Mykhailo Rudnytskyi and the struggle against the «Hrushevskyi school» in Lviv

Abstract

The campaign launched by the Soviet power against the «Hrushevskyi School» in post-war Lviv was not so much an ideological campaign directed only against Ukrainian historians. Rather, it was a broader campaign of pressure and persecution, which clearly illustrates the Soviet government’s attempts to implement social discipline to establish total control over various groups of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Consideration of various aspects of this campaign shows how discursive practices and relevant social «rituals» in the Soviet era were subordinated to the unification and Sovietization of Western Ukrainian public space in the postwar period. In contexts of this process, the case of Galician publicist and writer Mykhailo Rudnytskyi was significant. The study of his biography in this period allows us to analyze at the micro-level great processes that took place in Soviet Ukraine at this time.
In addition to Moscow and Kyiv, local Soviet activists played an important role, primarily among the «pro-communist» professors of LSU. The Soviet government used the old principle of «divide et impera» by dividing intelligentsia into several groups, first criticizing one and then using them to criticize another one. Party documents show that Mykhailo Rudnytskyi remained a «stranger» to the Soviet government, a fragment of the «old world». Rudnytskyi also did not perceive the Soviet government as «his» but resorted to self-censorship for survival. Choosing survival strategies in postwar Lviv, he tried to balance between ostentatious loyalty to the Soviet regime and maintaining his own moral and ideological position.