Babyn Yar. Holocaust — Taboo Topics of Soviet Historiography

Левітас, Фелікс Львович and Рамазанов, Шаміль (2022) Babyn Yar. Holocaust — Taboo Topics of Soviet Historiography Сторінки історії: збірник наукових праць (53). pp. 113-129. ISSN 2307-5244

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Abstract

The Holocaust tragedy and the objective coverage of the events in Nazi-occupied Kyiv in 1941–1943 from Stalin’s time to the final stage of perestroika were excluded from the Soviet historical narrative. Certain groups of Soviet intellectuals, Jewish and Ukrainian activists alone fought for the preservation of historical memory in spite of the actions of the totalitarian system in the USSR. Soviet model of historical memory was ideological and, thus, based on three worldview constructs. The first concept is the idea of the existence of the so-called «United Soviet People». The second one is embodied within the policy of the Soviet Union in the Middle East, where the Soviet Union took an anti-Israel position. The third one is the policy of state antiSemitism, which was a part of the official policy from the Stalin era till the collapse of the Soviet Union. The last days of Stalin’s regime were characterized by the overt anti-Semitic campaigns in the USSR. The acquired dynamics of Stalin’s state anti-Semitism never lost its relevance both either during the «thaw» and during the command-and-control «standstill» period. These facts became known when archival documents became known to the broad scientific community. Furthermore, along with the Holocaust victims, the names of many thousands of sons and daughters of the Jewish people who fought heroically against Nazism during World War II were restored. The analysis of various historical sources allows the authors to build a complete picture of the attitude of the Soviet party and law enforcement agencies to falsification of the memory of Stalin’s repressions and the Genocide in Ukraine, the victims of which were representatives of different nationalities. Falsified versions of the Soviet history were actively supported by some representatives of academic and university history. Even the monument to the victims of Nazism was opened under the pressure from the world community in Kyiv in the summer of 1976, but it did not convey the meaning of the Kyiv tragedy that took place during the Nazi occupation. The team of the Ukrainian authors, under the leadership of People’s Artist M. Lysenko, who won the competition for the monument in Babyn Yar, was constantly pressured by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Only after the proclamation of Ukraine’s independence in 1991, it became possible to conduct various scientific studies regarding the history of the Holocaust. The Tragedy of Babyn Yar and the life of Ukrainian Righteous People has become a part of the modern Ukrainian narrative and modern Ukrainian memory. The proposed article, which is built on the principles of historicism and objectivity, is a part of a modern historical discourse on memory studies.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	DOI: 10.20535/2307-5244.53.2021.248462
Uncontrolled Keywords:	holocaust; babyn yar; nazi genocide; stalinist; totalitarianism; historical memory
Subjects:	Це архівна тематика Київського університету імені Бориса Грінченка > Статті у наукометричних базах > Web of Science Це архівна тематика Київського університету імені Бориса Грінченка > Статті у журналах > Фахові (входять до переліку фахових, затверджений МОН)
Divisions:	Це архівні підрозділи Київського університету імені Бориса Грінченка > Інститут післядипломної освіти > Кафедра історичної та громадянської освіти
Depositing User:	Наталія Миколаївна Дем'янчук
Date Deposited:	12 Oct 2022 15:07
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2022 15:11
URI:	https://elibrary.kubg.edu.ua/id/eprint/41943

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