The end of Petro Shelest’s era was marked by enormous criticism of Oles Honchar’s novel Sobor [The Cathedral], which was inspired by party functionaries. The chronology and mechanics of this campaign are revealed in detail in Vitaliy Koval’s book Sobor i navkolo nioho [The Cathedral and Around It], published in Kyiv in 1989.
The most vociferous of the party functionaries was Oleksiy Vatchenko, first secretary of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, who noted that the novel engages in “blackening Soviet reality”, slander against “men of labor” and “wonderful Soviet workers,” and displays an “infatuation with olden times.” One of the alleged reasons behind Vatchenko’s wrath is that he may have recognized himself in the novel’s antihero — Volodka Loboda. At least in Dnipropetrovsk it was rumored that the oblast party chief, much like Loboda, had placed his father in a nursing home, which is highly improper from the viewpoint of traditional Ukrainian morality. Moreover, the smoke-blackened workers’ community of Zachiplianka was reminiscent of a particular industrial district in Dnipropetrovsk, Vatchenko’s birth place. Moreover, Honchar’s novel drew a sharp contrast between working-class Zachiplianka and nomenklatura chair-warmers.
Vatchenko’s findings served as a prologue to the party’s excoriation of Sobor as an “ideologically depraved...harmful, and slanderous work.” Before his speech at the plenum of the CPU’s Central Committee on March 29, 1968, where this lethal verdict was pronounced, Vatchenko allegedly flew to Moscow to consult Leonid Brezhnev. Vatchenko’s “improvisation” was also a blow against Shelest, as the Kremlin leadership may have gotten the impression that there were ideological problems in the Ukrainian republic.
The campaign of 1968-1969 differed little from similar excoriations during the Stalinist period. “Letters from workers” were organized, reviews with the necessary ideological labels were commissioned, and personnel meetings were held, during which the writer was chastised for “becoming divorced from reality.” Honchar was obliged to repent and engage in self- criticism. However, he not only refused to disown his novel, he engaged in a polemic with those lovers of ideological labels. During his speech at a soiree dedicated to his 50th birthday, Honchar called Sobor a work that is “no less patriotic than Praporonostsi [The Flag Bearers].” There is a spirit of defiance in his effective portrayal of “petty Beelzebubs,” who “are nostalgic for the past, the days of arbitrariness, when they could persecute people with impunity,” as opposed to the “red horses of art” whom the “Beelzebubs” would like to put in the “harness of their narrow-mindedness” (quoted in Vitaliy Koval’s Sobor i navkolo nioho, Kyiv, 1989, p. 56).
Letters of support from his readers helped the writer endure hard times. As for the party organs and special services, they did not dare resort to repressive measures against the popular, prizewinning writer, limiting themselves to moral and psychological pressure and a ban on mentioning Sobor — as though Honchar had never written his novel.
The writer’s Diary [Shchodennyk], published by Veselka in 2002-2004, makes it possible to analyze Honchar’s reflections on the situation that arose around his novel. He had forebodings immediately after Sobor was published in the journal Vitchyzna [Homeland]: “I feel as though I am surrounded by a flock of literary crows (among them those whom I considered friends). They are not cawing yet, only waiting greedily for a signal. When will they give the command to pick his eyes out?” (Jan. 25, 1968).
Soon rumors began to spread that the pope had allegedly nominated Sobor for the Nobel Prize. Two days before the fateful plenum this subject was raised during a conversation between Honchar and Shelest, who “had not read the novel yet” but had already received enough “biased Loboda-style disinformation.” The clouds were gathering. During the plenum Vatchenko’s verdict was pronounced. In his Diary Honchar describes this day: “Vatchenko, Dnipropetrovsk chair-warmer No. 1 (200 kilograms of live weight!) flung mad at Sobor. The glutton and foul-mouth who sold out his father. He doesn’t surprise me.
Meanwhile, P.Yu. [Petro Yukhymovych Shelest] told me the day before yesterday that since he has not read my book yet, he would not speak about it at the plenum (he promised; I did not ask this favor of him), but he went back on his word. He took the floor and supported the Dnipropetrovsk glutton. Thus, the word and concept of honor exist for others, not them.
The audience was thirsting for blood” (March 29, 1968).
The situation was made all the more poignant by the fact that Honchar’s 50th birthday was to be celebrated in three days. Although the jubilee soiree did take place, the planned ceremony to award the writer with the star of Hero of Socialist Labor was out of the question. Even the printing shop delayed the press run of Sobor. Meanwhile, the journal Druzhba narodov [Friendship of the Peoples] was forced to renege on the publication of the novel at the insistence of the “Ukrainian comrades.” The Diary records Honchar’s painful response to the harassment and ‘moral rape of the people’ who were forced to speak out against Sobor, while the “disobedient” were fired from their jobs and expelled from the party. He deplored the acts of cowardice of those who yesterday had been his friends, but unable to withstand the pressure, “are renouncing themselves.” Honchar was under tremendous pressure during this period: “For half a year or even longer I have been living under the pressure of 1,000 atmospheres... Since the days of Kaganovich, literature has not experienced such bitter harassment” (entries for May 1 and 7, 1968). In the party offices they expected Honchar to repent and criticize himself. But drawing on the moral support that came in hundreds of thousands of letters from readers, he chose a different path and decided not to give in to those “Beelzebubs.”
On May 31, 1968, Shelest met Honchar and several other writers in an unofficial setting: on a boat and later on an island. Mykola Bazhan, Leonid Novychenko, and Pavlo Zahrebelny “stood up in defence of Sobor.” However, the anti-Sobor campaign did not abate, all the more so as some Moscow-based publications joined in (see the article by A. Fed in Izvestiia). In general, Shelest’s position in the story of Sobor is ambiguous. He had made diplomatic gestures toward the author. At the same time, Honchar pointed out that Shelest had read a draft copy of Fed’s article before it was published, “and he even added something.” Shelest’ official party status forced the Ukrainian leader to toe the line and not “go out on a limb.” His “reflexes” got the better of him. He was, after all, a party soldier, who was in the habit of “breaking” ideologically suspicious individuals (in an entry in Honchar’s Diary, Shelest allegedly says in a conversation with someone about Honchar, “We’ll break him!”).
The nature of Honchar’s reflections becomes clear from the involuntary associative array that materializes on the pages of the Diary from 1968. The imagery and subjects are very telltale: “Van Gogh’s black birds” — crows that descended on the artist in his nightmares; Vladimir Mayakovsky’s death by suicide; Boris Pasternak’s silence in response to Stalin’s question whether he would vouch for Osip Mandelstam; Maksym Rylsky’s motives in writing his Pisnia pro Stalina [Song about Stalin]; Chinese Red Guards with their dazibaos [big-character posters], and Vatchenko’s “Chinese” oblast.
The tragedies of the leap year 1968 form an ominous pattern: the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the death of Yuri Gagarin, the fire in Vydubychi Monastery, which destroyed ancient books and icons, “tank communism” in Czechoslovakia (in which Shelest was also involved). Here is a ready-made plot for an unwritten story: “Aristophanes was paid by the enemies of Socrates to ridicule him in his comedy Clouds. Socrates came to watch this pasquinade at the theater. Many people sailed in from the islands, and everybody asked: ‘Where is the one who is being ridiculed? Show him!’ Then Socrates rose (he had a front-row seat) and stood through the entire play, thus expressing his disrespect for the play and the audience. This is called strength of spirit!” (May 1, 1969).
Honchar’s Diary contains many reflections on the spirit and the soul, a recurrent subject in his works. It turns out that Honchar was a deeply religious man despite being a communist. Of course, he was not just moved by the spiritual music of Dmytro Bortniansky or inspired by the beauty of Riga’s Domsky Sobor. He was in constant communication with Almighty God and he respected Christian values.
On March 4, 1968, he made the following entry: “For 2,000 years Jesus Christ, this carpenter from Nazareth and young philosopher, has remained an ideal of spiritual beauty. History hardly knows anything more powerful than his utterly humane teachings.” After completing his novel Cyclone, Honchar went to St. Sophia Cathedral to give thanks to the Madonna Oranta. The most solemn words in his diary are addressed to God and the Mother of God. The Christian Virgin Mary is “a symbol of purity and everything that is most humane” (Nov. 28, 1970).
“The Mother of God and the Savior — even if considered simply as a symbol and idea — this idea is incommensurably loftier, more humane and moral than all those vulgar dogmas about our apish ancestry” (Aug. 22, 1970). He constantly noted his thoughts on the purpose and meaning of faith, considering it his goal as an artist to keep up his readers’ spirits and “strengthen their faith” in the same way as the authors of Biblical sagas did. He traveled widely, and during those journeys the author of Sobor constantly felt the need to discover spiritual beauty.
Sometime around 1970 the “Beelzebubs’” offensive against Sobor began gradually disappearing from the pages of his Diary. As if summarizing what he had lived through, on Nov. 2, 1969, Honchar tries to analyze the causes of what had happened: “Now, with hindsight it becomes clearer who was the real mastermind behind the campaign against Sobor, who inspired all this wild harassment. Perhaps the Dnipropetrovsk satrap was not the one who initiated it. It was the agency [KGB — Author]. The methods and “cadres” that were used point to it. In retaliation for 1967, when you spoke out against the repressions and trials. When you refused to take part in that shameful “Commission” that was supposed to prepare “materials.” Therefore, Sobor was merely a pretext. Only these behind-the-scenes dealings can explain all this rabid anger and hateful frothing at the mouth.”
Naturally, everybody was waiting for Honchar to respond. What would be his next work? After Sobor he published Cyclone.
The time will come when the declassified archives of the Security Service of Ukraine will either support or disprove the writer’s side of the story.
(To be continued)
