Drama of the Horror Years

The Writers’ Union of Ukraine has been so preoccupied with the current problems and their resolution, which involved even the country’s judiciary, legislative, and executive authorities, that it failed to mark the seventieth anniversary of the First Founding Assembly of the Writers’ Union of Ukraine in 1934.

The assembly was preceded by two years of hectic work by the Organizing Committee created in keeping with the Communist Party decree “On the Reform of Artistic and Literary Organizations.” Its objective was “to unite all writers, who support the platform of Soviet power and wish to contribute to building socialism, in a single Union of Soviet Writers.” In June 1934 this union endorsed the resolution of the union admissions committee, which examined nearly 400 applications and recommended 120 applicants for full membership in the union and 73 writers-interns aspiring to membership. Originally a union member, Ivan Kindratovych Mykytenko was elected secretary of the board of the Writers’ Union of Ukraine. Now that Ukraine is observing the seventieth anniversary of the union, it is fitting to recount the tragic lot of Ivan Mykytenko.

In the relatively brief fifteen-year period of his creative prime, Mykytenko left a noticeable trace in the history of Ukrainian literature, enriching it with an impressive collection of dramatic and prose works, poetry, essays, and literary criticisms. He was an outstanding public figure: for nearly ten years he was among the leaders of the All-Union League of the Proletarian Writers’ Associations, the International Association of Revolutionary Writers, the All-Ukrainian Union of Proletarian Writers, and a board member of the Union of Writers of the USSR. He was a delegate to the XII and XIII congresses of the Communist Party of Ukraine. He was an active member of the International United Front against Fascism, attended international antifascist congresses of writers in defense of culture in Paris, Madrid, etc.

Yet, at different times Soviet society used different criteria to assess its outstanding personalities, which largely determined the views of Mykytenko’s creative heritage. Despite the acclaim he first received from both readers and theater audiences, Ivan Mykytenko’s creative heritage went from popularity to total oblivion in the late 1930s. In the mid-1950s his works saw the light of day again, but the life story of this great writer was known only to family members and a few select friends and admirers. In the meantime, hypocritical censorship hid from the public a personal drama worthy of a talented playwright, the kind of playwright Ivan Mykytenko once was.

The October 3, 1937, party meeting of the Union of Soviet Writers of Ukraine closed long after midnight. The agenda included one item: calling Ivan Mykytenko to account. The meeting approved a unanimous decision to expel the writer from the Communist Party “as a person who concealed his kurkul [rich peasant] origins when he became a member and throughout his membership in the party; a person who supported and concealed his brother, a kurkul bandit, and befriended the sworn enemies of the Soviet people — Trotskyites and bourgeois nationalists — and assisted them in harming Ukrainian literature.” The meeting room emptied, but the light remained on for a long time. The watchwoman peered through the door crack and saw Ivan Mykytenko, who was standing still near the stage and staring into nothing. She called to him shyly. When he snapped out of his stupor, he headed straight for the door, tripping over the chairs as if he were blind.

In those days the newspapers carried reports that Ivan Mykytenko had been expelled from the secretariat, presidium, and board of the Union of Soviet Writers of Ukraine, dismissed from his post as editor of the magazine Radianska Literatura [Soviet Literature] and its drama columnist.

He probably realized what awaited him. The tragic lot of the writers Mykola Khvyliovy, Oles Dosvitny, Hryhory Kosynka, and many others was already known by then. What he didn’t know was the source of the negative information about him. Decades later scholars researching this horrible period in the archives would find Politburo document no. P-51/94 dated June 2, 1937 “On Anti-Soviet Elements,” which the Soviet NKVD used to justify its mass cleansing of society between August 5, 1937, and November 15, 1938. This decree introduced quotas for repressions in every republic, oblast, and district. Repressions of the first and second categories called for execution by firing squad and imprisonment, respectively, and were administered with a ratio of three to one. This touched off competition among penal institutions that proposed “counter plans,” demanding higher quotas. Leplevsky, the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, solicited higher quotas from the Communist Party leadership on three occasions.

On the morning after the meeting Ivan Mykytenko told his wife that he was headed to the NKVD to hand in his pistol, but he never returned.

After years of being in the limelight, he wandered alone in the streets of Kyiv trying to understand the source of the political accusations against him. He probably could not understand why his colleagues accused him of having planted enemies in the republican writers’ organization to which he had generously devoted all of his efforts over a period of many years. Had he done something wrong?

The prewar literary archives of the Writers’ Union of Ukraine did not survive, but even superficial analysis confirms that these accusations were groundless.

Born in 1897, Ivan Mykytenko published his first works in the early 1920s while he was still a student at the Medical Institute of Odesa. His first publication was the poem “Siohodni Sviato” [Today Is a Holiday], followed by songs based on his poems “Oi shcho tse za shum uchynyvsia?” [What is this ado all about?], and “Ishly polky chervoni” [Red Regiments on the March], as well as dozens of feature articles in the press.

He then published his first collection of short stories entitled Na Soniachnykh Honakh [On the Sun- Lit Meadows], which focused on the Civil War, which he had witnessed, and reforms in the countryside. It was followed by the poem “Vohon” [Fire] and the play Idu [I’m Going]. After his relocation to Kharkiv he published a story entitled “Vurkahany” [Rogues] and a novel Ranok [Morning], about reeducating the homeless. His talent was fully revealed in his dramatic works, especially so in his famous drama Dyktatura [Dictatorship]. Mykytenko addressed the problems of raising a new intelligentsia in his lyrical and romantic play entitled Kadry [Cadres] and described the heroic days of the period of Ukraine’s industrialization and Civil War in his plays Sprava Chesti [A Matter of Honor] and Bastiliya Bozhoyi Materi [The Bastille of the Mother of God]. His major achievement as a playwright is his lyrical comedy Divchata Nashoyi Krayiny [Ladies of Our Country], which centers on the way workers’ communities can educate an individual. He also authored several non-fiction books including Holuby Myru [Doves of Peace] and Trynadtsiata Vesna [Thirteenth Spring].

Mykytenko had a high regard for the role that Maxim Gorky played in the development of literature and upbringing of young writers. Presiding over the first session of the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, Mykytenko gave Maxim Gorky the floor to deliver his speech on Soviet literature. Addressing the congress, Mykytenko said rightfully that “a talented writer is one who has his own definite literary character and his own clear direction, which is representative of all his works.”

According to existing documented evidence, Mykytenko felt responsible for what he called the “destruction of the remains of individualism in the writers’ milieu” during his tenure as deputy chairman of the Union of Soviet Writers of Ukraine. As evidenced by the biographies of many famous writers, the repressions of 1934-1937 stopped the buildup of Ukraine’s literary potential. Arguably the best and most productive part of the literary milieu was liquidated. Proof of this are the following statistics: 33 writers were subjected to repressions in 1934, another 8 in 1935, 3 in 1936, and 19 more in 1937. Between 1934 and 1973 a total of 63 writers fell victim to Stalinist repressions, including M. Irchan, V. Pidmohylny, Ye. Pluzhnyk, M. Semenko, H. Shkurupiy, H. Kosynka, V. Vrazhlyvy, H. Epic, I. Semyvolos, and M. Vorony, to name only a few.

Yet the years have put the facts in order. Was the grave charge of “sowing weeds among the literary ranks,” leveled against Mykytenko in October 1937, justified? While his fellow writers rushed to make their pronouncements, Mykytenko simply had no time to exonerate himself.

The American philosopher and author Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that fear always stems from ignorance. I believe the events of those years were largely due to the state of affairs in Ukrainian society. Splintered by revolutionary uprisings, hostilities, inconsistencies stemming from constantly changing governments, and by the Holodomor, Ukrainian society proved unprepared to embark on a quest for its own path of development. Fear bred treacherousness, jealousy, and schemes to topple rivals. The Ukrainian writers’ organization was not immune to discord either.

The February 12, 1929, meeting between a number of Ukrainian writers and Stalin, at which Ivan Mykytenko was also present, could have brought some measure of good to the Ukrainian literary organization. The meeting, held as part of Ukrainian Week in Moscow, was focused on national issues, Bulgakov’s novel The Days of the Turbins, the question of the Ukrainian language, etc.

Several times Stalin repeated that “they (Ukrainian writers — Auth.) feel like guests, while they should feel like masters.”

In the 1920s, the short story and novella were developing alongside the novel as a more mobile literary genre. By painting life as it really was, Mykytenko seemed to be shaking up and rejuvenating these literary genres. His works stimulated a profound discernment of life; they examined the national character and served to enrich the psychology of the man in the street.

A significant stage in the development of Mykytenko’s creative talent was his 1936 play entitled Flute Solo, which took him nearly three years to write. The literary community praised the work, its dramatic poeticism and light humor. However, owing to the context of those days, the play represented a threat to the author. Hidden in it was a bitter satire aimed at the blatant careerism, duplicity, and misuse of revolutionary slogans, which originated in the atmosphere of political myopia and narcissism of many high officials. Even though the protagonist of this play says that such manifestations exist everywhere, “at the institute or on the tram, at the opera or in a clothing store, in your lover or mine, during a high-level meeting or in a cheap pub, during a lively debate or in quiet company over a cup of tea,” it was clear that the author was alluding to the phenomenon of those days — mimicry of the traditional psychology of philistinism.

In those days, Mykytenko was a habituО of different Communist Party, Soviet, and other official circles. His meetings with people, analyses, and juxtapositions, which are typical of the way a writer perceives the world, resulted in unexpected observations and frank personal deductions. Using his innate ability to paint generalized images and types, the author built his satire on the traditions of Moliere, not afraid to lay it on thick, but still managing to observe the conventions of the genre.

In my view, what Mykytenko simply could not overlook was the relationship between Stanislav Kosior, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, and Pavel Postyshev, second secretary of the Central Committee. As we know, Postyshev arrived in Ukraine in 1933 on instructions from Stalin to carry out two missions from the dictator: to bring order into agriculture and to pacify the Ukrainian intelligentsia, which he viewed as a source of separatism. In this connection, the repressions gradually focused on the political and cultural elite of Ukraine.

Arguably the most objective evaluation of Postyshev’s activity in Ukraine came from the participants of the XIII congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine (May 27 — June 3, 1937, by which time Postyshev was no longer on Ukrainian territory). The delegates were especially critical of Postyshev’s activity during his tenure in Ukraine, accusing him not so much of losing his vigilance as of inflating his own personality into a cult. For example, Panas Liubchenko, chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Ukraine, said that Postyshev’s role was exaggerated during his stay in Ukraine. Meanwhile, according to M. Popov, who was then the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Postyshev “got a swollen head,” as a result of which his positive traits much too quickly changed into negative traits and he became an “expert on all issues, beginning with the history of Ukrainian culture and ending with the mission of the Communist Party of Poland.” Sporting an embroidered shirt instead of a service jacket, the traditional uniform of Bolshevik leaders, Postyshev conducted a frantic struggle “against the bearers of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism.”

To be continued in the next issue