Making Ukraine Soviet: Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin

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Winner of the BASEES Alexander Nove Prize 2021 Winner of The American Association for Ukrainian Studies 2019-2020 Book Prize Honorable Mention for the ASEEES Omeljan Pritsak Book Prize in Ukrainian Studies 2022 While most studies of Soviet culture assume a model of diffusion, according to which Soviet republics imitated the artistic trends and innovations born in Moscow, Olena Palko adroitly challenges this centre-periphery perspective. Rather than being a mere imposition from above, Making Ukraine Soviet reveals how the process of cultural sovietisation in Ukraine during the interwar years developed from a synthesis of different and often conflicting cultural projects both local and Muscovite in orientation. Engaging with a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including literary and archival material, Palko grounds her argument in the cases of two celebrated and controversial Ukrainian artists: the poet Pavlo Tychyna and prosaist Mykola Khylovyi. Through this unique biographical lens, Palko's skilled analysis of cultural construction sheds fresh light on the complex process of establishing and consolidating the Soviet regime in Ukraine. In doing so, Palko offers a timely re-assessment of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and adds nuance to current debates on the relationship between national identity, the arts, and the Soviet state.

Reviews

Palko offers a fascinating tour of the myriad and mercurial cultural institutions of the early Soviet Ukrainian world. * The Times Literary Supplement *
Olena Palkos highly accomplished book represents a ground-breaking contribution to several fields: Soviet history, Ukrainian history and 20th-century Ukrainian and Soviet literature and culture [It] weaves a vivid picture of a whole literary and artistic culture in a state of flux, excitement and ultimately disillusionment. It is a rare book that has so much to offer to literary scholars and historians alike * BASEES Alexander Nove Prize Committee *
[Making Ukraine Soviet] is therefore a very entertaining journey through the history of Ukrainian culture during the period of consolidation of communist power over Ukraine ... this is one of the best books of the last decade as regards research on the history of Ukraine in the early communist era. * H-Ukraine *
Palkos Making Ukraine Soviet represents a novel analytical study of the interwar period of Soviet Ukraine ... Palkos book will appeal to scholars of Soviet history, literature, and culture, especially those specializing in Soviet Ukraines literary and political affairs. It may be equally attractive to a general readership familiar with the works of Tychyna and Khvyliovyi. * Canadian Slavonic Papers *
[A] well-researched monograph ... [the book] permit[s] the reader to gain a nuanced understanding of the protagonists both as artists and as political figures. * History: Journal of the Historical Association *
Palkos work therefore has important lessons that reach far beyond the study of the 1920s and early 1930s ... The monograph lays a solid foundation on which other scholars will hopefully build to trace how this dynamic continued to shape Ukrainian culture. * Revolutionary Russia *
This is a fresh look at a crucial episode in Soviet history. By following the careers of Mykola Khvylovyi and Pavlo Tychyna, the author unravels tangled threads that united and divided writers, artists and political figures in the 1920s. She argues that a simple arithmetic of revolution, a juxtaposition of friends and enemies, cannot explain the situation in Ukraine. Instead, the story of cultural sovietization is best seen as a clash of two competing models: Soviet Ukrainian culture and Soviet culture in the Ukrainian language. The victory of the latter led in 1933 to Khvylovyis suicide and Tychynas publication of Partiia vede (the Party Leads), the poem that symbolizes his capitulation to the regimes demands. Drawing on new archival findings, Palkos study skillfully interweaves political history, biography and literary analysis. * Myroslav Shkandrij, Professor of Slavic Studies, University of Manitoba, Canada *
Olena Palko ably charts the emergence of a space called Soviet Ukraine through an engaging and carefully researched narrative. In her telling, Ukrainian writers crafted an emergent national culture, but readers ultimately defined its parameters. * Matthew Pauly, Associate Professor, Michigan State University, USA *

Author Bio

Olena Palko is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, UK.