Soviet forces triumphantly watching the German Wehrmacht flee depopulated Kyiv in November 1943, just in time for the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, found quite a mess on their hands, which only became worse as large numbers of people continued to seek haven there. It took the authorities years to sort out the complexities. The first winter was especially difficult: bitter cold, torn clothing, little food and renewed Luftwaffe bombardments. Integral to the authorities' success, as Martin J. Blackwell illustrates, were the establishment of the “Temporary Commission for the Regulation of the Entrance of Citizens into the City of Kyiv” and resolutions that temporarily prohibited the return of many prewar or would-be residents or allowed for evictions. Less successful were resolutions mobilizing the work force.
Blackwell's useful monograph is a tightly knit examination of multiethnic Kyiv between November 6, 1943 and early 1947. He documents the rapid and uncontrolled (though not from want of trying) growth of population—from 200,000 residents at “liberation” to its prewar size of over a million—and the rebuilding of this devastated Soviet capital: specifically, the restoration of housing, factories, sewage systems, and food supplies; engaged workers (including German POWs who remained until 1954); and revived efforts at maintaining law and public order as well as keeping away the so-called socially dangerous.
After a brief contextual introduction to Kyiv, the main focus rests on the ups and downs of exchanges between “ordinary” Ukrainians (such as those who had not left during the occupation or demobilized soldiers and other returnees with extended families) and the various political elites in their—at times tense—initial attempts to rebuild and/or Russianize the city (especially still during the war). As Blackwell points out, different objectives and interests had to be weighed as ideological and pragmatic priorities shifted, resulting in disappointment, frustration or also satisfaction, depending on whose point of view. Concerned that studies so far about postwar reconstruction of other war-torn Soviet cities have ignored investigating both the power and insecurity of the Soviet state or “why ordinary people's interests might have contributed to the deemphasizing of the ideological imperatives associated with building communism in favor of simply rebuilding a Russian-led state” (13), Blackwell undertakes to demonstrate that “a comprehensive story of Soviet power's return to post-Nazi Kyiv is an ideal window for determining how the Stalin regime operated at the Cold War's outset” (15), which emphasized an “anti-Semitic and statist discourse” (2).
The research leans heavily on official resolutions or decrees and minutes from Oblast and Party committee meetings, which Blackwell found in the Central State Archive of Civic Organizations of Ukraine (TsDAHOU) and the State Archive of Kyiv Oblast (DAKO). He also makes use of select fonds from the Central State Archive of the Higher Organs of Power of Ukraine (TsDAVOVU). Contemporary memoirs are avoided because, according to the author, “uncensored literature … is scant” (14). To make up for this, Blackwell provides some vignettes from newspaper clippings, letters of complaint from ordinary citizens, and excerpts from confiscated private letters. The narrative arc, clearly divided into three parts (or six chapters), covers “resettlement” (who could and did return and stay and for how long), “reassembly” (housing, food, and labor issues) and the “relegitimization” of Soviet control. Nicely chosen black-and-white contemporary photographs of Kyiv accompany each part.
Blackwell's limited choice of sources is both its strength and weakness. Clearly we learn much about the Kyiv urban project and the difficulties policy-makers (in Moscow or interest groups in Kyiv) had in fulfilling expectations, largely due to a complicated competition for resources, not least male bodies: do you mobilize them for construction or the Red Army? But much of the bigger picture is missing: an analytical comparison to Kyiv's rapid urbanization in 1934, the enduring effects of the Great Terror and wartime massacres (awkwardly perhaps, Babi Yar is spelled Babyn Iar), on the returning or resettling citizens. Blackwell goes only so far as to explain why his protagonists avoided these issues. A gender analysis (symbolically, the index entry “women” relates mainly to behavior and harassment), and a thorough discussion of the urban youth (including the Komsomol) are absent. The narrative also suffers at times from “bureaucratic speak” (see for example the first sentence quoted in paragraph three above). A chronological list of the relevant resolutions, decrees, memoranda, and minutes would have been most helpful.
