Shevel and the MZS: Promotion or Demotion?

In the 1960s, growing re-Stalinization and increasing repression of dissent inspired the revival of national communism in Ukraine. Ironically, entrusted by Leonid Brezhnev and Nikolai Podgornyi, Petro Shelest, First Secretary of the KPU (the Communist Party of Ukraine) and a member of the all-union Politburo who was secretly delegated to discuss Khrushchev’s dismissal with 36 other Ukrainian party officials and to prepare the October 1964 coup, became a strong supporter of national cultural and economic revival (Shapoval Reference Shapoval2011, 26, 27; Plokhy Reference Plokhy2015, 304). A true believer in communism and Ukraine’s national development, Shelest surrounded himself with like-minded individuals, hoping to revive the primary status of the Ukrainian language and culture, and to restore Ukraine’s prestige in the international arena. He found in Shevel a friend, a reliable colleague, and a person whom he could trust. For them, their dilemma was rather transpicuous: they could appease their own national consciousness with Soviet ideology, or reject the party’s ideological constraints and thus perish in the corridors of power, being accused of Ukrainian nationalism (Shapoval Reference Shapoval2011, 289).

Shevel’s career was similar to many who rose to prominent positions in the Communist Party from the Komsomol. This youth organization was a platform for raising trustworthy party members. Komsomol members’ reliability was verified and confirmed in various capacities and settings over several years before they became party candidates (Hornsby Reference Hornsby2016).Footnote ² Similar to Shelest, who in the late 1920s served as a Komsomol leader in the Kharkiv oblast, and to people like Aleksandr Shelepin and Vladimir Semichastnyi who both became KGB chairmen after rising to Komsomol first secretaries in the 1950s, Shevel began his career as a state official in the Komsomol TsK. In May 1943, he was appointed instructor of its Propaganda and Agitation Department (PAOS). Intelligent and educated nationals always remained suspicious to Moscow, be they Ukrainians or Latvians (Swain Reference Swain2012). Nevertheless, a young graduate of the Kharkiv Institute’s Philology Department, Shevel was a precious cadre for party officials who took a special interest in him as an articulate and broadly trained young man.

A true believer, Shevel strengthened his reputation as a loyalist during World War II when he joined guerrilla groups to secretly fight the Germans in the occupied Soviet territories. These experiences helped him create bonds with his Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian counterparts. At the end of the war, a “party-partisan clan” (partiino-partyzans’kyi klan) of bureaucrats emerged who shared similar memories and experiences of the resistance movement. This affiliation was much more robust than that of Komsomol membership. The clan’s members supported one another in their promotion to leading positions in the party and state institutions (Vasil’iev et al. Reference Vasil’iev2006, 7).

In December 1944, Shevel was sent to recently annexed Lviv, a sign of the party’s confidence in his abilities as a propagandist (PAOS). His supervisors appreciated his leadership skills, loyalty, and the rhetoric he employed in his speeches. In February 1953, at the Kyiv Komsomol Convention, Shevel called Komsomol leaders to “expose Ukrainian and Jewish bourgeois nationalists,” identifying them as “beastly agents of American imperialism who are always ready to sell Ukraine wholesale and retail to American imperialism and Zionism.”Footnote ³ In late 1954, after a decade of service as a Komsomol leader, he was promoted to the position of the second secretary and, seven years later, the first secretary of the Kyiv Party Committee. In June 1961, at the height of the cultural revolution (shistdesiatnytstvo) and simultaneous re-Stalinization, Moscow and Kyiv party leaders agreed that Shevel had matured enough to become Ukraine’s chief ideologue. From June 26, 1961 to August 10, 1970, heading the TsK KPU Propaganda and Agitation Department (PAOS) and closely cooperating with Shelest and the KGB, Shevel dealt with ideological and national issues in the republic (Shapoval Reference Shapoval2011, 470). The first wave of repression against nationalists occurred under Shevel’s watch, when in 1965–1966 the KGB conducted a secret operation, arresting Ukrainian writers, artists, and teachers (Kas’ianov Reference Kas’ianov1995, 47–64).

Regularly reporting to the TsK on the progress of curbing nationalism in Ukraine, Shevel left behind a great wealth of documents about his “prophylactic conversations” with and the “inappropriate behavior” of Ukrainian dissidents and recalcitrant writers, such as Lina Kostenko, Ivan Drach, and Ievhen Sverstiuk (Shapoval Reference Shapoval2011, 348; TsDAHOU, 1/25/183/96-98). For example, in 1966, Shevel and Iurii Kondufor, head of the TsK KPU Science and Culture Department, pressed Ivan Dziuba, a key figure in the resistance movement against state terror, to publicly refute Ukrainian emigres’ claims that he, Dziuba, was arrested, and to condemn the West’s deliberate attempts at dramatizing the situation with Ukrainian intellectuals (Shapoval Reference Shapoval2011, 344; Kas’ianov Reference Kas’ianov1995, 65). Dziuba categorically refused to cooperate. Shevel wrote to the TsK, identifying Dziuba’s behavior as arrogant and non-complainant (TsDAHOU, 1/24/4302/6, 7, 23, 25).

To further compromise Dziuba, Shevel called Vitalii Korotych and asked him to write a scathing review of Dziuba’s pamphlet Internationalizm chy rusyfikatsiia? in exchange for a trip to New York to represent Ukraine at the United Nations (UN). Shevel was absolutely struck by Korotych’s request to allow him to read Dziuba’s text, exclaiming: “Do you understand that we want to send you to the UN? Why do you need to read it? I can just vocalize this proposition—and ten people would immediately line up here to volunteer to write whatever is required of them without reading the text! You what, don’t understand the seriousness of the matter? Think about it!” (Korotych 2000, 1032–1033).

Despite Shevel’s Soviet style of governing, he drastically differed from many Ukrainian bureaucrats. According to his colleagues, Shevel was a person of broad intellectual horizons and interests. He was familiar with world literature and Ukraine’s history and culture due in large part to his educational background, which seem to shape his national consciousness (Vrublevs’kyi Reference Vrublevs’kyi2005, 26; Kravchenko Reference Kravchenko2005, 58).Footnote ⁴ One of Shelest’s assistants O. Khomenko characterized Shevel as an “inextinguishable well of ideas and knowledge” who was respectful of authorities but not fearful of them (Reference Khomenko1990, 1025). Similarly, Vitalii Vrublevs’kyi, a scholar and Shevel’s colleague in the Propaganda and Agitation Department who became Volodymyr Shcherbyts’kyi’s deputy in 1972, has suggested that Shevel had principles, vehemently defending his point of view before the highest party officials (2005, 23). As Shevel’s colleagues suggested, apparently this feature became the reason for Shevel’s new appointment as the Minister of the MZS in 1970. This position was clearly a step down from the prestigious and influential post of Ukraine’s propaganda chief (Iel’chenko Reference Iel’chenko2005, 22). An opinionated person and a man of excellent propagandist skills, Shevel seemed to be tested by the party as to whether he was able to solve similar ideological tasks as the MZS’s Minister.

Yet even in this new capacity, Shevel followed his principles, earning a reputation as a Ukrainian patriot who promoted the Ukrainian language. Shevel encouraged his colleagues to use Ukrainian in their business correspondence, and under his leadership, the MZS was among a few state institutions that used Ukrainian as the language of business communication (Udovenko Reference Udovenko2005, 15; Korniienko Reference Korniienko2005, 73). In the 1970s this was not a popular practice and was a sign of non-conformity that complicated Shevel’s relationship with his supervisors. In addition, without formal training as a diplomat, Shevel faced challenging tasks—to strengthen Ukraine’s diplomatic service while simultaneously complying with the Kremlin’s political and ideological demands.

The MZS and Its Cold War Tasks

As any Ukrainian state institution, the MZS was fully subservient to Moscow. Its sovereignty and national integrity had been destroyed decades earlier. Ignoring international treaties about preserving the sovereignty of Soviet republics, by 1922 the Russian Federation began to obstruct the professional activities of Khrystyian Rakovs’kyi. For his anti-Ukrainian views, Moscow had appointed Rakovs’kyi a Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars in Soviet Ukraine, who simultaneously chaired the Ukrainian People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. His transformation into a Ukrainophile, however, made the Russian Communist party (RKP(b)) search for mechanisms that would subordinate Ukrainian institutions to Moscow (Maistrenko Reference Maistrenko1978, 89–92). The methods of pressure varied, from denying Ukraine’s requests to finance missions and to provide headquarters abroad to depriving Ukrainian diplomats of the opportunity to use Moscow’s telegraph system. At the time, the Ukrainian Communist Party of Bolsheviks (KP(b)U) was wholly subordinated to the RKP(b) (Doroshko Reference Doroshko2008, 63–83), and this status became Russia’s most powerful leverage over Ukraine’s expansion of its foreign diplomatic missions. On October 6, 1922, the TsK RKP(b) ordered the authorities to sign treaties with the republics, including Ukraine, about the creation of the Union. On December 30, 1922, the treaties were signed. As a result, Ukraine’s political and economic activities abroad were gradually curtailed, and foreign journalists began to speak of Ukraine as an entity that de facto lost its sovereignty (Danylenko Reference Danylenko2015, 705–708). The People’s Commissariats of Foreign Affairs in the republics were abolished because of the creation of a centralized institution—the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in Moscow (Narkomindel, later the Ministry of Foreign Affairs/MID, Ministerstvo inostrannykh del in Russian). In early August 1923, Ukraine’s missions abroad ceased their activities, and an appendage totally subservient to Moscow’s Narkomindel functioned in Ukraine.

In February 1944, the KP(b)U’s Politburo declared the creation of Ukraine’s Narkomindel. However, the process of further centralization shaped the politics of this Ukrainian quasi-institution, limiting its functions to perfunctory participation in the activities of the UN and other international organizations. In June 1945, Ukraine became one of the founding members of the UN, which, beyond the advantage of having more votes at peace conferences, was Stalin’s attempt to mitigate the negative impression in the West about the USSR’s annexation of Eastern Galicia and the Baltic States, the liberation movement in Western Ukraine, and the brutality of Soviet repressions after 1945 (Holub Reference Holub1953; Sullivant Reference Sullivant1962, 245–246; Bilinsky Reference Bilinsky1964, 269–278; Motyl Reference Motyl1982, 71–73; Plokhy Reference Plokhy2010, 185–195). Ukraine’s membership in the UN increased its visibility in the international arena but its foreign policies were “completely subordinated to the policy imperatives of the USSR” (Motyl Reference Motyl1987, 87). Moscow’s Narkomindel had the prerogative of decision-making and managing relations between the USSR and foreign states. Ukraine’s status remained equal to that of a provincial Soviet region until the very end of the Soviet Union, but despite this fact Ukraine received certain recognition from the international community due to the TsK KPSS (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) February 1958 decision to create Ukraine’s Permanent Mission to the UN (TsDAHOU, 1/24/4986/151-52).Footnote ⁵

As an outsider, Shevel had to be cautious. According to practices established at the dawn of the Narkomindel, there were plenty of KGB people observing the MZS’s staff from within (Kocho-Williams Reference Kocho-Williams2008, 96). Domestically and abroad, the MID, its republican branches, and embassies were heavily saturated with intelligence agents. Approximately, one- to two-thirds of their personnel worked for the Soviet intelligence apparatus (Kaznacheev Reference Kaznacheev1962, 46–48, 79, 87, 179–180, 184–185, 193). Within the MZS, KGB people carried out round-the-clock surveillance of its personnel, including its leadership. In addition, working offices, as well as homes, of people like Shevel were bugged with listening devices (HDA SBU, 16/1/1028/237).Footnote ⁶

In contrast to other Soviet ministries, the MZS was rather small—100 people, including diplomats and staff. By late 1979, there were 47 diplomats, but only 29 of them were trained as diplomats. The majority were 31–40 years old (15 people) and 41–50 years old (17 people). Five people belonged to an older age cohort (51–60 years old), and four were older than 60. The youngest generation of diplomats included seven people (under 30 years of age) (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1996/7). Importantly, the MZS was an elite Soviet institution, and its traditions of nepotism were inherited and encouraged by the MID. The diplomats’ promotions and their work for the most prestigious Department of International Organizations and Department of International Economic Organizations were achieved through influential relatives and connections, and/or by advancing professional knowledge at the Higher Diplomatic School (VDSh--Vysshaia Diplomaticheskaia Shkola), later the Diplomatic Academy of Moscow’s MID (KE).Footnote ⁷ According to Valerii Kuchyns’kyi, “every Soviet republic had a quota for its citizens to study there. The duration of the courses for diplomats from the republics was two years, for party officials and others – three years.” The Moscow School also offered short-term courses designed for “the best cadres in the Soviet republics” (KE). Although the professional level of Shevel’s subordinates was important to Kyiv and Moscow party leadership, their ideological dispositions were a priority.

At the very beginning of his tenure, Shevel realized what was required of him. The MZS was supposed to function as an ideological organ, fighting local nationalists and monitoring their connections with nationalist émigrés. Moscow’s directives about how to handle Ukrainian nationalists and Western “insinuations” about state violence against them had to be thoroughly followed. Importantly, Shevel’s loyalty was routinely assessed at many levels. Disloyalty or dual loyalty were quickly diagnosed and punished.

Shevel maintained his integrity, never falling into the space of sycophancy and cynicism. He even approached his new duties with a degree of humor and, abbreviating the Russian word inostrannyi to strannyi, consistently referred to the MZS as Ministerstvo strannykh del (the Ministry of Strange Affairs). Although Shevel’s humor was contained to the private sphere, and he was the Minister of Strange Affairs only for a close circle of colleagues (Vozianov Reference Vozianov2005, 49), Moscow was aware of his sarcasm and creative linguistic games through reliable channels of informers and technology. Despite Shevel’s frivolous jokes, he entered the history of Soviet Ukraine’s diplomatic service as the longest tenured minister. The rationale of the party’s tolerance toward people like Shevel rests in the emergence of group identity and group solidarity, especially among nationals, a natural phenomenon of passive resistance to the autocratic state that was extremely pronounced especially during the Brezhnev era, a period of the KGB’s harassment of the Soviet elite (Zubok Reference Zubok2009, 300–301; 321–334). In order to survive, the Soviet regime needed to isolate its subjects to suppress political activism and to prevent sedition, treason, and separatism, which were always possible in the space of coercion and violence, the very essence of the Soviet system. The atomization theory, however, which explains the functioning of Soviet society, seems to overlook “multibonded groups” that resisted and obscured the KGB’s intelligence and the regime’s attempts at individual isolation.Footnote ⁸ These group ties emerged within every institution and every informal organization and, although not homogenous, the Soviet bureaucratic apparatus was such a group where these ties grew strong in the 1970s.

Under Shevel, a group solidarity seemed to exist among the members of the diplomatic core, yet in authoritarian settings, such as the USSR, the power of these group ties and Shevel’s individual power had serious limitations. It is true that in Ukraine, party leaders and state officials (nomenklatura) enjoyed reasonable autonomy, yet the fear of becoming a purge statistic was like the sword of Damocles that hung over their heads daily. In the 1970s, Soviet propaganda and state power buttressed by the KGB were strong and “stable” (Kuzio Reference Kuzio2000, 15). Ukrainian diplomats feared exposure as Ukrainian nationalists, but beyond conformism and ideology that shaped the activities of Ukraine’s state institutions, the Cold War and re-Stalinization became firmly imprinted in their practices.

The escalation of nationalist tendencies in Ukraine and the support of the international community for Ukraine’s opposition provoked serious concerns for the Soviet government (Motyl Reference Motyl1982, 77–78). The MZS’s engagement in denouncing émigré nationalists and in curtailing their rapprochement with Ukraine’s dissenters were critical to Moscow, because Ukraine lacked cadres, including KGB professionals. Shelest repeatedly requested that more KGB operatives be sent to Ukraine because the nationalist movement intensified, as did the activities of foreign intelligence services that allegedly developed their interest in objects of military and strategic importance located in Kyiv and Kharkiv. Shelest informed Moscow that 1,325 former agents of foreign intelligence services and more than 1.5 million people maintained active correspondence with residents in capitalist countries. He suggested that the decreased numbers of KGB agents could not possibly monitor these connections. In addition, Shelest expressed his concern about 140,000 former leaders of the OUN, who resided in Ukraine’s territory after they returned from camps, a source of potential instability especially in Western Ukraine (TsDAHOU, 1/25/387/21-23).

The statistics were indeed alarming. Before 1954, in Ukraine there were 19,000 individuals working for the secret organs. By 1970 only 8,335 people remained. Shelest complained that the number of KGB city district departments had also decreased: in 19 eastern Ukrainian oblasts there were only 115 departments left that serviced 390 administrative districts. Eleven oblasts had only two or four city district departments which caused tremendous difficulties in conducting surveillance, especially in close proximity to strategically important defense objects. Kyiv and Kharkiv, with populations of 1.6 million and 1.2 million residents respectively, suffered the most because it became increasingly difficult to prevent the anti-social and nationalist activities of “hostile elements,” Shelest argued. He insisted that the KGB staff be increased by up to 1,128 people to create an additional 18 regional KGB departments in Kyiv and Kharkiv, a city department in Donets’k and 41 regional and city departments in Ukraine’s 16 oblasts. Moscow partially satisfied Shelest’s request, allowing an additional 650 staff to be included in Ukraine’s KGB in 1971 (TsDAHOU, 1/25/387/21-23).

Ukraine’s KGB needed the help of other state institutions, and the MZS was assigned tasks that were traditionally solved by the secret police. Samizdat (samvydav in Ukrainian), manually retyped copies of publications that were circulated among intellectuals and considered seditious by the state, became another problem for the authorities (Kas’ianov Reference Kas’ianov1995, 88–120). Special MZS personnel carefully reviewed samizdat texts, and sent the TsK and the KGB their reports with brief biographies of the authors. For instance, in 1970 the MZS concentrated on two books published in the same year in Canada and the United States, Two Years in Soviet Ukraine by John Kolasky and Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? by Andrei Amalrik, that illegally circulated among intellectuals. The MZS contributed greatly in clarifying the danger of samizdat texts, and in late December 1971, the Union’s TsK issued a secret resolution to “silence dissent and quash the growing samizdat movement” (Farmer Reference Farmer1980, 189; TsDAHOU, 1/25/398/1-5, 8, 38).

Moscow’s anxieties about the situation in Ukraine were exacerbated by proclamations and leaflets of anti-Soviet, anti-Russian, and pro-Western content that by 1970 became a wide-spread phenomenon in the largest Ukrainian cities. For instance, on March 25, 1970, leaflets were found at the Kyiv Polytechnical Institute that called for support of Dziuba and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who were expelled from the Writers’ Union (TsDAHOU, 1/25/398/19). Other leaflets were pro-Western, and openly called for change of the regime: “Down with communism,” “Down with the USSR,” and “Long live America” (TsDAHOU, 1/25/698/104).

The Kremlin blamed Ukraine’s leadership, making a decision to replace Ukrainians in key positions of power with people loyal to Moscow. As far as Brezhnev was concerned, Shelest and his associates had adopted a national-deviationist orientation (Bilinsky Reference Bilinsky1975, 239–255; Shapoval Reference Shapoval2011). The most noticeable move was the July 16, 1970 appointment of Vitalii Fedorchuk as head of Ukraine’s KGB. He replaced Vitalii Nikitchenko, who adopted Shelest’s moderate approach to punishing dissent (Bilocerkowycz Reference Bilocerkowycz1988, 32). Fedorchuk believed that Shelest had ingratiated himself with nationalists and prepared the grounds for Shelest’s dismissal. In June-July of 1972, Moscow blamed Shelest for supporting the Ukrainian intelligentsia and ultimately fomenting dissent, and replaced him with Shcherbyts’kyi who was considered more loyal than Shelest (Shapoval Reference Shapoval2011, 30–36). The reshuffle continued after Shelest’s ouster.

By 1970, the regime made a clear distinction between those who were compliant and those who resisted Ukraine’s ideological and cultural subversion. The reputation of many Ukrainian intellectuals as nationalists was established through their participation in shistdesiatnytstvo. The KGB’s Fifth Directorate conceived a secret operation under the code name “Block” (1971–1986) to neutralize the opposition (HDA SBU, 16/1/1028/398-431; Bilocerkowycz Reference Bilocerkowycz1988, 33–34; V’iatrovych Reference V’iatrovych2011, 204–212; 213–225), and Fedorchuk and Shcherbyts’kyi violently choked it, engaging Shevel and the MZS in their activities. Those Ukrainians who were more or less informed about the state terror tried to secretly escape from the communist paradise. From 1970 to 1975, in the territory of Ukraine, 217 people were arrested while attempting to cross the Soviet border (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1399/105).

The “nationalists” were under constant surveillance. The KGB recreated their moods and conversations in reports to the TsK and MZS officials who had their own interest in these people (TsDAHOU, 1/25/398/63-68). Because in the 1970s the Iron Curtain proved to be porous, communication between Soviet citizens and the West grew substantially, requiring the efforts of several state agencies to monitor it (TsDAHOU, 1/16a/10/1-2; Vasil’iev et al. Reference Vasil’iev2006, 374; Zhuk Reference Zhuk2010). More frequently than before, “nationalist” gatherings were attended by the Ukrainian diaspora, sympathizers with the cause of Ukraine’s liberation from Russia’s domination. For instance, in 1975, approximately 5,000 tourists of Ukrainian heritage from Canada, the United States, France, and other countries visited Ukraine to learn more about their roots (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1433/50). No one was trusted, either the Westerners or the Ukrainians. Through the concerted efforts of Malanchuk, Fedorchuk, and Shevel, the guests’ ideological inclinations were thoroughly scrutinized, and the extent of their interactions with Ukrainian citizens was noted. On the basis of these analyses, the MZS made decisions about people’s eligibility for visas. Close attention was paid to Ukrainian celebrities and intellectuals who a priori were suspects and thus targets. They were questioned twice about their potential connections with Ukrainian émigré by MZS and KGB officials—in the process of obtaining visas to travel abroad and upon their return home. For example, after his return from Canada in March 1970, the theater and film director Viktor Ivchenko was accused of meeting with “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists.” Ivchenko denied the accusations and stated that if any publications that blemished his reputation would appear in the press, he would immediately call for a press conference to protest the abuse (TsDAHOU, 1/25/398/62). To avoid Ivchenko-like threats in the future, in September 1971 the TsK ordered the MZS to deny visas to capitalist countries to most celebrities and especially to scientists who had access to classified information (TsDAHOU, 1/16/176/1-2).

The crackdown on dissent in Ukraine intensified in October 1972 when Shcherbyts’kyi promoted Valentyn Malanchuk to ideological chief and secretary of the TsK, a black day for the intelligentsia (TsDAHOU, 1/25/642/128). Immediately after appointing Malanchuk, on October 11, 1972, Sherbyts’kyi signed a top secret resolution about the intensification of struggle against nationalism, an order that Malanchuk took to heart. The era of malanchukism is associated with the broad scope of repression against Ukrainian intellectuals and the destruction of Ukrainian culture and language.

Strategically, the MZS contributed a great deal to curbing Ukrainian nationalism. The nationally conscious Ukrainian intelligentsia that was swept away by a new wave of state repressions in 1972–1973 (Kas’ianov Reference Kas’ianov1995, 121–158) had their sympathizers in the MZS but, as state officials, they had to thoroughly conceal their patriotic feelings and often latent nationalism. They protected their extremely comfortable but fragile world from the authorities, simultaneously being loyal to Soviet ideology and national patrimony. One of the most unusual contributions were the MZS’s suggestions about how to handle annual ceremonial gatherings of Ukrainian intellectuals near Taras Shevchenko’s monument in Kyiv. Beginning on May 22, 1963, they celebrated the anniversaries of the reburial of Shevchenko’s remains in Kaniv by making speeches and reading Shevchenko’s poems. The authorities perceived these activities as provocations and interpreted them as “nationalistic” manifestations. These ceremonies usually attracted significant attention from the Western press and foreign tourists. In cooperation with Kyiv party authorities and the KGB, the MZS came up with an innovative idea to minimize foreign guests’ attention to clashes that regularly occurred between commemorators and the militia. With Moscow’s permission, these institutions inaugurated a youth festival “Kyiv Spring,” dedicated to friendship among the peoples of the USSR. The festival was to be held annually on May 16–22, a plan that dislodged the activists’ program, forcing them to gather in the evenings after the festivities. The militia were able to apprehend the transgressors quietly, when foreign guests had predictably dispersed. These measures were rather effective: the May 22, 1972 arrest of 82 people indeed passed largely unnoticed in the West (TsDAHOU, 1/25/698/1,18).

In addition, the MZS provided the TsK with digests of reactionary works published abroad (TsDAHOU, 1/16/177/1-2). On April 13, 1973, Shcherbyts’kyi signed a resolution to fight the ideology of national communism espoused by Ukrainian émigrés in works published in the West. The book Do khvyli, written in 1919 by two Ukrainian left-wing social democrats Serhii Mazlakh and Vasyl’ Shakhrai and republished in New York in 1967, advocated Ukraine’s independence, and was deemed especially harmful. In response, Malanchuk proposed the creation of special groups of scholars who would study these digests and publish critiques of this “libelous” ideology. He further suggested that the Association “Znannia” should organize a series of public lectures to clarify Soviet nationalities policies, employing talking points from Brezhnev’s speeches (TsDAHOU, 1/16/177/4-5).

Soviet propagandists, however, failed miserably to conceal regimentation and state violence. The UN and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) were bombarded by letters of complaint from various civic organizations concerning prosecution of Ukrainian intellectuals. Human rights violations and Ukraine’s forced russification were the two most frequent grievances. These petitions continued to be the main headache for Shevel during the entire decade of his tenure as minister.

The process of dealing with this issue was time-consuming and rather complex. Shevel had to inform the TsK about each case. Then, under Malanchuk’s supervision, the KGB created a special document (kompromat) that would demonstrate that isolation of this individual was legitimate and necessary. Further, this document was forwarded to the MZS (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1512/12-14). Typically, as a philologist and a person of high erudition, Shevel himself revised compromats to dramatize and enhance them rhetorically (Zlenko Reference Zlenko2005, 12; Korniienko Reference Korniienko2005, 72). The objective was to amplify the guilt of the accused before the state, and to justify their imprisonment. When the reports to the UN were finalized and approved by the TsK, they were sent to the chair of the Union’s Executive Council who presented them before UN members to disavow the claims about human rights violations in the USSR (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1512/14).

Beyond explanatory letters to the UN, Shevel’s responsibilities also included writing analytical reports to the TsK, in which he discussed the extent of the UN’s awareness about the conflict between nationalists and Ukrainian authorities. For instance, Shevel’s July 7, 1972 report highlighted how well-informed the petitioners were in their appeals to the UN about the illegal arrest of Valentyn Moroz, Viacheslav Chornovil, Ivan Svitlychnyi, Ievhen Sverstiuk, Leonid Pliushch, Iryna Stasiv-Kalynets’, and Stefania Shabatura. The authors demanded the restoration of their rights stipulated by the Declaration of Human Rights, and an open trial for these men and women which ought to be attended by the representatives of the International Court. Shevel emphasized that these texts were clearly “fabricated by Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists” hostile to the USSR, and that they were considered at the highest level by the UN’s Secretary General Kurt Waldheim. The most striking detail was the number of petitions: from January to May 1972, Waldheim received 3,000 letters written in defense of Ukrainian intellectuals, “allegedly” prosecuted by the Soviet regime. Shevel noted that petitions were received from the United States, Canada, and Western European countries, and their sheer numbers encouraged the UN to include the cases discussed in these petitions in the agenda of the UN human rights commission. Shevel, however, comforted the TsK by stating that typically no decisions were made in the past about letters of this sort, and likely the situation would remain the same in the future (TsDAHOU, 1/25/698/91-92).

In August 1979, the TsK KPU Foreign Connections Department ordered Shevel to design strategies that would neutralize Western “nationalists’ attempts to use UNESCO as a platform for spreading anti-Soviet lies about the russification of schools in the republic” (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1891/55). In three weeks Shevel came up with a comprehensive plan that would, in his view, restrain nationalist émigrés’ activities.

Shevel identified four categories among three million ethnic Ukrainians residing abroad: reactionary, progressive, “neutral,” and politically indifferent. He suggested that Soviet embassies invest their efforts in intelligence, studying the connections between nationalists and the local political, business, and clerical elites, governments, and secret services, and analyzing the extent of interactions between them and other “ethnic reactionary circles, such as Zionists and Maoists.” Shevel insisted that it would be prudent to ideologically subvert nationalist youth and those who belonged to the “neutral” immigrant category to prevent their anti-Soviet activities. Shevel argued that to achieve these goals Soviet embassies should organize cultural events to reach out to those who were ideologically unstable or undecided, and provide them with Soviet propaganda literature. In addition, he promised to financially support events, such as “The Days of the UkrSSR Abroad,” held under the auspices of Soviet embassies, which would promote the Soviet way of life in Ukraine and deliver a message about the humane nature of Soviet nationalities policies. Shevel accentuated that anti-Soviet rhetoric had been intensified in the American Congress which, in his view, constituted “a gross interference in Soviet internal affairs.” He continued that American intelligence used every opportunity to escalate the conflict between the USSR and the U.S. by harassing Soviet officials who worked in America or who visited there on business trips. Thus the proposed measures would discredit the émigrés’ claims that were damaging to peaceful coexistence and Soviet-American relations (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1891/69-71).

Shevel wrote these propositions and reports until the end of his tenure as minister, closely cooperating with the TsK’s commission on external political propaganda and counterpropaganda. Among its members were ideological dinosaurs, such as Kapto, Anatolii Merkulov, Leonid Kravchuk, and Arnold Shlepakov (TsDAHOU, 1/25/2859/27).Footnote ⁹ Importantly, in his reports, Shevel identified people, such as Moroz, Pliushch, Nadiia Svitlychna, and Petro Hryhorenko as “criminals” whose public speeches shaped publications of nationalist émigrés and inspired them to established charity funds, such as the Moroz fund, the Hryhorenko fund, the Svitlychna fund, and the Pliushch fund (TsDAHOU, 1/25/2859/27).Footnote ¹⁰

Pro-Soviet and anti-nationalist rhetoric also permeated the documents that Shevel wrote for historical anniversaries. The end of Shevel’s tenure coincided with celebrations of the 35th anniversary of the Soviet victory over fascist Germany and the 40th anniversary of the “unification” of western lands with Soviet Ukraine. The authorities asked Shevel to prepare two texts that would be distributed abroad among members of the UN and other international organizations. In late 1979, he submitted two documents for the TsK’s approval. The tremendous efforts of all Soviet peoples against the Germans in the Great Patriotic War constituted the gist of the first document. Shevel criticized the attempts of Ukrainian nationalists to emphasize the important role Ukraine and Ukrainian soldiers played in the liberation of the USSR from German occupation, and stressed that the victory could not be imagined without the contribution of all Soviet peoples. The second document discussed the “voluntary unification” of western Ukrainian lands in Poland with Soviet Ukraine in 1939, and Polish suppression of national minorities in western territories (especially Ukrainians and Belarussians) as a justification for unification.Footnote ¹¹ It was designed to neutralize the discourse about the 1939 Soviet aggression in Poland and the questioning of the Soviet Western borders with socialist countries (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1996/16).

The trail of documents that Shevel left behind reveals that the state equipped the MZS with the necessary tools and authorization to discourage dissidence and criticism of Soviet nationalities policies domestically and abroad. The party established rigid rules and procedures that codified the MZS’s functions and Ukrainian diplomats’ political behavior. Whether Shevel and people like him believed in what they were writing for their bosses remains a matter for conjecture. An analysis of his social links and national affinities invites us to discover another Shevel, a person of principles, national pride, and concerns about Ukrainian culture.

Shevel’s Vacillation

Shevel’s conformism is not surprising. The late Brezhnev period was characterized by the overarching control of the KGB, inspiring fear even among the most courageous high-ranking state officials. As Alexander Motyl has aptly noted, “Brezhnev returned to a watered-down version of Stalinism…granting more prerogatives to the coercive apparatus” (1987, 138). Vladimir Voinovich has identified the formula of survival under the Soviets through the revelations of Vasilii Karetnikov, a character of the satirical novel The Fur Coat. In a private conversation, Karetnikov, a writer and a deputy to the USSR’s Supreme Soviet, shared his thoughts with his fellow writer Yefim Rakhlin: “The state gave me everything, and I despise it…. The Party demands our devotion, not our hearts [or principles]. … you’re supposed to understand the difference between the words allowed and required. I do what is required, and therefore I am allowed much. If you don’t do what is required, you are allowed less. Much less. That’s dialectics” (Voinovich Reference Voinovich1989, 80-81). Following Karetnikov’s logic, loyal apparatchiki did what was required of them to sustain reasonably comfortable lives. They learned from the Great Terror that alternatives to conformism and politically anemic responses might be fatal (Viola Reference Viola2017).

So did Shevel, a loyal Communist apparatchik and part of the Soviet system that created, promoted and politicized him. He owed the system everything he had—education, a high position in the party and state hierarchy, and nomenklatura privileges. Shevel’s tenure as Ukraine’s chief ideologue to a significant degree shaped his activities as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Although the application of his skills within diplomatic settings seemed “strange” to Shevel, he did not regret such a twist in his career. He extended his circle of acquaintances in the intelligentsia and even befriended quite a few of them. These bonds illuminate Shevel’s conflicted worldviews and professional challenges. He was a Ukrainian Soviet patriot, like many other representatives of the Ukrainian state elite, including those who were close to Shevel (i.e. Shlepakov and Leonid Leshchenko) (Zhuk Reference Zhuk2018, 26–27, 80–87, 107–112).

Memoirs written by Shevel’s colleagues, in conjunction with archival documents, provide valuable insight into Shevel’s identity and personality. They suggest that Shevel’s dual loyalty played a decisive role in his “soft” removal from the MZS immediately after the 1980 Summer Olympics hosted by the USSR. Clearly, Shevel’s Ukrainization of the MZS was not included in the Kremlin’s short-term or long-term plans. His leniency toward Ukrainian intellectuals garnered no appreciation among Moscow’s party leadership who encouraged Shevel to retire.

In early 1974, the central and regional TsKs launched a sensational campaign against Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his book The Gulag Archipelago about the Soviet forced labor camp system, published in the West in 1973 and thereafter circulated as samizdat until 1989 when the Russian journal Novyi Mir finally published it. Ukrainian writers and state officials were required to condemn the book and its author for his anti-Soviet attitudes despite the fact that only a few had read it. The Kyiv poet Mykola Nahnybida, for instance, identified Solzhenitsyn’s work as a form of political prostitution (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1044/3). The secretary of the Crimean chapter of the Writers’ Union Anatolii Dombrovskii announced that Crimean writers approved the party resolution to strip Solzhenitsyn of his Soviet citizenship and to deport him from the USSR (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1044/8). Kharkiv writers Iurii Shovkoplias, Viktor Lahoza, and Volodymyr Petrov sent a letter to the regional party committee, in which they identified Solzhenitsyn as “an internal emigrant and a despicable pygmy who spit in the face of his Motherland and the Soviet people” (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1044/27).

Shevel was aware of the events related to Solzhenitsyn’s deportation. In February and March 1974, he reported to Shcherbyts’kyi, offering an analysis of how the United States utilized Solzhenitsyn’s text in its anti-Soviet propaganda and alerting him that the party’s attack against those who refused to participate in the anti-Solzhenitsyn campaign had become known to the West. Shevel attached a translated interview of the Russian writer and Kyivite Viktor Nekrasov, published in March 1974 in The New York Times, in which Nekrasov revealed how the authorities harassed him and threatened to not publish his works, if he was recalcitrant (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1044/29-33,35,39, 44). For 42 hours, nine KGB officers terrorized Nekrasov, thoroughly searched his apartment, and confiscated everything that he valued—his private archive, tape recorder, typewriter, and unfinished manuscripts (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1044/55-56).

Interestingly enough, the memoirs by Shevel’s colleagues reveal the discrepancy between his official position and his personal stance about the Solzhenitsyn affair. They remembered that during a meeting where the MZS’s personnel were supposed to label Solzhenitsyn’s work as anti-Soviet, Shevel interrupted the presenter, who had fervently attacked Solzhenitsyn. Shevel asked him whether he had read Solzhenitsyn’s work, and insisted that labels would be appropriate only when one was familiar with the text. After Shevel’s remark, the atmosphere of ideological enthusiasm was ruined, and the meeting was quickly ended (Kuchyns’kyi Reference Kuchyns’kyi2005, 37; Korniienko Reference Korniienko2005, 73).

It is also debatable whether Shevel’s reports to the TsK accurately reflected the MZS’s efforts to curtail communication between Ukraine’s intellectual elite and Ukrainian émigrés. More research is needed to investigate the MZS’s real mode of operation abroad. The Ukrainian poet Borys Oliinyk has argued that, while serving as minister, Shevel expanded the writers’ connections with the Ukrainian diaspora. Oliinyk recalled that Shevel arranged a meeting with the New York diaspora, where Oliinyk had an opportunity to talk with them and read his poetry. Denunciation letters followed and, being under Malanchuk’s two-year “siege,” Oliinyk was finally removed from his position as secretary of the Writers’ Union. Malanchuk’s chauvinistic tendencies and attacks against intellectuals made Shevel receptive to and protective of nationally conscious writers. Many claimed that Shevel rejected Malanchuk’s Russification of Ukraine, but he was unable to directly send the national message to broader audiences, let alone to the TsK. Yet Shevel included Oliinyk in the Ukrainian delegation to the UN General Assembly, which ameliorated Malanchuk’s attacks (Oliinyk Reference Oliinyk2005, 84).

This tactic was germinated under Shelest. Both were worried about the fate of Ukrainian intellectuals, and saved many of them from the clutches of the KGB and repression. Among them were also the Ukrainian writer Oles’ Honchar, who was criticized by the party for his “nationalistic” novel Cathedral (Sobor, 1968) (Zhuk Reference Zhuk2010, 53–64; Koval’ Reference Koval’1989; Shapoval Reference Shapoval2011, 345; Vozianov Reference Vozianov2005, 47), Iurii Mushketyk, a talented Ukrainian prose writer, and Pavlo Skochii, the deputy of the first democratic session of the Lviv oblast Rada in 1990 (Skochii Reference Skochii2005, 76–82; Bilodid Reference Bilodid2005, 35). Shevel was sincerely disturbed by the imprisonment of Ukrainian writers. He sadly told his colleagues: “See, boys, I am very concerned that when I talk to an intelligent person, he (or she) is against Soviet power” (Korneienko 2005, 74). Shevel also complained to his associates that the TsK pressed him to fire a young diplomat, Iurii Kostenko, only because his wife Liudmyla Skyrda published her poetry in Ukrainian (Bilodid Reference Bilodid2005, 35).

Many felt indebted to Shevel and Larysa Pavlivna, Shevel’s wife who often asked her husband to protect the talented celebrities (Oliinyk Reference Oliinyk2005, 83). She worked as an editor in the literary journal Dnipro whose chief editor in the 1970s was Mushketyk. Through everyday communication with Larysa Pavlivna, he seemed to know the world of the Shevel family. Mushketyk is indeed enormously grateful to Shevel for protecting him from Malanchuk’s abuse. Mushketyk, however, is quite balanced in his evaluation of Shevel, emphasizing that in many respects, he was a communist loyal to Moscow, like everyone else in the TsK. Mushketyk remembers Shevel when he, as Ukraine’s ideology chief, participated in the campaign against the gifted Ukrainian writer Hryhir Tiutiunnyk, labeling him a nationalist and anti-Soviet writer. Mushketyk posits that Shevel was a conflicted individual and laments that Shevel had to suppress his humane qualities and nationalism: “Under the right circumstances, he could do a lot of good things” (Mushketyk Reference Mushketyk2005, 102–103). Similarly, Shevel’s daughter Larysa Bilyk has noted that her father “lived during such a time occupying such positions that he could not do what he believed was right. A lot of things did not depend on him” (Bilyk Reference Bilyk2005, 109).

Shevel was vigilant and self-monitoring in his official reports but frank with people whom he trusted. For instance, in a private conversation with Skochii, he revealed that a group of nationally conscious party leaders in Ukraine, including Shelest, were trying to preserve Ukrainian intellectuals, culture, and identity from destruction and repression. Shevel suggested that Shelest also attempted to protect Ukraine from economic servitude by rejecting Moscow’s requests to increase quotas for bread and other Ukrainian foodstuffs to be exported (Skochii Reference Skochii2005, 81). Helping nationalists was a secret affair for Shevel that counterbalanced the official “strange” affairs of the MZS and the responsibilities he fulfilled as its Minister. Civic gallantry, however, was not foreign to Shevel. The Ukrainian diplomat Anatolii Zlenko revealed that Shevel loathed state violence and the Holodomor, products of Stalin’s terror in Ukraine (Zlenko Reference Zlenko2005, 13). Shevel also had the courage to inform Shcherbyts’kyi about Malanchuk’s black list of “Ukrainian nationalists” who were banned from promotion and publishing their work (Vozianov Reference Vozianov2005, 49). Shevel argued that such practices were absolutely unacceptable, non-transparent, and arbitrary.

This leniency toward Ukrainian writers made Shevel vulnerable to denunciations, and in 1979, Merkulov, head of the TsK Foreign Relations Department, wrote to Shcherbyts’kyi about Shevel’s incompetence and accused him of being unable to organize the MZS’s work. Merkulov claimed that the MZS’s personnel were “out of control” but Shevel paid little attention to their moral and professional shortcomings. The MZS was supposed to function as a Soviet propaganda agency, not to accommodate nationalists. Prior to Merkulov’s report, at a joint meeting with the TsK KPU, Shevel expressed his concerns about the MZS’s active engagement in the struggle against nationalists, announcing that the MZS “was not an ideological organ” (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1996/7). Shevel was admonished for this ideological shortsightedness, but, as Merkulov suggested, he remained unresponsive to any criticisms, and drew no lessons from professional advice. Merkulov noted that his department was under the impression that Shevel was simply incapable of efficiently managing the MZS’s cadres, a necessary requirement for his position clarified by both—Moscow’s and Kyiv’s party leadership (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1996/10).

“Prophylactic” talks with Shevel in the TsK headquarters and numerous meetings dedicated to Shevel’s apolitical behavior resulted in his hospitalization for 22 days. In November 1979, Shevel blamed his poor health for possible shortcomings in his work, providing his doctor’s explanatory note to the TsK. The diagnoses were quite serious—hypertonia and chronic ischemic disease (TsDAHOU, 1/25/1996/13). The TsK permitted Shevel to keep his job for another year, and in November 1980 he resigned, succeeded by Volodymyr Martynenko. According to many testimonies, Shevel indeed suffered from poor health, a result of his war experiences, but as some of his colleagues suggested, unofficially, the reasons behind Shevel’s replacement were his harmony with nationalists and his excessive consumption of alcohol.

For Brezhnev, the task of transforming Ukraine into an exemplary Soviet republic was impeded by people such as Shevel who constantly maneuvered between their nationalist and communist inclinations. Like his ex-patron Shelest, nationally minded Shevel became expendable after Brezhnev suppressed the dissident movement in Ukraine and inhibited the revival of Ukrainian culture (Plokhy Reference Plokhy2017, 293–294).

Shevel’s ambivalence appears to be of an intellectual and ideological nature. He enjoyed considerable upward social mobility, a factor that is crucial to one’s intellectual ego. His successful career as a state bureaucrat occurred precisely because of the triumph of Soviet ideology, his acceptance of this ideology, and the “imperial priorities of the state” that came with it.Footnote ¹² The acceptance of this compromise typically occurred easily; a protest against it, especially in the public sphere, was always difficult, if not inconceivable. Apart from Shevel’s formal struggle against Ukrainian nationalism, his devotion to Ukrainian culture is unquestionable, exemplified by those whom he helped survive. With their survival, the space of national consciousness was sustained and further expanded in Ukraine.

Epilogue

As many observers have emphasized, the majority of Ukrainian Soviet nomenklatura had never been “anti-centrists.” Most recent studies, such as Sergei Zhuk’s Soviet Americana (2018), illuminate the fact of their loyalty to Moscow and support for its decisions. But they were not anti-Ukrainian. In fact, they were proud of the fact that Soviet power offered Ukraine statehood status, though in a Soviet socialist form. For the majority, independent Ukraine was an unacceptable and impossible option, and their position about Ukraine’s future was ambivalent at best. They regularly maneuvered between centrist and anti-centrist positions, exhibiting double-consciousness of a Stalinist-type communist and a Ukrainian patriot (Vasil’iev et al. Reference Vasil’iev2006, 7–8, 13). Some scholars have identified Ukraine’s nomenklatura working under Khrushchev and Brezhnev as national communists whose contributions to the collapse of the Soviet Union were decisive. The nationally conscious intelligentsia and their push toward reforms and Ukraine’s independence lacked institutional tools which were provided by the “primary political actors” in Ukraine—nationally minded state elites who were Soviet communists (Plokhy Reference Plokhy2014; Reference Plokhy2017, 293–294; Kuzio Reference Kuzio2000, 3, 8).

Archival findings illuminate with absolute clarity what was required of the MZS top leadership during the Cold War and how they kept up with the state’s growing demands to fight nationalism in the republic and abroad. The Cold War necessitated routine enhancement of the USSR’s reputation in the international arena, and Moscow produced a Soviet Ukrainian institution designed to boost it by obscuring human rights violations and state violence against Ukraine’s dissent. The party effectively managed and monitored the regional state elites who fulfilled this task and were critical to the very survival of the Soviet regime. Although engaged in symbolic and ritualized interactions with the state, they helped the Kremlin govern and keep the general public under control to minimize deviant behavior. They were given two options: to conform and pursue their elite careers; or “not conform and then accept the consequences” (Motyl Reference Motyl1987, 119–120). The majority kowtowed to the state, accepting political aesthetics and rituals and willingly participating in them. “Civic emotions” and negotiations with the state also became a ritual, exemplifying reciprocal relationships between Soviet citizens and the state (Yekelchyk Reference Yekelchyk2014, 4, 5). It is unknown whether hypocrisy and conformism were harmonious or agonizing for Shevel, a discovery that could be drawn from his diary or personal notes. None of them seem to be left behind.

Certainly, the dilemma of conformism should be considered in the context of consumption, no matter how divorced it might seem from the tenets of Leninism-Marxism. Financial comfort and social mobility were those elements of consumption that Soviet ideology offered to its loyal servants, and this ideology was appealing precisely because, beyond indoctrination and violence, it could offer them the illusion of national independence substantiated by “their possession of formal republican sub-state structures, parties, legal codes, flags, anthems, and constitutions” (Motyl Reference Motyl1987, 83–84). Requirements of loyalty to Moscow and national aspirations often clashed, ultimately revealing the elites’ Ukrainianness with a communist face. Soviet ideology was a device that organized Ukrainian state officials’ political and social space and practices which were not exactly Soviet, but by no means, were they anti-Soviet or national in a conventional sense. Truly, “the evidence for our thinking lies in our actions and utterances,” one thinker has suggested (Freeden Reference Freeden2003, 21).

Shevel’s involvement in Soviet propaganda and nationalities policies was a series of battles against internal and external nationalists, as well as a never-ending battle between unequal powers—state power and counter-power of constant individual negotiations, battles that shaped his identities and the MZS’s image during the Cold War. Importantly, by action or inaction, national communists expanded the space of nationalism in Ukraine, and Shevel’s individual history serves as a clear reminder of how conflicted Soviet life was and how pervasive the influence of ideology was in the space of personal and professional conflict.