The Soviet Myth of the Ukrainian Village: The Tools for Manipulating Historical Memory

This article examines the role of Ukrainian village and its peasants in economic and political processes of the Soviet Union. The Soviet period had significant impact on the historical consciousness of post-Soviet population in forming a ne — gative image of both the Ukrainian village and Ukrainian peasant. Many scholars of different specialties have focused on aspects of Ukrainian village and the role of peasants in history. Studying various aspects of this subject resulted in a larger quantity of academic pieces than average in the Ukrainian history research. The historiographic analysis determined various scientific centers that produced knowledge most actively and thus influenced the perception of the subject: Institute of History of Ukraine (Kyiv), the Research Institute of the Peasantry (Cherkasy), agrarian historians from leading universities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Vinnytsia, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolayiv, Kamyanets-Podilsky and other. Ukrainian peasantry created a distinct, unique and highly productive agriculture through a vast and diverse experience. The Ukrainian village is a moral and spiritual center of the regional society. Nevertheless, it has a historically permanent feature — the tragic fate. Ukrainian village was the largest victim of absence of Ukrainian statehood. In the times of occupations Ukrainian peasants were robbed and forced to unpaid work, aimed at feeding conquerors. The ongoing processes of urbanization, that has been taking place globally, pooled the best people from countryside, especially in Soviet times, but also nowadays. Statistical analysis of dynamics in the number of villages and its population in the recent past is negative. The paper argues that with the constant weakening of the village, Ukrainian state is losing its authentic face.

Source: Lanovyuk L. (2018) The Soviet Myth of the Ukrainian Village: The Tools for Manipulating Historical Memory. History Pages. № 46: 158-163

Source web-site: http://history-pages.kpi.ua/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/46_10_Lanoviuk.pdf