Eradication of the National Element in Ukrainian Cinema in the 1960s–1970s

Abstract

In this article the author studies the elimination of the national element in the Ukrainian cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. The author explores the role and place of national-patriotic issues in Ukrainian cinematography, shows the ideological enslavement of filmmakers, studies the conditions of creative self-realization in the Ukrainian SSR, and analyses the influence of social and political factors on the cultural sphere of Ukrainian people in the outlined period. The representatives of Ukrainian cinema has always tried to popularize national features of their own people, but in the specified period, for censorship reasons, Ukrainian cinema began to be prohibited. The main reason is the struggle with the so-called “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism”. For such an accusation it was enough to voice any film in Ukrainian and to fill its content with Ukrainian subjects. The characteristic features of Ukrainian cinematography of the 1960s – the early 1970s are as follows: subordination to the Soviet centralized command-administrative system, total control of the CPSU – CPU, russification, denationalization, persecution of all Ukrainian values under the pretext of forming a united Soviet nation.