HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

258 ReviewsFor example, the complex period of indigenization (1923-1933) is given onlytwo hardly intelligible paragraphs (p. 109) ending with a quotation fromRichard Pipes to the effect that the Bolsheviks afforded fewer opportunitiesfor self-rule than even the Russian autocracy. This might well be true for theperiod before 1923, the date at which Pipes' study ends, but hardly for, say,Soviet Ukraine under Skrypnyk. The author has so little familiarity with therelevant literature that he is unaware an alternative view might be possible.Since the collectivization of agriculture culminated in the complete reversal ofthe previous nationalities policy, the fact that the author devotes two pages toit raises the hope that he makes at least some kind of point in this regard.However, the indifferent account he provides is only tenuously connected tohis main theme by the fact that the number of Ukrainians and Kazakhsdropped significantly and "because thousands [!] of non-Russians worked aspeasants and subsequently came under attack by the Soviets' 'dekulakization'program" (p. 114).Since Ukrainians represent the largest and historically most self-assertiveof the USSR's non-Russian nationalities, treatment of them is a good indicatorof the level of the author's scholarship. One seeks in vain for such relevantworks as Basil Dmytryshyn's Moscow and the Ukraine, R. S. Sullivant's SovietPolitics and the Ukraine, John Armstrong's The Ukrainian Revolution, GeorgeLuckyj's Literary Politics in the Soviet Ukraine, Hryhory Kostiuk's StalinistRule in the Ukraine, Yaroslav Bilinsky's The Second Soviet Republic, the worksof Arthur Adams, Peter Potichnyj, Bohdan Bociurkiw, Steven Guthier, orIwan Majstrenko. The author has also apparently failed to use such relevantjournals as Slavic Review, The Slavonic and East European Review, Jahrbücherfür Geschichte Osteuropas, Canadian Slavonic Papers, NationalitiesPapers (devoted exclusively to the study of Soviet nationalities), The Journalof Ukrainian Studies, or Harvard Ukrainian Studies. To the period betweenthe end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War II, the authordevotes just over one page, citing only Jurij Borys's dissertation, which endswith the end of the Civil War, and John Armstrong's study of Ukrainiannationalism during World War II. Indicative of the general level of the work isthe following passage: "Ukrainian nationals obtained important governmentand academic posts thereby enabling them to promote an independent Ukrainianculture. Avowed 'cultural nationalists' such as Professor Mikhail Hrushevsky,Alexander Shums'kyi, and later Nicholas Skrypnyk, embraced Sovietcommunism and received such appointments." One hardly knows whether tolaugh or cry. Individuals like Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi were given appointmentsbecause the regime decided to promote Ukrainian culture in an attempt tolegitimize itself. Oleksander Shums'kyi and Mykola Skrypnyk were neveravowed nationalists, cultural or otherwise; they always denied changes thatthey were nationalistic. Skrypnyk did not embrace communism later thanHrushevs'kyi, because Hrushevs'kyi never embraced communism, and Skryp-