Ukrainian SSR Working Class (1946-1965) in the Modern National Historographic Tradition

Abstract

The article examines the modern national historiography of Ukrainian working-class issues of the postwar twenty century (1946-1965). The existence of several methodological levels, the highest of which is philosophical, is the historiographical research specificity. The authors of the article used analysis and synthesis from the list of this group methods. The next level is considered to comprise general scientific methods, of which the method of classification and typologization and the method of idealization (abstraction) were used. Special historical methods are the third gradation of the methods. The research tools of the proposed work include historical and genetic, chronological, problematic and chronological, biographical, comparative historical methods, as well as methods of periodization, content analysis, dialectic of retrospective and prospective analysis. The authors of the article conclude that the main thesis of the modern national historiography of the problem is the statement that the postwar economic recovery was carried out on a predominantly extensive basis. More than 90% of workers at Ukrainian industrial enterprises achieved production standards mainly by manual labor. Lack of proper safety precautions often resulted in significant injuries. Much was said about the working-class leading role in the society, but little was done to ensure that workers actually managed the enterprises. To a certain extent, this was facilitated by the permanent mobilization and propaganda activities carried out by that period regime, inspiring “socialist competition” and various kinds of “movement of shock workers and innovators.” People’s real, everyday enthusiasm, their readiness for another sacrifice in the name of a better future were closely intertwined with the formalism and demagoguery inherent in the communist system. The overwhelming majority of contemporary Ukrainian historians support the idea that by rebuilding the economy, people were reviving a normal life for themselves and their children, while the system attributed everything primarily to the “highest interests of the Bolshevik Revolution homeland.” Living and working conditions of people were difficult. Nevertheless, people believed in a better life. This feeling also increased as workers saw that thanks to their valiant labor the country was gradually overcoming enormous difficulties and solving extremely complex tasks of the destroyed economy reviving. However, J. Stalin and his entourage, trying to strengthen the totalitarian regime, rejected the possibility of the country’s development in a democratic direction, and so did those forces interested in preserving the command economy and vulgarized forms of ideology. At the same time, to the researchers’ point of view, it was also crucial that the mass consciousness had no experience of living in a society developing on the principles of democracy, which in itself hindered the understanding of the need for a radical renewal of the entire political system