Making the Soviet West: Post-War Sovietization of Western Ukraine and Cultural Staff From the East

The Sovietization process of the western regions annexed to the Ukrainian SSR upon the Second World War was contradictory and included Ukrainization and the fight against ‘bourgeois nationalism’, the reconstruction of some monuments and destruction of others, repression against local cultural elite and their career promotion and education. What was the role of ‘Easterners’, Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews, in this process, as residents of the prewar Ukrainian SSR and the representatives of the ‘brotherly republics’? What view did they take on the western Ukraine and how were they affected by the things they saw? How did the project of Ukrainian Soviet nation change under the impact of Stalin ‘reunification’? What the ‘Soviet West’ had become within the Ukrainian body – a virus of confrontation against the regime, a symbolic alternative to the ‘Soviets’, or another achievement of Soviet modernization and ethnic unification?

Lecture was held as a part of the lecture and discussion program of the cultural forum "PogranKult: GaliciaKult" and supported by the International Renaissance Foundation.