Introduction
Summary
On October 28, 1944, a Red Army officer named Kostenko wrote to the leaders of Soviet Ukraine's Communist government, and stated:
A year has passed since the liberation of the city of Kyiv. About the same amount of time has passed since I started to solicit the return of my family from evacuation in Omsk [Russia] to our hometown of Kyiv. I wrote—and so did the command of my military unit on my behalf—to all organizations for them to help my family return to Kyiv. But what has been done? Nothing! At a time when I have spared neither blood nor my life itself fighting for Kyiv, and for the liberation of Ukrainian land, there are bureaucrats who have saved a few drops of ink rather than write an answer to my requests… . And now … I am not happy. I am malicious. My hand grips my gun with a burning hatred. I ask myself, what has been done for my family? Where is the payback for my suffering? Just let them know, then, those bureaucrats hiding within the walls of the Kyiv City Soviet, that I damn them. And when I return from the field of battle, I will find them, and I won't mind using a few of my spare bullets on them. I ask that you give them this.
Unfortunately, Kostenko's request had landed on deaf ears. After the Nazi occupation's end on November 6, 1943, the Ukrainian Communists watched helplessly as ordinary people ignored formalities, and returned by any means possible to resettle a depopulated Kyiv, still a “regime city of the first category” according to Joseph Stalin's guardians of state security—the All-Union People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) headquartered in Moscow. As a result of the Ukrainian Communists’ management of this reassembling population, Stalin's regime stealthily adjusted its rule to satisfy the anti-Semitic interests of Kyiv's Ukrainian majority—to the detriment of its Jewish minority. And in a situation where scarcity on all fronts ruled, the Ukrainian Communists’ best means of relegitimizing Soviet power were by capitalizing on Moscow's public call for ideological vigilance in 1946, and arguing for their own indispensability as the leaders of a damaged—but still popular—state.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Kyiv as Regime CityThe Return of Soviet Power after Nazi Occupation, pp. 1 - 16Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2016