institutionally embedded political, social, and cultural practices that define a person as a member of a polity.2 It seems that Stalinist ideologues shared this understanding. While the issue of disenfranchisement retained some importance until 1936,3 determining a person’s civic status was not one of mature Stalinism’s main concerns. There were a small number of foreign nationals caught in a legal limbo in the postwar Soviet Union, including in Kyiv, most of them fighting to obtain Soviet citizenship—and with it, the right to work and study.4 However, the authorities showed little concern for this group. In contrast, the official propaganda of Stalin’s time focused heavily on turning all Soviet people into good citizens by teaching them to identify with the state and its symbolic incarnation, the Great Leader. Rituals of participation and demonstrative emotional responses served as vehicles for such identification. As the city’s main newspaper Kyivska Pravda editorialized in February 1946, the Soviet people had achieved all their victories “with the heartfelt unity of a single, powerful civic organism, with one person serving as its guiding spirit—a titan who synthesized all the greatness of our people.”5 Four years later another editorial in the same newspaper proclaimed: “The fullest and brightest expression of the Soviet people’s moral and political unity is found in their love for Comrade Stalin.” It was this love that underscored Soviet citizens’ “unity of actions, views, beliefs, and political aims, unprecedented in human history”.6 Moreover, Stalin insisted that the people’s love for him was well deserved. As the one-time Ukrainian party leader Lazar Kaganovich commented

i n t ro du c t i o n    ( 3 )

during the drafting of a thank-you letter to Stalin from the Ukrainian people on the Revolution’s 30th anniversary, “Comrade Stalin does not particularly like the expression ‘selfless devotion.’ Where it says ‘selfless devotion,’ add something about gratitude.” In the final version, the Ukrainian people sent Stalin their “fervent feelings of love and gratitude.”7 Everything the Soviet people did as citizens was construed as thanking Stalin and the party for their “care,” as well as for the nation’s victory in the war and their survival For instance, when they voted for the official slate of candidates, the voters “were expressing their loyalty and love for the party, for Stalin, by fulfilling their civic duty.”8 This book argues that the Stalinist state understood citizenship as practice, with participation in a set of political rituals and public display of certain “civic emotions” serving as the marker of a person’s inclusion in the political world. What role did political rituals and civic emotions, such as love for the Motherland and the Great Leader, play in the relationship between the Soviet state and its citizens? In his influential work on Stalinism, Stephen Kotkin attempts to overcome the simplistic state–society dichotomy by arguing that power operated through language. Ordinary people assumed the state-prescribed Soviet identity primarily by “speaking Bolshevik,” and learning the art of this “identity game” was essential to social advancement—or mere survival. Kotkin goes so far as to claim that it is irrelevant whether those speaking Bolshevik believed in what they were saying; the important point is that they knew which language they were supposed to speak.9 A group of younger scholars have taken Kotkin’s analysis a step further. They argue that while the rules of “speaking Bolshevik” were determined and enforced by the state, Soviet people appropriated them and conceptualized the world and their lives in terms of official ideology.10 Much like Soviet ideologists did, however, these historians are finding it difficult to distinguish genuine belief from widespread dissimulation, in part because of the limited number and ambiguous nature of the sources they see as reflecting the “inner Soviet self,” such as obligatory autobiographical statements and even confessions during interrogation. In addition, the interpreters of Kotkin do not account for the innumerable forms of passive and active resistance in Stalinist society.11 Moreover, by accepting the mass internalization of Soviet ideology, they actually move away from Kotkin’s fascinating conundrum of why the issue of belief seems irrelevant during that period. No less perplexing is the suggestion of another prominent historian of Stalinism, Hiroaki Kuromiya, that “for all the politicized appearance of Soviet political life, it was depoliticized and the population was demobilized as a political force.”12 Both these paradoxes indicate a gap in our understanding of Stalinism, which cannot be swept aside simply by postulating the transformative power of Soviet ideology.

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Returning to this unresolved issue, this book brings the state back into the picture as an agent constantly educating and monitoring the political allegiance of its citizenry. The Bolshevik state’s professed aim was to create a new Soviet person, an omnipresent “inner Soviet self.” But the government of the USSR could only verify citizens’ beliefs and allegiances through their participation in state-approved political and social practices.13 Personal belief, then, was not exactly irrelevant to the state—certainly not in theory—but rather difficult to assess outside of the public domain. Hence, the state paid attention to mass political rituals and required people to speak up at innumerable meetings. By marching, signing letters of gratitude, and expressing public approval of the party’s policies, ordinary citizens presumably manifested their sincere support of the Bolshevik agenda. But, the machinery of the Stalinist state could only make assumptions about what its citizens really thought. All that the bureaucrats could ascertain was mass participation in political rituals.14 And yet the party’s ideological functionaries insisted on a certain form of participation. Since they expected the population fully to internalize the official ideology, they also called for emotional responses to political events. The obligatory “civic emotions” of Stalin’s time are relatively easy to gauge through newspapers. The two obvious candidates are love and gratitude: love for Stalin and the Motherland, and gratitude to Stalin and the Soviet state for their “gift” of life and well-being.15 Hatred of the internal and external enemy also figures prominently in the system of Stalinist political rituals.16 Specialists on the Soviet Union were late in responding to the so-called emotional turn in historical scholarship, and when such studies finally started to appear, they frequently used the traditional concept of individual human emotion opposed to the rationality of political action and official discourse.17 In contrast, the notion of “civic emotions” is proposed here as a tool for studying the interaction between citizens and the state,18 which usually took place in a ritualized political context. Anthropologists and sociologists have argued that rituals, even the most rigid political ones, are never “empty,” that they help shape identities and reproduce cultural practices.19 Indeed, this book finds that the people were willing participants and even helped ensure that public events were conducted in the proper manner. But the population also often imbued these ceremonies with different meanings: as a popular fête, an occasion to get together after work, a chance to buy goods not available on other days, and even as an opportunity to drink. The people also clearly understood these political rituals as moments of negotiation, whereby citizens fulfilling their “patriotic duty” expected the state to reciprocate by providing essential services and basic social welfare. Significantly, these popular appropriation

i n t ro du c t i o n    ( 5 )

strategies did not contradict people’s belief in the Soviet system. Both sincere communists and conformists enthusiastically reframed Stalinist ceremonies as events that were relevant to them and their families. There was also a small group of active resisters, people who voted against the official slate of candidates and wrote anonymous letters of protest while pretending to be loyal citizens in public. “Civic emotions” functioned as a marker of a person’s inclusion in the political world rather than as a true reflection of his or her beliefs.

THE COMMUNAL DIMENSION OF STALINIST POLITICS

This book analyzes Stalinist citizenship as an active form of participation. By studying practices rather than policies, such an approach restores agency to individuals within the field of power established by the state. Moreover, it resists the familiar dichotomy present in my working definition of citizenship as a relationship between the individual and the state, for the state was most often represented during electoral campaigns, political-information meetings, and other mass-political events by volunteer agitatory (“agitators”), who played a complex and ambiguous role of speaking on behalf of the state before the people and on behalf of the people before the state. Through their mediation the political space spread to communal apartments and factory shops, and power relations acquired a “communal” character. Often ordinary individuals, for example, coworkers or neighbors with whom voters could establish a personal relationship, agitators merged the personal and the political in a way that made political participation a communal duty. The everyday nature of Stalinist political life—that fabric of public participation which made the Soviet state more than just a well-guarded camp—can thus be conceptualized as a “communal model” of citizenship.20 These everyday interactions, this book suggests, were more important than formal political events, with the outcome never in doubt. Subscription to state bonds, acceptance of new work targets, and group readings of Stalin’s speeches appear as more important moments of political realignment at ground level, in which state ideology was refracted through daily interaction—often communal in nature—between ordinary citizens and agitators. The effects of these interactions rippled out in all directions: the authorities gauged societal response to their policies and identified potential sources of discontent based on what they heard from agitators, whereas ordinary people “updated” their Soviet identities through ideological interaction with them. A meeting of voters with their agitator was intended to be an occasion for the political education of the masses, but was instead a

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locus of subtle negotiations on issues ranging from the supply of everyday necessities to citizens’ political rights. Last but not least, in this “communal” model of Stalinist political life, failing to show up at the polling station or voting against the official candidate did not mean rebellion against an abstract state but an attempt to make trouble for his or her agitator, with whom the voters had already established a personal relationship, knowing that either the agitator would not be able to go home until all voters were accounted for or would receive a reprimand if too many negative votes had been cast. Thus, big politics at the local level worked subtly through communal attitudes, in addition to the ever-present threat of force and the fear it generated. This interpretation thus differs radically from the views of contemporary Western observers, who saw the agitator’s personal relations with his or her audience as conflicting with his or her political duties. For example, Alex Inkeles wrote in 1950: [A]‌man’s role as agitator may conflict with other roles which he plays as a member of society. In particular, it may conflict with the agitator’s personal relations with his audience of fellow workers, [in] personal relations toward which he has a real emotional commitment. Because the men who are his “audience” when he acts as agitator are often, during the rest of the day, simply his fellow workers, men with whom he eats in the factory lunchrooms, rides home on the trolley in the evening, and whom he perhaps sees socially and reckons as friends after working hours. And in some situations, in so far as the agitator consolidates his party position by fulfilling his agitation instructions, he may at the same time be disrupting his relations with his fellow workers.21

By contrast, the amalgamation of the political and the personal in everyday situations constituted the essence of Stalinist citizenship. It was this combination, rather than the ever-present fear of political reprisals, that made Stalinist everyday politics work. This book will also aim to clarify the contradiction apparent in recent works by Russian historians of Stalinism, such as Elena Zubkova, who acknowledge that Stalinist political agitation somehow “worked” and elections took place in a festive atmosphere, in spite of the population being by and large apolitical. This conceptual tension remains unresolved: Was it just “ostentatious (ritualistic) political activism” or was the Stalin regime able to “inculcate the proper societal attitudes”?22 A  similar interpretive dualism is apparent in the work of Ukrainian historians studying “popular attitudes” in postwar Soviet Ukraine. Vitaly Kononenko, who focuses on the Vinnytsia region, writes of the Stalinist state as a totalitarian polity, in which the population “constituted, with little exception, an apolitical mass.”23 At the same time he acknowledges that the holiday atmosphere

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during elections “influenced popular attitudes,” while “a feverish propaganda campaign and the work of agitators secured the necessary results for the state.”24 Viktor Krupyna similarly notes that the population found the Soviet government’s declared program of postwar reconstruction “genuinely appealing,” while critical attitudes “did not become widespread.”25 Maryna Herasymova argues that in the Donbas region “there existed a substantial stratum of people who supported state policies. There was an even larger share of those who took a conformist position.” “Under totalitarianism,” she goes on to say, “the appearance of loyalty to the state was more convenient than a critical take on the realities of life that carried with it the threat of repression.”26 Such interpretive difficulties beg the question: Did propaganda work, or is the question moot because the outward display of loyalty was the only available option? Interestingly, this contradiction is also replicated in the recollections of some contemporaries, such as Ivan Dziuba, the future dissident and minister of culture in independent Ukraine. Dziuba readily acknowledges having been a Komsomol activist and a true believer in communism, as well as a “fanatical agitator and, moreover, one who took this work very seriously.” At the same time, he claims that most people were conformist: “Naturally, dissatisfaction existed, but it was carefully hidden. On the surface, everyone demonstrated complete loyalty to the authorities. Moreover, this was the power that [after the German occupation] came back ‘for good.’ But there were also many who believed.” Earlier in the same interview, however, Dziuba presents a curious picture of harmonious conformism, in which the question of belief did not matter. He writes: “I think no one felt dissonance between official and everyday life. It was accepted as normal that people said one thing among themselves and another in official settings.”27 Very appropriately, Dziuba’s notion of “official settings” and the models of public behavior associated with them bring us back to the concepts of civic emotions and communal model of politics, in which certain things are “accepted as normal.” What Dziuba is talking about is inclusion in the Soviet political world, taking part in a symbolic interaction with the state, a ritual that served to confirm citizens’ loyalties. To him, as to other contemporaries, this was a social practice independent of individuals’ political views. Yet, as this book shows, while demonstrating their allegiance to the state in many formulaic ways, Stalinist citizens also found within the rigid political rituals a number of subtle ways to negotiate with, question, mock, and resist the state apparatus. The six chapters that follow highlight these instances in different everyday spaces:  in communal apartments, on the streets, in factory shops, in political education rooms, and inside polling stations. The evolution of Stalinist everyday politics will be examined through the

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close reading of public displays of hatred, official celebrations, ritualistic political education, demonstrations of patriotism in the workplace, electoral campaigns, and one of the most scripted events in Soviet political life—Election Day. This book shows that such political events allowed ordinary people an opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty while at the same time giving them an opportunity to express their concerns, fear, and prejudices. As the more ossified routine of political rituals developed toward the end of the Stalin period, passive resistance to obligatory participation also increased. This book aligns with the field’s recent return to the study of Stalinist political education and youth socialization as facets of the Stalinist system that were no less important than control and repression.28 It is also in line with new interest in the restoration of physical space and social order (and, in some cases, the cultural construction of nationality) in Soviet cities after World War II.29 By focusing on the city of Kyiv, the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, this study adds an important nationality dimension to the picture of late-Stalinist political life, without skewing the picture in the way that the selection of a recently incorporated western Ukrainian region would. Unlike in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, for example, there were no Ukrainian nationalist guerrillas in the forests around Kyiv, and the local population had lived under Soviet rule for decades. The political and social models found in Kyiv were typical of other postwar Soviet cities, but the mechanisms of their introduction and adoption could be seen better there than anywhere else because Kyiv had been under German occupation from 18 September 1941 to 6 November 1943. Thus, when Soviet power returned, it had to rebuild Stalinist political life from scratch, and in the process it highlighted certain features and ideological changes that took place during the war. Allowing for the study of both general Soviet models and the nationality policy, and offering the added advantage of easy access to archives, the Ukrainian republic has been used recently as a case study for influential books on Soviet history.30 The republic and Kyiv in particular have also been used as case studies of German occupation policies and Soviet population control after the Red Army retook the Ukrainian capital.31 This book uses the city of Kyiv as a setting for the study of the late Stalinist concept of citizenship understood as a symbolic interaction between citizens and the state in the political space. In the process it will offer the story of Soviet postwar reconstruction, vignettes of Nikita Khrushchev’s leadership style in his Ukrainian days, a window into the everyday lives of ordinary people, and the squares, factories, and residential neighborhoods of a major Soviet city.

C H A P T E R  1

w

The Civic Duty to Hate

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n the morning of 6 November 1943, when the military reported that German troops had abandoned Kyiv, the Ukrainian party leader Nikita Khrushchev and his small entourage of generals, functionaries, and writers boarded four jeeps and rushed to the city center. The vehicles followed an armored car filled with machine-gunners, as they drove by Kyiv’s landmark buildings, many of them still burning. Khrushchev later recalled: “The city made an eerie impression. It had once been such a large, noisy, cheerful southern city, and suddenly there was no one on the streets! You heard only your footsteps when you walked down Khreshchatyk Boulevard. Then we turned up Lenin Street. You could hear the echoes in this empty city.” As the party walked up Lenin Street to the opera house, however, Kyivites appeared. The very first person to appear was, as Khrushchev remembered many years later, a young Jew crying hysterically and repeating the same phrase over and over again, “I’m the only Jew in Kyiv still alive.” Then an old worker appeared, carrying a cloth shoulder bag that reminded Khrushchev of his own lunch bag from his days as a metalworker before the Revolution. The worker hugged and kissed the Ukrainian party leader, who was truly touched by this display of emotion.1 Khrushchev even shed a few tears.2 Marshal Zhukov, who was also there, recalled being surrounded by a small crowd of visibly exhausted civilians, who were crying and telling Khrushchev and his men about their sufferings under the Nazis.3 On 9 November 1943 Pravda published Khrushchev’s first report to Stalin about the situation in Kyiv: “While in Kyiv on 6 and 7 November I talked to many city residents, who wept as they recounted the horrors of the German occupation.” The Ukrainian party leader accused the Nazis of ( 9 )

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Figure 1.1  Ukrainian party leader Nikita Khrushchev chats with a young girl on the streets of Kyiv, 6 November 1943. Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

attempting to drive out the entire population of the city, attacking people with specially trained dogs, blowing up the central part of the city, and even stealing the bronze door-handles from government buildings.4 This authoritative statement (which, notably, omitted the issues of mass executions and the Holocaust) was the first awkward attempt to use Nazi atrocities in Kyiv as propaganda material for the war effort. For Kyivites and all other Soviet citizens, Nazi crimes in the Ukrainian capital were to fuel hatred of the enemy. The concept of hatred, which had always been prominent in Bolshevik thinking, came to occupy a central place in wartime Soviet propaganda. When the Red Army was preparing to capture Kyiv, on 3 November the republic’s main newspaper, Radianska Ukraina, published an editorial with the telling headline “The Strength of Our Hatred.” According to the author, hatred of the enemy constituted a powerful weapon in the hands of the Soviet people because this emotion “temper[ed] their will to struggle.” The editorialist outlined the main reasons for abhorring the “German-Fascist invaders”:  they encroached on everything that was sacred and dear to the Soviet people; they committed horrible crimes; they were the eternal enemies of Great Rus′; and their very existence was incompatible with honor, freedom, and happiness. Besides hating the Nazis, citizens of the Ukrainian republic had an additional target for their loathing: namely, the

t h e ci v i c du t y to   h at e   

( 11 )

“Ukrainian-German nationalists [who had been] thrice damned by the Ukrainian people.”5 Typical of revolutionary and revisionist states that possessed an exclusionary vision of the world, hatred of enemies emerged in Stalin’s time as a core component of ideal Soviet identity, on par with love and gratitude to the Leader. Prewar denunciatory campaigns against “enemies of the people” gave way during the war to hatred of external enemies, the Nazis, and, in the words of official discourse, the “internal” Ukrainian nationalists, with whom they were linked. After the war, public hatred of the nationalists was muted since its prominence in the official discourse served as an acknowledgment of the strength of the nationalist insurgency in Ukraine’s western oblasts, but these wartime enemies also provided a link to new, Cold War–era, enemies:  the United States in particular and the West in general. However, fueling hatred of a distant external enemy had a limited mobilizational effect, until the Kremlin announced a new, Jewish internal enemy during the so-called Doctors’ Plot affair of 1953. Only Stalin’s death cut short this political construct, after which his successors abandoned the concept of internal enemies and downplayed their critique of foreign powers, perhaps because the notion of public hatred was so inseparably linked with Stalinist terror and total war.

HATRED AND REVENGE

If Khrushchev had not yet mentioned the issue of mass executions in his first report to Stalin, by 8 November Pravda military reporter Ya. Makarenko provided a detailed list of Nazi crimes in the city, including mass murder. According to him, the Nazi aggressors blew up the city’s central boulevard, Khreshchatyk, and Assumption Cathedral in the famous Kyivan Cave Monastery. In 1941 they executed over 85,000 people, engineered a famine in the city, and continuously hanged partisans and absentee workers in the city parks. To add a personal touch to his story, Makarenko interviewed a woman in her sixties, who stood on Khreshchatyk blessing the passing Soviet soldiers with the Sign of the Cross. Onysia Maiboroda’s son was in the Red Army, but her daughter had been conscripted for slave labor in Germany. During the occupation she was reduced to begging and huddling in the kitchen of her former apartment. The reporter concluded his story with these words: “The ashes and stones of Khreshchatyk, the ruins of ravaged buildings and streets are calling for revenge; they are stoking the flames of vengeance.”6 Just as the ruins of Khreshchatyk were fast becoming the principal symbol of Nazi destruction, there was also an obvious symbol for Nazi

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crimes against humanity in the city. As early as 11 November Makarenko and L. Ognev mentioned in Pravda “huge graves in Babi Yar (Babyn Yar in Ukrainian), where tens of thousands of innocent people killed by the Hitlerites are buried.”7 On 17 November, in an unsigned article entitled “What Happened in Babi Yar,” the newspaper Kyivska Pravda referred to “tens of thousands of peaceful residents” who had been executed there.8 Yet, for various reasons both of these symbols were highly ambiguous. Regarding Khreshchatyk, many Kyivites knew that it was actually blown up on 24–25 September 1941, when the retreating Soviets, intent on killing Nazi officers and dignitaries, planted time- and radio-controlled bombs all over the street. The Soviet partisans successfully sabotaged the Germans’ firefighting efforts, and as a result the city center burned for a week. The Germans later discovered and safely removed another 670 mines.9 After their return in 1943, the Soviet authorities claimed that the destruction was the work of the German army, but the population no doubt remembered the Germans panicking after the explosions, cordoning off the city center, and searching for mines. The ravine of Babi Yar presented a different kind of difficulty. The largest and most infamous killing field in Kyiv, it was forever marked in popular memory as a site where on 29 and 30 September 1941 the Nazis machine-gunned 34,000 Kyiv Jews. Later, a large concentration camp for POWs was created nearby, and the ravine continued to serve as a place of mass executions and burials for POWs as well as other types of undesirables, ranging from communists to Ukrainian nationalists. Scholars estimate the total number of people killed or buried in Babi Yar at 100,000.10 But Soviet ideologues would struggle for decades to redefine Babi Yar, seeking to transform it from a symbol of a Jewish wartime tragedy into that of Nazi atrocities against the civilian population in general.11 This strategy is obvious already in early propaganda materials that were aimed at mobilizing the population for military and labor efforts. (The Stalinist authorities did not want to present revenge for Jewish sufferings as a major factor in the war, as this would “confirm” Nazi propaganda about the Judeo-Bolshevik character of the Soviet state. Popular anti-Semitism played a certain role as well.) On 27 November the authorities organized an open-air rally in Kyiv to celebrate the city’s liberation. Several speakers mentioned Babi Yar, including the commander of the First Ukrainian Front, General Nikolai Vatutin:  “Each of you knows about the atrocities of the Nazi monsters in Kyiv. In 1941 alone the vile Fascist animals exterminated over 85,000 peaceful residents of Kyiv—women, old people, children. The blood in our veins freezes as we discover the terrible picture of the Fascist cannibals’ terrible crime in Babi Yar.”12 A letter sent to Stalin on behalf of the rally’s participants mentioned “over one hundred thousand” Kyivites who

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were killed in Babi Yar, and the writers made the following promise: “For as long as we live, none of us will ever forget or forgive the German cannibals, the plunderers of our land and killers of our people. On our deathbeds we will pass on to our offspring our hatred and scorn toward the Fascist enemies of humankind.”13 On 15 December the Kyiv newspaper Kyivska Pravda published the poem “Babyn Yar,” by the prominent Ukrainian poet Volodymyr Sosiura, in which he mourns the victims and calls for revenge without mentioning the Jews.14 In April 1944 Kyiv oblast leaders, reporting to Stalin on their success in collecting money for the Defense Fund, used an evasive turn of phrase: “The Germans destroyed Kyiv, bestially shot and tortured to death about two hundred thousand peaceful townspeople in the Gestapo’s torture chambers.”15 In fact, even top-secret internal correspondence, such as Khrushchev’s second report to Stalin from Kyiv (21 November 1943), referred only to “peaceful city residents” executed in Babi Yar without specifying this tragedy’s relation to the Nazi genocide of the Jews.16 As the ambiguity of these two main symbols became obvious, Soviet authorities continued their search for other examples. One promising possibility was a building located at 24 Lvivska Street, which was used by the Nazis as a deportation point for Kyivites conscripted for slave labor in Germany. By late November the journalist Mykola Sheremet had already published an article entitled “The Walls Are Screaming,” about the farewell inscriptions found on the walls there.17 In December the city party committee’s secretary for ideology, Maria Pidtychenko, wanted to stage an exhibit on Nazi atrocities, featuring photos of mass graves, prisons, and that deportation point, but nothing was done. In April 1944, at a conference of museum workers, Pidtychenko again proposed that the walls of the deportation point be photographed and the stocks from the Gestapo prison preserved, perhaps for a future exhibition at the Historical Museum.18 One possible reason for the Ukrainian leadership’s lack of enthusiastic support for Pidtychenko was Khrushchev’s preoccupation with memorializing the Soviet victory in Ukraine as opposed to Nazi crimes. At the time, the first secretary entertained plans to create historical preserves at major battlefields and to establish a Museum of the Patriotic War.19 Another reason could have been the existence of a centralized program to collect information about German atrocities, a program run by the Extraordinary State Commission on the Establishment and Investigation of Crimes Committed by the German Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices and the Damage Inflicted by Them on Citizens, Collective Farms, Civic Organizations, State Enterprises, and Institutions of the USSR. This all-Union Commission was created in November 1942 to collect evidence for postwar indemnity claims and trials, but also for the purposes

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of wartime propaganda.20 At the time, all of Ukraine was under Nazi control; however, as the Red Army began to advance into the republic’s territory, the authorities published notices informing Soviet citizens about the commission’s existence and inviting them to submit information about deaths and damages.21 In Kyiv the commission began its work in late November with the visit of a representative from Moscow and the creation of local branches. Khrushchev headed the republican commission, while lesser party chiefs automatically became heads of local commissions, right down to the level of factories and collective farms.22 In general, the party and state apparatus did all the evidence-gathering work, which allowed the commission to publish its final report on Nazi crimes in Kyiv as early as 1 March 1944. On the negative side, however, the commission did not produce any new, powerful symbols of Nazi atrocities. Its instructions called for the submission of detailed and illustrated reports about what were awkwardly called “glaring crimes” (iarkie zlodeianiia),23 but local bureaucrats lacked both the time and the expertise to select them from among numerous, often handwritten, submissions. The commission’s work, conducted in great haste and at a time when the Soviet administrative apparatus in Ukraine was still weak, all too often meant collecting approximate numbers and sending them to Moscow. In April 1944 this led Ukraine’s foreign minister Oleksandr Korniichuk to write a memorandum to Khrushchev. Worried that in Ukraine no use was being made of the commission’s rich data, Korniichuk suggested publishing descriptions of the most heinous atrocities as “Red Books of the Ukrainian SSR,” a labor-intensive project that would have required the Kremlin’s approval.24 This was never implemented. Instead, the republic’s ideologues turned the publication of the commission’s report on crimes in Kyiv into a major propaganda event. Published by the local and republican press on 1 March 1944, the report was a lengthy, if somewhat nonspecific, list of accusations grouped in three sections: economic exploitation, destruction of culture, and mass murder. It ended with the names of German policemen, SS, and army officers responsible for committing atrocities in Kyiv. Among specific crimes, the report mentioned the destruction of Khreshchatyk and the execution of “thousands of peaceful Soviet citizens” in Babi Yar. The report claimed that in total the Nazis killed 195,000 Kyivites.25 In reality, this report was provisional and based on estimates, while the calculation of exact numbers continued after its publication. In October 1944 the death count in Kyiv and Kyiv oblast stood at 127,273 civilians and 69,021 POWs.26 In the end, the Soviet authorities never publicized their final count of human losses in Ukraine, although one year after the republic’s liberation Khrushchev would announce the

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commission’s estimate of economic damage (285 billion rubles) and the number of slave laborers taken to Germany (2,023,112).27 But the general statements contained in the March 1944 report on devastation and executions were sufficient for Soviet propaganda purposes. Even if Khreshchatyk and Babi Yar were ambiguous symbols, they represented thousands of smaller events in assigning guilt and fanning hatred of the enemy. The report was speedily released in pocketbook format.28 On the day it carried the report, the official newspaper Radianska Ukraina also published an editorial entitled “Let Us Avenge Ourselves without Mercy for the Blood and Ruins of Kyiv!” This strongly worded text concluded with two slogans: “A curse on the German cannibals; death to them” and “Avenge the blood and sufferings of Kyiv.”29 This intensified propaganda of hatred was probably timed to coincide with the Red Army’s renewed offensive in March 1944. On 19 March the Ukrainian authorities organized an open-air rally in Kyiv to celebrate the complete liberation of Kyiv oblast and, on behalf of the 50,000 participants, sent Stalin a greeting assuring the Leader that the hearts of Kyivites were “burning with the fire of holy hatred toward the enemy.”30 On 22 March, with the Soviet offensive gaining steam, Radianska Ukraina carried another fiery editorial, “The Time of Atonement Has Come”:  “May the enemy’s black blood flow like a river! Death and damnation to the butchers, killers of nations!”31 Similar rhetoric continued later, as evidenced by Mykola Yatko’s article “Revenge Unites Us.” Published in Kyivska Pravda on 1 May 1944, it addressed German soldiers with the words, “Tremble, you hostile subhumans (nedoliudky). The Red Army is coming.”32 This racial slur, rare in Soviet propaganda during the final stage of the war, did not appear by accident. In times of decisive battles, elements of ethnic animosity often leaked into the “balanced” concept of hatred, which held that the Soviet people loathe Nazis rather than Germans, and abhor their crimes rather than their nature. Another giveaway was Leonid Novychenko’s suggestion in Radianska Ukraina that Ukraine’s nineteenth-century national bard, Taras Shevchenko, “hated Germans” too.33 This idea dovetailed very neatly with the attractively simple scheme of the Slavs’ age-old struggle against the Germanic peoples—a concept that was especially popular early in the war, when Ukrainian writers eagerly described the victories of medieval princes and seventeenth-century Cossacks over German knights and mercenaries.34 Yet, these references to the past were only episodic. Although historical references abounded in the “positive” literature that inculcated patriotism, the bulk of Soviet hate propaganda in 1943–45 was based on Nazi war crimes. The “Red Books” projects never got off the ground, but in early 1945, the historian and party official Kuzma Dubyna published two

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comparable booklets restating the commission’s findings. The Ukrainian version was entitled 778 Tragic Days of Kyiv (the number of days the city was in German hands), while the Russian version appeared under the title German Crimes in Kyiv.35 Going beyond the general statements of the commission’s report, Dubyna used several vivid eyewitness testimonies collected by the commission. The author was clearly aware of the ambiguity of Khreshchatyk and Babi Yar as symbols of Nazi atrocities. Significantly, Dubyna accused Adolf Hitler of “ordering his savage hordes to exterminate Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Jews”—precisely in that order.36 Describing the killings in Babi Yar, he did not conceal the fact that the Nazis originally used the ravine for shooting Jews, but emphasized that this was followed by the execution of many others. About Khreshchatyk, Dubyna wrote that the Nazis blew up the street and “wanted to blame this on partisans.”37 Writing in Kyivska Pravda, O. Novytsky welcomed the publication of Dubyna’s booklet, which “inflames hatred toward the German Fascist cannibals and calls for revenge.”38

ORDINARY HATERS

As with every other aspect of Soviet ideology, ordinary citizens were expected to internalize their hatred of the Nazi enemy. The majority of Kyivites clearly did so, particularly since the two-year Nazi occupation had antagonized those who had remained in the city, while those returning with the Red Army always identified with the Soviet cause. (Many of those who disliked Stalinist rule departed with the Germans.) But my aim here is not to ascertain the exact percentage of people whose hatred of the Nazis was genuine. Rather, I  am interested in the contexts in which Soviet citizens could and were expected to express their hatred of the Nazis, and also in the government’s attempts to regulate the reception of this discourse of hate. Interestingly, most public events in liberated Kyiv featured Nazi-bashing, but until August 1944 (when German POWs were marched through the city) not a single one was devoted exclusively to this type of hate-mongering. This fact demonstrates the generally subordinate or “constructive” use of hatred in Soviet wartime propaganda. The authorities regarded hatred of enemies as the reverse side of love for the Motherland. Judging by the general structure of public rituals during the 1940s, patriotic love could exist without hate, but not vice versa. Thus, from the very first mass rally on 27 November 1943 to celebrate the city’s liberation, no meeting passed without a condemnation of Nazi crimes. Yet, even at the first rally the most important speakers—politicians and generals—used this topic to highlight other major themes: gratitude to Stalin for the liberation, eagerness

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to defeat the enemy, and readiness to rebuild Kyiv. Only two speakers who did not represent the authorities, a doctor and a kindergarten worker, concentrated on the Nazi killings and death by starvation. Both vowed never to forget the crimes of the hated invaders.39 Until May 1945 expressions of hatred toward the enemy would remain an obligatory component of public rituals both large and small. Ordinary Kyivites began participating in this discourse as early as November 1943, when the authorities organized meetings at work and in residential neighborhoods to celebrate the return of Soviet power. Because these events took place within days, if not hours, of the Red Army’s return to the city, very few paper traces exist. Still, one report records that in Zhovtnevy District a certain worker named Hutchenko said at a meeting: “The Red Army liberated us from the German invaders, who had taunted us a lot, and now we will avenge ourselves on them, we will work indefatigably to help the Red Army defeat them sooner.”40 The next occasion presented itself during the subscription campaign for war bonds in December 1943. As Soviet bureaucracy was quickly regaining its ability to produce a paper trail, many such statements were recorded, especially since both the state and the citizenry understood subscription for war bonds to be an important moment of their interaction in the political space. Small workplace meetings resumed during the distribution of the Second War Loan in December, but officials also frequently recorded comments people made while subscribing for the loan. Given the deprivations that Kyivites suffered under the German occupation and the fact that almost every family had sent men to the Red Army, much of the popular sentiment was probably genuine. Thus, such public rituals provided “space” for ordinary people to discuss their very real sufferings under the Nazi occupation—no doubt a cathartic moment for many. But, my point is that whether or not they truly hated the enemy, Kyivites felt the need to express their feelings toward the enemy in the context of a familiar political ritual during their symbolic interaction with the state in the political space. In fact, some statements fell short of the standard of hatred found in the press and, instead, simply narrated the various sufferings under the German occupation. However, if clear-cut statements about hatred of the Nazis were sometimes absent, the affirmation of allegiance to the Soviet power was always unmistakable from the context. For instance, Professor Borys Bukreiev of Kyiv University declared, “For us, these two years under the Germans were worse than hell.” A groundsman at the Botanical Garden named Halchynsky said, “I lived in German slavery for more than two years; I saw how the fascists killed people; cut them down. The Germans burned down my house and everything in it. I was left in my underwear.”41 A 68-year-old worker named Akhtyrko, who was employed at the repairs and services office of Leninsky District, said,

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“I suffered so much under the Germans; those murderers harassed me so much that I was barely alive when the long-awaited Red Army came.” The employees of grocery store no.  89 declared their desire to “help our valiant Red Army defeat the enemy of humankind.”42 At the dairy factory in Zaliznychny District a female worker named Sudakova assured the local bosses, “There is no need to spend time agitating in our midst—our backs still ache from what the Hitlerite bandits did to us.”43 Despite the negative experiences described in such statements, it is sometimes difficult to categorize personal narratives as expressing hatred. These are tales of sufferings that confirm, in a roundabout way, the people’s allegiance to the Soviet power. The subscription campaign for the Third War Loan, launched in May 1944, was accompanied by similar rhetoric, but now the emphasis was more clearly placed on revenge. The homemaker Fenia Prokopenko spoke about her desire to help her husband, who was in the Red Army, “to exterminate the detested enemies.” The famous poet Maksym Rylsky called “for exterminating the enemy faster and completely.”44 The next public event that disposed people toward reminiscing about the German occupation came in September 1944, when the authorities prepared to celebrate the complete liberation of the Ukrainian SSR. On that occasion Ukrainian ideologues organized the entire adult population of the republic to sign a long poem narrating the events of the war and expressing gratitude to Stalin. The procedure included reading and discussing the poem at workplaces and in residential neighborhoods, as the stanzas decrying Nazi atrocities spurred the listeners to talk about their experiences. Reports record that at the Second Fuel Factory people recalled Nazi atrocities, and at a meatpacking plant the female worker Petrovska referred to the destruction of Khreshchatyk. An office worker at the Supreme Soviet, a certain Yepikhina, complained about “how difficult it was to live under the occupation.” At the meat and dairy distribution warehouse, the worker Ivashchenko recounted the execution of his father by the Gestapo.45 There is no question that some Kyivites were not sincere in their condemnations of the German occupation. In private conversations they might express other opinions about the Nazi occupation, as did, for example, the postal workers Turba, Demurina, and Pashkova, who fondly recalled the German food rations for workers. Demurina remembered the special gift package that she received on the occasion of Hitler’s birthday and which lasted her “for a month.” Turba added that the German administration did not prosecute absenteeism. Pashkova observed that the “Germans were generally good people” because they gave nice presents to their Ukrainian lovers. It is not clear from the file if the NKVD arrested these women, but the district party committee sent a lecturer to this post office to give a talk

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on “Nazi Atrocities in Kyiv.” Trying to minimize their responsibility for the failure to control their flock, the district authorities actually tried to present such incidents as instances of an “unhealthy attitude” rather than anti-Soviet activity.46 Going against the official interpretation in a formal public setting was a different matter. There were cases where Kyivites refused to subscribe for government bonds for a variety of reasons: poverty, lack of employment, real or perceived injustices. However, I found only two instances where people made anti-Soviet statements to the authorities. A certain Bunakova, whose husband had recently been arrested by the NKVD, declared that “during those two and a half years she lived better.” The yard-keeper L. Hutchenko subscribed for only 50 rubles and said, “If this loan had been distributed last year, he would have signed up for more, because life was better then.”47 Of course, “last year” referred to the time before the Red Army took Kyiv. But, even in cases deemed political by the authorities, dissenters challenged only the official assessment of their everyday life—not the grand scheme of struggle between the Soviet good and Nazi evil. Overall, Nazi crimes in Kyiv remained in the limelight of Soviet propaganda only briefly. Within weeks of the city’s liberation official documents registered a decided uneasiness among bureaucrats asked to detail the sufferings inflicted on their land. There are several reasons for this. In Soviet official discourse, hatred remained the reverse side of patriotism, rather than the principal moving force in the war, while patriotism required belief in Soviet strength, not the mourning of Soviet losses. As promoters of discipline and consciousness, Stalinist ideologues remained ever suspicious of spontaneity present in hatred and revenge. Similarly, the legacy of Nazi rule was too convenient an explanation for slowness in restoring the city’s economy. The party leader of Kyiv oblast, Z. T. Serdiuk, indicated the authorities’ new attitude during a conference of Kyiv party activists on 27 December 1943. When the city party boss, Fedir Mokiienko, devoted the entire first part of his speech to Nazi crimes in Kyiv, Serdiuk commented: “I think the time has come when there is no need to talk at meetings such as this about what the Germans did.”48 The celebration of Soviet military successes and achievements in reconstruction soon pushed the issue of Nazi atrocities into the background. Hatred of the enemy was not supposed to disappear; it was just that the authorities expected the disciplined and conscientious Soviet people to control their emotions. In the late summer of 1944 Stalinist bureaucrats gave their flock a practical lesson in controlling their sacred hatred of the enemy. On 17 July, 57,600 German POWs were paraded through the streets of Moscow, which were then washed clean by street-washing machines— an event recorded in a frequently aired Soviet documentary. The press,

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Figure 1.2  German POWs parade down Khreshchatyk Boulevard, 16 August 1944.

Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

including Ukrainian newspapers, reported that Muscovites “looked with hatred and scorn at this miserable and dirty scum,” but “the Soviet people’s self-control and discipline was manifested in their restraint.”49 In August a similar event took place in Kyiv. Following a radio announcement on 15 August, the next day republican newspapers published a notice about the time and itinerary of the march and called on citizens “not to allow any incidents in regard to the POWs.”50 The march of 36,918 Germans through the center of Kyiv took place between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. on 16 August. Although the newspapers claimed that the POWs were “only some of the prisoners captured lately by the troops of the First Ukrainian Front” and that they were on their way to POW camps, these were, in fact, captives of five different Soviet Fronts (army groups) plus over 5,000 prisoners who had been brought from the camps.51 An estimated 170,000 spectators watched the show, which ended with fire trucks washing the streets.52 Official reports state with satisfaction that the spectators “expressed feelings of hatred and scorn” by yelling taunts at the POWs: “Death to Hitler!” “Here’s the end of your war!” “Shoot them all!” “Shame on the killers!” “Animals!” People in the crowd talked about stoning the POWs, beating them with sticks, and forcing them to run (rather than walk).53 The reports also noted with equal satisfaction that the “yelling and threats notwithstanding, the residents of Kyiv conducted themselves with restraint, and the passage of the POWs was not accompanied by any excesses.”54 Actually, there were some, but they were committed by citizens partially exempt

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from the rules of self-discipline—disabled war veterans. On four occasions they attacked POWs with crutches, sticks, or stones, before being pushed back by the guards.55 This show of strength, demonstrated through restrained hatred, was not spoiled by a mere two attempts to help the POWs. The NKVD immediately arrested a certain Andriiantseva, who threw an apple into the column of Germans. (The report specified that her husband had been arrested as an “enemy of the people” and that she had lived in Kyiv during the Nazi occupation.) The security police also pinpointed an apartment at 10 Gorvits Street, from which someone had thrown bread and a box of tobacco into the German column, but was still investigating exactly who was responsible for this.56 More troubling for the authorities were several shows of compassion. Party functionaries reported having heard comments, such as “They too left behind their wives and children” or “Not all of them killed and harassed of their own will; that was Hitler’s will.” One woman cried, “Look, they are so thin, dirty, ragged, and with bushy hair. They too left wives and children, who are waiting for them at home.”57 Even more worrisome were some rare dismissals of the entire event as having been staged or misguided. A secret NKVD report records in great detail only two such statements from people, who were already under observation. Trypilsky, the manager of a large pawnshop, said sarcastically, “These are the same Germans that they showed in Moscow. I saw them at the cinema.” The writer Yuri Yanovsky reportedly stated, “The demonstration of prisoners did not achieve its aim. This perhaps intentionally selected column stirs up neither hatred nor desire for revenge. The spectators react in a peaceful manner and sometimes show pity. The problem is not in this mass [of POWs] that has been shown to us, but in Germany’s ruling clique.”58 Ironically, Yanovsky’s last phrase was quite in line with Soviet slogans of the last year of the war, when Stalin and his ideologues emphasized the difference between the German people and the Nazis. With the fighting moving to Germany proper, hatred of the enemy had to be mediated by self-discipline as never before. For the army, Nazi crimes in Kyiv largely lost their propaganda value because the frontlines had moved far beyond the borders of Ukraine, and for Kyivites—because they were busy reconstructing the economy. Nevertheless, the Stalinist authorities did not lose their sense of drama: once stirred, hatred required closure. It came in January 1946, when Kyiv witnessed the trial and execution of a group of Nazi war criminals. Beginning in the fall of 1945 and ending in early October 1946, the Soviet press offered extensive coverage of the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg59 Meanwhile, the Soviet authorities were

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Figure  1.3  Hanging of German war criminals at Kalinin (now Independence) Square, 29 January 1946. Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

gearing up for the trials of less important German military and police commanders, who had ended up in their hands. One such investigation, which was carried out in Moscow and resulted in a massive—by the standards of the day—twenty-volume case, concerned fifteen Nazis, who had served in Ukraine in general and Kyiv in particular. The trial began in Kyiv on 17 January 1946 in the presence of foreign journalists. Owing to a bureaucratic mix-up, the authorities neglected to make public announcements, and the beginning of the trial had to be delayed because of the complete absence of members of the public. On the second day, after notices appeared in the morning papers, the room was packed, with some 300 to 400 people waiting outside the building.60 In contrast to their coverage of the Nuremberg tribunal, articles about which were being translated from the central press, Ukrainian newspapers only rarely reported from Kyiv. One interesting detail that emerged from what was published is that, in an apparent retreat from an earlier Soviet position, the prosecution accused the Nazis of murdering “seventy thousand Soviet citizens of Jewish nationality” in Babi Yar in 1941.61 The military tribunal of Kyiv Military District proceeded quickly and the verdict was ready as early as 28 January. Of the fifteen defendants, twelve were sentenced to death by hanging—a penalty that had not been carried out since tsarist times and was reinstated in 1943, especially for war criminals. One defendant received twenty years’ hard labor, and two were sentenced to fifteen years.62 Following a radio announcement, at 5:00 p.m.

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on 29 January a reported 200,000 spectators gathered on Khreshchatyk to watch the execution. The city authorities reported shouts of approval and applause from the crowd, but also occasional expressions of disappointment with the ritual or disgust at the method of execution: “No impression at all,” “In old Russia executions were more interesting,” “No difference between the Germans and our people—both of them hang people.”63 Yet, closure it was, for by early 1946 hatred of the Nazis belonged to the past, and the new times required new enemies.

HATE-IN FOR PEACE

There was no rupture in the official discourse of hate, however, because attacks on internal enemies—“Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists”—provided continuity between the two consecutive external foes, the Nazis of wartime and the Cold War–era United States and Great Britain. The nationalists allegedly served first the Nazis and then the West. Yet, the internal enemies of the late 1940s differed from the “enemies of the people” of a decade earlier. The Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists were concentrated in Western Ukraine and abroad, and any public rituals of hatred in Kyiv would have only confirmed their strength. Hence, there were none. To preserve the image of a Soviet Ukrainian society united under Stalin’s wise leadership, it was best to scorn the nationalists as agents of a foreign adversary. This was also the solution chosen by Soviet ideologues earlier in the war, when they invented the label “Ukrainian-German nationalists.” At Kyiv’s first rally on 27 November 1943 Khrushchev described Ukrainian nationalists as the servants of the Nazis, but gave no further details.64 Most of contemporary Soviet wartime propaganda followed the same model, with one exception. On 9 January 1944 Kyivska Pravda carried an article summarizing the state of knowledge about nationalist activities in Kyiv during the German occupation. The authors, however, could only accuse the “nationalists” (not all of whom were in fact connected to the Ukrainian nationalist underground) of serving in the municipal administration, editing newspapers, and creating museums.65 In addition, all the individuals named in the article had either been executed by the Nazis or had retreated with them, thus becoming external enemies. Khrushchev knew full well that the Nazis had long since broken with those Ukrainian nationalists who had wanted to further their aims of establishing an independent Ukrainian state by collaborating with Hitler. In September 1942 he read an intelligence report about the nationalists’ growing bitterness with Nazi policies and the burgeoning nationalist anti-Nazi underground.66 But, equating nationalists with foreign invaders

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in the popular imagination, at least in Eastern Ukraine, was important in the long run. The Soviet authorities rightly envisioned difficulties with their reabsorption of Western Ukraine, which was incorporated in the USSR only in 1939 and where the nationalist underground was at its strongest. When the Red Army captured Kyiv in November 1943, however, its troops were still far away from Western Ukraine, and antinationalist rhetoric was still a very minor trend in the maelstrom of anti-German cant. By the time Western Ukraine’s turn came in the summer of 1944, Kyiv was far back in the Soviet rear, and antinationalist hatred was once again largely irrelevant there. However, this would change after the war. During the first months of Soviet power in Kyiv, local bureaucrats remained paranoid about Nazi agents who supposedly remained in the city. The city party leader, Fedir Mokiienko, declared at a conference of propagandists in January 1944: “Were the Germans here for a long time? They were. Did they leave their people here? They did. And they left more of them than we imagine.” His conclusion was straightforward: “We should inculcate anger toward [these] enemies.”67 The republican leadership apparently felt otherwise. The campaign against alleged Nazi agents in Kyiv never materialized in the press, and Mokiienko was soon dismissed from his post. This did not mean the absence of arrests: by the first anniversary of Kyiv’s liberation, the oblast branch of the NKVD reported to Khrushchev that it had “uncovered many enemy agents, Ukrainian nationalists, and German henchmen and lickspittles.”68 In contrast to the late 1930s, however, the official discourse remained silent about these arrests. Condemnations of Ukrainian nationalism became more prominent in mid-1944, when the Red Army encountered serious resistance from nationalist guerrillas in Western Ukraine. In late 1944 the republic’s main party journal, Bilshovyk Ukrainy, even published an article entitled “The Ukrainian-German Nationalists Are the Fiercest Enemies of the Ukrainian People.”69 Yet, in the sphere of ideology the war remained primarily a mortal combat against the Nazi enemy and, once the war ended, Soviet ideologues claimed a victory over the nationalists as well. At a festive meeting in October 1945, convened to mark the 1st anniversary of the republic’s liberation, Khrushchev announced, “Under the leadership of the Communist Party, patriots of the Soviet state defended their land, their beloved Soviet power, and crushed the enemies, the German fascists, together with their agents, the Ukrainian-German nationalists. Soviet Ukraine is flourishing once again.”70 Although the nationalist insurgency in Western Ukraine lasted until the early 1950s, it was barely reflected in official political life and propaganda. (The campaign against nationalist deviations in the humanities during 1946–48 and 1951 may be seen as an echo of events in Western Ukraine, but its victims were not

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beyond redemption. The authorities did not expect the population to hate wayward scholars and artists.) Of course, citizens of the Ukrainian republic were still expected to loathe Ukrainian nationalism as a theoretical idea. As the prominent ideologue Dmytro Manuilsky said at a Ukrainian party congress in 1949, nationalism “excites feelings of deep scorn and burning hatred in the people of Soviet Ukraine.”71 But he was talking about Ukrainian nationalists who had emigrated abroad and allegedly served their new masters, the American imperialists. Although animosity toward Ukrainian nationalists bridged wartime hatred of the Nazis and the developing abhorrence of Cold War enemies over the years, Soviet propaganda, deprived of a clear-cut foreign enemy, lost some of its zest. Only a serious crisis in relations between the USSR and the Western powers, which emerged in September and October 1947, led to a decisive change in Soviet imagery—and to a view of the world that Soviet citizens were expected to internalize. So dramatic was the linguistic change that many Ukrainians mistook its first application for a declaration of war. On 18 September the Soviet envoy Andrei Vyshinsky read an address at the UN, entitled “For Peace and Friendship of Peoples, against the Instigators of a New War.”72 After his speech was broadcast on the radio, the Kyiv party authorities reported numerous conversations in the city about the imminence of war and even some about a war having started already. These were not the usual rumors circulating at the city’s bazaars and reaching the authorities’ ears exclusively through informers. Many people approached their party organizers, asking them what to do in connection with the war. The wildest misinterpretations of this broadcast came from the deputy head of the Kyiv-Petrivka railway station, party member Otrokov (“Today they broadcast on the radio that America has declared war on us”) and from a train conductor, disabled war veteran K. F. Balachuk (“Yesterday I heard Joseph Vissarionovich [Stalin] on the radio saying that there will be a war with America. Release me from my duties: I will take up arms and go to war against the American uncles [Sams]”).73 The Kremlin clarified the situation in early October, when it released information about a recent conference of nine communist parties that had issued a declaration on the international situation, accusing the American imperialists of expansionism and warmongering.74 A  few days earlier the Soviet press published an exchange of diplomatic notes between the US ambassador and the Soviet Foreign Ministry, sparked by Boris Gorbatov’s article about President Harry Truman in Literaturnaia Gazeta. The Soviet reply indicated that it was allowed (and thus required) to publish comparisons between the American president and Hitler.75 A war had not begun, but the education of hatred was the order of the day and Stalinist ideologues spoke openly about it. At a conference of city party activists on 31

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October, the head of the Political Administration of Kyiv Military District, General Vasilii Mzhavanadze, said We have great experience in educating our people in hatred toward the enemies of our Motherland. During the Great Patriotic War this hatred was so strong that it literally crushed the German Fascist army and its state. What we have now is the weakening of such hatred. Our task is to inculcate in our people the most seething, deep, and cordial love toward our Motherland and to ignite the most burning hatred toward the enemies of our Motherland.76

At a conference of propagandists on 1 December, the secretary for propaganda of the city party committee, Yakiv Pashko, spoke along the same lines: Today we ought to use everything in our work among the masses to expose the warmongers, British and American reactionaries and imperialists, who are seeking to hinder our constructive work. I must say that, in regard to this question, we should take into account the experience of the Great Patriotic War. During the war we conducted considerable work on inculcating hatred toward the enemy. Just as during the war we educated our people in hatred toward the enemy and mobilized them for the struggle for victory on the fronts in the Patriotic War, so today we need to educate hatred toward the reactionaries, toward the warmongers.77

Lower-level ideological workers followed these directives to the best of their abilities. In Kyiv tens of thousands “studied” the declaration of the conference of nine communist parties and A.  A. Zhdanov’s speech “On International Relations.” Some listeners understood, as did Yukhymets, the head of the horticultural department of Kaganovichsky District, that “now there are two camps in the world.” Others concluded, as did a road-building worker named Razduvaev, that “the animals in America are growling because they want more blood.”78 But, regardless of their level of competency in international relations, Soviet citizens now had to hate foreign enemies again. Just as they had done with the Ukrainian nationalists, Stalinist ideologues tried to connect the new foreign foe to the Nazis. In February and March 1948 the party apparatus mobilized Kyivites for the study of a new Soviet book called Falsifiers of History, which served as a response to some Western documentary publications about the origins of World War II. The book argued that the Americans and British had encouraged Hitler to attack the USSR. During discussions of this book in Kyiv, however, readers were expected to comment on the contemporary situation as well. A party report noted with satisfaction that “with hatred workers and intellectuals brand

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the British and American imperialists as aggressors and active instigators of World War III.”79 By mid-1948 the United States had clearly taken over the place previously reserved for Nazi Germany in Stalinist ideology. The republic’s main party journal, Bilshovyk Ukrainy, announced in an editorial, “After the defeat of Hitlerite Germany, the reactionaries from the USA became the most dangerous and wicked enemies of socialism, democracy, freedom, and independence of peoples.”80 Lesser foreign enemies now had to be connected to the principal, most hated, one. Early on, Britain appeared alongside the United States as the Soviet Union’s foe, but at public meetings in subsequent years the Soviet people denounced Greek monarchists, Tito, and Zionists as American puppets.81 Why did the Soviet people have to hate American imperialists? The principal reason was that the United States represented an immediate military threat to the USSR. As an editorialist in Bilshovyk Ukrainy wrote in April 1951, “The imperialists from the United States of America and their allies in Western Europe are intensively preparing a new world war against the Soviet Union and the entire camp of peace, democracy, and socialism.”82 Or, at the very least, American leaders wanted to humiliate the USSR by making it an economically dependent, “second-rate power.”83 There were also moral reasons for abhorring American imperialists in principle: their “fascist” political system, their racist views, their decadent culture, and their “loathsome ‘American way of life.’ ”84 In addition to numerous articles in the press, public lectures entitled “American Imperialism as the Worst Enemy of the Soviet People” or “American Imperialism as an Enemy of Humankind” appeared in the repertoire of Soviet mass political education.85 During the last years of Stalin’s rule, the state made condemnation of American imperialists a part of the Soviet political campaign for world peace. The all-Union Conference of Peace Advocates in August 1949 became the first major event of this campaign. To mark its closing in Moscow, the Kyiv authorities organized some 50,000 city residents to attend an open-air rally. While fully approving the decisions of the Moscow conference, Kyivites also “joined in the choir of hatred and protest against the bloodthirsty warmongers,” or so their address to Stalin claimed.86 Then, on 2 October, Kyivites celebrated the International Day of Struggle for Peace with an even more impressive 80,000-strong rally at the Dynamo stadium. The poet Andrii Malyshko, fresh from his trip to North America, exposed the imperialists in tirades filled with threatening images: “Overseas, in America and Canada, packs of those warmongering wolves gather at night for secret assemblies. They want rivers of blood to flow in the steppes again; [they want] people to shoot each other; [they want] to ruin Stalingrad, Kyiv, our heroic Leningrad, long-suffering Warsaw, golden-domed Prague, and beautiful

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Budapest.”87 A  similar mass rally took place in Kyiv in October 1950 to mark the conclusion of the Second Conference of Peace Advocates.88 In July 1950, with the beginning of American involvement in the Korean War, the Soviet authorities organized a mass signing of an appeal issued by the Permanent Committee of Peace Advocates; in everyday correspondence it was often referred to as a petition to ban the atomic bomb, or the Stockholm Appeal. Signings took place after meetings at work and in residential neighborhoods. In Kyiv 2,891 meetings took place:  according to the local newspaper, participants in the Ukrainian capital “held up foreign aggressors to shame” and 606,700 people signed the letter. Yet, amidst the usual talk about the Soviet peace policy and aggressive imperialists, citizens asked a number of sober questions that demonstrated their concern about their government’s actions abroad: “Is it possible to consider these events as the beginning of World War III?” “Are we providing assistance to the People’s Republic of Korea?” “Will Soviet troops take part in the conflict?” “Will there be a war between the USA and the USSR?” “Why are signatures being collected for the appeal to ban only atomic weapons, and not all weapons?”89 Rather than showing hatred of imperialists, these questions indicate healthy anxiety about the prospect of war. A year later, in September 1951, Kyivites were signing another appeal, this time from the World Peace Council, calling for the conclusion of a pact of peace between the five great powers. At both large and small meetings, speakers approved of the Soviet Union’s foreign policy and denounced the American imperialists. The leading Ukrainian choir director, Hryhorii Veriovka, proclaimed, “American butchers from Wall Street and their supporters are doing their utmost to draw humankind into a new war, [a war] against the Soviet Union and the countries of people’s democracy.” Then again, most of the questions that people were addressing to rank-and-file propagandists revolved around the Soviet Union’s involvement in Korea.90 Either because the population was tiring of signing campaigns or because August was the traditional month of summer holidays, the city authorities managed to collect only 504,000 signatures—100,000 fewer than the year before.91 Soviet ideologues pushed their anti-American campaign to new extremes in 1952, when the press used its strongest language to date to condemn American war crimes in Korea. Article titles speak for themselves: “World Public Opinion Protests the Atrocities Committed by American Aggressors,” “On the Path Trailed by Hitler’s Tyranny,” “New Facts on the Brutal Murder of POWs by Americans,” and “This Cannot Be Forgotten!”92 American atrocities had replaced the United States’ aggressive plans as the principal reason for hatred because they were “proof ” of the imperialists’ bestiality. As Yu. Ivanov wrote in Radianska Ukraina, “The American army

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of butchers marks its path in Korea with killings, tortures, death camps, and plague.”93 At various public meetings speakers competed at reviling the American imperialists. At the “Lenin’s Smithy” shipyard in April 1952, the worker Tamara Kolbasina thus condemned the use of bacteriological weapons in Korea: “With their murderous deeds [the Americans] have surpassed even the Nazi war criminals.” At the “Bilshovyk” factory, the worker Halyna Hurynenko ended her speech with the exclamation, “Damnation, eternal damnation to the American fascists!”94 But by ratcheting up the rhetoric on an issue that was not connected to people’s everyday lives, the authorities risked producing empty, false hatred. Those who took civic emotions seriously often asked the question, “Why is the Soviet Union not helping Korea?”95 The state did not welcome requests to volunteer for service in Korea, in part because it never officially acknowledged that the Soviet military “instructors” who were based in that country were involved in actual combat. When six workers of the Kyiv Machine-Building Factory in 1950 volunteered to go to Korea, the Ukrainian party functionaries had to turn them down.96 Unable to fight the American imperialists on the battlefield, what else could good Soviet citizens do to prevent their hatred from burning out? At meetings, speakers often suggested even more heroic labor in the workplace as the best application of this hatred. As Savin, a worker at the “Bilshovyk” factory, said at a rally in September 1951, “Each kilogram of steel that our collective smelts is a blow against warmongers.”97 Yet, the appeal to work more and better was, perhaps, the most overused and least effective of the Soviets’ slogans. In a society where all citizens were expected to demonstrate an emotional response to the state’s ideological discourse, fanning abstract hatred for a distant external enemy only made civic emotion ring hollow.

THE ENEMY WITHIN AND THE DENOUEMENT

Thus, it was logical that the search for new internal enemies who could be connected to the external enemy intensified during the last years of Stalin’s rule. The campaigns against those who had “kowtowed to the West” and “rootless cosmopolitans” in 1948 and 1949, respectively, prepared the groundwork, even though these two groups did not qualify as “enemies.” Citizens were supposed to criticize rather than hate them.98 Similarly, the victims of the 1951 campaign against nationalist deviations in Ukrainian culture were not beyond redemption, as most of them soon restored their careers. Things fell into place on 13 January 1953, when Pravda and other Soviet newspapers informed their readers about the arrest of a group of prominent

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doctors, most of whom were Jewish, who were accused of complicity in the deaths of several prominent Soviet officials. For the first time since the late 1930s Pravda carried an editorial about internal enemies entitled “Vile Spies and Killers,” duly reprinted the same day in Kyiv’s new evening paper, Vechirnii Kyiv.99 To be sure, official propaganda painted the doctors as agents of American intelligence and the “Jewish bourgeois nationalist organization Joint,” but they were “enemies within,” who could be both hated and physically destroyed.100 Given the persistence of anti-Semitic attitudes among ordinary Russians and Ukrainians, the authorities scored a coup with their selection of the enemy.101 Judging from reports on the population’s reaction, no government announcement in recent memory was so widely discussed.102 At a public meeting at Kyiv University, Vasilii Golovtsin, a professor of geology, announced, “It gives one the creeps to read materials about the evil gang of spies and killers, who masked themselves as professors and medical doctors. The voice of our people will thunder—death to contemptible scoundrels, hirelings of British and American warmongers.” At the “Lenin’s Smithy” shipyard, the engineer I. Ivashchenko proclaimed, “As a citizen of the Soviet state, I demand death for these enemies of the Soviet peoples.”103 Unlike the anti-American propaganda of the previous years, but much like the 1930s witch-hunt for “enemies of the people,” this campaign generated an impressive response from below. It was, to a great extent, aimed indiscriminately against all Jews. Newspapers received numerous letters from readers expressing hatred toward the arrested, as well as other suspected Jewish evil-doers.104 Reports on the popular mood recorded statements ranging from mistrust of Jews to the desire to kill them. Thus, the engineer Oleksandr Radchenko said in private, “Strange that the government tolerates them in the party and in managerial positions. All of them are traitors.” An unidentified citizen said, while riding the tram in Podilsky District, “Everywhere Jews are trying by all means to exterminate the people.” The watchman at the Fourth Footwear Factory bragged, “There are seven bullets in my revolver. I would love to shoot seven Jews.”105 In hospitals and doctors’ offices there were cases of patients refusing injections and asking for doctors “of indigenous nationality.”106 At school no. 71 a group of students beat up their two Jewish classmates; at school no. 54 a student wrote a call to beat up Jews on the classroom blackboard.107 Handwritten leaflets and slogans scrawled on tram cars appeared, urging people to beat up or expel the Jews. (The NKVD quickly removed these.)108 The campaign was destined to be a huge success, thanks to its clearly identifiable internal enemy and resonance with popular anti-Semitism. Moreover, defining an ethnic group as an enemy fit well with the increased

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ethnicization of the late Stalinist polity. Stalin’s death, however, cut this campaign short. On 4 April all newspapers carried information about the rehabilitation of the doctors.109 For people who considered themselves Soviet patriots, the sudden removal of the symbolic enemy had a disorienting effect. In contrast to all the political events of the last ten years, reports on the political mood register numerous cases of confusion and disapproval, and, moreover, disapproval on the part of good Soviet citizens rather than politically unreliable elements. The common theme in most of these conversations was that either the government or all the Soviet peoples had lost face. “We have been slapped in the face, we have been pushed into a rubbish pit,” complained the office worker Olha Dorynchenko, who believed that the Soviet government had capitulated to foreign pressure. A musician with the Ukrainian Philharmonic Society, Pavlo Chutkyi, felt likewise:  “This communiqué is a disgrace for the Soviet Union.”110 The chief engineer at the Institute of Physics, Skliar, best expressed the frustration felt by those who accepted the original announcements at their face value: I do not understand at all. This is a slap [in the face of] the Council of Ministers and testimony to the lack of seriousness in the government’s decision making. First [it] makes accusations of sabotage—a serious announcement—then another serious announcement. What this means is that one of these announcements was made without verification. I would rather shoot Vinogradov and the others than take on such shame and cause such confusion. What will be the reaction abroad? In all my adult life I do not recall the publication [in newspapers] of anything like that.111

This first group of perplexed citizens—and there are many more examples in the reports—were worried precisely because the new ideological winds were undermining their civic sentiment and identification with a strong Soviet state. This is why the homemaker Evdokiia Prozorva complained, “I do not understand. What is going on in the country?” while the teacher Grigorii Vanin protested, “What a shame for the authorities and the state. They should not have made this announcement. If a mistake was made, it would have been better for the state’s prestige to sacrifice the interests of private citizens.”112 Only a small minority of reported comments connected this stunning reversal with the intrigues of Jews and their ability to get out of scrapes; the majority of dissenters wanted their symbolic enemy back, because public expressions of hatred for such an enemy would only confirm their love for Stalin. As the head of quality control at the Karl Marx Confectionery in Kyiv, party member Mykola Petrychenko, put it, the doctors “had been arrested when Comrade Stalin was alive and it cannot be that he did not

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check [this case].”113 Thus, the rehabilitation of the doctors undermined the entire belief system of people who had internalized Stalinist ideology. As the future dissident Raisa Orlova described her reaction to the announcement, “A crack appeared in the edifice I had been constructing in my soul for so long, with such diligence and precision. This crack widened and widened until I found myself buried under the ruins.”114 An even more stunning blow was delivered in the summer of 1953. In June, acting on a report written by Lavrentii Beria, the Kremlin removed the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Leonid Melnikov, allegedly for failing to pay attention to the promotion of the Ukrainian language and cadres in Western Ukraine.115 No sooner did all the party groups end their meetings by condemning Melnikov and praising Beria116 than a new announcement from Moscow branded the latter a foreign spy and an evil enemy of the Soviet state. At thousands of meetings Kyivites duly expressed their new-found hatred for Beria in the same language they had used to condemn the doctors. The lathe operator Malinin at the “Bilshovyk” factory pronounced, “We demand that this mean enemy of the party and the Soviet people be erased from the face of the earth.” The mason Bolkhovsky, who worked on the reconstruction of Khreshchatyk, enumerated Soviet achievements and concluded, “This is not to the imperialists’ liking. Their despicable hireling Beria was aiming to restore capitalism in our country. There is no limit to our anger and indignation.”117 However, it is telling that some questions from below hinted at the possibility of reversing the rehabilitation of Jewish doctors in connection with Beria’s arrest: “Was Beria not an organizer of the band of doctors-wreckers, whom he later released?” “Did Beria have a hand in the release of the doctors who were previously arrested by the Ministry of Internal Affairs?” “Is the government going to reopen the case of the group of saboteur doctors?”118 But, for the first time those unorthodox opinions that were reported in the wake of Beria’s dismissal did not simply express confusion or disagreement with the official interpretation. (Those who disagreed typically saw the fall of Beria as a reflection of the struggle for power in Moscow.)119 Rather, they included a sentiment never expressed before: that official discourse was no longer worth being internalized. A student at a teachers’ college, Oleksii Slonytsia, is credited with uttering words that made it both into a report about the popular mood in Kyiv oblast and a general report to the Ukrainian Central Committee about the reception of official announcements on the Beria affair. Slonytsia allegedly said, “One can pay no attention to these materials because the next day refutations may follow, as has happened in the past.”120 Although the authenticity of this statement cannot be verified, it sums up quite nicely a citizen’s disillusionment with the official discourse. Indeed,

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Stalin’s successors never brought back the internal enemy, who could be hated and destroyed—as opposed to criticized and reeducated. Hatred was never again a core civic emotion, and the condemnation of foreign imperialists became increasingly formal and shallow. Graeme Gill has argued that, although its economic and social “faces” emerged earlier, Stalinism as a system was completed only with the beginning of the Great Terror.121 It may be said that, while its various components would be dismantled over a long period of time, the extremist political and ideological practices typical of Stalinism ended with the disappearance of “internal enemies” after the Doctors’ Plot. Ultimately, the combination of official rituals and popular sentiment did not produce the civic emotion of hatred required of ideal Stalinist citizenry. In 1943–44 a willing populace tried to frame its painful memories of the Nazi occupation within an official discourse of hatred. During the early Cold War–era public utterings at all levels duly echoed the official propaganda of hatred, but the enemies were too distant, and unless the rhetoric caused confusion and a war scare, it remained shallow and irrelevant. When the image of an internal enemy was reintroduced in 1953, its resonance with popular anti-Semitism created an impressive public response. Such a popular reaction only confirmed that, no matter how formal Stalinist political rituals appeared to be, they never lost their ability to mobilize popular fears and prejudices. Yet, the speedy abandonment of the Doctors’ Plot only undermined the credibility of the state as a producer of ideological discourse. It is only logical that Stalin’s successors chose to abandon the practice of fanning the public’s hatred toward the internal enemy—not just because it was linked to terror and total war, but also because it was the most self-destructive of the obligatory Soviet “civic emotions.”

C H A P T E R  2

w

Stalinism as Celebration

T

wo contemporary reports about just how the inhabitants of Kyiv welcomed the Red Army make for a curious comparison. In the words of one Soviet official, Kyivites greeted the soldiers with tears in their eyes and “cigarettes, home-made tobacco blend, wine, home-made liqueur, and patties” on hand for distribution as welcoming gifts. However, another ideologue observing the interactions on the streets wrote about Kyivites “expressing their profound gratitude to the Leader, Comrade Stalin, for his wise guidance of the Red Army in the liberation of Kyiv.”1 For all their difference, these two reports simply demonstrated two ways of describing the same event: one emphasizing the population’s heartfelt joy and the other stressing the people’s command of the proper political language. These two descriptions also highlight the tension, ever present in Stalinist civic emotions, underlying the need to show citizens’ sincerity without allowing for spontaneity, a negative term in the Bolshevik political lexicon, it being the opposite of “consciousness.” The dilemma of staging “consciously sincere” celebrations of political events haunted Soviet officials in Kyiv throughout the postwar period. Such concerns could be seen as paradoxical because the authorities were faced with a population willing to demonstrate its political allegiance. With Nazi collaborators, Ukrainian nationalists, and others who had reason to expect repression having gone to the West, the majority of Kyivites were favorably disposed toward Soviet power. The authorities, however, insisted on a disciplined yet emotional celebration—and a nearly constant celebration to boot. Over the years, fatigue and passive resistance were bound to develop among the population. Other problems also emerged. In addition ( 34 )

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to replacing spontaneity with orderliness and maintaining the appearance of ever-increasing popular enthusiasm for Stalin’s rule, officials had to contend with the problem of old revolutionary holidays becoming intertwined with liberation dates, and occasions specific to Ukraine conflicting with all-Union festive dates. In the wake of the war and major territorial changes, the Soviet Ukrainian calendar of holidays underwent major changes to take into account the new political and ideological realities. In the long run, the authorities downgraded war-related festivals, while absorbing the republic’s events into the Soviet canon. This evolution reflected larger ideological processes that occurred during High Stalinism, just as the critique of “spontaneity” during festive events mirrored contemporary efforts to restore strict ideological control. However, party functionaries seemed to be perpetually unsatisfied with the results. Though capable of ensuring attendance with disciplinary measures, they remained doubtful that mere participation reflected citizens’ inner convictions—hence the constant demands for an emotional response that validated the sincerity of ritualistic participation. In the end, the authorities embraced food stalls on the streets and orchestras in parks as means of turning Soviet holidays into communal fêtes.

CELEBRATING THE LIBERATION

Upon arrival, the Soviet authorities showed immediate concern for the symbolic reclaiming of Kyiv. Even before the removal of Nazi posters and street nameplates, party officials set about organizing festive meetings to mark the anniversary of the October Revolution as a symbol of the restoration of Soviet political life. The date of the liberation was not accidental because the military intended to hand Kyiv over to Stalin as a kind of Revolution Day present. Yet, celebrating the anniversary in the city itself proved difficult. On 7 November the authorities in Petrovsky (Podilsky) District managed to gather in a movie theater around 1,000 people, or “almost everyone” they could find2; however, other districts missed the anniversary date. On 8 November party organizers in Kirovsky (Pechersky) District succeeded in assembling some 600 remaining workers for a meeting at the city’s largest factory, the famous “Arsenal.”3 Similar smaller meetings took place at the few functioning enterprises, such as the shoe factory, water pumping station, and driving school.4 No celebrations, however, took place in Stalinsky District, where, on 8 November, residents assembled instead for the screening of a new Soviet film, The Battle of Orel, followed by a lecture on the international situation.5 Other districts simply did not report on whether they had held festive meetings or not.

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Early Revolution Day gatherings aimed to symbolize Kyiv’s readmittance into the Soviet Union, but the task of celebrating the liberation of Kyiv itself, the largest Soviet city to change hands during the war, remained. While the occasion called for a major rally, the population’s slow return to the city prevented the authorities from organizing a mass event until late November. Finally, on 27 November 1943 an open-air rally celebrating Kyiv’s liberation took place in Shevchenko Park, in the city center. An estimated 40,000 people listened to speeches by Ukrainian party leader Nikita Khrushchev; commander of the First Ukrainian Front General Nikolai Vatutin; Marshal Georgii Zhukov; President of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences Oleksandr Bohomolets; and assorted writers, physicians, and workers. Khrushchev set the tone for the gathering by beginning his speech with “our first word of love and gratitude to the organizer of victory over the Germans, to the organizer of the Red Army offensive, which liberated our magnificent Kyiv. Glory to our great Stalin!” (Applause and shouts of “Hurrah” followed.) In a similar fashion, other speakers thanked Stalin, the Red Army, and the great Russian people for their military prowess—or denounced the Nazis and their alleged assistants, the Ukrainian nationalists. Significantly, most orators spoke on behalf of the Kyivites; General Vatutin was the only one to address the crowd directly. He expressed his “heartfelt congratulations on the occasion of the liberation from German slavery and the return to the happy family of the peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, under the sun of Stalin’s Constitution.” As if to confirm its principal function as a ritual of thanksgiving, the rally ended with the crowd’s enthusiastic adoption of two messages: the Kyivites’ letter of gratitude to Stalin and a similar letter “from the Ukrainian people to the great Russian people.”6 Following the first difficult winter in the ruined city, the restoration of Soviet political life in Kyiv proceeded slowly during the spring of 1944. On 19 March, before the snow had melted, another large open-air rally took place in the city center to mark the complete liberation of Kyiv oblast. This time the proceedings were broadcast by Ukrainian radio. Applauding, an estimated 50,000 participants showed their “approval” of yet another letter to Stalin, thanking him for liberation and promising new achievements in battle and labor.7 But, in the long run the practice of sending letters filled with gratitude to the Leader proved inadequate, once it became clear to the authorities that the reabsorption of Ukraine was not going to be either quick or easy. In early spring 1944, as the Red Army began to encounter nationalist guerilla resistance in Western Ukraine and multiple economic and social crises plagued Eastern Ukraine, the republic’s leadership engaged sixteen leading Ukrainian poets to compose a lengthy collective poem entitled “An Epistle

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[Slovo] to Great Stalin from the Ukrainian People.” The resulting literary product opened with the salutation, “Our wise teacher, our faithful friend, / Our great father. These words are for you.” The poem expressed boundless gratitude to Stalin for his wise guidance in general and for the liberation of Ukraine in particular. Toward the end, as the collective voice of the Ukrainian people thanked Stalin “for the sun that you lit” and made an oath “[t]‌o be loyal forever, just as we have been / To the friendship of peoples and our authorities [vladi svoii],” the poem reached an almost ecstatic fervor.8 In an unprecedented effort to confirm citizens’ allegiance to Soviet power, the Ukrainian leadership organized a collection of signatures under this letter. The signing ritual was planned as an intensive republicwide campaign on 5–8 September 1944, but logistical problems did not allow for a three-day limit on the process. In Kyiv the signing in most districts did not start until 6 September because the authorities needed time to organize meetings and prepare “discussions” of the letter. (In line with the contemporary reconstruction drive, meetings typically ended with participants vowing to increase production quotas.) Kyivites who missed these meetings would often come to the district party committees afterward, asking for their chance to sign—either they felt excluded from an important public event or worried about being denounced as absentees.9 But this demonstration of loyalty also gave citizens an opportunity to display their deep personal feelings about the war. Some documents mention that participants cried during the reading of a poem (which dwelled at length on the human cost of the Nazi occupation) and during the discussion period, when some stories of personal suffering were recounted.10 By contrast, there were cases of war widows from villages in Kyiv oblast refusing to sign—apparently struggling to reconcile their private emotions with the required display of joyous gratitude, or perhaps even blaming the Soviet state for the loss of their loved ones. In addition, some peasants refused to sign in the belief that the Americans had almost forced Stalin to disband collective farms, but the Soviet leader was collecting peasants’ signatures in order to prove that the population wanted them.11 The signing campaign continued through the rest of September and early October, until the authorities finally wrapped up the process in connection with the forthcoming celebrations of the “complete liberation of the Ukrainian lands” (discussed below). By 11 October 1944, 9,316,973 Ukrainian citizens, including 158,272 Kyivites and 445,501 residents of Kyiv oblast, signed the letter that Khrushchev then forwarded to Stalin.12 Forcing the majority of the republic’s adults to sign this eulogy, and moreover doing so in the midst of the difficult reconstruction period, seem eccentric. However, this campaign revealed several important features of restoring the Stalinist regime in Ukraine:  the authorities’ deep concern

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about popular allegiances, their belief in the effectiveness of large-scale political rituals, and the complete conflation of Soviet power with Great Stalin. By the fall of 1944 Ukrainian party bosses no longer favored open-air rallies because popular allegiances could be “registered” at work and in residential districts in the form of signatures under the letter to Stalin. On 14 October the republic celebrated what was termed the “complete liberation of the Ukrainian lands.” (This concept was somewhat imprecise, as Ukraine’s western borders were about to change again in 1945, and, at the moment, they were the subject of an international dispute. Perhaps for this reason, Khrushchev secured Stalin’s personal permission to hold such a celebration.13) Instead of a mass rally, a more formal festivity in the Kyiv opera house—admission by invitation only—became the high point of the celebrations. It was there that Ukrainian functionaries staged a final official reading of the letter to Stalin and announced the total number of signatories. The municipal authorities decorated the streets lavishly with red banners and portraits of party leaders and generals, but there was no parade or mass demonstration.14 Indeed, in 1944 there was still no sign of the (future) customary military parades or public demonstrations to mark 1 May in Kyiv (or Moscow). Some Kyivites apparently remembered these festivities fondly, as events where they could either demonstrate their loyalty or express their “Soviet” identity. When city workers began laying asphalt on sections of Khreshchatyk Boulevard, Kyiv’s still-ruined main avenue, passersby asked if this was being done in preparation for a demonstration.15 Yet, there was no parade or demonstration, even in November 1944, when the “double holiday” of Revolution Day and the 1st anniversary of the city’s liberation certainly warranted them. By then, however, the republic’s bureaucrats were planning a major celebration. As documents from the archives of the Ukrainian Communist Party’s Central Committee show, discussions about how to greet returning veterans began, on Khrushchev’s proposal, as early as 26 October 1944. Proposed ideas ranged from holding parades and building triumphal arches to creating new songs, and the discussions soon focused on the celebration of the imminent Soviet victory.16 By 31 January 1945 the same group of ideologues had already planned a conference on “Victory Day”17; by April there were detailed plans for “spontaneous” public rallies after the arrival of the word of the war’s official end, to be followed the next day by a parade and demonstration. The local authorities began the preparations by decorating streets with banners, slogans, and portraits designed “to last two to three years.” The instructions also stressed the need to use decorations that reflected “the national motifs and elements of Ukrainian folk art,” so as to

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present the victory as a Ukrainian national holiday as well. The list of large portraits installed in Kyiv included that of the seventeenth-century Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky.18 The demand for decorations that could last two to three years reflected ideologues’ belief that Victory Day would become a permanent Soviet holiday. Suggestions for “making a tradition of Victory Day” can be found in the minutes of a meeting held on 27 March 1945.19 Frustratingly for the ideologues, the date of the victory remained unknown. By April people were guessing at the possible dates; one female collective farmer spoke at a Kyiv market about how wonderful it would be to celebrate both Easter and Victory Day on 5 May.20 Soviet officials longed for a similar concurrence. During a meeting on 4 April a mid-level city bureaucrat named Comrade Drofa mused, “I would like 1 May to become this day.”21 Just as the Red Army captured Kyiv in time for Revolution Day, the war might end, appropriately enough, on the Day of Workers’ Solidarity. Such a coincidence would also be in the interests of the state, for it would obviate the need to create a second major holiday (and another day off) in late April–early May. It was, therefore, no accident that the civic and party authorities prepared for 1 May 1945 with Victory Day in mind. This probably explains the military parade (which took place on Korolenko, not Khreshchatyk, Street, present-day Volodymyrska Street)—Kyiv’s first after the liberation, which the local newspaper even billed as the “Victory Parade.” Festive meetings held that day in all organizations celebrated, if not the victory itself, then “the raising of the Victory banner over Berlin.”22 Political information reports on the popular mood at this time presented a picture of universal approval and only occasionally mistaken interpretations, for example, “victory came from God because churches were open during the war.”23 During the hectic first days of May the Kyiv authorities lost control over a population anxiously awaiting the end of war. When, on the evening of 2 May, loudspeakers on the streets announced that an important government broadcast would be aired at 11:00 p.m., enormous crowds gathered in expectation of a declaration of victory. Instead, the masses heard Stalin’s order congratulating the Red Army on the capture of Berlin. Thousands of people celebrated on the streets all night long, dancing, singing, and kissing strangers. Some soldiers and officers in the crowd fired off rounds into the air. However, the city authorities only managed to organize more formal festive meetings on the following day.24 The story was repeated on 9 May, when the news of Nazi Germany’s capitulation finally arrived. An official communiqué was broadcast over the radio at 2:15 a.m., which was preceded by an announcement that an important broadcast was imminent, with the result that “thousands of Kyivites gathered around [street] loudspeakers.”25 While preplanned “spontaneous”

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rallies could not take place because the workers had gone home, truly spontaneous celebrations began at night: their loudest expression took the form of disorderly shooting in the air and sometimes unruly street parties. At 9:00 a.m. Stalin’s victory speech was broadcast on the radio.26 Even though official announcements declared 9 May a holiday, many Kyivites went to their workplaces, where they could listen to the radio, and formal festive meetings with speeches could finally take place. (To cover up the late-night street party, reports to Moscow claimed that meetings in the city actually lasted “from 3:00 a.m. until 12:00 noon.”) The Victory parade and demonstration began in the city center at 2:00 p.m. and reportedly attracted as many as 200,000 Kyivites.27 During their final preparations for Victory Day, Ukrainian bureaucrats registered concern over two significant issues. The republic’s leading ideologue, Dmytro Manuilsky, then secretary of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine (CP[B]U) Central Committee, worried that the people’s pride in their victory might lower their tolerance of harsh working and living conditions. At a conference on 27 April he said, “Lest we create the impression among the population that it is all over, it is necessary for articles [in the press] to mark the historic victory of the Soviet peoples but not dampen [popular] ardor.” Manuilsky wanted the media to disseminate the idea that Soviet military achievements had to be bolstered by continual heroic labor on the home front.28 Indeed, during 1945 Ukrainian newspapers often sounded this caution.29 Maria Pidtychenko, secretary for propaganda at the Kyiv city party committee, expressed another fear that revealed great concern for the restoration of Stalinist political life in the war’s aftermath. Pidtychenko cautioned municipal bureaucrats “to make sure that [Victory Day festivities] do not take place spontaneously.”30 The authorities did not quite succeed in this and, as we shall see below, the struggle against “spontaneity” in Soviet festivities continued after the war.

SOVIET AND UKRAINIAN HOLIDAYS

Equally important for the authorities was the need to adjust the new celebratory canon. The war had left a legacy of well-respected new holidays, including Victory Day and various anniversaries of battles and liberations. But, it also led to the establishment of new holidays specific to different branches of the armed forces, such as Tank Crewman Day and Artillery Day. These new dates often commanded the allegiance of veterans and the population at large, but could conflict with the old Soviet calendar of holidays, or meant that too many festivities were packed together in a short period of time. In 1946, for example, festive meetings and military salutes

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had to be held on both 3 September (Day of Victory over Imperialist Japan) and 8 September (Tank Crewman Day).31 In 1944 the Kremlin proclaimed 19 November Artillery Day, also called the Day of Stalin’s Artillery—an event to be marked with salutes, festive meetings, and awards.32 After the war ended, however, the Soviet leadership restored the distinction between fixed-date celebrations, which involved a day off and were reserved for major holidays, and other events. In 1945 Artillery Day was celebrated on Sunday, 18 November,33 but the Soviet ideologues apparently preferred to reschedule it further away from Revolution Day, celebrated earlier in the month. Over the next two years Artillery Day would be celebrated on the third Sunday in November,34 a date eventually accepted as traditional. Thus, Artillery Day shared the fate of several previously established minor holidays that were conveniently grouped together in late July and August and always celebrated on a weekend—Navy Day, Aviation Day, and Railroad Worker Day. In 1947, for example, such holidays were marked in Kyiv with festive meetings, outdoor fêtes, and fireworks on 27 July, 3 August, and 10 August, respectively.35 But, decisions about the exact date of festivities had to be announced each year; in 1950 Navy Day was celebrated on 23 July and in 1952 on 10 August.36 There were, of course, no major revolutionary holidays in July and August. Potentially more subversive was the elevation of the day of Kyiv’s liberation (6 November) over the most sacred date in the Soviet calendar, 7 November. During 1943–45, the city’s newspapers often referred to these two combined dates as the “double holiday” or “the holiday of the Ukrainian capital.”37 Although the 7th, being Revolution Day, was an official day off, the celebration of Kyiv’s liberation always spilled over to this date and featured prominently in official speeches. In 1945 district party committees prepared a single festive program for the 2nd anniversary of Kyiv’s liberation and the 28th anniversary of the Revolution—in that order.38 On 4 November 1945 Kyivska Pravda published an editorial entitled “On the Eve of Two Great Events.”39 On 6 November 1946 it titled its lead article “Before the Great Holiday,” ostensibly referring to Revolution Day (hence the preposition “before”) but, in reality, commemorating the 3rd anniversary of the Red Army’s arrival.40 By 1947, 6 November was disappearing as a separate holiday, but in an article entitled “The Holiday That Is Twice as Dear to Kyivites,” the editors reflected on the 7 November celebrations by noting that Kyiv’s liberation was the main subject of the large pictures mounted on the city’s buildings.41 Victory Day itself fell victim to the calendar, for its first celebration in 1945 was never matched in subsequent years. In 1946 the Soviet Union marked 1 May with lavish parades and manifestations in Moscow and Kyiv, but 9 May saw no parade and only an outdoor evening fête (narodnoe

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gulianie).42 In 1947, 9 May featured a track-and-field event, an outdoor fête, and fireworks—the same range of festivities as on Artillery Day that year.43 Moreover, Victory Day remained a day off only for two more years, until 1947.44 In his book Making Sense of War, Amir Weiner analyzed the complex ideological process of the war replacing the revolution as a central element of Soviet mythology.45 My research also shows that the state consistently regarded individuals’ war records as ultimate proof of their loyalty, yet the evolution of political rituals during Stalin’s last decade did not grant the victory a separate place in the Soviet holiday canon. Instead of being assigned a separate holiday celebrating the people’s war effort, the victory was gradually incorporated into the Stalin cult as another “gift” to the people from their leader, and as such its celebrations became part of all the principal Soviet holidays. By 1952 Victory Day was celebrated only with lectures, thematic films, and a military salute in the evening.46 In 1956 a special decree of the CP(B)U Central Committee was needed to raise celebration levels in the press by reverting from authored newspaper articles back to special Victory Day editorials—and to reestablish festive workplace meetings on that day.47 Holidays specific to the Ukrainian republic also diluted the Soviet canon, inasmuch as their point of reference was the Ukrainian people, rather than the Revolution or the all-Union war effort. This is particularly true of jubilees of various Ukrainian cultural figures, which were duly celebrated with festive meetings and bombastic editorials—but no parades—even during the most difficult days of the war and reconstruction period. For instance, in March 1944 citizens marked the 130th birth anniversary of the greatest national poet, Taras Shevchenko, complete with festive meetings and concerts on the same scale as lesser Soviet holidays. Celebrations included a soirée at the Kyiv opera house, attended by most of the republic’s bosses (though not by Khrushchev)48—an honor that ranked Shevchenko’s birthday higher than holidays such as Artillery Day. Only slightly less impressive were the events marking the 150th anniversary of the philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda (December 1944), the 100th jubilee of the playwright Ivan Karpenko-Kary (September 1945), and the 75th anniversary of the poet Lesia Ukrainka (February 1946).49 However, Stalinist ideologues remained on the lookout for a major holiday that could be constructed as a Soviet Ukrainian event. The connection to the war was also an important factor because, as Weiner has argued, in Stalinist mythology the war redefined both the Soviet and Ukrainian components of the republic’s identity.50 The first significant, if abortive, attempt related to the anniversary of Ukraine’s full liberation. As discussed earlier, on 14 October 1944 the republican leadership proclaimed that the liberation of Ukraine was complete. With the 1st anniversary of this

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event conveniently falling on Sunday, 14 October 1945, Ukrainian functionaries were presented with an opportunity to organize a major celebration. However, with 7 November looming large, functionaries also worried about the republic’s holiday eclipsing an all-Union event. As Kost Lytvyn, the secretary for ideology of the CP(B)U Central Committee, warned during a conference on 1 September, “We should organize the celebration of this holiday in such a way that the anniversary of the October Revolution will be marked on a greater scale.”51 An obvious solution was not to hold a parade and demonstration; Khrushchev vetoed an interesting proposal to organize a parade of 5,000 former partisans in Kyiv52—apparently, lest it create the impression that Ukraine was liberated by its guerrillas and not by regular Red Army troops. In the end, the capital was extensively decorated for the holiday, which featured a major gathering at the opera house on 13 October. There, Khrushchev gave an agenda-setting speech, “On the Results of the First Year of Reconstruction in Ukraine and Our Tasks.” On the 14th Kyivites enjoyed sports events, outdoor dancing, and fireworks. Still, the event was framed at least partly as an ethnic holiday. Khrushchev defined the liberation as a “memorable, unforgettable date in the history of the Ukrainian people,” and Kyivska Pravda led with an editorial headlined “The Holiday of the Ukrainian People.”53 But the date’s proximity to 7 November did not bode well, and the 1946 ideological campaign against alleged nationalist deviations in Ukrainian culture was probably the final argument against this holiday. In subsequent years, the anniversary of the liberation was marked only by the decreasing number of newspaper articles. Another opportunity presented itself late in 1947, with the approach of Soviet Ukraine’s 30th anniversary. Thirty years was not considered a “round date” in the Soviet Union:  according to an old government decree, only 25th, 50th, 75th, 100th, 125th, and so forth, anniversaries were officially celebrated. Khrushchev, however, received special permission from Stalin to mark the republic’s 30th anniversary in light of the fact that, in December 1942, when Soviet Ukraine turned 25, it was under Nazi occupation.54 (In other years, the event was merely marked by newspaper editorials.) And yet, the proclamation of Soviet power in Ukraine had taken place on 25 December 1917, a date too close to two others: the New Year and Catholic Christmas. The authorities, therefore, moved the celebration to 25 January 1948, decreeing that it be marked as a “nation-wide (vsenarodnyi) holiday of the Ukrainian people.”55 These festivities eclipsed all other holidays in Ukraine during the Stalinist period. Following lead-up meetings in the districts, residents of the lavishly decorated capital witnessed a military parade and public manifestation, followed by an evening fête with a military salute and fireworks.56 A monument to General Vatutin, whose troops liberated Kyiv in 1943 and who was

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mortally wounded by nationalist insurgents in 1944, was unveiled during the celebrations, and the foundations were laid for another monument, to Mykola Shchors, a Soviet hero of the Civil War in Ukraine.57 In an unprecedented gesture, Stalin’s deputy, Viacheslav Molotov, attended a jubilee session of the republic’s parliament in Kyiv, where he made an important ideological pronouncement—that “the Ukrainian people were the first to join the great Russian people” in their march toward communism. The official confirmation of their second-among-equals status came replete with holiday congratulations from Comrade Stalin, as Molotov stressed in his jubilee speech.58 The Ukrainian authorities tried to offset the ethnic features of this holiday by constantly referring to the assistance Ukrainians had received from the Russian people during the Revolution and, especially, by profusely thanking Stalin in various speeches and open letters. During his welcome speech at the railway station, city party secretary Petro Matsui asked Molotov to convey to Stalin Kyivites’ profound gratitude for his care and attention to them.59 During a jubilee session in parliament, Khrushchev ended his oration with the salutation, “Long live our wise leader, the best friend of the Ukrainian people, beloved and great Stalin!”60 Parliament sent Stalin a message thanking him for, among other things, the creation of the Soviet Ukrainian state,61 even though his actual input in the 1917 decision remained unclear. The holiday decorations included so many portraits of Stalin that some celebrants reportedly stated that when they saw Molotov at the Kyiv railway station, they imagined they were seeing Stalin himself.62 If the impressive, albeit one-time, festivities on 25 January 1948 did not interfere with the regular Soviet holidays, the 10th anniversary of the “reunification of the Ukrainian people in the Ukrainian Soviet state” did. Marking ten years since the Soviet conquest of Eastern Poland (or, more properly, the anniversary of the ensuing proclamation uniting these lands with the Ukrainian SSR), this event fell on 30 October 1949, thus necessitating another mass demonstration in the city center mere days before 7 November. A fitting editorial in the official journal Bilshovyk Ukrainy was entitled “A Great Historical Event in the Life of the Ukrainian People,”63 and the event was indeed celebrated as an essentially ethnic holiday. In Khrushchev’s speech—indeed, in almost every type of propaganda— Stalin was credited with the reunification,64 but even this did not make the holiday more “Soviet.” Instead, despite the fact that the usual parade took place on 7 November, almost all propaganda work on the ground during October and early November concentrated on the anniversary of the reunification. The CP(B)U Central Committee instructed the local authorities to keep the decorations and slogans from the reunification events for 7 November.65 Many organizations, like the Kyiv Aircraft Plant, united the

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two holidays under one heading in their reports on propaganda work in the fall.66 Perhaps not realizing that this diminished the Revolution Day parades, the Ukrainian Central Committee’s internal memos hailed the 30 October demonstration in Kyiv as “the best organized and the most interesting” in recent years.67 As they did with most other public events, the republic’s ideologists framed the 10th anniversary of the reunification as a ritual of thanksgiving. According to a report by the city party committee, the festivities “demonstrated [the people’s] unity with the Bolshevik Party, their boundless love for and devotion to the great leader of peoples, Comrade Stalin.”68 A temporary sculpture of Stalin was erected on Khreshchatyk Boulevard at Instytutska Street, as though the Soviet leader were viewing the parade.69 In contemporary editorials as well as in Khrushchev’s speech at the jubilee session of the Ukrainian parliament, Stalin was credited with both the creation of the Ukrainian republic in 1917 and the unification of the Ukrainian people in 1939.70 The parliament’s jubilee address to the Soviet leader read, “Comrade Stalin, please accept a deep bow from the Ukrainian people, who are singing and will always, generation after generation, sing praises to you.”71 Yet, if thanking Stalin was an obligatory marker of Sovietness, on this occasion Ukrainians thanked him as a separate ethnic group. Given the equation in public discourse between loyalty to the Soviet state and gratitude to Stalin, it is interesting that Stalin’s birthday did not become an annual holiday. According to his official biography, the Bolshevik leader was born on 21 December 1879.72 Since the 1930s, on 21 December occasional newspaper articles and lectures in major organizations paid tribute to Stalin’s wise leadership, but it is difficult to call such low-key events a “celebration.” Similar public talks and editorials about the Leader were common in other months as well. The first of Stalin’s birth anniversaries after the liberation of Kyiv, 21 December 1943, for example, was marked by an article on the second page of a local newspaper, “Stalin: The Leader of Nations, Marshal of the Soviet Union,” and talks about his life that were held in every political education group.73 Stalin’s 70th birthday in December 1949 was an exception. Surpassing in scope the celebrations of his 50th birthday in 1929 and 60th in 1939, in the Soviet commemorative hierarchy the postwar jubilee occupied a place between lesser annual holidays, such as Red Army Day, and the two main festivities, 1 May and Revolution Day. In other words, the celebration featured obligatory festive meetings, lectures, and solemn promises to raise production targets, but no military or civilian parades and no day off for workers. Judging by newspaper editorials and the speeches of Ukrainian party leaders, it appeared that “the Ukrainian people” used the occasion to thank Stalin once again for the creation of a Soviet Ukrainian state and

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the unification of all Ukrainian lands.74 But the holiday was, after all, a person’s birthday, and official rhetoric could hardly avoid incorporating certain traits of a traditional birthday celebration, such as gifts, cards, and wishes for long life. The Ukrainian leadership spent much time agonizing over the list of official birthday gifts to Stalin from the Ukrainian republic—paintings, sculptures, and tapestries portraying the landmarks of Soviet history and Stalin’s life, as well as vases, tablecloths, and models of industrial enterprises. Khrushchev did propose renaming the city of Stanislav in Western Ukraine as Stalinokarpatsk (“the City of Stalin in the Carpathian Mountains”), but he did not receive the go-ahead from the Kremlin for such a move. Other gifts were delivered to the Great Leader by the republic’s official delegation to the festivities in Moscow.75 Organizations and individual citizens sometimes prepared their own gifts, usually handicrafts and models, but the authorities promoted the idea of fulfilling and overfulfilling annual production plans in advance of 21 December as an ordinary person’s finest gift to Stalin. Indeed, festive meetings in districts and enterprises on 19 and 20 December routinely featured reports to the Leader about the completion of the plans. Two hundred and fifty Kyiv factories supposedly finished their annual programs by Stalin’s birthday, while “Arsenal” reported completing 108 percent of the plan. The “Lenin’s Smithy” shipyard announced the production of the following extra-plan “gifts” to the Leader: a tugboat and suction dredger.76 All organizations in Kyiv, from the CP(B)U Central Committee to the communal housing trust, sent their congratulations and reports to Stalin, and many individual citizens did likewise. For over a year after the jubilee Soviet newspapers published a never-ending list of organizations and citizens from all over the Soviet Union who sent Stalin their congratulations in December 1949—an impressive catalog of labor reports in lieu of birthday cards.77 The traditional birthday wishes for good health and long life rarely appeared in official addresses, phrased as they were in the familiar mode of thanking Stalin for all he had given to the Ukrainian people. Yet, on the district and enterprise level they were more prominent. Even newspaper reports about local festive meetings sometimes captured this communal language of familiarity, as in a Kyivska Pravda story about the residents of Kyiv’s Stalinsky District “sending their father and leader, dear Joseph Vissarionovich, their warmest wishes for long, long years of life, energy, and good health for the good of the Soviet people, for the joy and happiness of all progressive humankind.”78 A festive meeting at the Stalin Ship Repair Docks was concluded not with some politically sound slogan, but with “all present wishing [Stalin] good health and many years of life.” At the Administration of the Liqueur and Vodka Trust, the festive meeting’s program featured a short official report, wishes for good health and long

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life to the Leader, the recitation of a poem about Stalin, and the acceptance by acclamation of a letter to Stalin. The letter’s texts also featured “cordial wishes for long life and good health.”79 In the official mythology of Stalin’s time, the Leader was presented as the father of the Soviet family. Yet, this was a symbolic relationship related to the representation and justification of power—and symbolic relations can be undermined by undue familiarity. Wishes for good health and many more years of life desacralized Stalin as a symbolic father by stressing that he was mortal and getting on in years. After the 1949 jubilee, annual celebrations of Stalin’s birthday returned to the usual minimalist model, with lectures held in organizations and occasional newspaper articles, but no festive meetings or “gifts.” It is possible that Stalin and his ideologists intentionally kept 21 December a low-key event for fear that a traditional birthday celebration, with its customary wishes for good health and long life, would unduly humanize the supreme leader. There were other, more appropriate, occasions for citizens to interact with Stalin as a sacred symbol rather than as a living septuagenarian. As shown in Chapters 5 and 6, elections provided one such occasion. Stalin was always nominated as the “first candidate” in all electoral districts, regardless of the legislative body to be chosen—the all-Union parliament, the republic’s legislature, or municipal council. The Leader invariably picked up an electoral district in Moscow to stand for the all-Union parliament, but Kyivites voted for him as a candidate to the Ukrainian legislature and oblast council. The accompanying rhetoric focused more on the Soviet people’s love for and gratitude to Stalin than it did on elections as proof of Soviet democracy. In 1947, when the day to elect municipal councils coincided with Stalin’s actual birthday, 21 December, the symbolic affirmation of Stalin’s political authority fused with his celebration as a human being and produced strange scenes, where voters stopped by his portrait at the polling station to voice their wishes for good health and long life. Significantly, Kyivska Pravda made only fleeting mention of the coincidence in an article published several days after the elections.80 The authorities were obviously concerned about overly humanizing the political love that people were supposed to feel for Stalin. Constitution Day was another holiday that served as a symbolic replacement for the Leader’s birthday. Already convenient as an annual event, with a fixed date close to Stalin’s real birthday on 5 December, Constitution Day was also a good fit in that official propaganda used it to present the 1936 Constitution as “Stalin’s Constitution,” a charter granted by Stalin to the people, which fixed the symbolic relationship between the leader’s gift and the masses’ gratitude. In the hierarchy of Soviet holidays, the Day of Stalin’s Constitution—a designation used more frequently in the press than the

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Figure 2.1  A Constitution Day cartoon from Kyivska Pravda, 5 December 1947. The caption reads “The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a socialist state of workers and peasants.”

official “Day of the Soviet Constitution”—occupied a place right behind the two principal holidays that warranted a day off and a parade. In the impressive scope of festive meetings and the exalted tone of newspaper editorials, it exceeded everything but 1 May and 7 November. All Soviet holidays of

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Stalin’s time celebrated the symbolic relationship between the Leader and his people, but Constitution Day was exclusively dedicated to it. Ukrainian artists portrayed a larger-than-life Stalin opening the Constitution in the presence of a male worker and a female farmer; poets wrote, “We Sing Glory to the Stalinist Law”; and prose writers addressed Stalin the legislator with an appeal, “Shine, Our Sun!”81 Yet, the more Soviet holidays turned into a celebration of the people’s symbolic link to Stalin, the greater the threat to this version of Soviet identity in case of Stalin’s physical death or his symbolic death, should his successors reject Stalinism.

RESTORING SYMBOLIC ORDER

Even with their arranged list of holidays, Stalinist ideologists remained concerned with how celebrations should proceed. Customary parades and demonstrations for 7 November resumed in 1945, as Kyiv celebrated the 28th anniversary of the Revolution and the 2nd anniversary of the liberation. The republican leadership, however, was not pleased with the first effort. After the demonstration Khrushchev summoned all district party secretaries currently in the city to his office for a reprimand. No records of his remarks are extant, but in February 1946 the first secretary explained the problem to a conference of oblast party chiefs: “We were dissatisfied with the way the demonstration went on 7 November. A very large number of people turned out. The mood was exceptionally good. Yet, the demonstration did not proceed in a very organized fashion; [people] were walking in a crowd (skopom), spontaneously (stikhiino), and there was no proper order.”82 The same month Khrushchev attended a conference of Kyiv party organizers, during which the secretary of the city party committee, Borys Horban, recalled problems with the very first mass event of 1945, the 1 May demonstration. As soon as Horban mentioned that the demonstration had become too stretched out and had turned into a leisurely stroll, the Ukrainian leader interrupted him, “Not a promenade but a disorganized crowd.” Horban agreed, “We did not form the columns properly.”83 Khrushchev’s juggling of the notions of order and spontaneity is highly revealing here. In his efforts to restore Soviet political rituals in postwar Kyiv, Khrushchev was particularly frustrated by the marchers’ failure to maintain symbolic order. They transformed a ritual of symbolic communication between participants and viewers into a simple “stroll” that lacked the requisite political atmosphere. The Ukrainian leader’s next critical comment about public celebrations only confirms this interpretation. In January 1946 Khrushchev turned his attention to the way festive meetings were being organized. On 21 January, when key city activists gathered in

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the Kyiv opera house for the anniversary of Lenin’s death, the sight of many empty seats offended the Ukrainian leader. Moreover, most of the faces in the audience were familiar to him. An investigation revealed that tickets had been distributed primarily among republic- and city-level bureaucrats who, according to Khrushchev, were mostly in attendance because they had been promised a free concert of Ukraine’s best artists, which was included in the program. “And where are the workers, the white-collar employees, and the intelligentsia?” Khrushchev asked angrily.84 In other words, the meetings did not suit his notion of a point of interaction with the “people,” where the party leadership and the audience could fulfill their symbolic roles. The resulting decree of the Ukrainian Politburo dealt both with demonstrations and festive meetings. Interestingly enough, its main demands pointed in the opposite direction: bringing the masses to order at open-air events and increasing participation of the masses at by-invitation-only meetings. Needless to say, the resolution did not make any mention of the violation of symbolic order. Rather, the authors of the text justified their attention to festive meetings and demonstrations by extolling them as “a powerful tool in the political education of the masses [and] their mobilization for the fulfillment of the most important political, military, and economic tasks.”85 A closer look at the files of the city and district party committees reveals the kinds of problems uncovered during the investigation of the November 1945 demonstration. Some organizations, such as the fish-processing factory (Zaliznychny District), the Hotel Management Trust, the Directorate of Military Hospitals, the Construction Design Bureau (all in Leninsky District), the Supreme Court and the Office of the Attorney General (both in Pechersky District), and the government garage (Molotovsky District), failed to send any marchers, resulting in reprimands at the management level. However, more serious punishments awaited those who had sent marchers but failed to coach them as conscientious demonstrators representing model citizens. The City Communal Construction Office (Pechersky District) had 120 employees, but only 40 showed up for the demonstration, and a mere 25 to 30 were still there by the time their column marched past the government reviewing stand. To make matters worse, the manager of that office, Comrade Trubylo, was so drunk that district party organizers did not allow him to march. Trubylo received a “severe reprimand with a notation on his party record card,” just one step short of expulsion from the party.86 The Sixth Furniture Factory (Pechersky District) provided only 40 marchers from among its 200 employees and did not supply them with any portraits or banners. The factory party organizer, Comrade Yemelianov, left even before his group marched past the central platform, and lost his position as a result.87

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It was easier for Ukrainian authorities to reestablish the desired order at indoor festive meetings—at least at the principal events, usually held at the Kyiv opera house with the republican leadership in attendance. Assigning seats to several hundred reliable Stakhanovites afforded an easy fix to the problem of representing the “people.” A  1949 report about the meeting held on the occasion of Stalin’s 70th birthday specifies, for example, that 950 of the 1,800 attendees were Stakhanovites.88 But the leadership still wanted to see mass participation in celebrations that did not feature a public demonstration. In such cases, festive meetings at workplaces and smaller indoor festivities in each of the districts were intended to symbolize the people’s involvement. During the last decade of Stalin’s rule, the party leadership in the Ukrainian capital could not provide close ideological supervision over such events and limited its efforts to making sure that these meetings took place. The last case of failure to celebrate important anniversaries or major political events with a district-level gathering was recorded on 22 February 1944 in Stalinsky District. That day 570 key district activists were supposed to assemble at the club of the Institute of Land Reclamation to celebrate Red Army Day. (Actually, this holiday was celebrated on the 23rd, but district meetings always took place the day before the main event at the opera house.) The district party committee distributed 500 invitations to the largest enterprises and organizations, while the district party secretary personally handed out another 70 invitations to various local dignitaries. Only 50 people showed up, all of them district bureaucrats, and the fiasco triggered an investigation resulting in a number of reprimands.89 Party bureaucrats were incapable of supervising festive meetings in smaller organizations, so they satisfied themselves with brief reports confirming that such gatherings had taken place. Those arranged in reaction to unexpected political events—as opposed to preplanned Soviet holidays— apparently turned into a pure formality. This is how one lower-level party organizer in 1946 described the mechanism of these meetings: “A phone call comes from the district [party] committee to organize a meeting and have a report ready in two hours. But you have to prepare for a meeting.”90 In other words, practically no time was left for the preparation of speeches, a task that fell routinely to local party and Komsomol organizers. At the same time, regular holidays in smaller organizations turned into communal gatherings featuring a meal and a political speech or two. As early as 1945, for example, the employees of the Kyiv oblast central library marked Revolution Day with a communal dinner and the purchase of gifts for their children. By 1947 they were arranging a communal breakfast before leaving to join the demonstration. The workers collected 920 rubles for that purpose and considered purchasing take-out meals from a restaurant.91

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In addition to collecting reports about such celebrations in individual organizations, holding (indoor) district-level festive meetings before all major holidays, and gathering the district column for citywide demonstrations, district authorities were expected to manage occasional open-air rallies in response to select political events other than calendar holidays. As was the case with festive meetings, the party apparatus concentrated its attention on ensuring attendance. One case in June 1945 sent an important signal to the city’s industrial managers and district bosses. Apparently overwhelmed by a string of new holidays in 1945, Comrade Kanovsky, the deputy director of Plant no. 768—also known as “Tochelektropribor,” a major producer of electrical equipment— refused to send workers to participate in the district-level festive rally on the occasion of Transcarpathia’s official transfer from Czechoslovakia to Soviet Ukraine. Although Kanovsky argued that the plant was struggling to meet its production quotas, warning that army orders could go unfulfilled, he was still punished with a severe reprimand with a notation on his party record card.92 Following Khrushchev’s intervention in January 1946, attendance at the capital’s major festive events was assured, but the leadership continued to worry about the proper response from audiences. In preparation for Artillery Day (23 November 1946), secretary of the city party committee Petro Matsui reminded district secretaries of a problem that had occurred at an unspecified festive meeting earlier the same year: “At the last meeting [Sydir] Kovpak shouted a slogan but no one followed suit. I am told that there were preparations, but it all happened because people from the districts took seats in different places. If people were sitting around the comrades from their districts, such as the secretary of the district party committee and the active, the district secretary could show an example and others would join in.”93 This arrangement, long used at party congresses, was eventually replicated at the local level. Massive open-air demonstrations were more difficult to regiment. From the files of district party committees and various organizations’ party groups, it is clear that the mobilization of people for demonstrations was a perennial concern. Usually a week before the two major holidays, 1 May and 7 November, workplace party and Komsomol cells held meetings that invariably adopted resolutions “to ensure 100-percent attendance” of employees at the demonstration. Sometimes party members were also expected to bring their dependents or voters from the ward where they served as agitators. Either a factory director or party organizer would then read out a list of “right-flank” and “left-flank” marshals, who were responsible for maintaining their row in the column. Large industrial enterprises would sometimes provide trucks to bring in workers from distant suburbs.94

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After 1946 party documents record no incidents of unsatisfactory attendance at mass political events. However, the records of the local administration show that lower-level bureaucrats remained deeply concerned with popular participation as the most obvious marker of individual political loyalties. In rare cases, when party or Komsomol members missed these events without good reason, they were reprimanded.95 Controlling the entire nonparty population was, of course, impossible, but those in the workforce were expected to march—and the overwhelming majority of them did. Archival sources do not indicate any formal reproach or administrative action against nonparty individuals failing to put in an appearance. The management of industrial enterprises, however, sometimes identified groups that were likely to show poor attendance—primarily young workers or, more specifically, young workers living in dormitories.96 This most mobile group, which had little to lose, required organizers’ special attention. Since some demonstration participants later headed out to informal parties involving drinking, the local authorities also worried about saving all the banners and signs. Getting these items ready was the responsibility of organizations and enterprises that provided marchers.97 Managers and party organizers entrusted the decorations only to the most reliable party members, and even they received annual reminders about bringing them back in good shape.98 The odd case of designated sign-bearers declining this honor or botching their task was classified as a manifestation of “anti-party behavior.” In 1952 a certain Comrade Herasymenko from the “Bilshovyk” factory refused to accept responsibility for a large picture mounted on a cart because this would involve bringing it back to the factory after the parade, thereby jeopardizing his travel plans for later in the day. Even though his motives were clearly nonideological—in fact, Herasymenko offered to carry a smaller portrait of the Soviet Belarusian leader P. K. Ponomarenko instead—his actions led to a party investigation. Taking into consideration Herasymenko’s wartime service as an officer in the Red Army, his party colleagues decided to issue him a severe reprimand along with a notation on his party card rather than expel him.99 Even with attendance firmly under their control, the authorities remained dissatisfied with the symbolic function of festive demonstrations. Factory managers sometimes acknowledged that their primary concern was for their column “to pass by the platform in an orderly manner.”100 But many marchers failed to do even that. In preparation for Revolution Day in 1952, the second secretary of the oblast party committee, Olha Ivashchenko, lectured the key party activists of the city districts: If district secretaries are going to hold conferences with party organizers, they need to mention certain organizations that march in disorderly fashion [neorganizovanno]. As a

( 54 )  Stalin’s Citizens rule, we have good signs, and some district columns march well, for example, those from Zhovtnevy and Zaliznychny districts. In some district columns, such as Stalinsky, the head walks well but the tail not so well. There are organizations that never respond to greetings [from the reviewing stand]. I believe the district secretary knows these organizations and their party organizers. You need to tell them that their column marches particularly badly.101

Yet, even if all participants were aware of disorganized marching and failure to respond with a “Hurrah” to leaders’ greetings, media reports about festive demonstrations never mentioned such problems. Newspaper accounts dovetailed nicely with the parade plans drawn up by party bureaucrats in emphasizing order, discipline, and elation as expressions of the marchers’ Soviet consciousness. It was no secret that the party apparatus preassigned the positioning of columns and the ordering of signs, greetings, and even songs. But, the degree to which the marching orders were followed was important to Soviet ideologists because it reflected the population’s acceptance, through symbolic interaction with authorities, of the Soviet social order.102 Festive demonstrations in postwar Kyiv involved large numbers of citizens: 200,000 in 1945, 250,000 in 1947, 350,000 in 1949, and 400,000 in 1952.103 Participants marched southward along Khreshchatyk Boulevard, and the republican leaders reviewed their columns from a temporary platform set up in front of the Central Department Store. People marched in district columns, two columns at a time, with Leninsky and Stalinsky Districts opening the demonstration out of tradition, because of their names, highly fraught with symbolism. In the district columns, prominent places were reserved for major plants and organizations that overfulfilled their production quotas and, within these, to Stakhanovite workers and decorated inventors. Most enterprises prepared models of the items they produced, then carried or pushed them past the government platform as symbolic gifts. Demonstrators held signs with slogans usually taken from the party’s holiday “Appeals” to Soviet citizens, essentially collections of slogans published in the press in advance of 1 May and 7 November. These same slogans were also read through loudspeakers, with the demonstrators responding with obligatory enthusiasm. Some loudspeaker announcements were supposed to come from the marchers’ ranks. As Kyivska Pravda reported in 1947, such pronouncements all met with a massive, collective “Hurrah”: “Long live our wise and dear Comrade Stalin!” “Long live the Central Committee!” “Long live the closest collaborators of Great Stalin, Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich and Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev!”104 The republican and municipal authorities’ strict count of portraits carried by marchers throws an interesting light on the official hierarchy of

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Figure  2.2  Marchers pass by the reviewing stand during the Revolution Day civilian parade on Khreshchatyk Boulevard in Kyiv, 7 November 1946. Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

leaders, whose guidance the demonstrators were supposed to celebrate. For the 350,000 Kyivites expected to march on 1 May 1949, party functionaries requested 799 portraits of Stalin, 583 of Molotov (as the official second-in-command), 563 of Khrushchev (as the republic’s long-serving leader and now its patron in the Kremlin), but only 422 portraits of Lenin. Two years later the number of portraits was calculated per 100,000 marchers, with an estimated total number of 400,000: 300 of Stalin, 240 of Georgii Malenkov (as the new heir apparent), 230 of Molotov, 140 of Khrushchev, and 200 of Lenin. In both cases, the marchers also carried a smaller number of portraits of Politburo members and leaders of foreign communist parties, as well as thousands of banners and slogans.105 Stalin’s symbolic prominence and preeminence over Lenin was evident in the solemn opening of festive demonstrations. Both in May and November civilian demonstrations followed military parades. After the troops departed from Khreshchatyk, Revolution Day demonstrations opened with two large, wheeled portraits of Lenin and Stalin, followed by 16 banners of the Union republics, followed by smaller portraits of all the Politburo members, followed by 800 standard-bearers with red banners. But if Lenin and Stalin appeared equal in stature on Revolution Day— according to the official narrative of the Bolshevik Revolution, they made the Revolution together—Stalin reigned alone on 1 May. Theoretically the Day of Workers’ International Solidarity, in reality this holiday celebrated

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Figure 2.3  Ukrainian leadership review the parade on Khreshchatyk Boulevard on Revolution Day, 7 November 1948. Left to right:  speaker of the republic’s Supreme Soviet Mykhailo Hrechukha, Second Secretary Demian Korotchenko, First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, commander of the Kyiv Military District General Andrei Grechko. Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

Soviet power and the achievements of socialism. In other words, it celebrated Stalin’s rule and gave citizens another opportunity to thank him. At the head of the procession was a large portrait of Stalin decorated with flowers and a cloth embellished with Ukrainian ornamentation, followed immediately by 1,000 standard-bearers holding aloft red flags. Next, a column of children in Ukrainian ethnic costumes carried a banner inscribed with the slogan “Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood!,” as well as flowers to be handed to the republican leaders and 60 white pigeons to be released before the government platform.106 For all the authorities’ concern with maintaining order (to reflect Soviet consciousness) and expressing gratitude (to confirm symbolic relations between people and power), there remained a desire to see citizens rejoicing during mass celebrations. Emotional responses would confirm the sincerity of the people’s love for the party and their gratitude to Stalin. One strategy used by functionaries to encourage popular jubilation was turning major holidays into mass-culture events.107 In 1949, for example, the authorities printed 80,000 copies each of five songs to be distributed to marchers on 1 May. These included two songs about Stalin, written by Ukrainian composers, two highly popular patriotic songs from Soviet films, and the Ukrainian folk song “The Cossacks Woke Up before Dawn.”108 Newspapers also mentioned with approval follow-up festive lunches at home, which often

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involved drinking, even suggesting that the first toast should always be to the great Stalin.109 But the real popular celebration, usually referred to in documents by the Russian term narodnoe gulianie, or popular fête, began after the 9 p.m. fireworks on 1 May and 7 November. In 1951 and 1952, for example, party functionaries arranged for brass bands to play on five squares in the city center, with one-hour concerts to be followed by mass dancing, games, and folk singing from 10 p.m. to midnight. Similar entertainment continued on the evenings of 2 May and 8 November, respectively.110 As the Soviet economy recovered slowly after the war, Ukrainian leadership increasingly spurred the marchers’ morale with extra food deliveries. Tacitly acknowledging that Stalin’s citizens needed more than taking part in marches past the Politburo platform to be joyful, the authorities gradually restored the prewar practice of increased consumption on holidays. Festive food provisions had come a long way since 1945, when 1 May was marked by the distribution of 2 kilograms of potatoes to every employed Kyivite and 1 kilogram to a dependent, as well as the guarantee that for a two-day period the usual inferior bread rations would be replaced with white bread.111 Food rationing had ended by 1952, but the availability of cheap and diverse foodstuff remained a problem. That year the municipal authorities prepared for 7 November by supplying shops by 5 November with an additional 520 tons of meat; 785 tons of sausage; 2,360 tons of fish products; 126 tons of cheese; 3,000 tons of sugar; 5.5 million liters of vodka; 10 million rubles’ worth of wine; cotton fabric worth 29 million; leather footwear worth 17.5 million; expensive perfume worth 1.5 million rubles—and the list goes on. For the benefit of Kyivites working nine-tofive, for the three days before the holiday all grocery stores were ordered to remain open until midnight, and other stores until 10:00 p.m.112 Far from keeping silent about these pragmatic holiday preparations, which one could read as an implicit “deal” between the powers that be and the people, the press trumpeted them as evidence of rising living standards.113 These consumerist infusions were clearly meant to raise citizens’ moods before the holidays, and lower-level functionaries sometimes said as much. For instance, in 1946 the party organizer at the Liqueur and Vodka Trust’s central office, Comrade Lazebna, spoke about ensuring deliveries of food and goods in order “to create a holiday feeling in our collective.”114 High-ranking functionaries could not be caught using the same language, but they still relied on similar measures to frame parades in the Ukrainian capital as popular fêtes. In this, too, the municipal authorities had come a long way since 1946, when they first discussed the idea of setting up soda kiosks at public events.115 By 1952 some 800 kiosks and stands served demonstration participants, selling books and helium balloons in addition to food and beverages.116 This number did not include office cafeterias

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and workers’ canteens, all of which opened early—and featured a festive menu—on the morning of the demonstration day.117 To accommodate marchers and spectators, for three days starting on 6 November, the city food industry produced greatly increased amounts of ice cream (120 tons), cakes (45,000), boxes of candy (38,000), and bottles of lemonade and kvass (210,000).118 But, by turning official holidays into popular fêtes, the authorities implicitly acknowledged that holiday crowds were celebrating Soviet achievements by enjoying new opportunities for consumption. This, of course, tainted the symbolic interaction between the people and the leadership. Instead of rejoicing in a genuine expression of their inner Soviet selves, marchers could be viewed as thanking the leaders on the reviewing stand for goods obtained and food consumed. Yet, it is telling that this concern does not register in ideological documents of the time. This indicates the increasingly ritualized character of Stalinist political life, in which the act of “thanking Stalin” was more important than the precise object of these thanks or the sincerity of gratitude.

CELEBRATING THE DEAD

Although joy and sorrow are opposite human emotions, both can reflect a person’s relationship with a loved one, where the object of love is dead. In the symbolic relationship between the Soviet people and the state, public celebrations were also supplemented by festivals of mourning devoted to the same civic emotions of love and gratitude. Elements of public sorrow were prominent in the short run; however, for protracted mourning rituals, the celebration of life and ideas was emphasized more than grief over an individual’s passing. This trend is particularly visible in one of the oldest Soviet mourning rituals, the anniversaries of Lenin’s death (21 January 1924). By the 1940s the mourning component was barely discernible in what had become a mid-level holiday celebrating Soviet achievements, and Stalin as the Lenin of today. In a sole distinction from other holidays, festive meetings on 21 January were officially called “solemn-funereal” (urochysto-traurni). Twenty years after Lenin’s death, 21 January 1944 became one of liberated Kyiv’s first Soviet festivals to be marked by “solemn-funereal” meetings in districts and major organizations, culminating in a major gathering in the opera house attended by Khrushchev. Prior to the event, the CP(B)U Central Committee circulated an instruction to local party organizations about the propaganda topics to be highlighted during the meetings: the advantages of the Soviet social system, friendship among the Soviet peoples, the

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mobilization of all efforts to defeat the enemy, and Lenin and Stalin as the organizers of the Red Army.119 All reflected the political and military situation of January 1944 and had precious little to do with mourning Lenin. The format of “solemn-funereal” meetings reveals how the remembrance of Lenin was transformed into a celebration of Stalin. Key gatherings invariably took place at Kyiv’s opera house, where the republican leadership sat on a stage facing the audience, with a small bust of Lenin and a giant portrait of Stalin flanked by red banners behind Khrushchev. The gathering opened with a minute of silence to remember Lenin’s death, but was soon followed by Stalin’s election in absentia as honorary chairman of the meeting—an act met by a prolonged standing ovation. Like similar meetings in Moscow, meetings in the capitals of Soviet republics traditionally featured theoretical speeches about Lenin’s legacy and the current political situation. In postwar Kyiv the speaker was usually Dmytro Manuilsky, deputy premier and secretary of the CP(B)U Central Committee, who had no formal responsibility for ideological matters but was an old Bolshevik with a law degree from the Sorbonne, a close collaborator of Lenin’s, and a respected party intellectual. When he was unavailable—Manuilsky also represented Ukraine in the UN—Central Committee secretaries Kost Lytvyn or Ivan Nazarenko stepped in. The titles of the keynote theoretical speeches always reflected the same principal idea: “Under Lenin’s Banner, under Stalin’s Guidance, Forward to the Victory of Communism!” or “Twenty-Five Years without Lenin, under Stalin’s Guidance, on the Leninist Road.” After the initial, brief mention of the country’s terrible loss in 1924—Lenin’s death—the speeches focused on Stalin’s wise leadership since that time, dwelled on ideological concerns of the day, and ended with a proclamation of glory to Great Stalin. A concert followed the meeting.120 Meetings in districts and organizations preceded the main gathering by a day or two, but replicated its structure. They also featured theoretical speeches based on the model text distributed by the CP(B)U Central Committee; in 1952 and 1953, for example, the title of the speech was “Twenty-Eight (Twenty-Nine) Years without Lenin, under the Leadership of Comrade Stalin, on the Leninist Road.” Poor attendance at “solemn-funereal” meetings could be construed as a sign of serious ideological problems in the collective, as was the case with students at the Theater Institute in 1949.121 In addition to attending meetings, organized groups of citizens were expected to visit Lenin exhibitions in major libraries, festivals of films about Lenin in all movie theaters, and, above all, the Lenin Museum. In April 1945 the Kyiv branch of the Lenin Museum, originally opened in 1938, became the first museum in the Ukrainian capital to open its doors to visitors. By the year’s end it had received 96,000 visitors and, in 1947,

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194,000, with attendance numbers peaking on the anniversaries of Lenin’s death and Revolution Day. Despite the unveiling of a red granite statue of Lenin at the southern end of Khreshchatyk in July 1946—Kyiv’s first Soviet monument to be built after the Nazi occupation—this spot did not become a center of memorial activities on 21 January, perhaps because the festival no longer celebrated Lenin but Soviet power in general, and Stalin’s current rule in particular. Various delegations laid flowers at the statue, but the Lenin Museum remained the place to visit because its seventeen halls continued the narrative of the revolution into the present and featured Stalin as the Lenin of today. Such reasoning may also explain why the anniversaries of Lenin’s birth, even the 75th in April 1945 and the 80th in April 1950, were marked, under Stalin, on a lesser scale than the dates of Lenin’s death, which ultimately, turned into a celebration of his successor.122 The element of mourning was stronger in memorial events born out of World War II, yet they too were essentially celebrations. Significantly, no public rituals mourned the numerous victims of the Nazi occupation regime among Kyiv’s civilian population, including the more than 100,000 people who were killed in Babi Yar. Instead, Soviet authorities encouraged citizens to remember the soldiers who died during the city’s liberation in 1943. In the first months following the return of Soviet power, the drive to create local heroes met with an enthusiastic response from below, both from the army and the population. Military detachments petitioned for permission to bury their dead, especially senior officers, in a major city for which they had fought. Dozens of individual and mass military graves thus appeared in Kyiv’s parks and squares, with local schoolchildren and organizations taking responsibility for their upkeep.123 One burial site acquired special significance for Kyivites—the tomb of Master Sergeant Nykyfor Sholudenko, whose tank was the first to enter the city center and who was killed on Kalinin (now Independence) Square. Despite the chaos of the first days after the liberation, he was buried in the very center of the city, at the park entrance at the northern end of Khreshchatyk, with his rank mistakenly indicated as that of a captain on the tombstone. The grave’s central location and circumstances of Sholudenko’s death, and perhaps his background as an ethnic Ukrainian from a village near Kyiv, made him the symbolic liberator of Kyiv for the moment, a local equivalent of the Unknown Soldier—the latter concept being introduced into Soviet memorial practice only after Stalin’s death. Until the spring of 1944 Sholudenko’s grave remained the principal memorial site of the war, a place where various delegations and groups laid flowers and wreaths. There were even proposals to build a statue of Sholudenko on Khreshchatyk.124 In April 1944, however, another candidate for the post of the city’s “symbolic liberator” presented itself, one who was more appropriate from the

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authorities’ point of view. In late February Ukrainian nationalist guerillas in Western Ukraine had ambushed a motorcade, among whose passengers was the commander of the First Ukrainian Front, Army General Nikolai Vatutin. The general, whose Front (or group of armies) had liberated Kyiv in 1943, was badly wounded and died in a Kyiv hospital in the early hours of 15 April. Burying him in the Ukrainian capital seemed natural, and the event turned into a grand military funeral—perhaps the most imposing funeral in the Soviet Union during World War II. The visitations lasted three days, and the funeral procession on 17 April included some 125,000 Kyivites led by Khrushchev and other Ukrainian leaders, who carried the coffin to the park across from the parliament building. The most prominent wreath featured a ribbon with the inscription “From J. V. Stalin and the Officers of the General Staff.” At the gravesite Khrushchev and other speakers stressed Vatutin’s great service in the liberation of Ukraine and painted him as Stalin’s pupil and a faithful son of the Communist Party. When the coffin was lowered into the grave at exactly 6  p.m., artillery salutes were given in both Moscow and Kyiv.125 Vatutin’s grave soon supplanted Sholudenko’s as the principal remembrance site related to the war. Official delegations now visited Vatutin’s gravesite when paying homage to the war dead, as did a group of Stakhanovites from Stalingrad in July 1944 and the Yugoslav leader, Joseph Broz Tito, on his visit to Kyiv in May 1945. Unlike the lowly Sholudenko, Vatutin could be—and was—branded “a great Stalinist military leader” in official propaganda during the celebration of Ukraine’s full liberation in October 1944. Thus, Stalin’s guidance could be celebrated indirectly through the local cult of Vatutin the liberator. Indeed, this motive was prominent in newspaper articles marking the 1st anniversary of his death, with telling titles, such as “The Liberator of Kyiv” and “One Year after the Hero’s Death.”126 Yet, Kyivites did not forget about Sholudenko. Until the end of the 1940s his modest grave remained on the officially approved itinerary for tourists, schoolchildren, and (less important) delegations. It was decisively overtaken as an official memorial site by Vatutin’s tomb only after January 1948, when a majestic monument to the general was unveiled at his gravesite. The inscription on the statue’s foundation reads: “To General Vatutin from the Ukrainian People,” a statement of symbolic gratitude rather than mourning, yet with a twist of ethnic exclusivity that earned Khrushchev a reprimand from Stalin.127 The unofficial competition between the two wartime gravesites in the city center continued until 1957, when Ukrainian authorities moved the remains of Sholudenko and other war heroes buried elsewhere in the city to a new park, which they designated as the Park of Eternal Glory, near the new monument to the Unknown Soldier.

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Figure 2.4  Monument to General Nikolai Vatutin in Kyiv (sculptor: Yevgeny Vuchetich, 1948). The inscription in Ukrainian reads: “To General Vatutin from the Ukrainian people.” Source: Author’s photo, 2013.

Significantly, though, this pantheon of war heroes was built after Stalin’s time. During the Stalinist era the state did not encourage a large-scale cult of fallen heroes, perhaps because giving credit to them would undermine the official discourse of victory as yet another of Stalin’s “gifts” to the Soviet people.128 During the last years of the war, proposals from below to create an alley of war heroes lined by their statues in Kyiv or to publish Ukrainian “commemorative books” sometimes found their way into the republic’s newspapers. Archival documents show that in 1943–45 Khrushchev was also caught up in this impulse, as he repeatedly spoke of future war memorials, memorial preserves at the sites of the most important battles, and a war museum.129 Eventually, however, he seemed to

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realize that the Kremlin did not share his enthusiasm, and these projects were shelved temporarily. The deaths of contemporary Soviet political figures also did not generate mass rituals, in which mourning prevailed over the affirmation of Stalin’s leadership. The demise of Mikhail Kalinin in June 1946 and Andrei Zhdanov in August 1948 were duly marked with memorial meetings in Kyiv’s major organizations, with speakers promising to “further close the ranks around Comrade Stalin and the Central Committee.” Since the deceased had never held official positions in Ukraine, their relevance lay in their status as Stalin’s faithful comrades-in-arms; indeed, this was the main motif of official speeches and newspaper articles. But, because the main symbol and personification of the Soviet system, Stalin himself, remained alive, there was little cause for Kyivites to despair. Thus, most memorial meetings devoted less time to mourning than repeating the same old promises to work better and overfulfill the plan.130 Perhaps the only commemorative event in the Stalinist Soviet Union that allowed elements of mourning to predominate over elements of celebration was the death of Stalin on 5 March 1953. Devotion to the socialist project and the Soviet Motherland has for too long been equated with love for Stalin, the main symbol of the Soviet state and a figurative “father” in a multinational Soviet family. Contemporary descriptions of his funeral, during which hundreds died in a stampede in downtown Moscow, emphasize sincere grief, feelings of confusion, and a temporary loss of direction.131 The Ukrainian dissident Ivan Dziuba remembers how the radio announcement about Stalin’s death sparked mass weeping at his student dormitory in Donetsk:  “All of us cried and I  cried too.”132 The Ukrainian historian Zhanna Lazoryshyn recently published an article based on interviews with eight ordinary Kyivites, most of whom admitted crying and being in shock upon hearing the news.133 On this occasion, speakers at memorial meetings that took place in every organization in Kyiv were often more emotional than was expected of a Soviet person delivering a public oration. During the Stalinist era public speeches in districts and organizations mostly imitated the tenor of newspaper editorials, but this was a rare occasion where the former far surpassed the latter in affectation. Witness the difference between the official report that the CPU Central Committee submitted to the Kremlin and the voices of mourners recorded by district- and city-level bureaucrats. The report to Moscow reads: “The people of Soviet Ukraine are feeling heavy grief and sorrow over the death of our leader and teacher, Comrade J. V. Stalin, and will respond by redoubling their efforts in the construction of communism, by increasing their vigilance, and further closing ranks behind the CPSU Central Committee and the Soviet government.” In contrast, speakers at

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memorial meetings in Kyiv more than once slipped into such expressions as “Farewell, our Father!” and spoke of being at a loss for words to express what they felt, or about “the land of the Soviets moaning, having been struck down by boundless sorrow.”134 Such predominance of despair over socialist optimism corresponds to accounts, both written and photographic, of widespread weeping at memorial meetings. No less telling were the reports that Ukrainian authorities received about inappropriate public reactions to Stalin’s death. The majority of these did not concern a lack of mourning or improper joy, but panic and fear about the future after Stalin’s death. The word “panic” is used repeatedly in secret police intelligence about the mood of railway employees in March 1953, with most recorded statements referring to an imminent war with the West or Jewish pogroms.135 In other words, even inappropriate reactions equated Stalin’s death with the end of an established way of life. In Kyiv there were very few recorded cases of outright refusal to participate in public mourning after Stalin’s death. One involved a five-year-old boy, who said at his kindergarten that it was “no big deal” and that, in any case, he planned to immigrate to the United States, where life was better. A cashier at the Kyiv-Petrivka railway station, Halyna Komolova, did not wear a black ribbon on her dress and declared to a co-worker, “I am far from being in mourning.” Instead, she spoke of listening to a Voice of America broadcast about the jockeying for power among Stalin’s successors. Pavlo Biloshytsky, a fire-box cleaner at the locomotive depot in Korosten, near Kyiv, went so far as to visit a restaurant to have a celebratory drink of vodka. While there, he “used obscenities in reference to the Leader and expressed malicious anti-Soviet sentiments.”136 He was immediately arrested, while Komolova and the boy’s father were put under surveillance. At the “Bilshovyk” factory, party member Serhii Kovalsky also got drunk on the day of Stalin’s death. He sang songs and yelled obscenities in public, but apparently the latter did not sound anti-Soviet, and in the end he received only a party reprimand.137 In this case, however, participation in mourning rituals after Stalin’s death, whether sincere or forced, did not serve as a clear marker of political allegiance; it was no longer obvious with whom or what the mourners were symbolically interacting. Whereas all previous public rituals equated the Soviet state with Stalin, the state was now “dead” until such time as his successor was found or the whole relationship between the state and citizens was reimagined. This difficulty is apparent in memorial speeches and addresses prepared by rank-and-file activists. Some speakers followed the line of Stalin’s official obituary in Pravda, which called for the Soviet people to close ranks around the “Stalinist” CPSU Central Committee and the government, without naming a single successor. As the Stakhanovite worker

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I. T. Demianchuk said at the “Lenin’s Smithy,” “great grief has descended on our party and our people,” but it “should not break us, because with us are [Stalin’s] closest comrades-in-arms and pupils.”138 Meanwhile, many Soviet citizens found it easier to transfer their allegiance to a single leader, the heir apparent, Georgii Malenkov. At many memorial gatherings participants purportedly reiterated Malenkov’s funeral oath to continue Stalin’s cause—with Malenkov’s name now writ large in reports—literally, in capital letters—just like Stalin’s was during his last decade, with other speakers at the funeral barely mentioned. Participants “approved” of Malenkov’s appointment as chairman of the Council of Ministers and by late March were “thanking” him for the forthcoming price reductions. Still, instead of the habitual “Long Live Great Stalin,” numerous messages to the Kremlin, in which Kyivites confirmed their loyalty in connection with Stalin’s death, ended with the impersonal “Long live the Party’s Central Committee and the Soviet government!”139 Perhaps this confusion about the new object of love and allegiance led to the appearance in memorial rhetoric of neutral but banal promises to complete the annual plan by Stalin’s birthday (21 December), to overfulfill monthly plans every month, and to introduce technological innovations. While politically correct, such pledges only lowered the tone of the mourning ceremonies.140 A further problem was the absence in Kyiv of an obvious site for a shrine to Stalin that could also serve as a center of commemorative activities. There was no permanent Stalin statue in postwar Kyiv or, for that matter, in any major Ukrainian city. Khrushchev retrospectively explained this absence by his faithfulness to the party rules of modesty, but most likely it had more to do with his uncertainty about Stalin’s possible reaction to a funding request for such an expensive project during the period of postwar reconstruction.141 The Ukrainian bureaucracy was also aware of the leader’s notorious tendency to demonstrate his “modesty” and “disapproval” of his own cult by publicly chastising the initiators of such requests. As a result, party organizers in Kyiv channeled flower-bearing mourners to busts of Stalin that were found in most party committees, clubs, and major organizations. A small plaster statue of Stalin inside the locomotive depot of the main railway station became a memorial spot for those with a pass to this restricted-access area. Above all, though, municipal authorities encouraged people to visit the Lenin Museum, an ideological shrine dedicated to Lenin, Stalin, and the socialist cause. Some 30,000 Kyivites went there between 5 and 10 March 1953 to pay their respects to the Leader.142 Yet, the mass mourning ritual on the day of Stalin’s funeral, 9 March, could not be held in a museum building. Instead, crowds of Kyivites gathered at the northern end of Khreshchatyk on Stalin (now European) Square and along the entire boulevard. After hastily organized memorial meetings

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Figure 2.5  A mass meeting on Stalin (now Yevropeiska) Square and Khreshchatyk Boulevard on the day of Stalin’s funeral, 9 March 1953. The mourners listen to loudspeakers broadcasting the state funeral from Moscow. Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

held at workplaces on 6 March, when the news first trickled in, the authorities prepared much better for the day of the funeral. All transport in the city center stopped running at 10:00 a.m. Between 11:00 and noon all loudspeakers broadcast the funeral proceedings on Red Square in Moscow, with Kyivites standing bareheaded on the streets to listen. After the noonday salute and a minute of silence, when all transport in the city stopped, those in the workforce hurried back to their organizations to attend memorial meetings and make pledges of loyalty either to Stalin’s pupils in general or to Malenkov in particular.143 One final glitch in this moment of symbolic interaction between the state and the people was the Kremlin’s refusal to hold a “Stalin Levy,” a heavy campaign of recruitment to the party. As elsewhere in the Soviet Union, there were in Kyiv numerous requests from below to repeat the precedent of 1924, when thousands of people mourning Lenin’s death responded by committing themselves to the Bolshevik cause as the so-called Lenin Levy and the party leadership waived the usual rules and procedures for accepting these volunteers, most of whom were industrial workers. In their speeches during Kyiv’s 9 March memorial meetings some participants— many of whom were workers—requested admittance to the party in Stalin’s memory. Although there was no encouragement from above, more than 500 people submitted applications. But, Moscow responded to the Ukrainian

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authorities by declaring that the “usual rules” were to be applied, including sparse annual allocations of new party memberships for regions and quotas for various social strata.144 In 1953 no number of new Bolsheviks could symbolically replace the dead Leader. As a result, no significant increase in party membership occurred in Kyiv immediately after Stalin’s death, and the authorities thus squandered a chance to translate mourning into increased social activism. By the 1st anniversary of his death Stalin’s cult was slowly unraveling; the event did not even match the scope of the anniversaries of Lenin’s death. Newspaper editorials now mostly presented Stalin as Lenin’s pupil—the second man in the hierarchy of Soviet founders—with telling epithets, like “A Faithful Pupil and Comrade-In-Arms of Lenin the Genius” or “A Great Continuer of Lenin’s Cause.” Instead of “solemn-funereal” meetings everywhere, only schools put on talks about Stalin’s life, and exhibitions were held at libraries and museums.145 The single greatest mourning event in the Stalinist Soviet Union not only lacked a clear symbolic dimension, but also failed to become a celebration of Soviet power. It did not even endure as an annual event. Stalin’s successors sought instead to establish a cult of the war dead as a mourning ritual uniting the people around the Bolshevik project. Stalinist celebrations in postwar Soviet Ukraine were intended to be moments of symbolic interaction between the state and its citizens, which allowed the latter’s political identity, both Ukrainian and Soviet, to be confirmed. In reality, the observance of political rites simply became a marker of participation in the Soviet political world. The citizenry adopted the principal official holidays as communal festivals marked by improved food deliveries and public dancing, but other celebrations became increasingly ossified. During the first decade after Kyiv’s liberation, however, Ukrainian leadership was repeatedly frustrated by the issue of controlling “spontaneity.” Reconciling all-Union and specifically Ukrainian holidays also proved to be a challenge. Finally, the authorities gradually downgraded the importance of the war victory, for it was to be seen as another symbolic gift from Stalin and the party, rather than as an achievement of the people. They also did not allow mourning of the war dead to develop into a significant, nationwide political ritual. With the most recent page of Ukraine’s history, at once tragic and heroic, not reflected in the holiday canon, Soviet celebrations became increasingly divorced from people’s life experiences.

C H A P T E R  3

w

A Refresher Course in Sovietness

O

ne evening in the spring of 1944 a certain Professor Karlov of the Kyiv Pedagogical Institute had just finished delivering a public political-education talk “On the Patriotism of the Soviet People” when someone from a group of students standing in the dark corridor shouted at him: “Here comes that scum (svoloch) who yells in favor of Soviet power.”1 Across town, at the Kyiv Medical Institute, students stunned Instructor Kononenko during her lecture on Stalin’s book On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People by initiating a discussion about Ukrainian nationalism. One female student expressed the opinion that “the nationalists—the followers of Bandera, Bulba and others—fought for the national ideals of the Ukrainian people and for that the Germans were executing them. The Germans had no national ideals and were not nationalists, while those were nationalists in the good sense, those who had struggled for the nation’s freedom.”2 Party ideologists explained these examples of anti-Soviet feelings and dangerous confusion over political issues, admittedly rare in Kyiv, by reminding people of the city’s two years under Nazi occupation. According to the official line, as expressed by Khrushchev at the June 1944 meeting of the CP(B)U Central Committee, the Germans and Ukrainian nationalists “sought to influence the ideology of the Ukrainian people” who, however, “remained loyal to their Fatherland, the great Soviet Union.”3 At the same time, lower-level party functionaries favored another, more telling, metaphor—that of Nazi propaganda “poisoning the consciousness of our people.”4 In particular, the Germans and Ukrainian nationalists “slandered the Soviet Union and presented a corrupt picture of the history of Ukraine” ( 68 )

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in an effort to “undermine the friendship of peoples.” They also allegedly “channelled the profiteering instincts” of the population by promoting private trade.5 In published reports and articles, party ideologists denied the success of such enemy propaganda, but indicated that the population of the occupied regions had been “deprived of Soviet information” and needed to catch up on the “truthful” interpretation of recent events.6 However, this contradicted the Bolshevik belief in the transformative power of political education. If Soviet propaganda could make people Soviet, then Nazi and Ukrainian nationalist propaganda could also have a lasting identity-shaping effect. Therefore, as late as 1948, reports on political education in the city’s factories still occasionally indicated the approximate percentage of workers who had lived under German occupation. A high concentration of such people in one shop (generally 60 or 70 percent) indicated a need for more vigorous political propaganda.7 Of course, the language used and the measures proposed in Kyiv should be seen in a wider context. In the fall of 1944 the Kremlin issued a series of ideological decrees (styled as Central Committee “resolutions”) on the shortcomings in the ideological work undertaken in Belarus, the Tatar autonomous oblast in the Russian republic, and Western Ukraine. These documents emphasized the need for political education to remedy the resurgence of nationalism, which in Western Ukraine took a most troubling form for the Soviet authorities—a mass armed insurgency.8 In the Ukrainian republic during the last years of the war and the first postwar years, speakers at various conferences on propaganda understandably focused on the danger of nationalism in the western regions, which had only been part of the Soviet Union since 1939.9 This rhetoric had an effect on the situation in Kyiv and elsewhere in the Ukrainian republic as well, creating an atmosphere of suspicion around any alleged vestiges of “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism.” Ideologists heightened their attention to political education as a universal panacea for all such concerns.10 These considerations, though specific to the Ukrainian republic, reinforced more general concerns among the Soviet leadership, such as the ideological education of new party members. As elsewhere in the Soviet Union, new members, who had joined the party during the war, now constituted the majority of Ukrainian communists:  over two-thirds of the 580,000 members in 1947. As an editorial in a Ukrainian party magazine put it in 1945, these newcomers lacked “ideological tempering.”11 There was also a deeper connection to the Soviet project in general—a belief in political education transforming consciousness. From the first days after the liberation of Kyiv in 1943 to the last days of Stalin’s rule (and later), one finds in archival memos and newspaper articles constant attempts to explain mismanagement and the poor work ethic by pointing

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to insufficient indoctrination in Marxism. If a dairy products factory did not meet its production targets, the blame obviously lay with local political-education circles for failing to do a good job. After all, Comrade Tkachenko, a worker at the Arsenal factory, started to produce 150 percent of the norm after joining a study group devoted to the life stories of Lenin and Stalin!12 As Khrushchev declared in 1949 at a republican party congress, “The higher the level of the Marxist-Leninist training of our cadre, the more successful our communist construction.” A  party journal elaborated:  “Agitation work is one of the main components of party work, a powerful lever for raising the political consciousness of the masses. Further successes of communist construction, the tempo of our progression forward depend on the growth of political consciousness and higher ideological level of the workers.”13

THE RETURN OF AGITPROP

Propaganda work among city residents resumed almost immediately after the Red Army took Kyiv on 6 November 1943. In those first days military political officers attached to the First Ukrainian Front (group of armies) took the lead, in particular the group commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Malyshev. Between 7 and 14 November they organized 18 free film screenings in the city (attended by an estimated 16,000 people), 18 lectures about the 26th anniversary of the Revolution (18,000 people), and 48 talks on the military situation (5,000 people).14 These attendance figures must have been inflated for reporting purposes because the Germans had ordered a complete evacuation of the city, and the population was returning slowly from the surrounding countryside. When a mobile group dispatched by the Central Committee’s Department of Propaganda and Agitation arrived in the Ukrainian capital on 10 November, its head, Anatolii Lykholat, complained, “The main problem is the absence of the population. There are almost no people. We can only gather some 10 to 15 people per talk.”15 As the Kyivites returned, however, the authorities discovered two ways of reaching out to them: by preceding the free film screenings with short political talks and organizing lectures at large factories, where workers showed up in expectation of food rations. On 15 November some 300 workers at the Karl Marx Chocolate Factory attended a lecture about the war and international situation. By late November hundreds of such events reportedly involved a total of 75,000 city residents.16 Official memos about early propaganda work in Kyiv often highlight the emotional reaction of the people—proof positive of their “sincerity,” which mere attendance did not furnish. After two years of brutal Nazi occupation,

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at first locals felt nostalgic for the rituals of Soviet everydayness. For example, reports speak of people in the audience crying during the first political meeting at the Arsenal factory on 8 November. Hearing the title “comrade” also reduced some to tears. The screenings of the old Soviet favorite, the 1934 civil war film Chapaev, elicited stormy applause and shouts of “Hurrah!” A short talk on the international situation before the screening of another film was interrupted by “Hurrah!” and shouts of “Long live the Red Army!” and “Long live great Stalin!”17 However genuine this rejoicing may have been, such occasions also functioned as a ritualistic expression of loyalty. At the opposite end of the spectrum, one finds reports of Soviet posters and slogans being torn down at night and, more specifically, two incidents in late 1943 of people muttering at lecturers such insults as “scum” and “scum that we did not finish off.”18 In addition to demonstrating their loyalty, Kyivites needed to acquire political knowledge essential to their lives as Soviet citizens. Numerous reports about people’s eagerness to learn about the events of the last two years—and these events’ proper political interpretation—can be confirmed through what we know about the demand for newspapers. In Molotovsky District, one week after the liberation “people showed up at the district party committee and demanded, begged for a Soviet newspaper, even an old one. People buy from each other and then resell newspapers with Comrade Stalin’s speech [on the occasion of Revolution Day, 7 November 1943].” Between 10 and 22 November the forty press kiosks in the city sold 36,111 copies of Pravda and other Moscow newspapers, 4,000 of Radianska Ukraina, 24,300 of Kyivska Pravda, and a stunning 73,350 copies of Stalin’s short book of wartime speeches On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People.19 Whichever Soviet publication became available was immediately snapped up. Newspapers, essential for navigating the Soviet political world and as sources of information about the course of the war, continued to be in high demand in subsequent months. Already in January 1944 party memos mention incidents of postal workers stealing subscription copies and reselling them at an open-air bazaar. In the spring of 1944 the press kiosk salesman at Sinnyi Market, a certain Vronsky, was put on trial for speculating in newspapers: in just two months he had bought some 10,000 copies from his kiosk at 20 kopecks each and resold them privately at between 1 and 2 rubles per copy. At the time of his arrest investigators found 1,800 copies stashed in his home; they estimated the monthly income from such a scheme to be in the neighborhood of 19,000 rubles!20 Constrained by wartime shortages and centralized distribution, the local authorities could not secure a larger daily allotment of newspapers than the estimated 35,000 to 40,000 copies of mid-1944; their solution was to construct newspaper

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stands throughout the city: 335 by January and 883 by June 1944, where people gathered whenever a fresh issue was posted.21 Yet, individual reading of a newspaper remained problematic from an ideological point of view. Would a citizen in fact read the paper and, if so, would he or she grasp the main points of the party line? This was the same concern that ultimately left ideologues dissatisfied with street loudspeakers broadcasting news from Moscow and on wired one-channel radio receivers, some 400 of which were set up in homes and offices when Soviet troops entered the city.22 In order to control this process of ideological updating, the authorities insisted on continuous group work as their preferred form of controlled interaction with the possibility of feedback. For that reason, already by the last week of November 1943 they began restoring the foundations of mass propaganda work: the network of agitators. Supposed volunteers, but in reality appointed by local party committees, agitators did not receive any pay for the readings and talks they conducted at workplaces and in nearby residential neighborhoods. First mentions of them in district-level reports date to around 20–23 November 1943, in which they are described as “reading” the text of Stalin’s Revolution Day speech to the citizenry. At this point, Zaliznychny District reported having 18 agitators in 12 organizations, whereas Leninsky District had 32 and Petrovsky District 34, who in the space of ten days managed to reach only some 1,500 workers with their reading sessions. Molotovsky District claimed 50 agitators and 4,215 listeners.23 In these early reports, the words “readers” and “agitators” are used as synonyms that give a clear indication of their role—reading official texts rather than explaining them or answering questions. They are also sometimes described as “school teachers,” which reveals the initial group’s social and educational makeup.24 The network of agitators expanded rapidly with the Kyivites’ return to the city, as well as in connection with the arrival of civilian administrative personnel from the Soviet rear. In early December the city party committee estimated that it had a thousand agitators in the city, “most of them communists who had arrived from the eastern oblasts, as well as the intelligentsia— teachers, Komsomol members, etc.”25 Emphasis on party members from the Soviet rear, who had not been tainted by life under Nazi occupation, is notable in reports from late 1943, but less so in 1944, when the system could only grow proportionately to the population increase if it included the locals as well, that is, those who had not retreated with the Red Army in 1941. As of the spring of 1944, all 8 agitators at the Red Excavator factory, as well as the majority of the 107 agitators in Zhovtnevy District, had remained on occupied territory. Of the 223 agitators in Leninsky District, 89 had lived under German rule and only 134 were party members.26 By 1 July 1944 the city boasted 4,163 agitators, although their educational

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background was uneven at best. In Stalinsky District 16 agitators had university degrees, 70 secondary schooling, and 58 had completed only four grades; in Petrovsky, Zhovtnevy, and Kaganovichsky District agitators with elementary educations constituted a majority.27 As a result, the city party committee’s secretary for propaganda, Maria Pidtychenko, demanded at an Agitprop conference in January 1944 that all lectures and talks be written down and checked by ideologists—a move that could only reinforce simple reading as the preferred mode of propaganda work.28 What did the agitators read? First and foremost, they perused daily reports from the Soviet Informbiuro, short official news releases about the situation at the front, which were broadcast from Moscow and printed on the first page of all Soviet newspapers. Because newspapers did not arrive on their “publication date” until the war’s end, these were often recorded by hand in district party committees during radio broadcasts, then copied locally using typewriters that took between four and eight sheets of paper at a time. In Petrovsky (soon to be renamed Podilsky) District in December 1943, a secretary at the district party committee typed 30 copies daily; the Agitprop department of Kirovsky (Pechersky) District produced 150 copies every day in January 1944. Party committees then distributed Informbiuro reports to major factories and organizations, where they were copied again, sometimes by hand, and read during lunch breaks or after a shift.29 Yet, because of their very nature as updates on the situation at the front, these reports did not provide a good medium for political education as such; in fact, they could have an opposite effect. For example, the report of 20 November, which acknowledged the Germans’ recapture of the nearby city of Zhytomyr, sparked widespread rumors about the imminent retaking of Kyiv as well. Popular reactions recorded by the NKVD and the local authorities ranged from not showing up for work and shunning Soviet political events to contemplating suicide should the Nazis return.30 Already by late November 1943 Kyivan party bureaucrats were searching for a more appropriate ideological document with “stable” content and a clear message for agitators to read to the population. In the chaos of the first weeks after liberation, some districts focused on Stalin’s Revolution Day speech as the most recent pronouncement from the Leader, while others adopted Stalin’s book On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union as a succinct compendium of the Soviet version of war events.31 The situation in Petrovsky District was most likely typical:  in late November all agitators began reading Stalin’s book. Then they received an order to switch to Stalin’s speech, and by mid-December they had received a new directive indicating that agitation work indeed had to focus on the book.32 In either case, however, “reading” was no longer an appropriate term; the Soviet concept of political education required all participants to engage

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with the texts they read or “studied.” A  report from 20 December 1944 claims that 40,000 Kyivites were “studying” (vyvchaie) Stalin’s Revolution Day speech, although such a number could only be reached by including all listeners to whom the agitators had read this speech.33 Another report from January 1944 registers a confusing yet important transition, with 69,649 people involved in “readings” of Stalin’s book and another 5,152 “studying” it in study circles.34 These were the beginnings of institutional differentiation between political information for the masses and a narrower system of political education for party members and other activists, although this demarcation was reemerging slowly and in a confusing fashion. At first Kyivites showed great interest in lectures and readings. In addition to being important rituals of interaction with the state, which allowed for individuals’ demonstration of loyalty, they provided political information that was so vital for survival and success in Soviet society. Those who had spent two years under Nazi occupation were eager to catch up on political developments within the country and abroad. Above all, however, city residents, including those who had returned with the Red Army, wanted to know about the course of the war and prospects for victory or future conflicts—something that would have palpable implications for their own lives and those of their loved ones serving in the Red Army. Not surprisingly, questions about the surrender of Zhytomyr and the German counterattack southwest of Kyiv predominated during “discussions” of Stalin’s Revolution Day speech.35 Early efforts at “studying” Stalin’s book, which contained his various orders, speeches, and interviews from the beginning of the war, also initially provoked uncomfortable questions about the military failures of the Soviet leadership: “Comrade Voroshilov once said that we would be fighting on the enemy’s territory, but we are fighting on ours.” “Why did our government not prepare for war as well as the German government did?” “Why were no preparations for war made, despite knowing about and seeing the German preparations?” City-level ideologists preferred to view such questions as representing “political backwardness” rather than popular disillusionment with the propaganda surrounding alleged Soviet military prowess.36 Another question that was very popular in the weeks immediately following the liberation—the authorities’ attitude toward citizens who had remained in Kyiv during the German occupation—reveals a high level of fear of government repression. Of particular import is the language used by citizens who formulated such enquiries and that used by local functionaries as they rephrased original queries in reports to their superiors. In district-level reports one finds such questions as “Is it true that those who had remained in Kyiv during the German occupation will be shot?” and “How are the Bolsheviks going to treat the people who remained under the

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Germans?”37 However, when the city-level ideologists reported back to the Central Committee, references to executions and the opposition between “the Bolsheviks” and the people were replaced with a more general interest in “What will be the attitude to those who remained on occupied territory?”38 Popular questions about current Soviet policies reflected rumors that circulated widely throughout the city, but that in fact originated in Nazi wartime propaganda. The population was curious to know, for example, if the Baku oil fields and the northern port of Murmansk had been leased to England, and whether Molotov’s wife had really left for the United States with all the Soviet gold reserves.39 In Kyiv, rumors concerning the possible reintroduction of the New Economic Policy, under which private trade had flourished in the 1920s, apparently resonated strongly and generated many questions. Some people went so far as to make inquiries into the application process for a license to become a private trader.40 Still, the questions being asked in Kyiv were not as extreme as in Kharkiv, the first major Ukrainian city to be retaken, where in June 1943 the population asked party lecturers about widespread famine and alleged anti-Soviet rebellions in Siberia and Kazakhstan, and if Jews could serve in the Red Army.41 Other inquiries reflected more directly the people’s interest in “updating” their Soviet identity. Since this required the mastery of political information, questioners often asked whether any party congresses or conferences had taken place during the war, what new laws had been passed, and what changes had occurred in the USSR during the past two years.42 Two issues sparked particular interest: the dissolution of the Comintern and the new official line on religion. Both were manifestations of the Stalinist “Great Retreat” from militant internationalism, which the German-controlled press and radio had reported on and which Soviet agitators now confirmed. During a conference on propaganda held on 29 January 1944, the propaganda secretary of the Kyiv party committee, Maria Pidtychenko, recognized that the German explanation for the Comintern’s dissolution had stuck with Kyivites. “About the Comintern,” she said, “people have drawn the conclusion that the Bolsheviks abandoned their theories.”43 The same applied to the Kremlin’s wartime rapprochement with the Orthodox Church. In Kyiv rumors were circulated, attributing Soviet victory to the fact that the authorities were no longer “godless” and to the impact of prayers. Some better-educated citizens, such as the schoolteacher Yarchevska, concluded that the prewar atheistic propaganda had been a mistake.44 Indeed, questions about the party’s new line on religion were among those most frequently asked, and even lower-level bureaucrats remained confused as to the extent of the symbiosis between the Orthodox Church

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and the state, as illustrated by another example from Pidtychenko’s speech, that of a priest volunteering to give a political-information talk in one of Kyiv’s districts: “You know, in one case it even came to this: The secretary of the district committee and the head of the Agitprop department there summoned a priest and began checking the theses of his lecture. They decided that, because Comrade Stalin had received representatives of the clergy, they too should invite the priest. The priest, of course, showed up at the district committee and what do you expect? The secretary approved his text and off he went to read the lecture.”45 Pidtychenko warned party functionaries against such collaboration, for they were obliged to remember that “we remain atheists.” Such a seemingly paramount issue as the situation at the front remained the subject of lively interest only for a few months, until the front moved west of central Ukraine. In Stalinsky District beginning in late 1943, people gathered spontaneously at a large map of Europe displayed near the party committee building. Members of the military often stopped near the map to tell stories, and the committee was forced to assign agitators to circulate in the vicinity. People frequently moved the flags on the map at night, even before official announcements were made. One time somebody wrote on the map, “The war will be over in the fall [of 1944].”46 But in the summer of 1944, when the war moved to Western Ukraine, inspectors of the city party committee declared this map out of date, while other street map stands in Leninsky and Stalinsky Districts had been removed.47 Similarly, early interest in Informbiuro reports soon waned. In May 1944 V. Herasiutyn, the head of the Agitprop department in the Petrovsky District party committee, reported to his superiors that the reading of Informbiuro reports had ceased abruptly with the stabilization of front lines in May. Agitators were instructed to continue daily readings, even if reports only said that no notable changes had occurred on the Eastern Front. Yet, the population now favored international news over domestic: But the state of affairs did not improve and interest in reading Informbiuro reports decreased. Instead, the demand for lectures on the international situation increased greatly. All organizations and enterprises are sending requests only for this type of lecture, and when we offer other topics, such as the Soviet home front or the strength of the Soviet state, they do not attract anybody. There is more interest in how to understand Churchill’s speech about Turkey and the Polish government, and what hampers the struggle in China. Even Italian developments are of lesser interest than the situation in Bulgaria. The issue of peace proposals to Finland is quite clear to the workers of our district, but they are curious about America’s reaction. In general, there is great

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and constantly growing interest in questions concerning the international situation. This is not surprising, but we are forced to include [material on] the Home Front in these lectures.48

Considering the way in which significant questions about new Soviet policies were answered or marked as dangerous, this seemingly paradoxical mass interest in foreign affairs was, in fact, natural. Ostensibly insignificant developments in Europe and American reaction to them could mean either a quicker end to the war or the prolongation of warfare and perhaps a new war among the Allies. Actually, Kyivites began to bombard lecturers with questions about the international situation from the very first days after the liberation. Among the most popular inquiries one finds concern about the Soviet Union’s relations with the United States, England, Japan, Turkey, China, Italy, and Finland; the prospect of a second front in Europe; and the possible constitution of postwar borders.49 News about the November 1943 Teheran conference of the Big Three (for security reasons, reported in the Soviet press only in early December) further stimulated interest in international affairs and even generated elaborate questions concerning the situation in Iran and whether the Teheran agreements could prompt Turkey to enter the war on the side of Nazi Germany. “Is it true that our armies won’t advance beyond the Buh River?”—the reference to the river hearkening to the post-1939 Soviet-Polish border—probably reflected rumors about the division of Europe among the Allies and the hope that the war would end soon.50 In January 1944 the Leninsky District Agitprop reported as typical questions about the Cairo Conference (where representatives of the United States, England, and China had gathered to discuss the war against Japan), the Allied bombardment of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, the Curzon Line (the 1920 British-proposed border between Poland and the Soviet State), and the rumored German proposal of a separate peace with England.51 In June 1944 the Allied landing in northern France sparked popular interest to such a degree that Kyivska Pravda reported the gathering of crowds near newspaper stands. Speaking at a citywide party conference that month, Pidtychenko complained that Kyivska Pravda usually limited itself to reprinting the Informbiuro report, while excluding central press materials about the second front: “There is nothing about what is now happening in Western Europe in connection with the landing of troops, and the workers are not given a chance to read such materials in a timely fashion.”52 Subsequently, the city party newspaper improved its coverage of the Allied war effort, typically by reprinting more relevant materials from the central press, and also issued a biweekly and rather lengthy “survey of international

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affairs” at the bottom of page 2.53 Even so, the news of the Yalta Conference in February 1945 created a sensation again, with crowds of Kyivites reportedly gathering near street loudspeakers and newspaper stands.54 By contrast, discussion of internal policies was becoming ossified in the form of a ritualistic “approval” of government decisions and “thanking” Stalin and the party for everything from the 1944 pronatalist decree encouraging large families to the regular slashing of bread prices and any major political speech of the day.55 At the same time, the population could use this interaction with the government to petition the authorities through the “questions” they asked. Beginning with the earliest political-education meetings, one finds questions such as “When will bread ration cards be distributed?” or “When will power and water supplies be restored?” They became even more specific in 1944: their content referred to workers not being provided with hand tools; poor borsch at the factory canteen; no salt in another cafeteria; illegal evictions from apartments, and the like.56 Meanwhile, the authorities worried more about the near-universal extension of political education than its exact content. On 27 December 1943 the head of the Central Committee’s brigade of lecturers, Anatolii Lykholat, estimated that in the fifty days since the liberation, only about 30 percent of all Kyivites had attended lectures and talks. He held this low level of inclusion in political work, rather than the successful German counterattacks, responsible for the mood of uncertainty in the city.57 By mid-1944 the estimated number of city residents who attended 1,578 lectures and talks reached 329,218. The city also had 4,163 agitators, but they usually worked without a plan or any supervision from district party committees.58 In essence, they remained simple readers of newspapers and Informbiuro reports. If the working population was thus “covered” with a propaganda blanket at work, the so-called unorganized population remained a perennial concern of Kyivan ideologists. Although the city authorities assigned agitators to residential neighborhoods by late 1943, they did not enforce any control. By mid-1944 reports suggested that no ideological work with unemployed urban residents had begun.59

THE ILLUSIONARY WORLD OF POLITICAL EDUCATION

If much of the early political-education work in the city was ad hoc and chaotic, prioritizing numbers over structure, by late 1944 the authorities began to restore the system of political education as it existed in other parts of the Soviet Union. The ideologists created the illusion of a systematic

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mass “study” of party documents from the very first days after their return to Kyiv, focusing initially on Stalin’s book On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. In December 1943 the city party committee ordered district committees to start organizing “study circles” for this purpose, although some districts showed good Bolshevik initiative by reporting the existence of such circles already in November.60 The statistical data cited in various memos and reports are at once impressive and ambiguous. By June 1944, 13,000 Kyivites were reportedly enrolled in 558 study groups; by the end of the year 28,850 people were studying Stalin’s book in such “circles” and another 3,250—independently.61 Unlike in the prewar system of political education, these early study groups were not packed with party members; we know, for example, that in Leninsky District in the summer of 1944, the 134 “circles” enrolled 920 communists and 2,737 nonparty Kyivites.62 However, claims that “all the workers” at the “Lenin’s Smithy” Docks were involved in studying Stalin’s book or even that 480 workers, or 65 percent of the workforce at Factory No. 473 (producing aircraft), were all enrolled in 15 study circles devoted to the book do not ring true.63 Indeed, an inspection at the Stalin Docks in the summer of 1944 revealed that “more often what is called ‘study circles’ is actually readings” of Stalin’s book. Of the ten such study groups at this major shipbuilding and ship-repair enterprise, only the one composed of Komsomol activists actually met for discussions, while the other nine were simple readings in factory shops that had already ended.64 In the same factory where 65 percent of the workforce was allegedly enrolled in study groups, an inspection in July 1944 showed that some shops had not even met for a single reading. In Leninsky District, where this plant was located, “most organizations did not finish the study of Comrade Stalin’s book,” most likely a reference to the readings of this 123-page brochure, which had started back in December.65 In the Ministry of Communal Properties (responsible for the maintenance of apartment buildings and such), all study groups had “fallen apart” by the fall of 1944.66 As Maria Pidtychenko explained at a propaganda conference in June 1944, after completing Stalin’s book, all the “circles” were supposed to start studying the compendium of Stalinist ideological and historical dogmas, the 1938 Short Course of party history.67 This transition, however, apparently took place only in some larger organizations that exercised tighter control over political work, such as the “Bilshovyk” Factory, where this change took place in May and June 1944.68 Elsewhere, political education trailed off until the fall, when the authorities launched a serious effort to rebuild it in connection with the Ukrainian Central Committee’s decree of 7 October 1944, which offered systematic study of Marxism as a solution to the escalating problems in Western Ukraine.69

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The new system, in fact, represented a restoration, with some modifications, of the political-education model as it existed in the prewar Soviet Union. At the core of the system rested the education of party members and candidates, along with a smaller share of nonparty activists and professionals, through a network of evening party schools. Every district was to establish one “district party school” for party activists and managerial personnel, as well as several “political schools” in larger organizations for rank-and-file members and nonparty professionals. Political schools did not exist before the war; the authorities introduced this new level for those poorly educated new party members not yet prepared to master the Short Course either independently or in study circles.70 District party schools had a 160-hour curriculum, which could be covered in eight to ten months and included the Short Course as current policies. The course at political schools was supposed to last three to four months and focus on the Short Course and Stalin’s book, although shorter and simpler textbooks of “political literacy” were available. In both cases, a model timetable envisaged four-hour evening meetings: once or twice a week for political schools and twice a week for party schools.71 The creation of evening schools started in December 1944, and by April 1945 the city authorities counted 9 district party schools with a total enrolment of 388 people and 49 political schools with 1,113 students.72 In theory, party members with college degrees were exempt from enrollment, but in practice many of them ended up being forced to attend so that high enrollment numbers would be reflected.73 With classes scheduled twice a week in the evenings, attendance usually plummeted after one or two weeks. In Stalinsky District in January 1945, seventy people enrolled in the party school, but only twenty-nine remained after the first two weeks. Of them, between nine and twelve attended regularly, although the report explains that the students smoked heavily and listened to lecturers without due attention. As a result, the students’ command of the material was very poor.74 In Pechersky District the authorities enrolled in the party school no fewer than 105 activists with educational levels ranging from elementary school (12) to university degree (19), of whom no more than 20 to 40 actually attended classes.75 A similar picture emerges from the reports of other districts, with the notable exception of Molotovsky District, where attendance was exemplary, and party activists and managers excelled in their study of party history under the guidance of instructor Nina Petrivna Kukharchuk, the wife of First Secretary Khrushchev.76 Confusingly, “study circles” continued to exist in tandem with this new party-based system and apparently included a higher proportion of nonparty professionals. As of 1 April 1946, the city had 9 district party schools (354 people enrolled), 33 political schools (782), 248 study circles on

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party history, and 243 circles on Stalin’s book (total enrollment for all circles: approximately 5,000 people). An even higher number—8,015 party members and some 2,000 nonparty intellectuals and professionals—was listed for people studying Marxism independently.77 There is every indication that in the first postwar years, which Kyivites experienced as a time of malnutrition, crowded living quarters, and long working hours, city residents accepted political education as a necessary ritual, but tried to devote as little time and effort to it as possible—just enough to get some orientation in political matters without incurring the wrath of the authorities because of excessive absenteeism. Occasional inspections and grassroots paperwork reveal that some political schools and study circles existed only on paper (as at the Kyiv Locomotive Repair Depot in the spring of 1945), or that a festive meeting to mark the 1st anniversary of Ukraine’s liberation could also be presented as a session that had taken place at a political school or a study circle (as at the Kyiv oblast public library in October 1945).78 Regardless of whether a reading group existed or not, by early 1946 it was common practice to count it either as a study circle or a political school, depending on what was needed, or even as both at the same time. At a motorcycle factory no study circles existed until the first one was created in January 1946 with an enrollment of thirty, but it spontaneously disbanded after the first session.79 At the Maxim Gorky Machine-Building Factory in December 1945, individuals enrolled at a political school were made to sign lists confirming that they had been notified of upcoming study sessions, yet attendance still hovered around 10–30 percent.80 Even bureaucrats had no time to spend on creating the illusion of political education. In the Ukrainian republic’s People’s Commissariat of Fishing Industry, for example, “after the war’s end any political life in the party organization has all but stopped: there are no party meetings; study circles closed down and agitators stopped working.” In the finance and meat and dairy ministries, functionaries justified themselves to inspecting ideologists by offering such excuses as “lack of time” and being “overworked.”81 Low-level managers at “Lenin’s Smithy” put it more bluntly: “I do not want to study” or “my brain doesn’t take in any studying.”82 Study groups and evening schools that met more or less regularly suffered from low attendance and a large student turnover, as well as from the rote teaching method:  most people could not complete the program on time simply because the instructors “were reading the Short Course chapter by chapter.”83 A showcase political-education event could actually lead to embarrassment, as at the “Lenin’s Smithy” Docks in February 1945, when the district party committee organized professors from the Department of the Foundations of Marxism-Leninism at Kyiv University to lead a

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“theoretical conference” on Lenin’s book What Is to Be Done? Apparently lacking any theoretical preparation, but aware of the role the concept of the “working class” played in Soviet political discourse, some of the dock workers challenged the Leninist dogma that “the working class could not independently develop a social democratic consciousness, that it received such consciousness from outside, from the intelligentsia.” A “significant debate” ensued.84 A more appropriate place for such conferences on Marxist theory would have been the highest institutional level of the political-education system, the Evening Marxist-Leninist University that opened in Kyiv in October 1944. The authorities instructed party functionaries, industrial managers, and nonparty intellectuals with university degrees to enroll there for additional training in Marxism. Yet, even these most prominent citizens who agreed to be enlisted were not prepared to attend regularly. In order to look good to their higher-ups, ideologists were forced to modify the enrollment figures on the go. Thus, the original report about the university’s opening mentioned 402 students, but later statistical data referred to 242. This meant that disastrous attendance levels, as on 18 May 1945, when Pidtychenko counted 112 people and complained that “soon there will be no listeners at lectures there,” could still be presented as constituting an attendance level of just under 50 percent.85 During the 1945–46 academic year the university accepted 821 students, but by June 1946 Kyivska Pravda was lamenting the fact that only “220 to 240 out of the 500” enrolled attended lectures.86 In fact, as revealed in an internal memo, the dropout rate after the first year of the two-year program constituted 61 percent in 1945 and 62 percent in 1946. Of the 442 people who had started in 1944, only 88, or 19.8 percent, graduated in 1946; of the 821 originally enrolled in 1945, 253 (30.8 percent) graduated in 1947.87 Nevertheless, the numbers game continued. Enrollments in district party schools remained relatively stable: in 1946 all 12 schools enrolled 327 people; in 1948, 12 schools had 350 students (320 party members and 30 nonparty managerial personnel). At the same time reports boasted significant expansion in other levels of party political education. From 25 political schools with an enrollment of 556 in 1946, the network expanded to 218 schools with 4,073 students (2,333 party members and 1,740 nonparty individuals) by 1948. In 1949 there were 311 political schools with 9,997 students. The Evening Marxist-Leninist University accepted a record 3,950 students in the 1947–48 academic year. Yet, the greatest increase was seen in the number of people engaged in “independent study”—from 23,229 in 1946 (a twofold increase over the previous year) to 30,802 in 1947.88 Party members did not constitute the majority in the latter group. Statistical data from some districts for 1948 indicate that, for example, in Stalinsky

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District, fewer party members (2,935) than nonmembers (3,367) reportedly studied independently.89 The concept of political education by way of “independent study” was engrained in Bolshevik thinking, combining as it did the theoretical belief in a new communist person with a deep-seeded mistrust of real people on the ground. On the one hand, First Secretary Khrushchev waxed philosophical at the June 1946 plenary session of the Ukrainian Central Committee: “A party person, and even more so a party member in a managerial position, ought to have an organic need to read political literature and belles-lettres; and this need has to be cultivated.” On the other hand, he insisted at another party conference in April 1947 on “fully enveloping with Marxist-Leninist education not just new party members but all members, with special attention [paid] to new ones.”90 From a purely organizational point of view, such comprehensive coverage could only be achieved by instructing a large proportion of party members to undertake “independent study.” Moreover, the publication of the authoritative Short Course in 1938 supposedly eliminated the need for a mass network of study circles because this text was thought to be relatively accessible and well suited for independent study—a point much emphasized in the central press immediately after its release.91 By the fall of 1948 approximately half of all party members in the Ukrainian republic and 63  percent of members in Kyiv were listed as engaged in an independent study of Marxism.92 Over the years, Kyivan ideologists of various ranks repeatedly stated in internal memos and unpublished talks that such numbers were “fictitious” (1944); that “in fact, no work is being done as far as studying is concerned” (1946); “local party cells have been cheating on us regarding the state of independent study” (1946); and that “of course, in essence the majority does not engage in any independent study” (1948).93 In other words, it was a world of political illusion, in which both sides pretended to study and supervise, with supervisors only occasionally enforcing even token participation. Such illusions could not be maintained for long. After all, there was a textbook now and inspectors occasionally showed up to check on how both the organized and independent learners of Marxism were mastering their studies. The Short Course, however, proved to be a challenging text for the average Soviet reader. As David Brandenberger has shown in his book Propaganda State in Crisis, Soviet ideologists had already discovered this in the late 1930s, almost immediately after the Short Course’s publication in 1938.94 In postwar Kyiv, failure to complete the “study” of the Short Course was the authorities’ most widespread grievance about the system of political education, from political schools to study circles to those studying independently. The first three chapters of the book, which dealt with the history of the revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire, were relatively

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straightforward, if complex, for the uneducated reader, but Chapter 4 presented an insurmountable obstacle, including as it did a philosophical section “On Dialectical and Historical Materialism.” Even learners with college degrees found it challenging, and yet there was no way of excluding this section, which was (correctly) rumored to have been written by Stalin himself. (He also did substantial editorial work on the rest of the text.95) In fact, newspapers intimated that Stalin’s contribution to the Short Course was even greater: in 1946 Kyivska Pravda referred to the book as “a classic work by Comrade Stalin.”96 No wonder that the “study” of the Short Course, when it was indeed taken more or less seriously, usually amounted, in the words of one political-school instructor at a 1947 conference, to “starting the Short Course with Chapter One and proceeding to Chapter Four. Then the new academic year begins and they start with Chapter One again.”97 Signals about Chapter 4 being incomprehensible for most readers—a problem obliquely phrased as “certain difficulties” in its study—occasionally even made it to the local press. However, if in newspaper stories the solution was invariably to invite some professor of philosophy as a guest lecturer,98 in real life political-education work usually stalled at this point. In Stalinsky District in June 1948 only 27 of 178 study circles on the Short Course finished the book, and “the rest were usually still in the pre-October period” of party history. In Podilsky District 7 out of 74 circles reported completing the program, compared to 32 circles that still had not made it to the Soviet period.99 If the system of political education was not already spinning its wheels, a new challenge materialized in 1946 in the form of Stalin’s multivolume Works. Newspaper editorials with titles like “Stalinist Teaching Inspires” and “A Mighty Ideological Weapon of the Party and the People” called for the mass study of Volume 1.100 However, the articles in Volume 1 dealt with intricate matters of intra-socialist ideological struggles in the Caucasus region at the turn of the twentieth century; the only article that was more or less appropriate for ideological education, “Anarchism or Socialism?,” also had an unfortunate theoretical bent that posed a problem. After some initial reports in August 1946 about “study circles” being organized for the study of Volume 1, these factors, together with the speedy publication of Volume 2, revealed the infeasible nature of the project. Volume 3 came out in November 1946, and by the end of 1947 seven volumes were in print in Russian, while the Ukrainian edition started with the publication of Volume 1 in December 1946.101 Yet, even if unable to digest or keep up with the Works, the system of political education still had to react somehow to this series’ appearance. In the end, ideologists found a compromise in staging public lectures about Volume 1, which various philosophy and history professors read gratis at major factories and other venues. Subsequently,

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Stalin’s Works appeared on the list for individual study for the intelligentsia, but were largely ignored in everyday propaganda.102 Moreover, thousands of Kyivan subscribers did not even bother to pick up newly published volumes of Stalin’s Works and Lenin’s Collected Works. By 1952 city warehouses contained a staggering 88,000 unclaimed copies of various volumes from these series’ Russian and Ukrainian editions.103 In the spring of 1947 a new, more accessible, ideological text seemed to offer a solution—Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin: A Short Biography. This second edition of Stalin’s biography, attributed to a group of authors but edited by the Leader himself, now included the war years, and it generally received much more publicity than the first edition of 1939.104 In March 1946 a decree of the party’s Central Committee introduced a major change to the system of political education with respect to studying the biographies of Lenin and Stalin, with Lenin now added for the sake of appearances, there being no authoritative one-volume biography available at the time. In Kyiv hundreds of study circles were created immediately, and those studying independently began switching to the Short Biography.105 Or, so claimed the official reports. Inspections of political education in 1947–49 revealed the same picture of trying to keep up appearances while doing nothing or next to nothing. The inspectors’ language became more alarmist, with such terms as “collapse” and “disintegration” cropping up increasingly in the discussion of political education even in large organizations. A certain Comrade Lopata declared at a closed-door party meeting at a machine-building factory in 1947: “We have before us the fact of complete failure (polnogo sryva) in the political education of communists.” Meanwhile, Kyivska Pravda lamented the “disintegration” of the district party school in Stalinsky District, where no more than six to eight out of the thirty students who had enrolled kept up their attendance.106 A  year later inspectors found only eight of the Zhovtnevy District’s party school’s thirty-two students, absolutely no political-education work at the “Sport” restaurant, and half of the party members at the “Ukrkabel” Cable Factory apparently not involved in any form of study.107 At the Ministry of Local Industries in November 1947 party organizer Comrade Vanchuk explained the lack of political-education work thus: “You see, the conditions did not allow for it. Many of us had to go on many business trips in order to ensure the fulfillment of the production targets. Because of that, we had to curtail all mass-political work.” The decision to create a study group on Stalin’s biography at the ministry was never implemented, and the study circle on the Short Course ceased meeting much earlier.108 Even at the Kyiv oblast library in 1951, the study circle of reasonably well-educated people could not advance beyond Chapter 2 of Stalin’s biography.109 No matter how accessible the text and how prepared the readers, the symbolic role of such

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studying in the relations between the Soviet state and its citizens was fulfilled the minute a study group was created. Then everybody became too busy to take it seriously. As for those listed as studying Marxism independently, an even smaller proportion of them bothered to keep up appearances. In Podilsky District in 1948, 5,455 people (among them 3,762 party members) were supposedly engaged in independent study. In order to assist them—in reality, to ensure at least some semblance of control—the district authorities distributed 1,500 free subscriptions to a lecture series on Marxist theory, and estimated the average lecture attendance at 200 to 300 people. However, an inspection on 18 March 1948, which was likely announced with at least short advance notice to the district ideologists, found only some 130 people present at the beginning of Professor Kononenko’s lecture on Stalin’s 1924 brochure On the Foundations of Leninism, and a mere 64 who returned after a break.110 For the inspectors, asking questions to check on political literacy often produced embarrassing answers, such as “Lenin described the life of the peasantry, but I have no idea of what his works are.”111 Those supposedly reading Volume 1 of Stalin’s Works claimed that the period covered there was the Bolshevik Revolution. Young workers and Komsomol activists at a motorcycle factory were sometimes even incapable of responding with Stalin’s date of birth or his first name and patronymic!112 Even among mid-ranking party functionaries and managers in Kyiv, all of whom read newspapers, the Central Committee’s inspectors insisted that “none were studying theory.”113 This attentive reading of the press and neglect of Marxist theory by members of Soviet officialdom were a telling sign:  only the former was essential for survival and advancement in the Stalinist political world. This general trend was also reflected at the lowest level of ideological work, in “political information” sessions that thousands of agitators conducted at their workplaces. By 1947 Kyivites were well served with newspapers, with approximate citywide subscription totals of 64,000 all-Union papers, 74,000 Ukrainian ones, and 18,000 specific to Kyiv oblast. In addition, newspaper kiosks sold some 35,000 papers a day. The city also boasted 57,582 wired radio receivers broadcasting only one official news channel (later, two channels).114 Whoever wanted to follow the news and the slightest changes in the party line would have no difficulty in accessing the media. Yet, the state insisted on the continuation of “agitation work,” which for all practical purposes still meant the reading of newspapers. Each district now had thousands of agitators—a total of 19,500 citywide in 1948115—who did not need to be very educated, but needed to command enough respect among their fellow workers to ensure that some newspapers did get read at least occasionally, or that workers covered for them, if necessary, by confirming the fact of such readings. Molotovsky

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Figure 3.1  Agitator M. B. Starik and workers from the First Shoemaking Factory study Stalin’s preelection speech (Kyiv, February 1946). Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

District reported that out of a total of 3,640 agitators in 1948, there were 1,945 party members and 1,150 Komsomol members. The total number also included 385 teachers and 78 physicians, data meant to suggest the high educational level of some agitators without providing an exact statistical breakdown of how many of them had finished school or college. At the Stalin Ship Repair Docks in 1948, for example, 21 of 44 agitators had only an elementary-school education, but the memo explained that they “held authority” in the collective.116 Citywide reports painted a rosy picture of the thousands and thousands of “talks” that were conducted by these agitators:  10,000 talks in Kaganovichsky District alone in the fall of 1949 on the topic of the 10th anniversary of the “reunification” of the western Ukrainian lands (during the Soviet absorption of Eastern Poland in 1939).117 At the Arsenal, 127 agitators reportedly organized 1,481 talks, 2,031 newspaper readings, and 573 lectures in 1949.118 However, that same year an inspection at the Stalin Docks showed that “all mass agitation work in factory shops in the best-case scenario is limited to the reading of random newspaper articles,” implying that, in the worst-case scenario, agitation work was entirely fictional. The effectiveness of such readings was also minimal, as illustrated by an example cited in the same report: On 21 April [1949] in the “red corner” of the wood-panelling shop agitator Com. Taranenko, who is also the shop manager, began reading the latest newspaper, starting

( 88 )  Stalin’s Citizens with telegrams from abroad, then jumped to the three-year plan of developing animal husbandry, but did not manage to say much until somebody switched on the circular saw. After the saw was switched off, he started reading the editorial, obviously without first familiarizing himself with the text, and consequently got confused when he was reading it and as a result ended up rushing through it. During such readings three groups of workers played dominoes and checkers, often slamming them down in excitement, while others slept with their heads on desks and half of the workers simple left the “red corner.”119

Apparently, such open disdain for the ritual of “political information” was quite common among workers. The activities of sleeping, eating, and even working during readings were reported elsewhere in the city.120 A sweeping inspection of political work at “Lenin’s Smithy” in 1947 revealed that, despite the availability of 170 agitators for a workforce of 3,800, “workers were unaware of the most important decrees by the party and the government, questions related to Soviet foreign and internal policies.”121 If the local authorities at least maintained the illusion that ideological education was being conducted at work during the day, even they acknowledged a complete lack of it during night shifts and at dormitories, especially among the nonworking population.122 Things looked particularly bad in outlying suburbs, such as Kurenivka, Pushcha-Vodytsia, Priorka, and Batyieva Hill, and even worse in the large villages just outside the city, from which a significant proportion of the population commuted to work in Kyiv. Villages near railway stations, in particular, grew into real satellite towns, such as Velyka Dymerka (35 kilometers from Kyiv) with a population of 8,000, 724 of whom worked in the capital—many of them railway employees with free passes. According to a 1949 report, the real “center of mass work” in Velyka Dymerka was the local church, while the Komsomol organization there did not grow because “parents forbid the young to join, saying that war is imminent, that the Americans will come and exterminate the communists and Komsomolites.”123 Overall, the story of restoring mass political education in Kyiv even in the immediate postwar years, when citizens were eager to learn about the new party line and demonstrate their allegiance, sheds sobering light on recent theoretical proposals about “Soviet subjectivities” and the internalization of Bolshevik ideology. Things would only worsen towards the end of the Stalin period.

THE TUG OF WAR WITH THE PUBLIC

For ideological reasons, the Soviet leadership was not prepared to tolerate the consensus, developing locally, about simply maintaining appearances

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in political education. Several decrees that were issued in 1947 and 1948 forced local functionaries to take ideological work seriously again, and attempted to streamline the system of political education. The decrees of the all-Union Central Committee on the shortcomings of agitation work in Stalingrad (November 1947) and of the Ukrainian Central Committee on the state of mass-political work in Kharkiv oblast (May 1948) signaled official displeasure with the fictitious numbers and ghost study groups— a point hammered home during subsequent local conferences on propaganda.124 In connection with this, the Kremlin also indicated the ideal progression through the various levels of political education:  political school, study circle on the biographies of Lenin and Stalin, study circle on the Short Course, district party school, study circle on works of Marxist theory, Evening University of Marxist-Leninism, and independent study.125 In practice, the system remained as messy as before, but local functionaries cracked down on the number of those who claimed to be “studying independently,” which led to a decrease in rates from 41,084 in the 1947–48 academic year to 19,300 the following year. Simultaneously, a significant increase in the number of those enrolled in political schools makes one suspect that some party members were simply reassigned from the supposedly highest stage of Marxist education to the lowest one. In Kyiv, the number of political schools rose from 244 (with 5,549 students, including 2,990 party members) to 649 (with 11,984 registered participants, including 10,872 party members). The following year this large, incoming class of the political-education system moved on to the next stage, study circles, and the number of political schools decreased dramatically to 248, with 3,620 students.126 In a way, this indicated that the 1948 reform was a one-time campaign to tighten up the rules, which did not lead to an expansion of party-based political education. In 1947 and 1948 the authorities also tried to strengthen mass agitation work. In connection with the November 1947 decree on political work in Stalingrad, the Kremlin demanded that heads of party committees at all factories and organizations be ex officio chairs of “agitators’ collectives” in the workplace. If this decision was aimed at tightening discipline and assigning responsibility for failures, the accompanying move to force agitators to purchase their own propaganda literature could have been both a fiscal measure and a way of ensuring that they actually acquired brochures with recent speeches and government programs.127 At the same time, the authorities sought to make the readings themselves more interesting for the workers by including literary works by Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Nekrasov, and Maxim Gorky, as well as more popular Soviet novels by Elizar Maltsev, Vera Panova, and Vasilii Azhaev. Newspapers reported on this new emphasis with approval, as they did on other efforts to make the “agitation” sessions

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more attractive, such as group-listening to radio broadcasts or paying more attention to international developments.128 Soon it was considered acceptable for a study circle supposedly focusing on the Short Course to read excerpts from historical novels such as Aleksandr Stepanov’s Port Arthur or Mikhail Sholokhov’s Quiet Flows the Don, attend plays such as Oleksandr Korniichuk’s Sinking of the Squadron, and even watch Soviet spy films such as Secret Mission.129 Other strategies of the late 1940s included a kind of “outsourcing” of mass political education. This could be achieved, first, by organizing a group excursion to Lenin Museum, where experienced guides offered professional lectures and responded to all kinds of questions. The Kyiv branch of the all-Union Lenin Museum reopened on 15 April 1945, and by the year’s end it had registered 96,284 visitors, only 41,534 of them reportedly on group visits; in reality, almost all were likely participants of organized excursions. During 1947 the number of visitors grew to 193,656, and the museum staff offered, in addition to standard excursions, lectures and seminars on the biographies of Lenin and Stalin as well as on general party history and other political topics of the day.130 In 1949 the museum branched out to another part of the city, establishing an exhibit “On the Lives and Activities of Lenin and Stalin” in the land’s largest and oldest monastery, Kyivan Cave Monastery (est. 1051), which then operated as a museum city, although a small community of monks returned to the Lower Caves during the war, thereby creating “difficulties” for ideologists. Leaving aside the fact that the Cave Monastery was traditionally devoted to the veneration of different, non-Marxist, saints, it did not help matters that the monks told visitors that the hermit Archbishop Antonii (Abashidze), who was buried at the entrance to the Near Caves, had been Stalin’s teacher at Tiflis Seminary—which was true.131 Lecture series at Lenin Museum and perhaps at the Cave Monastery, too, were not free, but available by subscription, which could be covered by organizations rather than individuals. For example, in 1945 the Ukrainian Liqueur and Vodka Trust purchased seven subscriptions for its employees for a lecture series on the principal works of Marxism, although the organization had no control over their attendance.132 This method worked for both the ideologues and local party functionaries, the only difficulty being the enforcement of attendance, if it were ever to be checked. A more promising solution emerged with the creation in July 1947 of the Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge. First established in Moscow and soon replicated in all the Union republics (in Ukraine in January 1948), this organization offered academics and other intellectuals a chance to earn a modest honorarium for delivering a lecture, while giving organizations the possibility of paying for these by means of a

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bank transfer to another organization.133 In the first five months the society gave 298 lectures in Kyiv, “over a hundred” of them on the state of international affairs and the rest mostly on Soviet history, Stalin’s biography, and the like. Only one was classified as a lecture on Marxist-Leninist philosophy and two on economic topics, subjects that would become more prominent in later years. Kyivska Pravda also complained about the dearth of lectures on the natural sciences. The cost of a lecture was between 150 and 200 rubles, which some factory party organizers believed was excessive.134 On top of that, lectures tended to be either too complex for their audience or, on the contrary, unprofessional to such a degree that they confused the listeners. In 1949, at the Fifth Construction Administration working on the restoration of Khreshchatyk Boulevard, an audience composed mainly of young female villagers was treated to a lecture on nuclear power, with special attention paid to the structure of an atom. The same year, deputy editor of Kyivska Pravda Comrade Storchak tried to supplement his income by giving a lecture entitled “The Struggle against Cosmopolitanism in Literature,” but he caused agitation among the workers when he proclaimed, “In order to build communism, future generations will have to march through blood and dead bodies.”135 In general, in the late 1940s international affairs commanded the interest of the population, but this topic created serious difficulties for rank-and-file agitators, who simply could not answer any questions from the floor. This was particularly apparent in more complex situations, such as the creation of the Cominform in the fall of 1947, when audiences worried, for example, about the communist parties of China and Great Britain refusing to join this new organization.136 That year in particular, rumors about an impending war sparked popular interest in international developments. By the summer Kyivites were saying that a war had started secretly and that the wounded were allegedly being brought to the city’s hospitals.137 The rumor mill went into overdrive in September 1947, after the Soviet representative at the UN, Andrei Vyshinsky, delivered an address entitled “For Peace and Friendship of Peoples, against the Instigators of a New War.” Broadcast on the radio, it was widely mistaken for either a declaration of war or a signal that war with the United States was in the offing. In Pechersky District, crowds gathered near street loudspeakers and “one could hear talks that Com. Vyshinsky says openly that we will have to go to war against America. They have nuclear bombs and we will attack through Turkey.”138 Others, such as the letter carrier Nina Hryhirova in Stalinsky District, suggested that the United States would begin by attacking Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, which would result in the Soviet Union’s entry into the war—an interpretation indicating some familiarity with current international developments. Radzumovsky, a grinder at the “Trudovyk” collective of disabled workers, also showed some

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Figure 3.2  Workers at the “Bilshovyk” Factory listen to a radio broadcast in the “Red Corner,” a room reserved for political-education sessions (Kyiv, 1946). Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

understanding of the balance of power, even if he exaggerated American achievements by saying, “America is harvesting 175 billion tons of grain per year, and in addition it can carpet bomb anybody with nuclear bombs.”139 There were signs of panic in the city, with some believing that the war was already under way and others claiming that they had heard Stalin himself on the radio declaring war on the United States. Salt, bread, and butter disappeared from shops and bazaars. At Volodymyrsky bazaar, the interpretation that the war was predicted in the Holy Scriptures circulated among female traders:  this war would destroy everything and everyone and would last exactly two months.140 A party organizer at “Lenin’s Smithy” reported to the city party committee: “Com. Vyshinsky’s speech caused great interest in newspapers, which are being snatched up immediately in factory shops. Workers are demanding lectures about the international situation.”141 The UN’s follow-up debates in October, reported in highly charged Cold War language by the Soviet press, sparked a wave of anxiety, as did the creation of the Cominform, and particularly the Soviet breakup with Yugoslavia in 1948, which generated numerous questions and fears of a war not so much against Yugoslavia as the United States.142 During the Korean War a large map of the front lines was installed on Khreshchatyk Boulevard, and in the summer of 1950 the press reported Kyivites gathering near the stand. At lectures and other political-information events, questions about the situation in Korea and the possibility of the United States using

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a nuclear bomb led the way. One could also see an awakening of popular concern about Asia as a possible battleground between the West and the USSR, with factory workers reportedly asking intricate questions about political parties in Japan, the situation in Tibet, developments in India, and the nationalization of Iran’s oil industry.143 Such interest did not extend to Marxist theory, however. The reforms of the late 1940s had only a limited effect on the system of political education. City ideologists claimed during the 1949–50 academic year that the network of schools was “better organized” that year,144 yet by 1952 there was a renewed sense of crisis. As much as functionaries could control things in political education, they tried to implement the directives from above while yielding to pressures from below. One all-Union trend of the early 1950s was to increase the percentage of the general population within the party-based political-school system or, in the words of the Ukrainian Central Committee’s secretary for ideology, Ivan Nazarenko, “to include more non-party activists.”145 This trend is borne out by statistical data. The total numbers of Kyivites reported as studying party history and theory continued to grow: from 64,683 (including 52,383 party members) in 1950 to 77,000 (54,864 party members) in 1951, and to 95,654 (59,217 party members) in 1952.146 In these positive data, however, one discovers a familiar strategy of giving up in the face of local resistance by allowing a significant proportion of “independent students”: 23,565 in 1950; 29,000 in 1951; and 36,000 in 1952.147 The authorities also tried to increase the number of study circles on the biographies of Lenin and Stalin and to enforce the two-tier system among study circles focused on party history: the first year, when students studied the Short Course, and the second year, when they read original works of Marxist classics.148 Like before, however, much of this was pure fiction. In 1950 less than half of the circles and political schools in Kaganovichsky, Molotovsky, and Pechersky Districts survived until the end of the academic year—even on paper. Those that still met were hopelessly behind schedule. Attendance at the Evening Marxist-Leninist University again hovered around the 50 percent mark and probably with the same statistical manipulations as before.149 Rare inspections of the learning process produced examples of sheer ignorance and perhaps even intentional sneering on the part of annoyed workers. For example, during a study circle meeting in the First Shop of the Arsenal Factory in 1951, a worker named Sapak stated that the Soviet Union was created in 1937, and the worker Zakharchuk thus characterized the situation of ethnic minorities in tsarist Russia: “Their life was tough; the Negroes raided them and took everything away.”150 Open resistance to participation in political education also occurred, if only rarely, probably because it was easier to show up a few times than

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fight over the matter. In some cases, however, reports conveyed the voice of protestors, such as Kovalchuk, a mechanical engineer employed at the “Ukrkabel” factory in 1951, who refused to sign up for four years in a row: It does not matter if you give me a reprimand or thirty reprimands. With my party card I fought in the Patriotic War from the beginning to the end. My two children need to be sent to a sanatorium this year, which is why I am taking extra work. I have studied and I am studying, but I cannot attend study sessions. Why are you making an example out of me? I was shell-shocked twice and it is difficult to make my brain work. A reprimand is a big punishment, which I do not deserve. When I come to study sessions, I fall asleep there.151

All these confusing defenses notwithstanding, Kovalchuk ended up with a reprimand noted on his party card, the highest punishment short of expulsion, and probably another indicator to the rest that it was easier just to fake participation. Others refused, claiming that a college degree exempted them from participating in organized study circles, technically a point found in the 1938 directives on propaganda work in connection with the release of the Short Course, but which was largely ignored after the war. Communists were dragged before party committees and threatened with reprimands or worse.152 Those who showed up for study sessions apparently minded their own business. During local ideological conferences, study group and political-school instructors spoke with envy of the disciplinary measures available to their high-school counterparts, as did Comrade Zlobinsky from the metal safes factory in 1951: “Schoolteachers can give an unsatisfactory mark. If a student misbehaves, a teacher can ask him to leave the classroom. Such possibilities are not open to us.”153 In despair, lower-level propagandists turned to in-class readings of literary works, including some “anti-imperialist stories” by Prosper Mérimée, or went straight to the wartime chapter in Stalin’s biography, since the topic of the war always generated reminiscences among audience members.154 Compared to the system of political education, political-information work among the masses reached the stage where statistical data could no longer be compiled with any degree of reliability—no doubt a relief for all parties involved. The authorities limited themselves to counting the number of agitators in the city:  35,686 in 1951, 22,039 of them party members (54 percent of the total) with college degrees completed or in progress.155 The total number of “talks” they gave was now so large as to be meaningless as a measure of success or failure: some 1.4 million people during the 1950 calendar year and 85,000 in the month of September 1951.156 In the early 1950s the city’s ideologists stopped reporting the total number of talks, just as they had done in the late 1940s with the

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totals of listeners. Where statistical information exists for individual organizations, the numbers tend to look suspiciously like rounded-up estimates. Thus, at the Arsenal in 1950, 200 agitators reportedly gave 2,000 talks, 2,500 newspaper readings, and 590 lectures.157 In all probability, only the readings actually happened and likely not in such a large number as was claimed. At the same time, the pay-per-lecture Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge could not satisfy the city organizations’ demand even with some 1,300 lectures per month in early 1952.158 By the early 1950s both agitators and their audiences could no longer maintain the illusion of regular work. Party memos from the period acknowledge that agitation work livened up during various political campaigns (elections, state loans, letter signings), but quickly died out afterward.159 At the “Bilshovyk” Factory in 1952, party organizers acknowledged “the attitude of indifference” that existed in almost all shops as far as mass political work was concerned; scheduled talks often did not take place because “the people did not gather.” In the same factory’s Mechanical Shop during the lunch break in February 1953, workers slept, ate, and played checkers in the area designated as the “red corner”— this, instead of reading newspapers or at least listening to the radio (which was broken).160 Regardless of the demand for lectures on the part of managers concerned with the lack of ideological work in their organizations, the Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge still reported the cancellation of seventeen lectures in January 1952 for lack of an audience. In only one venue in Pechersky District, the summer theater in Mariinsky Park, some thirty lectures had to be canceled in the spring and summer of the same year.161 Even once-popular topics related to the international situation could not command popular attention outside of brief outbreaks of war scares. In February 1951 such a lecture for 400 people at the Factory of Electrical Measuring Equipment was accompanied “from beginning to end by incredible murmuring and yelling,” because the management had staged it as a preelection event and served alcoholic drinks in the cafeteria before the lecture.162 If this was the level of political information in the workplace, things looked even bleaker in the suburbs. As an anonymous concerned Kyiv-based communist wrote to the Central Committee in Moscow in 1951, They are sending you reports about the thousands of talks conducted by agitators. In reality, it is all a lie. Not a single agitator showed up among the residents this summer. You are being duped. Respected comrades, this is what is going on in Kyiv, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR! And what about rural districts, villages—they do not even remember what a central newspaper looks like.163

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In reply to their Moscow superiors, Kyivan bureaucrats kept silent about the extent of agitation work in working-class suburbs, focusing instead on refuting the anonymous author’s other claim that virtually no newspaper kiosks existed there. As it turns out, in 1951 Kyiv had only 57 such kiosks, 12 of which were located in the suburbs; however, they sold some 76,000 papers a day, including 27,500 central newspapers. With subscription numbers added, Kyiv received a total of 258,000 papers daily, but this in itself did not constitute “propaganda work,” so the only possible conclusion in the report was that there were “serious shortcomings.”164 Nevertheless, Stalinist ideologists themselves were well aware of the crisis in propaganda work. At the Seventeenth Congress of the CP(B)U in September 1952, the secretary for propaganda at Dnipropetrovsk city party committee, Comrade Shokhanova, even proposed in desperation that evading political education be considered grounds for expulsion from the party. According to the stenographic record, the audience responded with “animated reaction in the hall,” but that was the extent of the official reaction to such a radical suggestion. Speaking at the same forum, Pidtychenko called for another reorganization of the system of political education—as open an acknowledgment of its failures as was possible in the Soviet official discourse.165

THE LAST HURRAH

Ironically, it was Stalin’s own late theoretical works that presented a challenge to the Soviet political-education system with which it could never quite cope. In June 1950 Pravda published the Soviet leader’s long article on linguistics, declaring “un-Marxist” the influential theories of the leading early Soviet historical linguist Nikolai Marr (1865–1934). Stalin did not deal with Marr’s complex “Japhetic theory” of the origins of all Indo-European languages, but focused instead on the late linguist’s idea about the “class-based character” of language. According to Stalin, nations rather than classes were communities defined by language, which did not change much as the result of revolutions. Accordingly, the Soviet leader called it a simplification of Marxism to include language in the “superstructure” of society, which supposedly changed in accordance with the changes in the “economic base.”166 Although not particularly complex in comparison with Marr’s own writing, average readers found Stalin’s treatise, entitled “Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics,” which was immediately issued as a booklet in colossal print runs, utterly incomprehensible. Soviet ideologists realized this and therefore restricted the text’s inclusion in the network of political education to academics and university students.

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Stalin’s argument also proved difficult to summarize succinctly, leading to the appearance of such vaguely populist formulas as “it is the people who create language” in explanatory literature.167 A far greater challenge to the system emerged with the publication in 1952 of Stalin’s work Economic Problems of Socialism. Given how fundamental the subject of political economy was for Marxist-Leninist ideology, the ideologues had no choice but to focus the political-education network on the Leader’s latest text. Moreover, Stalin’s treatise, which developed from his comments on the draft textbook on political economy, addressed issues that were central to the Soviet social sciences. For example, Stalin affirmed the continued existence of objective economic laws under socialism (as opposed to the state’s regulation), while defining them as “planned proportional development” of the economy aimed at the satisfaction of society’s requirements, rather than profit. He also confirmed the persistence of commodities under socialism. Prior to his intervention, Soviet economists were actually split on these issues.168 In any case, the concepts involved went well over the average reader’s head. Luckily for the ideological functionaries, Stalin’s text appeared in the press in early October 1952, just days before the opening of the Communist Party’s Nineteenth Congress, the first one in thirteen years and thus a major political event that overshadowed everything else. Before the congress even ended, Soviet citizens began “studying” its materials, primarily Malenkov’s speech and Stalin’s brief concluding remarks. However, what the media branded as “study” amounted, in practice, to a mere group reading, as transpires from many lower-level reports and even some newspaper articles.169 Just how attentive the Ukrainian party bosses were to the language used in reporting is revealed in the transcript of the first meeting of the Ukrainian Central Committee after the party congress ended. In reviewing the draft report to Moscow, First Secretary Melnikov came upon this sentence:  “Millions of workers are involved in collective readings of these historic documents.” He then demanded that the term “studying” be used instead, lest it appeared that “our people are illiterate.”170 Of course, the difference was not simply in the level of education implied but also in the question of agency—suggesting active involvement as opposed to passive listening. Whether the masses “studied” the speeches or simply heard them broadcast and read to them once again by agitators, what really mattered to the ideologists was the popular enthusiasm these texts allegedly generated. Leninsky District reported that, as a result of studying the speeches, its residents and workers “expressed their devotion to and love for our party, the Soviet state, and Comrade J. V. Stalin.” The employees of “Lenin’s Smithy” Docks also felt “happiness and pride” in Soviet achievements, and they

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“unanimously expressed their heartfelt gratitude to the Communist Party and the wise leader of the Communist Party and the Soviet People, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.” Office workers at the Liqueur and Vodka Trust accepted new annual targets, having been “inspired by the dear leader’s work, Economic Problems of Socialism.”171 The latter formula was surely related to some local functionaries’ attempt to solve their problem with Stalin’s treatise by blending the “study” of it with that of the congress materials. Thus, an early report from Darnytsia District claimed that the population “studied” both the congress documents and Stalin’s work through participation in 7,000 “talks and readings” involving 80,000 people.172 However, the republic’s bosses did not endorse such an initiative. As First Secretary Melnikov explained to the members of the CPU Central Committee in December 1952: We should not confuse the explication of the congress’ decisions and that of Comrade Stalin’s works. The works of Comrade Stalin require scholarly explanation by highly qualified lecturers. It is not reasonable to expect that in the nearest future lectures about Comrade Stalin’s book will be given in every village. We would not find the lecturers for that, and no simplification should be permitted in this case.173

Thus, the Ukrainian party boss, who was likely taking a cue from senior ideologists in Moscow, effectively excluded Stalin’s book from the list of current political documents to be “studied” by the masses. Eliminated from the domain of mass political information, which the authorities treated more or less openly as a ritual of thanksgiving, the book now ended up in the system of political education. There, the appearance of “studying” involving individual and group work still had to be maintained. Beginning on 1 January 1953, the entire system of political education officially switched from its regular program to the study of the congress proceedings and Stalin’s economic treatise.174 Before January was over, however, newspaper articles signaled widespread difficulties with the study of Stalin’s book, noting in particular its superficial approach and proliferation of embarrassing mistakes.175 Archival documents paint a picture that was even more troublesome for Stalinist ideologists. Any serious study of Economic Problems of Socialism was reserved for second-year political-education circles specializing in political economy. Such groups, totaling only 50 in the 1952–53 academic year, constituted a tiny segment in the city’s system of political education, which included several thousand circles, schools, and seminars. Members of political economy circles, most of them engineers and economists, were supposed to spend between 34 and 52 hours a year working through Stalin’s text. For the 17 district

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party schools, the ideologists slotted only 8 hours for studying the book, while the almost 600 political schools and all other types of circles did not read it at all.176 In practice, even seminar leaders responsible for educating rank-and-file propagandists could not make sense of Stalin’s work. Most organizations did not have knowledgeable economists among their staff, but relied on invited lecturers from the city’s colleges or high schools and counted lecture attendance as participation in the study of Economic Problems. Between October 1952 and February 1953 the city party committee reported organizing a whopping 2,420 lectures.177 Yet, even professional economists and social-science instructors faltered when faced with theoretical questions about the Soviet economy. A  city-level report on ideological work recorded an embarrassing gaffe by Deputy Finance Minister Comrade Popov, who claimed in a public lecture that planning was the main economic law of socialism—the very notion that Stalin had specifically disproved in his book (he argued instead that planned proportional development aimed at improving the well-being of the Soviet people, rather than profit, constituted such a law).178 At the Administration of the Southwestern Railway, the propagandist D. Ahranat explained the 130 percent industrial growth in the Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe by the “impoverishment of the workers” there.179 Another local report preserved the following entertaining exchange between the workers of the Karl Marx Chocolate Factory and their propagandist, Professor Kuznetsov from the Agricultural Institute, who could not quite handle questions from the floor: Is there exploitation [of labor] in our country? No. And what about housekeepers? Well, yes, [hiring] housekeepers constitutes exploitation. So, this means that all our responsible workers are exploiters? Well, in this case, housekeepers do not constitute exploitation.180

Most of those registered as engaged in “independent study” did not have the nerve even to claim that they had worked their way through Economic Problems, reporting instead that they had studied the congress proceedings. The Ukrainian Central Committee concluded in February 1953 that even the party members among those studying independently “were not prepared to take on Economic Problems.”181 Invited lectures were again the preferred solution for those few who could be persuaded to sign up for independent study of Stalin’s book.182 College and high-school instructors invited to lecture or supervise circles at other organizations received honoraria from the latter, although neither side publicized this fact.183

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That the system of political education could not deal with Stalin’s last theoretical work was but one indication of its many failures. However, the authorities did not necessarily perceive them as such because, in their perception, political information and political education were lumped together as yet another ritual of participation marking a person’s inclusion in the Soviet political world. By 1953 an army of 41,929 agitators (24,399 of them with university degrees completed or in progress) stood by prepared to read and explain to Kyivites any new ideological pronouncement from the Kremlin. The previous year they conducted approximately 1 million “talks” involving over 10 million citizens, or 10 times the city’s population.184 In addition to the “agitators” who kept mass political information going, 6,118 “propagandists” ran the system of political education, which in the 1952–53 academic year included no fewer than 3,363 study circles, 597 political schools, and 17 district party schools, as well as 676 theoretical seminars and 73 lecture series for those studying independently. The total number of students in the system of political education that year stood at 105,381, and 58,784 of them were candidates or members of the Communist Party.185 What this meant in practice is that “almost all communists, except for the sick and the elderly”186 were enrolled in various types of political education, as were tens of thousands of nonparty Kyivites—all those socially active workers in good standing with the management and people with any ambition of social advancement. Yet, if being a good Stalinist citizen required enrollment, it did not necessarily require actual attendance or study. Mere days before Stalin’s death, the Ukrainian Central Committee devoted its plenary meeting to the shortcomings ofpropaganda work in Kyiv. The speakers at this conference (27– 28 February 1953) revealed that attendance in study circles did not exceed 50 to 60 percent even when organizations received advance notice of an inspector’s visit. Study circles were constantly disintegrating and being reformatted; listeners did not appear to take any notes.187 Even in large factories, such as the “Bilshovyk,” talks were canceled regularly because “people did not show up.”188 Little or no illusion of political education was maintained in factory dormitories and at construction sites—places where one would find the most mobile young workers with nothing to lose. The authorities also did not truly reach out to nonworking residents of distant suburbs.189 For the first time in postwar Kyiv, party bosses also showed awareness of gender misbalance in political education, which probably reflected a general late-Stalinist stereotype of women’s largely secondary, auxiliary role in the political sphere. With over 190,000 women in the city workforce, party functionaries were of the opinion that the “majority of them [were] neither involved in political work nor included in the system of political education.” Meanwhile, 1,570 of the working women in Kyiv were officially classified as

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“illiterate” and another 3,200 as possessing “little literacy.”190 The cadre of agitators and propagandists was not necessarily adequately educated either, with over 3,000 agitators and something like a hundred propagandists having completed only elementary school.191 However, speakers decried as the greatest failure of all the fact that the 31,193 Kyivites (22,435 of them party members) registered as studying independently “in fact do not study at all and demonstrate ignorance in the questions of Marxist-Leninist theory.”192 When First Secretary Melnikov reported to Georgii Malenkov in Moscow on the outcome of the plenary meeting, he modified this statement to read, “Many communists among those studying Marxist-Leninist theory independently in fact do not do any studying.”193 However, any such revelations and proposed remedial measures in a report from Kyiv did not receive due attention from Malenkov. On the day the report was transmitted, 3 March 1953, Stalin was lying in a coma in his countryside villa outside Moscow, while Malenkov and other lieutenants were jockeying for power. Centered as it was on Stalin’s persona and pronouncements, the rigid Soviet system of political education was about to experience a shock followed by liberalization and restructuring. Already in the summer of 1953 articles in party journals signaled to agitprop activists the end of the Stalin cult. Phrased as the restoration of proper Marxist views on the role of great individuals and popular masses in history, such texts effectively undermined the very axis of Soviet political education.194 In September 1953 the party’s Central Committee in Moscow responded to pressure from below by decreeing the principle of voluntary enrollment in political education. In Kyiv, and probably elsewhere in the Soviet Union, this was understood as permission to dissolve the system completely. In at least three city districts party functionaries decided to cancel evening party schools altogether. A number of the city’s organizations did not establish any study circles for the new academic year, releasing nonparty activists from any obligations and listing all party members as enrolled in independent study. At the Motorcycle Factory the party bureau defined independent study as “listening to the radio and reading newspapers.”195 At the Ukrainian republic’s Prosecutor General’s office, the party organizer Yefymenko defined the new line on political education by citing the first lines of a well-known Ukrainian folk song: “Unsaddle the horses, boys, and lie down to rest.”196 The system of mass political information also suffered from mass absenteeism. After Stalin’s death the rate of people not showing up for public lectures on political topics rose dramatically, with Kyiv’s Factory No. 483 (which produced military aircraft) furnishing some of the most glaring examples.197 As a result of all these developments, the Kremlin had to issue a clarification that it did not intend to liquidate the system of political education.198

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Local party organizers had to go back to twisting people’s arms to make them enroll, or at least to creating study circles on paper. Workers were again herded to newspaper readings and public lectures, at least when inspectors were expected. Believing in the transformative function of political education, the Soviet authorities strove to include all Kyivites in various forms of political information and political education. At first, the population of the recently liberated city responded enthusiastically, because political information was essential for orientation in the Soviet political world and because taking part in study sessions served as an expression of loyalty. However, popular interest soon waned, and a tug of war ensued over attendance of what had ossified into yet another ritual of participation, and one of the least popular ones at that, because it required a regular time commitment. Nearly universal passive (and, at times, active) resistance to required attendance casts doubt on recent theories about the mass internalization of communist ideology and the development of “Soviet subjectivities.” Run by “volunteer” agitators and propagandists, the mammoth system of political information and political education could not digest any more complex Marxist works, but for ideological reasons the authorities could not accept it for what it really was: another locus of symbolic interaction between the citizens and the state, a place to express thanks and enthusiasm in response to any official pronouncement. Tension between the system’s proclaimed intent—the study of Marxism as a means of raising consciousness—and its actual political function as a ritual of participation was at the root of the state’s perennial dissatisfaction with agitprop.

C H A P T E R  4

w

The Toilers’ Patriotic Duty

I

n the summer of 1952 the employees of several major factories in Kyiv made a commitment to meet the year’s production targets early—by Stalin’s birthday on 21 December. At the “Bilshovyk” plant, the party organizer A. V. Yurkevych spoke of this promise as reflecting the workers’ “gratitude to the Communist Party and Comrade Stalin.” However, the results of the first six months of 1952 offered few grounds for optimism. Nearly 3 percent of the ready production went straight to waste and only 86.5 percent could be delivered to consumers. Because of the low pay and deplorable working conditions, as many as 300 workers’ vacancies remained unfilled.1 As Yurkevych’s audience were well aware, however, it was more important to make a solemn promise to Stalin than to fulfill it, because the former was an act charged with political symbolism, while the latter was just a question of fixing the books. Yet, throughout the Stalin period and afterward, the Soviet authorities insisted on treating labor enthusiasm as proof of political allegiance. Perhaps it even functioned as such in the very first months after the city’s liberation. A week after the Red Army took Kyiv, on 13 November 1943, the Germans counterattacked, launching a forty-day period of heavy fighting and mutual encirclement attempts just west of the city. Stalin worried mightily about the situation west of Kyiv, even calling his generals during breaks in the Teheran conference of the Big Three, which began on 28 November.2 His concern, however, was nothing compared to the anxiety of ordinary Kyivites. As the radio and the press reported the renewed German capture of nearby Zhytomyr and Korosten,3 many residents of the capital withdrew from public life and stopped going to work. In the words of an internal party memo, “Some population groups do not want to be seen as ( 103 )

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activists (ne bazhaiut sebe aktyvno proiavliaty) and are refraining from going to work in the factories and Soviet organizations.”4 The Red Army managed to push the Germans back in late December, defeating them decisively in areas west and south of Kyiv by mid-February 1944. However, the population’s attitude in the critical days of late November and early December was telling. In the political world that Stalin’s citizens inhabited, even going to work—and, especially, working with enthusiasm—could be regarded as a statement of allegiance to the powers that be. At least, this was the understanding the Soviet authorities inculcated in their citizens. According to Pravda, those Kyivites who spontaneously went to their workplaces during the first few days after the city’s liberation were moved by “the great force of a Soviet person’s patriotism.”5 Subsequent exhortations in Kyivan newspapers presented the city’s reconstruction as the duty of “conscientious citizens-patriots” and characterized donations to the Red Army Fund as both “our first duty to the state” and a “demonstration of the Ukrainian people’s patriotism.”6 “Tireless, honorable labor” was a citizen’s duty in wartime, but in peacetime it too held political meaning: “The laboring masses of Kyiv and Kyiv oblast respond to the greatest legislator of our epoch, Comrade Stalin, for his care (pikluvannia) with their heroic labor in socialist fields, at plants and factories, at reconstruction and construction sites of Kyiv and the oblast.”7 In other words, “heroic labor” in the workplace, combined with occasional volunteer labor and subscription to state loans—which essentially represented volunteering for a pay reduction—was to become part of the symbolic political relationship between citizens and the state, a relationship in which the masses were expected to demonstrate their Soviet patriotism and love for Stalin through daily sacrifices. As with other aspects of this multifaceted symbolic relationship, toiling for the state and making donations to it had to reflect the people’s sincere “civic emotions” rather than their resignation to obligatory participation. As in other cases, however, the authorities transmitted this obligation to ordinary citizens through the mechanisms of communal authority (ad hoc workplace committees, the institution of volunteer agitators, and other forms of peer pressure) as much as through brutal state coercion. Since these local networks often embraced traditional egalitarianism, communal notions of moral economy could thus both assist in and put limits on the state’s grand project of creating “good Soviet citizens.”

A TAX ON PATRIOTS

The day after the Red Army took Kyiv, Pravda published Stalin’s order, in his capacity as commander in chief, designating fifty-four divisions

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and regiments that took part in the fighting near the Ukrainian capital as “Kyivan.” By the end of the operation in the sector west of Kyiv in February 1944, a total of sixty-five military units obtained the right to include the word “Kyivan” as part of their official name (some held dual designations, with “Kyivan-Zhytomyran” being the most popular combination).8 The Soviet authorities saw such geographical designations not only as a way to stimulate soldiers’ pride in their regiments but also as an opportunity to establish a special relationship between military units and the cities after which they were named. Starting early in 1944, Kyiv’s districts and larger enterprises sent their liberators occasional “reports” on their labor achievements and efforts to restore the ruined city. The military, in turn, promised to vanquish the Nazis as their revenge for the Kyivites’ sufferings.9 These were not private letters but official documents prepared by party functionaries and army political officers. However, it would be too easy to dismiss them as representations of official discourse, which had precious little to do with the world of ordinary Kyivites. In fact, the same formulas were repeated at every meeting in the smallest organization. For the majority of Kyivites who had family members in the Red Army or mourned their war dead, this was as much an opportunity to make sense of their own lives in the larger political context as a chance to “speak Bolshevik” publicly. This explains the frequent “personal” statements that were heard at various meetings in the workplace, as we will see below. In the early months after the liberation, Kyivites sent gift parcels to the army in impressive numbers: approximately 10,000 as New Year gifts for 1 January 1944 and over 8,000 gifts that were sent in time for the next Red Army Day (23 February 1944).10 This, too, was a centrally organized campaign that allowed individual contributors to support the Soviet military effort by expressing care and appreciation for an anonymous soldier who would receive their gifts. (Only some gift parcels went to Kyivan divisions.) Packages typically included underwear, sweaters, towels, combs, razors, tobacco pouches, tobacco, cigarettes, biscuits, sugar, wine, and vodka, and most of these products were homemade.11 Last but not least, gift parcels could contain letters ranging from short notes to long, politically sound treatises. Soldiers often replied to them.12 However, civilians’ personal and symbolic connection with the army, which developed through such interactions, was at cross purposes with the foundational moral economy of Stalinism. Citizens were supposed to be thankful to Stalin rather than the Red Army, certain regiments, or individual soldiers. Therefore, in the grand scheme of extracting resources from the population, “gifts to the front” were a minor component, further diminishing with time. Participation in this campaign was not necessarily proof of patriotism and love for the Soviet state.

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What the newspapers hailed as a “patriotic movement” and “manifestation of the Ukrainian people’s patriotism” was donations to the Defense Fund, or essentially to the state, which traditionally generated thank-you letters from Stalin himself to districts, enterprises, and even individuals making particularly large contributions.13 By the time the Soviet power returned to Kyiv, there already existed in the Soviet Union at war a convention of “voluntary-obligatory” contributions to the Defense Fund and examples of “Stakhanovite” donors, such as the beekeeper Ferapont Golovaty from Saratov oblast in Russia (actually an ethnic Ukrainian born in Poltava oblast) who gave 100,000 rubles to the Fund in 1942. Just like those of the original Stakhanovites, the records of these donors could be inflated or otherwise organized by the state—although Golovaty’s family still claims to this day that this was not the case.14 In Kyiv, the largest individual contribution was made two days after the city’s liberation, but it was not reported in the press until three months later, in February 1944, when the campaign to collect money and valuables for the Defense Fund really took off in the city. This suggests that the donor, a 74-year-old retired female schoolteacher by the name of Paraska Berezkina (residing at 41 Artem Street, apt. 4) might not even have known of the Defense Fund’s existence when she offered, under whatever circumstances, her donation consisting of a gold chain, gold watch, gold pendant with diamonds, emerald brooch, and two gold hairpins. Moreover, the authorities probably inflated the gift’s value substantially by appraising it at 100,000 rubles.15 In any case, Berezkina’s donation was made public only in February 1944, when she received a personal if standard reply from Stalin: “Please accept my greetings and thanks for your care (zabotu) of the Red Army.”16 By then, Berezkina was one of many such donors in Kyiv. The head of the air-defense unit at the “Ukrkabel” cable factory, Tetiana Myhal, donated gold items valued at 40,000 rubles along with 24,000 rubles in cash in an effort, as specified in her letter to Stalin, “to help my husband, who is fighting in a partisan detachment, and all beloved fighters of the Red Army.” Serhii Feodorovych and Neonila Mykhailevska, a married couple, wrote to Khrushchev to thank Stalin and the Red Army for the liberation of Kyiv. They also donated several gold and silver items. A man named Hryhorzhevsky telegraphed a message to Stalin: “I have two sons, both of them officers in the Red Army. I myself am too old and cannot serve.” He volunteered to help by donating 3,000 rubles.17 In the first week of February 1944, in Pechersky District alone, the authorities collected 1,290,248 rubles in cash, 400,795 rubles in prewar government bonds, and 768 grams of gold and silver items for the Defense Fund. At larger enterprises, it was not unusual to collect over 100,000 rubles in one day. For example, 130,000 rubles were raised at the “Bilshovyk” factory

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on 4 February, although archival documents show that some “cash” contributions were actually promissory notes to be covered by future salaries.18 By 26 February 1944 the total value of contributions to the Defense Fund in Kyiv stood at 4,439,663 rubles and, by early 1945, at 22 million.19 In Kyiv oblast the state paid for some grain, meat, milk, and other products that were collected from the peasants, but it also took a considerable amount without payment, as “voluntary” contributions to the Defense Fund. As a result, by 12 February Kyiv oblast had collected 7.2 million in donations, far exceeding the capital city itself, which had raised only 1.7 million. By early April 1944 the combined donations in the city of Kyiv and Kyiv oblast reached the equivalent of 39  million rubles, an achievement reported to Stalin in a solemn letter. As usual, the Leader responded by sending his “fraternal greetings and thanks [on behalf] of the Red Army.”20 Parallel to the collections for the Defense Fund were fundraisers organized for more specific causes that presented Soviet-style “naming opportunities.” As soon as the Red Army liberated a few eastern Ukrainian oblasts (only temporarily, as it turned out) in 1942, the authorities channeled to them collections for the “Soviet Ukraine” tank column, which totaled over 10 million rubles.21 In February 1944 Kyivites joined the effort by fundraising for the “Kyiv” tank column, which was also known as “The Kyivan” (Kyianyn) and “The Liberators of Kyiv” during the first weeks of the campaign. No fewer than three entities claimed to have initiated the collection for the tank column: the First Footwear Factory, the “Bilshovyk” factory, and the city’s Zhovtnevy District.22 A  closer look at the original reports, however, suggests that money was collected for the Defense Fund and later designated for the tank column. The 130,000 rubles collected at the “Bilshovyk” on 1 and 2 February 1944 were first reported as a contribution to the Defense Fund, but ten days later this sum figured in the workers’ letter to Stalin as their gift for the “Kyiv” tank column.23 As was the case with donations to the Defense Fund, contributions to specific causes were typically accompanied by letters or telegrams to Stalin, which generated his standard reply consisting of “fraternal greetings and gratitude on behalf of the Red Army.”24 The press and official reports characterized such monetary contributions to the war cause as the Kyivites’ “patriotic initiative” or “demonstration of patriotism.”25 If this manifestation of patriotism included a general moment of symbolic interaction with Stalin, who received thanks for the liberation and thanked donors on behalf of the army, it also envisaged the possibility of naming a tank “Lenin’s Smithy” after one’s factory or even “Nikita Khrushchev” after the Ukrainian party leader (an initiative of the Kyiv Opera Company). The “Artem” factory collected funds for a warplane called “Artemivets,” and the Southwest Railroad raised donations for the plane “Kyivan Railway Worker.”26 By the end of

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1944 the authorities had collected 22.5 million rubles for “tanks and aircraft” and 22 million for the Defense Fund in Kyiv. The term “tank column” conveniently did not have a set numerical definition of how many tanks it included, but in February 1945 newspapers reported that the “Kyiv” tank column had gone into battle.27 Together with such extraordinary ad hoc mechanisms for “voluntary-obligatory” fundraising, the state also restored the regular system of annual purchase of government bonds. Kyivites missed the First State War Loan in the spring of 1942; the Second War Loan, issued in May 1943, reached them only in December of that year.28 The subscription drive was launched in workplaces on the morning of 25 December under the slogan “Let’s lend the state our two-week pay,” and it came with the expectation that pledges in every organization would approach the equivalent of a worker’s monthly salary. Ad hoc “assistance committees” in every office and factory facilitated the fundraising in order to maintain the pretense of an arms-length relationship with management, which in reality was involved as well. By day’s end, 4,188 people working in 134 organizations in Leninsky District pledged 878,380 rubles, or 52 percent of their monthly pay, contrary to the claim in the same report that “most toilers are subscribing to a monthly rather than two-week salary.”29 In fact, the average contribution per employee was only 210 rubles as compared to the average of 635 rubles for 31 private traders and craftsmen in the district, who took part in the fundraising on the first day. The average contribution from 1,255 people among the “unorganized population” was only 58 rubles.30 Party functionaries staged the subscription as a public event involving meetings in workplaces, where citizens thanked Stalin and the Red Army for liberating them from the Nazi yoke. Contrary to what would become the norm at such events, statements recorded in December 1943 tend to be highly personalized, with descriptions of individual sufferings under the occupation predominating over the ritualistic language of gratitude. Of course, this did not indicate opposition to the official discourse but, rather, its peculiar refraction in individual narratives that combined expressions of patriotism with a plea for help and hope for a better future, as in the words of a certain Halchynsky, an employee of the Botanical Garden: The Germans burnt my house and all my belongings. I was left in my underwear. Right now my material circumstances are very difficult—other people are giving me clothes to wear. Regardless of my difficult circumstances, I am subscribing for 1,000 rubles or three-month pay and will be looking for an additional job in order to provide for my family.31

If some Kyivites explained their enthusiasm for state bonds in terms of the suffering they had endured under Nazi rule, which they called a “heavy

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yoke,” “worse than hell,” and something they “barely survived,”32 others related this official campaign to their life experiences by equating the concept of donating to helping their relatives in the Red Army. For example, the housekeeper at the Marseilles Hotel, Comrade Shmalko, signed up for 375 rubles, three times her monthly salary of 125, explaining that both her sons were at the front.33 Still, the overwhelming majority of Kyivites were prepared to satisfy only the minimum demand of the state—two weeks’ worth of their wages. There were also those who simply refused to contribute. To the authorities, the refusal to reestablish a symbolic bond with Soviet power after two years of German occupation was a political statement, which they tried to explain through the person’s social background or enemy connections. Thus, in a single residential apartment block in Leninsky District, where four women categorically refused to subscribe, two allegedly had a Nazi connection—the husband of one of them had worked for the Gestapo during the occupation, and the other woman’s husband was recently arrested by the NKVD for collaboration. In the latter case, the woman also openly admitted that, for her, life was better under the Germans. The other two were private traders at a bazaar.34 Was this particular apartment block exceptional? Although many such incidents occurred throughout the city in 1944, in this case the zealous apartment manager, Comrade Loiko, wrote an extraordinarily detailed report spelling out all the details. In later years, too, there were citizens who refused to buy state bonds, but local organizers always preferred to persuade rather than denounce them. The first subscription drive after the city’s liberation, however, was exceptional both because the authorities expected to encounter lasting effects of Nazi propaganda and because numerous private traders—a category that would all but disappear by 1946—still felt relatively independent of the state. In fact, private traders constituted the majority of abstainers in many districts, and they justified their actions (or lack of) by pointing to the high taxes and meager incomes.35 In the end, the authorities in Kyiv raised the impressive sum of over 15.5  million rubles:  12,796,425 from 50,106 members of the working population, 610,175 from 10,634 unemployed individuals, and 2,059,170 from an unspecified number of employees of “secret organizations.” These secret organizations—army and security units stationed in the Ukrainian capital—were so secretive that the press did not even report the amount of their monetary contribution. However, only 586,778 rubles of the total sum were in the form of cash; the rest was to be contributed through payroll deductions over the next four months.36 The newspapers did not report how much the republic’s leadership contributed, but an archival note reveals that Khrushchev did not overdo it—he only pledged his monthly

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pay. Also unmentioned by the press was that in the spring of 1944 twenty Kyivan bureaucrats received bonuses of between 300 and 1,000 rubles for their “successful organization of subscriptions” for the state bonds.37 With the routine of yet another political ritual thus reestablished, subsequent subscription campaigns proceeded according to the same general scenario, with the exception that their amounts increased in line with the growing numbers of the city’s residents and an increase, beginning in 1944, of the expected individual contribution to the equivalent of one month’s wages. In fact, these amounts were subject to secret negotiations between the city authorities and the People’s Commissariat of Finance. In advance of the May 1944 subscription campaign, the ministry set the “planned” amount for Kyiv at 83 million, but the municipal bureaucrats, who not only had to meet but exceed the “plan,” argued that such a figure had “no basis in reality.” They estimated the total amount of monthly salaries for all civilian organizations at 25 million, for “secret organizations” at 4 million, and for a possible contribution from “unorganized populations” at 1  million. Considering the presence of an undisclosed number of well-paid military personnel in the city, the ministry agreed to lower the target to 53.7 million—a figure ultimately duly exceeded, with the collection of 71,816,200 rubles.38 Per-capita contributions increased considerably once the bar was raised to one month’s salary. In Pechersky District it constituted an average of 511 rubles for individual employees and 131 for nonworking persons.39 Bonuses for bureaucrats also increased considerably, with all district party bosses now receiving 1,000 each and other minor officials, 800 rubles each.40 In reports to their superiors, Kyivan party functionaries characterized the loan’s success in the city as a “response to the dear leader from the Soviet patriots of the city of Kyiv” or as a “striking demonstration of the working masses’ love and devotion to our Motherland and dear Stalin.”41 Statements recorded at workplace meetings, even those that were reported in the press, nevertheless tended to be more down-to-earth and personalized, referring more to their loved ones at the front than to Stalin. Even if they were ghost-written by local party organizers, it is telling that they chose to put such words in the mouths of the “people.” For example, Saranchuk, a worker employed at the Third Machinery Repair Depot in Stalinsky District, said at a meeting, “I have five children and my husband is at the front. I am subscribing for 1.5 times my monthly salary in order to crush the Nazi invaders faster, and I call on everyone to do the same.”42 There were refusals to participate, of course, but the authorities were no longer interpreting them as vestiges of German influence or signs of a “wrong” social background. In fact, those who declined or subscribed to very small amounts usually did not hearken to the German occupation, but

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pleaded intolerable material circumstances. For example, local functionaries reported the postal worker Olifer in Pechersky District as saying that “his children were allegedly starving”—the word “allegedly” having been inserted to distance district bureaucrats from such ideologically incorrect language. One possible exception was the yard-keeper L. F. Hutchenko in Stalinsky District, who explained his contribution of only 50 rubles by saying that he would have given more last year because life was better then.43 The ambiguous “last year” could refer either to the previous state loan in December 1943 or to the period of the German occupation, which ended in November. In the official discourse, the purchase of state bonds was presented as a selfless act of patriotic love, in terms suggestive of a nonrefundable gift. In fact, loans had a maturity term of 20 years, with one-third of the bonds (denominated in amounts of between 25 and 500 rubles) selected in lotteries over the 20-year term for prizes valued at between 500 and 50,000 rubles each.44 One session of the second All-Union Lottery of the Third State Loan was actually held in the Kyiv Opera House in October 1945 and widely covered in the press. Three Kyivites won 1,000 rubles each and a war widow by the name of Bublyk won 5,000.45 For the overwhelming majority of bondholders, however, inflation, two currency reforms, and various exchanges of bonds to those of a new series that would not mature until the 1980s meant that they had, in fact, donated their own money to the state. The Fourth State War Loan, the last, was distributed just days before victory was declared on 4 May 1945, in the amount of 126  million in Kyiv.46 Billed by the press as the “Victory Loan,” it was also the last one to feature personal wishes and narratives recounted at meetings. Officials recorded the words of housewives buying bonds “so that my husband will come back with the victory,” “because my husband and son are at the front,” or “to avenge my killed pilot husband.” The warehouse manager of the Fifth Bread Factory, a disabled war veteran named V. Ikov, said, “I spilled my blood on the battlefield for the Motherland, and now I am giving three months of my pay for the cause of the final victory.”47 Whether spontaneous or prepared, such statements, weaving life experiences into the fabric of the official discourse, would become increasingly rare during peacetime. Instead, cases reflecting a more or less subtle refusal to exceed the suggested contribution amount, accompanied by complaints about the low living standard, would become the norm. One early and rather extreme example occurred during a short meeting held at the Kyiv oblast industrial insurance office before the start of the subscription drive in May 1945. As soon as the head of the organization’s party group, Comrade Fedotova,

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began beseeching the employees to give more than their monthly pay, the office manager, Comrade Ilchenko, yelled at her: Don’t you propagandize [ne ahitui] me. You are starving too, while the bosses eat. Yesterday I went to see Litvinov at the oblast trade department and you should have seen what an abundant breakfast was delivered to him, while we are starving! Let them sign up even for an annual pay, but I will only sign up for a month; I have lots of deductions as it is.48

Following this incident, many other workers at the insurance office refused to subscribe for more than their monthly pay, and it took much effort and pressure to bring the organization’s total to 135 percent of the salary pool. Another incident reported in 1945 linked the refusal to buy bonds with insufficient food supplies. Shkurliak, a worker employed at the “Stroidetal” construction components factory, responded to the appeal to contribute by saying “enough of this twaddle” and asked who was responsible for the meals in the factory canteen.49 That year the Soviet authorities extended their payment-by-installments scheme from four to ten months, which led to the last payments for the 1945 bonds being made in February 1946, a mere two months before the start of payments for the 1946 bonds.50 Effectively, state loans became a monthly tax, but one accompanied by patriotic rhetoric. Beginning in 1946, state bonds had a new name, the State Loan of Reconstruction and Development of the USSR, and a slightly lower overall target: 20 billion rather than 25.51 That year, the Soviet authorities sold state bonds worth 154 million rubles in Kyiv. This number increased to 187 million in 1947 and 211 million in 1948. (During the December 1947 currency reform, all bonds held by citizens were exchanged 3 to 1 in contrast to the 10 to 1 rate for cash, but their maturity was also extended for 20 years from 1948).52 Although the amount of money that was collected increased constantly, the state was, in fact, experiencing difficulties in the campaign’s rhetorical positioning. The grand project of the postwar years, industrial reconstruction, did not necessarily resonate with the population to the same degree as did the previous project to crush the Nazis and end the war. The press spoke of the people’s alleged enthusiasm for supporting the subscription drive as reflecting their patriotism in general, with bylines reading “Demonstration of boundless devotion to the Motherland” and “Toilers are helping their state.”53 Speeches at presubscription meetings, now reported in less detail, also contained more generalities and fewer personalized narratives. Statements along the lines of “I want to make our Motherland a flourishing, wealthy, and mighty state, and I am happy to give my hard-earned pay to strengthen her” or even shorter references to the purchase of bonds as “our civic duty” now replaced previous family stories of suffering and hopes for the safe return of husbands and sons.54

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At the same time, reported refusals to subscribe at all or to subscribe for more than a certain sum continued and even multiplied in the late 1940s. In many cases (the vast majority of which probably remained unreported), the protesters were eventually persuaded by their colleagues and immediate superiors. Thus, in 1946 Prybora and Blokh, two cutters employed at the Fourth Footwear Factory, “refused for a long time,” but ultimately agreed to contribute. In the same factory’s mechanical shop, the recently demobilized soldier Zalevko also declined at first, because of his conflict with the shop foreman, but later relented. At the city harbor office, a food stall saleswoman named Ivanova argued that she “had no means,” and coal loader Kaliuk gave only 10 rubles out of his 300-ruble monthly salary, saying that he was “clothed in rags and going about barefoot.”55 Group refusals usually happened as a protest against work conditions and the authorities treated them as such, blaming management rather than classifying the workers’ action as anti-Soviet. In 1947, one-fifth of the workers at the “Transsignal” railroad electrical equipment factory did not participate in the purchase of bonds because their salaries had shrunk considerably for the two months that the enterprise spent without a power supply. The same year, multiple cases of refusal to subscribe occurred at the Water Supply Trust, where the cafeteria was closed, potatoes were not delivered, and new production norms were implemented without any explanations.56 By 1948 the crisis could no longer remain unacknowledged. The internal memos of the city party committee now spoke of “most districts systematically failing to fulfill the [subscription] plan,” a situation explained by “the weakening in agitation work” rather than the population’s resistance to unrealistic targets. Compared to 1947, the subscription sum in Pechersky District actually decreased by 419,000 rubles, with 719 workers and office employees refusing to participate at all.57 In 1948 the tactic of missing work on subscription day in an attempt to evade purchasing bonds became commonplace, especially among the city’s construction workers, who were notably unhappy with their barracklike dormitories and awful food. In the First Construction Company of the Gas Transportation Administration, 140 workers out of 350 missed work on that day in 1948, while one of the highest earners, a welder named Matveev, refused to contribute even a single kopeck from his 2,500-rouble monthly salary. Other construction organizations in Kyiv also registered multiple absences.58 Elsewhere in the city, workers signed up for less than anticipated. At the Electromechanical Plant, 100  percent of the employees participated, but their contributions capped at 80 percent of their total monthly pay, whereas the “plan” was set at some 120 percent of the monthly salary pool. At the typewriter factory only 271 employees out of 330 signed up and typically

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pledged less than their monthly pay. The situation was especially troubling in the assembly shop, where the workers agreed to contribute a total of 41,000 rubles from their monthly salary pool of 76,000. Frustrated, the authorities went after the alleged “organizer” of this fiasco at the assembly shop, the technician Shvarts-Fetisov, who paved the way for other workers by signing up for 500 rubles instead of 2,500 and declaring, “I am starving and no one will feed my family.”59 He had remained in Kyiv under the German occupation, worked as a private tradesman until 1946, and managed to build himself a house—all these things marking Shvarts-Fetisov, in addition to his German-sounding name, as an unreliable element. The language used in the memo (“he was not exposed in due time”) suggests that he may have been arrested.60 The practice of explaining refusals to contribute by indicating a person’s possible anti-Soviet views emerged elsewhere in the city, as the authorities responded to the fundraising crisis. When Oleksiienko, a worker at the “25 Years of October” cooperative, refused to sign up regardless of his relatively decent monthly salary of 1,500 rubles, the authors of the report immediately linked his refusal to his status as a former party member who had remained in the city under the Nazi occupation and was later expelled from the party for his failure to resist German rule.61 However, the authorities’ overall reaction to the fundraising crisis of the late 1940s was even more radical: they stopped collecting information about negative incidents and left it up to factory managements to ensure the completion of the subscription drive. In the 1950s districts no longer reported to city officials about individual or mass refusals to sign up for state bonds. By then, most organizations established a mechanism for organizing subscriptions, one that combined informal and formal elements. Every year, in late March, the Central Committee of the CP(B)U and the Kyiv city party committee passed resolutions about the distribution of bonds and target figures. The “plan” was usually established at some 110 percent of the monthly salary pool, with a desired outcome of producing 120 percent of the target sum. Each city district was assigned its own subscription plan. District conferences, party meetings in all organizations, and informational meetings of agitators followed during the month of April. Agitators—usually the same volunteers who ran political information systems and staffed electoral campaigns—played a minor role in the subscription campaign, mostly exerting peer pressure on individuals reluctant to sign up. On paper, of course, they focused on carrying out propaganda work among the employees in their organizations and residents of nearby neighborhoods. In factories, separate “plans,” or targets, could be established for each shop; in white-collar organizations, the same held true for every floor of the building or unit.62

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In practice, local managers and party organizers often signed up all the workers present automatically, unless they protested. Apparently, a subtle moment of negotiation resulting in “voluntary” participation had to take place in each and every case, because complaints could arise when workers did not know they were being signed up. In 1952 a factory shop’s party cell leader at the “Bilshovyk” factory, Comrade Oberfeld, was reprimanded after three female workers submitted this type of complaint. Of course, the subtlety behind acquiring consent depended on the circumstances. In 1950 Khomenko, an engineer employed at Factory No. 512, beat up a worker named Kohotiuk when the latter only agreed to sign up for a contribution of three week’s pay rather than five weeks, as the engineer had demanded.63 In most places, however, there was also an informal type of communal pressure that bolstered the authorities’ demands. Based on popular notions of justice and moral economy, this pressure worked both ways—forcing the bosses and those who were better off to contribute more, while ensuring that everyone contributed something. The notion that “the management (rukovodiashchii sostav or rukovodstvo) should sign up for more” than the monthly salary that was expected from the rank-and-file was apparently widespread; over the years this sentence appeared in the minutes of party cell meetings in several organizations.64 Also widespread, to the point of being acknowledged by a district party secretary during a meeting at the “Ukrakabel” factory in 1951, was the understanding that “people with high salaries should, of course, sign up for more than their three-week pay, while those with large families or low salaries are unable to sign up for monthly pay.” Communist Party members were also expected to contribute at least their monthly salary.65 There was a good reason for the regular publication of the amounts contributed by writers, famous architects, and leading scholars—usually in the tens of thousands: to thwart possible talk of social inequality.66 Individual agitators and party organizers on the ground, who often knew their peers’ circumstances best, could be guided by communal egalitarianism when demanding bigger contributions or even reporting on their co-workers and neighbors. Food kiosk salesperson Ivanova from the Kyiv Harbor Office appeared in the 1946 report not just because she claimed to have “no means of subsistence,” but because her peers knew that she was married to a ship captain, and thus by definition she was not among the poorest in their collective.67 In 1952 a residential block agitator by the name of Skorokhodova described the following case at a meeting: Last year we were signing up people in our residential block for state bonds. There is one woman who dresses very well and receives 400 rubles from her [ex-] husband. She has one child and she definitely does not have to survive just on these 400 rubles. She tells us

( 116 )  Stalin’s Citizens that she does not have any money to contribute. Then she gives us, like alms, 25 rubles. We told her that we will not sign her up for 25 rubles, but we can for 50 rubles. She does not want this. Well, we will visit her again.68

The “we” in Skorokhodova’s narrative apparently referred to local female activists who willingly, even eagerly, translated the political obligations of Soviet citizens into communal peer pressure, not because they were communist zealots but because their communal concept of equality so dictated. It was due to this fusion of the political and the communal that the authorities managed to collect 5.8 million rubles from 72,894 of the city’s “unorganized population” in 1948 and 5.9 million in 1951.69 The state loans of the early 1950s, which raised 276  million rubles in Kyiv in 1951 and 303.5 million in 1952,70 were distributed to the accompaniment of new rhetoric. In line with the overall Soviet propaganda focus of the time, the press and official memos presented them as “peace loans” that were preventing war by strengthening the Soviet state.71 Some lengthier scripted statements at local meetings reflected this interpretation, as did the speech of Andrii Piorko, an elderly worker employed at the “Arsenal” factory in 1951: “This loan will further strengthen the might of our Motherland, which is at the head of the struggle for peace, against the [Western] warmongers.” Danylov, a worker at the “Bilshovyk” factory, elaborated: “The distribution of the new loan will deliver a crushing blow to the warmongers.”72 At the same time, party reports did not interpret the loan subscription as evidence of popular hatred for the new Western enemy but, first and foremost, as “new proof of the toilers’ high political consciousness, their boundless love and devotion to the heroic party of Lenin and Stalin, our people’s readiness to carry out all the brilliant designs of the great Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.”73 Short, generic statements of gratitude, such as “I thank the party and the government for looking after us, the workers,” also reappeared in these years,74 signaling the return of the basic model of “civic duty” as gratitude to the state for its universal gift of life and well-being. For all this rhetoric, however, constant problems with meeting and exceeding the ever-increasing collection targets led, in 1951, to an unprecedented decision of the All-Union government (never reported in the press) to hold an additional subscription drive in Ukraine in mid-May, after the original campaign in early May brought unimpressive results— only 102.5 percent of the “plan.”75 The main reason for this “failure” was the poor collection results at major enterprises, where workers and engineers were experiencing “donor fatigue.” For example, at one of the city’s largest employers, the “Bilshovyk” factory, party organizers felt “ashamed before the district party committee” because in 1951 the subscription drive

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brought in only 85 percent of the monthly salary pool. For the purpose of comparison, it should be noted that 94 percent in 1952 was considered a success.76 However, even the additional subscription campaign of 1951, conducted without much advertising from 12 to 14 May, went poorly. At the “Ukrkabel” factory more than half of the party members refused to participate, including some party cell leaders in the shops.77 The Soviet government realized that the “voluntary-obligatory” purchase of bonds was placing a heavy burden on the population. Reducing this duty was among the very first reforms undertaken after Stalin’s death in March 1953. There was no loan subscription campaign in May, and when the newspapers finally announced it in late June, two things signaled a different approach: the authorities lowered the suggested contribution to the equivalent of two week’s pay, and they stressed the “voluntary” aspect of participation.78 Of course, on the grassroots level these instructions translated into “ensuring subscription of every employee in an amount equal to two-weeks’ pay while observing the voluntary principle,”79 but this was exactly the intended result—to lessen the load at least somewhat.

TO SERVE AND REBUILD

The Russian and Ukrainian term mobilizatsiia (mobilization), a word with which Kyivites were intimately familiar during the wartime, has a broad meaning of organizing people for something, but more often it is used in its narrower sense of a military draft. Indeed, this was the very first citizens’ duty claimed by the returning Soviet power in November 1943. Red Army detachments in the city conducted their own semi-legal conscription from day one, but the official conscription campaign, with its slogans and agitators, was launched on 17 November 1943 and lasted for almost a month. The authorities managed to draft only 5,407 men, however, because over 23,000 had an exemption as workers in military industries. Young men born in 1925 and 1926 began to be called up on 26 November, but only 1,362, or 55 percent, of the eligible group were drafted from Kyiv, the rest having obtained a health or military-industry exemption. By January 1944 security sweeps of the city uncovered impressive numbers of men who had failed to register at military commissariats (1,839), draft dodgers (307), and army deserters (162).80 Contemporary documents do not refer to any enthusiasm for combat duty among the liberated Kyivites, and this is hardly surprising. On the contrary, local functionaries complained about the ever-increasing number of enterprises offering draft deferments or exemptions. According to them, “it has become a rule in Kyiv” that able-bodied male workers—a group all

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factory managers wanted to attract—only accepted positions that offered draft exemption.81 Women did not have to worry about being drafted, but they could volunteer for noncombat duty when the authorities issued a call for them. For example, in June 1944 the Red Army recruited in Kyiv 150 women volunteers between the ages of 20 and 35 “politically reliable and childless” females to serve as nurses, telephone operators, cooks, and laundry personnel.82 Dangerous as it was, noncombat army duty could actually be an improvement over the lot of those women who remained in Kyiv, where they constituted the bulk of the workforce. Wartime legislation allowed the authorities to conscript labor for any projects, and women always constituted a large majority of the conscripted. Beginning on 12 November 1943, every day thousands of Kyivites were sent to build defenses west of the city and help the military construct a temporary railway bridge across the Dnieper River.83 The latter became an early cause célèbre of labor enthusiasm in Kyiv, perhaps because this bridge, which opened on 20 November, ensured the steady supply of Soviet troops and military equipment to the west bank of the Dnieper at the very moment when the German counterattack seemed unstoppable.84 Some 5,000 to 6,000 Kyivites worked daily on the bridge construction site, which was regularly bombed by German warplanes. There were cases of elderly women toiling there, even though they were exempt from labor conscription because of their age. The head of the oblast party committee, Zynovii Serdiuk, presented the heroic efforts of Kyiv residents as proof that these people, who had stayed in the German-occupied city, had remained loyal to the Soviet power. They worked for free under falling bombs, even though “we did not give them bread, as far as I know, or supplied them with anything else, and the weather was cold and their apartments were chilly.”85 However, subsequent mobilizations for urgent projects, such as the construction of a replacement bridge early in 1944, relied as much on borrowing workers from enterprises as they did on conscripting “unorganized populations.”86 By then, all able-bodied individuals who were not working were assigned a job according to state needs, usually at factories and construction sites. The only group of able-bodied people who remained outside the workforce consisted of mothers with small children—5,700 people in Podilsky District in early 1944 and perhaps ten times as many citywide.87 From this time on, official rhetoric applied the notion of heroic labor primarily to a person’s performance at his or her workplace, but it was somewhat invalidated as a measure of enthusiasm by rewards in the form of salaries and rations. The authorities then started to emphasize voluntary labor on projects unrelated to individuals’ place of employment, as presumably a more objective indicator of popular patriotism.

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Thus, in March 1944 and again in March 1945 the authorities exhorted Kyivites to join the drive to clean up the garbage in the city. The real reason behind this campaign was the spread of typhus in the city, but this was never mentioned in the newspapers.88 In 1944 the city bosses initially hoped that housewives would volunteer in sufficient numbers after the press called on them to give backyards a “cultured appearance.” Soon, they resorted to rewarding professional yard-keepers with extra ration cards and clothing coupons for “organizing” the residents of their buildings for occasional assistance.89 In 1945, when typhus returned in the early spring, the campaign was designated more honestly as “the month of spring-sanitary cleaning,” and district councils were empowered to mobilize people, including factory workers and office employees, for up to six days.90 In July 1944 there was even less pretense of volunteering when the Soviet Ukrainian government decreed that Kyiv residents aged 14 to 55 would be conscripted for up to 20 days per person to cut firewood in nearby forests. Newspapers described this conscripted labor as “our duty, the duty of workers in the rear to support the Red Army with labor achievements,”91 but in reality the firewood was being stocked for the city in preparation for the winter. The municipal authorities also “motivated” participants by distributing clothing coupons. Of course, there was never any intention to mobilize all the eligible population at once, for this would have disrupted the city’s economy; however, districts usually sent less than a half of their daily allotment of workers (some 400 instead of 1,000 in Stalinsky District) and with insufficient tools. Besides, in August the city authorities could not even organize the delivery of stockpiled firewood to Kyiv.92 The lack of enthusiasm at the district level indicated an important problem with such ad hoc projects supposedly relying on the labor enthusiasm of the population. In fact, such projects temporarily removed workers from enterprises and organizations that were under pressure to fulfill and overfulfill their own plans. After the war’s end the authorities by and large abandoned the practice of accomplishing significant projects using temporarily conscripted workforces, but the rhetoric of “volunteering” and “labor enthusiasm” continued because of its underlying connection to patriotism and civic duty. Perhaps the best example of the increasing divergence between theory and practice was the restoration of Khreshchatyk, Kyiv’s main boulevard. As explained in Chapter 1, the Nazis did not raze the heart of Kyiv— the Soviets did. When the Red Army returned two years later, however, Khrushchev was shocked to see his favorite boulevard transformed into burned-out ruins. Apparently, he did not know about the Soviet involvement or preferred to feign ignorance. The unedited text of his memoirs reads:  “I could not sort this out. The population was saying that, as the

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Germans had explained, it was blown up by the partisans who had stayed behind. As far as I know, there was no such assignment for the partisans to destroy Khreshchatyk, but who knows, it is difficult to say. Still, I think it was the Gestapo’s dirty trick.”93 In any case, as explained earlier, contemporary Soviet propaganda used Khreshchatyk as a local symbol of Nazi destruction. “The ruins of Khreshchatyk and the beautiful adjacent streets cry out for revenge,” wrote a city party official in a Ukrainian newspaper in January 1944.94 Work on clearing the debris commenced the same month. The state mobilized several thousand young women from the countryside for labor duty at Kyiv’s construction projects. In late January hundreds of them started working on Khreshchatyk as employees of a militarized state construction company that included a brigade led by a teenaged girl named Dunia Petrychenko, the project’s future star Stakhanovite.95 At the moment, however, cold, snow, and a lack of tools precluded any notable achievements. The conscripted workers, most of them peasant women between the ages of 16 and 18, ran away at the first opportunity, especially when agricultural work started in the spring. By May the city authorities estimated that between 40 and 60 percent of the mobilized workers had gone home.96 The idea of making Khreshchatyk a “people’s construction” project powered by voluntary contributions from the city’s entire population can be seen germinating at this time. In a newspaper interview in late January 1944, city architect Matushevych estimated that clearing the debris would require 500,000 days of work. With 10,000 people participating, that would translate into only 50 days of work, and he indicated completion in time for the 1 May holiday. In mid-February M. Pashko, a city functionary in charge of construction, estimated that 1 million workdays would be needed, and 15,000 people could work on Khreshchatyk at the same time.97 However, Khrushchev claims in his memoirs that it was his idea to make Khreshchatyk a symbol of reconstruction “that could serve as an example for other Ukrainian cities.” The Ukrainian party boss included the appeal to make Khreshchatyk a “people’s construction site” in his agenda-setting speech at a session of the republic’s Supreme Soviet on 1 March 1944.98 According to some contemporary party memos, the restoration of Khreshchatyk began after Khrushchev spoke from the podium,99 but this is no more than a rhetorical flourish—the restoration had to be presented as the masses’ enthusiastic, voluntary response to an appeal issued from above. In reality, the volunteers were to supplement, not replace, the permanent staff of construction workers who had been on the ground since January— not to mention that thousands of volunteers showed up on Khreshchatyk on the morning of the same day, before Khrushchev had even finished his

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lengthy speech at the Supreme Soviet. As we will see below, Khrushchev surveyed their work in the morning, before heading to the parliament. Several days earlier, on 25 February, the republic’s Council of People’s Commissars passed a decree to create the Administration on the Clearing of Khreshchatyk, which was charged with completing the first stage of work by 1 May and the second by 1 September. In the process, Khreshchatyk was to be widened to 60 meters, making it a more convenient ground for parades. The government, however, did not plan immediate work on the restoration of the street’s buildings.100 On the morning of Wednesday, 1 March 1944, hundreds of schoolchildren and housewives carrying flags and slogans splashed on posters, together with columns of workers marching to orchestra music, assembled on the snow-covered main boulevard of Kyiv. A total of 4,000 people represented two districts: Leninsky and Molotovsky. Since there was not much working space left among the ruins, the authorities resolved to alternate work duty among the city’s districts, with two districts working per day and each supplying a thousand volunteers. On the first day both districts organized twice as many people. The authorities set a production norm of 1.5 cubic meters of debris per person per day and secretly hoped that this norm would be exceeded.101 Yet, even the most optimistic internal memo stated that only 2,200 cubic meters were cleared by 4,000 people on the first day.102 In fact, Fedir Mokiienko, the city party boss, characterized the situation on Khreshchatyk in early March as “utter chaos”: there was simply not enough space or tools for all the workers. Khrushchev, who showed up on the first day, rebuked the overzealous district functionaries for bringing in more people than necessary: “We do not need a crowd here.”103 The district allotment of volunteers was then reduced to between 400 and 600 people, aiming for a total number of approximately 1,000 workers per day. But very few could stay all day. “Volunteers” arriving from factories and offices typically worked until lunchtime, because otherwise the work schedule at their place of employment would be affected. The housewives reached an informal understanding with the district organizers that it would be reasonable for them to work for approximately three hours. Schoolchildren, too, could miss only a limited amount of classes.104 In addition, labor productivity remained very low. The frustrated Mokiienko raged at a closed-door conference of district-level party functionaries on 16 March: “Bring fewer kids, don’t take professors; instead, bring people who know how to work.” At the previous meeting on 9 March, he even considered the possibility of paying “volunteers” to attract students, who were always on the lookout for a job on the side: “It is not a bad thing when ideology goes together with the ruble.”105 Yet, no such scheme was implemented.

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Figure 4.1  Volunteers clear debris on Khreshchatyk Boulevard, 1944 or 1945.

Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

Even when the volunteers, equipped sparingly with picks and saws, managed to clear some debris, removing it from Khreshchatyk constituted a logistical problem—city authorities had failed to build narrow-gauge tracks for cargo trams. Already on the second day of mass volunteering, 2 March, people stood idle because of this delay, and since there was no way to hide this problem from the population, it ended up being discussed in the press.106 In the first twenty days of mass work on Khreshchatyk, tens of thousands of volunteers toiled for a total of 50,800 hours and 330 construction workers, for 3,400 hours; however, their combined efforts to remove rubble from the site, using occasionally available trucks, amounted to little more than 10,600 tons of debris. Construction engineers reported to Khrushchev that only the complete mechanization of the construction site would allow clearing the debris by the deadlines fixed in the government decree. In the short run, they asked for 3,000 permanent construction workers.107 By April the crisis of volunteering on Khreshchatyk had become painfully obvious. In the words of a party memo, “some organizations completely stopped sending people, in others men leave after only two hours.”108 The average daily count of participants already decreased to some 500 to 860 people by early April, even though the authorities distributed clothing coupons, cinema tickets, and free mineral water. By late April Pechersky District only sent 30 to 50 workers out of its norm of 282 per day. In response to the city party committee’s desperate decision requesting 1,000 permanent

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“volunteer” workers from the districts, the latter sent a total of 40. Out of 500 salaried construction workers, between 80 and 130 missed work every day for no legitimate reason. The cargo tram, its tracks finally in place, did not function because there was no electricity.109 In May functionaries were already admitting in internal memos that the government-approved plan of clearing Khreshchatyk had “failed (sorvan).” An editorial in Kyivska Pravda reminded readers that the restoration of Kyiv was the duty of “conscientious citizens-patriots” and asked: “Can it be tolerated that the number of people coming to work on Khreshchatyk has decreased?”110 The state’s first reaction was to order Kyivites to work. On 12 April 1944 the Soviet Union’s highest government body in wartime, the State Committee on Defense, issued decree no.  5601, “On the Disassembling of Ruined Buildings, Clearing of Debris, and Preparation for the Reconstruction of Khreshchatyk Street and the Central Blocks of the City of Kyiv.” This document appeared as a result of Khrushchev’s petitioning of the Moscow center on various issues related to Kyiv’s main boulevard, but it is possible that the first and most important clause was added in the Kremlin. This clause allowed the Ukrainian authorities to conscript 12,000 Kyivites to perform labor on Khreshchatyk.111 Although some Ukrainian scholars assume that this plan was implemented,112 there is no trace in the archives of such massive mobilization or masses of new workers appearing on Khreshchatyk. It appears that the Ukrainian government never took advantage of this permission on any significant scale simply because not enough eligible, nonworking populations existed, and mobilizing workers would undermine the economy. Moreover, the republic’s Council of People’s Commissars took unusually long, until 25 May, even to duplicate this directive with its own decree. The Kyiv party committee also procrastinated, passing an appropriate resolution no earlier than 13 June. The Ukrainian authorities apparently doubted the very possibility of mobilizing that many people in the capital. In any case, the archival document unambiguously states that by 1 October only 370 Kyivites of the envisaged 12,000 were conscripted.113 The campaign was then quietly shelved. The implementation of the decree’s subsequent clauses, however, is confirmed by local archival materials and press reports. Khreshchatyk was to receive increased funding and a variety of construction equipment, including tractor-trailers and metal-cutting mechanisms. The Ukrainian government also obtained the right to confiscate from civilian organizations whatever construction equipment it judged to be “underused.” Engineers assigned to the construction were granted exemption from the draft, which made it easier to attract experienced professionals, and fifty extra executive ration cards helped various officials feed themselves better while organizing the masses for heroic labor.114

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In June the Administration on Clearing, briefly renamed in the spring as the Administration on the Reconstruction of Khreshchatyk, was reorganized as the Khreshchatyk Construction Trust uniting four construction companies, four drafting offices, and a supply division. The trust received tractors, trucks, winches, and pit-props. It was also assigned a cement factory and mechanical workshops for its exclusive use. The Administration adopted some measures to improve the conditions of permanent construction workers by repairing the most glaring problems at their dormitory and organizing a canteen.115 Yet, the authorities were not prepared to abandon the illusion of a volunteer “people’s construction site.” Speaking at a city conference of party organizers on 9 June 1944, the Kyiv party committee’s secretary for propaganda, Maria Pidtychenko, frankly acknowledged:  “The number of [volunteers] coming to Khreshchatyk is very low. There are cases where they show up only for appearance’s sake but do not work or, when they do work, they do not fulfill the norm.”116 One way of addressing this problem was to intensify propaganda work. Five hundred agitators took turns coming to Khreshchatyk for talks and readings.117 The press designated “a sacred name” to Khreshchatyk, which all Soviet citizens pronounced with love, while its restoration became a “patriotic duty of Kyivites” as well as an “example of heroic reconstruction efforts.”118 Stakhanovite workers at the city’s factories made solemn promises: “The Germans have destroyed Khreshchatyk, but we will rebuild it.”119 Another habitual way of motivating Soviet citizens was socialist competition. On 1 July 1944 the city council established the “Red Banner” challenge, which called for a challenge to be issued every month to the best-performing organization. Monetary prizes of 5,000 rubles were given to the best city district and 3,000 rubles to the best Stakhanovite brigade. A  conference of shock workers on Khreshchatyk soon followed, but it was dwarfed by a rally of Khreshchatyk builders held in the opera house on 20 July. There, a star was born—Dunia Petrychenko, a young woman from the village of Perehonivka, whose brigade allegedly completed 200 to 250 percent of the norm per shift. Her keynote address at the meeting called on fellow conscripts from the countryside to work better and learn construction-related professions.120 As the public face of socialist competition on Khreshchatyk, Petrychenko was widely featured in the press. In late August she spoke again at the Komsomol conference of “young builders of Khreshchatyk.” By September she was receiving fan mail from young soldiers at the front.121 One thing the newspapers did not emphasize was that Petrychenko was not a volunteer working on Khreshchatyk in her free time but a construction company employee. Volunteer shock workers also received some coverage

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in the press along with Petrychenko, but their profiles were not nearly as convenient for propaganda purposes. While some of their achievements were far more impressive than that of Petrychenko’s brigade, they tended to be able-bodied younger males with draft exemptions—not exactly hero material for wartime Soviet propaganda. Two all-male brigades of volunteers emerged as competitors for fame and monetary prizes as soon as the socialist competition was announced in July. Both also had the advantage of easy access to tools at their main place of employment. The first was the Abram Blidman brigade of the Dnieper Steamship Company, which on 15 July completed 580 percent of the daily norm. However, the Viktor Kolos brigade of the Secure Communications Administration (a government communications unit of the NKVD) exceeded this record, completing 690 percent on 17 July and 705 percent on 18 July.122 On 31 July the Blidman brigade moved ahead in the competition with 1,100 percent of the norm, but on 10 September the Kolos brigade countered with 1,256 percent. By mid-September they raised the bar from 1,393 to 1,620 percent, although these incredible records were now being calculated from an hourly rather than daily norm. By this point both brigades were only showing up on Khreshchatyk for two hours or so and only several days per month.123 In fact, by the late summer of 1944 the Ukrainian authorities completely gave up on their plan to have Khreshchatyk cleared by Kyiv volunteers by the double holiday of the first anniversary of the city’s liberation (6 November) and Revolution Day (7 November),124 although no such announcement ever appeared in newspapers. The press also never mentioned a fact obvious to any passerby—that beginning in the fall of 1944 German POWs had become the primary workforce on Khreshchatyk.125 There is every reason to believe that Kyivites did not object to this but, rather, saw it as an acceptable situation given the horrors of the Nazi occupation. Already in the spring of 1944, when any enthusiasm for volunteering on Khreshchatyk had dissipated, the city party authorities reported to their superiors numerous questions from below, like: “Why are German POWs not being used for the reconstruction of Khreshchatyk?”126 A government decree issued on 29 August 1944 assigned 4,500 POWs for work on Khreshchatyk, although its first draft envisaged a higher number of deployed POWs:  7,000. But since POWs were in high demand at other reconstruction projects, Khreshchatyk initially received only 1,100 prisoners (later 2,000), of whom no more than 700 at a time could be escorted to work because of the lack of available guards. POWs began working on Khreshchatyk in September 1944 at a rate of 300 to 350 people per day. By November some 700 to 800 worked on a daily basis, compared to no more than 300 Kyiv volunteers, who usually worked only in the morning or during their extended lunch break.127

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By early 1945 the stream of volunteers dried up, and Khreshchatyk became an openly slave-labor project relying on German POWs. In the first five days of March 1945 officials reported that “civilian organizations” (a code word for enterprises and offices sending their workers as “volunteers”) had provided only 82 labor days—the equivalent of some 16 people working full-time every day.128 Meanwhile, German POWs fulfilled their production norms, even though Kyivites and ideological functionaries in particular found it disturbing to hear them singing lively German songs while marching to work along the city’s central streets.129 Dunia Petrychenko’s fellow workers, by contrast, continued to desert in large numbers. In addition, the majority of young women conscripted from the Ukrainian countryside regularly got away with starting their workday an hour or two later than scheduled and ending it an hour or two earlier.130 Instead of reporting on 7 November 1944 the completion of the envisaged clearing, the Kyivan authorities could only tell Stalin in an open letter that the city’s volunteers had worked 300,000 workdays on Khreshchatyk.131 In the quest for smaller, achievable targets, Khrushchev accepted the proposal of the construction engineer, Petr Stromentov, to build a 1.4-kilometer tunnel under Khreshchatyk, a so-called kolektor that would house all the water mains, pipes, and cables in the city center—an innovation in Soviet urban planning at the time.132 But the completion of this project in time for another holiday, 1 May 1945, required extra working hands in addition to the constantly dwindling number of permanent construction workers and German POWs, who were meant to clear the ruins. The authorities no longer counted on Kyivan volunteers. On 13 December 1944 the republic’s Council of People’s Commissars passed a decree allowing the deployment of anti-aircraft defense units (standing idle in the city since the German air raids ended in late spring) for construction work. The 6th Anti-Aircraft Defense Regiment and a municipal Air Defense Battalion, specified in the decree, consisted mainly of young women, just like professional construction brigades did, but military uniforms and harsh disciplinary measures made all the difference. The kolektor was completed by 1 May 1945, and the entire street was asphalted by the end of the month.133 Unconcerned about matching his words to reality, the city party boss, Borys Horban, claimed at an annual conference of Kyiv communists in January 1945 that “the work of city’s laboring masses to clear the debris on Khreshchatyk had become a powerful manifestation of Soviet patriotism.” Further in his speech, he said, “The hour is near, when the people will turn to the construction of buildings.”134 Indeed, the authorities originally planned to start reconstruction on Khreshchatyk according to the same model of a “people’s construction site,” with thousands volunteering their labor on a daily basis to complete work three years after the conclusion of the clearing.135 Motivational articles appearing in the press as early as

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June 1944 rhapsodized the future Khreshchatyk as a modern administrative, commercial, and cultural center of the city. The Ukrainian government inaugurated a competition of architectural projects the same month and announced the winner, the architect N. Stepanov, by February 1945. This was followed by a new competition that resulted, rather predictably, in the victory of Oleksandr Vlasov, Khrushchev’s favorite and Kyiv’s main architect, in September 1946. Regardless of the confusion, newspaper articles, and drawings and scale models exhibited at the city’s Museum of Russian Art played their intended propaganda role.136 The construction site was still not ready, since much of it remained occupied by ruins in various stages of disassembly, and building materials for the massive construction project remained unavailable. By the fall of 1946 the authorities planned to start construction on Khreshchatyk in 1947 or 1948 and complete it in five years.137 Meanwhile, to support the illusion of mass enthusiasm for the avenue’s reconstruction (and for the benefit of a visiting team of Moscow architects), Khrushchev attempted briefly to reanimate volunteer public works on Khreshchatyk in April 1946.138 When Kaganovich arrived in Kyiv in 1947 for a short stint as the Ukrainian party chief, at a meeting of a city party committee he characterized the delay in construction as an ideological failure: “One should not keep wounds open for too long. The wounds agitate against the Germans, but the time will come when they will start agitating against us. (Animated reaction in the hall). What kind of managers are you if nothing has been done in four years?”139 Still, construction work on Khreshchatyk started only late in 1949 and continued for nearly a decade. When it finally began, the government relied on professional construction workers and did not rally Kyiv residents for mass volunteering. Thus, only the clearing of Khreshchatyk went down in history as a heroic “people’s construction site.” Soviet ideologists maintained this illusion to the end, however. Throughout 1947 Kyivska Pravda published hardly any reports about volunteer work on Khreshchatyk, but the new wave of activity early in 1948 (with Khrushchev back in his seat as first secretary and promoting his pet projects once again) sparked detailed reporting.140 The last episode of mass volunteer labor on Khreshchatyk took place in April 1949, when the street was readied for the 1 May parade—and ultimately, for the start of real construction work.141 Kyivites could go back on Khreshchatyk but only as spectators, as they did in large numbers in 1951, when the shape of the first new building became apparent—and reportedly sparked debates about its design on the streets and in public transport.142 (Most of Khreshchatyk’s new buildings were designed in the late Stalinist wedding-cake style.) Construction dragged on well into the late 1950s because of the usual problems with worker desertion, insufficient mechanization, and a deficit of materials.143

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Figure 4.2  A fine example of Stalinist “wedding-cake” architecture on the restored Khreshchatyk Boulevard, the “House with a Star” (25 Khreshchatyk Blvd.; architects:  Anatoly Dobrovolsky, Oleksandr Malynovsky, and Petro Petrushenko; completed in 1954). Source: Author’s photo, 2013.

Where did the volunteers go? Many of them now combined volunteer labor with self-interest by restoring residential building for their own organizations. Viktor Kolos’s shock worker brigade from the Secure Communications Administration was the first to convert its labor achievements on Khreshchatyk into possession rights to a six-story building at 49 Red Army Street, a few blocks south. They obtained permission to do so from the municipal authorities as early as July 1944. Originally, NKVD communications specialists had promised to provide their own tools and materials, but, in the end the city had to supply them and also engineering advice in order to make their case a success and an example for others.144 A number of other enterprises followed suit in late 1944 and early 1945, taking up the renovation of uninhabitable apartment buildings in the city center on the condition that 80 percent of the apartments would be theirs

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and 20 percent would go to the municipal housing fund.145 Because of the lack of construction materials, however, many organizations could not start reconstruction work for many months. Tellingly, though, some military factories sent submachine-gunners to guard “their” buildings when the city council tried to reclaim them.146 Three, and even four, years later, the city authorities complained about the slowness or even complete lack of restoration work on apartment buildings thus assigned, primarily because of the unavailability of construction materials.147 The only other attempt at a major “people’s construction” project in postwar Kyiv folded almost immediately, without leaving much trace in the press. In 1949 city district leaders assigned 1,125 party and Komsomol members to take time off work to volunteer for the construction of the subway. However, 65 percent of them stopped coming during the first three months, while others could not cope with the physically demanding job of volunteer miners.148 The model of the “people’s construction site” was subsequently applied only to minor projects that could be completed in a few weeks or, on a limited scale, in residential construction carried out by factories for their employees. However, the general concept of mobilizing “volunteer” workers or students for temporary unpaid work either in lieu of their main activity or during their spare time remained in place until the collapse of the Soviet Union. In late Soviet times this model was best represented by one month of “voluntary-obligatory” agricultural work during the summer holidays. And what of postwar Kyivites? Although they were no longer working on Khreshchatyk, the residents of the Ukrainian capital were not deprived of an opportunity to demonstrate their enthusiasm for volunteer labor: accordingly, they took part in numerous voskresniki (volunteer labor Sundays) in their respective neighborhoods, usually cleaning streets or tidying up parks. Such events typically happened in the spring, with the biggest of them organized in April, on or near Lenin’s birthday (22 April). In 1952 two districts on which we have statistical data, Zhovtnevy and Podilsky, supplied 48,000 people for the Leninist volunteer-work Sunday.149 Overall, though, the authorities abandoned massive volunteer projects, which could only be feasible in wartime or in the immediate postwar period, as unpromising and settled for another compulsory demonstration of labor enthusiasm—at each citizen’s regular workplace.

HEROES AT WORK

The language of reports about Kyivites’ labor achievements widely employed notions of “patriotism,” “patriotic appeals” and “patriotic

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upsurge.”150 Above all, these reports characterized heroic labor as part of citizens’ reciprocal relationship with the state, personified by Stalin. As a 1952 memo put it, “In response to perpetual Stalinist care for the improvement of the material conditions of all the laboring masses, the workers, peasants, and the intelligentsia of Kyiv oblast organized a wide-ranging socialist competition in order to fulfill the production plans for 1952 ahead of time and thus mark the 1 May holiday, the day of international workers’ solidarity.”151 There was a pragmatic dimension to this understanding of labor enthusiasm in exchange for good care. For example, government announcements about the lowering of retail prices were accompanied by meetings, during which the “people” both thanked the state and declared new, ever higher, targets in socialist competition.152 There was also a more abstract, symbolic, aspect to this interaction. When the Kyiv aircraft plant did not fulfill its production plan for 1947, its party group secretary, Comrade Kushnarev, announced at a district meeting that “[t]‌he plant owes a big debt to the Motherland and Comrade Stalin.”153 This symbolic relationship was reflected in the practice of presenting labor achievements as “gifts” to the state. “Industry’s Gifts for the October [Revolution] Anniversary” read the large-font headline running through the entire length of page 3 of Kyivska Pravda in October 1945. Articles on this page, however, described relatively modest achievements, such as the fulfillment of October plans a few days ahead of time.154 In general, Revolution Day (7 November) was an inconvenient date for reporting

Figure  4.3  Workers of the “Transsignal” factory pledge to fulfill the annual program in time for Stalin’s 70th birthday (December 1949). Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

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because it came too early in the calendar year to suit promises to finish the annual program, although some enterprises occasionally made such pledges.155 Constitution Day (5 December) was thus more suitable, but not quite as perfect as Stalin’s birthday (21 December), which, however, was celebrated as a major state holiday that came complete with reports about labor achievements only once, in 1949, when the leader turned 70.156 The second most important state holiday, 1 May, served as an annual pretext for early spring socialist competitions, but it came right after the month’s end and thus offered only an uninspiring challenge of fulfilling April’s production program on time or a few days ahead of schedule.157 Ad hoc occasions for socialist competition to fulfill a plan ahead of time could include Stalin being awarded the Victory Medal in 1945, the 30th anniversary of the Ukrainian republic in 1948, the 10th anniversary of the “reunification” of all Ukrainian lands in 1949, and the opening of the 17th party congress in 1952.158 In fact, any major political event, such as Stalin’s agenda-setting speech on Revolution Day in 1944, supposedly filled Soviet citizens with a “patriotic upsurge,” which was reflected in new labor obligations.159 Whether or not such obligations were met was of less importance to the authorities; the simple act of declaring love for the state through a pledge to work better than expected mattered more than actual results. It was not for nothing that programmatic articles in ideological journals and the press classified socialist competition as a “school of communist education” developing “high consciousness of Soviet citizens.” They also commonly defined socialist competition as a “method of building communism”—not just because it resulted in higher productivity, but also because it supposedly created new relations between the people and the state.160 The first reports about the revival of socialist competition in Kyiv date from early December 1943. By 20 December the competition had allegedly “spread widely” in the city, with a number of organizations overfulfilling their plans by 50 to 100 percent.161 However, only in a few cases did these “plans” include actual production targets or firm numbers. From the prewar total of 1,176 industrial enterprises in the city, only 278 still existed in late 1943, and of these 278 only 75 resumed work in the first months after liberation.162 In the absence of electricity, larger factories like “Arsenal” and “Lenin’s Smithy” were temporarily converted into field repair workshops for heavy tanks whose treads, incidentally, had destroyed road surfaces on nearby streets. During 1944 the “Bilshovyk” factory switched from its prewar profile of machine building for the chemical industry to the production of mortar rounds. It completed 141 percent of its plan, but this remained one of very few quantifiable labor achievements in Kyiv.163 Most other

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industrial enterprises focused on the reconstruction of their shops and “Bilshovyk” eventually followed suit as soon as the war ended in 1945.164 The ritual and rhetoric of mass socialist competition were hardly noticeable in the reports and newspaper articles from late 1943, but they returned in force in March 1944, when the authorities realized that 1 May—the usual reporting date in socialist competition—was fast approaching. The language itself, featuring the expressions “to organize” and “to start” the competition, suggests that it did not exist in the winter.165 Nevertheless, the newly organized socialist competition was reportedly a success. Among the winners were the “Ivan Lepse” factory, which completed 108  percent of the monthly plan in April, and the Locomotive Repair Depot, which repaired thirteen locomotives instead of eleven.166 Similar propaganda campaigns unfolded in the fall of 1944, when the period arrived to think about reporting for Revolution Day. This time, however, articles and reports focused less on the hardly measurable percentiles of tasks involved in physical plant reconstruction than on tangible results, such as reopening a factory shop or putting a power plant in operation.167 Officially, the aim of socialist competition pegged to Revolution Day was to fulfill an eleven-month plan by 7 November; however, contemporary reports remain unclear on how many, if any, of Kyiv’s enterprises managed to do so and how many of these actually had clear numerical targets. “Lenin’s Smithy” was proclaimed the winner, but for the majority of organizations, as well as the authorities, the obligatory rhetoric of participation seems to have been more important than the actual results.168 In fact, a look at lower-level reports and meeting minutes suggests that, unlike other rituals of political participation in postwar Kyiv, socialist competition never had an element of genuine popular interest or public acceptance of an imposed procedure—it was a fiction all along. Quite possibly, competition was perceived as an additional unpaid duty at the workplace rather than a political obligation vis-à-vis the state. As well, workers could see it as purely a paper phenomenon that never existed in real life, but was faked by higher-ups in their reports. In any case, even in 1944, when the slogan of helping one’s near and dear fighting at the front remained powerful during donation drives, socialist competition was a flop. At the “Artem” factory in the spring of 1944, meetings to commence the competition in advance of the 1 May holiday took place, but “in essence, no socialist competition was organized.” At the “Bilshovyk” factory in October 1944 “no targets were fulfilled” in the factory’s pre-Revolution Day socialist competition with its peer, the “Red Excavator” enterprise.169 At the Liqueur and Vodka Trust, party organizer O. S. Lazebna issued an appeal in 1944 to “make socialist competition real.” Two years later she was forced to acknowledge that everybody “forgets” about competition as soon as 1 May has passed.170

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The alleged mass enthusiasm for socialist competition was even less believable in light of what the authorities knew about Kyivan workers’ real attitudes. With desertion rates of up to 30 percent at major enterprises during the first half of 1945, in complete contravention of legislation threatening criminal prosecution for abandoning the workplace without official permission, the city’s workers were clearly unhappy with their work conditions and wages.171 A party organizer at “Bilshovyk,” Comrade Dubner, tried to explain “unhealthy attitudes” among the workers by the fact that three-quarters of them had remained in Ukraine under the Nazi occupation,172 but it was the dismal pay and food ration, not ideological contamination, that caused discontent. In July 1944, forty-seven of the fifty-eight workers employed in the foundry of this same factory were allegedly involved in a socialist competition, and twenty-eight of them were designated Stakhanovites. In fact, sometimes becoming a Stakhanovite was the only way to survive; their average salary was 977 rubles a month, as opposed to the average wage of 475 rubles for others. In all likelihood, management simply made all older and more experienced workers “Stakhanovites” in order to keep them, even if some “Stakhanovites” produced record levels of waste—22  percent in one case. Such manipulations were facilitated by low quotas, under which any worker could give 200 to 300 percent of the plan if provided with materials.173 At other enterprises, workers might not even be aware of their participation in a socialist competition, as was the case at the “Maxim Gorky” machine-building factory in 1945, where most workers in the 7th shop had no knowledge of their production quotas and pay scales, let alone competition pledges, and did whatever the foreman told them.174 In such cases, management likely invented the competition targets and winners without bothering the workers with all this paperwork. By the late 1940s the percentage of involvement in socialist competition in the city reached the 90th percentile:  in 1948, 96  percent of industrial workers participated and 50  percent of them were designated Stakhanovites. With the inclusion of office workers (whose duties were often difficult to measure and compare), the number went down somewhat—to 91.2  percent—but it was still impressive.175 Essentially, participation became universal, with the exception of inveterate slackers and those under prosecution for absenteeism or desertion. At “Lenin’s Smithy” at the end of 1948 the total number of workers, excluding engineers and all levels of management, stood at 1,877, and their average salary was 767 rubles per month. Labor fluctuations remained extremely high, with 1,011 workers hired during the year and 403 leaving, including 73 desertions. Nevertheless, management claimed that 93  percent of workers had participated in a socialist competition, and 42 percent had signed individual

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competition pledges. There were also 932 Stakhanovites.176 The situation was similar at “Arsenal,” where 1,621 workers out of 1,917 took part in the competition, 1,425 signed pledges, 404 were designated “shock workers,” and 1,015 were “Stakhanovites.” At the same time, 629 workers left during the year and 33 of them were arrested for desertion. There were also 101 cases of unwarranted absenteeism.177 If factory directors concerned themselves with reconciling the number of deserters with the percentage of Stakhanovites, supervisors of office personnel had the unenviable task of inventing the rules of competition. At the oblast library, firm targets could only be established for the number of books borrowed by readers (which, of course, was expected to increase all the time), but not for bibliographers, consultants, or cleaners. Still, the party group resolved to count everybody as participants in the socialist competition, with readers’ comments and peer evaluations forming their criteria.178 At the Liqueur and Vodka Trust, office employees supervised competition among the trust’s factories, but remained uncertain as to the details of their own competition.179 In 1950 Comrade Volkova, the party leader of Pechersky District, which included a disproportionately high number of administrative institutions, announced at a city party conference that socialist competition pledges among office workers often included clauses, such as showing up at work on time or answering complaints.180 The mass labor enthusiasm described in these reports was clearly out of step with the dismal “real” results of the city’s industry. At a meeting of Kyiv party activists in June 1948 the third secretary of the city party committee, Comrade Kotov, revealed the sources of this incongruity: Today you read in the newspaper Pravda Ukrainy that industry in Podilsky district has fulfilled the plan for the first six months. But what do we have in reality? The secretary of the Podilsky district party committee, Comrade Nehoda, gave this information to the newspaper, and the editor Comrade Troskunov published it. But one should say that in reality Podilsky district’s industry did not fulfill the plan; it did not even fulfill the plan for the first five months.181

Falsification of results existed at all levels, from factory shops to the party’s Central Committee. At a conference held in 1947 to promote socialist competition in Kyiv, the third secretary of the CP(B)U Central Committee, Demian Korotchenko, whose portfolio included industry, first cited the numbers he obtained from the Central Committee’s Industrial Department: 63,900 industrial workers in the city, 48,437 of them involved in socialist competition, with only 4,000 workers not fulfilling individual plans. He then added, “but I  do not believe this last figure.”182 Indeed, if only 6 percent of workers failed to meet their production targets, how could

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24 percent of the city’s factories, 119 in total, fall short of the annual plans for 1947?183 Massive numbers of fraudulent reports at the factory level could have dire consequences for management if discovered, as happened in 1947 at the motorbike factory. Gross failure to complete plans also guaranteed dismissal for management personnel, as was the case that same year at plant no. 473 (building aircraft), which completed only 30 percent of the production target for 1947.184 Far more widespread among Kyiv’s factory directors were manipulations of categories of production, which allowed them to fulfill the plan in gross output by producing easy-to-make items, while remaining behind on the main product. Thus, in 1947 the “ceramic” factory produced only 55 percent of its target number of bricks, but still fulfilled the overall plan. The “Rosa Luxemburg” factory managed to produce only 83 percent of clothing items and 76 percent of socks, but exceeded its gross output plan due to the overproduction of underwear.185 With attention focused on gross output figures rather than profitability, the majority of enterprises in postwar Kyiv lost money: in 1947 only 120 broke even, while the remaining 344 required state subsidies.186 To maintain the important ideological illusion of mass labor enthusiasm, factory managers kept individual production norms artificially low—a fact acknowledged at many local conferences and party meetings.187 An average Ukrainian worker’s labor productivity in 1948 constituted only 75 percent of the prewar figure.188 Another fact much discussed at lower-level meetings was the ubiquitous shturmovshchina (rush work) that took place at the end of every month in order to meet the monthly plan. Even if workers genuinely wanted to exceed their targets—or at least meet them to secure their wages—their desires were often impossible to meet because of the chronic lack of materials. The “Arsenal” factory fulfilled only 18 percent of its monthly plan between 1 and 10 December 1947, 19  percent between 11 and 20 December, and 63 percent between 20 and 31 December. In 1949 the workers of “Arsenal” complained about “sitting around for twenty-five days and fulfilling monthly plans in the remaining five” by working overtime in three shifts. The employees of the factory’s 4th shop reportedly “worked for five to six hours and spent the rest of their time searching for materials”; older workers repeatedly beat up their younger colleagues in conflicts over tools and materials.189 At “Bilshovyk” in 1948, the factory director had promised workers a bonus for completing the three-month plan (apparently a common practice at major enterprises), but failed to follow up on his promise and became the subject of discussion at the factory’s annual party conference.190 Perhaps unsurprisingly under such circumstances, socialist competition remained on the back burner for both management and workers. As speakers at the 16th CP(B)U Congress in 1949 acknowledged, competition

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agreements were often prepared in the director’s office instead of being discussed and accepted at a meeting with all employees. That year workers at “Lenin’s Smithy” had no idea they were competing with Russian shipbuilding docks in Sormovo, while workers and shop-level management at “Arsenal” did not even know about their competition pledges in response to the appeal issued by eighty-eight Moscow factories that they had allegedly “accepted” only a month before.191 Overall, the traditional methods of encouraging socialist competition— specific factories’ public challenges, Stakhanovite conferences, Red Banner awards for winners—did not work. No other appeal for socialist competition generated as much press and meetings as the challenge issued by the workers of Leningrad in February 1947 to complete the annual program in time for the Revolution’s 30th anniversary (7 November 1947). No fewer than 373 meetings attended by more than 50,000 people took place in Kyiv with all kinds of solemn promises voiced there.192 Yet, as mentioned earlier, 1947 was a disastrous year for Kyiv’s industry in general. Even the most optimistic official reports suggested that the city’s industries fulfilled the annual program only by 24 November.193 In their search for new forms of stimulating labor enthusiasm, the authorities predictably settled on making pledges to Stalin in person— essentially the same model of symbolic interaction found in Soviet mass politics. In 1950 an editorial in the Ukrainian party journal entitled “To Completely Fulfill the Obligations Pledged to Comrade Stalin” called collective promissory letters to the Leader “a new form of social movement and a further development of the idea of socialist competition.”194 Another Ukrainian journal in 1949 interpreted pledges to Stalin as “a manifestation of [the people’s] growing political consciousness”: “Toilers consider it the greatest honor and sacred duty to keep their word given to Comrade Stalin.”195 Of course, Stalin did not check on the fulfillment of the pledges, but district and city party committees did, even if they chose not to submit reports to the Leader about the many organizations failing to follow up on their promises.196 By 1952 the concept of labor enthusiasm as citizens’ duty to Stalin reached its apogee when, on the initiative of Kyiv’s “Red Excavator” factory, pledges featured promises to the Leader to complete the annual program by his birthday (21 December). One of the two city newspapers published an editorial headlined, “Let Us Honorably Keep Our Word to Great Stalin.”197 Other, more pragmatic, new forms of socialist competition during the late 1940s and early 1950s included the mutual checking of pledges among enterprises and individual workers, which was especially widespread in 1949–50, and competition within occupations (turners competing with turners, but not against welders).198 Competition aims and

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criteria also changed in the late 1940s with an attempt to supplement gross output figures with notions of profitability, labor productivity, lowering the prime cost, and reducing waste—even if these could not always be measured with any degree of reliability in the Soviet economic system.199 “Arsenal” did report, as one of the factory’s main achievements in 1949, an across-the-board reduction in prime cost of 26 percent, but an inspection at the “Transsignal” factory in 1950 revealed that management personnel simply hid their colossal amounts of waste by reducing the figure by at least 60 percent.200 Each new government initiative aimed at redefining socialist competition was duly presented at factory meetings in Kyiv as the workers’ “patriotic movement,” as was the case in 1948 with the call to uncover new internal production capacities.201 Yet, meeting the challenges remained the task of management, which reshuffled numbers, rather than that of workers. Similarly, gross output figures remained the

Figure 4.4  One of the very few surviving Stalin-era statues in Kyiv: an idealized representation of a female subway construction worker decorating the residential building at 8 Prorizna Street (c. 1952). Source: Author’s photo, 2013.

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backbone of both the production program and socialist competition in factories. Viewing labor enthusiasm in the workplace as a citizen’s duty and his or her expression of patriotism remained problematic in the last years of Stalin’s rule. Not much depended on the workers themselves because in the early 1950s factories continued to idle early in the month and work overtime in the last ten days. In January 1951, for example, the mechanical shop of “Bilshovyk” fulfilled 0 percent of the monthly program in the first ten days, 11 percent in the second, and 89 percent in the last. In 1952 workers of the 2nd shop at “Bilshovyk” refused to accept revised production quotas and demanded that management supply them with materials “from the first days of the month.” They also complained about the quality of machine parts produced elsewhere in the factory.202 Meeting monthly production targets also remained a challenge for the city’s factories. In the last two months of Stalin’s rule, January and February 1953, over a hundred Kyiv enterprises failed to fulfill their monthly plans. In June 1952 the Khreshchatyk Construction Administration established a kind of anti-record by not meeting its monthly targets for twenty-seven months out of the last thirty-three. The Kyiv Telegraph Office had been ahead of all other organizations in terms of plan fulfillment, and its director was even nominated for the Stalin Prize, until the authorities discovered in 1952 that all his reporting was fraudulent.203 Low salaries and lack of housing continued to cause high labor turnover, as was the case at “Bilshovyk,” where 212 workers were hired during the first six months of 1952, and 352 left. According to shop-level managers, the main reason behind this was the low hourly wage for young workers.204 If new employees at “Bilshovyk” complained about a starting wage of 600 rubles per month, what could be said of wages in the range of 200 to 300 rubles for cleaners and unqualified workers at the “mechanical” factory in Kaganovichsky District? During the Union-wide public discussion of the draft of the next Five-Year Plan in 1952, representatives of this factory proposed that such low wage scales should not be allowed to exist.205 After the state abolished criminal responsibility for workplace absenteeism in July 1951, the number of workdays missed at “Bilshovyk” increased sevenfold and at Footwear Factory No. 4, by the factor of 11. At the “Gorky” machine-building factory, the total number of workdays missed stood at 16 in January–March 1951 and 13 in April–June, but increased to 94 in July–September and 244 during October–December.206 The picture of conscientious workers surpassing production quotas simply out of love for their Motherland clearly did not hold water. Not surprisingly under the

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circumstances, socialist competition remained purely a formality, imitated for appearance’s sake, but garnering minimal effort. According to the official figures, 95 percent of Kyiv’s industrial and construction workers participated in socialist competitions in 1951, but inspections at individual enterprises often revealed that no one monitored either progress or results.207 When public condemnation of Beria in July 1953 presented an opportunity for workers to talk about the government’s mistakes in general, Zhuk, a metalworker employed at the measuring equipment factory, had this to say about the real situation that existed with the production plan and socialist competition: It is difficult even to imagine our factory’s party leadership and management ever putting an end to rush work. Until the 15th of every month our workers can fulfill no more than 35 percent of the daily target because of the lack of materials for measuring equipment. But beginning on the 25th of every month, we toil without a lunch break from 8 a.m. until midnight. What, then, is the point of talking about a real socialist competition? In essence, it is a formality.208

At a party meeting at the same factory in August 1953, party member Dzhydzhulenko painted a similar picture of socialist competition: “Pledges are made for artificially low targets; nobody checks on their fulfillment.”209 Of course, things had been this way all along and everywhere, but workers voiced their opinions publicly only when they felt they could do so with impunity—in places where management was already in trouble with the higher-ups. Just like other late-Stalinist civic practices, the purchase of state bonds, volunteer labor, and shock work went through stages of popular appropriation (through the connection to wartime collective experiences) and subsequent ritualistic ossification. What set them apart, however, was the higher level of passive resistance from below, primarily because of these practices’ close connection to one’s work load and living standard—both painful issues for Kyivites during the deprivations of the postwar years. When the state had difficulty enforcing loan subscription as a marker of individual allegiance, what came to its rescue was the mechanisms of communal peer pressure informed by the popular concept of equality. This, however, did not happen with volunteer labor and socialist competition. Neither ever gained any real communal acceptance as a shared collective duty in some symbolic relationship with the state, and thus remained a primarily fictional ritual involving minimal

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effort—for the sake of appearance. Citizens never questioned the need to express gratitude to Stalin and the Soviet state, but they started dragging their feet when this involved taking a mandatory wage cut or working overtime. The population clearly preferred manifesting its love for the Leader during elections and parades rather than by making daily sacrifices at work.

C H A P T E R  5

w

Comrade Agitator

I

n January 1946 the “agitator” Comrade Kalmykova visited her group of voters in their apartment building at 19 Engels (now Luteranska) Street in Kyiv. There were only some fifteen people present, most of them yard-keepers, their spouses, and retirees. Kalmykova’s assignment was to persuade her flock to vote for the only candidate in their electoral district, the Ukrainian party chief Nikita Khrushchev. The leaflet with the candidate’s biography had not been delivered on time from the party publishing house, leaving her to rely on newspaper articles and Khrushchev’s short biographical sketch from some wall calendar. The voters did not mind, however. They nodded in agreement and made supportive comments throughout her talk. One elderly yard-keeper even told a story about running into Khrushchev on Khreshchatyk Boulevard and complaining to the republic’s leader about his illegal eviction, which was subsequently reversed. In contrast to reports describing the experiences of other agitators, there were no questions, complaints, or petitions of any kind. The observer, the ideologist Comrade Timofeev from the CP(B)U Central Committee, formed a very positive impression of Kalmykova’s work and the voters’ mood.1 Everyone was happy, including the fifteen citizens, who had not let down “their” agitator and showed their loyalty to the powerful inspector. One wonders, however, why it was even necessary to send an army of agitators to ensure the electoral success of Khrushchev and other candidates. In fact, the most striking realization for the researcher poring over archival documents from postwar Kyiv is the amount of time and effort the party and state organs spent preparing for elections. The tasks of rebuilding the ruined city center, reconstructing industry, and providing residents ( 141 )

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with food and shelter clearly took a second seat to the massive propaganda campaigns that preceded every election: to the all-Union Supreme Soviet in 1946 and 1950, to the Ukrainian legislature in 1947 and 1951, and to oblast and municipal soviets in 1947, 1950, and 1953. One may wonder why the authorities took these electoral campaigns so seriously. If the state presented voters with a single slate of candidates running unopposed, with everyone aware they would be endorsed by over 99 percent of voters (at least according to the official results), the question arises:  Why did the Kremlin spend colossal amounts of time and energy, not to mention money and materiel, on staging elaborate electoral campaigns? Elections and parliamentary sessions were also very expensive—and paid for by the center rather than the republics. In 1951, for instance, Moscow allotted 11,980,000 rubles for organizing the elections to the Ukrainian legislature.2 Was the illusion of democracy worth all the effort and expense from the authorities’ point of view? The archival record of the proceedings in the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR is as boring and scripted as the newspapers reports about them—and limited to the perpetual, unanimous rubber-stamping of party decisions.3 If the Soviet leadership did not consider it necessary to hold a Communist Party congress for the thirteen years between 1939 and 1952, why could not it do the same with all levels of elections? This chapter’s argument is that electoral campaigns involving the entire population were far more important in the Stalinist political system than the resulting legislative bodies. Inasmuch as elections were a formality, electoral campaigns emerged as the principal venue of citizen interaction with the state in the political domain. An army of volunteer agitators served as a medium in this process, representing the state before its citizens and citizens before the state. With only one party program and one slate of candidates, agitators were expected not so much to fight for the votes as educate voters about the ideological issues of the day and explain the voting procedure. The people, however, awaited their visits for a different reason: they knew that this was their one chance to ask for the state’s assistance with pressing everyday issues, such as pensions, residential registrations, and help for the needy. A  symbolic political interaction with the state therefore included elements of formal political education and subtle negotiation with the state about life’s necessities. Using as intermediaries in this interaction volunteer agitators— sometimes voters’ neighbors and co-workers and, in any case, people with whom they had established a personal connection over time—helped the state immensely. Communal in nature, agitators’ relations with the voters transposed Stalinist politics to a level of neighborhood solidarity, with peer pressure exerted in order not to let down “our” agitator and prevent him or

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her from becoming as powerful as any ideological convictions. Thus, big politics worked subtly even on the local level—through communal attitudes rather than just force and fear.

THE ILLEGITIMATE SOVIET POWER

Soviet power returned to Kyiv, but only metaphorically, in November 1943. As the Red Army continued pushing westward, the restoration of political institutions in the rear demonstrated the largely symbolic role of “soviets” (councils), the elected bodies that gave the Soviet system its name. The republican parliament, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, was elected in February 1947, more than three years after the Germans’ retreat from Kyiv, and elections to oblast, city, district, and village soviets took place only in December 1947. The reestablishment of Soviet power in Kyiv involved a major violation of the Constitution. In late 1943 returning functionaries promptly reestablished executive committees of soviets at all levels (vykonkomy in Ukrainian; ispolkomy in Russian) for handling everyday administrative tasks. However, instead of having executive committees elected by particular soviets’ deputies, party bureaucrats simply appointed new people at their discretion, to round off the number of elected ones they could find from the soviet’s old composition. Admittedly, it would have been impossible to observe proper procedures after the two-year German occupation, with most able-bodied men away at the front or already killed. Even three years after the war’s end, a recount of deputies in oblast and lower-level soviets throughout Ukraine located only 46 percent of oblast, 33 percent of city, and 29 percent of district deputies elected in 1939, whereas the Constitution set the quorum for all of them at 50 percent. The executive committees of soviets survived by “co-opting” new members, an illegal practice in itself, and these local governing bodies included, by 1947, only between 32 and 38 percent of elected deputies, depending on the level.4 Khrushchev and other leaders, however, were not worried about the technical “illegitimacy” of Soviet power in localities. They paid more attention to the republic’s parliament because that was the body that could provide a podium for important political pronouncements. In February 1943, when the Red Army had briefly retaken Kharkiv, an emboldened Khrushchev ordered the preparation of the Supreme Soviet’s session in Kyiv, with the intention of issuing an appeal to the Ukrainian people and a letter of gratitude to Stalin.5 But the Germans pushed the Soviets out of Ukraine, and fiercer fighting ensued before the Red Army could reclaim Kharkiv in late August and Kyiv in early November. Perhaps because of this embarrassment,

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as well as the inability to gather any significant number of elected deputies, the Supreme Soviet was not convened after the liberation of Kyiv. An appeal to the Ukrainian people was issued in the name of the party and the government, and letters of gratitude to Stalin and the Russian people were adopted by acclamation at an open-air rally in Kyiv on 27 November. In the end, the parliament was convened only in March 1944 to hear Khrushchev’s agenda-setting speech “The Liberation of the Ukrainian Lands from the German Invaders and the Urgent Tasks of Rebuilding the Economy of Soviet Ukraine.” It is not clear if the required 50  percent of elected deputies were in attendance at this rather symbolic session. One indication that this was not the case was the adoption of important decisions—not by the session but by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which met after the session ended. These decisions concerned budget approval, endorsement of the government’s work during the war, the appointment of Khrushchev as chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, and the establishment of new ministries for defense and foreign affairs.6 Subsequent sessions of the republic’s Supreme Soviet probably included more than half of the deputies and followed formal procedures more strictly, as in March 1946, when the parliament renamed the Council of People’s Commissars as the Council of Ministers and voted for its composition, or in August 1946, when the legislature “debated” and passed the Five-Year Plan for the Ukrainian SSR for 1946–1950.7 However, new elections did not take place until February 1947, after the elections to the all-Union parliament in February 1946, but before the local soviets got their turn in December 1947. Decrees concerning the postponement of the long-overdue elections and extension of the deputies’ terms had to be issued every summer from 1942; even after the war ended in July 1945, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR deferred them until June 1946.8 The party archives in Moscow and Kyiv contain correspondence and draft decrees scheduling the elections in Ukraine (as in all other Soviet republics) for December 1946; 15 December in the Ukrainian case. In the end, the Kremlin decided to wait until February 1947. One possible reason for the delay was concern about nationalist insurgency in the Baltic republics and Western Ukraine, where the rebels managed, in some locations, to disrupt the all-Union elections of February 1946, despite a massive army and police presence.9 Yet, the preelection propaganda campaign was just as vigorous in Kyiv, where the Soviet authorities faced no threat from organized nationalist resistance. Thus, electoral campaigns in all the republics in the Union must have reflected some general pattern of Stalinist political life, the symbolic interaction between government and voters. A good starting point for examining this symbolic interaction is to look at the expectations of Stalinist ideologists. How did they understand the

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Figure  5.1  The former Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (architect: Volodymyr Zabolotny, 1939), which now houses the Supreme Rada of Ukraine. Source: Author’s photo, 2011.

elections; what did they expect from the voters? In December 1946 the Ukrainian Central Committee’s secretary for propaganda, Ivan Nazarenko, spoke frankly before an audience of senior ideological workers: “We have no doubt that our people will vote for our candidates, but that is not enough. We need to make use of this most important political event by advancing our political work among the working population (trudiashchikhsia), by raising the communist consciousness of our people.”10 At another such meeting, held several weeks later in January 1947, the Kyiv city party committee’s secretary for propaganda, Yakiv Pashko, elaborated on the propagandistic and mobilizational function of elections: In our country it has become a tradition to turn an electoral campaign into a mass school for the political education of the people, which helps the workers to understand better

( 146 )  Stalin’s Citizens and in more depth the policy of our Bolshevik party and the Soviet government. Our electoral campaign becomes a school, in which the working masses are educated in the spirit of devotion to their country; it unites the workers around the party.11

Thus, the ideologists cynically dismissed the elections’ formal role in creating a legislative body that would represent the voters’ choices, emphasizing instead their use as major propaganda campaigns. But does this mean that the authorities totally disregarded the notion of the voters’ will? Apparently not, because their vision of elections included both what they could be used for and what they could “demonstrate.” In a long preelection article published in January 1947, Khrushchev (or his speechwriters) claimed that the electoral campaign “has turned into a striking demonstration of our people’s unshakable devotion to the socialist system, to the great and victorious ideas of Lenin and Stalin.”12 Perhaps because the actual outcome of the voting was not in doubt, the authorities also expected additional proof of their citizens’ sincerity—voting joyfully and rejoicing at the opportunity to endorse Stalin’s leadership. As Kyivska Pravda editorialized in December 1950, “Election day is approaching. The voters are waiting for it as for a great holiday. They have one thought, one desire—to cast their votes for the beloved father and friend of the Ukrainian people, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.” As explained in more detail later in this chapter, only a small number of Ukrainian voters actually saw Stalin’s name on their ballots, but the message of the official propaganda was unambiguous:  voting for any official candidate meant thanking Stalin. Another editorial in the same paper, this time on the day of the elections to the Ukrainian parliament in December 1947, explained the voters’ exemplary turnout:  “By doing so, they are expressing their boundless gratitude to and deep love for the wise Bolshevik party and the Soviet government, for the creator of all our victories—the great Stalin.”13 These official interpretations of the elections applied to the Soviet Union as a whole, but there were also reasonings particular to Ukraine as a non-Russian republic with a real nationalist resistance in some regions. As Nazarenko stressed at the 1946 meeting, ideological workers needed to present elections to the republic’s Supreme Soviet as proof that “the Ukrainian people have their own statehood (gosudarstvennost), which became possible only because of the victory of Soviet power.” This strategy, obviously targeting nationalist supporters in the western oblasts, was a rare example of the state using elections to prove something to the Ukrainian population. Symbolic exchanges typically functioned the other way around, with voters showing their allegiance to the Soviet cause. In the Ukrainian SSR, with its politically unreliable western regions, newspapers called on voters to turn the elections into “a new, powerful demonstration

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of the Ukrainian people’s moral and political unity, their readiness to march toward communism together with the other Soviet peoples and under the leadership of the party of Lenin and Stalin.”14

VOLUNTEERS ON BEHALF OF THE STATE

The key figure in making the population meet these expectations was the agitator. In theory, agitators were ordinary citizens who volunteered their time during lunch breaks and after work to prepare the population for voting by explaining the procedure and promoting Soviet achievements. In practice, however, local party organizations appointed them from among reliable people with some degree of education, with professionals and party members clearly overrepresented. Local party committees formally approved lists of designated candidates, often well before the elections took place.15 The majority of those selected doubled as agitators in the system of political education (discussed in Chapter 3), thus becoming, for all intents and purposes, permanent part-time unpaid ideological workers. But, there were also those who worked as agitators only during election campaigns, when local party organizations needed to report to their higher-ups on the ever-increasing number of talks given and people propagandized. In the lead-up to the February 1946 elections, the total number of agitators in Kyiv grew from 10,000 to 15,000. The authorities tallied 26,000 agitators in February 1947, but only 20,000 in December 1947, and 19,500 in mid-1948, when the election cycle ended and no major ideological campaigns were under way. In 1950 the total number of agitators ballooned to 47,843, only to shrink somewhat to 42,000 by 1953. Given that the number of voters in Kyiv grew from 454,000 to slightly over 700,000 during this period, the agitator-to-voter ratio increased impressively, roughly from 1 to 45, to 1 to 15.16 What did this army of agitators do? Officially, they educated voters, but in practice their role was more complex: that of intermediaries between the government and the population. In addition to providing political education to the citizenry and bearing personal responsibility for voter turnout, agitators also acted as collectors of popular opinion and even petitioners on behalf of their constituency. Nevertheless, official instructions emphasized propagandist and disciplinarian aims: “to ensure the participation of all voters in the elections, to further raise the political activism and socialist consciousness of the masses.”17 The fact that Soviet ideologists took seriously the educational function of agitators can be seen from more specific instructions about social groups requiring special attention.

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These included, first and foremost, the so-called unorganized population, that is, those not in the workforce and thus not covered by the propaganda blanket at work, and who were generally more difficult to organize. Reports about agitators’ work during the 1946 elections often include numbers of unemployed individuals in particular neighborhoods, apparently as an indication of a challenge for agitators.18 This population category comprised the elderly, the disabled, and housewives, as well as returning war veterans taking their time to find better jobs. There were also vague statements in the press about the possible lasting effects of Nazi propaganda on those who had remained in occupied territory, especially with regard to the issue of private property, and some rather blunt assertions about other categories of voters were made at closed ideological conferences: “False ideas of bourgeois democracy have been introduced into our milieu by some people who have been abroad, both in the Red Army and in German slavery—those who are now being repatriated [from Germany back to the USSR]. Such views were also disseminated in print, in particular by the magazine Britanskii soiuznik.”19 Finally, youth is often mentioned as another group needing extra propagandizing, perhaps because the war and the two-year German occupation disrupted their political education and socialization. Before the first postwar elections in February 1946, the authorities often arranged separate “meetings of young voters,” featuring lectures and concerts.20 Armed with this mental list of tasks and groups requiring special attention, agitators proceeded with their work. Their job literally involved much walking and knocking on doors, so much so that the only recorded case I found of someone refusing to serve as an agitator concerns a person claiming a lack of presentable footwear and clothing.21 Where did the agitators go? Most likely, they first went to the polling station for instructions about “their” group of voters and to the agitpunkt (agitation center) for lecture topics and propaganda materials. This frequently required only one trip, because every polling station doubled as an agitpunkt, but numerous additional agitation centers were established in larger organizations and most cultural institutions. The press and most general reports create the impression that agitators focused heavily on propaganda work. However, careful reading of archival documents on the shortcomings of electoral agitation shows that they had a more important task—checking voter lists. Local party organizations often mildly chastised their agitators for doing nothing but checking the lists—clearly, a minor offense.22 If, however, agitators missed names, buildings, and sometimes entire streets on their lists (believed to be reliably based on police residence registration records), their party supervisors raised the alarm. The most blatant mistakes, such as the 1946 case of an

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agitator missing all of Zahorodna Street and its 892 voters, made it into the pages of a local newspaper.23 The authorities were paranoid about such problems because they could allow unscrupulous residents to dodge voting altogether, thereby leaving their Soviet identity “unconfirmed,” or, if they showed up after all, skew upward the sacred number of the 99.9 percent turnout, which would require last-minute recalculations at district and city levels. Such omissions usually came to light well in advance of Election Day, since the authorities wisely required that all voters show up to check their names on lists posted at polling stations one month before the elections.24 Big-city voters, easier to organize and served by a larger army of agitators, always led the way. Three weeks before the all-Union elections in March 1950, 87 percent of Kyivites had verified their names, but only 66 percent of the republican population. Two weeks before the February 1951 elections to the Ukrainian legislature, the numbers stood at 98 and 82 percent, respectively.25 One explanation for this difference is the sheer number of Kyiv-based agitators, who could take the lists to voters in case they did not show up at the polling station. Especially before the first postwar elections in 1946, the checking of voters’ lists led to a significant increase in the number of registered voters: an amazing 733,088 people throughout the republic. In Kyiv, the available data for Molotovsky District indicate 3,841 “missed” names and for Kaganovichsky District, 11,642.26 If their agitpunkt did not happen to be in the same building as the polling station, agitators had to make another stop on their evening trips. Political-education rooms in large organizations, school classrooms, and district libraries most often doubled as agitpunkty. The authorities divided responsibility for necessary renovations and slogans among nearby factories, ministries, and military institutions; district libraries and schools provided portraits of leaders and loaned propaganda literature.27 Most of the agitational work took place elsewhere, but the agitpunkt served as a coordinating center, library, and lecture hall. A  special magazine for agitators described an ideal agitpunkt as possessing a library, reading room, baby room, buffet, and games room (suggested games being checkers, chess, and dominoes)—that is, “a permanent place for voters to get together.”28 There are archival reports about such well-organized agitation centers, which were usually attached to major factories or colleges. In 1946 agitpunkt no. 3 of the 9th electoral district, which the “Dytodiah” (children’s clothing) factory took under its wing, was described as “bright and comfortable,” bursting with portraits of Soviet leaders and coordinating the work of 100 agitators. There was an experienced agitator on duty from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., and people gladly showed up in the evening to read books and newspapers, as well as play checkers, chess, and dominoes—conspicuously

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listed in the exact same order as in the magazine. In 1947 agitators at voting station no. 176 and the attached agitpunkt, under the aegis of the “Ukrkabel” (electric cable) factory, organized five concerts, including one featuring opera singers, as well as fifteen well-attended film screenings over the course of a single month—in addition to exemplary propaganda work. The same year inspectors from Moscow called the agitpunkt at the Kyiv Military Intercommunications College outstanding, especially because of the homemade posters that illustrated the voting procedure. In 1951 the agitpunkt at the “Artem” factory (military industry) was likewise in excellent condition, well stocked with books, newspapers, and portraits, and with an agitator on duty between 12:00 noon and 8:00 p.m. The 132 affiliated agitators, 64 of them party members, were responsible for a total of 1,739 voters in 34 nearby apartment buildings—a ratio of 1 to 13.29 Not all the hundreds of agitpunkty in Kyiv—280 in 1946, over 400 in 1951—were model centers, however. Especially during the 1946 and 1947 elections, both held in the winter, agitators complained about unheated polling stations and agitpunkty where “one could not last even twenty-five minutes.”30 Most of the agitators’ activities, however, were held at their workplaces and after work in nearby apartment buildings. At work, agitators typically used their lunch breaks to read and explain the Elections Statute and recent party pronouncements. The authorities preferred the notion of kruzhok (study circle), implying listener participation, to that of a passive public listening to an agitator’s reading, which resulted in the creation of numerous study groups that focused on the Constitution, the Elections Statute, and ideological documents of the day. Yet, this project slowly folded, probably because all this “study” was limited to an agitator’s reading. In late 1945 official reports claimed that 5,845 study circles existed in the city, and in 1946, the suspiciously round number of 7,000. The following year, the reporting method switched to the number of talks given and the number of voters who attended them; for example, 85,000 talks and 500,000 voters before the 1947 elections. This change was likely just another way to recalculate all the occasions where agitators read various documents out loud. Soon the grand total of “talks” and formal lectures reached astronomical numbers (349,000 talks and 5,060 lectures in preparation for the 1952 elections), prompting ideologists to stop reporting the total number of attendees, which threatened to surpass the actual number of voters in Kyiv.31 When visiting future voters at home, agitators typically tried to gather the residents of several communal apartments—up to 30 people—in one room. Even during the first postwar elections there was no pretence of a “study circle”; in newspaper reports from late 1945, a good agitator simply read from a fresh newspaper, residents reminded each other about the voting procedure, and all of them recalled the war and the horrors of the

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German occupation. Young voters could also occupy themselves during such meetings by reading aloud (Soviet) novels or listening to their elders’ (suitably gloomy) reminiscences about their life before the revolution.32 Regardless of all the robberies that raged in postwar Kyiv, failure to let an agitator into your apartment was considered a political transgression. Such cases were extremely rare even in 1945–47 and usually reported to the city authorities.33 Gradually, agitation work at a place of residence intensified and became more structured, at least on paper. In 1950 the city authorities considered the ratio of agitators to voters in the range of 1 to 15, to 1 to 12 to be a satisfactory one and demanded that agitators make weekly visits to their residential groups.34 Agitators’ work usually began with the publication of the Elections Statute two or three months before Election Day. There were separate statutes for each level of elections—to the all-Union Supreme Soviet, the Ukrainian legislature, and local soviets—the main difference among them being the number of voters electing a single deputy and thus the number of electoral districts in the city of Kyiv:  three during the 1946 elections, nine in February 1947, and hundreds during the municipal elections in December 1947. Technicalities pertaining to nomination and voting procedures, among others, remained the same, but since Stalinist ideologists saw the voting procedure itself as an important political matter, the statutes developed in the republic were sent to Moscow for approval.35 Since such a technical document could not be “discussed,” over the years official reports about agitators’ work emphasized the “collective reading and elucidation” of statutes.36 The other topics covered by the agitators may be divided into perennial and annual ones. The study of the Constitution of the USSR, usually simplified into a list of the “rights and duties of Soviet citizens,” with an emphasis on the right to elect and be elected, was a perennial favorite. Agitators tended to discuss citizens’ rights as reasons for thanking Stalin with their votes: “We, the Soviet people, have a right to work, receive an education, and go on vacation—all granted to us by the Stalin constitution.”37 As we will see later, however, the population paid attention to the language of people’s constitutional rights in the Soviet state and sometimes used it, if in an awkward form, when pressing for their everyday needs. Meaningful discussions of citizens’ rights and legislation relevant to ordinary peoples’ needs rarely took place during electoral campaigns. One such example was a 1947 lecture for female voters “On the Rights of a Mother.” Voting, already discussed as a right, was also first on the list of duties, followed closely by the duty to engage in productive work (which also doubled as the right to employment). In the context of the postwar economy, the latter duty was characterized as an obligation to rebuild the city and its industry.38

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Another important perennial topic was the superiority of Soviet democracy over its Western equivalent. Elections prompted the publication of numerous, if rather abstract, articles on this topic comparing Soviet parliamentarians’ worker and peasant backgrounds to the predominance of capitalists and their flunkies in Western parliaments.39 When ideologists addressed each other, they sometimes used a more revealing language, as when Nazarenko stressed the need to explain to the population “why our elections are different from elections in capitalist countries.”40 The favorite strategy of Soviet journalists and speechwriters, however, was to sidestep the issue of competitive elections by reaching back to the pre-Soviet elections that older citizens could remember. Rather than informing their readers about electoral procedures in the West, authors discredited the notion of multicandidate elections by counting how many of the city councilors in pre-Revolutionary Kyiv and deputies from Ukraine to the State Duma were large landowners and rich merchants.41 Topics that changed from year to year likely meant more for the Soviet citizens’ orientation in the contemporary political world. For winter elections, study texts often included the main political speech of the Revolution Day celebrations on 7 November, given by Viacheslav Molotov in 1945 and by Andrei Zhdanov in 1946. In late 1945 agitators in Kyiv also read and explained Khrushchev’s speech on the 1st anniversary of Ukraine’s liberation. Stalin’s election speech on 9 February 1946, broadcast on the radio and marked by celebratory meetings everywhere, outshone them all and became the principal ideological document of the late 1940s. In addition to ideological analysis of the war and the postwar international situation, the text offered guidelines for economic reconstruction and promised improved living standards, with the abolition of ration cards and the lowering of prices.42 Generally, reconstruction figured prominently as a lecture topic during the early postwar years, displaced by the struggle for peace and new construction projects by 1950–51, and the decisions of the 19th Party Congress in 1953. Sometimes a topic that was considered political-educational could elicit genuine interest among the public, as was the case in December 1945, when 200 voters (apparently, an unusually large number) showed up at agitpunkt no. 20 near the “Ukrkabel” factory for a physicist’s lecture on nuclear energy.43 Ironically, familiarizing voters with candidates’ biographies came last in the work of Kyivan agitators. This aspect was usually mentioned late in the electoral campaign and received short shrift in reports. In the absence of different party platforms to discuss and with no choice of candidates, the latters’ names mattered little—unless, of course, one’s candidate happened to be the republican leader, to whom agitators could give personal credit for

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changing the lives of their constituents, and for the reconstruction of the city and the republic, or Stalin himself.44 Approximately one week before every all-Union election, the party’s Central Committee issued an Appeal to Voters; similarly, the CP(B)U Central Committee issued appeals before elections specific to the republic. These general statements about the party’s current policies and recent achievements always contained a contrived sentence to the effect that the party leadership “hopes for and counts on the voters’ trust,” or “The party of communists expects that during the forthcoming elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR voters will once again show their confidence in the Communist Party and approve its policies.”45 The Appeal to Voters, also published as a separate booklet with a large print run—100,000 for the city of Kyiv in 1946, when newspapers were still difficult to get hold of—was the final ideological document that agitators studied with voters in their charge.46

CITIZENS AS VOTERS

In addition to its political-educational function, the authorities also used electoral agitation to gauge voters’ political allegiance and hear their pressing everyday concerns, tasks that an elections itself could not fulfill since ideologists envisioned it as a demonstration of gratitude and unity. Agitators acted as intermediaries between the authorities and the population at large, not only reporting to their higher-ups typical or troublesome questions from their audiences, but also helping voters resolve a variety of minor, everyday problems. In these interactions, ordinary Kyivites sometimes adopted the language of citizens’ rights and duties to press for their needs. Like local bureaucrats, voters demonstrated an understanding of elections as a moment of negotiation, where the authorities felt obliged at least to consider submitted requests. To the ideologists’ great relief, even after the two-year German occupation, postwar electoral campaigns in Kyiv featured a miniscule number of openly anti-Soviet political statements. Police reports to the Ukrainian leadership about the population’s “political mood” before the first elections (February 1946) use the word “comedy” a lot, for this was apparently the most popular among “isolated negative reactions” to the forthcoming elections by the republic’s otherwise content voters.47 However, the sentiments that police informers detected in peoples’ daily conversations were rarely expressed in official settings. During the entire campaign in late 1945 and early 1946, the People’s Commissariat of State Security reportedly uncovered only one case of anti-Soviet agitation in Kyiv (this formulation implied

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arrest and prosecution). An unnamed person was overheard saying “Our elections are not free. There are free elections in England; the people did not want Churchill and they did not elect him.”48 The authorities could have been deceiving themselves about the number of anti-Soviet statements, however. Whereas a veiled hint at the intention not to vote for Stalin clearly warranted arrest, the ideologists tried to present a number of other statements undermining the basic tenets of Soviet political mythology as simply betraying the lack of political education among some citizens. In most cases, there is no indication in the file that the offending utterance resulted in prosecution. For example, in November 1945, when the agitator Konkova talked to a group of voters in Zhovtnevy District about the significance of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, the voter Lysenko said: “It was not the Red Army that won but American [canned] ham and airplanes.” Also in late 1945, the housewife Mishennikova refused to attend what she considered a pointless meeting of voters because “the Soviet power does not allow freedom of [political] parties.”49 At Kyiv’s Second Power Station, the worker Hryhoriiv took the floor during a discussion of the Elections Statute to denounce the entire system as a fraud: “In essence, the Supreme Soviet has already been ‘elected.’ Studying the Statute is a formality, just as the elections are.” He went on to dismiss the (prewar) Ukrainian parliamentarian Maria Demchenko, who was elected “because she harvested 50,000 kilograms of sugar beets from one hectare, even though she does not know how to run a state,” adding that during the elections to the State Duma representatives of various parties treated voters to vodka and snacks on Election Day, “but they do not do this now.”50 In Molotovsky District, during a meeting with voters organized by the agitator Tabakmakher, a certain Medvedev declared: “I have not voted for the Soviet power and will not [vote this time]” and left the gathering.51 Rare as they were, such statements represented a refusal if not to play along, then at least an attempt to keep up the pretense of a sincere emotional response that the ideologists sought. Yet, the files provide no indication that these individuals suffered any persecution following their outbursts, at least not immediately. Rather, the functionaries, who feared for their own careers, preferred to interpret such statements as showing a need to intensify agitation work among the population. Other such signs included agitators’ general complaints about housewives treating propaganda work “dismissively” and residents in Yevbaz neighborhood (many of whom were bazaar traders) giving agitators a “cold” reception. Even asking your agitator a question like “What is the state going to lose if I do not vote?” was considered an expression of confusion rather than an unwillingness to play along with the authorities.52

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Reports about erroneous interpretations during the next electoral campaign (late 1946 and early 1947)  are considerably less detailed, perhaps because the authorities did not focus as much on evaluating the suspected lasting effects of Nazi propaganda. Yet, again there are indications of what were termed “unhealthy attitudes”: “overestimation of US and British [military] might, underestimation of the role of elections.” In Kaganovichsky District, an unidentified, “slightly drunk” citizen told the agitator Kozakova that “we do not elect; they give us a ready candidacy and all we need to do is vote.” Once more there were cases of Kyivites declaring that they would not vote (for example, a certain Slushna from Mezhyhirska Street), but the ideologists’ recommendation to agitators was just “to work individually” with such people.53 The Soviet authorities also did not prosecute citizens who framed their objections to state policies as questions, thus feigning confusion or a desire to dispel rumors—provided that they refrained from pointing out the undemocratic or unconstitutional character of certain government policies. Before the 1947 elections to the Ukrainian SSR Supreme Soviet, popular questions to agitators in Kyiv included “Why would Ukraine not become an independent state?” “Can a Soviet republic leave the Soviet Union?” “Is it true that after the elections Ukraine will become an independent state?”54 Ideologists preferred to believe that voters were honestly asking for clarification of the republic’s constitutional right to separate, but such questions might just as easily have been asked in a teasing manner. In any case, it appears that a rumor about Ukraine’s forthcoming separation indeed circulated throughout the city. In contrast, the authorities saw one of the most popular questions during the elections of 1946 and 1947—“Can priests be elected?”—as organized by the clergy to test the state’s position, although it could also have been the result of genuine confusion following the state’s wartime reconciliation with the Russian Orthodox Church.55 Ideological functionaries preferred not to view as anti-Soviet questions about the undemocratic or illegal nature of state policies: “Is it not a violation of democracy that a worker cannot move from one factory to another of his own will?” and its variants, “Is it not a violation of socialist legality that it is impossible for a worker to transfer at will to another enterprise?” “Will the government decree on the prohibition of unauthorized job changes be abolished?”56 Another loaded question was also considered legitimate: “Why does the Constitution say that education is free, whereas one has to pay for it after Grade Eight?”57 Even a question describing the pointlessness of the entire electoral campaign warranted explanation rather than repression, as long as it was asked with the pretense of honest confusion, as in the case of the workers at the “Artem” military factory in late

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1945: “Is it even necessary to conduct agitational work in preparation for the elections, if there is only one party in our country, and therefore there cannot be such struggle during the electoral campaign as in capitalist countries?”58 No less tongue-in-cheek was the question, “In what ways is our electoral system different from those in Europe’s democratic countries?” implying that the Soviet system was not democratic.59 In some cases, voters subtly questioned the past selection of candidates by using the system’s own language, as in the question, “During the last elections we voted for enemies of the people—will we be electing such people again?” Indeed, many prewar deputies had been shot in 1937 and 1938. At the Second Power Station, the worker Mikhnitsky said, “Last time we voted for Marchak, but he turned out to be an enemy of the people.” In Podilsky District somebody formulated a more elaborate version of this question, giving the example of the republic’s former party leader, who was executed in 1938: “Why were there no by-elections to elect new deputies to replace those who left (Kosior), and why were voters not even notified about this?”60 Significantly, a large number of questions concerned the right to vote, which the population—mindful of the disenfranchisement of “exploiting classes” before 1937—apparently understood as a marker of their good standing with the state. The majority of these questions concerned “repatriated” or former Ostarbeiter, who returned from slave labor in Germany with the stigma of ideological unreliability, but did not lose the right to vote. Repatriated individuals were eager to take part in elections, precisely in order to confirm their full rights as citizens. In 1946 an agitator reported on a case of six repatriated Kyivites arriving just before the elections and insisting on voting before even obtaining residential registration:  “They wrote applications, we added them to the [voters’] list and these people calmed down. They are citizens with full and equal rights (polnopravnye) and they will vote.”61 Other categories of people about whom citizens often posed questions included those who had remained in German-occupied Kyiv, those without residential permits, clergymen, churchgoers, people who had been away from the city on a business trip, and those currently serving abroad in the Red Army—in all cases, they could vote.62 Anti-Semitic rumors, ever-present in postwar Kyiv, prompted the singular occurrence of a question about the creation of a separate electoral district for the city’s Jews, but it was not asked again, perhaps because audiences sensed from agitators’ reactions that it was not (yet) in line with official ideology.63 In contrast, another spontaneous question from the floor resonated with both voters and agitators, who often reported it to their higher-ups as a sign of what the population at large would consider just: “Why are those who

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had served in administrative institutions under the Germans not being stripped of the right to vote?” Versions of this question also focused on those who had served in the auxiliary police, their wives, and village captains. The question could also be formulated more forcefully in the form of a demand, as when the worker Vrublevsky at the “Bozhenko” furniture factory said: “I understand the democratic character of our Constitution, but as an old worker who helped establish Soviet power in 1917, I think that policemen and all other traitors should be deprived of voting rights without trial and not allowed to vote.”64 Because the authorities saw the elections, with their predictable results, as essentially a political-education campaign, they encouraged questions on all kinds of issues, including those not necessarily related to the elections. The population mostly played along by asking, for the record, friendly questions about domestic and foreign policies, but also took the opportunity to probe agitators on those “big issues” that truly worried ordinary Kyivites. In the aftermath of the total war, with the city center still lying in ruins and most families still mourning their war dead, rumors often had an apocalyptic quality. The partial solar eclipse on 9 July 1945, when between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. Kyivites saw up to 82 percent of the sun obscured by the moon, made a strong impact on the popular imagination. Regardless of explanatory articles in the local newspaper and radio broadcasts, several months later agitators were still answering questions, like “Is it true that one-third of the Sun broke off and is falling toward Earth?” or even “When will the end of the world come?” (accompanied by an agitator’s note saying that the last question was related to the same rumor).65 But, if this rumor spread mostly among people with little education and only in one particular year, another apocalyptic expectation was common to all social strata, sparking numerous questions during every electoral campaign under Stalin. This was the fear of a new world war. Over the years, general questions concerning the possibility of another war proliferated in reports. Occasionally, rumors circulated that war had just been declared or had begun without public notification. In late 1945 agitators in Kyiv were asked if Turkey had really declared war on the Soviet Union on 15 November. In 1947 a rumor circulating in the city prompted questions such as “Is it true that a war is underway and the wounded have been brought to Kyiv?”66 The population apparently screened international news and Soviet ideological statements for indications of the growing or decreasing likelihood of a military conflict directly influencing them. In late 1945 voters in Kyiv were asking their agitators whether Molotov’s words about “capitalist encirclement” in his Revolution Day speech signified imminent war. Ordinary people also worried mightily about the fact that the Council of Foreign Ministers of

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allied states could not reach any decisions during its conference in London. Others asked, “Will a nuclear bomb lead to war?”67 Although the United States was clearly the main potential enemy throughout the years, voters also worried about possible or real Soviet involvement in local conflicts, particularly in Greece and Korea, as well as the danger of a clash with the Western Allies in Germany.68 Of course, the line in official reports that “agitators gave exhaustive answers to all the above-mentioned questions”69 is a figment of bureaucratic imagination. Agitators differed from the general public only in the fact that they had at least a secondary education and read the press regularly. They could identify a politically unsound rumor or anti-Soviet interpretation of events, but few could discuss the intricacies of foreign policy. Yet, the authorities did not really expect this of them; rather, the agitators’ role was to conduct ritualistic meetings that reinforced the Soviet identity among the population. Another function of electoral campaigns, the transmission to the authorities of popular concerns and requests concerning daily life in Kyiv, put agitators in more difficult situations because they served as intermediaries between the state and often disaffected voters. As late as 1947 instructional articles in the press suggested that agitators explain all “difficulties” in the city as “temporary, of a transitional character,” but this did not always sit well with the voters whom they had to face. During the same electoral campaign in 1947, the agitator Makarov from the machine-tool factory complained at a factory party meeting about the difficulties of agitation at workers’ dormitories:  “They always swear at agitators, often ask why the dormitories are not heated. We explain that this is connected to the difficulties [of postwar reconstruction], but this does little to calm down the voters.”70 However, the reaction from below likely also depended on who was asking. If disgruntled workers felt free to vent their frustrations to agitators from the same factory, who might be fellow workers or young engineers with little disciplinary power, this is not how the population of residential neighborhoods interacted with unfamiliar and powerful agitators from the republic’s central institutions. During the 1947 electoral campaign agitators from Soviet Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice thus reported on their work: One should note that, although the contingent that the agitators from the Ministry of Justice serve consists to a large degree of the poor (maloimushchee) population of the city outskirts (unskilled workers, cleaners, low-paid office workers, etc.), who are often burdened with large families and many of whom had remained in the occupied territory, the voters’ mood is completely satisfactory. They willingly attend the talks about the prospects of fulfilling the Fourth Stalinist Five-Year Plan and, while complaining to agitators about material difficulties in everyday life, readily agree that the completion

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of the Five-Year Plan and the future harvest will improve the well-being of the Soviet people considerably.71

In cases where voters did not tremble as much before their agitators, their general questions about the economy and everyday life could border on open criticism of Soviet policies. This is true of the following questions reported as typical during various electoral campaigns in Kyiv:  In 1946 “When will the good life return?” “When will the material situation of the working people improve considerably?” “Why is bread being taken away from the collective farmers?” “Why is the struggle against speculation conducted so poorly?” “Why are the local authorities not adopting decisive measures to combat burglaries and robberies on the outskirts?” In 1947  “When will rationing be abolished?” “For what period of time has rationing been extended?” “When will the permission be given to build private housing?” “What are the causes of the typhus epidemic and why are adequate measures not being taken?” “Why do peasants from Bessarabia, who have been conscripted for construction work in Kyiv, walk around barefoot and beg for food?” And in 1951  “When will prices go down?” “When will the quality of consumer goods improve?”72 With these questions, citizens probably hoped to send a signal to the authorities. Indeed, as the reports compiled from every corner of the Soviet Union confirm, people everywhere asked similar questions.73 The authorities claimed to have listened. Originally promised by Stalin in his election speech in February 1946, the abolition of rationing—one of the most popular questions posed to agitators during 1946 and 1947—finally took place on 14 December 1947, a week before the elections to the local soviets. The population greeted the simultaneous reduction of bread prices and the opening of numerous additional grocery stores both at official meetings and spontaneously. Upon exiting the new stores with their purchases, some Kyivites exclaimed: “Here it is, the good life; it’s back. May God grant good health and strength to our dear and beloved Comrade Stalin!” or “Long live Comrade Stalin, hurrah to Comrade Stalin!”74 The abolition of rationing, however, came complete with a currency exchange that was designed to wipe out large savings in cash and shrink any significant bank accounts. The majority of workers, who had no savings to speak of, apparently welcomed it as targeting hated speculators. Those slightly better off emptied the stores, bought theater tickets for future performances, and ordered expensive haircuts. There were expressions of discontent at the Arsenal factory, where the mid-month advance was delayed, leaving the employees without money on the very day of the government announcement. Even the official communiqué tried to preempt grumblings by pointing out that the reform would be the people’s “last sacrifice” to the cause of postwar reconstruction.75

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With these reforms, announced during the electoral campaign and presented at meetings as “Stalin’s protection of the interests of working people,” the authorities claimed that the election results represented the voters’ answer to the reforms, which in turn was the state’s answer to popular concerns. The gratitude of Kyivites allegedly “found its expression during the elections to the local Soviets” on 21 December, as confirmed by the 99.99 percent turnout and 99.94 percent of votes in favor of the official slate of candidates. The authorities also reported as evidence patriotic inscriptions on bulletins thanking Stalin for the abolition of rationing and for the currency reform.76 Similarly, when state prices on major food items were lowered on 1 March 1950, just before the all-Union elections on 12 March, Kyiv authorities summarized the popular response as follows:  the voters “will unanimously vote for the candidates because it means a happy life.”77 If ideologists expected citizens to thank the state for a better life with their votes, people desperate for improvements in their living conditions could turn the tables and threaten to abstain from voting unless their demands were met. This, admittedly risky, negotiating strategy could be successful if local bureaucrats considered the request reasonable. Thus, before the February 1947 elections to the Ukrainian legislature a female voter named Shevchuk (10 Annensky Lane) announced to the local agitator: “According to Stalin’s Constitution, I should be receiving a bread ration card, but I am not getting one and I do not want to vote anymore. I voted on 10 February [1946] and what did it give me?” Although not based on any clauses of the Constitution, Shevchuk’s request was completely legitimate. The bureaucratic glitch was immediately fixed and she received her ration card.78 The agitator Kizei, an employee of the Kyiv Polytechnic, ran into a more difficult situation that same year while talking with some female construction workers living in an unheated dormitory. The three women living in room 12 said, “What are the elections to us, when we are hungry? Before the war we voted for Comrade [Maryna] Hnatenko. Back then we were receiving four kilograms of grain for a workday [on a collective farm], but now we are sitting here in the cold and have not been paid for three months.” According to the agitator, many other workers in this dormitory felt the same. Satisfying the demands of 157 construction workers was not as easy as helping one elderly woman to acquire a ration card. As in another similar case regarding the dormitory of the Bridge Construction Depot, the situation allegedly “improved” after the administration became involved, but it is highly unlikely that all the workers’ demands were met.79 Finally, the city authorities ignored the demand of A.  V. Veksler (77 Dmytrivska Street), who announced to his agitator that he would not vote for Khrushchev, who was standing for election in his district. The voter “expressed his displeasure with C[omrade] Khrushchev because

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C[omrade] Khrushchev did not give him an apartment, and he told the agitator that his family will vote for Com[rade] Stalin [instead].” The only result of this demarche was to put the entire building under agitators’ close observation, further increasing the number of talks about “temporary difficulties.”80 Generally, only in desperate cases did voters try to negotiate the resolution of their private concerns during elections to the all-Union and Ukrainian Supreme Soviets. They understood these events as appropriate occasions for asking questions about the possibility of war, major state policies, and the general improvement in living standards—issues one could bring up in a symbolic interaction with Stalin. In contrast, the elections to local soviets in December 1947 and December 1950 saw a flurry of questions and demands concerning concrete everyday problems specific to Kyiv’s neighborhoods. These electoral campaigns contained a strong component of real, as opposed to symbolic, interaction with the authorities. One month before the elections hundreds of lower-level deputies—in 1950 Kyivites were represented by 1,666 deputies to district soviets, 844 to the city soviet, and 44 to the oblast soviet81—held meetings to “report on their work” with voters, who apparently had waited for this moment of direct negotiation with local authorities. (Tens of thousands of agitators worked on this campaign as well, but their function as an “interface” was muted. Only the mayor, Oleksii Davydov, who was elected to this position indirectly, by the city council, collected questions and proposals during a meeting with agitators, who summarized voters’ concerns for him.) What is interesting about the municipal elections is not just the sheer number of demands but the language in which they were expressed. Both the population and the agitators, and even official reports at the city level, spoke of “voters’ demands,” as in this example from 1947: “At a number of meetings, voters demanded that the city executive committee and district soviets concentrate, first of all, on improving the operation of trams and buses, increasing the number of stores, eliminating power outages, the renovation of housing, and the construction of new apartment buildings and customer service premises.”82 During the electoral campaign, petitions from residents asking to have their buildings wired for radios or their power supply restored routinely opened with the phrase “We, the voters of,” followed by the street or neighborhood name. During the meeting with the chairman of the Zaliznychny District soviet, Comrade Izhelia, “the voters [of an outlying neighborhood] demanded that stairs be built to Batyieva Hill, the streets in Batyieva Hill lit with electricity, additional street water fountains installed, and cultural life organized for the residents of Batyieva Hill.”83 Requests and questions recorded during these two campaigns could be very specific:  for example, the lack of footwear for girls aged 12 to 16, a

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stinking rainwater collector near Zhytny Market, or the lack of repairs in a particular flooded apartment. They could also be more general ones that were applicable to most neighborhoods: the unsatisfactory functioning of public transport, insufficient number of public baths, and unreliable supply of electricity. There is every indication that local authorities listened, at least to concerns repeated in more than one neighborhood—city bureaucrats summarized these demands district by district and the city soviet’s executive committee planned remedial measures.84 During the elections to the Soviet and Ukrainian legislatures, however, voters almost never made such concrete demands. Instead of speaking in the voice of a collective (“We, the voters”), each of them stood on his or her own in a symbolic interaction with power personified by Stalin. The general principle of quid pro quo applied: people could obtain help more easily before the elections, when the authorities needed contented voters, but assistance was always individual. Also, instead of a candidate standing for election, they dealt with an intermediary—the agitator—who represented the state in general. Especially during the electoral campaigns of 1946 and 1947, when state social services remained underdeveloped, Kyivan agitators played a major role in helping the population resolve all kinds of everyday problems. Judging by the language of reports, agitators “discovered” problems just as often as they responded to complaints or requests. Many agitators likely saw helping the poor and the disadvantaged as a state-approved form of social activism. Some could be guided by compassion, while others merely carried out their duties. But, the end result remained the same: in preparation for the elections, representatives of the state helped improve ordinary people’s lives. More often than not, agitators assisted with paperwork. As relatively educated people with a better-than-average orientation in the world of Soviet bureaucracy, they helped individuals obtain a certificate about a husband’s death at the front, register for disability status, apply for a job, receive a registration stamp, apply for a pension, acquire a bread ration card, and so on. In one case, an agitator helped a worker’s family prepare paperwork for a lawsuit that resulted in the return of their apartment. Sometimes an agitator realized that his or her charges were entitled to a state benefit they did not know about, as in the case of the agitator Kaufman, who in late 1945 helped the voter Khodakivska to prepare documents about the number of children she had—seven—which status entitled her to a medal and considerable support payments from the state.85 When an agitator found out that a certain Marchenko, an unemployed woman recovering from typhus, was lying hungry in her unheated apartment on Zhertv Revoliutsii Street, her situation began to change: her stove was repaired, firewood and donated

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clothing were delivered, and she obtained financial aid. Another agitator helped the bedridden disabled voter Kostiantyn Riznychenko by obtaining a bread ration card, wiring his room for radio, and providing a complimentary newspaper subscription. The press reported on such cases as examples of the great work being done by agitators.86 When agitators represented a large factory or powerful administrative institution, they could do more for voters than just help with paperwork. In 1946 the “Ukrkabel” factory helped open an additional bread store in the neighborhood, thus eliminating the long lines. The same enterprise also provided elderly voters in the vicinity with firewood.87 During the 1947 elections agitators from the Ministry of Justice applied their influence and bureaucratic skills to helping voters in their charge. They mobilized the police to help a single woman named Skrypchuk (aged 75), who had been illegally evicted from her apartment. They double-checked the amount of pension due to the voter Chyhir, whose income went up (and retroactively for the last seven months, too). They obtained a free sanatorium pass for the retired engineer Sverhun, who suffered from rheumatism, and donated 10 square meters of cloth from the ministry’s supplies to the voter Shapovalova, who had adopted an abandoned baby. When an agitator from the ministry realized that the voter Rvacheva was being mistakenly charged communal payments for a joint kitchen, he “sent for an apartment manager and demanded an immediate stop to this.”88 Whether it was rendered by heavy-handed ministry employees or gentler people from other walks of life, the assistance offered by agitators was greatly appreciated by the population. Voters understood that this was part of some bargain that had been struck not so much with individual agitators or even the institutions they represented as with the state in whose name they were offering assistance. What people would have appreciated even more would have been steady attention to their needs. As one inscription on a bulletin during the 1946 elections read, “Thank you, comrades, for all the work you did in our building. We ask you not to forget about us in the future too.” Reportedly, there were many such notes.89

THE FIRST CANDIDATE

The electoral procedures as such began with the creation of electoral commissions, both at the level of electoral districts and individual polling stations. In Stalin’s time, Kyiv was divided into three electoral districts during all-Union elections and up to nine during the elections to the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet, but the number of polling stations (each serving, according to the Elections Statute, between 1,500 and 3,000 voters) grew steadily,

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from 337 in 1946 to 476 in 1951. In theory, the members and chairpersons of district electoral commissions were nominated by the voters and confirmed by the executive committee of the soviet to which the elections were being held. In practice, however, local party bodies selected such individuals, and the central party apparatus approved their candidacies. Thus, in preparation for the all-Union elections in 1946, the CP(B)U Central Committee sent to Moscow the names and brief biographies of commission members for the city’s three electoral districts. In subsequent elections, the all-Union Central Committee sometimes requested the names of commission chairpersons for the districts in which members of the Politburo were standing for election. This happened, for example, during the municipal elections in Kyiv in December 1947.90 The authorities always observed the formal nomination procedure, however, which resulted in another mini-campaign in preparation for the actual electoral campaign. Candidates for the three to nine district commissions during the “big” elections typically included Stakhanovite workers, war heroes, and famous scholars. The discussion of their candidacies was a mere formality. However, the authorities could not control the nomination of candidates to station electoral commissions as effectively for the hundreds of polling stations in Kyiv. Between 1946 and 1951 the number of station commission members grew from 2,816 to 4,038, and the procedure for their approval represented a curious mix of bureaucratic stage management and reckoning with popular opinion. The Kremlin’s instructions dictated that, within the commissions, women should constitute at least 40 percent and party members, no more than 40 percent. With this in mind, district party committees asked local organizations for nominations of a certain type of candidate. Local party organizers obliged, but they usually suggested candidates who commanded respect in their collectives, in order to guarantee a smooth nomination process. District party committees then examined these suggestions and “approved” the candidates, whom the organizations were now free to nominate formally after a brief discussion.91 Occasionally, local party organizers could misjudge public opinion in their collectives so badly that the approved candidate would be rejected. Two such incidents took place in Kyiv before the 1947 elections to the Ukrainian parliament. When office workers at the salespersons trade union headquarters learned that their nominee was to be Petro Poliachek, some people approached the party organizer to say that “they would not vote because he is not an authoritative person.” As a result of these backroom conversations, the organization nominated another candidate, Kh. M. Dubovytska, a choice that the district party committee approved retroactively. During the nomination meeting at the Kaganovichsky District grocery trading administration, the workers rejected the preapproved

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candidacy of Lidiia Melnykova because she allegedly made and sold moonshine. It is not clear whether the alternate candidate was proposed from the floor or by the party organizer, but in any case the district’s “best salesperson,” K. M. Sadovska, passed the nomination process with flying colors.92 With the electoral commissions thus established, ideologists could proceed to the first of the two climactic moments in the electoral campaign— the nomination of candidates. The symbolic importance of this act becomes obvious in light of the fact that in every single district Stalin was named the “first candidate” to any elected soviet everywhere in the country, except for the lowest-level district soviets. This strategy highlighted the function of elections as an arena of the people’s personal, symbolic interaction with the leader, regardless of whose name actually appeared on voting bulletins. The CP(B)U Central Committee prepared tables with the names of candidates to be nominated or supported at meetings. The list always began with Stalin’s name, continued with the names of several other Soviet leaders, and ended with the name of the actual candidate to be elected in a given district. Over the years, the distance between Stalin and other Soviet leaders increased visibly. During the 1946 elections Stalin was nominated at 55 meetings in Kyiv, Molotov at 44, Khrushchev at 40, Zhdanov at 14, Kalinin at 11, and Voroshilov at 9. In 1950 Stalin was nominated at 1,349 meetings in the city, Molotov at 115, Khrushchev at 112, Malenkov at 60, Bulganin at 46, and Beria at 37.93 Yet, in the rhetoric accompanying the nominations, Stalin always completely dominated other leaders. Even when an employee of the Ministry of Education, P. D. Ukhtomska, took the floor in 1946 to nominate the actual candidate, her minister Pavlo Tychyna, she still began by talking about Stalin, the symbolic first candidate: “To vote for Stalin is to vote for our country’s victorious path. To vote for Stalin is to vote for peace, happiness, and freedom.”94 In 1950 a city-level party memo openly acknowledged that the main function of nomination meetings was to serve “as a powerful manifestation of the working people’s love and devotion to the Bolshevik Party, to our leader and teacher, Comrade Stalin.”95 Carefully scripted meetings usually began with a Stakhanovite worker, award-winning inventor, or some other typical representative of the organization in question proposing the candidacy of the Great Leader and asking him to do the voters the honor of standing in their district. A good example of this ritual in its fully developed form is the meeting that was held at the “Lenin’s Smithy” shipbuilding enterprise on 16 January 1951. With about 2,500 workers gathered before the podium graced by a giant portrait of Stalin and the slogan “Glory to great Stalin,” an honorary presidium of the meeting was elected—the entire Politburo headed by Stalin. Stormy applause followed, and members of the audience cried, “Long live Comrade Stalin!” “Glory to Great Stalin! “Hurrah!” Then the foreman of

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the assembly shop, the Stakhanovite worker Andrii Shcherbakov, took the floor to announce, “We have gathered today to exercise a great right granted to us by Stalin’s Constitution—to nominate candidates for deputies of the Ukrainian SSR Supreme Soviet. . . . In these joyful days each of us, the Soviet people, addresses Comrade Stalin with these words: ‘From the bottom of our hearts, thank you, our great leader! Thank you for the happiness you gave us and our children, for the joy of life, for your tireless concern for the working people!’ ” The nomination was followed by applause lasting several minutes and ideologically sound cries from the audience.96 Just a year earlier, at a similar meeting at the same factory, the locksmith V. T. Hudzivny, who had fulfilled fourteen annual plans in five years, nominated Stalin for the all-Union parliament thus: I think I will express the thoughts and hopes of everybody working at our plant by calling the name of the person, to whom we owe our happiness, our labor achievements, the dear name of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. [Stormy and prolonged applause]. We will be asking our dear Comrade Stalin to do us the great honor of agreeing to stand for election in Kyiv-Leninsky electoral district.97

Human resources specialist N. S. Karpenko continued: “All of us are happy to live and work in the heroic Stalin’s era, the communist era. All of us are proud of our Motherland, the mighty Soviet state. We are proud of having great rights that are written in the Stalin Constitution in gold letters.” The accompanying photograph showed workers listening to these speeches in an unheated shop, all of them bundled up in shabby clothing.98 At a nomination meeting at the Writer’s Union on 4 January 1946, the distinguished Ukrainian poet Maksym Rylsky put his proposal into verse under the title “The First Candidate”: From every city, town, and village Thanks to this person, glory to the leader! The Soviet family of a hundred fraternal peoples Raises this beautiful name high above the world. This name is our banner and our behest, This name, like the Sun, enlivens the world. It means grand construction sites and green fields, It means invincible might and Stalin’s genius.99 In such statements one can read the intertwined motifs of Stalin’s nomination as an expression of gratitude for everything and, at the same time, as the exercising of a constitutional right also granted by Stalin, one more

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reason to be thankful. Party journals encouraged just such an interpretation of nominations:  “Tens of thousands of voters nominating Comrade Stalin at pre-election meetings are thus expressing gratitude to their leader for bestowing happiness on all our people and for his wise guidance, thanks to which the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic obtained its Soviet statehood, independence, and freedom.”100 The tropes of gratitude changed slightly during the celebration of Stalin’s 70th birthday in 1949, as addresses to him acquired more of a personal touch. In nominating Stalin for the all-Union parliament in 1950, the blacksmith V.  Haiduk, employed at the Stalin Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Docks, wished the Leader good health:  “Nominating Comrade Stalin as a candidate, I wish him many, many years of life and good health for the good of the Soviet people and the working people of the entire world.”101 References to victory in the war, so prominent during the 1946 and 1947 electoral campaigns—Generalissimo Stalin, “the architect of victory,” “he who leads us from one victory to another,” and even “our savior, Great Comrade Stalin, who saved our Ukraine and our people from humiliating German slavery”—all but disappear by the early 1950s, because Stalin’s gift of life, prosperity, and happiness had more universal quality than his particular service in winning the war. What did not change over time, however, was his image as the patriarch of the Soviet family (“our friend, father, and teacher”) and the supreme political leader (“the first candidate” to any legislature).102 Of course, nervous or excited speakers could get the terminology or names of offices wrong, as happened in 1950, when the “Arsenal” worker Koptenko nominated “our dear and beloved Comrade Stalin” as “the first people’s candidate to the deputies of state power.” (Some oblast-level ideologist corrected this to “deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”) Stalin did not stand in Kyiv anyway; the city’s eventual deputy was one of the following “Arsenal” nominees:  Stalin, Molotov, Malenkov, and Mykhailo Synytsia, first secretary of the city party committee.103 In rare cases, speakers could also extol Stalin for the wrong reasons. During the 1946 elections the 70-year-old storekeeper at the Kyiv-Moskovsky railway depot, Comrade Rezut, claimed to have met the young Stalin when he was working as a postman in Baku in 1901. At the nomination meeting he said, “I remember as if today those happy moments when Comrade Stalin shook my hand for every letter delivered to him. I know Joseph Vissarionovich to be the most remarkable person and friend.”104 Significantly, his words did not make it into the newspapers, and he never spoke again during subsequent meetings. Even if Rezut’s claim were legitimate, Soviet people were not about to elect Stalin just because

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he was a nice person and shook hands with the postman every time he received a letter. Even if nominated in every single district in the republic, Stalin stood for election to the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet, Kyiv oblast soviet, and Kyiv city soviet in only one district in the capital. The Ukrainian party boss, whether Khrushchev, Kaganovich, or Melnykov, selected another district in Kyiv. District numbers and borders changed according to the type of election, but each time Kyivites had a good chance of ending up voting for the Great Leader, or at least for the republic’s chief. During the first postwar elections some residents turned the wait for the name of their deputy into a kind of sport, hoping for a chance for some “direct,” if only symbolic, political interaction with Stalin. In 1947 there were reports of people “waiting impatiently to hear the names of candidates for deputies” in their district.105 If Stalin alone was nominated, this meant he would surely stand in this district. If the list of high-profile nominees ended with a local candidate, that name would always end up on the ballot. After the first three postwar elections, the excitement of waiting for the slate of candidates subsided; everyone had figured out the intricacies of the system. Stalin was always elected to the all-Union parliament from Moscow’s Stalinsky District, to the Ukrainian legislature from Kyiv’s Stalinsky District, and to Kyiv oblast and city soviets also from Stalinsky District (electoral districts no. 5 or 6 and 108 or 192, respectively), where the “Lenin’s Smithy” was located.106 In advance of the 1946 elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Stalin was nominated in every electoral district in the Soviet Union, and other members of the Politburo, in multiple districts. One month before the elections, however, the press carried a collective open letter from the Politburo members to district electoral commissions. The Soviet leaders thanked the voters of all regions where they were nominated and informed the citizens of their choices. Stalin predictably picked up Moscow’s Stalinsky District, while Khrushchev stood for election in Kyiv’s Leninsky District. A  similar letter appeared during the next all-Union elections in 1950, although Khrushchev then worked in Moscow and stood for election there, whereas the new Ukrainian leader, Leonid Melnikov, took over the Leninsky District in Kyiv.107 The first time Kyivites saw Stalin’s name on their voting bulletins since the end of the war was during the elections to the republic’s Supreme Soviet in February 1947. The formulae used during the first days of January at nomination meetings in Stalinsky District—“a great honor has been bestowed on us, to nominate Comrade Stalin as the first deputy”—together with the lack of other candidates in this district signaled to the population that Stalin would stand. Indeed, a telegram duly arrived from Moscow on 8 January: “Grateful for the trust of all comrade voters who put forward my

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candidacy. Agree to stand for election to the Ukrainian SSR Supreme Soviet in Stalinsky electoral district no. 2 in the city of Kyiv. J. Stalin.” Molotov, Kaganovich, and Khrushchev also stood for election to the Ukrainian legislature in the capital’s various districts.108 However, the very next election, for local soviets in December 1947, was marked by an unfortunate delay in receiving the candidate’s consent because of a misunderstanding between local ideologists and the top Soviet leadership. As the Moscow archives reveal, events unfolded in the following order. On 6 November the apparatus of the all-Union Central Committee reported to the Central Committee secretaries Aleksei Kuznetsov and Mikhail Suslov that local party bosses throughout the country wanted to nominate Stalin and other leaders for their local soviets. By perusing old issues of Pravda from 1939, apparatus workers learned that during the last elections to local soviets Stalin was elected to city soviets in Moscow, Leningrad, and all the capitals of the Union republics. Molotov also became a deputy of seven city soviets. The Central Committee apparatus recommended a positive outcome. Interestingly, the historical investigation in Moscow focused on city soviets, as though the issue of electing the leaders to oblast soviets was not in doubt.109 Then the Central Committee functionaries prepared separate letters for all the Politburo members, first informing them about their nominations to various city soviets, then asking them to stand in certain districts in major cities. In Kyiv they earmarked for Stalin the electoral district no. 108 (“Lenin’s Smithy”); for Molotov, no.  426; for Kaganovich, no.  779; and for Khrushchev, no. 674. Significantly, the document did not state that the voters were asking the leaders to stand, but rather that “the city and oblast party committees as well as the Central Committees of union republics are asking you to agree to stand for election.”110 These letters about city soviets were sent for processing to the secretariats of the Soviet leaders, but at the same time the local party bosses found out, to their horror, that Stalin and Molotov had not agreed to stand for election to oblast soviets in the capitals of the Union republics. On 16 November the Ukrainian press reported that Kaganovich and Khrushchev were registered to stand for election to the oblast soviet in Kyiv, but Stalin—only in Moscow. On 18 November the distraught Central Committee apparatus in Moscow issued a memo about “not receiving the consent” of Stalin and Molotov, specifying that “no other candidates have been nominated” in the districts reserved for them in the republics’ capitals, including Kyiv.111 The problem was swiftly rectified. On 21 November Kyiv newspapers already reported that Stalin and Molotov had agreed to stand for election to the oblast soviet and that they were registered on the same day, somewhat compressing the usual practice because of the looming registration

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deadline.112 On 23 November the nomination procedure began in the Kyiv city soviet, but by then the Moscow paperwork had apparently reached its addressees. Once again Kyivan voters nominated Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, and Khrushchev, received their consent, and duly elected them as city councilors.113 What happened in the Kremlin in 1947? The most likely explanation is that Stalin simply became confused about which nominations he was supposed to decline—from places other than Moscow to the all-Union parliament, from districts other than republican capitals and Leningrad for other elections, all nominations for lower-level (below oblast and city-level) soviets—and made a mistake, which the people around him were afraid to correct. Significantly, during the next elections to local soviets in late 1950 the Central Committee apparatus did not send individual letters to Politburo members formally asking for their consent—lest they became confused again—but centralized the decision-making process in the hands of Secretary for Ideology Suslov. He approved the districts and the principal nominating organizations in Kyiv for Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, and Khrushchev, and also served as part of the trio of senior bureaucrats who made the final decision:  Georgii Malenkov, Mikhail Suslov, and Panteleimon Ponomarenko.114 Some components of the electoral procedure, which for other candidates were handled with little or no publicity, turned into occasions for even more mass rallies and expressions of gratitude in Stalin’s case. This was true of district preelection public meetings (peredvyborchi narady), an intermediary stage between nominations in organizations and the registration of candidates and an occasion for voters to “discuss” the proposed candidacies. These were major public events only during elections to the all-Union parliament or, in all other cases, only in districts, where Stalin stood for election. During the 1946 elections, in Kyiv’s Kaganovichsky electoral district a preelection meeting of representatives from the district’s organizations featured the usual nomination of Stalin as the “first candidate” followed by a standing ovation and cries of “Hurrah to Stalin!” and “Long live Stalin for many years!” Only a close reading of speeches helps determine that the actual candidate in this district was the president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Oleksandr Bohomolets.115 When Stalin stood for election in Kyiv, preelection meetings usually took place at the opera theater and featured the familiar rhetoric of love, gratitude, and the great honor of voting for the Leader.116 Even more impressive were the celebrations of Stalin’s consent to stand for election in Kyiv. Meetings in major factories and other organizations usually took place on the day of the announcement, their main motifs being gratitude for this honor and promises to work even harder. A  citywide

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Figure  5.2  Mass rally in Shevchenko Park marking Stalin’s consent to stand for election to the republic’s Supreme Soviet in Kyiv’s Stalinsky electoral district, 26 January 1951. Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

open-air rally usually followed on the next day in the square in front of the university, where the Shevchenko monument stood and a new park was being created to replace the one destroyed during the war. During the elections to local soviets in 1950, some 20,000 Kyivites gathered there to hear speeches from the podium under Stalin’s full-length portrait—five times larger than life. The Stakhanovite worker from “Lenin’s Smithy,” Volodymyr Shynkaruk, announced, “What a great honor it is to vote for the greatest person today, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin!” The audience applauded and sang the Soviet anthem. In January 1951, before Stalin’s election to the Ukrainian legislature, 150,000 people participated in a similar ceremony on the same square, which was held on a very frosty day.117 Another symbolic candidate widely nominated and always elected in Kyiv was the Ukrainian party leader. Under Khrushchev, electoral rhetoric established his close, if figurative, connection to both Stalin and the Ukrainian people. He was referred to as “Great Stalin’s closest comrade

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in arms,” but also “the finest son of the Ukrainian people,” even though Khrushchev was an ethnic Russian who could not speak Ukrainian. His consent to stand for election warranted mass outdoor rallies in the city; his meeting with select “voters” in the opera house featured elaborate speeches, but no questions from the audience.118 As official rhetoric had it, Ukrainians had reasons to be grateful to Khrushchev as a politician, who was not just Stalin’s shadow, thus entering into the same type of symbolic relationship with him that they had with Stalin: he “fought for the liberation” of the republic” and “applied so much effort and energy during the reconstruction of our republic’s economy.” Moreover, “Stalin’s genius and Khrushchev’s work” resulted in the reunification of all Ukrainian ethnographic lands in 1939–45.119 Melnikov, in contrast, was lauded only as the “worthy son of our glorious Communist Party,” “candidate of the Stalinist bloc,” and “Comrade Stalin’s faithful pupil.” During his meetings with voters, speakers focused on expressing their love for Stalin rather than any meaningful connection to Melnikov: “Comrade Stalin is the joy and happiness of our people, the banner of the struggle for peace, the bright present and brighter future of our great and mighty Motherland!”120 The personalities of other local candidates ultimately did not matter because they did not have a personal relationship with Stalin or independent status as political symbols; in the system of the figurative relationship between the government and the people, they could only be presented as Stalin’s nameless proxies. For example, during the 1947 voters’ meeting with the candidate to the Ukrainian parliament, a shoe factory worker named Maria Yarmolenko, her official representative Oleksandr Peskov began the meeting with the usual words of gratitude to Stalin. He appealed to the voters to elect Yarmolenko because “by voting for her, we will be voting for the Bolshevik Party, for our dear Stalin, for the further development of our Motherland.”121 The official representative of Paraska Husiatnykova, shop forewoman at the “Ukrkabel” factory and candidate to the all-Union parliament, pursued a similar discursive strategy during the meeting with her voters in February 1950: The thoughts and feelings of all the voters are turned (zvernuti) to Comrade Stalin, under whose leadership our people are marching confidently toward communism. On election day all of us, down to the very last person, will come to the bulletin urns and give our votes for the candidates of the Stalinist bloc of communists and non-party people. By voting for them, we will be voting for the Bolshevik Party, the Soviet government, for our beloved leader Comrade Stalin.122

If the overwhelming majority of candidates served as Stalin’s proxies, how did the authorities select them? As archival materials reveal, oblast party

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committees recommended candidates for the all-Union and Ukrainian legislatures, and the republic’s Central Committee confirmed them.123 The authorities monitored the statistical profile of deputies to prevent women and nonparty persons from being completely excluded, as well as to ensure a majority of ethnic Ukrainians. Among the 161 candidates from Ukraine to the USSR Supreme Soviet (136 to the Council of the Union and 25 to the Council of Nationalities), 40 were women, 41 were nonparty individuals, and 124 were ethnic Ukrainians.124 Because of all the leaders elected there, the capital often skewed the desirable proportions. During the 1947 elections to the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet, nine candidates stood for election in Kyiv, among them only one woman, one nonparty individual, and three ethnic Ukrainians. Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov, and Khrushchev had to be elected in the capital, thereby increasing dramatically the share of male non-Ukrainian party bureaucrats among the city’s deputies in the Ukrainian legislature. To make up for this imbalance, the twenty-six candidates selected in Kyiv oblast (excluding the city of Kyiv) included ten women, eight nonparty individuals, and a whopping twenty-four ethnic Ukrainians.125 Unsurprisingly, a female ethnic Ukrainian Stakhanovite collective farmer emerged as the typical profile of a deputy in Kyiv oblast. These seemingly easy choices sometimes brought unpleasant surprises for the authorities, however, because the majority of female peasants during the war had remained in Ukraine under the German occupation. In 1950 the CP(B)U Central Committee blocked the candidacy of Oleksandra Kamianenko to the all-Union parliament when it was discovered that her sister’s husband and uncle, both former kulaks, had served in the police during the German occupation. The deputy Zinaida Dolotenko in 1951 was not recommended for reelection to the Ukrainian legislature because of a whole range of problems: her vegetable-growing brigade had not fulfilled its quotas, she did not meet with her voters, and—the reason that likely forced the authorities to bring up the first two issues—in 1948 she married a person “not commanding political trust, who served the Germans during the Patriotic War.”126 Deputies elected in Kyiv—four to the all-Union Supreme Soviet and nine to the Ukrainian legislature—did not present Soviet officials with such unpleasant surprises. Rather, the challenge in selecting candidates was to make each group appear representative of the Soviet Ukrainian capital. In urban areas, Stalinist ideologists typically wanted to add workers, scientists, and writers to the usual slate of politicians; in the non-Russian republics, persons of the titular nationality also had to be on the list. The Ukrainian authorities struck a nice balance in choosing Kyiv’s deputies to the USSR Supreme Soviet:  the Ukrainian party boss (Khrushchev or Melnikov); a female Ukrainian worker (Paraska Husiatnykova from “Ukrkabel,” elected

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in 1937, 1946, and 1950); the president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (the physiologist Oleksandr Bohomolets, until his death in 1946, and the biochemist Oleksandr Palladin after 1947); and a Ukrainian poet (Pavlo Tychyna, who was also minister of education—he was elected to the Council of Nationalities).127 Among the city’s nine deputies to the Ukrainian legislature, the workers were represented by Maria Yarmolenko from the Fourth Shoe Factory and Andrii Dushko from the “Arsenal,” both ethnic Ukrainians. Born in 1915, Yarmolenko served as a symbol of a working woman’s new destiny under socialism: after arriving in Kyiv at 17 as an illiterate peasant, she learned to read and write in an evening school while making her name as a Stakhanovite worker. During meetings with voters in 1947, Yarmolenko’s official representative introduced her as a typical Soviet person: “[She] grew up together with our state. The development of our people reflects the advancement of our Motherland.”128 According to the main facts of her biography, Yarmolenko was an almost exact clone of her colleague Husiatnykova, except that the latter was born in Kyiv into a poor working-class family in 1899 and became a worker activist by the 1920s; she was also a party member. During the meeting with her voters in 1946, Husiatnykova applied Lenin’s well-known dictum to herself: “The words of Great Lenin, that every cook (kukharka) would learn how to run the state, came true.”129 Dushko (b. 1878) was already a metalworker even before Husiatnykova’s birth in 1898. As an active participant in the pre-Revolutionary workers’ strikes and the Bolshevik Revolution, he symbolized the native Revolutionary tradition closely identified in Kyiv with the workers of the “Arsenal.” When Dushko died in 1947, he was replaced by Hryhorii Tsaryk, a new kind of “Arsenal” worker of the new generation: besides being the best Stakhanovite, he was also a minor inventor and lathe operator.130 As indicated above, in 1947 Kyiv’s list of deputies to the Ukrainian parliament had to include three Soviet leaders and the Ukrainian party boss (Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, and Khrushchev) and four Soviet leaders and the Ukrainian chief in 1951 (Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Khrushchev, and Melnikov). The list was expanded by the addition of two city-level administrators in 1947, mayor Fedir Chebotarov and the city party committee’s first secretary, Petro Matsui, and one in 1951—mayor Oleksii Davydov, the city party boss Mykhailo Synytsia having been left without a seat in order to include an additional Soviet leader, Khrushchev. This overload of functionaries allowed for the inclusion of only one person in the category of intellectuals or professionals. In 1947 the quota was filled by Kyiv’s chief architect, Oleksandr Vlasov, who supervised the reconstruction of the city center; however, Khrushchev took his favorite designer with him when he left for Moscow in late 1948. For the 1951 elections, the Kyiv authorities replaced

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Figure 5.3  Hryhorii Tsaryk, lathe operator at the “Arsenal” Factory and deputy to the republic’s Supreme Soviet, works to overfulfill his annual program by nine times before Constitution Day (December 1948). Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

Vlasov with a popular children’s doctor, Professor Olena Khokhol, who had the added advantages of being a woman and an ethnic Ukrainian.131 If the candidates’ cumulative profile mattered to the authorities, their individual biographies made little difference to voters. In fact, printed information about the candidates to the all-Union and Ukrainian Supreme Soviets was usually limited to one newspaper article in the local press and a one-page leaflet with a photograph and a brief biography distributed to agitators in a given electoral district, often after a significant delay. Candidates for local soviets only merited the leaflet. But, in contrast to worker deputies, candidates from Kyiv in the categories of intellectuals/professionals were

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usually local celebrities. Biographical essays in the press emphasized their service to the city and its people, in the cases of the chief architect Vlasov and the children’s doctor Khokhol; their leadership as scholars, in the cases of academicians Bohomolets and Palladin; and Tychyna’s popularity as a poet.132 Even though they were not “typical” representatives of the people and not always of lower-class background, the authorities nominated them as symbols of Soviet achievements, be it in science, medicine, architecture, or literature. During their meetings with voters such candidates spoke about their significant personal contributions without forgetting to stress their commitment to the Bolshevik cause and devotion to Stalin as the source of such achievements.133 The members of another category of deputies well known to the population, local functionaries, were “marketed” in preelection propaganda as “true sons of the people” who worked tirelessly for the benefit of their constituencies.134 If the lower-class background of postwar Kyivan leaders justified the former statement, voters could have their doubts about the latter. As will be shown in the next chapter, voters crossed out the names of mayors and city party chiefs more often than they did the names of any other candidates in a variety of elections. Whereas a preelection meeting with voters was a formal and scripted affair for candidates to the all-Union and Ukrainian parliaments, during elections to local soviets such a meeting could turn into a grueling Q and A session with a city boss about problems concerning transportation, construction work, and the electricity supply. Between the municipal elections of 1951 and 1953, thirty-eight deputies to the Kyiv soviet “compromised themselves”—usually a codeword for a criminal conviction or dismissal from a post because of corruption—and another fifty-nine were not recommended for reelection because of their shoddy work.135 The only recorded case of the population spontaneously nominating an alternative candidate in Kyiv between 1946 and 1953 took place in the very district where the official candidate was the city party boss, Petro Matsui. On 6 January 1947 the workers of the Darnytsia locomotive depot gathered to nominate their representative to the district preelection meeting—a highly formal event, during which representatives from various organizations were supposed to “discuss” the candidates already nominated in this district: Stalin, Kaganovich, Khrushchev, and (the real candidate) Matsui. Instead of electing a representative to the district meeting, however, the workers nominated their fellow locomotive engineer, Korotchevsky, as a candidate to the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet—that is, to stand against Matsui. The city bureaucrats managed to dismiss this incident as a misunderstanding and technical mistake, because the deadline for nominating candidates had passed. The republic’s ideologists apparently never learned

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of this episode, the traces of which remain only in the city archives. The incident continues to be highly ambiguous. The district party committee blamed a local party organizer for “not explaining” to the workers that their meeting “had no right” to nominate a candidate. 136 This language seems to suggest that the workers clearly intended to put forward a candidate, and had not confused the position of a representative to a district meeting with that of a candidate for deputy. The ideological function of Stalinist electoral campaigns is best appreciated when compared to the first post-Stalin election, to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in February 1954. Stalin’s death and the ensuing critique of the “cult of personality” deprived the campaign of its focus, the First Candidate. The ritual of the “masses” expressing gratitude to the Great Leader, of everyone preparing to vote for him regardless of who their candidate was, suddenly lost its other symbolic pole, Stalin. For this reason, the 1954 electoral campaign was unusually tame. Reports about early nominations of candidates in Kyiv appeared in small font on page 2 of the local newspaper, and nomination meetings lost much of their grandeur.137 As a ritual of the people’s symbolic interaction with the authorities, the electoral campaign needed radical reconstruction—or a new “great leader.” However, it continued to function, if in an increasingly ritualized form, as a medium of ideological education and a channel for interaction with the population. Unlike the elections themselves, Stalinist electoral campaigns thus emerge as an important social practice of political participation, a moment of high politics translated into the everydayness of “communal citizenship.” Definitely a political ritual, the electoral campaign cannot be dismissed as an “empty” ceremony because it provided social space for symbolic interaction with the authorities, reiterated ideal notions of citizenship, and allowed for a moment of subtle negotiation. Participants could imbue these political rituals with different meanings or use them to express criticisms of the state, framing their questions and comments as part of a reciprocal relationship, in which citizens fulfilling their duty expected the authorities to provide them with services. A particularly interesting role in the mechanism of Stalinist “communal politics” was played by the army of “agitators,” who acted at once as political educators, enforcers of voter turnout, opinion pollsters, social workers, advocates for the poor, and defenders of the state’s policies. Ordinary citizens organizing elections for the state, agitators knowingly or unknowingly provided Stalinist politics with a human face. Despite the political tension ever-present in routine agitation work, relations between agitators and voters present a rather unexpected perspective on Stalinist politics as a “communal affair.” In the case of Stalinist

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electoral campaigns, grand strategies of the state—here, the political education of citizens and mass demonstration of allegiance—were translated into home visits by agitators, communal get-togethers, and newspaper-reading circles, during which the agitators forged personal relationships with their listeners. The success of Stalinist elections was ensured not just by means of fear or internalization of Bolshevik ideology, but at the very moment, so often described in newspapers and reports, when voters offered a cup of tea to a visiting agitator.

C H A P T E R  6

w

Election Day

O

n 19 December 1947, just days before the municipal elections in Kyiv, a student passing through the city center noticed a printed leaflet on the wall of St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral. The text, addressed to “Ukrainian citizens” and signed “the Ukrainian insurgents,” apparently was printed before the previous elections to the republic’s Supreme Soviet in February 1947. The nationalist insurgents called on Ukrainians to boycott the elections or destroy their ballots, because “the Ukrainian SSR is not a sovereign state, just a colony of the Muscovite empire—the USSR.” By proclaiming, at the end of the appeal, “glory” to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council, the authors identified themselves with the organized nationalist underground movement then active in Western Ukraine, but barely existing in the east. The student tore off the leaflet and delivered it to the district party committee.1 This was postwar Kyiv’s only recorded case of nationalist counterpropaganda pertaining to the elections reaching residents of the capital. The situation was markedly different in the newly conquered western regions, where nationalist insurgents had successfully disrupted the February 1946 elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in select locations and, now, the elections to the republican legislature were looming. The party archives in Moscow and Kyiv contain correspondence and draft decrees scheduling the elections in Ukraine (as in all other Soviet republics) for December 1946, but in the end the Kremlin delayed them until February 1947. It is quite possible that concern with the nationalist insurgencies in the Baltic republics and Western Ukraine caused this delay; instead of holding elections to the Ukrainian legislature in December 1946 ( 179 )

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as originally planned, Khrushchev reported to Stalin on the “dispersal to villages of troops from the Sub-Carpathian Military District.”2 The authorities provided every electoral candidate in the western oblasts with bodyguards and, for the last ten days before the election, assigned between seven and ten soldiers and policemen to guard every polling station. On Election Day there were rebel attacks on polling stations in the west, but only minor technical problems in Kyiv.3 In Kyiv the authorities successfully staged the elections as a “nationwide holiday” (vsenarodne sviato), an often repeated cliché in the press and unpublished memos throughout the Soviet Union.4 But, instead of dismissing the notion of elections as a popular holiday and rhetorical trope of Stalinist propaganda, it is worth pondering just why they were styled this way. I argue that, like the “real” Soviet holidays and celebrations discussed in Chapter 2, the elections allowed for a symbolic interaction to take place between the masses and the authorities in the political space. Styling an election as a holiday signals that the authorities expected a positive outcome and wanted to see a mass emotional response on top of dry numerical data. Perhaps the large majority of the population also embraced this understanding of the elections as a festive occasion to express their loyalty, rather than as a moment of political choice.5 Yet, this is not to say that no resistance took place on Election Day. During every election the authorities recorded a significant number of negative inscriptions on the ballots protesting everyday deprivations and injustices. There, expressions of discontent rarely rose to the level of condemning the political system itself, but they were worrisome nonetheless.

EVERYONE TO THE POLLS!

On the morning of Election Day, always a Sunday, agitators woke early and rushed to the apartment buildings and private houses assigned to them. Official pronouncements called on the agitators “to ensure the participation of all voters in the elections” as an alleged reflection of “ever higher political activism and socialist consciousness of the masses,” and the same directive was repeated in more pragmatic terms during agitators’ instructional meetings at their workplaces: “to guarantee 100-percent attendance from our buildings.”6 An informal prohibition kept agitators from entering residential buildings before the polls opened at 6:00 a.m.; however, good agitators did not need to knock on doors.7 Their voters would be waiting outside, ready to march, sometimes with red banners borrowed from their factory. Thus, in 1946 the leader of an agitators’ group at the Liqueur and Vodka Trust, Comrade Kashtan, said proudly of his coworkers:  “Some

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Figure 6.1  A  1951 Ukrainian election poster. The caption reads:  “Comrade voters! Vote for the candidates of the Communist and non-party bloc.” Source: Courtesy of the Arts Division of the V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine.

agitators did such a fine job that all voters from ‘their’ apartment building volunteered to go to the polls in an organized manner, with a banner.” In Molotovsky District the same year, a wind orchestra marched in the streets beginning at 5:45 a.m., its music not only marshaling citizens, but also signaling the event’s similarity to parades. Indeed, in this same district some voters could be seen marching to the polls in columns while carrying posters or slogans.8 This did not become a universal tradition, however. Newspapers praised the “organized arrival of voters with orchestras playing and songs sung” as a reflection of Soviet collectivism, the image of citizenry united in its support of the Soviet power,9 but there were many more residential buildings in the city than orchestras, and not all residents were as easy to “organize.” Typically, only factory workers lived in the same factory apartment block and could provide agitators from among their ranks who marched as model Soviet citizens. During the 1950 elections it was noted as an exception that “the collectives of the 9th Brick Factory and Cement Factory arrived in an organized way, with an orchestra, banners, and portraits of the leaders and government members,” and that “200 workers from the dormitory of subway builders came as one group, with portraits of leaders and [singing] songs.”10 Fascinating, but unfortunately rarely highlighted in contemporary reports, is the fusion of new political ritual and communal tradition developing, as small groups of neighbors went to the polls together. In 1947 “voter

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Comrade Sviderska, aged 78, the mother of a captain in the Soviet army, came to the polling station at the head of voters from five apartments in her building.”11 What made her an informal leader: her advanced age, her status as an officer’s mother, or her moral authority with the neighbors? We know even less about the homemaker Klochko, aged 68, who in 1950 was the first to arrive at the 26th polling station in Leninsky District “and brought with her all 17 voters from her [communal] apartment.”12 In any case, these elderly women led their neighbors to the polling station in an explicitly modern march that manifested their Soviet identities—a march of informal groups of voters that, from a distance, however, could be confused with religious processions since elderly women led the way, and because they often carried Stalin’s portrait adorned with flowers the same way an icon would be carried. Consider this example from February 1947:  “Twenty-seven residents of building no. 7 on Bratska Street arrived carrying at the head [of the column] a portrait of Comrade Stalin [decorated] with flowers. One of the oldest voters, 75-year-old Ustyna Romanivna Kubryk, carried the portrait.”13 During the same elections, senior citizens bearing Stalin’s portraits also led some 200 people from three apartment buildings on Khoreva Street, even though this large group included many Stakhanovites from two nearby factories.14 Apparently, with respect to self-organized groups, the communal tradition stemming from older village rituals was still the dominant component of the social order. However, by the time all the varieties of organized marchers arrived at the polling station, a crowd of “unorganized” voters was already waiting. In 1946, 259 residents of an apartment building on 5B Baseina Street “decided,” in the words of an archival memo, to march to the polls at 5:30 a.m. with an orchestra in tow. But, they could not get anywhere near the entrance as some 350 people had arrived before them.15 Indeed, that year the authorities estimated that some 60,000 Kyivites waited outside polling stations before the official opening; in 1947, 73,200 people showed up before 6:00 a.m. The majority of voters arrived shortly before the polls opened, but a substantial lineup could be seen forming from 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.16 Voters arrived “in their festive clothing, with flowers or greenery.” Men working the Saturday night shift (which was not uncommon in the city factories at the time) reportedly hurried home to shave and change before joining their families for the early-morning voting.17 During the first postwar elections in February 1946 there were moments when the reinvention of this political ritual proceeded spontaneously and sometimes unexpectedly for the polling station staff. Comrade Haidamaka, who was in charge of the 17th polling station in Leninsky District, later told a meeting of ideological workers: “Four minutes before 6:00 a.m., the corridor filled with people and the orchestra finished the state anthem—meaning,

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it’s time to go to the [ballot] boxes. But, at that moment a voice from the middle of the crowd yelled, ‘Long live Comrade Stalin! Hurrah to Comrade Stalin!’ Can you imagine, we didn’t know what to do—lead the voters to the boxes or join the people.”18 Of course, the “people” (liudi) gathered at the station included party members and agitators, yet this does not change the fact that short prevoting “meetings” occurred spontaneously throughout the city as part of an unplanned local initiative rather than an orchestrated part of the elections ritual. This initiative did not necessarily signify an impulsive expression of popular love for Stalin, but rather reflected the popular sense of what was appropriate to do and say before a major political event, such as elections. In the early postwar years meetings do not seem to have been scripted or marked by recorded speeches, but conveyed the folksy and informal tenor of popular political participation. Consider the summary of a short speech that Maria Korobova, identified only as a worker’s wife, made in February 1947:  “Before voting, she greeted everybody and wished happiness and good health to great Stalin and all the voters, for everyone to live well, for our life to heal faster after the war.”19 Within a matter of three years, however, during the 1950 and 1951 elections, speeches made by representatives of the masses already contained recognizable sloganlike clichés:  “From the bottom of my heart I  thank our party and the government for their care for Soviet mothers.” “For peace in the entire world! Long live the banner-carrier of peace, Comrade Stalin!” (Yevheniia Petrovska, mother of ten children, February 1951).20 However, meetings that featured speeches, which required substantial preparation, did not become an established component of the voting ritual at every polling station in Stalin’s time. While the authorities accepted the concept of solemn public ceremony before the start of voting, their inclination was to keep spontaneous outpourings of joy and gratitude to a minimum. This new rule was first implemented citywide during the all-Union elections in February 1950: “At all the polling stations short meetings took place, during which chairpersons of electoral commissions greeted voters on the holiday and invited them to carry out their civic duty.”21 The intention was not to stage speeches, but to provide citizens with an opportunity to express their joy and loyalty by yelling “Hurrah.” And, as illustrated by an example from the same year, that is exactly how the new ritual was conducted: “At 6:00 a.m. sharp the commission chairman, Comrade Gushchin, Ph.D. in Agriculture, congratulated the 257 voters [gathered near the entrance] with the start of voting and opened [the doors]. In response to Comrade Gushchin’s greeting, the voters cried ‘Long Live Comrade Stalin!’ Stormy applause and loud hurrahs followed.”22 The authorities clearly saw early voting as further proof of the regime’s popularity among the people. Since everyone had to vote and almost

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everyone voted in favor of official candidates, participation in and of itself was inadequate confirmation of a citizen’s Soviet identity; hurrying to the polls became evidence of voters’ sincerity and enthusiasm. Thus, during the 1951 elections the authorities made sure that 100 percent of registered voters showed up at the polls by 8:00 a.m. in the electoral district in Kyiv, where Stalin stood for election to the Ukrainian legislature.23 During the previous elections in 1947 the voting for Stalin was over by 9:00 a.m.; and in districts where the candidates were Khrushchev, Molotov, and Kaganovich, by noontime.24 Moreover, the Ukrainian authorities reported the numerical dynamics of voter participation to Moscow in real time, in the form of Khrushchev’s reports to Stalin that were also circulated to the other secretaries of the Central Committee. In February 1947, 71.9 percent of Kyivites voted by 10:00 a.m. and 97.02 percent by 2:00 p.m. During the municipal elections later that year, 99.2 percent of the capital’s voters were finished by 2:00 in the afternoon.25 Seen from the voters’ perspective, early voting was not only politically correct but also pragmatically advantageous because it left most of the day free for other pursuits. It also meant not letting down one’s agitator, who would otherwise start knocking on doors soon after 10:00 a.m. or much earlier if Stalin or Khrushchev were candidates. In February 1947 party member Boris Katz, from Molotovsky District, wound up in an official report for responding angrily when an agitator woke him up at 10:30 in the morning. Another annoyed party member, Hryhorii Shevchenko, mockingly told the agitator that he would come to the polling station at the eleventh hour, “at 11:45 pm,” although he ultimately showed up at noon.26 There is no doubt that a considerable number of nonparty voters engaged in similar behavior. However, the higher standard of political consciousness expected of communists led to their procrastination being highlighted in reports. Arriving early at the polls was, in fact, an obligation for many. Several party organizations formally voted to oblige party members to arrive at the polls at 6:00 am. Agitators and polling station staff thus had every reason to be angry at party member Borys Holovaty, who violated his party group’s decision in February 1947 by being the last person to vote at the 9th station of Leninsky electoral district at 2:00 p.m.— six hours after the polls opened and a full ten hours before they officially closed.27 Where agitators developed good personal relations with their voters, peer pressure could be applied to procrastinators, as with the Viter family in 1946: “On Election Day their neighbors came [to the polling station] and said that they had been telling them all morning to go and vote, but they were not going.” That year there were also more general reports of “indignation among voters” at those who made agitators wait until midnight at polling stations.28

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The Viter family, who had a history of barely allowing their local agitator into the apartment, was dubbed “unfriendly” in the report that eventually followed. Individuals causing “indignation” could also be categorized as social aliens or suspects: for example, a priest, a congregation elder, the wife of a repatriated citizen, or a bazaar trader. In many cases, however, people who seemed to avoid participating in the elections claimed an honest misunderstanding by having left Kyiv without making arrangements for voting elsewhere, or simply being absent from their apartment the entire day. The authorities could not easily distinguish these cases from the usual double registrations and careless students leaving the city for extended vacations.29 At the same time, blatant refusals to vote were extremely rare. One cannot take seriously a certain F. Stonaev, who showed up at the Kaganovichsky District polls in February 1947 “under the influence and refused to vote.” The blacksmith Kutsenko in Darnytsia District also arrived drunk and “swore about the elections,” but he still managed to vote.30 More serious was the case of I. V. Barkov of 21 Khoreva Street in Podilsky District, who in December 1947 “refused to go [to the polling station] because he ha[d]‌ lost a large sum of money as the result of the currency reform.” He later apologized to the agitators and performed his civic duty.31 In a sense, forcing such people to vote was counterproductive, because they were likely to cross out the names of official candidates. However, bureaucrats’ obsession with the highest possible voter turnout overrode such pragmatic considerations. Each and every citizen had to vote not because every vote counted, but because the voting process itself was seen as an important ritual of Soviet identity—the people’s symbolic interaction with the Soviet leadership. Paradoxically, not voting at all was thus more anti-Soviet than voting against an official candidate, whose personality usually did not matter— Stalin and his Ukrainian viceroy Khrushchev being the sole exceptions.

LINING UP TO VOTE

The fusion of the communal and the political manifested itself with particular clarity in the decision that gathered masses made before the polling station doors opened. The crowds had to determine who would vote first. Being the first to cast a vote at any given polling station in the capital was a cherished privilege, and not just because the act carried a slight chance of making it into the next morning’s papers. People with “wrong” or undistinguished social backgrounds—which meant they had a slim chance of being featured in a newspaper article—still competed for this right. It seems that, in their eyes, being the first to vote confirmed or assigned them an important status in their community. This status emerged from the clash and

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reconciliation of several hierarchies present in postwar Soviet everydayness:  the traditional communal authority assigned to senior citizens and mothers, especially mothers of many children; the unwritten rules of lining up and protecting your spot in the queue; and the new political ranking, in which war service, wounds, and medals, as well as labor achievements and various state awards, determined a person’s more prominent social position. Polling station staff could influence the outcome to some degree, but only within generally accepted rules. Official reports from early postwar elections, stating that “prominent people and heroes were the first to vote” or “the best people of Kyiv voted first in Leninsky district,” were false.32 The underlying communal hierarchy, at its strongest during the early, poorly organized elections, was based on a traditional respect for elders. At the 12th polling station in Molotovsky District in 1946, “the people who were eager to vote first could barely fit inside the room, yet all of them respectfully defer[red] to one-hundred-year-old Afanasiia Iosyfivna Melnyk.” At the 31st polling station in Kaganovichsky District, the first to vote was 113-year-old Fedot Davydenko, “who had been bed-ridden for five months, but arrived at the station on his own,” in a stunning example of the miraculous curative powers of the Soviet elections!33 In Leninsky District the oldest voter was Pavlo Tkachenko, aged 110 (born in 1836), who introduced himself as a veteran of five major wars: two Turkish wars (probably the Crimean War and the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–78), the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, and the Civil War (as a volunteer Red soldier).34 During the February 1947 elections 100-year-old Zakhar Voloshyn, who claimed to have met Ukraine’s national poet, Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861), was the first to vote at the 22nd polling station in Leninsky District.35 Being very advanced in age usually guaranteed one of the top spots in the lineup to the ballot box; for slightly “younger” senior citizens, additional Soviet credentials made a difference. In 1951 E. G. Orlov was the first to vote at his polling station just because he was 91; a certain Litvinov was the first voter at his station because he was 85 years old and a veteran worker of the “Bilshovyk” factory, the district’s main enterprise; and Ivan Terletsky voted first in his precinct because he was 70, both his sons had been killed at the front, and he had been a railroad worker for 40 years—a good match with the profile of a candidate standing for election, Lazar Kaganovich, who once held the post of minister of railroad transport.36 All three voters were also elderly males who suited the traditional, communal image of a senior citizen. Yet, in 1951, one can also find the crowd in front of the 15th polling station in Stalinsky District clearing the way for another traditional male figure of authority—Father Nikolai from St. Volodymyr Cathedral, a reference to which some bureaucrat ultimately deleted from the station’s report.37 The

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authorities only welcomed examples of old men with Soviet credentials voting first, as 75-year-old Mykhailo Kochubei and 85-year-old P.  Pisnyi did in 1947: the former had been a deputy to the Kyiv soviet in 1917, while the latter had three sons, all of whom were killed in the war.38 Characteristically, very elderly women were rarely among the first to vote even during the early postwar elections (100-year-old Afanasiia Melnyk was one of the few exceptions). When women of advanced age were given the chance to assert their position in society, they usually supported their claim to primacy among other voters with the achievements of their children, like 82-year-old Maria Zakrzhevska, whose two sons and granddaughter were decorated war veterans, or 67-year-old Comrade London, the mother of two war veterans. Similar in essence was the case of 81-year-old Maria Bakevych, who had been a schoolteacher of the Civil War hero Mykola Shchors.39 However, mothers with many children often did go first during postwar elections40 because their reproductive achievements were valued both in the traditional society and by Stalin’s pro-natalist regime. Unlike the very old, however, mothers of large families usually had to line up early for voting—unless they also happened to be senior citizens, as was the case with 86-year-old Evfrosiniia Erofeeva in 1951.41 Some old people lined up early as well, so pervasive had the psychology of lining up become after decades of deprivation and rationing. Thus, 100-year-old Zakhar Voloshyn showed up an hour before the polls opened.42 As was the case with mothers with many children, being ahead of many in the line and having waited with everybody else strengthened his main claim to primacy in this group of voters. If a crowd gathered before a polling station did not include any elders or mothers of big families (or if they did not claim their right to go first), this privilege rested with the first people in line, no matter who the person was. This is how Khana Benshtein, aged 65, managed to vote first in 1946 at the 29th station of Leninsky District, having waited since 11:00  p.m. Similarly, Antonina Politava, aged 66, voted first in 1947 at the 27th station of Stalinsky District by getting in line at 6:00 p.m. the previous day.43 There are other examples of people with undistinguished biographies who had no chance of seeing their names mentioned in the morning papers lining up for up to 12 hours in order to be the first to vote.44 However, the rule of the queue prevailed very rarely, having been trumped by a powerful new pecking order based on wartime heroism and suffering. During the 1946 elections 80-year-old retired railroad worker Semen Babkin was first in line at the 34th station in Leninsky District, but he allowed the much younger Colonel Ivan Zaitsev, who sported the highly coveted golden star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, to go ahead of him. At the 139th station in Kaganovichsky District, “old men from the Andreev

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Locomotive Depot” were at the front of the line, but they allowed two young Heroes of the Soviet Union, Comrades Pavlovsky and Tsvetkovsky, to go first.45 At the 31st station in Stalinsky District in February 1947, Polina Shraiman, who had been awarded the Mother Hero medal for bearing ten or more children, waited from 8:00 in the evening with her husband and children, but wound up ceding first place to the celebrated partisan commander and two-time Hero of the Soviet Union Sydir Kovpak.46 The same year, a blind war veteran named Lutsky voted first at the 10th station of Zhovtnevy District.47 In 1950, 75-year-old Mykhailo Yavorsky, who had waited since the previous evening, shared the first place in the lineup at the 19th station in Leninsky District with disabled war veteran I. Khudov, who had lost both his legs.48 Beginning with the February 1947 elections, polling station staff in some locations tried to select a group of first voters; their choices reflected the fusion of various hierarchies, including Soviet celebrities, such as Stakhanovites, actors, and inventors.49 At the 19th station in Stalinsky District, one such group included People’s Artist of Ukraine Oleksii Vatulia (a famous theater actor), retiree Agrafena Shaposhnikova (the mother of six children, including four war veterans), one Comrade Kaspar (aged 64 and a second-generation steel-mill worker), and Guards Captain Pavlovsky (who came from the hospital on crutches). At the 2nd station in the same district, the first to vote included the retired worker Komarnytsky, who had toiled for 50 years at the same factory, and a young Stakahnovite named Chaikovsky, who produced 250 percent of his annual production quota.50 In pushing Stakhanovites toward the head of the lineup, the authorities’ intention was clearly to emphasize new Soviet distinctions over traditional communal values, but no immediate, wholesale change took place. True, young(er) Stakhanovites were now much more prominent among early voters; however, they typically replaced war heroes, who had previously jumped the queue, rather than senior citizens. Incidentally, this latest change also allowed, for the first time after the war, young women into the front rows. In 1951 a Stakhanovite worker from the Second Bread Factory, Palazhka Yatsenko, went to the polls first, and she was dressed in the Ukrainian national costume (these were the elections to the republican legislature and thus a “holiday” with some Ukrainian coloration).51 During the 1950 elections 70-year-old Ivan Stoliarenko, who was first in line at polling station no. 32 in Leninsky District, gave up his place to Comrade Hrytsenko, a young female grape-grower from the Fruit and Berry Cultures Institute and a Hero of Socialist Labor. At the 87th station in Stalinsky District, where most voters worked at the “Bilshovyk” factory, the lineup was easier to organize. The first person to vote was also the enterprise’s best Stakhanovite: Oleksandr Ostapenko, who fulfilled 500 percent of his quota

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Figure  6.2  A  Ukrainian election poster from the early 1950s showing voters as they enter the polling station. The caption reads: “Let us give our votes for the candidates of the Communist and non-party bloc.” Source: Courtesy of the Arts Division of the V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine.

every single day. There, a mini-meeting took place, during which Ostapenko hinted at the reasons why new Soviet heroes had to be the ones voting first: “I was the first to come to the station in order to highlight once more with my presence, by voting for our candidates, my devotion and love for our great leader and teacher, Comrade Stalin.”52 In other words, the place in the lineup had to correspond to the degree of one’s commitment to Stalin, and the labor heroes of today had better proof of their love for the Leader than community elders and war veterans of the past. Nevertheless, communal values were not so easily supplanted, and senior citizens still voted first in the last years of Stalin’s rule. In 1950, for example, 111-year-old Andrii Dobizha was even featured in the city newspaper. During the same election, a 105-year-old woman by the name of Varvara Pryshchepa also voted first at her polling station.53 One could argue that the communal pecking order never fully disappeared. Instead, it was merged with the new Soviet political hierarchy because elderly citizens in the later decades were still among the first to vote in their capacity as old revolutionaries, war veterans, old workers, and mothers of new Soviet heroes.

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A SHORT WALK TO THE BALLOT BOX

Once inside the polling station, voters entered a highly regimented political space, where their every word and gesture were observed and could be recorded by their peers serving on the electoral commission or as agitators. Marked by numerous banners, slogans, and portraits of leaders, this world also included, somewhat incongruously, fine furniture and house plants. After the first postwar elections, which were held in the ruined city, the authorities wanted waiting areas of polling stations to look like an ideal “home” complete with window drapes, sofas and easy chairs (miagkaia mebel’), and flowers. There could also be (red) tablecloths and genre paintings (Comrade Khrushchev Talks to the Workers Rebuilding Khreshchatyk Boulevard), and a radio broadcasting the news or morning concerts from Moscow.54 Such surroundings transported the voters into an ideal Soviet near-future, with a standard of life they could attain soon—if they voted correctly. In some cases during the early postwar elections, voters brought luxury items from home to their polling stations and took them back at the end of the day. At the 3rd station in Podilsky District in February 1947, Lieutenant-Colonel Vdovin brought two large carpets and a vase with fresh flowers, while some unnamed voters carted in two palm trees and other plants.55 Whether voters did this on their own initiative or were prompted by the station staff (who were, after all, not outsiders, but employees from the district’s organizations “volunteering” their time), the underlying message was that an ideal “home” as represented within the public political space could not be worse than their private homes. This was the area where voters waited for their turn. In Stalin’s time, a polling station served between 1,500 and 3,000 voters with a theoretical traffic capacity of some 250 to 300 people per hour.56 The real processing speed was much higher, because the majority of voters did not enter the voting booth, but walked straight to the ballot box; since 1937 voters did not have to mark anything on the ballots, unless they wanted to cross out the only name of the official candidate printed there. Inevitably, a bit of a bottleneck occurred when a station opened in the morning, which is when voters got their first chance to sit on the sofas and listen to the radio in the waiting area. From there they proceeded, passports in hand, one by one (or in family groups) to the registration table in the voting hall, where each person received a ballot (or ballots) and signed the register. In the same large room, usually directly opposite the registration table, stood the ballot boxes (two during all-Union elections, because the Soviet parliament had two elected chambers; and three during municipal elections: for provincial, city, and district councils). To the side or, less often, between the registration table

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and the boxes, there were several voting booths. The appointments of the voting hall created an atmosphere of solemn ritual and heightened political awareness. In addition to red banners and slogans, bannerlike brocade or red silk was used generously in the décor, including the cover of the ballot box. The boxes and the voting booths were also decorated with the Soviet coat of arms. The voting hall was always well lit, even more so if photographers happened to be present in the morning. Often, Young Pioneers from the nearest school stood at attention by the ballot box, saluting the banners. By far the most important symbolic component of the voting hall, as we shall see below, was provided by multiple depictions of Stalin:  in busts, poster photographs, and paintings—sometimes even full-length portraits.57 Under the Leader’s watchful eye, voters received their ballots and walked to the boxes. Agitators, newspapers, and special photo collages at agitpunkty explained the procedure over and over again before the actual start of the elections; however, some confusing points arose given the very nature of the Stalinist electoral system. For example, newspapers strictly obeyed the law in instructing voters to “On the ballot leave the name of one candidate, the one you are voting for, and cross out the names of others.”58 Of course, there was only one name on each ballot, so the instruction to leave only one name and cross out the others was confusing. The press further explained that adding names to the ballot or using any ballot other than the official one would invalidate the vote,59 which effectively meant that voters entering voting booths could do so only with one purpose—to cross out the name of the official candidate or write something on the ballot. Otherwise, they could just walk over to the ballot boxes and deposit their ballots without marking anything on them. Yet, there was never any official instruction to bypass the voting booths and walk straight over to the boxes. In 1946, when a party group from Military Hospital no. 5864 in Pechersky District voted at a meeting in favor of making all of the hospital’s communists go straight to the ballot box, the city party authorities reported this violation of the Constitution straight to the CP(B)U Central Committee.60 There are no traces in the archives of any attempts to record the names of citizens entering voting booths; a significant minority of voters did go into them, either to observe the rules or (as we shall see later) to write all kinds of comments—positive and negative—on the ballot. Some voters were simply confused, leaving their ballots inside the booth or seeking directions from the station staff after spending five minutes inside.61 In theory, the staff was supposed to remind all voters receiving ballots about what to do in the voting booth, but it is unlikely that this was done systematically. Voters, too, could take this as a suggestion of their potential disloyalty and reply, as the 67-year-old nurse Elizaveta Orlovskaia did in 1950: “For whom would

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I, an old woman, vote if not for our dear candidates? No, I will go directly to the box.”62 Whether voters stopped by the voting booth or not, their short stroll to the ballot box was staged as a sacred moment of interaction with Stalin. It was very common to display the Leader’s bust on a stand just behind the box or his large portrait on the wall above, effectively turning the moment of depositing the ballot in the box into a kind of symbolic offering to Stalin. In other cases, the bust could be positioned between the voting booths, or a portrait was hung on the side wall, as though the Great Leader were observing the voting procedure.63 In the latter case, the moment of passing by Stalin’s image could acquire more symbolic importance than the moment of depositing the ballot into the box. Here is what the staff of the 17th polling station in Molotovsky District reported on what they saw as typical voter behavior in February 1947: As they pass by the gigantic portrait of Comrade Stalin decorated with pine branches, voters say to each other, “Although we are not voting for Comrade Stalin in person, we are voting for his helpers, which is the same as voting for him.” Turning repeatedly toward the portrait, most of them walk to the box while at the same time folding the ballots [so that they would fit into the slot—S.Y.]. Only some enter the voting booths or stop briefly and once again read the name of the candidate standing for election.64

In this telling example of symbolic interaction with the authorities, the polling station staff reported enthusiastically that voters did not ultimately care about the candidates for whom they were voting; their only function was to act as Stalin’s proxies. The actions of voters as they walked to the ballot box acquired both political and symbolic significance. Polling station reports include numerous descriptions of “typical” voter behavior, complete with names and examples, in part because such a tableau provided additional proof of citizens’ sincerity. According to this scheme, traditional, “backward” ways of expressing allegiance near the ballot box were welcomed by the authorities because they were clearly not scripted (although such behaviors could be encouraged in other, more subtle, ways). Thus, the reports mention repeatedly and approvingly that some older voters made the Sign of the Cross before depositing their ballot. It is, however, significant to note that all those examples described in detail were of older women, whose “backward” but emotional ways were somehow more acceptable than those of older men. In fact, statements recorded from elderly women constitute an important majority of examples that local electoral commissions submitted to their superiors. In a report dated December 1947, 104-year-old Maria Kuropteeva “crossed herself, greeted the staff with the holiday, and then

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Figure 6.3  Voting at the 4th polling station in Kyiv’s Stalinsky electoral district, where Stalin stood for election to the republic’s Supreme Soviet, 26 February 1951. Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

voted” at the 57th station in Stalinsky District. In February 1947, at the 12th station in Molotovsky District, “some voters of advanced age cross[ed] themselves, as, for example Citizen Filatova, an old woman of 77, who said while placing her ballot into the box: ‘May God grant good health to all and many years of life to Comrade Stalin.’ ”65 Such homespun formulas were recorded, with implicit approval, over and over again; apparently, they sounded more “authentic” coming from elderly, possibly illiterate, women precisely because they did not incorporate Bolshevik political language. At the 18th station in Kaganovichsky District in 1946, 70-year-old K. D. Nesterova “crossed herself while depositing the ballot and said, ‘May God grant health to our voters and to Great Stalin.”66 Open or implicit comparisons of Stalinist elections to a major religious holiday were welcome as well. In February 1947 a voter named Priannikova, aged 72, told a staff member at polling station no. 3 in Podilsky District: “For me, today is like the first day of Easter. That’s how I am celebrating today, it’s a day of great joy.” In 1946, the 80-year-old voter Nechaeva, in a move resembling an Easter tradition, brought homemade pies to her station in Pechersky District: “I was waiting for this day all week. I prepared as though for the greatest holiday: I made pies at home.”67 In addition to religious imagery, political language from the tsarist era occasionally crept into voter statements. In 1946 an unidentified elderly woman said at the 46th station in Zaliznychny District:  “May God help

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our voters with good health, for our deputies to rule over us wisely (mudro pravili nami), in the way Lenin said and Stalin taught.”68 It is hard to believe that in February 1947 no one on the electoral commission of the 50th station in Molotovsky District recognized the line from the tsarist anthem combined with another from a traditional Orthodox prayer formula for a ruling monarch—words that a certain Anna Palochkina addressed to Stalin: “May God protect his life for enemies to fear and for the good of our Fatherland.”69 Nevertheless, her words were included in the report as an example of popular attitudes. The authorities also did not mind receiving reports about another practice transplanted from popular religion, that of kissing objects considered sacred—which, in this case, meant the ballot. Such incidents were not as frequent as people crossing themselves, but at least they allowed for a description of male voters’ emotional participation by polling staff. Thus, in December 1947, the Chernetsky couple, both aged 60, “kissed their ballots before putting them into the box” at the 218th station in Podilsky District. In 1950 a voter named Beliaeva at the 19th station in Leninsky District “kissed the ballot and said, ‘I vote for Stalin.’ ” In 1946 at the 67th station in Podilsky District, a certain Biliavsky, in an example of proper manly behavior at the polls, “after receiving the ballot, took off his headgear, kissed the ballot, firmly shook the hand of the member of the electoral commission, and put the ballot into the box,” all the while apparently not uttering a word.70 There exists only one report, however, of a voter kissing Stalin’s portrait, probably because the parallel with an icon would have been too obvious and risky in this case. In February 1947, “[a]‌fter depositing her ballot, Comrade [Ahafiia] Svitlenko walked over to the portrait of Comrade Stalin, hugged and kissed it with the words, ‘My son, my dear,’ and left the polling station with tears of joy in her eyes.”71 The form of endearment that Svitlenko used, referring to Stalin as her son, was highly unusual in Soviet public discourse and suggested that the voter, identified only as a retiree, was probably of very advanced age. (She also voted first at her station that year.) Where did Bolshevik language come in? Voters predictably used it at the ballot boxes, in particular the familiar formulas of gratitude for a happy life (“I thank our dear Stalin for a happy life” or “Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy life”).72 Such rhetoric, displaying gratitude for the gift of life and well-being, played a major role in Stalinist public discourse in general.73 But, in this particular case, it also framed the political practice at hand—the elections—as an act of thanking Stalin rather than the one of electing people’s representatives. Statements like “For our father, Stalin” or “I vote for our Fatherland, for Comrade Stalin” (the latter uttered in Ukrainian, a rarity in mostly Russian-speaking postwar Kyiv) also presented the elections

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as the moment of voters’ interaction with Soviet power in general and the Leader in particular.74 It is not surprising, then, that the majority of people using modern political language at the ballot box actually focused on establishing such a connection to Stalin by branding the candidates as his proxies: “By voting for Comrade Yarmolenko, I vote for Comrade Stalin.” “If I had a billion votes, I would have given them all to Stalin and his people” (in Ukrainian). “By voting for the candidates, I vote for our beloved Comrade Stalin.” “By voting for Comrade Melnikov, I vote for our party, for our dear Stalin.” “I will vote for the best sons and daughters of our Motherland. By voting for them we are voting for Stalin.”75 Newspapers provided the tropes for such statements, and they also elaborated on the meaning of nearly unanimous voting for the official slate of candidates as a symbolic moment of thanking Stalin and the state: “In doing so [the voters] have expressed their boundless gratitude and deep love for the wise Bolshevik party and Soviet government, for the architect of our victories, great Stalin. Stalin! This dear name is on everyone’s lips.”76 Understanding the language used in newspapers helps explain why polling station reports gave preference to traditional or emotional expressions of allegiance:  a similar evolution was occurring in the official discourse. Stakhanovites in newspaper stories used the same tropes as elderly female voters, who were rarely featured in print. Not only did they present the elections as a ritual of expressing love for Stalin, but they could also address Stalin by the familiar “ty” rather than the respectful “vy”: “For you (za tebe), Joseph Vissarionovich, I  am giving my vote with joy. Live long years for the happiness of the Soviet people!” (Mykola Komarnytsky from “Lenin’s Smithy,” February 1947).77 The unaffected “ty” could be seen as a form of endearment, treating Stalin as a family member, but this was also the traditional way of addressing God in prayer. Model workers cited in newspapers even used the same, slightly modified, religious formula of well-wishing to a ruling monarch: “Long years to you, dear Joseph Vissarionovich, for the happiness of our people, for warmongers to fear!” (Oleksandr Bondarenko, December 1947).78 The fusion of the Soviet language with traditional forms of address became especially noticeable during and after the local elections of December 1947, which coincided with Stalin’s birthday (21 December). Voters spoke to Stalin’s portraits inside polling stations to wish the Leader “good health and many years of life.”79 Personal in nature, such wishes were nevertheless perfectly acceptable as political statements because they expressed love for Stalin—the equivalent of political loyalty. Thus, newspapers freely cited such declarations of love as part of the election coverage and even printed, as political documents, the birthday greetings that

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some polling stations sent to the Leader on behalf of their voters: “Dear Joseph Vissarionovich! We, the voters of the 97th precinct [of Zaliznychny district—S.Y.] send you warm birthday greetings. Together with all the workers of our country, we wish you long years of life for the happiness of the Fatherland and all humanity.”80 If an act of political choice turned into a communal ritual complete with traditional wishes of good health and, on this occasion, birthday wishes for the Leader, it is only logical that the behavior of voters after the elections resembled a communal party with food, music, and dancing. The authorities approved of this “domestication” of politics. As the head of Pechersky District, O. Nosenko, said in 1947, “Election Day is a holiday. Therefore, the way things are set up (vsia obstanovka) at the polling stations should correspond to the festive mood of voters, who will come here for balloting.”81 First and foremost, this concerned the food stalls, where most voters headed right after voting—or even beforehand, if there was a lineup to vote and the food stall was accessible from the waiting area. Food stalls (bufety) served beer and nonalcoholic drinks, as well as white bread, sandwiches, and cutlets, but the majority of voters rushed there to buy otherwise unavailable mandarin oranges and chocolates. Discovering that the mandarin oranges had been replaced with lemons and that candy was very expensive could be grounds for complaint.82 In general, citizens as “voters” felt free to voice their objections to food selection and quality, as, for example, at the 21st station of Kaganovichsky District in February 1947, where “there were many complaints about the lack of food at the food stall. The voter Dlinchuk found in two meat cutlets small pieces of glass.”83 In 1950 the voters in Darnytsia District were upset that the food stalls had not stocked enough beer. The same year, other polling stations in the city ran out of buns and baguettes by 10:00 a.m.; this was the most widespread complaint.84 The authorities required each polling station to have a separate waiting room for children, as well as a qualified adult supervisor, in order to allow their parents to vote.85 What was inside depended on the local organizations that helped furnish and staff the station, and on the state of the economy in general. In 1946 the Liqueur and Vodka Trust provided 50 kilograms of apples for the children’s room, while in 1950 the city power company “Kyivenerho” prepared gift packages for the first fifty children to arrive.86 From 1947 onward, newspapers suggested that an ideal children’s room had to contain a few toys, but reports about toys and children’s books became commonplace only in 1950.87 Nevertheless, even during the first postwar election in 1946 there were reports about neighborhood children “unwilling to leave” the bare-walled waiting rooms.88 Apparently, they turned this “political” space into playrooms, their own social area, much the same way

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that adults combined their expressions of love for Stalin with a shopping excursion, beer drinking, and dancing—often in the same physical surroundings where they had just solemnly waited for their turn to vote. Authorities liked the general idea of polling stations doubling as neighborhood clubs. Newspapers reported approvingly about neighbors and co-workers staying after voting to talk to each other and enjoy the concerts and films. The first secretary of the city party committee, Mykhailo Synytsia, told his superiors in 1951 that voters were staying behind because “they had at their disposal everything that is needed for cultured recreation.”89 The full spectrum of cultured recreation that he had in mind—concerts, films, and recent magazines—was indeed available at many, but by no means all, of the city’s polling stations. Many precincts in Kyiv were lucky to secure (with the help of the city party committee) tickets for free performances by leading actors, singers, and symphony orchestras. In 1946 the members of the State Puppet Theater entertained children at five precincts. In 1951 soloists from the Kyiv Opera sang popular songs at the 3rd polling station of Stalinsky District. In the less prestigious Podilsky District, polling stations on Election Day in February 1947 featured four professional orchestras, eight amateur choirs, seven folk orchestras, and thirteen amateur theater groups.90 In the absence of such artistic delights, however, the default entertainment for Kyivites at the polling station was the same as for Soviet voters elsewhere: dancing to radio, gramophone, or accordion music. Dancing usually started after most voters had done their “civic duty”: in the morning or after the concert, if one had taken place. While official reports emphasized more “cultured” pursuits at polling stations, such as concerts, they did not conceal the widespread popularity of dancing. After all, this was the way people celebrated their holidays, and Election Day was supposed to be a popular holiday too. Thus, reports from the 1950 elections mention dancing “at almost every polling station” in Darnytsia District. In Stalinsky District that same year, wind orchestras first gave “concerts” and then played live music for dancing.91 There is no specific information on the dance music played, but it is quite possible that some of the tunes heard inside polling stations would have been considered, upon closer examination by the authorities, ideologically suspect or at least inappropriate for the occasion. One such conclusion about possible dancing repertoires may be deduced from a 1947 report by the staff of the 32nd polling station in Molotovsky District complaining that a jazz orchestra from a nearby cinema theater arrived late. In contrast, at the 324th station in Pechersk District, the jazz orchestra arrived on time and the “young people [were] dancing” happily.92 Mobile film projectors, traveling from one polling station to another on Election Day for free movie showings, provided another reason for people

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to linger. (A significant number of cultural institutions converted into polling stations had stationary projectors, and practically all factory clubs and cinemas doubled as polling stations.) Free screenings of Soviet films could begin in the morning or be scheduled for the evening, depending on other available entertainment and the mobile projector’s schedule. The films in question were likely to be older Soviet fare, such as the ever-popular 1936 blockbuster Circus in Kaganovichsky District during the 1951 elections.93 Yet, the audiences probably did not mind this because the very nature of movie-going in Stalin’s time included repeated viewings of familiar Soviet favorites.94 For example, the three free screenings of the old comedy A Girl with Character (1939) on Election Day in February 1947 attracted 650 spectators at the 41st polling station in Podilsky District.95 Finally, chatting with neighbors was a distinct feature of postvoting entertainment at polling stations. In 1946, 80-year-old Semen Babkin was among the first to vote at his polling station, no. 37 in Leninsky District, but stayed behind long afterward “to talk to people.”96 The abolition of food rationing was a popular topic of conversation in 1947, and it was cited by report writers as a sign of positive attitudes because the public hoped for a better life as a result of this long-awaited measure.97 In contrast, when some students from the Industrial College talked among themselves at the 15th station of Kaganovichsky District in 1947 about their unheated dormitory, where water froze in glasses overnight, this was not considered an appropriate topic and was reported as such (albeit without any attempt to establish the speakers’ identities).98 Altogether, the food, music, dancing, children’s playing, small talk, and film screenings after voting present the curious picture of a popular fête following the most solemn and ritualized political moment, a combination also present in some religious holidays. Fused together, state interest and communal tradition produced the political popular holiday of Stalinist elections.

THE 99 PERCENT

While voters enjoyed themselves, electoral commissions at every station feverishly counted the votes. They could start counting only after all the registered voters in their precinct had voted or, if this was not the case, after midnight. Of course, nobody wanted to spend the whole day at a station waiting for a wayward voter or two. Electoral commission members and agitators serving the precinct, all of them “volunteers” and often co-workers in real life, had a vested interest in the completion of voting as soon as possible. So did the authorities, who considered early voting a sign of citizens’

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eagerness to express their loyalty. This opened the door to minor upward manipulation of voter turnout by agitators and commission members, who were permitted to take a mobile ballot box to the homes of sick or disabled voters. We know about this practice from a 1947 incident that took place in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia, where the secretary of the Stalinsky District party committee, Comrade Mykhailenko, was careless enough to utter this unspoken rule in public: If a voter who is not loyal to the Soviet power does not come to the polling station on Election Day, there is no need to remind this voter too strongly. A member of the electoral commission, a communist, should be sent to such voters with a mobile box, of which there should be several in every station. He should vote on behalf of this voter without actually visiting the voter, and make an appropriate mark in the register book [that is, to fake the voter’s signature—S.Y.]99

Mykhailenko wound up in hot water when the Ministry of State Security reported him to the Politburo in Moscow for violating the Constitution and the Elections Statute, but this was because he had presented as an official directive what was a widespread but informal practice. While the party authorities could not order polling stations staff to engage in minor ballot-stuffing, they were doing it anyway. This was small-scale fraud, however, probably in the range of less than 1 percent, or 15–30 votes per station. Such maneuvers, happening later in the day, after the overwhelming majority had voted, were usually aimed at bringing the station’s attendance figure from 99 percent to 99.99 percent. At the same time, however, district- and city-level electoral commissions were preoccupied with lowering overall attendance figures from over 100 percent to 99.99 percent. This was necessary because the authorities did not know, and usually underestimated, the exact number of voters in the Ukrainian capital. For example, before the March 1950 elections the official number of eligible voters (based on police records of residential registration) stood at 583,712 in January; in February this figure was revised to 587,486. The procedure of checking voters’ lists generated the slightly lower number of 575,761. By 6:00 p.m. on Election Day, however, 595,969 people had voted—which was recorded as 99.99 percent attendance. When the figure of 605,951 emerged by midnight, after all the precincts had phoned in their “final” numbers, this too was described to the republican authorities and the public as 99.99 percent. The next day, the total stood at 607,325, or 105.48 percent of the last preelection estimate; the figures were reported once again as representing 99.99 percent participation.100 The significant increase in voter turnout so late in the day is in itself strange given the pressure to vote early and the normal dynamics of voting,

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Figure 6.4  Counting the votes at the 3rd polling station in Kyiv’s Stalinsky electoral district, 26 February 1951. Source: Courtesy of the H. S. Pshenychny Ukrainian Central State Archive of Cinematic, Photo, and Audio Sources.

in which over 99 percent of Kyivites typically cast their ballots by noon or 2:00 p.m.101 There are several possible explanations for this anomaly. One reason for such fluid numbers lies in the inefficiency of resident registration by police and unreliable reporting by volunteer staff of local electoral commissions that reported attendance dynamics hourly by phone even as they processed the voters. But, there was also an unpredictable variable in the form of visitors from other localities, who produced vouchers (otkrepitelnye talony) allowing them to vote away from their places of registration. A fair number of business travelers could be found in the republic’s capital on any given day, a fact that tended to increase dramatically on

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Election Day, when most of them showed up to vote in the electoral district where Stalin was a candidate. This, of course, gave them bragging rights back home, where everybody voted for some unknown shock worker or collective farmer rather than through symbolic interaction in political space with the Leader himself. During the February 1951 elections there could have been as many as 5,259 out-of-town voters who showed up in Kyiv’s Stalinsky District.102 Still, these people were also likely to vote early. Since the authorities did not know the exact number of voters, they printed 10 percent more ballots than the estimate, with 7 percent distributed to polling stations and 3 percent kept at the district electoral commissions.103 Among other things, this meant that there was always a reserve of unused ballots for minor manipulation of attendance figures and voting results, definitely in the range of 1 or 2 percent, at both the station and district level if required. In all likelihood, the station staff probably “took the mobile box” to some unwilling registered voters, of which there were few, in any case. Yet, there were always a handful of cases where station volunteers were reluctant to run risks (for example, when a voter’s whereabouts were unclear and his or her family acted uncooperatively). At any rate, there was no pressure from above to produce the unlikely 100 percent result. Thus, at some point in the late evening a preliminary citywide number of abstainers emerged from station reports. It was very small—39 out of 484,406 voters during the 1946 elections, for example, translating into a participation rate of 99.99 (or 99.989884, if you round up to six digits after the decimal).104 It shrank even more when the final numbers were released the next morning—19 out of 484,943, or a participation rate of 99.995529, which, of course, was still rounded up to 99.99 rather than 100 percent.105 District-level paperwork confirms that reports on the number of abstainers were low: only three in Pechersky District in 1947 and four in Darnytsia in 1950.106 Still, commissions in electoral districts could always use some of their 3 percent reserve bulletins to increase the total number of voters, which would be done not so much to improve the already stellar participation rate as to decrease the percentage of negative votes relative to the total number of voters. This, in fact, is a possible explanation for the strange increase noted above in the overall number of voters in the evening and overnight during the 1950 elections, from 595,969 at 6:00 p.m. to 605,951 at midnight and to 607,325 the next morning. At stake here was another all-important percentage figure: the number of those voting in favor of official candidates. The authorities expected this number to increase from one election to the next, as a reflection of growing communist consciousness among the people and their approval of state policies. However, there was not much room for increase within less than

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one percentage point, between 99.00 and 99.99. In any case, engineering a tiny yet reportable rise involved a delicate calculation, with which volunteer station staff could not be trusted—nor could they see a general picture emerging in their electoral district by the evening of Election Day. The 3 percent ballot reserve of district electoral commissions must have been used in the final adjustment of these numbers. In Kyiv the 1946 elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR produced the impressive result of 99.27 percent in favor of the official slate. Of the 484,924 citizens who voted, 3,874 people crossed out the candidates’ names.107 During the February 1947 elections to the republic’s Supreme Soviet, the number of “yes” votes increased to 99.46  percent (a total of 2,867 negative votes). The July 1947 by-election in Pechersky District to replace an ailing deputy resulted in the even higher number of 99.76 percent. Municipal elections in December 1947 broke this record, however, with a 99.94 percent overall result in the city for the province, city, and district councils (99.95 percent for the Kyiv city council).108 Going even higher was essentially impossible, so the March 1950 city elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR did not match this “achievement,” but showed considerable improvement compared to previous elections to the Soviet and Ukrainian parliaments: 99.80 percent in favor out of 607,185 voters who took part in the elections with only 1,200 negative votes and 5 invalid ballots.109 For the first time in postwar Kyiv, however, electoral commissions reported a significant number of people who received ballots but did not vote—128 voters citywide. Such incidents were recorded in all three electoral districts, and there was some correlation between the proportion of negative votes for a candidate and the number of hoarded ballots in the district. Paraska Husiatnykova, a candidate in the Kyiv-Molotovsky electoral district, received more negative votes than the candidates in the other two districts, 677, and the number of hoarded ballots was also the highest in her district: 58.110 This correlation suggests that hoarding ballots was a form of voter protest. Since the Stalinist voting procedure made it extremely difficult and risky to hide a ballot, doing so required determination and even acting skills from those voters who clearly did not believe that their negative votes would be counted, but wanted nevertheless to deliver their message to the authorities. Yet, functionaries did, in fact, calculate the negative votes and prepared lists of candidates who had received more of them, which confirms that Stalinist elections were not completely falsified. Throughout the republic, the number of voters crossing out the names of official candidates decreased from 111,006 (0.53 percent) in 1947 to 33,981 (0.15 percent) in 1950 to 21,251 (0.09 percent) in 1951, a fact that can be explained by the rising standard of living, increased ballot-stuffing, or both. Where significant

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ballot-stuffing was initiated by the authorities, however, the change must have been effectuated by adding extra ballots rather than replacing negative votes with positive ones. Otherwise, the internal calculations in the apparatus of the CP(B)U Central Committee pertaining to those candidates who received the most negative votes would not make any sense. In 1951, for example, the largest number of negative votes was cast in the town of Nikopol and in an electoral district in Kharkiv (which included the Kharkiv Tractor Factory).111 Of course, such comparative tables were never made public, although one could compile them from published official sources. It is interesting to examine the distribution of negative votes among the candidates standing for election in Kyiv during the February 1947 elections to the Ukrainian legislature. Of the three “honorary” candidates from Moscow, Stalin received 0 negative votes, Molotov 60, and Kaganovich 696, or 1.1 percent (and also 202 invalid ballots, many of which were probably hidden negative votes as well).112 It is likely that Stalin’s result was falsified: as we will see below, in every election there were at least some inscriptions on ballots expressing hatred for the Leader. But why did Kaganovich end up with by far the worst results among the nine deputies elected in Kyiv? It is possible that the memory of his harsh rule in Ukraine in the 1920s played a role here, as could the ever-present, latent anti-Semitism of the populace, but the important point is that Kyiv bureaucrats did not falsify Kaganovich’s results—or did so only partially. Little did they know that by the end of the month Kaganovich would be back in Kyiv as the first secretary of the CP(B)U Central Committee. The current party leader in the republic, Khrushchev, received 228 negative votes (0.4 percent) with 7 ballots disqualified as invalid. Similar results were registered with respect to the city’s first secretary, Petro Matsui (223 against, 8 invalid), and the city’s main architect, Aleksandr Vlasov (230 against, 3 invalid). The mayor, Fedir Chebotarev, received 360 negative votes. But the second highest number of negative votes went to two working-class candidates, Andrii Dushko (421 against) and Maria Yarmolenko (431).113 This curious trend is noticeable in other elections as well. In the all-Union elections of March 1950, the worker Paraska Husiatnykova (667 votes against, or 0.32 percent) did considerably worse than the new Ukrainian party leader, Leonid Melnikov (124 against, or 0.06 percent), or the first secretary of the city party committee, Mykhailo Synytsia (399 against, or 0.20 percent).114 In fact, that year she placed sixth on the secret republicwide list of deputies receiving the most negative votes.115 It is possible that voters felt free to express their protest against the system to a greater degree when dealing with one of their own rather than a person representing the authorities. It is also likely that working-class candidates were less helpful than powerful bureaucrats when voters tried to

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approach them for help with their everyday problems; during the previous elections in 1946 there were inscriptions on ballots to this effect in the case of Husiatnykova.116 But, the most likely reason for worker candidates usually receiving more negative votes was that functionaries simply did not care to manipulate their results. We know from the Zaporizhia scandal that the disappearance of negative votes was possible, but it had to happen at the lowest level. As Comrade Mykhailenko instructed his station volunteers in that city, “When counting the votes, in case there are too many ballots with the candidate’s name crossed out, cautiously replace them with unmarked ballots and thus lower the number of votes against them.”117 This method was probably not employed universally: only in cases of unusual voting results and only if volunteer station staffers were willing to take the risk. (After all, Mykhailenko ended up being investigated by the Ministry of State Security.) These people also had to make judgment calls on how many negative votes were “too many” and by how much to reduce their number in the case of their particular candidate. What was surely done for Stalin and likely, to some degree, for republican and city leaders, was not considered necessary in cases of rank-and-file deputies chosen “from among the people.”118 After the announcement of the elections results the next morning, festive meetings took place at all enterprises and organizations that celebrated, in the words of a Kyivan newspaper, “the triumph of Soviet patriotism, universal (vsenarodnoi) love, and the workers’ devotion to Great Stalin.” When Stalin was elected to the Ukrainian legislature in 1947 and 1951, mass rallies involving hundreds of thousands of people took place in the city center.119 Kyivan electoral commissions sent letters to Stalin that did not congratulate him on being elected—this would reverse the symbolic relationship between the Leader and the people—but wished him good health and promised to fulfill production plans ahead of schedule.120 Meanwhile, numerous internal memos and articles in the press hailed the elections as proof of the population’s “political maturity, boundless devotion to the Communist Party, the Soviet state, the leader and teacher of the peoples of the USSR, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.”121

LETTERS TO THE LEADER

Arriving at the polls early in the morning, voting in favor of official candidates, and saying the right things while walking to the ballot box comprised the fundamentals of Soviet electoral behavior, but none of these were enough for the authorities. Party bosses also expected additional confirmation of sincerity in the form of (usually anonymous) patriotic

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inscriptions on the ballots and (often signed) letters dropped in the boxes together with the ballots—correspondence that party memos interpreted as an “open-hearted demonstration of the people’s love for the Motherland and Comrade Stalin.”122 As discussed earlier, adding other people’s names to a ballot would technically lead to its invalidation. In practice, however, adding Stalin’s name or a patriotic slogan made a ballot more valuable to the authorities because it was concrete proof of a voter’s proactive position, A voter could not simply drop an unmarked ballot into the box, which even a skeptic could do, but felt the urge to express his or her enthusiasm for the Soviet project by writing on the ballot. Needless to say, all ballots with patriotic inscriptions were counted. Year after year, the press reported on numerous positive inscriptions, as well as quotes from letters and poems discovered in the ballot boxes.123 Such articles signaled to voters that their writings were welcome. Agitators and polling station staff also understood that they should encourage voters to write on the ballots or bring letters, which at least in some cases were given openly to the station staff rather than deposited into the box.124 Like newspaper articles, unpublished party memos (in this example dating from 1950)  interpreted inscriptions and letters as reflecting “healthy moral-political attitudes of the population, its patriotic commitment to the Motherland, its boundless love and devotion to the Bolshevik party and the leader of nations, Comrade Stalin.” The word “love,” indicative of the Stalinist concept of patriotism as a “civic emotion,” appears often in such documents. A 1951 memo claimed that inscriptions and notes “document the voters’ unparalleled love for the Bolshevik party, the Soviet government, [and] great Stalin.”125 Yet, in addition to the thousands of patriotic inscriptions and notes submitted in Kyiv, there were always hundreds of similar messages classified as “anti-Soviet.” Adopting a welcoming attitude to anonymous writings prompted expressions of protest against the Soviet system in both its general and specific policies. But, the line between “anti-Soviet” and “patriotic” notes could also be fluid, depending on the tropes employed. After all, a number of positive inscriptions also contained criticisms and suggestions for improvements, which the authorities summarized and forwarded to the CP(B)U Central Committee after the elections. There is no concise, citywide statistical data on the number of patriotic and anti-Soviet notes submitted during election periods. The majority of patriotic notes seem to have been received in electoral districts where Stalin had stood for election—an estimated 15,000 in February 1947 in Stalinsky District, as contrasted with only 3,000 in Leninsky and 2,500 in Zhovtnevy, but no information on other districts is available.126 (In these elections to the republican legislature, Kyiv was divided into nine electoral districts, and

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the total number of voters stood at 531,000.) Furthermore, the reliability of (suspiciously round) official figures should be called into question. In the next republican election, in 1951, the very same Stalinsky electoral district only reported around 5,000 patriotic inscriptions and letters.127 Raw statistical data from the districts, where available, seem to suggest a much lower number of positive notes and a significant proportion of anti-Soviet ones. For example, for the February 1947 elections, when allegedly 15,000 patriotic writings were recorded in Stalinsky District, only 229 are quoted in the district commission’s report, together with 6 “critical” and 7 “anti-Soviet” statements. In Leninsky District, where Khrushchev was the candidate, there were 99 positive inscriptions, 36  “suggestions,” and 21 anti-Soviet statements. In Darnytsia District, where the candidate was the city party committee’s first secretary Matsui, the absolute and the relative number of patriotic inscriptions was much lower, with a total of 57 positive, 9 “statements about difficulties,” and 10 “anti-Soviet and fascist statements.”128 The latter case translates into 75 percent positive notes, 12 percent criticisms, and 13 percent hostile declarations among the tiny minority of voters in the district (76 out of some 45,000) who expressed themselves in writing. These sobering figures paint a very different picture from the bombastic statements and inflated numbers of citywide reports. The overwhelming majority of patriotic inscriptions during all elections and in all regions constituted no more than short sentences: “For Stalin,” “Long live Stalin,” and “I vote for Stalin.”129 In districts where Stalin did not stand for election, such statements “corrected” voters’ symbolic interaction with power: they “really” voted for Stalin rather than for whoever happened to be their official candidate. During the first postwar election in February 1946, for example, there were numerous cases of Kyivan voters adding the names of Stalin and other Soviet leaders (the report mentions Molotov, Khrushchev, Kliment Voroshilov, and Andrei Zhdanov) to their ballots, as well as “our popular generals” Georgii Zhukov, Ivan Konev, Konstantin Rokossovsky, Semen Tymoshenko, and (again) Voroshilov.130 The writers of the 1946 report seemed to approve of such additions; however, they would never again be mentioned in subsequent election reports. Just as the celebration of various anniversaries of battles and liberation dates faded into the background during the late 1940s, officially approved admiration of Soviet marshals also disappeared. Thanking Stalin for his universal gift of life and happiness rather than his specific guidance during the war emerged as the main motif of inscriptions instead. The familiar tropes of thanking Stalin for a “good life” and sending him personal wishes for good health and a long life predominate among notes that are slightly longer: “For a happy life, hurrah to Comrade Stalin. May he live for a long time and be the ruler of all the lands in the worlds, the

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leader of all the people in the world” (1946, in Ukrainian). “Thanks to our dear leader, Comrade Stalin, for the happy life of our multinational people. May you live long, dear Joseph Vissarionovich” (February 1947). “Thanks to Comrade Stalin for our good life!” (December 1947). “I want to send a big thank-you to the party and to Comrade Stalin for my happy years of youth” (1950). “Dear Father! May you live many years for the happiness of the Soviet people!” (in Ukrainian, 1953).131 During Kyiv’s 1946 elections, when Oleksandr Bohomolets, a prominent physiologist concerned with the problems of ageing, ran as a candidate, one voter wrote a rhyme asking for a way to make Stalin live another 200  years. Unfortunately, Bohomolets died that year, at the age of 65, leaving this medical problem unresolved. However, this setback did not stop one anonymous note-writer from raising the ante during the 1950 elections by wishing (in Ukrainian): “A thousand years of life to Father Stalin!”132 In December 1947, when the municipal elections coincided with the Leader’s birthday, many ballots were inscribed with celebratory wishes.133 Voters wrote in a very personal key, not only asking the Leader to “come visit us in Kyiv” but also reminding him “as a mother asks her beloved son to take good care of [his] health.”134 In December 1947 one letter dropped in a ballot box exemplified the popular discourse of gratitude directed to Stalin, with its combination of folksy language and formal expressions typically used in petitions and autobiographies: I, Maria Fedorivna Kutsenko, happily give my vote to comrades Kostiuk, Pashkovsky, and Pashko, who have been appointed (naznacheny) as candidates for deputies of local and regional councils, but great grief and sorrow fall upon me that I do not give my vote to our great leader and teacher, our dear father Comrade Stalin, who cares for our children and our dear Fatherland. I, Kutsenko, wish Comrade Stalin much happiness and many years to live and be healthy, because he cares for us.135

A smaller proportion of inscriptions used more formulaic political language, which changed somewhat with time, becoming depersonalized statements of patriotic allegiance using newspaper formulas, such as “I vote for the candidates of the bloc of communists and non-party people” (the July 1947 by-election) and “I happily give my vote to the Bolshevik party, which is leading us to a happy and joyous life” (December 1947).136 Whereas in 1946 and 1947 Stalin was still being thanked specifically for the “liberation from the German yoke,” the two elections in 1947 added a new motif of gratitude “for bread” (referring to the relative improvement of food supplies after the famine of 1946) and “for the currency reform.”137 By the early 1950s the official self-image of the Soviet Union as a protector of peace in the Cold War led to such inscriptions as “For peace, for communism, for Comrade

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Stalin” (1950) and “By voting for Stalin, I vote for peace” (1953)—but also “Death to the British and American warmongers!” (1951).138 A much larger group of ballot inscriptions explicitly referred to situations where Stalin was not a candidate. In these cases, their authors attempted to clarify or confirm that the elections were still about their direct political interaction with the Leader. Thus, in the district where the Fourth Footwear Factory’s Mariia Yarmolenko stood for election in February 1947, numerous ballots were marked by explanatory inscriptions:  “And for Comrade Stalin,” “And great teacher Stalin,” “Greetings and a kiss to Comrade J. V. Stalin,” “For Father Stalin” (in Ukrainian), “For Stalin and his daughter Yarmolenko,” and the like.139 Similar statements, almost universally unsigned, were common in all districts that year, just like during all other elections under Stalin. Even city party leaders, such as Petro Matsui, did not command allegiance on their own: “I vote for Matsui, for our party, for Comrade Stalin, for our happy future.” “For him. Long live Comrade Stalin.” “For the candidate with all best wishes. Say hello to Stalin.” “For Stalin. Greetings. I  am in favor” (Darnytsia District, February 1947).140 When the next city party boss, Synytsia, stood for election in 1950, he received similar comments on the ballots: “I vote for Com. Synytsia, [but] I  am thinking about Great Stalin” or “By voting for you, Com. Synytsia, I vote for Great Stalin. Work like the Great Stalin.”141 Only Khrushchev, as the long-serving party chief in Ukraine, who was credited in the media with the republic’s liberation from Nazi rule and its postwar restoration, was a separate object of love to a certain degree. Voters’ inscriptions also adopted the hierarchy of leaders from Soviet newspapers, in which Khrushchev, like Stalin’s senior lieutenants Molotov and Kaganovich, was called the Leader’s “comrade-in-arms.” At the same time, however, Khrushchev still received his share of “correcting” messages specifying that he was Stalin’s proxy. In other words, patriotic voters remained confused about the proper representation of the republic’s Leader, as evidenced by these examples from 1946: “Greetings to Nikita Sergeevich.” “I vote for you, for Stalin, for the Communist Party.” “I vote for you, Nikita Sergeevich, and wish you good health for many years. Long live the leader of the Bolsheviks in Ukraine, Comrade Khrushchev!” (in Ukrainian). “I happily give my vote to the staunch Bolshevik, Comrade Stalin’s comrade-inarms, the liberator of Ukraine, Comrade Khrushchev.”142 No such confusion existed in the case of Khrushchev’s successor to the post of first secretary, Leonid Melnikov, who did not rise to the stature of Stalin’s comrade-in-arms or as a separate object of love and gratitude. Like lowly worker and peasant candidates, he could be called Stalin’s son or pupil. Essentially, though, he was a proxy, as seen in these examples from the 1950 elections: “By voting for Com. Melnikov, we vote for our party, for

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the Great Stalin.” “By voting for Com. Melnikov, I vote for my bright future, for our dear father and teacher J. V. Stalin.” “With great joy I give my vote to the dear party of Lenin and Stalin, for his [sic] faithful son, L. G. Melnikov. Long live our dear Comrade Stalin.” Several notes called on Melnikov to “be like Khrushchev.”143

GIVE US BREAD!

Voters also used inscriptions on ballots as another channel for communicating their everyday concerns to the authorities. These grievances were usually formulated in generic form rather than as concrete requests because most of the notes and separate letters were unsigned. During the early postwar elections to the Soviet and republican parliaments, voters usually addressed what they saw as issues of national significance rather than local concerns. One prominent theme in 1946 was the general standard of living and inadequacy of state support:  “Nikita Sergeevich [Khrushchev], think about the poor.” “Improve the living conditions of workers and white-collar personnel.” “I ask to take into account the workers’ difficult material circumstances. I  tell the truth. Citizen Lavrynenko” (in Ukrainian). “Comrades Deputies! Consider the lives of workers. I am the widow of an officer; I work, but find myself starving together with my child.”144 Another theme, somewhat unexpectedly, was preservation of the family, which female voters must have considered threatened by the state’s pro-natalist policies encouraging single women to have children out of wedlock: “We ask our government to direct attention to the fact that some husbands, in particular those in the military, are abandoning their wives and families” (similar requests on four ballots in the same polling station) and “I ask the deputies to fight against those women who break up families.”145 The most burning issue specific to Kyiv and other Soviet cities largely destroyed during the war was shelter—both the distribution of scarce housing and the construction of new buildings. As one voter wrote in February 1947, “I ask you to work on apartment buildings, because we live in dug-outs.”146 Of course, none of these concerns came even close to the intensity of popular feelings on the issue of bread, which was, however, a politically dangerous question to raise. The line was fluid between statements classified as “critical suggestions” and those seen as “anti-Soviet.” One could legitimately write on a ballot “Do not forget that people want to eat,” “Give us bread,” and even “Down with the famine,” despite the fact that the latter word was not used in the press.147 Even “More beer and vodka, everything else will be fine,” clearly a satirical inscription, was classified among

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constructive suggestions.148 Yet, statements like “We do not need famine, give us bread” or “I vote for abundance and a happy life, not for famine” already appeared on the list of anti-Soviet comments, where one can also find the relatively neutral “Give us bread”—possibly because the writer of this note also crossed out the candidate’s name, which put the voter’s statement in a different, negative context.149 It was safer to denounce speculators and demand that police adopt measures against them—another popular motif during the immediate postwar years.150 On occasion, voters appealed to candidates to take their duties seriously, to improve the life of the people. Many used the short clichéd formula from the press, “I hope you will justify our trust,”151 but also longer notes to this effect, as during the July 1947 by-election in Pechersky District, where Hryhorii Tsaryk, a younger worker from the “Arsenal” factory, stood for election:  “Wishing you success in this responsible work, [we urge you:] do not forget about improving the economic situation of workers” and “Tsaryk, be a representative of the people not in words but in deeds; do not turn into a bureaucrat, take care of orphans, veterans’ children; that will show your true worth.”152 Similar statements appeared on ballots during the December 1947 municipal elections: “Dear elected deputies, be honest, just, and listen to the toilers.” “I ask you to look after the working class in particular.” “The force of the Soviet Motherland’s wonderful laws should be greater than the power of corrupt officials.”153 Of course, it was naïve to expect that deputies to the Ukrainian legislature could push through major social reforms, such as allowing workers to change their place of employment against the wishes of factory managers or providing disabled seniors with garden plots, two suggestions that were found in the notes scribbled on ballots during the February 1947 elections.154 It is true, however, that the summaries of critical comments submitted during the elections were forwarded to the CP(B)U Central Committee.155 Thus, citizens’ concerns were communicated to the authorities, who then forwarded republicwide summaries to the Kremlin. City authorities also claimed to have taken them into account and adopted “measures toward satisfying the legitimate demands of voters.”156 Voters’ suggestions could be numerous and very specific during municipal elections: to fix the sewage system in Podilsky District, to rebuild the main railway station, to repair roofs in certain buildings, and to salt the streets in the winter.157 These, too, were carefully recorded by the apparatus of the city party committee, with summaries forwarded to republican superiors. In the early postwar years the city authorities also sent the CP(B)U Central Committee complete lists of “anti-Soviet” inscriptions and notes. Most of them were short and referred to the Soviet power’s failure to supply food rather than to the nature of the Soviet system in general.158 In such

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inscriptions, frustrated voters usually dismissed the elections as an inconvenient distraction from real problems that needed attention. This trend can be seen in the following ten “anti-Soviet” ballot inscriptions in Darnytsia District during the February 1947 elections (note that they were apparently ranked by the district electoral commission, with the most “political” coming first): “A comedy, not an election.” “We need bread, not deputies.” “Give [us] bread, voting afterwards.” “We need bread, not Matsui.” “I vote for a life of plenty and happiness, not for a life of starvation.” “You need to look after the people so that they do not perish.” “A coffin.” “Bread is needed.” “Do not occupy yourself with this nonsense, better pay attention to the people’s sufferings.”159 As noted above, statements like “give us bread” could be considered either “anti-Soviet” or “constructive suggestions,” probably depending on whether the writer crossed out the name of the candidate.160 But, other inscriptions that local electoral commissions reported as “anti-Soviet” could accompany votes in favor of the official slate. This reflected the contradictory nature of social protest within the Soviet system, which was often expressed in categories adopted from the official discourse. For instance, the Kyivan voter who wrote in 1946, “I vote for Tychyna as a government member so that we will have free labor and no collective farms”161 not only mixed the parliament with the government but also the languages of endorsement and protest. In general, statements such as “Down with collective farms” were prominent in Kyiv during the 1946 elections, and reflected the well-known expectation among the peasants throughout the Soviet Union that collective farms would be disbanded after the war.162 Most urbanites were only one generation away from the village and likely saw the connection between collective farming and the famine, including food shortages in the cities. Statements against collectivized agriculture disappeared almost entirely in the following years, when the population realized the futility of hope but protested against voting because the famine had continued in 1947. Inscriptions like “More bread, we can vote later,” “There will be no life anyway. I vote against, I have been starving for two days,” or “Wait until all the voters die if they are starving like us” were registered in both February and July 1947.163 Still, they reflected desperation over food supplies rather than protest against the Soviet system in general and undemocratic elections in particular. A longer note discovered in Stalinsky District during the February 1947 elections expresses this general attitude well, while using many of the same tropes as the inscriptions from 1946: “Your candidates do not make any difference to us (Ot vashikh kandidatov nam ni kholodno, ni zharko). You better look at how the people are dying like flies from malt, while you spend these

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funds on devil knows what. What you do is nonsense. We could live without candidates, but without bread—never.”164 Like the majority of anonymous writers, however, the author of this inscription does not question Soviet power as such, only the improper focus of its efforts. This sentiment is even more clearly expressed in another, longer note from the same elections, in Leninsky District: “Com[rades] Deputies, we vote for you and [sic] for the Supreme Soviet so that you will feed us with bread, not radio broadcasts, so that you will give us as much bread as the stomach asks for. You can reduce radio broadcasts a bit and add more bread. This is our mandate for you.”165 The much-heralded abolition of rationing before the municipal elections in December 1947 did not bring the promised abundance either. Voters now complained about long lineups to buy bread: “We were hoping for an improvement in supplies after the reform, but it turned out the other way around. One has to stand in line, but cannot obtain products after spending much time.” “So, we have received the right to [obtain] bread without rationing coupons. We are starving. I vote for the famine.”166 If bread was clearly the main issue for the population, its deficit fueled a widespread sense of poverty and injustice, of others being better off or getting further in life. One convenient way to absolve the state of responsibility was to blame speculators and the Jews, with these two groups often conflated—a popular motif in ballot inscriptions and anonymous notes. “Jews live well,” “Down with the Yids,” and “Beat the Yids” appeared regularly on ballots.167 There were also longer letters that combined, as does this one from December 1947, Bolshevik language with the language of prejudice: “I give my vote to the bloc of the communists and non-party people, and thank the Government, the party, and Comrade Stalin for the abolition of rationing and the currency reform. However, there is one more request, namely, to remove Jewish speculators from Soviet trade.”168 The same year other voters expressed this sentiment in cruder terms: “We are voting for you, but how long will you torment us; you have allowed the Yids to live [well], while the workers are starving.” “It would be good if the Jews worked more and drank the workers’ blood less.”169 Since some of the hundreds of candidates in the municipal elections of 1947 had Jewish names, seeing them on ballots prompted anti-Semitic voters to write things like “Yid, to Palestine!,” “Against. Not sure about her nationality,” or “We don’t need them.”170 In fairness to Kyivan voters, the majority of dismissive inscriptions in December 1947 targeted Ukrainian and Russian candidates, who were most often described as “speculators,” “bureaucrats,” or “bribe-takers,” although they were never labeled with pejorative terms referring to their ethnic identity.171 Only in a very small minority of inscriptions and anonymous letters did authors rise above the usual everyday concerns and ethnic prejudices to

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condemn state policies, often without rejecting the Soviet system as such. The varieties of rejection could include opposing Stalinism to some idealized notion of Lenin’s rule, as in this example from February 1947: You had better give the people a [normal] life, for we are hungry, without bread. All of us workers live like beggars. Our children sit at home hungry, they go with us to vote, but there is nothing to eat. Why do we need this performance, if either way the ones you want will be [elected], not those whom we would want. What did we fight for at the front? In order to be demobilized and starve to death here? Give us a life, not elections! Lenin gave us the NEP, but Stalin will push us into our graves.172

The last sentence, which rhymes in Russian and was probably part of underground anti-Soviet folklore,173 contained a nostalgic reference to the New Economic Policy of the 1920s, which allowed private trade and individual farming, as a counterpoint to Stalinism. Another note from the same elections also opposed Stalin to Lenin for failing to follow up on the Soviet government’s promises to look after the toiling masses, before moving into political arguments: Glory to great Lenin!!! And a curse on “wise Stalin,” who is repeating for us [the famine of ] 1933. He violates his own constitutional duty to care for the people; we feel his “care” every day. He cares about machinery instead of people. How do the people live? Does he know? [. . ..] Why did we not have a meeting with our candidate? He is afraid to go to his sister Ukraine; he realizes that everybody votes because of fear for him, [for] a bloody despot and tyrant, the curse of humankind. Do not we have a deserving Ukrainian, why do we need a Georgian? Long live Soviet power! Down with Stalin!174

Other anonymous critics of Stalin’s rule also proceeded from an abstract ideal of popular democracy, probably developed through exposure to Soviet propaganda. For such writers, the authorities transgressed not against the Western understanding of democracy or individual rights but against the generalized interests and will of the “people” (narod). As one voter wrote in December 1947, “Elections without choice. You can deceive some of the people all the time or all the people for a short time, but you cannot deceive all the people all the time (yet this is what you are trying to do).”175 Another note from the same elections read, “You think very badly of the Soviet people if you think that they believe in this campaign.”176 A letter dropped in the ballot box in February 1947 began, “Cursed murderers! For whom do you stage this comedy? You are hypocrites and [a censored expletive]. The people hate you anyway. You stay in power through terror; you have frightened

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our poor, unfortunate people with blood and famine into supporting your rule, but the tears of the deceived people will fall on your heads.”177 According to one anonymous note from 1946, the victory in the war against Nazism actually prepared the “people” to overthrow the Stalinist leadership. “I can tell you that in the near future [the deputies] will be crushed, just as the Fascist [Nazi] party was crushed. Be in no doubt about this; neither your cruel terror nor your snake-like agitation will save you. The hour is nigh when our people will shake off your spider’s web, crush you, and scatter you.” Armed with the experience of defeating another party-state, the “people” also knew, from their wartime exposure to European living standards, that “bourgeois” Europe lived better, while they were “the most wretched [and] impoverished both in terms of material conditions and culture.” All in all, “[t]‌he people endure, but their patience will soon end and then, beware.”178 Another long letter from February 1947 stands out among “anti-Soviet” notes in that it offers a scathing critique of the system in general, including the elections: I cannot vote for this “government” because it can only give the people famine, cold, war, and difficulties. Because of these “difficulties” in 1933–34 several million people died of starvation. Now there is famine too and people are dying. Who created these famines? The government. The political system in the country, established by the government, is such that a war is necessary. And during the war it killed more than 20 million people. There is no democracy in the country, but the greatest terror and persecutions in the world. People do not decide anything, everything is fabricated. Candidates are not elected but named by the party, and the people should vote for them. The Communist Party stupefied the people and it does whatever it wants.179

Overall, however, anonymous inscriptions and notes did not contain any clear vision of what electoral system disgruntled voters would have preferred. In order to formulate one, they would need some ideal concept of democratic elections that could be based on memories of the pre-Bolshevik political order or on what they knew of Western political systems. And yet, during the first three postwar elections in Kyiv there was only one reported inscription referring to the former (“Down with the Bolsheviks. For Kerensky”) and another one, which may be interpreted as referring to the latter (“Dictatorship is hard, freedom of parties is needed”).180 The inscription on a ballot, “I want to live as an unemployed person in America,”181 clearly referred to a standard of life and assumptions about state welfare systems rather than to political rights. Ukrainian nationalism did not provide Kyivites with an alternative political option. In contrast to the western oblasts, where the names of nationalist

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leaders were often added to the ballots,182 such cases were rare in the republic’s capital. During the February 1947 elections there was one inscription in Ukrainian reading “Long live the leader of the Ukrainian people, Stepan Bandera!” During the elections to the oblast council in December 1947, there was one case of a voter crossing out the name of a Jewish candidate and adding Bandera’s name.183 Rare as they were, such inscriptions could also be ambiguous, as in the case of the Ukrainian poet and people’s commissar of education, Pavlo Tychyna, who in 1946 stood for election to the Soviet parliament’s second chamber, the Council of Nationalities, in the large electoral district encompassing the entire city. One voter, apparently a Ukrainian nationalist, crossed out his name and added the name “S. Bandera.” Another voter also crossed out his name, but added an explanation in Russian, “I am not voting—[he is] a Banderite.”184 If Tychyna was not Ukrainian enough for the first writer, he was too much of a Ukrainian for the second. Opinions about his poetry, which was innovative early in his career but had become boring and conformist since the 1930s, also differed. During the next all-Union elections another voter crossed out Tychyna’s name and added that of an immensely popular Ukrainian satirist, who was often in trouble with the authorities, Ostap Vyshnia:  “I am not voting for the candidate Tychyna; as a poet he is worthless and as a patriot, I don’t know. Another one needs to be nominated; my suggestion is Ostap Vyshnia” (in Ukrainian).185 Yet, in the same elections, there were also positive inscriptions (usually in Russian) on ballots with his name: “Our favorite poet” or “For our flourishing Ukrainian culture, national in form and socialist in content.”186 In general, however, only cases where Ukrainian culture and nationalism were specifically discussed provided a correlation between writing in Ukrainian and opposing Soviet policies. In the early postwar elections Ukrainian inscriptions were more numerous overall, probably because the ballots were printed in Ukrainian, and bilingual voters saw it as the language appropriate for the moment—and overwhelmingly positive. By the decade’s end, the proportion of Ukrainian-language notes decreased considerably, reflecting the increased Russification of official discourse. During the 1950 elections only about 5 percent of all inscriptions were in Ukrainian.187 Yet, the general trend did not change. Serious critiques of the Soviet system were usually written in Russian, comments about culture and Ukrainian nationalism in Ukrainian, and shorter demands for bread spread proportionately according to the share of Russian and Ukrainian in the total number of all inscriptions both positive and negative. The brutal Nazi occupation of Kyiv in 1941–44 also did not leave an alternate model of democracy to which people could refer. Stalinist officials listed the rare inscriptions “Heil Hitler” and images of swastikas

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among “anti-Soviet” notes,188 but it would have been more logical to group them together with other unarticulated expressions of protest, such as stand-alone obscenities not addressed to anyone in particular. The latter were usually noted in passing, in a sentence like “On the ballots there were several inscriptions of hooligan-like and vulgar content.”189 Thus, the population’s discontent found its expression primarily in protests against everyday deprivations. Only rarely did it escalate to protests against the Soviet political order. Whatever limited understanding of Western democracy people had, they did not use it as a basis for protesting, even anonymously and on a limited scale, the injustices of the Soviet political system. There were no inscriptions like “I do not vote for Communist party members” or “We want a two-party system like in the US.” Rare criticisms of the Soviet system were generally drowned out by mass demands for bread and a better life addressed to the powers that be. From 1950 onward, however, as the city authorities stopped reporting negative inscriptions and letters, this window into the world of ordinary Kyivites began to close. This did not happen abruptly. Already during the December 1947 municipal elections Darnytsia and Zaliznychny, two industrial city districts with a considerable share of low-income residents, claimed a total absence of anti-Soviet ballot inscriptions and anonymous letters—and the district bosses got away with this.190 During the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in February 1950, the reporting of negative comments decreased notably in Kyiv and stopped entirely during the municipal elections in December 1950. This was not a local decision, since other Ukrainian oblasts, such as Vinnytsia, did the same.191 During the February 1951 elections to the republican legislature, the Kyiv authorities reported to their superiors only a selection of “typical” positive comments and a very small number of minor constructive suggestions. Even electoral districts no longer collected negative statements for their reports to the city party committee. The same model was employed during the municipal elections in February 1953.192 Not coincidentally, the end of reporting was concurrent with the more radical manipulation of voting results discussed above, when both the absolute number and the proportion of negative votes decreased dramatically throughout the republic. From the authorities’ point of view, the concerns of the citizenry had been considered long enough. After all, voting in Soviet elections was about ritualistic demonstration of faithfulness, which should not include the option of refusal to swear loyalty. The large majority of Kyivites came to embrace the official styling of Election Day as a “holiday,” a festive moment for confirming their Soviet identities, rather than a political choice. This acceptance was marked

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by the fusion of the communal and the political in the rituals associated with going to the polling station, depositing the ballot, and relaxing with friends and neighbors afterward. Popular acquiescence also meant that the authorities did not require massive manipulation of voting results, although they still adjusted them, more decisively in the 1950s than in the immediate postwar years. Inscriptions on ballots and anonymous notes, which the authorities encouraged as additional proof of voters’ sincerity, actually demonstrated the internalization of the official discourse of “gratitude.” But this should not be used to reach far-reaching conclusions about developing “Soviet subjectivities,” because such ritualistic expressions of gratitude to the tsar and God had long been part of traditional culture. At the same time, negative comments focused overwhelmingly on pressing matters of everyday survival, while revealing the absence of any clear ideological platform for popular protest against the Soviet system. Still, mass protests against everyday deprivations were political: both because they were expressed in a political setting and because every protest under Stalin could be deemed a political act.

Epilogue “Good” Stalinist Citizens

S

ocial phenomena are best defined at their margins. Nothing illuminates the Stalinist concept of citizenship better than cases that caused the greatest difficulty for party functionaries, particularly those concerning religious believers. If behaving as a good Stalinist citizen supposedly reflected a person’s inner Soviet convictions, how did one reconcile this with open adherence to the opposite ideological system? What was the point of political education if religious activists proved to be better citizens than many party members? Stalinist ideologists struggled to find an ideologically sound explanation for this trend. During Easter services in 1944 Orthodox churches in Kyiv collected 250,000 rubles for the Defense Fund. Priests and monks (and even Jesuit monks in Western Ukraine) subscribed to the War Loans on par with other Soviet citizens. Eleven Orthodox priests in the city of Kyiv and Kyiv oblast were also decorated Red Army veterans.1 When Election Day coincided with an Orthodox feast in February 1947, 140 nuns petitioned the staff at the 17th polling station of Pechersky District to start the voting one hour later, so that they could hold matins at 6 a.m. and still be among the first to vote. Denied permission, they arrived in a single column at 7 a.m. The 14th polling station in the same district reported that at the Trinity Church, Reverend Skoropostizhny postponed the 6 a.m. service for an hour and called on his parishioners “to fulfill their civic duty first.”2 In May 1951 the authorities in Kyiv’s outlying suburb of Petropavlivska Borshchahivka (technically still a ( 218 )

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village on the city’s western outskirts) allowed the local Orthodox priest, Reverend Kravchenko, to speak at a meeting devoted to the State Loan campaign. Although the ideologists decried the very fact of the invitation, Reverend Kravchenko, in fact, sounded every bit like a good Stalinist citizen. He proclaimed glory to Stalin and showed an example to others by contributing 3,000 rubles.3 Even Evangelical Christian Baptists, viewed by the state with greater suspicion, demonstrated complete loyalty. As their pastors in Kyiv oblast assured the authorities, in 1951 all their members participated in the elections and signed the Appeal of the Congress of Peace Advocates.4 Stalinist ideologists were trouble by the ostensible contradiction between non-Soviet inner belief and model pro-Soviet behavior. Reporting in early 1947 on the political attitudes of Roman Catholics in Ukraine, a plenipotentiary of the Council on Religious Cults for Kyiv oblast, P. Vilkhovy, concluded that “the mass of rank-and-file Catholics are genuine (nastoiashchie) Soviet citizens”—a sentence that his supervisor underlined with a thick red pencil.5 His successor A. Oleinikov likewise wrote in 1952 that in his three years on the job members of registered religious congregations “did not shun any political campaigns.” On the contrary, they participated in elections, loan distributions, and collections of signatures under various open letters “on par with other people of ours.” Yet, the official ideology classified religious believers as a “backward” category in need of reeducation. Oleinikov explained this anomaly in a somewhat confusing fashion. On the one hand, religious citizens allegedly tried to adapt to the dominant models of political participation, or “the public life of our people.” On the other, “the Soviet people’s way of life has now encompassed all social strata, including religious believers.”6 Confusing as Oleinikov’s second assertion would appear to a straitlaced Stalinist ideologist, perhaps there is some truth to it. Although the latter would never have expressed it in such terms, the Soviet way of life was not defined by internalizing Bolshevik ideology, but by engaging in symbolic interaction with the state during various mass political events. Participation in such events did not reflect any coherent, inner Stalinist self but demonstrated understanding of the rules of everyday politics and the willingness to uphold them when the occasion called for it. At the same time, a great many Kyivites marching in Soviet parades and jockeying to be the first to vote also went to pray on feast days in numbers far exceeding the totals of all registered congregations. During Easter 1952 state functionaries tallied attendance at Orthodox churches in the city at 25,000; some 10,000 Jews celebrated Passover at the city’s only synagogue over a seven-day period in 1951.7 Young professionals and party members understood that they would risk their careers by attending religious services, but an impressive number of other Kyivites were not afraid of being seen worshipping.

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In fact, the connection between participation and belief in Stalinist political rituals was likely similar to the one that had existed in imperial Russia between membership in the Russian Orthodox Church and religious belief. Isaiah Berlin, an insightful British observer with native fluency in Russian, compared political education in the Soviet Union in the late 1940s to “public school religion, actively believed by a small minority, passively held by the rest.”8 In the end, though, there was also good news for Stalinist functionaries in the lack of a connection between a good citizen’s behavior and his or her inner communist convictions. Centered as it was on Stalinist ideas and the cult of Stalin the Great Leader, any major change in the official ideology would have caused an existential crisis for true Stalinists— and it did for some after Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in 1956. Yet, for the majority it was just a brief moment to question openly the things they had always detested—now under the guise of discussing the party’s most recent directives. The authorities soon suppressed the mass outpouring of criticism, but it is telling what citizens wanted to express in public and how they used the Soviet discourse in making their opinions known. The discussion of Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” in Kyiv was unlike any other political-information event. In the spring of 1956 it was read at meetings to party members as well as Komsomol and nonparty activists, but in reality it instantly became a conversation topic on the street. Agitators also read to the population at large the speech summary in the form of the Central Committee’s decree “On Overcoming the Personality Cult and Its Consequences.”9 These ideological documents did not lend themselves easily to the usual techniques of superficial popular “approval” because they actually denounced the essence of what the very same audiences had been “approving” until very recently. The usual thanks to the Communist Party rang hollow on this occasion, even if they did not disappear completely. Meeting reports included the occasional expressions of gratitude to the party and to Khrushchev in person for “uprooting the personality cult” and promises to exceed the plan in appreciation.10 Yet, in a major departure from the format of the report itself, approving comments constituted only a small minority among the expressions of confusion and discontent. It was as if the floodgates had opened suddenly, giving citizens an opportunity to criticize the entire Soviet system under the guise of denouncing Stalinist excesses. Condemnations of Stalin and Stalinism usually served only as a starting point in the often heated discussions. Sometimes they took a radical form, as at the Stalin Docks, where the worker Kizun vandalized Stalin’s bust in the factory yard immediately after the meeting.11 Elsewhere, participants suggested removing Stalin’s portraits, banning his books, and removing his remains from the Mausoleum.12 This was also the occasion to refer back

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to how the speakers had felt about the Stalin cult when the dictator was still alive. The engineer S. Gutman at the Kyiv Energy Company said, “We always felt that not everything Stalin was saying was true.” As Comrade Zlatous from the Subscriptions Bookstore mused, “We were thinking— just how was it different from the tsar?” At the Kyiv Trade Administration, Comrade Yasytnykova described how “nauseatingly annoying” she found all addresses and reports to Stalin in the media. At the leather factory, a certain M. L. Derborimdiker complained that “Stalin wrote the Short Course of party history that was stuffed into people’s heads all these years.” All these statements could be seen as reflecting the new party line, yet the meetings also featured some drama, which suggested a moment of catharsis behind the official-sounding rhetoric. This could involve a critique of dissimulation, as at the Kyiv Energy Company, where the engineer Evsei Rozenfeld lashed out at his colleague Leonid Kaganovich: “So, were you honest when you were crying at the meeting when Stalin died? Perhaps you should cry today too.”13 Characteristically, the rare, recorded objections to the de-Stalinization directives came not from workers and engineers, but from low-rank party functionaries and managers expressing concern about how this ideological sea change would affect “the people.” The cautious ones suggested that loyalty to Stalin as a political symbol kept the Soviet system functioning. They argued that “the people love Stalin, and it would be difficult re-educate them” and “making all this public would only plant the seeds of distrust towards the executive.” A senior academic also took it upon herself to express concern about the announcements’ effect on Ukrainian youth, which “has always seen Stalin as god-like.”14 Transferring the blame from Stalin to the entire Soviet leadership, and Khrushchev in particular, was often the next logical step after condemning Stalinism. The shop manager at the mixed-fodder plant, Mykola Kovalenko fumed, “All the people knew that Stalin was a power-hungry despot and that Hitler and Mussolini paled in comparison, yet Khrushchev allegedly did not know this!”15 More commonly, speakers couched this argument in the Soviet language of “insufficient self-criticism.” At a conference of the city’s propagandists in September 1956, an unnamed member of the audience asked, “Did the delegates of the [20th Party] Congress discuss the question of why conscientious communists had not taken organized action against the personality cult at some plenary meeting? This is what the population on the ground wants to know.”16 On other occasions rank-and-file agitators caught high-ranking party ideologists bending Marxist theory in their explanations of the cult: “You spoke about the decisive role of the masses in history. In this case, why was it so difficult to uncover Stalin’s mistakes in his lifetime?”17 At the Institute of Physical Chemistry, the researcher

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Horokhvatsky criticized the new party pronouncements for their “lack of analysis and self-critique” and wanted to know who among top leadership was going to take responsibility for allowing Stalin’s cult to flourish.18 The manager of the mixed-fodder plant, Mykhailo Hykal, even blurted out, “Khrushchev should not be the one to speak; we still remember what he did in the 1930s.”19 If such comments extended the critique of Stalin to encompass the entire Soviet leadership in Stalin’s time, others cast doubts on the de-Stalinization rhetoric of the post-Stalinist period, for example:  “Now I  am not seeing much in terms of collegial decision-making either. Khrushchev is always in first place.” “Are we not seeing the Khrushchev cult currently in the making?”20 Yet, an even greater number of speakers questioned the very nature of the Soviet political system. At the Writers’ Union, the poet Andrii Malyshko opined that “a leader of the Ukrainian people, even in his capacity as secretary of the Central Committee, should not be appointed from above but chosen through real elections.”21 At a seminar of propagandists some participants wanted to know “if it was correct when, during the nomination of candidates for Supreme Soviet, the candidacies of Stalin and other government leaders were forced upon every district throughout the Soviet Union; and if this practice will continue.”22 At the Ministry of Industrial Construction, Comrade Vasylkivsky condemned the lack of democracy during elections of party committees at all levels, which always included “all the same faces.”23 At the Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages, Retired Colonel Shcherbyna gave a long speech accusing the party leaders of being “the new privileged stratum that one could not criticize” and “separated from the people by their security detail,” as well as the perks of their office. He went so far as to say that the new Ukrainian party boss Oleksii Kyrychenko “had more bodyguards then the tsar.”24 Somewhat unexpectedly, the theme of social inequality and elite privileges became a central motif in the discussion of the “Secret Speech.” Variously phrased protests against these phenomena constitute the single largest section of any given report about such discussions in Kyiv. Because popular discontent resonated well with the egalitarian ethos of the early Bolshevik discourse, which was supposedly being revived after the decades of Stalinist distortions, people boldly now voiced their discontent at all levels of forums. Kyiv oblast first secretary Hryhorii Hryshko had to respond to such questions even at a conference of the city’s party activists: “Is this not related to the personality cult, that some functionaries receive money in envelopes in addition to their salary? First secretaries of district party committees are entitled to free stays at health resorts— why is that? Also, the families of some party executives are given free use of government automobiles.” Second Secretary Petro Shelest was asked

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at oblast evening courses for propagandists about “the domestic workers [who are] so numerous in Kyiv” and about forcing the elite’s housewives “to do their work themselves.”25 At a conference of the city’s best 1,200 propagandists, the participants also phrased their critique of social inequality as one possible way of implementing the party’s resolution: “Would it not improve the struggle against the consequences of the personality cult if we abolished personal dachas, chauffeured cars, the so-called ‘envelopes’ with cash, and exclusive access to material goods for some administrators? This is what the people are talking about, and this is what they ask us about after the lectures.”26 What ordinary workers discussed among themselves after an official meeting ended was not necessarily couched in such language, yet their conversations were intimately connected to the official discourse. On the one hand, the topic could be at least tangentially related to the meeting’s topic—in this case, the role of the collective and the individual (Stalin) in history. On the other, even the most extreme rejections of the Soviet system relied on the notions of capitalist exploitation and the collective versus the individual, probably gleaned from the political-education network, as in the case of the worker Sh. A. Beizem at the “Ukrkabel” factory: “I am a cart driver’s son, and my life was bad [under the tsar], but I never believed in the communist idea, and now I believe even less because nowhere is the individual abased as much as in the USSR. Under the guise of promoting the collective, the individual loses all importance and nobody reckons with us. What’s the difference?—in the old days the capitalists lived well and now Soviet functionaries live well, but we lived poorly then and still live poorly now.”27 The file does not reveal what consequences Beizem suffered for his remarks, but it is telling that the obligatory study of a party document could prompt ordinary workers to think theoretically about their lives, and do so in a mode directly opposed to the official discourse. In addition to outpourings of protest against inequality, the discussion of Khrushchev’s speech provoked some bold statements about the national oppression of Ukrainians in the Soviet Union. At the Writers’ Union, speakers did not limit themselves to demanding the rehabilitation of their repressed fellow writers. The poet Andrii Malyshko also declared that Stalin had “intentionally organized” the 1932–33 famine in Ukraine, while his colleague Leonid Vysheslavsky said that it was “time to stop bowing down to the Russian people, thanking them as the ‘elder brother.’ ”28 At the Pedagogical Institute, Professor Mykhailo Marchenko spoke about the decreasing number of schools with instruction in Ukrainian, which resulted in Ukrainian children being forced to study in Russian.29 Yet, these attempts to extend the range of acceptable criticism to speaking on behalf of the Ukrainian people about the state’s wrongs failed. The famine, assimilation,

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and national inequality would remain proscribed topics in Soviet public discourse until the final years of communism. Following a brief period of bewilderment, the Kyiv party authorities cracked down on such troublesome “anti-party outbursts that, under the guise of condemning the personality cult, questioned the correctness of party policies and decisions of the Twentieth Congress, and also slandered the party and the entire Soviet social system, discredited the party and state apparatus as a whole.”30 The offenders received official party reprimands or “severe reprimands” and had to repent their “mistakes” at various meetings.31 Such prompt measures sent a signal to the population at large. The authorities were not prepared to tolerate open disagreement with the party line and criticisms of current policies. Even the denunciation of Stalinism was to be limited to that of terror and the excesses of the leader cult. The same crackdown on incipient “public opinion” was taking place throughout the Soviet Union, especially after the functionaries’ instinctive reaction was solidified with the secret decree of the Central Committee “On the Strengthening of Party Organizations, Political Work among the Masses, and Rebuttal of Attacks by Hostile, Anti-Soviet Elements.”32 This decree, issued on December 1956, marked the end of the brief period of spontaneous glasnost in political life that emerged after the Secret Speech. With that, the authorities engineered a return to Stalinist-era, obligatory political participation and discursive compliance enforced by both state power and communal pressure. The only difference was the dismantling of the Stalin cult, which was eventually replaced by the more timid cult of Khrushchev. The system of political education was reformed to eliminate the study of Stalin’s biography and his works, with study groups on current politics and Marxist economic theory replacing groups studying the leader’s biography and, until a new textbook was ready, those devoted to party history as well. Soviet ideologists also reduced the total number of hours per month to alleviate widespread passive resistance to political education.33 Holidays, elections, and parades also continued in their usual cycle, and subscription to state loans was soon restored. With the Stalin cult in retreat, the popular Victory Day holiday began to gain more prominence in the Soviet canon as the “people’s victory.” In 1956 the Ukrainian Communist Party’s Central Committee authorized festive editorials in major newspapers on 9 May, as opposed to merely authored articles. The party bosses also planned festive meetings in all organizations and the laying of flowers at war memorials.34 War experience was previously seen as a litmus test of personal political allegiances for contemporaries, but now the war was elevated to a sacred event for all citizens to worship—and receive education in Sovietness by taking part in these collective rites.35

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Overall, however, the structure of political rituals remained mostly intact. The overwhelming majority of the population carried on voting, marching, and donating. The Soviet system survived and, with it, Soviet ideologists. They simply revised political-education plans, the list of portraits at parades, and the content of slogans. Grounded in symbolic relations with the state and communal models of shared participation, the everydayness of Stalinist politics survived Stalinism.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION 1. Dmytro Malakov, Kyiv, viina, nimtsi (Kyiv:  Amadei, 2008), pp. 164–66. The Malakov brothers were not actual orphans but the children of the female orphanage attendant who asked the officer for the time. Their acceptance at the orphanage with its food ration helped ensure their survival in a starving city. 2. See, e.g., Margaret Somers, “Citizenship and the Place of the Public Sphere,” American Sociological Review 58 (1993):  587–620; Brian Turner, Citizenship and Social Theory (Newbury Park, Calif.: SAGE, 1993). 3. As Golfo Alexopulos shows in her Stalin’s Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003). On the notion of citizenship during the late tsarist and early Soviet periods, see Eric Lohr, Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012). 4. See Tsentralnyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh orhaniv vlady i upravlinnia Ukrainy (hereafter TsDAVOV), 1/21/6, fols. 1–15; 1/21/7, fols. 2–48; 1/21/27, fols. 3–196. As of 1 November 1947, the NKVD knew of 153 foreign nationals residing in Kyiv: 66 Iranians, 31 Czechoslovaks, 21 Greeks, 11 Turks, 6 Yugoslavians, 5 Bulgarians, 5 citizens of France, and smaller numbers of others (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiskoi Federatsii [hereafter GARF], 9415/3/44, fol. 171). 5. Kyivska Pravda, 11 February 1946, p. 2. 6. Ibid., 26 February 1950, p. 3. 7. See Tsentralnyi derzhavnyi arkhiv hromadskykh obiednan Ukrainy (hereafter TsDAHO), 1/30/612, fol. 95 and “Lyst tov. Stalinu vid trudiashchykh Ukrainskoi RSR,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 11 (1947): 1–13, here 1. 8. Kyivska Pravda, 26 December 1947, p. 3. 9. See Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), chap. 5. “It was not necessary to believe. It was necessary, however, to participate as if one believed—a stricture that appears to have been well understood, since what could be construed as direct, openly disloyal behavior became rare” (p. 220). 10. See, e.g., Igal Halfin, From Darkness to Light:  Class, Consciousness, and Salvation in Revolutionary Russia (Pittsburgh, Pa.:  University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000); idem, Terror in My Soul:  Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, Mass.; Harvard University Press, 2003); idem, Stalinist Confessions: Messianism and Terror at the Leningrad Communist University (Pittsburgh, Pa.:  University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009); Jochen Hellbeck, “Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi (1931–1939),” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 44, no. 3 (1996): 344–73; idem, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009); idem, “Working, Struggling, Becoming:  Stalin-Era Autobiographical Texts,” Russian ( 227 )

( 228 )  Notes Review 60, no. 3 (2001): 340–59; Anna Krylova, “The Tenacious Liberal Subject in Soviet Studies,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, no. 1 (2000): 119–46. 11. On the manifold forms of popular resistance under Stalin, see Lynne Viola, ed., Contending with Stalinism:  Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s (Ithaca, N.Y.:  Cornell University Press, 2002). 12. Hiroaki Kuromiya, “How Do We Know What the People Thought under Stalin?” in Timo Vikhavainen, ed., Sovetskaia vlast—narodnaia vlast? Ocherki istorii narodnogo vospriiatiia sovetskoi vlasti v SSSR (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii dom, 2003), pp. 30–49, here 43. 13. Secret police summaries of the “public mood” cannot be used as reliable sources and, indeed, were not taken seriously even by the Soviet authorities at the time, as they always contained a fixed proportion of positive and negative comments, the latter possibly fabricated by police informers. See Lynne Viola, “Popular Resistance in the Stalinist 1930s:  Soliloquy of a Devil’s Advocate,” Kritika 1, no. 1 (Winter 2000):  45–69. The population’s petitions to the authorities and letters to newspapers focused almost exclusively on everyday concerns, such as housing, pensions, taxes, and employment (see, e.g., the summaries and statistics categorized by topic in TsDAHO, 1/24/2924; 1/30/369; 1/30/1390; Derzhavnyi arkhiv Kyivskoi oblasti (hereafter DAKO), 1/9/38; 1/11/3, fols. 119–22; TsDAVOV, 1/18/68, fols. 86–88). 14. Anthropologists have long studied rituals as organized symbolic practices that represent the social significance of certain events and in condensed form project certain myths or abstract ideas onto the external world. Historians, too, have viewed public ceremonies as symbolic representations of the ideal social order. See, e.g., “Ritual,” in Tim O’Sullivan et al., eds., Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 267–69; Mary Ryan, “The American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order,” in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1989), pp. 131–53. There is also an older book on the main Soviet political rituals:  Cristel Lane, The Rites of Rulers:  Ritual in Industrial Society—The Soviet Case (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). My emphasis, however, is on public events as sites of interaction between the state and its citizens and, in particular, on the “civic emotions” that citizens were expected to express there and the communal peer pressure that the authorities mobilized to assist in organizing everyday political life. 15. See Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000); Olga Sosnina and Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, “Kanon i improvizatsiia v politicheskoi estetike sovetskogo obshchestva,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 101 (2010): 130–48. 16. See Serhy Yekelchyk, “The Civic Duty to Hate: Stalinist Citizenship as Political Practice and Civic Emotion (Kiev, 1943–53),” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 7, no. 3 (2006): 529–56. 17. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Happiness and Toska:  An Essay in the History of Emotions in Pre-war Soviet Russia,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 50, no. 3 (2004): 357– 71; Ian Plamper, Shamma Shakhadat, and Mark Eli, eds., Rossiiskaia imperiia chuvstv: Podkhody k kulturnoi istorii emotsii (Moscow: NLO, 2010); Mark D. Steinberg and Valeria Sobol, eds., Interpreting Emotion in Russia and Eastern Europe (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2011). 18. Originally introduced in my 2006 article on hatred in Stalin’s time, the concept of “civic emotions” has since been applied to other periods of Soviet history. See my article “The Civic Duty to Hate” and Polly Jones, “Breaking the Silence: Iurii Bondarev’s Quietness between the ‘Sincerity’ and ‘Civic Emotion’ of the Thaw,” in Steinberg and Sobol, Interpreting Emotion, 152–76. 19. See, e.g., Amitai Etzioni, “Toward a Theory of Public Ritual,” Sociological Theory 18, no. 1 (March 2000): 44–59; Douglas A. Marshall, “Behavior, Belonging, and Belief: A Theory of Ritual Practice,” Sociological Theory 20, no. 3 (November 2002): 360–80.

Notes  ( 229 ) 20. See my article “A Communal Model of Citizenship in Stalinist Politics: Agitators and Voters in Postwar Electoral Campaigns (Kyiv, 1946–53),” Ab Imperio, no. 2 (2010): 93–120. 21. Alex Inkeles, Public Opinion in Soviet Russia:  A  Study in Mass Persuasion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 84. 22. Elena Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo:  Politika i povsednevnost, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), pp. 111 and 221. 23. V. V. Kononenko, Suspilno-politychni nastroi ta moralnyi stan naselennia Ukrainy v povoiennyi period (1945–1953 rr.). Avtoreferat dysertatsii kandydata istorychnykh nauk (Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy NANU, 2004), pp. 9–10. 24. V. V. Kononenko, “Nastroi naselennia Ukrainy v umovakh povoiennoi deklaratyvnoi radianskoi demokratii,” Naukovi zapysky Vinnytskoho derzhavnoho pedahohichnoho universytetu im. Mykhaila Kotsiubynskoho, Seriia Istoriia 6 (2003): 75–80, here 78 and 79. 25. V. Krupyna, “Vyborchi kampanii v URSR 1946–1947 rr. ta politychni nastroi naselennia,” Ukraina XX st.:  Kultura, ideolohiia, polityka (Kyiv:  Instytut istorii NANU, 2005), Vol. 9, pp. 360–68, here 363 and 367; idem, “Partiino-derzhavna nomenklatura povoiennoi Ukrainy,” in V. M. Danylenko, ed., Povoienna Ukraina: Narysy sotsialnoi istorii (druha polovyna 1940-kh–seredyna 1950-kh rr.) (Kyiv:  Instytut istorii Ukrainy NANU, 2010), 1:139–76, here 151. 26. M. S. Herasymova, Povsiakdenne zhyttia naselennia Donbasu v 1945–1953 rr.: Avtoreferat dysertatsii kandydata istorychnykh nauk (Donetsk:  Donetskyi natsionalnyi universytet, 2007), p. 14. 27. Ivan Dziuba, “Tsia knyzhka zminyla use moie zhyttia,” in Bogumila Berdykhovska and Olia Hnatiuk, eds., Bunt pokolinnia: Rozmovy z ukrainskymy intelektualamy, trans. Roksana Kharchuk (Kyiv: Dukh i litera, 2004), pp. 93 and 100. 28. See David Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and Terror under Stalin, 1927–1941 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011); Juliane Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 29. See Jeffrey W. Jones, Everyday Life and the “Reconstruction” of Soviet Russia during and after the Great Patriotic War, 1943–1948 (Bloomington, Ind.: Slavica Publishers, 2008); Karl D. Qualls, From Ruins to Reconstruction:  Urban Identity in Soviet Sevastopol after World War II (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2010); William Jay Risch, The Ukrainian West: Culture and the Fate of Empire in Soviet Lviv (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011). 30. Hiroaki Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas:  A  Ukrainian-Russian Borderland, 1870s–1990s (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001); Hiroaki Kuromiya, The Voices of the Dead: Stalin’s Great Terror in the 1930s (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008); Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War:  The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001). 31. Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair:  Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004); Martin J. Blackwell, “Regime City of the First Category: The Experience of the Return of Soviet Power to Kyiv, Ukraine, 1943–1946” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 2005). CHAPTER 1 1. N. S. Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, Vol. 1:  Commissar (1918–1945), ed. Sergei Khrushchev, trans. George Shriver (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), p.  580 (with “Khreshchatik” in the original corrected to Khreshchatyk Boulevard).

( 230 )  Notes 2. P. T. Tronko, “Moi zustrichi z M.  S. Khrushchovym,” in S. V. Kulchytskyi, ed., M. S. Khrushchov i Ukraina: Materialy naukovoho seminaru 14 kvitnia 1994 r., prysviachenoho 100-richchiu vid dnia narodzhennia M.  S. Khrushchova (Kyiv:  Instytut istorii Ukrainy NANU, 1995), pp. 193–200, here 194. At the time, Tronko was the newly appointed first secretary of the Komsomol in Kyiv oblast. 3. G. K. Zhukov, Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia (Moscow:  Agentstvo pechati “Novosti,” 1971), p. 491. 4. Pravda, 9 November 1943, p. 1. 5. Radianska Ukraina, 3 November 1944, p. 1. 6. Pravda, 8 November 1943, p. 3. 7. Ibid., 11 November 1943, p. 2. 8. Kyivska Pravda, 17 November 1943, p. 3. 9. See Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair:  Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 30–32. 10. Ibid., 306–07. 11. See Jeff Mankoff, “Babi Yar and the Struggle for Memory,” Ab Imperio, no. 2 (2004): 393–415. 12. TsDAHO, 1/70/95, fol. 92. 13. Pravda, 3 December 1943, p. 1. 14. Kyivska Pravda, 15 December 1943, p. 3. 15. Ibid., 11 April 1944, p. 1 16. N. S. Khrushchev, “Spravka N. S. Khrushcheva I.V. Stalinu ‘Polozhenie v gorode Kieve,’ ” in Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev:  Dva tsveta vremeni:  Dokumenty iz lichnogo fonda N.  S. Khrushcheva (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond “Demokratiia,” 2009), 1:54 –65, here 54. 17. Kyivska Pravda, 23 November 1943, p. 2. 18. DAKO, 1/3/9, fol. 21 (December 1943); 1/3/45, fols. 230–32 (April 1944). 19. See TsDAHO, 1/70/170; DAKO, 5/2/400, fol. 25; V. Hrynevych, “Khrushchov iak tvorets ukrainskoho radianskoho patriotyzmu v roky nimetsko-radianskoi viiny 1941– 1945 rr.,” Problemy istorii Ukrainy:  Fakty, sudzhennia, poshuky (Kyiv:  Instytut istorii Ukrainy NANU, 2004), Issue 11: 483–93. 20. On the evidence collected by the commission, see Marian R.  Sanders, “Extraordinary Crimes in Ukraine: An Examination of Evidence Collection by the Extraordinary State Commission of the U.S.S.R, 1942–1946,” PhD diss. (Ohio University, 1995). For an overview of its activities in Ukraine, see TsDAHO, 1/23/598, fols. 45–46; DAKO, 5/2/21; TsDAVOV, 2/7/781 and 2/7/1784. 21. TsDAVOV, 2/7/786, fols. 84–86. 22. DAKO, 5/2/21, fols. 4, 17–18. 23. TsDAVOV, 2/7/781, fol. 51. 24. Ibid., 2/7/1784, fols. 2–5. 25. Radianska Ukraina, 1 March 1944, pp. 1–2; Kyivska Pravda, 1 March 1944, pp. 1–2. 26. TsDAVOV, 2/7/781, fol. 50. 27. TsDAHO, 1/23/1615, fol. 11. 28. Pro ruinuvannia i zvirstva, zapodiiani nimetsko-fashystskymy zaharbnykamy v m.  Kyievi (Kyiv and Kharkiv: Ukrainske derzhavne vydavnytstvo, 1944). 29. Radianska Ukraina, 1 March 1944, p. 1. 30. Ibid., 21 March 1944, p. 1. 31. Ibid., 22 March 1944, p. 1 32. Kyivska Pravda, 1 May 1944, p. 2. 33. Radianska Ukraina, 11 March 1944, p. 4. 34. See Serhy Yekelchyk, Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), chap. 1.

Notes  ( 231 ) 35. K. Dubyna, 778 trahichnykh dniv Kyieva (Kyiv: Ukrainske derzhavne vydavnytstvo, 1945); K. Dubina [Dubyna], Zlodeianiia nemtsev v Kieve (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo politicheskoi literatury, 1945). 36. Dubina, Zlodeianiia nemtsev v Kieve, p. 5. 37. Ibid., pp. 6, 26. 38. Kyivska Pravda, 7 March 1945, p. 2. 39. The texts of speeches at the 27 November rally appear in TsDAHO, 1/70/95, 1/70/96, and 1/70/97. 40. DAKO, 5/2/598, fol. 2. 41. Ibid., 1/3/9, fols. 41–42. 42. Ibid., 1/3/10, fol. 2. 43. Ibid., 1/3/4, fol. 24. 44. Ibid., 1/3/75, fols. 42, 82. 45. Ibid., 1/3/78, fols. 6, 14; 1/3/76, fol. 4. 46. Ibid., 5/2/607, fol. 4. 47. Ibid., 1/3/10, fol. 3; 5/2/606, fol. 16. 48. Ibid., 1/3/2, fol. 47. 49. Kyivska Pravda, 19 July 1944, p. 2. 50. Ibid., 16 August 1944, p. 1. 51. See Radianska Ukraina, 18 August 1944, p. 3; Kyivska Pravda, 16 August 1944, p. 1; and TsDAHO, 1/23/940, fol. 24. 52. TsDAHO, 1/23/940, fol. 26; Kyivska Pravda, 18 August 1944, p. 2. 53. TsDAHO, 1/23/940, fols. 1, 3, 11, 27, 31–33; DAKO, 5/2/606, fol. 103; 5/2/607, fol. 175. 54. TsDAHO, 1/23/940, fol. 15. A similar statement appears in DAKO, 5/2/607, fol. 176. 55. TsDAHO, 1/23/940, fol. 26. 56. Ibid., fol. 27. 57. DAKO, 1/3/82, fol. 212; TsDAHO, 1/23/940, fol. 4. 58. TsDAHO, 1/23/940, fols. 31–32. 59. See, e.g., Kyivska Pravda, 30 November 1945, pp. 5–6; 4 January 1946, p. 7; 22 January 1946, p. 6. The verdict appears in ibid., 2 October 1946, pp. 4–5. 60. DAKO, 1/3/329, fol. 54; Kyivska Pravda, 18 January 1946, pp. 1, 4; Leonid Abramenko, “Vid uporiadnyka,” in Leonid Abramenko, ed., Kyivskyi protses: Dokumenty ta materialy (Kyiv: Lybid, 1995), pp. 5–7. 61. Kyivska Pravda, 18 January 1946, p. 4. 62. Ibid., 29 January 1946, p. 4; Abramenko, Kyivskyi protses, pp. 201–02. 63. DAKO, 1/3/329, fols. 55–57. 64. Kyivska Pravda, 3 December 1943, p. 1. 65. Ibid., 9 January 1944, p. 2. 66. TsDAHO, 1/23/115, fols. 1–9. Similar reports from early 1943 appear in 1/23/523, fols. 14–42. 67. DAKO, 1/3/45, fols. 78–79. 68. TsDAVOV, 2/7/773, fol. 133. 69. O. Kasymenko, “Ukrainsko-nimetski natsionalisty—nailiutishi vorohy ukrainskoho narodu,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 11 (1944): 18–24. 70. TsDAHO, 1/23/1615, fol. 68. 71. Ibid., 1/1/802, fol. 71. 72. Kyivska Pravda, 20 September 1947, p. 3. 73. DAKO, 1/3/428, fols. 42–45; TsDAHO, 1/23/4492, fols. 1–6. 74. Kyivska Pravda, 7 October 1947, p.  2; 11 October 1947, p.  1. See Informatsionnoe soveshchanie predstavitelei nekotorykh kompartii v Polshe v kontse sentiabria 1947 goda (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo politicheskoi literatury, 1948).

( 232 )  Notes 75. Kyivska Pravda, 3 October 1947, p. 2. 76. DAKO, 1/3/403, fol. 129. 77. Ibid., 1/3/404, fol. 27. 78. Ibid., 5/3/1408, fol. 53. 79. Ibid., 5/3/2058, fol. 7; 1/3/528, fol. 40. See Falsifikatory istorii:  Istoricheskaia spravka (Moscow, 1948). 80. “Radianskyi Soiuz—oplot myru i bezpeky narodiv,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 5 (1948): 8. 81. See Kyivska Pravda, 18 May 1948, p. 2 (Greece); Vechirnii Kyiv, 10 February 1953, p. 3 (Zionism); DAKO, 1/3/528, fols. 67–88 (Greece); 5/3/2586, fol. 22 (Tito). 82. “Velyke sviato trudiashchykh vsoho svitu,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 4 (1951): 6. 83. “Velychna peremoha radianskoho narodu,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 5 (1951): 2. 84. “SRSR—oplot myru i bezpeky narodiv,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 4 (1949): 5; Iu. Rovinsky, “Fashyzatsiia politychnoho ladu v krainakh amerykano-anhliiskoho bloku,” ibid. no. 11 (1950): 48–60 (fascism); B. Vronsky, “Vyrodzhennia i rozklad amerykanskoi burzhuaznoi kultury,” ibid., no. 7 (1950): 68–80 (decadent culture); M. Vilbaum, “Rasova i natsionalna dyskryminatsiia v SShA,” ibid., no.  4 (1951):  46–55 (racism); H. Yemelianenko, “Rasyzm—ideolohiia amerykanskykh imperialistiv,” Komunist Ukrainy, no. 8 (1952): 42– 53 (racism); Kyivska Pravda, 3 February 1950, p. 4 (way of life). 85. DAKO, 178/2/4, fol. 57; Vechirnii Kyiv, 16 July 1952, p. 2. 86. DAKO, 1/23/5655, fol. 271. 87. Kyivska Pravda, 4 October 1949, p. 1. 88. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsialno-politicheskoi istorii (hereafter RGASPI), 17/119/111, fol. 235. 89. DAKO, 5/3/3075, fol. 8 (questions), 25 (numbers); Kyivska Pravda, 4 August 1950, p. 1 (meetings). 90. DAKO, 1/9/259, fol. 14. 91. Ibid., 5/5/316, fol. 118. 92. Vechirnii Kyiv, 19 May 1952, p. 4; 20 May 1952, p. 4; Radianska Ukraina, 26 August 1952, p. 4; 11 September 1952, p. 3. 93. Radianska Ukraina, 11 September 1952, p. 3. 94. DAKO, 5/5/971, fols. 2–3. 95. Ibid., 5/5/316, fols. 39, 70–71. 96. TsDAHO, 1/30/2036, fol. 64. 97. DAKO, 5/5/316, fol. 57. 98. See O. Alentiev, “Proty nyzkopoklonstva pered burzhuaznym Zakhodom,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 11 (1948):  53–62; “Vyshche riven kerivnytstva ideolohichnoiu robotoiu,” ibid., no. 3 (1949): 11–16; DAKO, 1/3/416, fol. 192.; TsDAHO, 1/70/1819, fols. 1–14. 99. Vechirnii Kyiv, 13 January 1953, pp. 1, 3. 100. On the ideological significance of the so-called Doctors’ Plot, see Amir Weiner, “Nature, Nurture, and Memory in a Socialist Utopia: Delineating the Soviet Socio-Ethnic Body in the Age of Socialism,” American Historical Review 104, no. 4 (October 1999): 1114–55. 101. In the first years after Kyiv’s liberation, anti-Semitic incidents in the city were particularly frequent, as returning Jewish residents reclaimed their prewar apartments from their temporary occupants. Some manifestations of anti-Semitism could be explained by the lasting influence of Nazi propaganda, but there was also a widespread belief that Jews had not fought at the front and thus had not contributed to the Soviet victory. See Martin J. Blackwell, “Regime City of the First Category: The Experience of the Return of Soviet Power to Kyiv, Ukraine, 1943–1946,” PhD thesis (Indiana University, 2005), chap. 6. 102. S.  V. Kulchytsky makes the same point in his “Vektor antysemityzmu,” Polityka i chas, no. 1 (1998):  70–77. See also A. Lokshin, “Delo vrachei:  ‘Otkliki trudiashchikhsia,’ ” Vestnik Evreiskogo universiteta v Moskve no. 5 (1994):  52–62 and Amir Weiner, Making

Notes  ( 233 ) Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 290–97. 103. TsDAHO, 1/24/2773, fols. 3, 14. 104. See the report in TsDAHO, 1/30/3273, fols. 1–24. 105. TsDAHO, 1/24/2773, fol. 38 (Radchenko); DAKO, 5/5/1774, fol. 6 (tram-rider and watchman). 106. DAKO, 5/5/1774, fol. 14; TsDAHO, 1/24/2773, fol. 17. 107. TsDAHO, 1/24/2773, fol. 28. 108. Ibid., fols. 32, 40, 49, 70. 109. See, for example, Vechirnii Kyiv, 4 April 1953, p. 2. 110. TsDAHO, 1/24/2773, fols. 91, 97. 111. Ibid., fol. 99. 112. Ibid., fols. 91, 97. 113. Ibid., fol. 96. 114. Raisa Orlova, Vospominaniia o neproshedshem vremeni (Moscow: Slovo, 1993), p. 203. 115. Vechirnii Kyiv, 13 June 1953, p. 2. 116. See DAKO, 1/12/320. 117. DAKO, 1/12/319, fol. 5; 5/5/1825, fol. 97. See also ibid., 1/12/320; 5/5/1559, 5/5/1744, 5/5/1777; TsDAHO, 1/24/2775. 118. TsDAHO, 1/24/3062, fol. 2. 119. Ibid., 1/24/2775, fols. 155, 192. 120. DAKO, 5/5/1547, fol. 27; TsDAHO, 1/24/2775, fol. 163. 121. Graeme J. Gill, Stalinism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). CHAPTER 2 1. DAKO, 1/3/5, fols. 28 and 53. 2. Ibid., 1/3/23, fol. 91. Just before the Red Army’s final attack, the German military administration ordered all civilians to leave the city, but many did not oblige and went into hiding in the city. Those who left went to nearby villages and returned as soon as the front line had passed westward. Still, in the first days after its liberation, Kyiv, which in 1939 had 846,000 residents and in 1941 as many as 930,000, remained sparsely populated. As of 15 November, the authorities estimated only 18,000 residents in the city. This changed by late November, when the number of food-ration cards indicated some 200,000 residents. By January 1944 this number went up to 250,000, and by January 1945 to 472,000. See DAKO, 5/2/1130, fols. 14 and 28; T. V. Vronska, V umovakh viiny: Zhyttia ta pobut naselennia mist Ukrainy (1943–1945 rr.) (Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy NANU, 1995), 6. 3. DAKO, 1/3/9, fol. 10. 4. Tsentralnyi derzhavnyi arkhiv hromadskykh obiednan Ukrainy (hereafter TsDAHO), 1/70/72, fol. 1. 5. DAKO, 1/3/5, fol. 56. The battle of Orel later became known as the battle of Kursk. 6. TsDAHO, 1/70/95, fol. 79 (Khrushchev), 89 (Vatutin); 1/70/97, fol. 17 (40,000); 1/70/98, fols. 15–20 (letters); Kyivska Pravda, 28 November 1943, pp. 1–3; 3 December 1943, p. 1; Pravda, 3 December 1943, p. 2. 7. Radianska Ukraina, 21 March 1944, pp. 1–2; Kyivska Pravda, 21 March 1944, p. 1; DAKO, 1/3/72, fol. 12; 5/2/606, fols. 56–63. 8. TsDAHO, 1/70/881, fols. 3–5, 6; 1/23/720, fols. 1–42; Tsentralnyi derzhavnyi arkhivmuzei literatury i mystetstva Ukrainy (hereafter TsDAMLM), 590/1/22, fols. 1–83; Kyivska Pravda, 15 December 1944, pp. 1–2. 9. DAKO, 1/3/78, fol. 5; 1/3/82, fol. 205. Note, however, that in the Ministry of the Meat and Dairy Industry, the signing was followed by dinner and dancing (ibid., 1/3/76, fol. 18). Instead of a civic duty ritual, the event was staged as more of a holiday.

( 234 )  Notes 10. DAKO, 5/2/606, fols. 36–43. 11. Ibid., fol. 132. 12. TsDAHO, 1/70/881, fols. 1–2; Radianska Ukraina, 14 December 1944, pp. 1–2. Although the state apparatus did its best to collect signatures on such short notice, some Kyiv oblast party bosses believed that 150,000 signatures from the capital were insufficient and that this “low” number could embarrass them before their higher-ups (DAKO, 1/3/43, fol. 103). 13. TsDAHO, 1/23/784, fol. 2. 14. Ibid., 1/70/82, fols. 19–20; 1/23/784, fols. 17–18; Kyivska Pravda, 15 October 1944, pp. 1–2; Radianska Ukraina, 15 October 1944, pp. 1–2. 15. DAKO, 1/3/43, fol. 115. 16. TsDAHO, 1/70/202, fols. 1–5. 17. Ibid., 1/23/1589, fol. 17. 18. DAKO, 1/3/222, fols. 8–12 (“national motifs” and “two to three years” on fol. 8); 1/3/201, fols. 3–26. 19. TsDAHO, 1/70/202, fols.6, 29–30. 20. DAKO, 1/3/221, fol. 5 overleaf. 21. Ibid., 1/3/201, fol. 7. 22. Kyivska Pravda, 1 May 1945, pp. 1–2. 23. DAKO, 1/3/221, fol. 5. 24. Ibid., 1/3/221, fols. 5–7. 25. TsDAHO, 1/70/342, fol. 1. 26. Ibid., 1/23/1764, fols. 15, 19. 27. Ibid., 1/70/342, fol. 2; DAKO, 1/3/221, fol. 11. 28. TsDAHO, 1/70/306, fols. 6–7. 29. See, e.g., Kyivska Pravda, 5 September 1945, p. 1. 30. DAKO, 1/3/201, fol. 15. 31. Kyivska Pravda, 5 September 1946, p. 6; 8 September 1946, p. 1. 32. Ibid., 19 November 1944, p. 1. 33. Ibid., 20 November 1945, p. 1. 34. DAKO, 1/3/255, fol. 3; Kyivska Pravda, 12 November 1947, p. 1. 35. See Kyivska Pravda, 27 July 1945, p. 1; 5 August 1947, p. 1; 10 August 1947, p. 2. 36. Ibid., 23 July 1950, p. 1; Radianska Ukraina, 10 August 1952, p. 1; 12 August 1952, p. 1. 37. Kyivska Pravda, 6 November 1945, p. 1. 38. DAKO, 277/1/98, fol. 189. 39. Kyivska Pravda, 4 November 1945, p. 5. 40. Ibid., 6 November 1946, p. 1. 41. Ibid., 10 November 1947, p. 2. 42. Ibid., 4 May 1946, p. 4; 11 May 1946, p. 4. 43. Compare Kyivska Pravda, 11 May 1947, p. 1 and 25 November 1947, p. 3. 44. Nina Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. 104. 45. See Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2002). 46. Vechirnii Kyiv, 10 May 1952, p. 3. 47. DAKO, 5/6/292, fol. 22. 48. Kyivska Pravda, 10 March 1944, p. 1. 49. Radianska Ukraina, 16 December 1944, p.  3; 17 December 1944, p.  1 (Skovoroda); Literaturna hazeta, 13 September 1945, p.  1 (Karpenko-Kary); Kyivska Pravda, 24 February 1946, p. 5 (Lesia Ukrainka). 50. See Weiner, Making Sense of War.

Notes  ( 235 ) 51. TsDAHO, 1/70/306, fol. 20. 52.  Ibid. 53. Kyivska Pravda, 14 October 1944, pp. 1 (editorial and Khrushchev) and 8 (preparations in Kyiv); 16 October 1945, p. 6 (celebration in Kyiv). 54. TsDAHO, 1/23/5075, fol. 344. 55. Ibid., 1/70/647, fol. 36. The first draft of this decree envisaged the festivities on 27 and 28 December 1947. Ibid., 1/23/4486, fols. 12–13. 56. See TsDAHO, 1/23/5075; 1/70/1291; TsDAVOV, 1/18/58; Radianska Ukraina, 24–26 January 1948. 57. TsDAHO, 1/23/5075, fols. 131–32; Kyivska Pravda, 27 January 1948, p. 3. 58. Kyivska Pravda, 25 January 1948, p.  1; “Promova V.  M. Molotova na iuvileinii sesii Verkhovnoi Rady URSR v den 30-richchia Radianskoi Ukrainy,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 1 (1948): 1–5. 59. TsDAHO, 1/23/5075, fol. 25. 60. “Promova N.  S. Khrushchova na iuvileinii sesii Verkhovnoi Rady URSR,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 1 (1948): 10. 61. Kyivska Pravda, 27 January 1948, p. 1. 62. DAKO, 1/3/511, fol. 30. 63. “Velyka istorychna podiia v zhytti ukrainskoho narodu,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 9 (1949): 1. 64. TsDAHO, 1/30/1349; “Vsenarodne sviato,” Partiine zhyttia, no. 9 (1949): 1–8. 65. DAKO, 5/3/2491, fol. 52; TsDAHO, 1/30/1738, fol. 2. 66. DAKO, 1/6/332, fol. 2. 67. TsDAHO, 1/70/1731, fol. 6. 68. DAKO, 5/3/2594, fol. 61. 69. Ibid., fol. 64. No permanent monument to Stalin was ever built in Kyiv after the city’s liberation. Instead, during major holidays the municipal authorities installed temporary sculptures of the Leader, apparently made of plaster. One such sculpture stood on Stalin Square, at the end of Khreshchatyk, between November 1947 and May 1948, but it was removed afterward (TsDAVOV, 1/18/58, fols. 39–40). 70. Kyivska Pravda, 30 October 1949, p. 1; “Velyka istorychna podiia v zhytti ukrainskoho narodu,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 9 (1949): 2. 71. Kyivska Pravda, 31 October 1949, p. 2. 72. G. F. Aleksandrov et al., Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin: Kratkaia biografiia, 2d ed. (Moscow: OGIZ Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo politicheskoi literatury, 1947), p.  5. The real date was 6 December 1878. Common in the late Russian Empire, such tampering was usually aimed at avoiding or delaying military conscription. See Robert Service, Stalin:  A  Biography (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 14. 73. Kyivska Pravda, 21 December 1943, p. 2; DAKO, 791/1/4a, fol. 27. 74. TsDAHO, 1/23/6292, fols. 7–8; “Velykyi vozhd i uchytel radianskoho narodu,” Partiine zhyttia, no. 12 (1949): 11; Kyivska Pravda, 22 December 1949, p. 1. 75. TsDAHO, 1/70/1739, fols. 7–212 (discussion of gifts), 71 (renaming proposal); Kyivska Pravda, 20 December 1949, p. 1 (gifts sent to Moscow). 76. DAKO, 5/3/2594, fols. 87–94; 1/6/162, fol. 2. 77. Some addresses from Kyiv appear in DAKO, 1/6/161, fols. 59–69. The lists of organizations and individuals who sent congratulations may be found in Kyivska Pravda as early as December 1949 and as late as December 1950. See Kyivska Pravda, 17 December 1949, p. 1; 4 January 1950, p. 2; 19 December 1950, p. 2. 78. Kyivska Pravda, 18 December 1949, p. 2. 79. DAKO, 5/3/2594, fol. 93 and 5156/1/6, fols. 32–33. 80. Ibid., 1/3/412, fol. 149 (voters); Kyivska Pravda, 26 December 1947, p.  3 (newspaper report).

( 236 )  Notes 81. Kyivska Pravda, 5 December 1947, p. 1 (poster); Vechirnii Kyiv, 4 December 1952, pp. 1–2 (poetry and prose). 82. TsDAHO, 1/23/2884, fol. 136. In defense of the demonstration’s organizers, it must be noted that 7 November 1945 was a frosty day. As one party organizer explained at a later meeting, his column was supposed to start moving to the city center at 9:00 a.m., but because another district’s column was late in arriving, they had to wait for two hours. Many marchers’ hands were chilled to the bone. See DAKO, 1/3/304, fol. 38. 83. DAKO, 1/3/304, fols. 6–7. 84. TsDAHO, 1/23/2884, fol. 137. 85. Ibid., 1/6/904, fol. 1. 86. DAKO, 1/3/222, fols. 25–39. 87. Ibid., 791/1/238, fol. 85. 88. TsDAHO, 1/30/1348, fol. 54. 89. DAKO, 1/3/222, fols. 6–7. 90. Ibid., 1/3/304, fol. 38. 91. Ibid., 178/1/1, fols. 19–19v; 178/1/7, fol. 15. 92. Ibid., 277/1/98, fol. 29. 93. Ibid., 1/3/308, fol. 128. General Sydir Kovpak was a celebrated Soviet partisan commander who occupied several prominent, albeit largely symbolic, government positions in the Ukrainian republic after the war. 94. See, e.g., DAKO, 1/24/2430, fols. 101–2; 1/23/4289, fols. 153–54; 282/1/6, fol. 58; 178/1/7, fol. 15; 5156/2/1, fol. 93; TsDAHO, 1/24/1417, fols. 9–10, 247–48. 95. See, e.g., DAKO, 282/1/5, fol. 44; 282/1/6, fol. 59; TsDAHO, 1/24/2423, fols. 73–74; 1/24/2430, fol. 108. 96. TsDAHO, 1/24/1417, fol. 9; 1/23/4289, fol. 154. 97. DAKO, 5/5/895, fol. 3. 98. TsDAHO, 1/24/1417, fols. 9, 248. 99. Ibid., 1/24/2432, fols. 73–74. 100. Ibid., 1/24/1417, fol. 9. 101. DAKO, 5/5/895, fol. 2. 102. There exists considerable literature on parades as symbolic representations of the ideal social order complete with social and gender hierarchies. For the Soviet case, see Karen Petrone, Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000). 103. Kyivska Pravda, 10 November 1945, p. 2; 10 November 1947, p. 3; DAKO, 5/3/1908, fol. 49; TsDAHO, 1/30/1872, fols. 17–18. 104. Kyivska Pravda, 10 November 1947, p. 3. 105. DAKO, 1/9/17, fol. 24; TsDAHO, 1/30/2326, fols. 7–8. 106. See DAKO, 5/5/938, fol. 33; 1/9/265, fol. 35; 1/11/661, fol. 3 (7 November); TsDAHO, 1/30/2326, fols. 1 and 6; 1/30/1872, fols. 6–7 (1 May). 107. Here, I  disagree with Karen Petrone, who believes that the elements of a folk festival developed spontaneously and undermined the symbolic function of Soviet holidays. See Petrone, Life Has Become Joyous, pp. 18–19. Malte Rolf also shows that, from the early years of the Revolution, Soviet festivals included a considerable element of popular culture. See Malte Rolf, “Constructing a Soviet Time: Bolshevik Festivals and Their Rivals during the First Five-Year Plan: A Study of the Central Black Earth Region,” Kritika 1, no. 3 (2000): 447–73. 108. DAKO, 1/9/17, fol. 29. 109. See, for e.g., Vechirnii Kyiv, 3 May 1952, p. 3. 110. TsDAHO, 1/30/2326, fols. 24–32; DAKO, 5/5/938, fol. 29; 1/11/661, fols. 32–35. 111. DAKO, 1/3/201, fol. 40.

Notes  ( 237 ) 112. Ibid., 1/11/661, fols. 49–54; 5/5/938, fols. 29–32. 113. See, e.g., Kyivska Pravda, 14 October 1950, p. 2; 5 November 1950, p. 3. 114. DAKO, 5156/1/3, fol. 7. 115. Ibid., 1/3/304, fol. 29. 116. Ibid., 1/11/661, fol. 53. 117. Ibid., 5/5/895, fol. 4. 118. Ibid., 1/11/661, fols. 51–52. 119. Radianska Ukraina, 22 January 1944, p. 1; Kyivska Pravda, 22 January 1944, p. 1; and 25 January 1944, p. 1 (meetings); TsDAHO, 1/23/785, fols. 9–11 (party instructions). 120. This description is based on TsDAHO, 1/30/1352, fols. 1–13 (1949); Kyivska Pravda, 22 January 1947, pp. 1–2; 22 January 1950, p. 1; 22 January 1951, pp. 1–3; Radianska Ukraina, 22 January 1949, pp. 1–3. 121. TsDAHO, 1/70/2196, fols. 39–41; DAKO, 5/5/937, fols. 1–4 (local meetings); 5/3/2649, fol. 34 (Theater Institute). 122. On the Lenin Museum in Kyiv, see TsDAHO, 1/70/1255, fols. 2–8 (the attendance numbers on fol. 6); Literaturna hazeta, 19 April 1945, p. 1; Kyivska Pravda, 3 April 1946, p. 6; 21 January 1948, p. 2; 22 January 1950, p. 3. The 75th and 80th anniversaries of Lenin’s birth were marked by editorials in party journals and newspapers. See, e.g., “Torzhestvo Leninizmu,” Propahandyst i ahitator, no. 4 (1945): 10–14 and “Velykyi Lenin,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 4 (1950): 1–9. 123. DAKO, 1/3/150, fols. 1–5; H. Ie. Iasiev, Pamiatky viiny na karti Kyieva (Kyiv:  Knyha pamiati Ukrainy, 2005). 124. Kyivska Pravda, 3 September 1944, p. 2 and “Sholudenka vulytsia,” in A. V. Kudrytsky, ed., Kyiv:  Entsyklopedychnyi dovidnyk (Kyiv:  Holovna redaktsiia URE, 1981), p.  703 (Sholudenko’s biography); Kyivska Pravda, 19 May 1944, p. 2 (monument proposal). 125. TsDAVOV, 2/7/790, fols. 10–15; Radianska Ukraina, 15 April 1944, p. 1; 18 April 1944, p. 1; Kyivska Pravda, 18 April 1944, p. 1. 126. Kyivska Pravda, 9 July 1944, p. 1 and Tsentralnyi derzhavnyi kinofotofonoarkhiv Ukrainy im. H. S. Pshenychnoho (hereafter TsDKFFA), 0–35576 (Stalingrad delegation); 15 April 1945, p. 2; 17 April 1945, p. 2 (articles about Vatutin); TsDAHO, 1/23/1446, fol. 2 (Tito); 1/70/82, fol. 19 (“a great Stalinist military leader”). 127. TsDAHO, 1/70/478, fol. 3; DAKO, 5/3/2490, fol. 15 (itineraries); TsDKFFA, 0–19633 (delegates of the XIII Congress of the Ukrainian Komsomol at Sholudenko’s grave, 14 December 1946); Mykhailo Kalnytsky, Dmytro Malakhov, and Oksana Yurkova, Narysy z istorii Kyieva (Kyiv: Heneza, 2002), p. 325 (Vatutin’s monument); Kyivska Pravda, 27 January 1948, p. 3 (Vatutin monument unveiled). 128. On Soviet memorial policies during the immediate postwar period, see Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead, chap. 5. On the image of victory in official propaganda as the state’s “gift” to the people, see Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin!: Soviet Public Culture fromRevolution to Cold War (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), chap. 7. 129. TsDAHO, 1/23/449, fols. 1–8; 1/23/784, fols. 7–9; 1/70/9, fols. 18–19; 1/70/170, fol. 1; DAKO, 5/2/400, fol. 25; Radianska Ukraina, 18 June 1944, p. 1; Kyivska Pravda, 19 May 1944, p. 2; 29 April 1945, p. 2. 130. Kyivska Pravda, 4 June 1946, pp. 1 and 3; 5 June 1946, p. 3; 6 June 1946, p. 3 (Kalinin); DAKO, 1/3/512, fols. 1–23; 1/3/528, fol. 234 (Zhdanov). Mikhail Kalinin was the chairman of the Soviet parliament, and Andrei Zhdanov was the Central Committee secretary in charge of ideological matters. 131. See Service, Stalin, pp. 588–89. 132. Ivan Dziuba, Spohady i rozdumy na finishnii priamii (Kyiv: Krynytsia, 2008), p. 147. 133. Zhanna Lazoryshyn, “Spryiniattia kyianamy smerti Stalina:  konstruiuvannia ofitsiinoi versii i tvorennia istorychnoi pamiati ochevydtsiv,” Ukraina Moderna online, 5 March 2012, http://www.uamoderna.com/md/136-stalin.

( 238 )  Notes 134. TsDAHO, 1/24/3473, fol. 101 (report to Moscow); DAKO, 1/12/326, fols. 46 and 79 (“Farewell, our Father!”); 1/12/323, fol. 82; P–5/5/1567, fol. 6 (“lacking words”); 5/5/1743, fol. 49 (“the land of the Soviets moaning”). 135. On public displays of weeping, see TsDAHO, 1/24/4255, fols. 73–74; DAKO, 5/5/1743, fol. 49; and the photograph of a crowd on Khreshchatyk in Vechirnii Kyiv, 10 March 1953, p. 4. The report about inappropriate reactions of railway employees appears in TsDAHO, 1/24/2743, fols. 6–10. 136. TsDAHO, 1/24/2924, fols. 292–94 (boy); 1/24/2743, fols. 7 (Komolova) and 8 (Biloshytsky). 137. DAKO, 282/4/2, fols. 37 and 55. 138. For impersonal statements of allegiance, see Pravda, 6 March 1953, p. 1; Vechirnii Kyiv, 6 March 1953, p.  1; 17 March 1953, p.  1; DAKO, 1/12/323, fol. 83; 1/12/326, fol. 2 (Demianchuk). 139. For references to Malenkov, see DAKO, 1/12/323, fols. 102 and 121; 1/12/326, fols. 1–2 (oath) and 109 (formula ending messages). 140. DAKO, 1/12/323, fol. 84; 1/12/326, fols. 13 and 26–28; 5/5/1567, fol. 8. 141. Between 1944 and 1950, 99 monuments to Lenin, 61 to Stalin, and 332 to Soviet soldiers were constructed in the Ukrainian republic, but the overwhelming majority consisted of cheap, standard-cast statues erected in small towns (TsDAHO, 1/30/1990, fols. 7–10). The new Lenin monument in Kyiv unveiled in December 1946 constituted a notable exception (Kyivska Pravda, 7 December 1946, p. 1). The Kyiv city authorities pushed for a new monument to Stalin on Stalin Square to replace the one that had been destroyed by the Germans, but as late as the summer of 1952 First Secretary Melnikov remained reluctant to request Moscow’s approval (TsDAHO, 1/30/2755, fol. 168). 142. “ ‘Vy skazhete:  Kuda zhe vy ranshe smotreli?’:  Rech tov. Khrushcheva na soveshchanii apparata Leningradskogo oblastnogo i gorodskogo komitetov KPSS, 8 maia 1954 g.,” Istochnik, no. 6 (2003): 9–15, here 12 (Khrushchev’s explanation); TsDAHO, 1/30/3249, fol. 46 (busts); Vechirnii Kyiv, 11 March 1953, p. 2 (plaster statue); 8 March 1953, p. 3; and 11 March 1953, p. 2 (the Lenin Museum). 143. TsDAHO, 1/30/3249, fols. 43–45; DAKO, 1/12/326, fols. 1–2; 1/12/323, fols. 82–83; Vechirnii Kyiv, 10 March 1953, pp. 1–4. 144. TsDAHO, 1/30/3249, fols. 27, 31–32, and 49; DAKO, 5/5/1743, fols. 30–31. 145. Kyivska Pravda, 5 March 1954, pp. 1–2. CHAPTER 3 1. TsDAHO, 1/23/700, fols. 15–16. 2. Ibid., 1/70/198, fol. 1.  Taras Borovets (nom de guerre:  Taras Bulba, 1908–1981):  a Ukrainian nationalist leader, the founder and commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army before it was forcibly overtaken by the Bandera wing of the OUN in 1942. 3. Radianska Ukraina, 3 June 1944, p. 1. 4. T. Holubenko, “Lenin i Stalin pro partiinu dystsyplinu,” Partrobitnyk Ukrainy, no. 4 (1945): 6–10, here 10. See also similar statements in Kyivska Pravda, 21 November 1943, p. 3 and 10 October 1944, p. 1. 5. TsDAHO, 1/70/72, fols. 20–21; DAKO, 1/3/159, fol. 60. 6. [editorial], “Shyrshe rozmakh ideino-politychnoi roboty v masakh,” Ahitator, no. 9 (1944): 35–38, here 36; Kyivska Pravda, 10 October 1944, p. 1; and DAKO, 1/3/159, fol. 60. 7. DAKO, 1/3/528, fol. 107; 1/3/307, fol. 138. 8. See Kommunisticheskaia partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh siezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK (Moscow:  Izdatelstvo politicheskoi literatury, 1971), 6:107–20 and 124–29.

Notes  ( 239 ) 9. Kyivska Pravda, 10 October 1944, p.  1; 25 November 1944, p.  1; Pravda Ukrainy, 25 November 1944, p. 1. 10. DAKO, 1/3/82, fol. 251; Radianska Ukraina, 10 December 1944, p. 1; Kyivska Pravda, 23 February 1945, p. 1. 11. [editorial], “Partiino-politychnu robotu—na riven novykh, zroslykh zavdan partii,” Partiine zhyttia, no. 4 (1947): 1–12, here 3–4 (numbers); [editorial], “Keruvaty—znachyt vykhovuvaty,” Partrobitnyk Ukrainy, no. 4 (1945): 1–5, here 3 (quote). See also Kyivska Pravda, 27 March 1946, p. 3. 12. Kyivska Pravda, 5 June 1948, p. 2 (dairy factory); 21 October 1947, p. 2 (Arsenal). For similar statements, see DAKO, 1/12/74, fol. 38; Kyivska Pravda, 19 May 1944, p. 1; 20 October 1944, p. 1; 13 June 1948, p. 2; [editorial], “Za dalshe polipshennia partiinoi osvity,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 12 (1948): 1–10, here 2. 13. Kyivska Pravda, 1 October 1949, p. 1 (citing Krushchev’s speech in January 1949) and [editorial], “Za vysoku ideinist bilshovytskoi ahitatsii,” Partiine zhyttia, no. 4 (1949): 3–7, here 3. 14. DAKO, 5/2/598, fol. 3. 15. TsDAHO, 1/23/539, fol. 2. 16. Ibid., 1/70/42, fol. 4 (Chocolate Factory); DAKO, 1/3/5, fols. 96–97 (free film screenings); 5/2/598, fol. 3 (75,000). 17. DAKO, 1/3/9, fols. 2 (“comrade”), 8 (Chapaev); 10 (Arsenal); 1/3/5, fol. 3 (talk before the film). 18. Ibid., 1/3/4, fol. 9 and 1/3/9, fol. 33 (posters); TsDAHO, 1/23/700, fols. 15–16 and DAKO, 1/3/4, fol. 8 (“scum”). 19. DAKO, 1/3/9, fol. 33; 1/3/4, fol. 8.  The book in question is I. Stalin, Pro Velyku Vitchyznianu viinu Radianskoho Soiuzu (Moscow:  Viiskove vydavnytstvo Narodnoho komisariatu oborony, 1945), 123 pp. 20. DAKO, 1/3/26, fol. 109 (postal workers); TsDAHO, 1/23/700, fol. 27; DAKO, 1/2/42, fol. 26 (Vronsky). 21. DAKO, 1/3/42, fol. 25 (total number of copies); 1/3/79, fol. 4 and Radianska Ukraina, 11 June 1944, p. 1 (newspaper stands); DAKO, 1/3/82, fol. 56 (people gathering). 22. TsDAHO, 1/23/633, fol. 8. 23. DAKO, 1/3/5, fols. 11 and 32; 1/3/9, fol. 3; 1/3/11, fol. 1. 24. Ibid., 1/3/5, fol. 53; 1/3/11, fol. 1. 25. Ibid., 1/3/4, fol. 7 and a similar statement in 1/3/5, fol. 72. 26. Ibid., 277/1/25, fol. 33; 1/3/45, fol. 14; 1/3/82, fol. 4. 27. Ibid., 5/2/606, fols. 88–90. 28. Ibid., 1/3/45, fol. 16. 29. Ibid., 1/3/8, fol. 18 (Petrovsky); 1/3/45, fol. 7 (when read); Kyivska Pravda, 4 January 1944, p. 2 (Kirovsky). 30. DAKO, 1/3/6, fol. 16; 1/3/9, fol. 1. 31. Ibid., 1/3/6, fol. 6 (speech); Kyivska Pravda, 21 November 1943, p. 3 (book). 32. DAKO, 1/3/81, fol. 1. 33. Ibid., 1/3/4, fol. 23. 34. Ibid., 1/3/79, fol. 4. 35. Ibid., 1/3/6, fol. 22; 1/3/9, fol. 17. 36. Ibid., 1/3/81, fol. 1. 37. Ibid., 1/3/5, fol. 56 and 1/3/9, fol. 7. 38. TsDAHO, 1/23/633, fol. 28. 39. DAKO, 1/3/9, fol. 17; 1/3/11, fol. 1; 1/3/9, fol. 23 overleaf; 5/2/108, fol. 9. 40. Ibid., 1/3/4, fol. 7; 5/2/108, fol. 8; TsDAHO, 1/23/633, fol. 37; and DAKO, 1/3/9, fol. 12 overleaf (license). As Julie Hessler has shown, this rumor had some basis in reality.

( 240 )  Notes See Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 279–95. 41. TsDAHO, 1/70/78, fol. 78; 1/70/79, fol. 69; 1/70/80, fols. 28–30. 42. DAKO, 1/3/9, fol. 17; 1/3/4, fol. 7. 43. Ibid., 1/3/45, fol. 17. 44. Ibid., 1/3/4, fol. 22. 45. Ibid., 1/3/45, fol. 16. 46. Ibid., 1/3/82, fol. 191. 47. TsDAHO, 1/70/72, fol. 10. 48. DAKO, 1/3/82, fol. 77. Regular German air raids on the city ceased around the same time, which certainly influenced popular attitudes. The last major bombing of the Darnytsia railway station in the city’s eastern environs happened on 5 and 6 May 1944, although on 12 June 1944 some German bombers again broke through Soviet air defenses to drop bombs on Darnytsia. See T. V. Vronska and O. Ie. Lysenko, eds., Kyiv u dni natsystskoi navaly: Za dokumentamy radianskykh spetssluzhb (Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy NANU, 2003), pp. 502–03. 49. See DAKO, 1/3/4, fol. 7; 1/3/5, fol. 112; 1/3/9, fol. 1; 5/2/108, fol. 9; TsDAHO, 1/23/633, fol. 28. 50. Kyivska Pravda, 8 December 1943, p. 1 (official analysis of decisions); DAKO, 1/3/4, fol. 23 (questions). 51. DAKO, 1/3/81, fol. 8. 52. Kyivska Pravda, 10 June 1944, p. 2 (crowds); DAKO, 1/3/42, fol. 111 (Pidtychenko). 53. See, e.g., Kyivska Pravda, 8 October 1944, p. 2; 22 October 1944, p. 2. 54. DAKO, 1/3/221, fol. 2 55. See, e.g., Kyivska Pravda, 12 July 1944, p. 2. 56. DAKO, 1/3/6, fol. 22; 1/3/9, fols. 13 and 17 (late 1943); 5/5/513, fols. 62–63; 5/2/532, fol. 19 (1944). 57. Ibid., 1/3/2, fols. 40 and 42. 58. Ibid., 5/2/607, fols.74 and 83. 59. Ibid., 1/3/2, fol. 42; 1/3/45, fol. 8; 791/1/25, fols. 24 and 87. 60. Ibid., 1/3/4, fol. 8; 1/3/5, fol. 46; 791/1/4a, fol. 4. 61. TsDAHO, 1/70/197, fol. 85; DAKO, 1/3/78, fol. 49. 62. DAKO, 1/3/60, fol. 34. 63. Kyivska Pravda, 8 January 1944, p. 3 and DAKO, 1/3/51, fol. 2. 64. TsDAHO, 1/70/80, fols. 81–82. 65. DAKO, 1/3/82, fols. 115 and 165. 66. Ibid., 1/3/78, fol. 39. 67. Ibid., 1/3/42, fol. 105. 68. Ibid., 282/1/1, fols. 8 and 10. 69. See E. V. Safonova, Ideino-vykhovna robota Komunistychnoi partii sered trudiashchykh vyzvolenykh raioniv Ukrainy v roky Velykoi Vitchyznianoi viiny (1943–1945 rr.) (Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo Kyivskoho universytetu, 1971), p. 24; DAKO, 1/3/46, fol. 52. 70. Partiinoe prosveshchenie: Ocherki istorii, 227; Kyivska Pravda, 27 September 1946, p. 3. 71. “Prymirnyi uchbovyi plan politshkil pry pervynnykh partiinykh orhanizatsiiakh,” Ahitator, no. 11 (1944): 31–33; Kyivska Pravda, 15 October 1946, p. 2. The textbook most commonly used in political schools during the postwar decade was B. Volin, Borba rabochikh i krestian nashei strany za sverzhenie vlasti pomeshchikov i kapitalistov, za postroenie sotsializma v SSSR (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1947), 164 pp. See DAKO, 5/3/1777, fol. 42. 72. DAKO, 1/3/225, fol. 8. 73. Ibid., 1/3/162, fol. 43.

Notes  ( 241 ) 74. Ibid., 1/3/227, fol. 97. 75. Ibid., 1/3/224, fol. 67. 76. Ibid., 1/3/225, fols. 8–10; Kyivska Pravda, 10 August 1945, p. 3. 77. DAKO, 1/3/331, fols. 19 and 60. 78. Ibid., 1/3/229, fol. 17; 178/1/1, fol. 20. 79. Ibid., 1/3/307, fols. 138–39; 1/3/308, fols. 7–8. 80. Ibid., 1/3/209, fol. 36. 81. Ibid., 1/3/227, fols. 109 (fishery ministry), 111, 113 (other ministries). 82. Ibid., fols. 125 and 127. 83. DAKO, 1/3/331, fol. 24. 84. TsDAHO, 1/70/301, fols. 97–98. 85. DAKO, 1/3/229, fols. 1 and 14. 86. TsDAHO, 1/23/6250, fol. 19; Kyivska Pravda, 25 June 1946, p. 4. 87. DAKO, 1/3/531, fol. 49. 88. TsDAHO, 1/23/4543, fols. 4, 13, and 17; 1/70/426, fols. 1 and 8; DAKO, 1/3/429, fol. 9; 1/3/531, fols. 2–4; 1/6/326, fol. 26. 89. TsDAHO, 1/70/1202, fol. 4. 90. Kyivska Pravda, 9 June 1946, p. 4 and TsDAHO, 1/23/4072, fol. 5. 91. Pravda, 15 November 1938, pp.  1–2; [editorial], “Programma ideinogo vooruzheniia,” Bolshevik, nos. 21–22 (1938): 17–24, here 21. 92. TsDAHO, 1/70/1220, fol. 6; M. Pidtychenko, “Naperedodni novoho navchalnoho roku v systemi partosvity,” Partiine zhyttia, no. 9 (1948): 42–46, here 42. 93. DAKO, 1/3/23, fol. 170; 1/3/308, fol. 3; 1/3/307, fol. 153; TsDAHO, 1/70/1220, fol. 6. 94. Daviv Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis:Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and Terror under Stalin, 1927–1941 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 218–25. 95. Ibid., 198–209. 96. Kyivska Pravda, 2 October 1946, p. 2. 97. TsDAHO, 1/70/664, fol. 1. 98. See Kyivska Pravda, 23 August 1946, p. 1; 26 April 1947, p. 3; 29 April 1947, p. 3. 99. TsDAHO, 1/70/1202, fols. 1, 11–12. 100. Kyivska Pravda, 3 July 1946, p. 3; 11 September 1946, p. 1; 25 October 1946, p. 4. 101. Ibid., 4 August 1946, p.  3; 3 November 1946, pp.  4–5; 12 November 1946, p.  1; 8 December 1946, p. 2; O. Mykhailov, “VII tom Tvoriv I. V. Stalina,” Partiine zhyttia, no. 12 (1947): 22–31. 102. DAKO, 178/1/7, fol. 53; Kyivska Pravda, 13 August 1946, p. 2; Radianska Ukraina, 25 August 1946, p. 2. 103. DAKO, 5/5/1184, fol. 30. 104. G. F. Aleksandrov et  al., Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin:  Korotkaia biografiia, 2d ed. (Moscow: OGIZ, 1947). 105. DAKO, 5/3/1408, fol. 33; 178/1/7, fol. 50; H. Kahanovska, “Dosvid vyvchennia biohrafii V. I. Lenina i I. V. Stalina,” Partiine zhyttia, no. 4 (1947): 34–38; Kyivska Pravda, 2 April 1947, p. 1; 3 June 1947, pp. 2–3. 106. TsDAHO, 1/23/4289, fol. 1; Kyivska Pravda, 24 January 1947, p. 5. 107. Kyivska Pravda, 13 April 1948, p. 2; DAKO, 1/3/504, fols. 65 and 218. 108. Kyivska Pravda, 22 November 1947, p. 2. 109. DAKO, 178/2/4, fol. 1. 110. Ibid., 1/3/528, fol. 55. 111. Ibid., 1/3/528, fol. 241. 112. Kyivska Pravda, 12 April 1947, p. 2; DAKO, 1/3/532, fol. 18. 113. TsDAHO, 1/23/4543, fol. 25. 114. Ibid., 1/23/4543, fols. 80–82.

( 242 )  Notes 115. DAKO, 1/3/484, fol. 61. 116. Ibid., 1/3/528, fols. 13 and 107. 117. Ibid., 1/6/166, fol. 27. 118. Ibid., 1/6/56, fol. 100. 119. Ibid., 1/9/26, fol. 2. 120. Ibid., 1/3/528, fols. 110 and 199. 121. Ibid., 1/3/428, fol. 24 and TsDAHO, 1/23/4495, fol. 7. 122. DAKO, 1/3/209, fol. 36; 1/6/56, fol. 105; 1/9/26, fol. 3. 123. TsDAHO, 1/23/5969, fol. 98 (distant suburbs); 1/70/1658, fols. 3 (church) and 18 (quote); 1/70/1263, fols. 1–4; DAKO, 277/1/98, fol. 68 (other satellite villages). 124. Kyivska Pravda, 2 June 1948, pp. 1–2; 26 June 1948, p. 2; 30 June 1948, p. 3. 125. “Po-boiovomu orhanizuvaty marksystsko-leninske navchannia komunistiv,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 8 (1949): 1–9, here 2; DAKO, 5/3/1777, fols. 41–42. 126. DAKO, 1/6/328, fols. 96–97 (1948–49); 71 (1949–50). 127. Ibid., 1/3/484, fols. 63 and 65. 128. Ibid., 1/9/49, fol. 12; Kyivska Pravda, 6 June 1948, p. 2; 13 February 1948, p. 3. 129. DAKO, 5/3/3279, fols. 15, 22, and 69; M. Moiseiev, “Partiina osvita na zavodi,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 3 (1951): 53–57, here 55; Kyivska Pravda, 16 October 1949, p. 2; Vechirnii Kyiv, 16 July 1952, p. 2. 130. TsDAHO, 1/70/1255, fol. 6 (statistics); L. Kukharenko, “Lenin zhyve v sertsi ukrainskoho narodu,” Partrobitnyk Ukrainy, no. 1 (1946):  58–60; Kyivska Pravda, 22 January 1946, p. 4; 9 August 1947, p. 2 (functions of the museum). 131. DAKO, 1/9/24, fol. 2; TsDAHO, 1/30/2769, fol. 158. On the true story of Stalin’s relationship with Archbishop Antonii (David Abashidze), see Oleh Sliepinin, “Iz Hruzii z viroiu, abo peretyn paralelei,” Dzerkalo tyzhnia, 28 May 2005, http://dt.ua/SOCIETY/ iz_gruziyi_z_viroyu,_abo_peretin_paraleley-43467.html. 132. DAKO, 5156/1/3, fol. 29. 133. Kyivska Pravda, 9 July 1947, p. 1; 17 January 1948, p. 1; 20 January 1948, p. 1. On the early years of the society, see S. M. Klimov, Sankt-Peterburgskaia oblastnaia organizatsiia obshchestva “Znanie”: ocherki deiatelnosti, 1947–1997 (St. Petersburg: Znanie, 1997). 134. Kyivska Pravda, 13 June 1948, p. 2 and DAKO, 1/7/53, fol. 93. 135. DAKO, 1/9/26, fol. 6; TsDAHO, 1/30/1818, fol.41. 136. TsDAHO, 1/30/614, fols. 104–05 and 109. 137. DAKO, 791/1/1434, fol. 24. 138. DAKO, 1/3/428, fol. 58. 139. Ibid., fols. 42 and 45. 140. Ibid., 43, 47, 54, and 56. 141. Ibid., 48. On war rumors elsewhere in the USSR, see Timothy Johnson, “Subversive Tales? Wr Rumours in the Soviet Union, 1945–1947,” in Juliane Fürst, ed., Late Stalinist Russia:  Society between Reconstruction and Reinvention (London:  Routledge, 2006), pp. 62–78. 142. Kyivska Pravda, 26 October 1947, p. 5; DAKO, 1/3/428, fol. 38; TsDAHO, 1/23/4491, fols. 1–8; DAKO, 5/3/2058, fols. 62–83. 143. Kyivska Pravda, 14 July 1950, p. 4 (map); DAKO, 1/9/263, fols. 62–71 and 5/5/486, fols. 5–11 (questions). 144. DAKO, 1/9/49, fol. 1. 145. TsDAHO, 1/30/1843, fol. 73. 146. DAKO, 1/9/49, fol. 3; 1/9/117, fol. 12; Vechirnii Kyiv, 29 July 1952, p. 2. 147. DAKO, 1/9/49, fol. 4; 1/9/117, fol. 14; 1/11/78, fol. 16. 148. TsDAHO, 1/30/1843, fol. 73. 149. DAKO, 1/9/49, fols. 70–71; 1/7/505, fols. 9 and 27.

Notes  ( 243 ) 150. Ibid., 1/9/507, fol. 146. Zakharchuk probably meant the Black Hundreds, a right-wing volunteer militia in late Imperial Russia. For other examples, see 1/11/5, fol. 68. 151. TsDAHO, 1/24/1417, fol. 23. 152. DAKO, 1/9/117, fol. 109. 153. DAKO, 1/9/504, fol. 15. 154. Ibid., 28 and 31. 155. TsDAHO, 1/24/219, fol. 44; DAKO, 1/9/60, fol. 69. 156. DAKO, 1/7/3a, fol. 74; 5/5/316, fol. 107. 157. Ibid., 1/9/60, fol. 21. 158. Ibid., 791/8/440, fol. 177. 159. Ibid., 1/9/127, fol. 35; 791/8/440, fol. 50. 160. TsDAHO, 1/24/2431, fols. 44–45 and Vechirnii Kyiv, 25 February 1953, p. 2. 161. DAKO, 1/11/3, fol. 286; Vechirnii Kyiv, 30 July 1952, p. 2. 162. DAKO, 1/9/503, fol. 7. 163. DAKO, 1/9/127, fol. 25. 164. Ibid., 29–30. 165. TsDAHO, 1/1/983, fols. 126 (Shokhanova) and 161 (Pidtychenko). 166. On Marr’s theories and Stalin’s unexpected involvement in linguistic debates, see V. M. Alpatov, Istoriia odnogo mifa: Marr i marrizm (Moscow: Nauka, 1991). 167. DAKO, 1/9/519, fol. 34. See also “Pro pidvyshchennia ideino-teoretychnoho rivnia kerivnykh kadriv,” Komunist Ukrainy, no. 12 (1952): 12–22 (studying Stalin’s work); I. Sosnovsky, “Pro pratsiu tov. Stalina ‘Marksyzm i pytannia movoznavstva,’ ” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 10 (1950): 18–29, here 19 (quote). For another example, see Kyivska Pravda, 20 June 1951, p. 3. 168. See Ethan Pollock, Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), chap. 7. 169. Vechirnii Kyiv, 16 October 1952, pp. 1–2; DAKO, 1/11/651, fols. 82–83; 1/11/652, fols. 1–3; 5/5/1186, fol. 55. 170. TsDAHO, 1/1/1101, fol. 21. 171. DAKO, 5/5/1186, fol. 9 (Leninsky District); 56 (“Lenin’s Smithy”); 1/11/651, fol. 83 (“Lenin’s Smithy”); 5156/1/9, fol. 15 (Liqueur and Vodka Trust). 172. Ibid., 5/5/1186, fol.1. 173. TsDAHO, 1/1/1101, fol. 6. 174. Ibid., 1/70/2198, fol. 22; DAKO, 5/5/1547, fol. 16. 175. See, e.g., Vechirnii Kyiv, 15 January 1953, p. 2; 23 January 1953, p. 3; 31 January 1953, p. 2. 176. TsDAHO, 1/30/3244, fols. 9–12. The numbers of circles appear in TsDAHO, 1/24/2738, fols. 14–15. 177. DAKO, 1/12/609, fol. 24; 1/12/324, fol. 28 (lectures); TsDAHO, 1/24/2738, fol. 95 (total number of lectures); 1/30/3244, fols. 14–15 (seminar leaders confused). 178. DAKO, 1/12/74, fol. 36. 179. TsDAHO, 1/1/1109, fol. 130. 180. DAKO, 1/12/608, fol. 5. 181. Ibid., 1/12/324, fol. 28; 1/12/328, fol. 9; 5156/2/1, fol. 87 (independent study); TsDAHO, 1/1/1115, fol. 3 (Central Committee). 182. DAKO, 178/3/2, fol. 1; Vechirnii Kyiv, 11 April 1953, p. 2; 21 April 1953, p. 1. 183. DAKO, 1/12/74, fol. 32. 184. Ibid., 1/12/608, fol. 92. The population figure of approximately 1 million in 1953 is an estimate; the first postwar census in 1959 registered 1,104,000 residents in Kyiv. 185. TsDAHO, 1/24/2738, fols. 14–15. 186. DAKO, 1/12/616, fol. 112. 187. Ibid., 1/11/641, fol. 5; 1/12/608, fol. 106; 1/12/609, fol. 37; 1/12/74, fols. 37–39.

( 244 )  Notes 188. TsDAHO, 1/24/2431, fol. 45. 189. Ibid., 1/1/1109, fols. 184–86; 1/1/1113, fols. 6 and 11. 190. DAKO, 1/12/608, fol. 20. 191. Ibid., fol. 18; TsDAHO, 1/30/3245, fol. 4. 192. DAKO, 1/12/74, fol. 35 (quote); 1/12/609, fol. 32 (numbers). 193. TsDAHO, 1/24/3473, fol. 87. 194. [editorial], “Vdoskonaliuvaty ideino-politiychnu pidhotovku kadriv,” Komunist Ukrainy, no. 7 (1953): 1–8, here 7; [editorial], “Piatdesiat rokiv Komunistychnoi partii Radianskoho Soiuzu (1903–1953),” Komunist Ukrainy, no. 8 (1953): 27–41, here 39. See also TsDAHO, 1/12/622, fols. 67–68. 195. TsDAHO, 1/70/2229, fols. 90 and 97; DAKO, 1/14/471, fols. 36 (quote), 38 (three districts), 99, and 118. 196. DAKO, 1/14/471, fol. 105. 197. Ibid., fol. 25. 198. TsDAHO, 1/70/2229, fols. 87–97; DAKO, 5/5/1810; 1/14/471, fols. 37 and 99. CHAPTER 4 1. TsDAHO, 1/24/2431, fols. 3 (Yurkevych), 17, 19, and 23. 2. On the Soviet defense operation west of Kyiv in November and December 1943, see V. H. Berezhynskyi, Kyivska oboronna operatsiia 1943 roku (12 lystopada–22 hrudnia 1943 roku) (Kyiv: Naukovo-doslidnyi tsentr humanitarnykh problem Zbroinykh Syl Ukrainy, 2003). On Stalin’s concern and his phone calls from Teheran, see S. M. Shtemenko, Generalnyi Shtab v gody voiny (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1968), pp. 195 and 197. 3. See Pravda, 20 November 1943, p. 1 (Zhytomyr); 1 December 1943, p. 1 (Korosten). 4. TsDAHO, 1/23/633, fol. 39. This report from the city authorities to the CP(B)U Central Committee summarizes lower-level reports about the public mood dating from late November and early December 1943, such as DAKO, 1/3/4, fol. 7; 1/3/6, fol. 16; 1/3/9, fol. 1; and 1/3/11, fol. 1. 5. Pravda, 11 November 1943, p. 2. 6. Kyivska Pravda, 20 May 1944, p. 1; 13 August 1944, p. 1; Radianska Ukraina, 11 February 1944, p. 1. 7. Kyivska Pravda, 30 May 1944, p. 2 (first quote); 5 December 1945, p. 1 (second quote). 8. Pravda, 7 November 1943, p.  3; Mykhailo Kalnytsky, Dmytro Malakov, and Oksana Yurkova, Narysy z istorii Kyieva (Kyiv: Heneza, 2002), p. 324. 9. See TsDAVOV, 2/7/773, fols. 11–20; TsDAHO, 1/23/368, fols. 148–52; 1/70/233, fols. 1–15; Pravda, 11 December 1943, p. 2; Kyivska Pravda, 26 January 1944, p. 1; 15 February 1944, p. 2; 7 October 1944, p. 1; 7 November 1944, p. 4. 10. DAKO, 5/2/598, fol. 7; 1/3/82, fol. 21; Radianska Ukraina, 3 January 1944, p. 4; Kyivska Pravda, 26 February 1944, p. 1. 11. DAKO, 1/3/82, fol. 2; Kyivska Pravda, 22 February 1944, p. 1. 12. DAKO, 1/3/53, fol. 16; Kyivska Pravda, 5 January 1944, p. 2. For more background on this, see A. V. Mitrofanov, ed., Sovetskii tyl v period korennogo pereloma v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine: Noiabr 1942–1943 (Moscow: Nauka, 1989). 13. Kyivska Pravda, 4 February 1944, p.  1; 11 February 1944, p 1; “Materialy dlia besid,” Ahitator, no. 1 (1944): 51–52. 14. See Mariia Liamina, “Kak pasechnik Ferapont pobedu pokupal,” MK.RU, 25 March 2005, http://www.mk.ru/editions/daily/article/2005/03/25/198359-kak-pasechnik-fe rapont-pobedu-pokupal.html. In Golovaty’s case, it appears that from the collective farm he received payments in kind (honey, a very expensive item during the war) for operating the apiary.

Notes  ( 245 ) 15. DAKO, 1/3/61, fol. 43; Radianska Ukraina, 5 February 1944, p.  1; Kyivska Pravda, 4 February 1944, p. 1. 16. Radianska Ukraina, 16 February 1944, p. 1. 17. DAKO, 5/2/108, fols. 11–12 (Myhal and Hryhorzhevsky); Kyivska Pravda, 5 February 1944, p. 2 (Feodorovych and Mykhailevska). 18. Kyivska Pravda, 8 April 1944, p. 1; 5 April 1944, p. 1; DAKO, 5/2/602, fol. 49. 19. DAKO, 5/2/108, fol. 13 and 1/3/159, fol. 63. 20. TsDAHO, 1/23/633, fols. 28–29; DAKO, 5/2/602, 11–12 (oblast); Kyivska Pravda, 11 April 1944, p. 1 and Radianska Ukraina, 14 April 1944, p. 1 (reports and Stalin’s reply). 21. TsDAHO, 1/23/452, fols. 1–3. 22. See DAKO, 1/3/75, fol. 23; 277/1/25, fol. 51; 791/1/25, fol. 31; Radianska Ukraina, 11 February 1944, p. 1. 23. Compare DAKO, 1/3/75, fol. 1 and Kyivska Pravda, 12 February 1944, p. 1. 24. See DAKO, 1/3/70, fols. 1–26; Kyivska Pravda, 12 February 1944, p. 1; 19 February 1944, p. 1; 25 February 1944, p. 1. 25. DAKO, 1/3/75, fol. 23; Radianska Ukraina, 11 February 1944, p. 1. 26. Kyivska Pravda, 8 February 1944, p. 1 (“Lenin’s Smithy”); 16 February 1944, 1 (Artem); 25 February 1944, p. 1 (railroad); 11 November 1944, p. 1 (opera). 27. DAKO, 1/3/159, fol. 63 (total collected); Kyivska Pravda, 4 February 1944, p. 1 (tank column). 28. However, the subscription drive duly began in May in eastern Ukrainian oblasts, which were already under Soviet control: TsDAVOV, 2/7/786, fol. 108; TsDAHO, 1/23/452, fols. 9–11. 29. DAKO, 1/3/1, fol. 7 (slogan); 1/3/10, fols. 1–2 (numbers). 30. Ibid., 1/3/10, fol. 1. 31. Ibid., 1/3/9, fol. 42. 32. Ibid., 1/3/4, fol. 24; 1/3/9, fols. 41–42; 1/3/10, fol. 2. 33. Ibid., 1/3/4, fol. 24. 34. Ibid., 1/3/10, fol. 3. 35. See DAKO, 1/3/10, fol. 3. On a brief revival of private trade during the last years of the war, refer to Julie Hessler, “A Postwar Perestroika? Towards a History of Private Enterprise in the USSR,” Slavic Review 57, no. 3 (1998): 516–42. 36. DAKO, 1/3/25, fol. 29; 1/3/4, fol. 25; Kyivska Pravda, 31 December 1943, p. 2. 37. TsDAHO, 1/23/452, fol. 10 (Khrushchev); DAKO, 1/3/28, fols. 54–56 (bonuses). 38. DAKO, 1/3/45, fol. 125; 1/3/82, fol. 71. 39. Ibid., 791/1/25, fol. 72 overleaf. 40. Ibid., 1/3/30, fol. 187. 41. Ibid., 5/2/606, fol. 5; 1/3/82, fol. 72. 42. Ibid., 5/2/606, fol. 7. See also Kyivska Pravda, 5 May 1944, p. 1. 43. DAKO, 5/2606, fol. 16. 44. Radianska Ukraina, 5 May 1944, p. 1. 45. TsDAVOV, 2/7/1909, fols. 43–47; Kyivska Pravda, 6 October 1945, p.  6; 7 October 1945, p. 8. 46. TsDAHO, 1/23/2738, fol. 1; 1/23/1592, fol. 15; DAKO, 1/3/223, fol. 41; Kyivska Pravda, 12 May 1945, p. 2. 47. DAKO, 1/3/223, fols. 20 and 37 (housewives), 23 (Ikov). 48. Ibid., fol. 23. 49. See DAKO, 1/3/223, fol. 12. The other three cases of refusals recorded in the same district (Podilsky) in 1945 do not include any explanation of the reasons behind these refusals. Most likely, the people who declined cited difficult material circumstances, because more “political” statements would have been recorded.

( 246 )  Notes 50. Kyivska Pravda, 19 February 1946, p. 1; 13 March 1946, p. 3. 51. Ibid., 4 May 1946, pp. 1 and 6; 5 May 1947, p. 1; 4 May 1948, p. 1. 52. DAKO, 1/3/332, fol. 119 and Kyivska Pravda, 12 May 1946, p.  1 (1946); DAKO, 5/3/1318, fol. 5 and TsDAHO, 1/23/4343, fol. 63 (1947); DAKO, 1/3/114, fol. 40 (1948); Kyivska Pravda, 15 December 1947, p.  1 and 11 April 1948, p.  2 (currency reform). 53. Kyivska Pravda, 7 May 1946, p. 2; 5 May 1947, p. 1. 54. DAKO, 1/3/510, fol. 9 and 1/3/332, fol. 26. 55. Ibid., 1/3/332, fol. 52. 56. Ibid., 5/3/1318, fol. 13. 57. Ibid., 1/3/528, fol. 204. 58. DAKO, 1/3/510, fol. 7. 59. Ibid., fol. 10. 60. Ibid., fol. 10. 61. Ibid., fol. 7. 62. This summary is based on DAKO, 1/3/332, fol. 1; 5/3/1318, fols. 3–8; 277/6/8, fol. 104; 178/3/1, fol. 17. 63. TsDAHO, 1/24/2432, fol. 33 (Oberfeld); 1/30/2036, fol. 58 (Khomenko). 64. See this very sentence repeated in DAKO, 5156/1/3, fol. 6 (vodka and liqueur trust, 1946) and 178/1/7, fol. 15 (oblast library, 1947). 65. TsDAHO, 1/24/1417, fol. 9. 66. See, e.g., Kyivska Pravda, 5 May 1948, p. 1. 67. DAKO, 1/3/351, fol. 52. 68. Ibid., 5/5/898, fol. 1. 69. Ibid., 1/3/114, fol. 40; 1/9/261, fol. 28. 70. Ibid., 1/11/330, fol. 57; 1/9/261, fols. 28–29. 71. Kyivska Pravda, 4 May 1951, p. 4; DAKO, 1/11/330, fol. 3. 72. DAKO, 1/9/261, fols. 21 and 22. 73. Ibid., fol. 19. 74. DAKO, 1/7/222, fol. 4. 75. RGASPI, 17/131/198, fol. 10; TsDAHO, 1/24/1417, fols. 2 and 7; DAKO, 1/11/330, fol. 57. 76. TsDAHO, 1/24/2430, fols. 101 and 107. 77. Ibid., 1/24/1417, fols. 2 and 4. 78. DAKO, 5/5/1563; Vechirnii Kyiv, 25 June 1953, p. 1. 79. DAKO, 5156/2/1, fol. 22. 80. Ibid., 1/3/157, fols. 1–5; 1/3/1, fols. 32 and 35–36; 1/3/11, fol. 1. On security sweeps and the restoration of the passport regime in Kyiv in 1943–45, see Martin J. Blackwell, “Regime City of the First Category: The Experience of the Return of Soviet Power to Kyiv, Ukraine, 1943–1946” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 2005), 50–72. 81. DAKO, 1/3/157, fol. 1. 82. Ibid., 1/3/20, fol. 135. 83. Ibid., 1/3/60, fol. 3; 1/3/58, fol. 7; 1/3/8, fol. 14. O. Nosenko, “Vidrodzhennia stolytsi Ukrainy,” Ahitator, no. 9 (1944): 39–40. 84. The military situation west of Kyiv became critical on 21 November, when the Soviet military were faced with the real danger that the Germans might retake the city. Thus, the opening of the bridge the day before made a crucial difference in stopping the German advance and preparing the resumption of the Soviet offensive on 26 November. See Berezhynskyi, Kyivska oboronna operatsiia, pp. 11 and 17. 85. DAKO, 1/3/2, fol. 61. 86. DAKO, 1/3/8, fol. 14.

Notes  ( 247 ) 87. Ibid., fol. 13. 88. On the typhus epidemic in Kyiv during 1944 and 45, see DAKO, 1/3/158, fol. 4 and T. V. Vronska, V umovakh viiny:Zhyttia ta pobut naselennia mist Ukrainy (1943–1945 rr.) (Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy NANU, 1995), p. 15. 89. Radianska Ukraina, 19 March 1944, p. 4 and DAKO, 1/3/45, fols. 178–90. 90. DAKO, 1/3/158, fol. 4; Kyivska Pravda, 13 March 1945, p. 2. 91. Kyivska Pravda, 5 July 1944, p. 1 (decree) and 7 July 1944, p. 1 (quote). 92. See Kyivska Pravda, 11 July 1944, p. 2; 29 July 1944, p. 2; 5 August 1944, p. 2; 16 August 1944, p. 1. 93. RGASPI, 397/1/12, fol. 136. 94. Radianska Ukraina, 16 January 1944, p. 2. Rumors about the Soviet involvement in the destruction of the city center were dismissed as German propaganda. See K. Dubina, Zlodeianiia nemtsev v Kieve (Moscow: OGIZ Gospolitizdat, 1945), p. 26. 95. Kyivska Pravda, 26 January 1944, p. 1; 29 January 1944, p. 1; 19 July 1944, p. 2; Radianska Ukraina, 11 February 1944, p. 2. 96. Kyivska Pravda, 19 February 1944, p. 1 (unsatisfactory results); TsDAHO, 1/23/700, fol. 47 (desertion). On the postwar mobilization of the workforce in the Soviet countryside (the so-called orgnabor), see Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism:  Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004), chap. 1. 97. Kyivska Pravda, 26 January 1944, p. 2 (Matushevych); 13 February 1944, p. 2 (Pashko). 98. RGASPI, 397/1/12, fol. 137 (memoirs); Radianska Ukraina, 6 March 1944, pp.  1–4 (speech). 99. DAKO, 1/3/72, fol. 10. 100. TsDAVOV, 2/7/1133, fol. 1. 101. DAKO, 1/3/45, fols. 80 and 89; 1/3/82, fols. 19–20; Radianska Ukraina, 3 March 1944, p. 4. 102. DAKO, 1/3/82, fol. 19. 103. DAKO, 1/3/45, fols. 107 (Mokiienko) and 89 (Khrushchev). 104. Ibid., fol. 89. 105. Ibid., fols. 108 (first quote) and 100 (second quote). 106. DAKO, 1/3/27, fol. 100; Radianska Ukraina, 4 March 1944, p. 4; Kyivska Pravda, 4 March 1944, p. 1. 107. TsDAHO, 1/23/632, fols. 8 and 27–28. 108. DAKO, 5/2/455, fol. 3. 109. Ibid., fols. 4–11; Kyivska Pravda, 22 April 1944, p. 2. 110. DAKO, 791/1/25, fol. 73 overleaf; Kyivska Pravda, 20 May 1944, p. 1. 111. RGASPI, 644/1/232, fol. 152. 112. See, e.g., Vronska, V umovakh viiny, p. 35. 113. DAKO, 1/3/138, fols. 7 (timeline) and 31 (outcome by 1 October). 114. RGASPI, 644/1/232, fols. 152–56. 115. DAKO, 1/3/27, fols. 295–97; 1/3/138, fol. 13; 5/2/455, fol. 6 overleaf; TsDAVOV, 2/7/2312, fol. 48; Kyivska Pravda, 28 March 1944, p. 2. 116. DAKO, 1/3/42, fol. 111. 117. Ibid., fol. 110. 118. Kyivska Pravda, 27 August 1944, p. 1; 20 April 1945, p. 1; I. Mynkovych, “Narodnu initsiatyvu na sluzhbu Batkivshchyni,” Ahitator, no. 6 (1944): 18–21, here 20. 119. DAKO, 1/3/78, fol. 14. 120. Kyivska Pravda, 4 July 1944, p. 1 (banner and awards); 8 July 1944, p. 2 (Stakhanovites); 21 July 1944, p. 2 (meeting at the opera house); DAKO, 1/3/138, 42–43 (Petrychenko’s speech).

( 248 )  Notes 121. Kyivska Pravda, 7 July 1944, p. 1 (featuring Petrychenko); 1 September 1944, p. 1 (meeting); 23 September 1944, p. 2 (fan mail). 122. Ibid., 18 July 1944, p. 2; 19 July 1944, p. 2; DAKO, 1/3/138, fols. 29 and 40. 123. Kyivska Pravda, 2 August 1944, p. 1; 10 September 1944, p. 1; 20 September 1944, p. 1. 124. See TsDAVOV, 2/7/839, fol. 48 (plan); TsDAHO, 1/23/1854, fol. 1 (not fulfilled). 125. See, e.g., the memoirs of Raisa Orlova, who took a short walk on Khreshchatyk while changing trains in Kyiv in May 1945: Raisa Orlova, Vospominaniia o neproshedshem vremeni (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1983), p. 151. 126. DAKO, 5/3/532, fol. 19; 5/2/606, fol. 103. 127. TsDAVOV, 2/7/839, fols. 46–48 and 69–70; TsDAHO, 1/23/1854, fol. 16; DAKO, 1/3/138, fol. 31. 128. TsDAHO, 1/23/1854, fol. 7. 129. DAKO, 1/3/194, fols. 68–69. 130. TsDAHO, 1/23/1854, fol. 4. 131. Kyivska Pravda, 10 November 1944, p. 1. 132. RGASPI, 397/1/12, fols. 138–39. 133. TsDAVOV, 2/7/2252, fols. 18–19; TsDAHO, 1/23/1854, fols. 6 and 59; DAKO, 1/3/243, fols. 1–5; Kyivska Pravda, 12 May 1945, p. 1. Although completed in time for the holiday, the tunnel under Khreshchatyk was not operational for years, until new buildings started going up on Khreshchatyk, nor was it secure. The police paid special attention to the kollektor’s ten entrances, concerned that street people, criminals, or even terrorists might get in (TsDAHO, 1/23/3408, fol. 5). 134. DAKO, 1/3/159, fols. 39–40. 135. Kyivska Pravda, 6 November 1944, p. 3. 136. TsDAHO, 1/23/1854, fols. 11–13; 1/23/1921, fols.1–16; Radianska Ukraina, 11 June 1944, p. 1 and 24 June 1944, p. 1; Kyivska Pravda, 9 January 1945, p. 2 and 7 February 1945, p. 1; Blackwell, “Regime City of the First Category,” 296–99. 137. “Kyiv cherez piat rokiv,” Bloknot ahitatora, no. 20 (1946): 44–45. 138. Radianska Ukraina, 7 April 1946, p. 1. 139. RGASPI, 81/3/117, fols. 182–83. 140. See Kyivska Pravda, 17 January 1948, p. 1; 20 January 1948, p. 2; 8 February 1948, p. 3; 14 February 1948, p. 3; 19 February 1948, p. 3. 141. DAKO, 5/3/2490, fol. 49; 5/3/2491, fol. 6. 142. Ibid., 1/9/60, fol. 210. 143. See, e.g., the following materials depicting the situation on Khreshchatyk in 1952: RGASPI, 17/131/371, fols. 161–66; DAKO, 1/11/5, fol. 32; 1/11/78, fol. 125; 5/5/1237, fols. 1–28; Vechirnii Kyiv, 2 April 1952, p. 2; 12 May 1952, p. 2; 13 June 1952, p. 2; 1 December 1952, p. 2. 144. Kyivska Pravda, 29 July 1944, p. 2; 8 August 1944, p. 2; 11 August 1944, p. 1; 8 December 1944, p. 2. 145. TsDAHO, 1/23/1855, fol. 11; Kyivska Pravda, 18 August 1944, p. 2. 146. DAKO, 1/3/194, fol. 43. 147. TsDAHO, 1/23/5673, fol. 67 (a 1949 report); Kyivska Pravda, 13 February 1948, p. 1. 148. DAKO, 1/9/60, fol. 215. 149. DAKO, 1/11/316, fol. 42. For examples from other years, see Kyivska Pravda, 8 April 1945, p. 1; 5 October 1945, p. 2; and 20 April 1948, p. 3. 150. See, e.g., DAKO, 5/2/527, fol. 10 (1944); 5/3/1336, fol. 18 (1947); 5/5/938, fol. 8 (1952). 151. DAKO, 5/5/938, fol. 1. 152. See, e.g., DAKO, 5/3/2586, fols. 1–2 (March 1948); Kyivska Pravda, 16 December 1947, p. 1; Vechirnii Kyiv, 1 April 1951, p. 2.

Notes  ( 249 ) 153. DAKO, 277/3/33, fol. 94. 154. Kyivska Pravda, 6 October 1945, p. 3. 155. Ibid., 23 February 1947, p. 4 and 28 May 1948, p. 1. 156. Ibid., 6 October 1945, p. 3; Vechirnii Kyiv, 15 November 1952, p. 1 (Constitution Day); Kyivska Pravda, 5 December 1949, p. 1; 9 December 1949, p. 3; 11 December 1949, p. 1 (Stalin’s birthday). 157. Kyivska Pravda, 1 May 1947, p. 1; 20 April 1948, p. 3. 158. Ibid., 11 July 1945, p. 1; 25 January 1948, p. 6; 5 October 1949, p. 1; Vechirnii Kyiv, 23 September 1952, p. 1. 159. TsDAHO, 1/23/785, fol. 62. 160. Kyivska Pravda, 16 November 1947, p. 1 (first two quotes); I. Mynkevych, “Sotsialistychne zmahannia—metod komunistychnoho budivnytstva,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 6 (1948):  37–50; V. Havrysh, “Sotsialistychne zmahannia—metod budivnytstva komunizmu,” Komunist Ukrainy, no. 2 (1953): 51–57. 161. DAKO, 1/3/4, fol. 19; 1/3/5, fol. 43; 5/2/62, fols. 1–2. 162. A. P. Priadko, Politicheskoe vospitanie rabochego klassa v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Kharkiv: Vyshcha shkola, 1986), p. 68. 163. DAKO, 5/3/1336, fol. 9 (tanks); 1/3/224, fol. 19 (mortars). 164. Ibid., 282/1/5, fol. 1. 165. Kyivska Pravda, 24 March 1944, p. 1; DAKO, 5/2/527, fols. 3–4. 166. Kyivska Pravda, 30 April 1944, p. 1; DAKO, 1/3/102, fol. 4. 167. “Shyrshe rozhornemo peredzhovtneve sotsialistychne zmahannia,” Bloknot ahitatora, no. 1 (1944): 1–15, here 3–5; Kyivska Pravda, 13 August 1944, p. 2. 168. DAKO, 5/2/527, fol. 10–11; 1/3/102, fol. 39; Kyivska Pravda, 20 December 1944, p. 1. 169. DAKO, 1/3/53, fol. 21 (Artem); 282/1/1, fol. 26 (“Bilshovyk”). 170. Ibid., 5156/1/1, fol. 2; 5156/1/3, fol.13 verso. 171. Ibid., 1/3/226, fols. 44–45. 172. Ibid., 282/1/5, fol. 46. 173. Ibid., 282/1/2, fols. 10–11. 174. Ibid., 1/3/209, fols. 29–30. 175. Ibid., 1/3/442, fol. 21; Kyivska Pravda, 15 May 1948, p. 1. 176. DAKO, 5/3/2727, fols. 4 and 4 verso. 177. Ibid., 5/3/2728, fols. 2–9. At all of Kyiv’s industrial enterprises combined, the total number of workers stood at 32,501 in 1947; 22,811 of them were hired during that year, and 16,488 left or were fired (DAKO, 5/3/1336, fol. 31). 178. DAKO, 178/2/4, fols. 5–6. 179. Ibid., 5156/1/9, fols. 42 and 52. 180. TsDAHO, 1/24/221, fol. 166. 181. DAKO, 1/3/484, fol. 77. 182. TsDAHO, 1/23/4242, fol. 14. 183. DAKO, 1/3/442, fol. 23; Kyivska Pravda, 15 February 1948, p.  1; 28 February 1948, p. 3. 184. DAKO, 1/3/442, fol. 26 (motorbike factory); 1/3/484, fol. 46 (plant no. 473). 185. Ibid., 1/3/484, fol. 76. 186. TsDAHO, 1/23/4242, fol. 6. 187. Ibid., 1/23/4289, fol. 162; 1/24/1417, fols. 41–44; DAKO, 1/12/319, fol. 123; L. M. Khoinatska, Vidnovlennia mashynobudivnoi industrii Ukrainy ta ioho sotsialni naslidky (1943–1950 rr.) (Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy NANU, 2003), pp. 129–30. 188. TsDAHO, 1/1/803, fol. 97. 189. DAKO, 5/3/1336, fol. 27 (1947); 1/6/56, fols. 22 and 31 (1949). 190. Ibid., 282/2/2, fol. 18.

( 250 )  Notes 191. TsDAHO, 1/1/803, fol. 247 (16th Congress); DAKO, 5/3/2727, fol. 23 (“Lenin’s Smithy”); 1/6/56, fol. 31 (“Arsenal”). The challenge issued by those eighty-eight Moscow factories referred to “more efficient” industrial facilities and was allegedly endorsed enthusiastically by the workers at twenty-five factories in Kyiv (Kyivska Pravda, 23 November 1949, p. 1). 192. DAKO, 5/3/1228, fol. 1; 5/3/1336, fols. 18–19; 5/3/1408, fols. 60–63; Khoinatska, Vidnovlennia, 127–28. 193. DAKO, 5/3/1336, fol. 19; Kyivska Pravda, 29 November 1947, p. 1. 194. [Editorial], “Povnistiu vykonaty zoboviazannia, vziati pered tovaryshem Stalinym,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 5 (1950): 1–10, here 3. 195. [Editorial], “Posylyty kerivnytstvo sotsialistychnym zmahanniam,” Partiine zhyttia, no. 8 (1949): 1–2. 196. TsDAHO, 1/24/221, fol. 9; DAKO, 1/3/516, fol. 7; 1/7/205, fol. 11; 5/3/2490, fols. 26–27. 197. TsDAHO, 1/24/2431, fol. 6; Vechirnii Kyiv, 14 April 1952, p. 1. 198. TsDAHO, 1/24/219, fols. 7–8; 1/1/803, fol. 216; Radianska Ukraina, 11 January 1949, p. 1; Kyivska Pravda, 15 July 1950, p. 3; 12 August 1950, p. 1 (mutual checking); 19 June 1948, p. 1; 18 August 1950, p. 2; 27 September 1950, p. 1; 31 January 1951, p. 3 (competition within occupations). 199. DAKO, 5/3/2018, fols. 2–4; 5/3/2727, fols. 6 and 9; Kyivska Pravda, 6 February 1948, p. 2; 3 March 1948, pp. 1–2; 4 June 1948, p. 1. 200. H. Tsaryk, “Zaluchaty do uchasti v partiinomu zhytti vsikh komunistiv,” Partiine zhyttia, no. 1 (1949): 46–47, here 46 (“Arsenal”); Kyivska Pravda, 29 November 1950, p. 2 (“Transsignal”). 201. DAKO, 5/3/1908, fol. 34. 202. Kyivska Pravda, 4 April 1951, p.  3 and DAKO, 1/9/60, fol. 25 (1951); TsDAHO, 1/24/2430, fol. 46 (1952). There was a similar situation at other city enterprises. See DAKO, 5/5/1150, fol. 22; 791/8/440, fol. 18; TsDAHO, 1/24/2431, fols. 84–86. 203. DAKO, 1/12/74, fol. 64 ( January–February 1953); 1/11/78, fols. 29 (telegraph) and 125 (Khreshchatyk). 204. Ibid., 282/3/6, fol. 93. 205. TsDAHO, 1/24/2430, fol. 47 (“Bilshovyk”); 1/11/323, fol. 31 (mechanical factory). 206. DAKO, 1/11/5, fol. 32; 5/5/1009, fol. 4. On similar trends elsewhere in the Soviet Union, see Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism, ch. 5. 207. DAKO, 1/9/60, fol. 20; Vechirnii Kyiv, 16 August 1952, p. 2. 208. DAKO, 5/5/1744, fol. 34. 209. Ibid., 1/12/319, fol. 123. CHAPTER 5 1. TsDAHO, 1/70/778, fols. 4–5. 2. Ibid., 1/24/859, fol. 117 (1951). In violation of the Constitution, no by-election took place in the two months following the July 1946 death of one of Kyiv’s deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Oleksandr Bohomolets. The Soviet leadership had resolved to save money and reduce the propaganda effort by conducting by-elections in this district and three other ones simultaneously with the elections to the Supreme Soviets of the Union republics in February 1947 (RGASPI, 17/121/526, fols. 6, 11, and 31). 3. See, e.g., the discussion in 1950 and 1952 of the republic’s budget, an area where one would expect some disagreement even among Stalinist bureaucrats, in TsDAVOV, 1/16/200 and 1/16/315. 4. TsDAHO, 1/30/589, fols. 3, 6; Iu. I. Zinchenko, Sovety deputatov trudiashchikhsia Ukrainskoi SSR v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1989), p. 71.

Notes  ( 251 ) 5. TsDAHO, 1/23/323, fol. 1. 6. Radianska Ukraina, 6 March 1944, pp. 1–4 (speech), 9 (decisions); also Kyivska Pravda, 6 March 1944, pp. 1–4 and 7 March 1944, p. 1. 7. Kyivska Pravda, 20 March 1946, p. 3; 28 August 1946, pp. 1–3. 8. Zinchenko, Sovety deputatov, 13; Kyivska Pravda, 14 July 1945, p. 1. 9. RGASPI, 17/122/183, fols. 77, 120; TsDAHO, 1/23/2564, fols. 79 (plans for December 1946), 39, 99 (disruption in February 1946); 1/23/2550, fols. 2–3, 12–14; 1/23/4311, fol. 3 (policing in preparation for the 1947 elections). On the insurgents’ activities during the 1946 elections, see also Anatolii Rusnachenko, Narod zburenyi: Natsionalno-vyzvolnyi rukh v Ukraini i natsionalni rukhy oporu v Bilorusii, Lytvi, Latvii, Estonii u 1940–50-kh rokakh (Kyiv: Pulsary, 2002), pp. 248–88. 10. TsDAHO, 1/70/480, fol. 3. A similar formula appears in an editorial in Kyivska Pravda, 19 January 1947, p. 1. 11. DAKO, 1/3/404, fol. 23. 12. Kyivska Pravda, 24 January 1947, p. 4. 13. Ibid., 13 December 1950, p. 1; 22 December 1947, p. 1. 14. TsDAHO, 1/70/480, fol. 4 (Nazarenko); Kyivska Pravda, 28 December 1946, p. 1 (appeal to voters). 15. See, e.g., DAKO, 282/1/6, fol. 13:  a list of agitators from the “Bilshovyk” factory was approved on 28 February 1945, although the elections were scheduled for February 1946. 16. RGASPI, 17/88/667, fols. 258–59; DAKO, 1/3/212, fol. 144; 1/3/226, fol. 122; TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 76 (data for 1945–46); DAKO, 1/3/412, fol. 52; 1/3/484, fol. 61; L. Kliuchnyk, “Zakripyty dosvid peredvyborchoi ahitatsii,” Partiine zhyttia, no. 2 (1947): 59–62, here 59 (data for 1947–48); DAKO, 5/3/3216, fol. 198; 1/12/323, fol. 1 (data for 1950 and 1953). 17. “Pered vyboramy do Verkhovnoi Rady SRSR,” Partrobitnyk Ukrainy, no. 7 (1945): 26– 30, here 26. Similar statements appear in Kyivska Pravda, 24 November 1945, p.  1; 19 January 1947, p. 1; and in “Naivazhlyvishe zavdannia partiinykh orhanizatsii,” Partrobitnyk Ukrainy, no. 2 (1946): 1–10. 18. RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 261; DAKO, 791/1/1434, fol. 11; “Pro politychnu i ahitmasovu robotu,” Partrobitnyk Ukrainy, no. 9 (1945): 11–18, here 12 (“those not employed”). 19. “Pered vyboramy,” 29 (private property); TsDAHO, 1/70/480, fol. 2 (bourgeois democracy). Britanskii soiuznik (British Ally) was a magazine published in Russian by the British government and sold in some Soviet cities during and immediately after the war. 20. RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 261; TsDAHO, 1/70/480, fol. 2. 21. TsDAHO, 1/23/4289, fol. 5. 22. DAKO, 5/3/3216, fol. 126; 5156/2/1, fol. 1; 282/4/3, fol. 51. 23. Ibid., 1/7/208, fol. 26; 5/3/3076, fol. 102; 5156/1/3, fol. 1; Kyivska Pravda, 29 January 1946, p. 1. 24. “Polozhennia pro vybory do Verkhovnoi Rady Ukrainskoi RSR,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 1 (1946): 15–24, here 16; Kyivska Pravda, 20 December 1945, p. 5. 25. TsDAHO, 1/24/82, fol. 2; 1/24/859, fol. 137. 26. Ibid., 1/6/906, fol. 14; Kyivska Pravda, 29 January 1946, p. 1. 27. See, e.g., DAKO, 282/1/6, fol. 67; 178/1/7, fol. 51. 28. “Iak orhanizuvaty politychnu robotu z vybortsiamy na ahitpunkti vyborchoi dilnytsi,” Bloknot ahitatora, no. 24 (1946): 68–78, here 73. 29. Kyivska Pravda, 29 December 1946, p. 1 (Dytodiah); DAKO, 1/3/404, fol. 2 (Ukrkabel); RGASPI, 17/122/249, fols. 160–61 (Military College); DAKO, 5/5/289, fol. 3 (Artem). 30. TsDAHO, 1//70/478, fol. 7. 31. RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 259 (1945); TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 76 (1946); DAKO, 1/3/412, fol. 52 (1947); 1/11/651, fol. 7 (1952).

( 252 )  Notes 32. Kyivska Pravda, 18 December 1945, p. 1; 25 November 1945, p. 2. 33. DAKO, 1/3/212, fol. 12; 1/3/404, fol. 15; RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 243. 34. DAKO, 5/3/3216, fol. 198; Kyivska Pravda, 28 February 1950, p. 2. 35. See RGASPI, 17/122/244 (the statute prepared for the 1947 elections to local soviets). The texts of various statutes appear in “Polozhennia pro vybory,” Bloknot ahitatora, no. 23 (1946): 3–30; Kyivska Pravda, 28 November 1946, pp. 1–2; 11 January 1950, pp. 1–2. 36. Kyivska Pravda, 16 October 1945, p. 1; 1 December 1946, p. 5; 4 December 1947, p. 1; 6 January 1951, p. 1. 37. Ibid., 21 December 1947, p. 1 (quotation); 26 December 1945, p. 1; 14 January 1950, p. 1; DAKO, 1/3/212, fol. 2. 38. DAKO, 1/3/404, fol. 6 (mothers); Kyivska Pravda, 12 January 1946, p. 1 (duties). 39. G. Aleksandrov, “Pro radiansku demokratiiu,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 2 (1946):  8–36; “Vybory do Verkhovnoi Rady SRSR—torzhestvo radianskoi demokratii,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 2 (1950): 11–20; Kyivska Pravda, 20 January 1950, p. 3. 40. TsDAHO, 1/70/480, fol. 2. 41. TsDAHO, 1/23/4307, fols. 40–41; Kyivska Pravda, 19 January 1947, p. 3. 42. Kyivska Pravda, 16 November 1945, p. 3 (Molotov); 10 February 1946, pp. 1–4 and 20 February 1946, p. 3 (Stalin); 8 December 1946, p. 4 (Zhdanov); DAKO, 1/3/212, fol. 12; RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 247 (Khrushchev). 43. For several examples, see “Radianska Ukraina na shliakhu novoho narodno-hospodarskoho i kulturnoho pidnesennia,” Bloknot ahitatora, no. 24 (1946):  1–19; O. Koroid, “Bilshe uvahy orhanizatsiino-tekhnichnii pidhotovtsi do vyboriv,” Partrobitnyk Ukrainy, no. 1 (1946): 53–57, here 53; Kyivska Pravda, 10 October 1950, p. 1; “Vybory do mistsevykh Rad deputativ trudiashchykh,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 10 (1950): 11–17, here 15; Kyivska Pravda, 30 December 1945, p. 2 (nuclear power). 44. Kyivska Pravda, 23 January 1946, p.  2; 28 February 1950, p.  2 (studying biographies); TsDAHO, 1/70/478, fol. 4 (agitators and voters discuss Khrushchev’s candidacy in 1946). 45. These examples come from Kyivska Pravda, 17 February 1950, p.  1, and 2 February 1947, p. 1. 46. DAKO, 1/3/319, fol. 100; Kyivska Pravda, 2 February 1946, pp. 1–3. 47. TsDAHO, 1/23/1424, fols. 4–5. 48. Ibid., 1/70/478, fol. 8. 49. RGASPI, 17/88/667, fols. 260–62; DAKO, 1/3/212, fols. 22 (Lysenko); 214 overleaf (Mishennikova). 50. DAKO, 1/3/212, fol. 219. 51. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 78; DAKO, 1/3/212, fol. 122. 52. DAKO, 1/3/306, fols. 22 and 25; 1/3/212, fol. 88 (question). 53. Ibid., 1/3/410, fol. 114 (unhealthy attitudes); 5/3/494, fol. 8 (ready candidacy); 1/3/409, fol. 138 (Slushna). 54. Ibid., 5/3/1310, fols. 87–88. 55. For the ideologists’ explanation, see TsDAHO, 1/70/315, fol. 20. For numerous examples, see RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 239; DAKO, 1/3/212, fols. 6 and 107; TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 82. 56. DAKO, 1/3/212, fols. 11 and 107; TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fols. 77 and 83. 57. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 83; variant in DAKO, 1/3/212, fol. 47. 58. RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 240; DAKO, 1/3/212, fol. 11. 59. DAKO, 1/3/212, fol. 22. 60. RGASPI, 17/88/667, fols. 244 and 274 (first two questions); DAKO, 1/3/212, fol. 218 (Kosior). Stanislav Kosior (1889–1939) was first secretary of the CP(B)U Central Committee in 1928–38. He was executed during the Great Terror.

Notes  ( 253 ) 61. DAKO, 1/3/306, fol. 26. For other examples, see RGASPI, 17/88/266, fols. 239, 240–41; TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 82; DAKO, 1/3/212, fols. 6, 16, and 20. 62. DAKO, 1/3/212, fols. 6, 16, 19–20, 107; TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 82; RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 244. 63. DAKO, 1/3/212, fol.174. 64. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 91 (first quotation); RGASPI, 17/88/667, fols. 239 and 245 (Vrublevsky). 65. DAKO, 1/3/212, fols. 114 (the quoted question) and 25 (variant); RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 250 (the end of the world). See also Kyivska Pravda, 4 November 1945, p. 2. Note that this popular article by the astronomer D. Piaskovsky appeared four months after the eclipse, clearly in response to subsequent rumors. 66. RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 261; DAKO, 1/3/212, fol. 22 (1945); TsDAHO, 1/23/4318, fol. 8; DAKO, 791/1/1434, fol. 24 (1947). For examples of general questions about the likelihood of war, see also DAKO, 1/3/410, fol. 124; 1/3/412, fol. 25; 5/5/289, fol. 39. 67. RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 250; DAKO, 1/3/212, fol. 27. 68. See examples from the 1947 and 1951 electoral campaigns in DAKO, 1/3/410, fols. 113 and 124; 5/5/289, fol. 39. 69. RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 273. 70. Kyivska Pravda, 12 January 1947, p. 4 and TsDAHO, 1/23/4289, fol. 7. 71. DAKO, 1/3/416, fol. 17. 72. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 91; DAKO, 1/3/212, fols. 88, 174, and 212 (1946); DAKO, 1/3/412, fol. 11; 791/1/1434, fol. 22 (1947); DAKO, 5/5/289, fol. 39 (1951). 73. RGASPI, 17/88/692, fols. 171–73. See also E. Iu. Zubkova, L. P. Kosheleva, G. A. Kuznetsova, A. I. Miniuk, and L. A Rogovaia, eds., Sovetskaia zhizn:  1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003), pp. 403–05. 74. DAKO, 1/3/426, fols. 93–97 (quotes on 96 and 97); Kyivska Pravda, 15 December 1947, pp. 1–2; 16 December 1947, p. 1; 17 December 1947, p. 2. 75. DAKO, 1/3/426, fols. 1–14 (population’s reaction); Kyivska Pravda, 15 December 1947, p. 1. See also the published collection of documents on very similar reactions elsewhere in the USSR: E. Iu. Zavadskaia and T. V. Tsarevskaia, “Denezhnaia reforma 1947 goda: reaktsiia naseleniia po dokumentam ‘osobykh papok’ Stalina,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 6 (1997): 134–40. 76. Kyivska Pravda, 15 December 1947, p. 2 (Stalin’s protection); DAKO, 1/3/426, fol. 98 (election results as an expression of gratitude). 77. DAKO, 1/7/208, fol. 52. 78. Ibid., 5/3/494, fol. 49. 79. Ibid., 1/3/41, fol. 123 (quotation); 1/3/409, fol. 72; 5/3/494, fols. 48–49. 80. Ibid., 1/3/409, fol. 72. 81. Ibid., 1/3/412, fol. 80. 82. Ibid., 1/3/412, fol. 56. 83. Ibid., 5/3/3089, fols. 9 and 20 (“We, the voters”); 1/3/412, fol. 17 (Batyieva Hill). 84. The examples come from TsDAHO, 1/24/295; DAKO, 1/3/412; 5/3/3089. See, in particular, DAKO, 1/3/412, fols. 74–79 on the reaction of the city authorities. 85. DAKO, 1/3/212, fols. 31 (court) and 105 (7 children). My summary of other typical uses of an agitator’s assistance is based on DAKO, 1/3/212; 1/3/306; 1/3/409; 1/3/416; 5/3/494; and 791/1/1434. 86. DAKO, 5/3/494, fol. 48 (Marchenko); 791/1/1434, fol. 14 (Riznychenko); Kyivska Pravda, 4 December 1945, p. 1; 30 December 1945, p. 2. 87. TsDAHO, 1/70/478, fols. 4–5. 88. DAKO, 1/3/416, fols. 14–15v. 89. Ibid., 1/3/306, fol. 31.

( 254 )  Notes 90. RGASPI, 17/88/667, fols. 257–62 and 265–66; TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 48 (1946); RGASPI, 17/121/606, fols. 159, 176, and 185 (1947). 91. DAKO, 5/3/494, fol. 1; RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 259 (number of polling stations and their commission members in 1946); TsDAHO, 1/24/859, fols. 47–48 (the same for 1951); 1/23/2562, fol. 131 (the 40  percent rule); DAKO, 1/3/318; 178/1/7, fol. 31; 277/1/98, fol. 263 (procedure at the district level). 92. DAKO, 5/3/494, fol. 4. 93. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fols. 12–13 (1946); DAKO, 1/7/208, fol. 32 (1950). For an example of a table dating from the 1947 elections to the republic’s legislature, see DAKO, 1/3/41, fols. 30–45. 94. TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 13. 95. DAKO, 1/7/208, fol. 13. 96. DAKO, 5/5/289, fols. 18–19: Kyivska Pravda, 17 January 1951, p. 1. 97. Kyivska Pravda, 5 February 1950, p. 2. 98.  Ibid. 99. TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 9. In December 1946 another major poet, Volodymyr Sosiura, published a similar poem, entitled “For Stalin I will give my vote” (Kyivska Pravda, 31 December 1946, p. 1). 100. “Radianska Ukraina hotuietsia do vyboriv u Verkhovnu Radu,” Bilshovyk Ukrainy, no. 2 (1946): 1–7, here 4. 101. DAKO, 1/7/208, fol. 5. 102. This discussion is based on TsDAHO, 1/23/2747; 1/23/4300; 1/23/4310; DAKO, 1/3/409; 5/3/3076; 5/5/289; Kyivska Pravda, 9 October 1945, p. 1; 4 January 1946, p. 1; 12 February 1950, p. 3; 12 November 1950, p. 1. The reference to “our savior” (Kyiv, late 1945) is from RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 241. 103. DAKO, 5/3/3216, fol. 77. 104. TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 5. 105. DAKO, 1/3/409, fol. 1. 106. See TsDAHO, 1/23/4300, fol. 25; 1/24/859, fols. 35–36; DAKO, 1/3/411, fol. 1; Kyivska Pravda, 3 January 1947, p. 3; Vechirnii Kyiv, 15 January 1953, p. 1; 30 January 1953, p. 1. 107. Kyivska Pravda, 9 January 1946, p. 1; 18 February 1950, p. 1. 108. TsDAHO, 1/23/4300, fols. 1 (“great honor”), 25 (telegram), 3–4 and 26–27 (other leaders). See also DAKO, 1/3/409. 109. RGASPI, 17/122/249, fol. 133. 110. Ibid., 17/121/606, fols. 135, 157, 174, 184. 111. Kyivska Pravda, 16 November 1947, p. 1; RGASPI, 17/122/249, fol. 143. The documents about Stalin’s nomination to the Kyiv oblast soviet in 1947 appear in DAKO, 1/3/411. 112. Kyivska Pravda, 21 November 1947, pp. 1–2. 113. Ibid., 23 November 1947, pp. 1–2; 20 December 1947, p. 2. 114. RGASPI, 17/131/185, fols. 171 and 193. 115. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fols. 38–41. 116. Kyivska Pravda, 7 January 1947, pp. 1–3; 19 January 1951, pp. 1–2. 117. DAKO, 5/3/1408, fol. 1; Kyivska Pravda, 9 January 1947, p.  6; 25 January 1951, p.  1 (meetings in organizations); Kyivska Pravda, 18 November 1950, p. 1 (park rally in 1950); 26 January 1951, p. 1 (1951). 118. TsDAHO, 1/23/4310, fol. 105 (“comrade in arms”; for similar designations, see 1/23/2747, fol. 13 and DAKO, 5/5/501, fol. 6); Kyivska Pravda, 11 January 1946, p. 1 (the “finest son” and the rally); TsDAHO, 1/23/4307; Kyivska Pravda, 6 February 1947, pp. 1–3 (meeting with voters). Molotov was also called “Stalin’s faithful comrade in arms” (TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 7).

Notes  ( 255 ) 119. Kyivska Pravda, 6 February 1946, p. 1 (liberation and reunification); 17 January 1951, p. 3 (reconstruction). 120. Ibid., 5 February 1950, p. 4 (“worthy son”); 16 December 1950, p. 1 (“Stalinist bloc” and the quote about Stalin); DAKO, 5/3/3076, fol. 14 (“faithful pupil”). 121. DAKO, 1/3/409, fol. 123. 122. Kyivska Pravda, 25 February 1950, p. 2. 123. See TsDAHO, 1/23/4310, fols. 442–510; 1/24/80, fols. 88–89. 124. TsDAHO, 1/23/2562, fol. 47. 125. DAKO, 5/5/501, fols. 81 (city), 82 (oblast); Kyivska Pravda, 12 February 1947, p. 2 (list of deputies elected in Kyiv). 126. TsDAHO, 1/24/80, fol. 89 (Kamianenko); DAKO, 5/5/501, fol. 88 (Dolotenko). 127. For the lists of deputies and their biographical details, see TsDAVOV, 1/16/91, fols. 5 and 23. During the 1950 elections Palladin was replaced by the first secretary of the city party committee, Mykhailo Synytsia, who did not get a seat in the Ukrainian legislature in 1947 because of the need to find a new district for Khrushchev. This episode is discussed below. 128. DAKO, 1/3/41, fol. 133; 5/3/496, fol. 44. 129. Kyivska Pravda, 22 January 1946, p. 5. 130. Aside from the two quotes referenced separately, this paragraph is based on the following sources:  TsDAVOV, 1/16/91, fols. 5, 31–31 overleaf; TsDAHO, 1/23/5160, fols. 20–21; DAKO, 5/3/496 (lists of deputies and biographical data); Kyivska Pravda, 19 January 1946, p. 2; 8 February 1950, p. 3 (Husiatnykova); 5 February 1947, p. 6; 25 April 1946, p. 4 (Dushko); TsDAHO, 1/30/731; Kyivska Pravda, 17 June 1947, p. 1 (Tsaryk); 4 February 1951, p. 2 (Yarmolenko). 131. TsDAVOV, 1/16/91, fols. 31–31v.; TsDAHO, 1/23/5160, fol. 21; Kyivska Pravda, 12 February 1947, p. 2; 28 February 1951, p. 1. 132. See, e.g., Kyivska Pravda, 15 January 1946, p. 3; 18 January 1946, p. 3; 12 January 1947, p. 2; 14 January 1947, p. 3; 7 February 1950, p. 3; 30 January 1951, p. 1. 133. See, e.g., Kyivska Pravda, 18 January 1946, p. 3; 29 January 1946, p. 3; 31 January 1946, p. 2; 17 January 1947, p. 1. Even prominent writers, such as Mykola Bazhan, sometimes used paid ghostwriters chosen from among lower-ranking ideological functionaries to prepare their speeches to the voters (TsDAHO, 1/70/618, fol. 35). 134. DAKO, 1/3/409, fols. 77 and 84–85; Kyivska Pravda, 15 January 1947, p. 3; 18 January 1947, p. 1; 30 January 1951, p. 1. 135. See, e.g., TsDAHO, 1/24/295; DAKO, 5/3/3089; Kyivska Pravda, 12 December 1947, p. 1 (meetings with voters); DAKO, 1/12/323, fol. 15 (Kyiv city soviet). 136. DAKO, 1/3/41, fols. 67 and 70. 137. Kyivska Pravda, 5 February 1954, p. 2. CHAPTER 6 1. TsDAHO, 1/23/4956, fols. 6–7. 2. RGASPI, 17/122/183, l. 77, 120; TsDAHO, 1/23/2564, fols. 79 (plans for December 1946); 39, 99 (disruption in February 1946); 90–91 (“dispersal”). On the insurgents’ activities in the western regions of the Soviet Union during the 1946 elections, see Anatolii Rusnachenko, Narod zburenyi: Natsionalno-vyzvolnyi rukh v Ukraini i natsionalni rukhy oporu v Bilorusii, Lytvi, Latvii, Estonii u 1940-50-kh rokakh (Kyiv: Pulsary, 2002), pp. 248–88. 3. TsDAHO, 1/23/2550, fols. 2–3, 12–14 (policing in preparation for the 1947 elections); 1/23/4311, fol. 3 (bodyguards and polling stations); 1/23/4310, fol. 436 and 1/23/4318, fol. 10 (outcome).

( 256 )  Notes 4. See, e.g., TsDAHO, 1/23/4307, fol. 2; DAKO, 5/5/502, fol. 1; Kyivska Pravda, 8 February 1947, p. 4 and 27 February 1951, p. 1. 5. My interpretation thus differs from that of Jeffrey Jones, who in his book on postwar reconstruction in the city of Rostov-on-Don seeks to uncover a “hidden transcript” behind the official discourse, which results in a detailed discussion of anti-Soviet statements made during the elections and constituting a small minority of those recorded. What is implied in such a scheme is that pro-Soviet behavior was somehow inauthentic ( Jeffrey W. Jones, Everyday Life and the “Reconstruction” of Soviet Russia during and after the Great Patriotic War, 1943–1948 (Bloomington: Slavica, 2008), chap. 7). 6. “Pered vyboramy do Verkhovnoi Rady SRSR,” Partrobitnyk Ukrainy, no. 7 (1945): 26–30, here 26; DAKO, 5156/1/3, fol. 1. 7. DAKO, 1/3/306, fol. 1. 8. Ibid., 5156/1/3, fol. 1 (Comrade Kashtan); TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 19 (orchestra). 9. This quote appears in Kyivska Pravda, 26 December 1947, p. 3. 10. DAKO, 1/7/208, fol. 60 and 5/3/3216, fol. 145. 11. Ibid., 5/3/1252, fol. 2. 12. Ibid., 5/3/3216, fol. 145. 13. DAKO, 1/3/415, fol. 6. 14. Ibid., fol. 9. 15. DAKO, 1/3/306, fol. 6. 16. TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 17 (1946); DAKO, 5/3/1306, fol. 3 (1947). 17. DAKO, 5/3/1306, fols. 2 (quote) and 15 (from a night shift). 18. Ibid., 1/3/306, fol. 5. For a similar example from the same year, but with fewer details provided, see TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 41. For other examples of spontaneous meetings before the opening of the polls, see TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 17 (1946) and DAKO, 5/3/1252, fols. 1–2 (1947). 19. DAKO, 5/3/1306, fol. 5. 20. Ibid., 5/5/502, fol. 3. Other examples are given in fol. 21. 21. DAKO, 5/3/3216, fol. 104. 22. Ibid., 1/7/208, fol. 61. 23. RGASPI, 17/131/228, fol. 47; Kyivska Pravda, 27 February 1951, p. 1. 24. Kyivska Pravda, 26 December 1947, p. 3. 25. TsDAHO, 1/23/4301, fols. 1–3; RGASPI, 17/122/253, fol. 78. 26. DAKO, 5/3/1306, fol. 44. 27. Ibid. In addition to party members, another category of late voters whose names could make it into polling station reports were writers. In December 1947 a domestic servant employed by the immensely popular satirist Ostap Vyshnia told the agitator that “the master had ordered him not to wake him up” (ne veleli budit). See DAKO, 1/3/412, fol. 275. 28. DAKO, 1/3/306, fol. 30 (the Viter family); TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 114 (indignation). 29. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fols. 113–14. 30. DAKO, 5/3/1306, fols. 42 and 44. 31. Ibid., 1/3/412, fol. 151. 32. TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 17; DAKO, 5/3/1306, fol. 8. 33. Both examples derive from TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 116. 34. TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 37. 35. DAKO, 5/3/1252, fol. 14. 36. Ibid., 5/5/502, fols. 4–6. 37. Ibid., 5/5/502, fol. 3. 38. Ibid., 5/3/1306, fol. 9 and 5/3/1252, fol. 14. 39. Ibid., 5/3/1252, fols. 14–15 (Zakrzhevska); 1/3/415, fol. 9 (London); and Kyivska Pravda, 10 February 1947, p. 2 (Bakevych).

Notes  ( 257 ) 40. See, e.g., TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 38; DAKO, 5/3/1252, fol. 14; 5/3/1306, fols. 4–5; 5/3/3216, fol. 170; 5/5/502, fol. 3; Kyivska Pravda, 10 February 1947, p. 2. 41. DAKO, 5/5/502, fol. 34. 42. Ibid., 5/3/1252, fol. 14. 43. TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 37; DAKO, 5/3/1252, fol. 13. 44. See, e.g., DAKO, 1/3/415, fol. 5 (64-year-old factory worker A.  P. Markevych and his wife Olha Mazurets, aged 60; 75-year-old retiree Mykhailo Kotsiuba) and TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 41 (K. D. Nesterova, aged 70). 45. TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fols. 38 and 40. 46. DAKO, 5/3/1306, fol. 5. 47. Ibid., 5/3/1252, fol. 6. 48. Ibid., 5/3/3216, fol. 142. 49. Unlike in 1946, that year some polling station reports referred to the “selection of those who would vote among the first” (DAKO, 1/3/412, fol. 142). 50. DAKO, 5/3/3216, fols. 4–5. 51. Ibid., 5/5/502, fol. 7. 52. Ibid., 1/7/208, fols. 61 (Hrytsenko) and 65 (Ostapenko). This was also the first election where official reports openly indicated that Stakhanovites were moved to the head of the line (DAKO, 5/3/3216, fol. 105). 53. Kyivska Pravda, 18 December 1950, p. 3 (Dobizha); DAKO, 1/7/208, fol. 62 (Pryshchepa). 54. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 86; DAKO, 1/3/412, fol. 101 and 1/3/415, fol. 41. 55. DAKO, 1/3/415, fol. 9. 56. Kyivska Pravda, 28 December 1945, p. 5; DAKO, 1/3/409, fol. 147. 57. See DAKO, 5/3/3216, fol. 189; 1/3/412, fol. 101; TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 86; Vechirnii Kyiv, 23 February 1953, p. 1. 58. Kyivska Pravda, 30 October 1945, p. 1. 59. See, e.g., Kyivska Pravda, 9 December 1945, p. 3; 29 January 1946, p. 1; 28 November 1946, p. 2; 11 October 1950, p. 1. 60. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 56. 61. DAKO, 1/3/415, fols. 31–32. 62. Ibid., 5/3/3216, fol. 144. 63. See, e.g., Kyivska Pravda, 22 December 1947, p. 1 and 16 December 1950, p. 3; DAKO, 1/3/415, fol. 41. 64. DAKO, 1/3/415, fol. 41. 65. Ibid., 1/3/412, fol. 277 (Kuropteeva); 1/3/415, fol. 35 (Filatova). Here and in subsequent examples, “God” is lowercased in the original memo, as was the usual Soviet practice when this word had to be used in print or in any official document. 66. TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 41. 67. DAKO, 1/3/415, fol. 17 (Priannikova); TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 116 (Nechaeva). 68. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 118. 69. DAKO, 1/3/415, fol. 31:  “Da khranit bog ego zhizn na strakh vragam i blago nashego otechestva.” 70. DAKO, 1/3/412, fol. 154 (the Chernetskys); 5/3/3216, fol. 142 (Beliaeva); TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 117 (Biliavsky). 71. DAKO, 5/3/1252, fol. 5. 72. Ibid., 5/3/1306, fol. 4; 1/7/208, fol. 62. 73. See Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). 74. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 117 (1946); DAKO, 1/7/208, fol. 62 (1950). 75. DAKO, 5/3/1306, fol. 9; 1/3/415, fol. 5 (February 1947); 1/7/208, fols. 61–62; 5/3/3216, fol. 142 (1950).

( 258 )  Notes 76. Kyivska Pravda, 22 December 1947, p. 1. 77. Ibid., 10 February 1947, p. 2. 78. Ibid., 26 December 1947, 3. 79. DAKO, 1/3/412, fols. 149 and 154. 80. Kyivska Pravda, 26 December 1947, p.  3. For more declarations of love for Stalin and birthday wishes, see ibid., 22 December 1947, p. 1. 81. Kyivska Pravda, 8 February 1947, p. 4. 82. DAKO, 1/3/415, fols. 36 and 41. 83. Ibid., 5/3/1306, fol. 38. 84. Ibid., 5/3/3216, fol. 94; 1/7/208, fol. 90. For other similar complaints, see DAKO, 1/3/412, fol. 322 (Leninsky District, December 1947) and 1/7/208, fol. 85 (Zaliznychny District, 1950). 85. Kyivska Pravda, 29 January 1946, p. 1; DAKO, 5/3/3216, fol. 148. 86. DAKO, 5156/1/3, fol. 1 (1946); 5/3/3216, fol. 189 (1950). 87. Kyivska Pravda, 8 February 1947, p. 4; DAKO, 5/3/3216, fol. 148 (1950). 88. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 124. 89. Kyivska Pravda, 10 February 1947, p. 2; DAKO, 5/5/502, fol. 12 (Synytsia). 90. RGASPI, 17/88/667, fol. 275 (1946); DAKO, 5/5/502, fol. 13 (1951); 5/3/1306, fol. 38 (1947). 91. DAKO, 5/3/3216, fols. 93 (quote) and 86. See also TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fols. 122–23 (1946); DAKO, 5/3/3216, fol. 106; 1/7/208, fol. 79 (1950). 92. DAKO, 1/3/415, fol. 37 and 1/3/412, fol. 225. 93. Ibid., 5/5/502, fol. 10. On free movies on Election Day, see also TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fols. 39 and 42; DAKO, 5/3/1306, fols. 38 and 42; 5/3/3216, fol. 106. 94. On this, see Serhy Yekelchyk, “Going to the Movies under Stalin,” in We’re from Jazz: Festschrift in Honor of Nicholas G. Galichenko, ed. Megan Swift and Serhy Yekelchyk (Washington, D.C.: New Academia, 2010), pp. 15–50. 95. DAKO, 1/3/415, fol. 25. 96. TsDAHO, 1/23/2747, fol. 38. 97. DAKO, 1/3/412, fol. 155. 98. Ibid., 5/3/1306, fol. 39. 99. RGASPI, 17/122/251, fols. 72–73. 100. See TsDAHO, 1/24/82, fols. 2, 34, 40, and 49; 1/24/85, fol. 13; DAKO, 5/3/3216, fol. 123. 101. See, e.g., RGASPI, 17/122/253, fol. 78; DAKO, 1/7/208, fol. 74. 102. DAKO, 5/5/502, fol. 47. On the numerous visitors voting for Stalin in Kyiv, see also TsDAHO, 1/30/2687, fol. 84. 103. TsDAHO, 1/30/2687, fol. 45 (data on the 1951 elections). 104. Ibid., 1/30/351, fol. 109. 105. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 173; DAKO, 1/3/319, fol. 124. 106. DAKO, 178/1/7, fol. 26 (1947); 5/3/3216, fol. 93 (1950). 107. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 173; DAKO, 1/3/319, fol. 124. This and all subsequent numbers referring to negative votes, as well as all inscriptions left on ballots, cannot be verified because, according to the Elections Statute, ballots were always destroyed after the first session of the elected legislative body (DAKO, 5/5/925, fol. 8). The only numbers available are those entered in official reports at any level; inscriptions, when they were collected, were usually typed and archived as one long list. 108. DAKO, 5/3/1306, fol. 45 and L. Kliuchnyk, “Zakripliuiemo dosvid peredvyborchoi ahitatsii,” Partiine zhyttia 2, no. 4 (1947): 59–62, here 59 (February 1947); Kyivska Pravda, 9 July 1947, p.  2 ( July 1947); DAKO, 1/3/426, fols. 97–98 and Kyivska Pravda, 24 December 1947, p. 1 (December 1947).

Notes  ( 259 ) 109. TsDAHO, 1/24/85, fol. 2. In the early 1950s, election results in Kyiv continued to hover in the percentage range of 99.9, in particular, 99.87 in the December 1950 municipal elections, 99.95 in February 1951 during the elections to the republic’s Supreme Soviet, and 99.85 in the February 1953 municipal elections. See TsDAHO, 1/24/90, fol. 9 and Kyivska Pravda, 20 December 1950, p. 1 (December 1950); TsDAHO, 1/24/859, fol. 230 (February 1951); Vechirnii Kyiv, 25 February 1953, p. 1 (February 1953). 110. TsDAHO, 1/24/85, fol. 14. 111. Ibid., 1/24/859, fol. 231. 112. DAKO, 1/3/410, fol. 31 and 5/3/1252, fol. 18. 113.  Ibid. 114. TsDAHO, 1/24/85, fol. 14. 115. Ibid., 1/24/82, fol. 89. 116. Ibid., 1/30/351, fol. 163. 117. RGASPI, 17/122/251, fols. 73–74. 118. If the situation in Kyiv was typical of postwar Soviet cities in general, this cannot be said of the recently conquered western part of Ukraine, where nationalist insurgents enjoyed widespread popular support, especially in the countryside. As noted above, there was heavy police presence at the polling stations in the region, and candidates had to be provided with bodyguards. There are also reasons to believe that ballot-stuffing there was conducted on a massive scale, at least in the immediate postwar years. When the system malfunctioned, as it did in the village of Menkevychi in Rivne oblast in 1946, the result was 192 votes “against” among 360 residents. In the same election, however, the rebellious residents of Lviv oblast cast an improbable 98.87 percent of their votes in favor of official candidates. See TsDAHO, 1/23/2884, fols. 4 and 20. In February 1947, in all western Ukrainian oblasts, the percentage allegedly rose to 99.54 percent (TsDAHO, 1/23/4301, fol. 7). By the 1950s the authorities had also succeeded in teaching western Ukrainians how to behave inside polling stations. When a peasant woman in Ternopil oblast publicly ripped up her ballot in 1951, this was seen as an alarming incident worth being reported all the way up to the republic’s second secretary Oleksii Kyrychenko (TsDAHO, 1/30/2687, fol. 87). 119. Kyivska Pravda, 12 February 1947, p. 3 (quote); 27 February 1951, p. 2 (a rally of 250,000 people). 120. See, e.g., RGASPI, 558/11/1312, fols. 11 and 13. 121. DAKO, 1/3/409, fol. 41. For other examples, see TsDAHO, 1/23/4301, fol. 6, and Kyivska Pravda, 26 December 1947, p. 3. 122. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 110. 123. See Kyivska Pravda, 22 February 1946, p. 2; 11 February 1947, p. 2; 22 December 1947, p. 1; 23 December 1947, p. 2; 19 December 1950, p. 2. 124. See an example in Kyivska Pravda, 23 December 1947, p. 2. 125. DAKO, 5/3/3216, fol. 206 (1950); 5/5/289, fol. 105 (1951). 126. Ibid., 5/3/1306, fol. 50. 127. Ibid., 5/5/502, fol. 51. 128. Ibid., 5/3/1310, fols. 1–5 (Darnytsia), 35–44 (Leninsky), 56–68 (Stalinsky). 129. See, for example, DAKO, 5/3/1310, fols. 50–53 (February 1947); 1/3/412, fols. 292–93 (December 1947); 1/7/208, fols. 98–99 (1950). 130. DAKO, 1/3/319, fol. 111. Some examples of such inscriptions appear in the same file in fols. 117, 130, and 132v., where Zhukov’s name appears very often. Elena Zubkova has described a similar trend Union-wide:  see E. Iu. Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo: Politika i povsednevnost, 1945–1953 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999), p. 113. 131. DAKO, 5/3/1310, fol. 46 (February 1947); 1/3/412, fol. 321 (December 1947); 1/7/208, fol. 99 (1950); 1/12/323, fol. 73 (1953).

( 260 )  Notes 132. Ibid., 1/3/319, fol. 114 (1946); 1/7/208, fol. 100 (1950). 133. Ibid., 1/3/412, fols. 297, 301, and 321. 134. DAKO, 5/3/1310, fols. 62 and 77. 135. DAKO, 1/3/412, fol. 322. 136. TsDAHO, 1/23/4318, fol. 46 ( July 1947); DAKO, 1/3/414, fol. 4 (December 1947). 137. DAKO, 1/3/319, fols. 105–06; 5/3/1310, fols. 61 and 63; 5/3/1310, fol. 19 (1946–47); 1/3/412, fols. 301 and 321 (1947). 138. Ibid., 1/7/208, fol. 100 (1950); 1/12/323, fols. 73–74 (1953); 5/5/502, fol. 120 (1951). 139. DAKO, 5/3/1310, fols. 50–53. 140. Ibid., fols. 1–4. 141. DAKO, 1/7/208, fol. 111. 142. Ibid., 1/3/319, fol. 107. For similar examples from February 1947, see DAKO, 5/3/1310, fols. 35–40 and, regarding Molotov and Kaganovich, 18–21. In 1951 all three of these figures were also routinely referred to in the inscriptions as Stalin’s “faithful comrades-inarms” (DAKO, 5/5/289, fols. 111–15). 143. DAKO, 1/7/208, fols. 106–08. 144. DAKO, 1/3/319, fol. 115. 145. Ibid. See also TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fols. 164–65. 146. See TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fols. 167–68; DAKO, 1/3/319, fol. 111. The quote is from DAKO, 1/3/412, fol. 296. 147. DAKO, 1/3/319, fol. 115; 5/3/1310, fols. 4 and 42. 148. Ibid., 5/3/1310, fol. 4. 149. For all examples from the February 1947 elections, see DAKO, 5/3/1310, fols. 4–5. 150. See, e.g., DAKO, 1/3/412, fols. 297, 304, and 321; 1/3/414, fols. 1 and 4; 1/12/323, fols. 78–80. 151. DAKO, 1/3/410, fol. 78; 1/3/412, fol. 291. 152. TsDAHO, 1/23/4318, fol. 47. 153. DAKO, 1/3/414, fol. 2; 1/3/412, fol. 172. 154. Ibid., 5/3/1310, fol. 4. 155. Ibid., 5/3/1306, fols. 52–60; TsDAHO, 1/30/351 and 1/23/4318. 156. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 173. 157. DAKO, 1/3/412, fols. 293 and 297; 1/3/414, fols. 1 and 5. 158. The Ukrainian historian Valery Kononenko, who studies popular attitudes in Vinnytsia oblast during the late 1940s, arrived at a similar conclusion: “The feelings of discontent noticeable at that time reflected not so much the rejection of [the elections’] undemocratic character as the worsening standard of life, which was connected first of all to the famine of 1946–1947” (V. V. Kononenko, “Nastroi naselennia Ukrainy v umovakh povoiennoi deklaratyvnoi radianskoi demokratii,” Naukovi zapysky Vinnytskoho derzhavnoho pedahohichnoho universytetu in. M. Kotsiubynskoho. Seriia Istoriia, 6 (2003): 78). 159. DAKO, 5/3/1310, fol. 5. 160. For examples of such statements counted as constructive criticisms, see TsDAHO, 1/23/4318, fol. 47 and DAKO, 1/3/410, fol. 78. 161. DAKO, 1/3/319, fol. 121. Another voter in the same district left an unquotable inscription, “What the. . . do we need your elections for? Give us bread,” yet still voted for the official candidate. Ibid., fol. 132. 162. See TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fols. 170–71; DAKO, 1/3/319, fols. 121–22. For similar expectations elsewhere in the Soviet Union, see Zubkova, Poslevoennoe sovetskoe obshchestvo, pp. 61–69. 163. DAKO, 5/3/1310, fol. 68 (February 1947); 1/3/410, fol. 79 ( July 1947). 164. DAKO, 5/3/1310, fol. 48. 165. Ibid., fol. 23.

Notes  ( 261 ) 166. TsDAHO, 1/23/4956, fols. 2 and 5. 167. See, e.g., TsDAHO, 1/23/4956, fols. 2–5 (December 1947); DAKO, 5/3/1310, fols. 23 and 43 (February 1947). 168. TsDAHO, 1/23/4956, fol. 2. 169. Ibid., fols. 1 and 5. 170. Ibid., fols. 4–5. 171. Ibid., fols. 1–5. Scholars studying eastern Ukraine under the Nazi occupation, when the local Ukrainian population could—and was expected by western Ukrainian nationalists arriving in Eastern Ukraine as propagandists and organizers—articulate its difference from the Russians, demonstrate that this did not happen. During the war, just as before and after the war, eastern Ukrainians saw the Russians as “ours,” while usually excluding from this category western Ukrainians and Jews. See Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, N.J.:  Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 249–51 and Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 206–07. 172. DAKO, 5/3/1310, fol. 80. 173. In the original: Lenin dal nam NEP, a Stalin zagonit v sklep. 174. DAKO, 5/3/1310 fol. 81. 175. TsDAHO, 1/23/4956, fol. 5. 176. Ibid., 1/23/4956, fol. 4. 177. DAKO, 5/3/1310, fol. 24. 178. Ibid., 1/3/319, fol. 121. 179. Ibid., 1/3/1310, fol. 25. 180. TsDAHO, 1/23/4956, fol. 3 (December 1947) and 1/30/351, fol. 170 (February 1946). 181. DAKO, 5/3/1310, fol. 43. 182. See, e.g., TsDAHO, 1/23/4318, fol. 10 and 1/23/5458, fol. 91. 183. DAKO, 5/3/1310, fol. 43 (February 1947); TsDAHO, 1/23/4956, fol. 5 (December 1947). Stepan Bandera (1909–59) was the leader of the radical wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The Soviet authorities labeled all Ukrainian nationalists “Banderites” in their propaganda, which made Bandera’s name widely known in the Soviet Union, albeit with a negative connotation. 184. TsDAHO, 1/30/351, fol. 170. 185. DAKO, 5/3/3216, fol. 110. 186. Ibid., 1/7/208, fol. 110. 187. Calculated from DAKO, 1/7/208, fols. 105–12. 188. See, e.g., DAKO, 5/3/1310, fols. 43 and 55. 189. TsDAHO, 1/23/4956, fol. 5. 190. Ibid., fol. 6 (Darnytsia) and DAKO, 1/3/414, fol. 5 (Zaliznychny). 191. See Kononenko, “Nastroi naselennia Ukrainy,” 80. 192. See DAKO, 5/5/289, fols. 105–17; 5/5/502, fols. 12–21 and 107–19 (1951); 1/12/323, fols. 73–80 (1953). The reporting of negative comments resumed after Stalin’s death. EPILOGUE 1. See O. Ie. Lysenko, Tserkovne zhyttia v Ukraini 1943–1946 (Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy NANU, 1998), pp. 152, 166–67, and 169. The Ukrainian exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church first contributed 150,000 rubles to the Defense Fund as a gift for Red Army Day, 23 February 1944. On this occasion Khrushchev received its head, Metropolitan Ioan (TsDAHO, 1/23/1030, fols. 1–8; Radianska Ukraina, 23 February 1944, p. 2). 2. DAKO, 5/3/1306, fol. 31.

( 262 )  Notes 3. DAKO, 5/5/319, fols. 125–26. 4. Ibid., fol. 13. The only reported cases of religious believers in Kyiv oblast (none in the capital city itself) refusing to vote concern Jehovah’s Witnesses and the tiny pacifist sect of Malevantsy, followers of K.  A. Malevannyi (1845–1913), a former Baptist whose teachings combined elements drawn from Stundism and the Khlysty (DAKO, 5/3/3275, fol. 5). 5. TsDAHO, 1/23/4555, fol. 42. 6. DAKO, 1/11/92, fols. 51–52. 7. Ibid., 1/11/92, fol. 172; 5/5/319, fol. 118. 8. Isaiah Berlin, The Soviet Mind:  Russian Culture under Communism (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), p. 93. 9. TsDAHO, 1/24/4255, fol. 232. 10. DAKO, 5/6/246, fols.1–2 and 49. 11. Ibid., 5/6/252, fol. 9. 12. Ibid., 5/6/246, fols. 2–4; 5/6/252, fols. 3, 5, and 8. 13. TsDAHO, 1/24/4255, fols. 72 (Gutman), 73–74 (Rozenfeld); DAKO, 5/6/246, fol. 31 (Derborimdiker); 5/6/252, fols. 3 (Yasytnykova) and 5 (Zlatous). 14. TsDAHO, 1/24/4255, fol. 13; DAKO, 5/6/246, fols. 22 (academic) and 32 (distrust). 15. TsDAHO, 1/24/4255, fol. 85. 16. DAKO, 5/6/292, fol. 57. 17. Ibid., 5/6/292, fol. 64. 18. Ibid., 5/6/246, fols. 21–22. 19. TsDAHO, 1/24/4255, ark. 77. 20. DAKO, 5/6/246, fol. 31; TsDAHO, 1/24/4255, fol. 12. 21. TsDAHO, 1/24/4255, fol. 61. 22. DAKO, 5/6/246, fols. 52–53. 23. Ibid., 5/6/252, fol. 1. 24. TsDAHO, 1/24/4255, fols. 71–72. 25. DAKO, 5/6/246, fol. 6 (Hryshko); 5/6/292, fol. 58 (Shelest). 26. Ibid., 5/6/246, fol. 60. For more examples, see 5/6/252, fol. 1. 27. DAKO, 5/6/246, fol. 35. 28. TsDAHO, 1/24/4255, fols. 59–60 (Vysheslavsky) and 61 (Malyshko). 29. DAKO, 5/6/252, fol. 8. 30. Ibid., 1/16/173, fol. 51. 31. TsDAHO, 1/24/4256, fol. 51; DAKO, 1/16/173, fols. 51–52; 5/6/313, fols. 19–20. 32. See Karl E.  Loewenstein, “Re-emergence of Public Opinion in the Soviet Union: Khrushchev and Responses to the Secret Speech,” Europe-Asia Studies 58, no. 8 (December 2006); 1329–45, here 1330. 33. DAKO, 1/16/319, fols. 38–42; 1/16/426, fols. 1–2; 5/6/292, fols. 27–46; Iu. V. Babko et al., Partiinoe prosveshchenie: Ocherki istorii (Kyiv: Vyshcha shkola, 1978), p. 242. 34. DAKO, 5/6/292, fols. 22–23. 35. For a more in-depth discussion of the war as a formative identity and state-building experience in the postwar Soviet Union, see Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003).

I N DE X

agitators, ix, 5–6, 72–73, 86, 95, 100, 114, 141–42, 147–52, 157–59, 162–63, 177–78, 181, 198, 205 Agitprop, 73, 75, 77 Ahranat, D., 99 Akhtyrko, worker, 17 Albania, 91 Andriiantseva, 21 anti-Semitism, 12, 30–31, 33 , 212, 215 Antonii, archbishop, 90 “Arsenal” factory (Kyiv), 35, 46, 70–71, 87, 93, 95, 116, 131–32, 134–37, 159, 167, 174– 75, 210 “Artem” factory (Kyiv), 107, 132, 150, 155 Assumption Cathedral (Kyiv), 11 Azhaev, Vasilii, 89 Babi Yar, 12–16, 22, 60 Babkin, Semen, 198 Babyn Yar. See Babi Yar Bakevych, Maria, 187 Balachuk, K. F., 25 Bandera, Stepan, 68, 215, 261n183 Barkov, I. V., 185 Battle of Orel, film, 35 Batyieva Hill (suburb of Kyiv), 88, 161 Bazhan, Mykola, 255n133 Beizem, Sh. A., 223 Belarus, 69 Belarusians, 16 Beliaeva, citizeness, 194 belief, 4, 6–7, 32, 35, 102, 105, 218–20, 227n9 Benshtein, Khana, 187 Berezkina, Paraska, 106 Beria, Lavrentii, 32, 139, 165 Berlin, 39 Berlin, Isaiah, 220 Bessarabia, 159

Biliavsky, citizen, 194 Biloshytsky, Pavlo, 64 “Bilshovyk” factory (Kyiv), 29, 32, 53, 64, 79, 92, 95, 100, 103, 106–7, 116, 131–33, 135, 138, 186, 188 Bilshovyk Ukrainy, 24, 27, 44 Blidman, Abram, 125 Blokh, worker, 113 Bohomolets, Oleksandr, 36, 170, 174, 176, 207, 250n2 Bolkhovsky, worker, 32 Bondarenko, Oleksandr, 195 bonds, 5, 17–19, 108–17, 218 “Bozhenko” factory (Kyiv), 157 Brandenberger, David, 83 Britanskii soiuznik, 148 Bublyk, citizeness, 111 Budapest, 28 Buh River, 77 Bukreiev, Borys, 17 Bulba-Borovets, Taras, 68, 238n2 Bulganin, Nikolai, 165 Bulgaria, 76–77, 91 Bunakova, citizeness, 19 Cairo conference, 77 Canada, 27 celebrations, 34, 36, 43, 50–51 Central Committee. See Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine Central Department Store (Kyiv), 54 Chaikovsky, worker, 188 Chapaev, film, 71 Chebotarov, Fedir, 174, 203 Chernetsky, family, 194 China, 76–77, 91 Churchill, Winston, 76, 154 Chutkyi, Pavlo, 31 Chyhir, citizen, 163

( 263 )

( 264 )  Index Circus, film, 198 cities, 8 civic duty, 3–4, 9, 197 civic emotions, 2, 4–5, 7, 33–34, 56, 70, 204–5, 228n18 citizenship, 2–3, 5–6, 151, 156, 177, 218 Cold War, 11, 23, 33, 207 Cominform, 91–92 Comintern, 75 communal dimension of politics, 5–8, 104, 116, 143, 177–78, 181–82, 185–86, 189, 217, 225 Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine (CP[B]U), subsequently renamed Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), 32, 40 Central Committee of, 32, 40, 42–46, 58–59, 68, 75, 79, 83, 89, 93, 97–100, 114, 134, 141, 145, 153, 164–65, 173, 191, 203, 205, 210, 224 Politburo of, 50 Seventeenth Congress of, 96 Sixteenth Congress of, 135 Constitution, 36, 47–49, 131, 143, 150–51, 155, 160, 191, 199 Cossacks, 15, 39, 56 Crimean War, 186 Curzon Line, 77 Czechoslovakia, 52 Danylov, worker, 116 Darnytsia District (Kyiv), 98, 98, 185, 196–97, 201, 206, 208, 211, 215 Darnytsia locomotive depot (Kyiv), 176 Davydenko, Fedot, 186 Davydov, Oleksii, 161, 174 Defense Fund, 106–7, 218 Demchenko, Maria, 154 Demianchuk, I. T., 65 Demurina, postal worker, 18 demonstrations (civilian parades), 52–58 Derborimdiker, M. L., 221 Dlinchuk, citizeness, 196 Dnieper River, 118 Dnipropetrovsk, 96 Dobizha, Andrii, 189 Doctors’ Plot, 11, 30–33 Dolotenko, Zinaida, 173 Donbas, 7 Donetsk, 63 Dorynchenko, Olha, 31

Dubner, party organizer, 133 Dubovytska, Kh. M., 164 Dubyna, Kuzma, 15–16 Dushko, Andrii, 174, 203 “Dytodiah” factory (Kyiv), 149 Dzhydzhulenko, party member, 139 Dziuba, Ivan, 7, 63 Election Day, 8, 149, 151–64, 180, 184, 196–97, 201 elections, 6–7, 47, 141–42, 144, 147–48, 152, 160–61, 163, 168, 177, 179, 181, 183–205 emotions. See civic emotions enemies, 11, 23, 25–26, 28–31, 33 England. See Great Britain “Epistle to Great Stalin from the Ukrainian People,” 36–38 Erofeeva, Evfrosinia, 187 Evangelical Christian Baptists, 219 Evening Marxist-Leninist University (Kyiv), 82, 89, 93 execution of Nazi war criminals, 23, 74–75 Extraordinary State Commission on the Establishment and Investigation of Crimes Committed by the German Fascist Invaders, 13–14, 230n20 Falsifiers of History, 26 famine, 210, 212–13, 223 Fedorova, party organizer, 111 Feodorovych, Serhii, 106 Filatova, citizeness, 193 Finland, 76 First Shoemaking Factory (Kyiv), 87, 107 First Ukrainian Front, 12, 20, 36, 61, 70 France, 77 German army, 1, 12, 103, 118 Germany, 13, 15, 21, 39, 158 Gestapo, 13, 109, 120 Gill, Graeme, 33 Golovaty, Ferapont, 106 Golovtsin, Vasilii, 30 Gorbatov, Boris, 25 Gorky, Maxim, 89 Great Britain, 23, 26–27, 30, 75, 77, 91, 154–55, 208 Grechko, Andrei, 56 Greece, 27, 158

Index  ( 265 ) Gushchin, agitator, 183 Gutman, S., 221 Haidamaka, agitator, 182 Haiduk, V., 167 Halchynsky, worker, 17, 108 hatred, in Stalinist ideology, 10–11, 16, 23, 25–28 Herasiutyn, V., 76 Herasymenko, worker, 53 Herasymova, Maryna, 7 Historical Museum (Kyiv), 13 Hitler, Adolf, 16, 18, 20–21, 23, 25 Hnatenko, Maryna, 160 holidays, Soviet, 1, 35, 38–51, 55–58, 67 Holocaust, 10, 13. See also Babi Yar Holovaty, Borys, 184 Horban, Borys, 49, 126 Horokhvatsky, citizen, 222 Hrechukha, Mykhailo, 56 Hryhirova, Nina, 91 Hryhoriiv, worker, 154 Hryhorzhevsky, citizen, 106 Hryshko, Hryhorii, 222 Hrytsenko, worker, 188 Hudzivny, V. T., 165 Hurynenko, Halyna, 29 Husiatnykova, Paraska, 172–74, 202–4 Hutchenko, worker, 17 Hutchenko, L., 19 Hykal, Mykhailo, 222 ideology, 3–4, 32, 69, 78, 88, 102, 178 Ikov, V., 111 Ilchenko, office manager, 112 India, 93 Inkeles, Alex, 6 Institute of Land Reclamation (Kyiv), 51 International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, 21–22 Iran, 93 Italy, 76–77 “Ivan Lepse” factory (Kyiv), 132 Ivanov, Yu., 28 Ivashchenko, I., 30 Ivashchenko, Olha, 53 Izhelia, official, 161 Japan, 77, 93 Jews, 9, 11–13, 16, 22, 30–31, 64, 156, 212, 215, 219, 232n101, 261n171

Kaganovich, Lazar, 2, 54, 127, 168–70, 173–74, 176, 184, 186, 203, 208 Kaganovich, Leonid, 221 Kaganovichsky District (Kyiv), 26, 73, 86, 93, 138, 155, 164, 170, 185–87, 193, 196, 198 Kalinin, Mikhail, 63, 165 Kalinin Square (Kyiv, now Independence Square), 60 Kaliuk, worker, 113 Kalmykova, agitator, 141 Kamianenko, Oleksandra, 173 Kanovsky, plant director, 52 Karl Marx Confectionary (Kyiv), 31, 70, 99 Karlov, professor, 68 Karpenko, N. S. 166 Karpenko-Kary, Ivan, 42 Kashtan, agitator, 180 Kaspar, worker, 188 Katz, Boris, 184 Kaufman, agitator, 162 Kerensky, Alexander, 214 Kharkiv, 89, 143, 203 Khmelnytsky, Bohdan, 39 Khodakivska, citizeness, 162 Khokhol, Olena, 175–76 Khomenko, engineer, 115 Khreshchatyk Boulevard (Kyiv), 9, 11–12, 14–16, 18, 20, 32, 38, 45, 54–56, 60, 65, 91–92, 119–29, 138, 141, 160 Khrushchev, Nikita, 8–9, 13–14, 23, 36–38, 42–43, 45, 49–50, 52, 54–55, 58, 61–62, 65, 68, 80, 83, 107, 119–23, 127, 141, 143–44, 146, 161, 165, 168–74, 176, 184–85, 203, 206, 208–9, 221–22, 224 “Secret Speech” of, 220–24 Khudov, I., 188 Kirovsky District (Kyiv). See Pechersky District (Kyiv) Kizei, agitator, 160 Kizun, worker, 220 Klochko, citizeness, 182 Kochubei, Mykhailo, 187 Kohotiuk, worker, 115 Kolbasina, Tamara, 29 Kolos, Viktor, 125, 128 Komarnytsky, Mykola, 195 Komarnytsky, worker, 188 Komolova, Halyna, 64 Konev, Ivan, 206

( 266 )  Index Konkova, agitator, 154 Kononenko, college instructor, 68, 86 Kononenko, Valerii, 6, 260n158 Koptenko, worker, 167 Korean War, 28–29, 92, 158 Korniichuk, Oleksandr, 14, 90 Korobova, Maria, 183 Korosten, 103 Korotchenko, Demian, 56, 134 Korotchevsky, engineer, 176 Kosior, Stanislav, 156, 252n60 Kotkin, Stephen, 3, 227n9 Kotov, party secretary, 134 Kovalchuk, engineer, 94 Kovalenko, Mykola, 221 Kovalsky, Serhii, 64 Kovpak, Sydir, 52, 188, 236n93 Kozakova, agitator, 155 Kravchenko, Rev., 219 Krupyna, Viktor, 7 Kubryk, Ustyna, 182 Kukharchuk, Nina Petrivna, 80 Kurenivka (suburb of Kyiv), 88 Kuromiya, Hiroaki, 3 Kuropteeva, Maria, 192 Kushnarev, party secretary, 130 Kutsenko, worker, 185 Kutsenko, Maria, 207 Kuznetsov, professor, 99 Kuznetsov, Aleksei, 169 Kyiv, ix, 1–2, 20, 36–37, 61, 95, 103, 117–18, 125–27, 136, 179, 194, 205, 233n2, 259n118 as a case study of Stalinist politics, 8, 69–70 retaken by the Red Army, 9, 24, 34, 36, 69, 103, 143 under German occupation, 8–13, 16, 18–19, 70, 74, 133 Kyiv Aircraft Plant, 44 Kyiv blast central library, 51, 85 Kyiv Locomotive Repair Depot, 81 Kyiv Machine-Building Factory, 29, 81, 85, 133, 138 Kyiv Medical Institute, 68 Kyiv Military District, 22, 26, 56 Kyiv oblast, 15, 19, 32, 36, 107, 169, 173, 222 Kyiv opera house, 9, 38, 42–43, 50–51, 58, 111, 172 Kyiv Pedagogical Institute, 68, 223 Kyiv-Petrivka Railway Station, 15, 64

Kyiv Polytechnic, 160 Kyiv University, 17, 30, 81, 171 Kyivan Cave Monastery, 90 Kyivska Pravda, 2, 12–13, 15–16, 41, 43, 46–48, 54, 71, 77, 82, 84–85, 91, 123, 127, 146 Lavrynenko, citizen, 209 Lazebna, party organizer, 57 Lazoryshyn, Zhanna, 63 Lenin, Vladimir, 50, 55, 58–60, 174, 213 Collected Works, 85 What Is To Be Done? 82 Lenin Museum (Kyiv branch), 59–60, 90 Lenin statue (Kyiv), 60 Lenin Street (Kyiv), 9 Leningrad, 27, 136, 169 Leninsky District (Kyiv), 17, 50, 54, 72, 79, 97, 108, 121, 168, 182, 184, 186–88, 194, 205–6, 212 “Lenin’s Smithy” shipyard (Kyiv), 29–30, 46, 65, 79, 81, 88, 92, 97, 131, 133, 136, 165–66, 168–69, 195 Liqueur and Vodka Trust (Kyiv), 46, 57, 90, 98, 132, 134, 180, 196 Literaturnaia Gazeta, 25 Litvinov, worker, 186 Locomotive Repair Depot (Kyiv), 132 Loiko, apartment manager, 109 London, 158 London, citizeness, 187 Lutsky, veteran, 188 Lviv, 8 Lykholat, Anatolii, 70, 78 Lysenko, citizen, 154 Lytvyn, Kost, 43, 59 Maiboroda, Onysia, 11 Makarenko, Ya., 11–12 Makarov, agitator, 158 Malakov, Dmytro, 1–2 Malenkov, Georgii, 55, 64–65, 101, 165, 170 Malinin, worker, 32 Maltsev, Elizar, 89 Malyshev, Lt.-Col., 70 Malyshko, Andrii, 27, 222–23 Manuilsky, Dmytro, 25, 40, 59 Marchak, Mykola, 156 Marchenko, citizeness, 162 Marchenko, Mykhailo, 223 Mariinsky Park (Kyiv), 95

Index  ( 267 ) Marr, Nikolai, 96 mass executions during German occupation, 11–12, 14, 16 Matsui, Petro, 44, 52, 174, 176, 203, 206, 208, 211 Matushevych, Adrian, 120 Matveev, worker, 113 Medvedev, citizen, 154 Melnikov, Leonid, 32, 97–98, 101, 168, 172–74, 195, 203, 208–9 Melnyk, Afanasiia, 186–87 Melnykova, Lidiia, 165 Mérimée, Prosper, 94 Mikhitsky, worker, 156 Mishennikova, citizeness, 154 Mokiienko, Fedir, 19, 24, 121 Molotov, Viacheslav, 44, 55, 75, 152, 157, 165, 169–70, 173–74, 184, 203, 208 Molotovsky District (Kyiv), 50, 71, 80, 93, 121, 154, 181, 184, 187, 192–94, 197 Moscow, 19, 27, 41, 46, 61, 65, 136, 168–69, 174 mourning, 58, 60, 63 Murmansk, 75 Myhal, Tetiana, 106 Mykhailenko, party secretary, 199, 204 Mykhailevska, Neonila, 106 Mzhavanadze, Vasilii, 26 nationality, 8, 44 Nazarenko, Ivan, 59, 93, 145, 152 Nazis, 10–11, 14–15, 18, 21–23, 73, 105, 119 Nechaeva, citizeness, 193 Nekrasov, Nikolai, 89 Nesterova, K. D., 193 NKVD, 18–19, 21, 24, 30, 73, 109, 125, 128, 153, 199 Nosenko, O., 196 Novychenko, Leonid, 15 Novytsky, O., 16 Nuremberg. See International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg Ognev, L., 12 Oleinikov, A., 219 Oleksiienko, worker, 114 Olifer, worker, 111 Orlov, E. G., 186 Orlova, Raisa, 32 Orlovskaia, Elizaveta, 191 Orthodox Church, 75–76, 155, 218–20

Ostapenko, Oleksandr, 188–89 Ostarbeiter, 156 Otrokov, party member, 25 Palladin, Oleksandr, 174, 176, 255n127 Palochkina, Anna, 194 Panova, Vera, 89 parades, 38, 40–41, 49. See also demonstrations (civilian parades) Pashko, M., 120 Pashkova, postal worker, 18 Pasko, Yakiv, 26, 145 Pavlovsky, officer, 188 Pechersky District (Kyiv), 35, 50, 73, 80, 91, 93, 95, 110, 113, 122, 134, 191, 193, 196–97, 201–2, 210, 218 Peskov, Oleksandr, 172 Petropavlivska Borshchahivka (suburb of Kyiv), 218 Petrovska, worker, 18 Petrovska, Yevheniia, 182 Petrovsky District (Kyiv). See Podilsky District (Kyiv) Petrychenko, Dunia, 120, 124–26 Petrychenko, Mykola, 31 Pidtychenko, Maria, 13, 40, 73, 75–77, 82, 124 Piorko, Andrii, 116 Pisnyi, P., 187 Podilsky District (Kyiv), 30, 35, 73, 76, 80, 84, 111, 118, 129, 134, 156, 185, 190, 193–94, 197–98, 210 Poland, 44, 76–77, 86 Poliachek, Petro, 164 Politava, Antonina, 187 political education, 5, 69, 78–102 political rituals, ix, 2, 4, 6–8, 58, 71, 139–40, 177, 183, 191, 206, 216–17, 224–25, 228n14 polling stations, 6 Ponomarenko, P. K., 53, 170 Popov, deputy minister of finance, 99 POWs, German, 16, 19–21, 125–26 POWs, Soviet, 12, 14 Prague, 27 Pravda, 9, 11–12, 29–30, 64, 71, 96, 104, 169 Pravda Ukrainy, 134 Priannikova, citizeness, 193 Priorka (suburb of Kyiv), 88 Prokopenko, Fenia, 18 Prozorva, Evdokiia, 31

( 268 )  Index Prybora, worker, 113 Pryshchepa, Varvara, 189 Pushcha-Vodytsia (suburb of Kyiv), 88 Radchenko, Oleksandr, 30 Radianska Ukraina, 10, 15, 28, 71 Radzumovsky, grinder, 91 rallies, 16, 36, 38, 171, 204 Razduvaev, worker, 26 Red Army, 1, 8–9, 11, 14–17, 24, 34, 36, 39, 103–5, 118, 143, 154 “Red Excavator” factory (Kyiv), 72, 132, 136 resistance, 139–40, 202, 209–17, 223, 228n13 Revolution, 3, 43, 174 Revolution Day, 1, 35–36, 38, 41, 45, 51, 53, 55–56, 125, 130 Rezut, storekeeper, 167 rituals. See political rituals Riznychenko, Kostiantyn, 163 Rokossovsky, Konstantin, 206 Roman Catholics, 219 “Rosa Luxemburg” factory (Kyiv), 135 Rozenfeld, Evsei, 221 rumors, 75, 91–92, 157 Rus′, 10 Russian Liberation Army, 1 Russian people, 36, 44, 144, 223 Russians, ethnic, 16, 30 Russo-Japanese War, 186 Russo-Turkish War of  1877–78, 186 Rvacheva, citizeness, 163 Rylsky, Maksym, 18, 166 Sadovska, K. M., 165 Sapak, worker, 93 Secret Mission, film, 90 Serdiuk, Z. T., 19, 118 Shaposhnikova, Agrafena, 188 Shapovalova, citizeness, 163 Shcherbyna, Col., 222 Shchors, Mykola, 44, 187 Sheremet, Mykola, 13 Shevchenko, Taras, 15, 42, 186 Shevchenko Park (Kyiv), 36, 171 Shevchuk, voter, 160 Shkurliak, worker, 111 Shmalko, housekeeper, 109 Shokhanova, party secretary, 96 Sholokhov, Mikhail, 90 Sholudenko, Nykyfor, 60

Short Course (of party history), 79–81, 83–84, 90, 93–94, 221 Shraiman, Polina, 188 Shvarts-Fetisov, worker, 114 Shynkaruk, Volodymyr, 171 Skliar, engineer, 31 Skorokhodova, agitator, 115 Skoropostizhny, Rev., 218 Skovoroda, Hryhorii, 42 Skrypchuk, citizeness, 163 Slavs, 15 Slonytsia, Oleksii, 32 Slushna, citizeness, 155 socialist competition, 130–32, 136–39 Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge, 90–91, 95 Sorbonne, 59 Sosiura, Volodymyr, 13, 254n99 “Soviet subjectivities,”  3–4, 88, 102, 217, 219 spontaneity, 34–35, 49, 53 SS (elite guard of the Nazi party), 14 St. Volodymyr Cathedral (Kyiv), 179, 186 Stakhanovites, 51, 54, 120, 124, 133–34, 166, 171, 173–74, 188, 195 Stalin, Joseph, 2–3, 9, 13, 31, 37–38, 40, 43–49, 54–55, 61, 84, 90, 103, 116, 153, 161, 176, 180, 194–96, 207, 209, 213, 220–22 birthday celebrations, 45–47, 51, 65, 103, 131, 195 death and funeral, 63–67, 101, 117 Economic Problems of Socialism, 97–99 elected in Kyiv, 47, 146, 165–71, 173, 184–85, 193, 201, 203–5 Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin: A Short Biography, 85, 89, 94 “Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics,” 96–97 On the Foundations of Leninism, 86 On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People, 68, 71, 73, 79, 81 statues of, 45, 65, 220, 238n141 Works, 84–86 Stalin Ship Repair Docks (Kyiv), 46, 79, 86, 167, 220 Stalin Square (Kyiv, now European Square), 65–66 Stalingrad, 27, 89 Stalinsky District (Kyiv), 35, 46, 51, 54, 76, 80, 82, 84–85, 91, 110, 119, 168,

Index  ( 269 ) 171–72, 186, 188, 193, 197, 200–1, 205–6, 211 Stanislav, 46 Starik, M. B., 87 Stepanov, Aleksandr, 90 Stepanov, N., 127 Stockholm Appeal, 28 Stoliarenko, Ivan, 188 Stonaev, F., 185 Storchak, newspaper editor, 91 “Stroidetal” construction factory (Kyiv), 111 Stromentov, Petr, 126 Sub-Carpathian Military District, 180 Sudakova, worker, 18 Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, 18, 56, 120–21, 142–44, 146, 154–55, 163, 166, 168–69, 171, 173, 175–77, 179, 193, 202, 204 Suslov, Mikhail, 169–70 Sverhun, citizen, 163 Sviderska, citizeness, 182 Svitlenko, Ahafia, 194 Synytsia, Mykhailo, 167, 174, 197, 203, 208, 255n127 Tabakmakher, agitator, 154 Taranenko, agitator, 87 Teheran conference, 77, 103 Terletsky, Ivan, 186 terror, 11, 30, 33 Tibet, 93 Tito, Josip Broz, 27, 61 Tkachenko, Pavlo, 186 “Tochelektropribor” factory (Kyiv), 52 Tolstoy, Leo, 89 Transcarpathia, 52 “Transsignal” factory (Kyiv), 113, 130 Trypilsky, pawnshop manager, 21 Trubylo, engineer, 50 Truman, Harry, 25 Tsaryk, Hryhorii, 174–75, 210 Tsvetkovsky, officer, 188 Turba, postal worker, 18 Turkey, 76–77, 91, 157 Tychyna, Pavlo, 165, 174, 176, 211, 215 Tymoshenko, Semen, 206 typhus, 119 Ukhtomska, P. D., 165 Ukrainian Insurgent Army, 179, 255n2

Ukrainian nationalists, 11–12, 23–25, 34, 61, 68–69, 144, 179–80, 214 Ukrainian people, 3, 36, 43–45, 146–47, 171, 222–23 Ukrainian Philharmonic Society, 31 Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR), 8, 10, 18, 38, 42, 44, 69, 144, 146, 155, 167 Ukrainians, ethnic, 16, 30, 172–73, 223 Ukrainka, Lesia, 42 “Ukrkabel” cable factory (Kyiv), 85, 94, 106, 115, 150, 152, 163, 172–73, 223 United Nations (UN), 25, 59, 91–92 United States of America, 11, 23, 25–30, 37, 64, 75–77, 91–92, 154–55, 208, 214, 216 Unknown Soldier monument, 60–62 Vanchuk, party organizer, 85 Vanin, Grigorii, 31 Vasylkivsky, citizen, 222 Vatulia, Oleksii, 188 Vatutin, Nikolai, 12, 36, 61 monument to, 43–44, 61–62 Vdovin, Lt.-Col., 190 Vechirnii Kyiv, 30 Veksler, A. V., 160 Velyka Dymerka, village, 88 Veriovka, Hryhorii, 28 Victory Day, 38–40, 42, 224 Vilkhovy, P., 219 Vinnytsia, 6, 215 Vinogradov, V. N., 31 Viter, family, 185 Vlasov, Andrei, 1 Vlasov, Oleksandr, 127, 174–76, 203 Voice of America, 64 Volkova, party secretary, 134 Voloshyn, Zakhar, 186–87 Voroshilov, Kliment, 74, 165, 206 Vorzel, 1 voters, 5, 142, 145, 149–51, 153, 159–62, 172, 180–82, 185, 187–92, 195–206, 209–11, 214–15 voting, 6, 195–98 Vronsky, press salesman, 71 Vrublevsky, worker, 157 Vuchetich, Yevgeny, 62 Vysheslavsky, Leonid, 223 Vyshinsky, Andrei, 25, 91–92 Vyshnia, Ostap, 215, 256n27

( 270 )  Index Wall Street, 28 war crimes, 13–16, 18–19, 21–22 war loans. See bonds war veterans, 21 Warsaw, 27 Weiner, Amir, 42, 261n171 Western Ukraine, 23–24, 32, 36, 44, 46, 60, 69, 76, 79, 86, 144, 179–80, 214, 218, 259n118 World Peace Council, 28 World War II, 8, 13, 42, 60, 76, 94 workers, 53, 103, 117, 123–24, 130–39, 160, 174, 176, 195 Writers’ Union, 166, 222–23 Yalta Conference, 78 Yanovsky, Yuri, 21 Yarchevska, schoolteacher, 75 Yarmolenko, Maria, 172, 174, 195, 203, 208 Yatko, Mykola, 15 Yatsenko, Palazhka, 188 Yavorsky, Mykhailo, 188 Yefymenko, party organizer, 101

Yemelianov, citizen, 50 Yepikhina, worker, 18 Yugoslavia, 91–92 Yukhymets, citizen, 26 Yurkevych, A. V., 103 Zabolotny, Volodymyr, 145 Zaitsev, Ivan, 187 Zakharchuk, worker, 93 Zakrzhevska, Maria, 187 Zalevko, worker, 113 Zaliznychny District (Kyiv), 18, 50, 54, 72–73, 161, 193, 215 Zaporizhia, 199, 204 Zhdanov, Andrei, 26, 63, 152, 165, 206 Zhovtnevy Distict (Kyiv), 17, 54, 72–73, 85, 129, 154, 188, 205 Zhuk, worker, 139 Zhukov, Georgii, 9, 36, 206 Zhytomyr, 73–74, 103, 105 Zionists, 27 Zlatous, citizen, 221 Zlobinsky, political educator, 94 Zubkova, Elena, 6