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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Serhy Yekelchyk
Serhy Yekelchyk*
Affiliation:
Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada
*
*Email: serhy@uvic.ca
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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.

Keywords

Ukraine“sixtiers”Komsomolwriterscultural space
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 45 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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