Yana Prymachenko1; 1 Institute of history of Ukraine, NASU , Ukraine
Discussion
In 1923 the Soviet authority initiated the indigenization policy. For the Bolsheviks, the most problems were caused by national minorities with national homelands in the neighboring countries governed by the regimes unfriendly to the Soviet state. The majority of Soviet Poles lived in rural borderland areas of Ukraine. Soviet authorities regarded Poles as both the potential fifth column of the unfriendly Polish state as well as a potential vanguard that could help in exporting socialist revolution. The common strategy was to make Soviet Poles an ally in promoting the idea of the socialist revolution in Poland by showing the “advantage of living in the first socialist state”. One of the tools for promoting the Soviet agenda domestically as well as abroad was visual arts where cinema played a crucial role. In 1925, VUFKU – the Ukrainian state cinema corporation – produced a propagandist film “P.K.P”. Appealing to the events of the 1920 Soviet-Polish War, this movie condemned Pilsudski’s support to the independent Ukrainian state. Likewise, in 1931 VUFKU created a propagandist documentary about Marchlewski's Polish national region to promote it abroad. The general message of the film was that the Polish national minority flourished under Soviet rule. So, the main question is how the culture, particularly visual arts, was used by Soviet authorities to promote its agenda among the Polish national minority?
