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Stalin's Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination
Based on declassified materials from eight Ukrainian and Russian archives, Stalin's Empire of Memory , offers a complex and vivid analysis of the politics of memory under Stalinism. Using the Ukrainian republic as a case study, Serhy Yekelchyk elucidates the intricate interaction between the Kremlin, non-Russian intellectuals, and their audiences. Yekelchyk posits that contemporary representations of the past reflected the USSR's evolution into an empire with a complex hierarchy among its nations. In reality, he argues, the authorities never quite managed to control popular historical imagination or fully reconcile Russia's 'glorious past' with national mythologies of the non-Russian nationalities. Combining archival research with an innovative methodology that links scholarly and political texts with the literary works and artistic images, Stalin's Empire of Memory presents a lucid, readable text that will become a must-have for students, academics, and anyone interested in Russian history.
230 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
4 people are currently reading
138 people want to read
About the author
Serhy Yekelchyk
19 books25 followersDr. Serhy Yekelchyk received his BA from Kyiv University and an MA from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Following a research fellowship in Australia in 1993–94, he came to Canada in 1995 to pursue a Ph.D. in Russian and Eastern European History at the University of Alberta. His dissertation analyzed representations of the past in Stalinist culture, with special emphasis on Soviet Ukraine. After graduating, he taught for a year at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) before coming to Victoria in 2001.
Dr. Yekelchyk’s research interests evolved since then to include the social and political history of the Stalin period, as well as the formation of a modern Ukrainian nation from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. His Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (Oxford University Press, 2007) was the first Western history of Ukraine to include the coverage of the Orange Revolution and was translated into five languages. His monograph on late-Stalinist political rituals appeared in 2014 and a book about the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict is coming out in 2015.
Dr. Yekelchyk is cross-appointed between the departments of Germanic and Slavic Studies and History and teaches a variety of courses on Russian history, Stalinism, Modern Ukraine, and Cold-War cinema. He supervises graduate and Honours students working on various aspects of Russian and Eastern European history and culture.
Dr. Yekelchyk’s research interests evolved since then to include the social and political history of the Stalin period, as well as the formation of a modern Ukrainian nation from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. His Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (Oxford University Press, 2007) was the first Western history of Ukraine to include the coverage of the Orange Revolution and was translated into five languages. His monograph on late-Stalinist political rituals appeared in 2014 and a book about the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict is coming out in 2015.
Dr. Yekelchyk is cross-appointed between the departments of Germanic and Slavic Studies and History and teaches a variety of courses on Russian history, Stalinism, Modern Ukraine, and Cold-War cinema. He supervises graduate and Honours students working on various aspects of Russian and Eastern European history and culture.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 25, 2019
Цікава книга, про витворення радянського канону історичної пам'яті в радянській Україні у сталінські часи. Детально розглянуто як ідеологи втручалися у роботу істориків, письменників, драматургів та інших митців, що мали створювати ідеологічно правильний продукт. З іншого боку, не бажаючи репресій, чи намагаючись не втратити роботу, чи тепле місце, частина "творчої інтелігенції" сама наввипередки згадувала бажані ЦК інтерпретації. Особливо у стосунках України та Росії та навколо теми "возз'єднання", яка у повоєнні роки, як здається, стала центральною темою у ідеологічній роботі. У книзі дуже побіжно оглянуто сприйняття населенням ідеологічно вивіреної продукції (а воно могло бути зовсім різним, бо одна справа написати - інше прочитати і інтерпретувати).
March 26, 2018
хороші антропологічні та культурологічні коментарі, теорії конструювання пам'яті, традиції. період - Радянський союз за Сталіна
November 6, 2017
Serhy Yekelchyk's book is a must read for students of East European history and politics. Rather than to assume homogeneity of cultural memory production in the Soviet Ukraine, the author poses and develops alternative argument. According to Yekelchyk, the Ukrainian intellectuals navigated between the notions of class and nation in mass culture production in the late Stalin's years. Paradoxically, even in harsh years of purges and repressions, they contributed to codification of Ukrainian literary canon, which has its longplasting impact nowadays.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 12, 2023
Добротне дослідження історичної пам'яті в зрілому сталінізмі. Про те, як українці пам'ятали навіть тоді, коли пам'ять про національних героїв підчищали, спотворювали та нищили. Закінчується оптимістично - "Пpoгoлoшeння нeзaлeжнoсті Укpaїни 1991 poкy знищили мiт дружби нapoдiв i пoвеpнyло нaцioнальний нapaтив як oфiцiйний poдoвiд yкpaiнськoгo нapoдy". Ех...
Книга 2008, але непогано було би перевидати її. Таке читати не просто, але потрібно.
Книга 2008, але непогано було би перевидати її. Таке читати не просто, але потрібно.
May 18, 2024
Yekelchyk's use of insights from post-colonial theory in his analysis of shifting frames of Ukrainian national memory is a fruitful one. He could maybe have put a finer point on how, specifically, all these shifts related to the Moscow leadership's attempts to justify its own strong central control. While Yekelchyk definitely does make this point, I think it could have been more explicitly revisited throughout the text.
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November 13, 2013Summary:
In his book, Yekelchyk moves past the question of whether the Soviet Union was a nation-braker or a nation-maker and instead asks "how interaction among Moscow ideologues, local bureaucrats, non-Russian intellectuals and their audiences had shaped national identities within the USSR." He notes that although the shift from proletarian internationalism to (Russocentric) nationalism is well-documented, very little attention has been paid to the way it was undertaken in non-Russian republics. Focusing on Ukraine, Yekelchyk shows that Stalinist Ukrainian culture was not only created by policy-makers in the Kremlin, but produced through the interaction of local bureaucrats (who had some room for ideological maneuvering and exploited it) and intellectuals with Moscow. Using recently declassified archival documents, Yekelchyk shows how the Ukrainian historical narrative was re-conceptualized as a national, and not class history during late 1930s, and how the relationship of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples originally portrayed as a "lesser evil" was made out into a "great friendship" of an older and a younger brother.
Yekelchyk doesn't buy the idea of total constructedness of nations, and posits instead that "nations are always imagined through the concrete social and cultural practices of their given societies," supporting this contention by the evidence that Ukrainian audiences were able to choose the message they wanted to receive from the cultural canon propagated from above. Not only could the state not control individual interpretations of historical narratives, it could also not suppress the existing memories of the population, or its confusion over the internal tensions in the narrative (and "confusing signals from Moscow" is a recurring theme of this book). In place of a coherent and convincing historical narrative, it was coercion that held Stalin's empire of memory together.
Comments/Critique:
Yekelchyk claims to "draw on the insights of post-colonial theory to interpret Soviet national ideology as an imperial discourse," but perhaps he could have engaged this literature more directly, since I don't think it was necessary to read Chatterjee to show that "an empire allows for articulation of ethnic difference." It is also not clear how literature on collective memory can be applied to an authoritarian state, and Yekelchyk notes this problem, but still attempts to make conclusions about what the Ukrainian people really thought. (On the other hand, the idea that we will never know what they thought is depressing; so maybe kudos for trying?)
I was also unsure about author's reasons for the structure of the book; it is unclear why the chapters are organized in the way that they are, and much of the author's analysis seems repetitive.
He also seems to be missing Moscow intellectuals - did they not write Ukrainian histories? How did their narratives fit into the picture?
In her review, Devlin notes that perhaps Yekelchyk overemphasized the autonomy of the Ukrainian intellectuals, and in light of Yekelchyk's ultimate conclusion (coercion instead of coherence) the critique makes sense. Had the intellectuals really enjoyed autonomy, would they not have been able to create a convincing narrative for their people? Alternatively, had they abused their autonomy, would they not have been silenced? And if so, what kind of autonomy was it?
Kozlov asks a possibly unanswerable question of how self-conscious the Ukrainian intellectuals were in their interpretations of the past: "to what extent [was] the survival of autonomous historical agendas... the fruit of anyone's deliberate effort as opposed to an unpremeditated carryover of cultural tradition"?
In his book, Yekelchyk moves past the question of whether the Soviet Union was a nation-braker or a nation-maker and instead asks "how interaction among Moscow ideologues, local bureaucrats, non-Russian intellectuals and their audiences had shaped national identities within the USSR." He notes that although the shift from proletarian internationalism to (Russocentric) nationalism is well-documented, very little attention has been paid to the way it was undertaken in non-Russian republics. Focusing on Ukraine, Yekelchyk shows that Stalinist Ukrainian culture was not only created by policy-makers in the Kremlin, but produced through the interaction of local bureaucrats (who had some room for ideological maneuvering and exploited it) and intellectuals with Moscow. Using recently declassified archival documents, Yekelchyk shows how the Ukrainian historical narrative was re-conceptualized as a national, and not class history during late 1930s, and how the relationship of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples originally portrayed as a "lesser evil" was made out into a "great friendship" of an older and a younger brother.
Yekelchyk doesn't buy the idea of total constructedness of nations, and posits instead that "nations are always imagined through the concrete social and cultural practices of their given societies," supporting this contention by the evidence that Ukrainian audiences were able to choose the message they wanted to receive from the cultural canon propagated from above. Not only could the state not control individual interpretations of historical narratives, it could also not suppress the existing memories of the population, or its confusion over the internal tensions in the narrative (and "confusing signals from Moscow" is a recurring theme of this book). In place of a coherent and convincing historical narrative, it was coercion that held Stalin's empire of memory together.
Comments/Critique:
Yekelchyk claims to "draw on the insights of post-colonial theory to interpret Soviet national ideology as an imperial discourse," but perhaps he could have engaged this literature more directly, since I don't think it was necessary to read Chatterjee to show that "an empire allows for articulation of ethnic difference." It is also not clear how literature on collective memory can be applied to an authoritarian state, and Yekelchyk notes this problem, but still attempts to make conclusions about what the Ukrainian people really thought. (On the other hand, the idea that we will never know what they thought is depressing; so maybe kudos for trying?)
I was also unsure about author's reasons for the structure of the book; it is unclear why the chapters are organized in the way that they are, and much of the author's analysis seems repetitive.
He also seems to be missing Moscow intellectuals - did they not write Ukrainian histories? How did their narratives fit into the picture?
In her review, Devlin notes that perhaps Yekelchyk overemphasized the autonomy of the Ukrainian intellectuals, and in light of Yekelchyk's ultimate conclusion (coercion instead of coherence) the critique makes sense. Had the intellectuals really enjoyed autonomy, would they not have been able to create a convincing narrative for their people? Alternatively, had they abused their autonomy, would they not have been silenced? And if so, what kind of autonomy was it?
Kozlov asks a possibly unanswerable question of how self-conscious the Ukrainian intellectuals were in their interpretations of the past: "to what extent [was] the survival of autonomous historical agendas... the fruit of anyone's deliberate effort as opposed to an unpremeditated carryover of cultural tradition"?
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews