Abstract
In the context of the post-Soviet transition, the relationship between the Ukrainian diaspora and its homeland generally continued to be discussed with the help of such categories as “with us” or “against us,” “supportive” or “hostile,” “loyal” or “traitorous.” The official portrayals and oftentimes private understandings of emigration swung between projecting those Soviet Ukrainian nationals emigrating and already abroad (a) as “betrayers” of their homeland, (b) as “sufferers” under capitalism, and (c) as “brothers” in communist aspirations. In this chapter Natalia Khanenko-Friesen explores how these Soviet ideological projections of the Ukrainian diaspora’s betrayal of the homeland affected the grassroots understandings and experiences of the diaspora, and how and why the average Ukrainian embraced the ideological discourse on the diaspora’s betrayal. The chapter analyzes several stories, in which “acts” of betrayal have been attributed to, associated with, or triggered by Myroslav Irchan, a prominent Ukrainian writer whose productive years coincided with the transformative 1910s–1930s.
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Notes
- 1.
Much of his literary biography derives from Irchan’s own reflections on his life that we now understand were crafted to suit the canon of the good Soviet writer (Sloniovska 2016).
- 2.
Published in the magazine Svoboda, in Vienna, in 1914 (Bodnaruk 1996).
- 3.
Erected in 1977 by sculptors A. Lendiel and A. Nimenko (http://wikimapia.org/12388043/uk/Пам-ятник-М-%C2%A0Ірчану).
- 4.
Bodnaruk’s article first appeared in Paris-based weekly “Ukrainske Slovo [Ukrainian Word]” on November 5, 1978. Cited in Bodnaruk (1996), available also at http://ukrlife.org/main/cxid/bodnaruk10.htm.
- 5.
Irchan also served for a short while in the Denikin Army. It was after the defeat of the Denikin Army in February 1920 that Irchan with his brigade joined the Red Army (Dzhuvaha 2011). The Denikin Army fought against the Bolshevik Red Army.
- 6.
Specifically with what Krawchuk calls the Ukrainian labour press (Krawchuk 1998, p. 6), through the newspaper Ukrainski Robitnychi Visti (Ukrainian Labour News), and journals Holos Pratsi (Labour Voice) and Holos Robitnytsi (Working Woman Voice).
- 7.
Cited in (Kobzej, no date, p. 2), Pidhajnyi’s book is titled “Ukrainska Intelihentsiia na Solovkakh” (Pidhajnyi 1947).
- 8.
A Ukrainian Canadian activist, Ivan Semblay was deported from Canada to the USSR in 1932 and like Irchan perished in the Stalinist purges. Though the disappearances of both activists were oftentimes “bundled” in the progressive left discussions as the Irchan-Semblay affair, for the purposes of this Chap. 10.1007/978-3-319-66496-5_1I refer to the chain of events that evolved in that time as the Irchan affair.
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Khanenko-Friesen, N. (2018). Betrayal and Public Memory: The “Myroslav Irchan Affair” in the Diaspora—Homeland Disjuncture. In: Grinchenko, G., Narvselius, E. (eds) Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66496-5_15
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