Making History Soviet in Ukraine, 1920s–30s

The formation of a “correct” version of the past replicates the methods of constructing history that were used in twentieth-century totalitarian states, and especially in the Soviet Union. One of the first campaigns consisted of the searches for a revolutionary past, writing the history of the Communist Party and the October Revolution, which were presented as the main events and starting points of Soviet history. A special commission, the Istpart, was founded in 1920 to “communize” time and space in those territories where the Bolsheviks established their authority. In 1931, a new historical project was announced: writing the history of industrial enterprises in the Soviet Union. To conduct this campaign, a Commission on the History of Factories and Plants was established by the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

To write a “correct” version of history, these commissions turned to the collection of memoirs by revolutionary events participants and workers. The Istpart’s activities in the 1920s in the Ukrainian SSR led to a revision of the past and the creation of “correct” approaches to treating the events of 1917–1921: the Ukrainian revolution had to be “correctly” included in the Bolshevik concept of civil war in Russia and Ukrainian political actors were deemed “enemies of the revolution” and “nationalist elements.” The 1920s campaign to write the history of the October Revolution was meant to lead to forgetting the Ukrainian past, and the 1930s project on the history of industrial sites was meant to demonstrate the achievements and flourishing of the Country of the Soviets. But this campaign was a sort of crooked mirror because it exactly coincided with the Holodomor and the repression of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. In my speech I will characterize these two commission and their methods of making new soviet version of history on the territory of Ukraine.