This book focuses on the generation of the sixties and seventies in Kharkiv, Soviet Ukraine, a milieu of writers who lived through the Thaw and the processes of de-Stalinization and re-Stalinization. Special attention is paid to KGB operations against what came to be known as the dissident milieu, and the interaction of Ukrainians, Jews, and Russians in the movement, their persona friendships, formal and informal interactions, and the ways they dealt with repression and arrests. This study demonstrates that the KGB unintentionally facilitated the transnational and intercultural links among the Kharkiv multi-ethnic community of writers and their mutual enrichment. Post-Khrushchev Kharkiv is analyzed as a political space and a place of state violence aimed at combating Ukrainian nationalism and Zionism, two major targets in the 1960s–1970s. Despite their various cultural and social backgrounds, the Kharkiv literati might be identified as a distinct bohemian group possessing shared aesthetic and political values that emerged as the result of de-Stalinization under Khrushchev. Archival documents, diaries, and memoirs suggest that the 1960s–1970s was a period of intense KGB operations, “active measures” designed to disrupt a community of intellectuals and to fragment friendships, bonds, and support among Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews along ethnic lines domestically and abroad.
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In The Labyrinth of the KGB offers a new and original insight into the experiences of non-Russian intellectuals in the USSR and the cultural history of Ukraine. A key issue with western historiography and political analysis today is a tendency to view the history of the USSR and former Soviet countries through the prism of Russian intellectual elites. This is reinforced by exclusive use of Moscow-based archives to determine what happened across the USSR. However, Bertelsen critiques this approach sharply, and her use of literary sources from Kharkiv demonstrates a different reality and alternatives for our understanding. As Russia's war in Ukraine continues, there is a growing realization among many in the West that Central and Eastern Europe need to be taken more seriously. A book like Bertelsen's In the Labyrinth of the KGB should contribute to the development of a new appreciation for what Ukraine—and other former Soviet republics—experienced as part of the USSR. It has immense relevance to what is happening in Ukraine today.
" - Middle East Monitor
Формат: Скан PDf
"
In The Labyrinth of the KGB offers a new and original insight into the experiences of non-Russian intellectuals in the USSR and the cultural history of Ukraine. A key issue with western historiography and political analysis today is a tendency to view the history of the USSR and former Soviet countries through the prism of Russian intellectual elites. This is reinforced by exclusive use of Moscow-based archives to determine what happened across the USSR. However, Bertelsen critiques this approach sharply, and her use of literary sources from Kharkiv demonstrates a different reality and alternatives for our understanding. As Russia's war in Ukraine continues, there is a growing realization among many in the West that Central and Eastern Europe need to be taken more seriously. A book like Bertelsen's In the Labyrinth of the KGB should contribute to the development of a new appreciation for what Ukraine—and other former Soviet republics—experienced as part of the USSR. It has immense relevance to what is happening in Ukraine today.
" - Middle East Monitor
Формат: Скан PDf
https://www.yakaboo.ua/ua/in-the-labyrinth-of-the-kgb-ukraine-s-intelligentsia-in-the-1960s-1970s.html