An unlikely bulwark of Sovietness: cross-border travel and Soviet patriotism in Western Ukraine, 1956–1985

Abstract

Focusing on the development of travel between the borderlands of Ukraine and Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe, this article explores what it meant to be Soviet outside the Russian core of the USSR between the mid-1950s and the mid-1980s. The cautious opening of the Soviet border was part of a larger attempt to find fresh sources of popular support and enthusiasm for the regime's “communist” project. Before the Prague Spring of 1968 in particular, official policies and narratives of travel thus praised local inhabitants who crossed the Soviet border for supposedly overcoming age-old hatreds to build a brighter future in Eastern Europe. By the 1970s, however, smuggling and cultural consumption discredited the idea of “internationalist friendship.” This encouraged residents of Ukraine to speak and write about the continuing importance of the Soviet border. The very idea of Sovietness was defined in national terms, as narratives of travel emphasized that Soviet citizens were inherently different from ethno-national groups in the people's democracies. Eastern Europe thus emerged as an “other” that highlighted the Soviet character of territories incorporated into the USSR after 1939, helping to obscure western Ukraine's troubled past and leading to the emergence of new social hierarchies in the region.

Keywords:

• Ukrainian history
• regional identities in western Ukraine
• Ukrainian-Polish relations
• Soviet patriotism
• Sovietization of western Ukraine

Notes

1. Tsentral'nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv hromads'kykh ob’’ednan’ Ukrainy, Kyiv (hereafter, TsDAHO), f.1, op.24, s.4265, ark. 87–98.

2. As William Risch argues, “Western Ukraine” was a Soviet construct in its own right (Risch 2011, 74–75, 148–155, 253).

3. “Information about borderland exchanges between Lviv and Rzeszow regions,” no date, Stowarzyszenie Współpracy Polska-Wschód (hereafter, SWPW), t.41/181.

4. Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw (hereafter, AAN), z.1354, s.XIA, t.78, ark. 149–154.

5. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii, Moscow (hereafter, RGANI), f. 5, op.33, d.46, ll. 24–38.

6. AAN, z.1354, s.XIA, t.75, ark. 148–149.

7. Many authors have stressed that ideas of “active citizenship” took root in Soviet society during the Thaw (see Kozlov 2006).

8. AAN, z.1354, s.XIA, t.78, ark. 149–154.

9. Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Moscow (hereafter, GARF), f.9576, op. 4, d.58, ll. 105–113.

10. GARF, f.9576, op.4, d.58, ll. 267–280.

11. GARF, f.9576, op.4, d.58, ll. 3–4.

12. GARF, f.9576, op.4, d.58, ll. 3–4, 5–12, 89–92, 267–80.

13. “Polish-Soviet Friendship Society information on tourism,” December 1966, SWPW, t. 41/219.

14. “Information on borderland exchanges in 1961,” no date, SWPW, t. 41/181.

15. GARF, f.9576, op.4, d.58, ll. 89–92.

16. GARF, f.9576, op.4, d.58, ll. 3–4.

17. GARF, f.9576, op.4, d.58, ll. 5–12.

18. GARF, f.9576, op.4, d.58, ll. 267–280.

19. Ibid.

20. TsDAHO, f.1, op.24, s.4784, ark. 333.

21. GARF, f.9576, op.4, d.58, ll. 105–113, 267–280.

22. Amir Weiner states that local state and party organs in the west were “gradually being indigenised,” and mentions tensions between “indigenous members and outsiders within the party organization in the western frontier” (Weiner 2006b, 336, 342–43).

23. GARF, f.9576, op.4, d.58, ll. 267–280.

24. Ibid.

25. TsDAHO, f.1, op.24, s.4784, ark. 351–356.

26. GARF, f.9576, op.4, d.58, ll. 105–113.

27. TsDAHO, f.1, op.24, s.5987, ark. 7–14.

28. TsDAHO, f.1, op.24, s.4575, ark. 4–6.

29. GARF, f.9576, op.4, d.58, ll. 105–113.

30. Ibid.

31. GARF, f.9576, op.4, d.58, ll. 267–280.

32. TsDAHO, f.1, op.24, s.5987, ark. 7–14; “Information about borderland exchanges between Lviv and Rzeszow regions,” no date, SWPW.

33. AAN, z.1354, s.LVI, t. 1112.

34. Ibid.

35. Derzhavnyi Arkhiv L'vivs'koi Oblasti, L'viv (hereafter, DALO), f.P3, op.10, s.249, ark. 199–201.

36. GARF, f. 9612, op.3, d.10, ll. 54–63.

37. GARF, f.9612, op.3, d.10, ll. 101–116.

38. “Information about borderland exchanges between Lviv and Rzeszow regions,” no date, SWPW.

39. GARF, f. 9612, op.3, d. 873, ll. 85–94.

40. “Polish-Soviet Friendship Society information on tourism,” December 1966, SWPW; Derzhavnyi Arkhiv Kyivs'koi Oblasti, Kyiv (hereafter, DAKO), f.P5, op.7, s.1003, ark. 12–23.

41. DAKO, f.P5, op.6, s.1060, ark, 1–6.

42. TsDAHO, f.1, op.24, s.5174, ark. 353–355.

43. “Letter from the Polish consul in Kyiv to the Polish-Soviet Friendship Society,” July 8, 1960, SWPW, t. 41/180.

44. “A note on regional cultural exchanges between Poland and the USSR,” April 7, 1976, AAN, z.1354, s.LVI, t.1112.

45. AAN, z.1354, s.XIA, t.84, pp. 269–70.

46. “New problems in borderland contacts,” October 1979, AAN, z.1354, s. LVI, t. 739.

47. See “Information about preparations for the Polish and Soviet Youth Friendship Days,” October 16, 1977, AAN, z.1354, s.XL, t.167.

48. “Information about borderland exchanges between Rzeszow and Lviv regions,” no date but probably 1971, SWPW, t. 41/181.

49. RGANI, f.5, op.58, d.20, ll. 25–29.

50. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.30, ark. 33–39; TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.31, ark. 132–137; TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.255, ark. 126–147.

51. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.30, ark. 108–111.

52. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.30, ark. 100–106.

53. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s. 255, ark. 41–44.

54. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.30, ark. 108–111.

55. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.30, ark. 139–148.

56. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.30, ark. 15–19.

57. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.255, ark. 2–5.

58. It was a common practice even on friendship trains, as customs officers were reluctant to search trains decorated with red stars (Sowiński 2005, 166).

59. “Information on customs control in January and February 1978,” February and March 1978, AAN, z.1354, s.XL, t.217.

60. “Information on customs control in April 1978,” May 1978, AAN, z.1354, s.XL, t.217.

61. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.2287, ark. 8–10.

62. DALO, f.P3, op.44, s.85, ark. 7–8.

63. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.2608, ark. 18–22; TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.2769, ark. 40–42.

64. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.2769, ark. 40–42.

65. “Report from a Warsaw-Moscow-Kyiv-Warsaw trip,” April 4, 1977, SWPW, 41/225.

66. “Incorrect behaviour of Polish tourists in western Ukraine,” June 10, 1981, TsDAHO.

67. “Polish tourists’ reactions to the events in Poland,” August 26, 1980, DALO, f. P3, op.44, s.85, ark. 21–26.

68. “Incorrect behaviour of Polish tourists in western Ukraine,” June 10, 1981, TsDAHO.

69. “Unevaluated comments by recent emigrants,” April 1983, Open Society Archive, Budapest, f.300, sf.6, s.3, c.3.

70. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.2769, ark. 76–78.

71. DALO, f. P3, op.44, s.85, ark. 21–26.

72. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.2287, ark. 6.

73. “Incorrect behaviour of Polish tourists in western Ukraine,” June 10, 1981, TsDAHO.

74. RGANI, f.5, op.84, d.76, ll. 35–39.

75. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.2287, ark. 4–5.

76. DALO, f.P3, op.46, s.86, ark. 22–24.

77. Ibid.

78. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.2600, ark. 5–8.

79. TsDAHO, f.1, op.25, s.2132, ark. 58–60.

80. RGANI, f.89, p.46, d.67, ll. 5–7.