In the Labyrinth of the KGB

Olga Bertelsen

doi:10.5771/9781793608932

Summary

This book focuses on the generation of the sixties and seventies in Kharkiv, Soviet Ukraine, a milieu of writers who lived through the Thaw and the processes of de-Stalinization and re-Stalinization. Special attention is paid to KGB operations against what came to be known as the dissident milieu, and the interaction of Ukrainians, Jews, and Russians in the movement, their persona friendships, formal and informal interactions, and the ways they dealt with repression and arrests. This study demonstrates that the KGB unintentionally facilitated the transnational and intercultural links among the Kharkiv multi-ethnic community of writers and their mutual enrichment. Post-Khrushchev Kharkiv is analyzed as a political space and a place of state violence aimed at combating Ukrainian nationalism and Zionism, two major targets in the 1960s–1970s. Despite their various cultural and social backgrounds, the Kharkiv literati might be identified as a distinct bohemian group possessing shared aesthetic and political values that emerged as the result of de-Stalinization under Khrushchev. Archival documents, diaries, and memoirs suggest that the 1960s–1970s was a period of intense KGB operations, “active measures” designed to disrupt a community of intellectuals and to fragment friendships, bonds, and support among Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews along ethnic lines domestically and abroad.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2022
ISBN-Print: 978-1-7936-0892-5
ISBN-Online: 978-1-7936-0893-2
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 344
Product type: Book Titles

1. Dedication No access
2. Contents No access
3. Acknowledgments No access
4. 1. Notes No access
1. From De-Stalinization to Re-Stalinization No access
2. 1. Robert Tretyakov and His Labyrinths No access
  2. Kharkiv Writers and Their “Ritual Vice” No access
  3. The KGB and the Kharkiv Literati No access
3. Notes No access
1. The Atmosphere of Controlled Freedom and Jewish Shistdesiatnytstvo No access
2. 1. Volodymyr Briuggen’s Labyrinths No access
  2. Negotiating the Labyrinth: Jewish Shistdesiatnytstvo and the “Jewish Question” No access
  3. New Pathways for “Young Zionists” No access
3. Notes No access
1. 1. Cooperation between Two Diaspora Groups and Its Challenges No access
  2. Unstable Cooperation No access
  3. The Kharkiv Dissidents No access
  4. The Challenges of the Kharkiv Chekists No access
2. Notes No access
1. 1. Recognizing Medical Power No access
  2. Soviet Psychiatric Practices No access
  3. Kharkiv Psychiatrists and the Saburova Dacha No access
  4. Ukrainian Nationalists as Mentally Ill No access
  5. The Writers’ Paths in the Labyrinths of Medical Power No access
2. Notes No access
1. The Holodomor as a Discursive Formation No access
2. 1. The Chekists and Ukraine’s Intellectual Elites in the 1930s No access
  2. The Chekists na cheku (Are Alert): The Domestic Postwar Famine Discourse No access
  3. Reinforcing the Famine Discursive Formation Abroad No access
  4. A Battle over Meaning No access
3. Notes No access
1. 1. The KGB’s “Helping Hands” No access
  2. Literary Kharkiv during Late Socialism No access
2. Notes No access
1. Notes No access
1. Interviews No access
2. Archives No access
3. Diaries No access
4. Private Correspondence No access
5. Documentaries No access
Index No access Pages 321 - 342
About the Author No access Pages 343 - 344