Cultural Terror and the "Executed Renaissance" (1933–1938)
The abrupt rollback of the policy of "Ukrainization." The start of the physical extermination and political defamation of the intellectual elite - writers, scholars, film directors, as well as the old national communists (M. Skrypnyk was driven to suicide)[1]. In parallel with the physical terror came the destruction of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, large-scale censorship, the rewriting of history, and the artificial convergence of the Ukrainian language with Russian; works published in the Ukrainian SSR before 1933, in the words of the compiler of the anthology "Executed Renaissance," were "destroyed as a result of Moscow's new course toward the rout and colonial provincialization of Ukraine"[2].
Actors
Instruments Applied
| ID | Name | Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| S0017 | Secret Police and Security Services | 4 |
| S0008 | Government | 2 |
| S0021 | Propaganda | 1 |
Procedures Carried Out
Creation of an atmosphere of total paralyzing fear in society through the fabrication of cases (for example, the "Union for the Liberation of Ukraine") and the staging of public show trials[1].
Mass confiscation and destruction of literature declared "nationalist," and rigid control over the printed word and the arts[1].
The forced orthography reform of 1933, aimed at artificially bringing Ukrainian grammar and terminology closer to the Russian language[1].
Mass closure and destruction of churches, as well as repressions against clergy, aimed at the complete destruction of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC)[1].
Physical annihilation and isolation of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, writers, and scholars, as well as of the party opposition (national communists), in the course of targeted repressions. Fabrication of cases (including the "UNC" case) and driving representatives of the national elite to death, including the historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the writer Mykola Khvylovy, and People's Commissar Mykola Skrypnyk[1].
Institutional destruction of national historical scholarship, closure of research schools, and removal of the works of Ukrainian historians from scholarly circulation[1].
The construction of a new Soviet-imperial historical canon to supplant the Ukrainian past: "from the late 1930s a thesis took hold in the historical scholarship of the USSR," proclaimed in the works of B. Grekov, K. Huslystyi, and F. Yastrebov, "of Kyivan Rus as the 'common cradle' of the history of the Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian peoples," and "in 1939 B. Grekov advanced the proposition of the ethnic unity of the 'Rus people' in the era of Kyivan Rus"[3]. This scheme displaced M. Hrushevsky's conception and denied the independence of Ukraine's history.