The Struggle Over Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi: Recent Soviet Polemics

* This article is in commemoration of the 125th anniversary of Mykhailo Hrushevs'ky's birth. 1 An anecdote cited by V. Chemerys in Slovo za toboiu Kyieve, Literaturna Ukraina 24 January 1991. Literaturna Ukraina, organ of the Writers Union of Ukraine, is hereafter cited as LU. 2 S. Tsikora, K chitateliu cherez polveka, Izvestiia 12 February 1988. As noted immediately by R. Solchanyk, this article represented a major step toward Hrushevs'kyi' s rehabilitation. See his to be Rehabilitated? Radio Liberty Research £w/te////70(1988):l-4. 3 Although Hrushevsky's writings were banned in Ukraine, they were available in Moscow and Leningrad. See la. Dashkevych, Khto takyi Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi? Nauka i kuVtura. Ukraina, vol. 23 (Kiev: Akademiia nauk URSR, Tovarystvo Znannia URSR, 1989)201. 4 The only comprehensive political biography of Hrushevs'kyi in English is T. Prymak's, Mykiiailo Hrusiievsky: Tlie Politics of National Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987). Unfortunately, the historical writings arc not analyzed here. See also L. Wynar, Naivydatnishyi istoryk Ukrainy Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi (1866-1934). U 50-littia smerty (n.p.: Suchasnist, 1985), which does analyze Hrushevs'kyi' s historical works. Cf. also D. Doroshenko, A Survey of Ukrainian Historiography, and O. Ohloblyn, Ukrainian Historiography 1917-1956 in The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., vols. 5-6.4, and 1-2 (1957) respectively. For a fairly recent Soviet assessment see the scant and mostly negative treatment of Hrushevs'kyi in V. Illeritskii and I. Kudriatsova, eds., Istoriografiia istorii SSSR s drevneishikh vretnen do Velikoi Oktiabrskoi Sotsialistichnoi Revoliutsii, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Moscow: Vysshaia shkola, 1971). See also L. Kovalenko, Istoriohrafiia istorii Ukrains'koi RSR vid