The early 1960s as a cultural space: a microhistory of Ukraine's generation of cultural rebels

Abstract

This article analyzes the early stage of the Ukrainian “sixtiers” movement as a semi-autonomous space of cultural expression that was tolerated by the authorities and defined, developed, and inhabited by young Ukrainian intellectuals. In contrast to present-day Ukrainian representations of the sixtiers as a force acting in opposition to the Soviet regime, the spatial angle employed here reveals an ambiguous relationship with official institutions. The Ukrainian Komsomol organization in particular appears to be both a controlling and an enabling agent that, together with the Writers' Union, provided meeting venues for the sixtiers until the mid-1960s. This complex symbiotic relationship continued even after some creative youth pioneered the first attempts to claim public space for cultural events without the authorities' permission. The cultural terrain inhabited by young Ukrainian intellectuals was not fully separate from mainstream Soviet Ukrainian culture or in opposition to it, although their vibrant cultural space also reached into a world of non-conformist culture unregulated by the state. A series of government crackdowns beginning in the mid-1960s dramatically shrank this open, ambivalent space of semi-free cultural expression, imposing firm boundaries and forcing intellectuals to make political choices.

Ukrainian Poetic Sixties: Mykola Kholodnyi’s Creative Individuality

“…Risch (2011) talked about the culture of the Soviet period in the western Ukraine town of Lviv and emphasised attention on forged alternative social spaces and opportunities to share high culture, music, and art among Lviv's post-Stalin-generation youth. Yekelchyk (2018) analysed the early stage of the Ukrainian Sixtiers movement. Bellezza (2019) researched the origins of the Shistdesiatnyky, the peculiarity of shistdesiatnytstvo as a new cultural course, and the repressions and dissent of A. Horska, V. Moroz, Dziuba, L. Pliushch, etc. Scientists also turned to the artwork of individual representatives of this period: Burianyk (1997) devoted her dissertation to Stus's poetry, his incarceration, and death; Pylypiuk (2002) considered the poetry of Kalynets and Stus; Achilli (2016) researched the reception of Shevchenko's poetry in the works of Stus; Savchyn (2021) analysed the literary translation of Stus and Svitlychnyi, etc.…”

Introduction: Subversion, Dissent and Opposition in Communist Europe and Beyond

“…Especially in "stagnant" late socialist societies, there were reasons for the state to create space for some level of alternate cultural and even political expression. The Ukrainian shistdesiatnyky ("sixties-ers," or people of the sixties) had an ambiguous, in some ways symbiotic relationship with authority -the cultural space they occupied was not completely separate from the official cultural space, and they were encouraged and facilitated by the Ukrainian Komsomol (Yekelchyk 2015). Polly Jones has demonstrated the fluidity between "official" and "underground" literature in the late Soviet Union: the authorities commissioned biographies by and about dissident figures, while even dissidents read good quality, officially published literature (Jones 2019: 1-27).…”