The Change of Signposts in the Ukrainian Emigration: A Contribution to the History of Sovietophilism in the 1920s by Christopher Gilley (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 913 which will take them into the next century, as the wealth of material gathered by Petrone proves conclusively. Department of Russian & Slavic Studies John Garrard University of Arizona Gilley, Christopher. The Change of Signposts in the Ukrainian Emigration: A Contribution to the History of Sovietophilism in the 1920s. Soviet and PostSoviet Politics and Society, 91. Ibidem, Stuttgart, 2009. 468 pp. Glossary. Notes. Appendix. Bibliography. €44.90 (paperback). Since the end of World War Two, the Ukrainian diaspora has positioned itself as a community of political refugees refusing to accept their nation’s subjugation by the Soviet Union. Christopher Gilley seeks to recover an earlier and more ambivalent picture of Ukrainian émigré politics by focusing on its powerful Sovietophile current of the 1920s, now largely forgotten. Using a wealth of materials from rare émigré periodicals and Ukrainian archives, he traces the history of the movement for the ‘return’ to Soviet Ukraine among the 80,000 to 100,000 Ukrainian émigrés, who escaped to Central Europe at the end of the Civil War. Strong Soviet sympathies among some members of the interwar Ukrainian emigration were no secret to later historians, but were usually interpreted as a reaction to the Entente’s March 1923 decision permanently awarding to Poland eastern Galicia with its predominantly Ukrainian population. The story Gilley tells is much more complex. Its aspects include the disintegration of minor socialist parties in the emigration, the nationalists’ search for foreign support against Poland, and simply the desire of many peasant soldiers to return home. All these factors led émigrés to turn their eyes to Soviet Ukraine. In turn, the republic’s leadership was interested in splitting the emigration politically and breaking down the larger groups of interned soldiers who were still in camps just across the border. SomeofGilley’smostfascinatingsourcescovertwohigh-profile‘returns’;that of the former head of the Ukrainian government, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, and the former head of the Ukrainian revolutionary parliament, Mykhailo Hrushevsky. The author provides a rich context for them through his close reading of émigré archives and newspapers, as well as contemporary Soviet memoranda. Vynnychenko went back briefly to Soviet Ukraine in 1920, but left after being denied a position of real influence, while Hrushevsky returned for good in 1924, although he continued his career in Soviet Ukraine as a historian rather than as a politician. What motivated these two former leaders of the Ukrainian Revolution? Gilley describes the world of émigré politics with its petty squabbling and competition for funding from foreign powers, in SEER, 91, 4, OCTOBER 2013 914 which both socialism and nationalism could push activists toward cooperation with the only Ukrainian polity in existence, the Bolshevik puppet Ukrainian republic. If Vynnychenko was motivated in larger measure by his own ideological affinity to the Bolsheviks, for Hrushevsky it was more of an opportunity to continue the long tradition of Ukrainian populism and cultural work in the only state that supported the Ukrainian language, culture, and scholarship. The Entente’s 1923 decision nearly coincided with the Soviet Union’s turn to the policy of korenizatsiia, which in its Ukrainian incarnation as Ukrainization soondevelopedintoanimpressiveaffirmative-actionprogrammeforUkrainian culture. This turned Soviet Ukraine into a beacon even for radical nationalists abroad. One of Gilley’s most stunning discoveries is that in late 1923 or early 1924 the future founder of the (rabidly anti-Soviet) Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Yevhen Konovalets, applied to the Soviet Ukrainian government for financial support for ‘his group’, only to have his request rejected (p. 307). The wide political spectrum of émigré activists that the author includes in his study presents a formidable challenge in terms of an overall theoretical framework. The one suggested in the book’s title (which, in an unusual move, is identical to the title of chapter five) calls for a comparison with the betterknown political trend among Russian émigrés, which is usually known as the ChangeofSignpostsmovement(Smenavekh,originallythetitleofaninfluential collection of articles). Yet, the reader soon realizes the difficulty built into any such comparison because these Russian émigrés were great-power chauvinists, who wanted to see the Soviet Union not as a socialist state but as a successor of the Russian Empire. This is the direct opposite of...