Kharkiv–The Capital of Ukrainian Modernity

Kharkiv's short stint as the capital of Soviet Ukraine from 1919 to 1934 is still a source of debate and myth. To some, this period was the golden age of the city and symbolizes its former greatness. For others, it was a mere coincidence of historical circumstance that Kharkiv was chosen to be the capital. On the one hand, post-revolutionary Kharkiv served as the new center of Ukrainian culture building. On the other, the city became the ultimate embodiment of Sovietness, breaking ties with what was authentically Ukrainian. These discussions have become an integral part of the city's identity and cultural understanding of itself. In either case, Kharkiv was destined to become the most vivid example of Ukraine's rapid process of modernization and the site of one of the most radical urban transformations of the interwar period in all of Eastern Europe.

The reason the  Bolsheviks

Bolsheviks

The Bolsheviks were a group within the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, which formed the new government after the deposition of the Tsar and the October Revolution in 1917.  chose Kharkiv as the Ukrainian capital is still a matter of debate, but this decision was obviously perfectly in line with the Soviet authorities’ favorite strategy: rewriting history and creating new symbols from a blank slate. Ukraine’s "historical" capital, Kyiv, had retained the image of an affluent, patriarchal city, and Kyiv was anything but loyal to the Bolshevik authorities during the civil war. Not so with Kharkiv. Unburdened by excessive imperialist symbolism, Kharkiv was a large industrial city and the center of the workers' movement, thus providing the ideal backdrop for revolutionary experiments.

For the Bolsheviks, Kharkiv became one of, if not the most iconic and symbolic construction site. The second most important Soviet republic’s new capital had to be created on an appropriate scale to show off its special status. Numerous social and cultural institutions were instated simultaneous to the transfer of the many administrative agencies to the city. All of this inevitably entailed a fundamental reorganization of urban space and its explosive growth. The scale of construction in Kharkiv in the 1920s and 1930s is awe-inspiring, even when compared to the radicality of many other urban planning experiments in the Soviet Union at that time. In Moscow, for instance, immense post-revolutionary construction appeared in pockets throughout the huge space of the metropolis, somewhat diluting the effect. In Kharkiv, new buildings were erected in a concentrated area, creating a sense of rapidly changing reality. At the same time, unlike the majority of the newly created Soviet “cities of the future,” Kharkiv had a rich history. Pre-revolutionary Kharkiv was one of the largest cities of the Russian Empire and an important university and industrial center, as reflected by its noble and stately architecture. Even against this backdrop, the buildings of the new era would stand in absolute contrast to those of the old.

The House of State Industry (Ukr. Derzhprom), a grandiose complex in the center of Kharkiv, is still one of the most important symbols of the entire Soviet architectural avant-garde. It would have enjoyed unspoken status as the main architectural monument of the era had it been built by a famous architect in Moscow. On the other hand, this daring, large-scale project was possible precisely because of its location. In Kharkiv one could do things that would not gain official approval in Moscow. Here one could take risks, experiment, and improvise. Derzhprom (Russ. Gosprom), one of the first skyscrapers in the USSR, was built in a record three years, despite constant resource and labor shortages. Chief engineer of construction, Pavel Rottert, and his team relied on numerous technological tricks and creativity to finish the job. Derzhprom was the ideal visual manifestation of the ambitions of the new government. One of the most popular images of the complex in the 1930s is a photograph with brand new Soviet GAZ cars in the foreground. The GAZ automobile is the Soviet version of the American Ford, and the Derzhprom building is like a New York City skyscraper. The Soviet government's aims and aspirations were obvious for all to see.

A vivid indicator of the status and ambitions of the city in the first decades of Soviet power is the number of unrealized architectural plans and projects. Only Moscow surpasses Kharkiv in this respect. Such projects included large government buildings, the grandiose construction of a theater of mass action for several thousand spectators, a huge sports arena, and wide transport highways. Most of these projects were not realized, but they served as an orientation for further development, visualizing the city’s image of the future and solidifying the new symbolic role of the city.

Indeed, other projects went on to exceed all initial expectations. New Kharkiv, a so-called sotsgorod or socialist city planned from scratch to house the families of workers for new industrial areas, sprang up a few kilometers from Kharkiv in just over two years, from 1930-1932. The creation of new modernist settlements near large industrial enterprises was a trend of the era, with such cities popping up in many countries. But Kharkiv's experience turned out to be unique both in terms of time and scale. Built for the workers of the Kharkiv Tractor Factory, New Kharkiv was designed to immediately house more than one hundred thousand inhabitants, and a mere four months passed from the start of project development to the ceremonial ground-breaking of the settlement.

Kharkiv of the interwar period turned into a laboratory of technologies and ideas. Personnel with work experience in Kharkiv would go on to leave their mark on other important projects throughout the Soviet Union. For instance, following the successful construction of Derzhprom, Pavel Rottert became the chief engineer of Dneprostroi (Ukr. Dniprobud). With this company, he participated in the construction of the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, at the time the largest hydroelectric power plant in Europe. A little later he headed construction of one of the main symbols of Soviet industrialization: the Moscow Metro.

The remarkable intensity and radicality of the changes to life in Kharkiv in the 1920s was not limited to architecture and industry. The Soviet authorities sought to turn the city into the new cultural center of Ukraine. Again, they saw it as an alternative and symbolic counterbalance to “petty-bourgeois” Kyiv.

Before the  1917 revolution

Russian Revolution

also:

Second Russian Revolution, Russian Revolution of 1917

The Russian Revolution of 1917 is considered a turning point in Russian history and the beginning of the rule of the Bolsheviks, a socialist movement in the Russian Empire. Before the so-called October Revolution gave rise to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, Soviet Union), it initially resulted in a civil war between groups loyal to the monarchy and opposition groups, from which the Bolsheviks ultimately emerged victorious. Their new state, the Soviet Union, was a dictatorship that did not shy away from the massive use of violence and repression to establish its rule over the multi-ethnic empire. , Russian was the predominant language in Kharkiv. And yet, around the turn of the 20th century, of all places Kharkiv became one of the main centers of  the Ukrainian national movement

Ukrainian national movement

Due to the fact that the territory of present-day Ukraine was part of the Habsburg Empire in the west and the Russian Tsarist Empire in the east in the 19th century, the Ukrainian national movement was by no means uniform. In the Russian Empire, Ukrainian was not regarded as a separate nation and language, but merely as a subordinate form or subgroup of Russian. Furthermore, Ukrainian culture and language were suppressed, for example by banning the Ukrainian language. However, this did not prevent some groups and individuals of the Ukrainian intelligentsia from expressing Ukrainian culture in literature, music, art, and other forms. Among its most important representatives were Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Kostomarov, and Pantelejmon Kulish. The movement was able to develop more easily in Austrian Galicia, which was characterized by a predominantly Ukrainian rural population. Ukrainian schools were founded here as early as the mid-19th century, meaning that Ukrainian national consciousness was established here earlier than in the eastern regions. Two particularly noteworthy supporters of the national movement in Galicia were the poet Ivan Franko and the historian Mychajlo Hruschewskyj. . As in other cities of the Russian Empire, national Ukrainian culture was only semi-legal. The imperial authorities opposed the development of national culture and were extremely wary of any manifestations of Ukrainianness. Nevertheless, it was in 1898 in Kharkiv that the first monument to the famous national poet Taras Shevchenko appeared on the territory of Ukraine. It was here as well that one of the founders of Ukrainian nationalism, lawyer Mykola Mikhnovsky, was active. In 1900, Mikhnovsky published his famous manifesto The Independence of Ukraine, and in 1904 he helped plan the bombing of the Pushkin monument in the city center. The monument was not destroyed by the explosion. In fact, only part of its pedestal broke off. The bust of Pushkin himself was removed more than a century later, on 9 November 2022, after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In this sense, the Soviet  Ukrainization

Ukrainization

The early period (approx. 1920-1930) of Soviet rule was characterized by a nationalities policy that followed the principle of korenisatsiya (rootedness). This meant the promotion of the many national identities and cultures of the multi-ethnic state and their integration into the state system. Among other things, Ukrainian culture was promoted during this phase and the Ukrainian language was used as the official language in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic and taught in schools in that territory. However, this phase came to an end at the beginning of 1930 and, in addition to political dissidents, particularly the national minorities and elites of the Soviet Union fell victim to the purges of the 1930s.  of the 1920s found rather fertile ground in Kharkiv and became part of the Soviet government’s new large-scale experiment in the field of nationality policy. The promotion of the Soviet republics’ national cultures fit in with Moscow's pragmatic strategy: Moscow aimed to win over indigenous populations and local elites, while demonstrating to the world that the various Soviet nations’ right to self-determination was manifesting in the young state. Thus Kharkiv did indeed become the place where the new national culture was constructed. In record time, numerous literary, artistic, and theatrical associations emerged in the city, drawing in creative young people and representatives of the national intelligentsia from all corners of Ukraine. The Soviet government’s representational journal USSR in Construction, published in several languages, noted in 1930: “Previously a primarily Russian city, now the capital of the Ukrainian working masses, in the Kharkiv of today there is publishing in Ukrainian, the development of Ukrainian literature, theater, and cinema, as well as attention to the national minorities of Ukraine,” (USSR in Construction, 1930, No. 7-8). 

The intense concentration of cultural life that existed in Kharkiv during its time as the capital is not just a metaphor. The image of density can be taken quite literally. New creative organizations, magazine editorial offices, theaters, and art studios popped up in a small, compact space in the center of the city. Major figures of national culture and young literary stars lived and worked side by side, creating a unique atmosphere with a special vibe. As they did with other professions, the Soviet authorities put the creative intelligentsia in separate cooperative living quarters. In Kharkiv, local architect Mikhail Dashkevich designed one such house specifically for Ukrainian writers in the fashionable style of constructivism. A sort of tribute to the architectural aesthetics of the era, Dashkevich imagined the outline of the building in the form of a “C” – the shape of the first letter of the Ukrainian word slovo, itself meaning “word.” Among residents, the informal name of the building is indeed firmly established, the Slovo Building.

The list of residents of the Slovo Building includes the who’s who of Ukrainian culture of the first half of the twentieth century. It is a living textbook of the history of national literature. Here, the famous avant-garde poet Maik Yohansen turns out to be the noisy neighbor of one of the most important Ukrainian poets of the Soviet period, Pavlo Tychyna. At the latter’s request, they switch apartments. The director and playwright Les Kurbas, the founder of modern Ukrainian theater, meets with his friend, the writer and playwright Mykola Kulish, right under the roof of his house to discuss new creative projects. Now, so many decades later, this all seems amazing, the stuff of mythology. It was a time of daring experiments, unexpected creative alliances, and a sense that an artist’s energy was all-powerful.

This romantic period was, however, short-lived. By all appearances, cultural and national politics were completely under control and pragmatically construed, but they gravely disappointed the Soviet government. The processes the policies had set in motion were beginning to produce results that irritated and frightened Moscow. In the minds of Soviet leaders there was too much freedom of speech, and the national cultural elites were spreading foreign ideas and becoming a potential threat to Soviet power. The situation no longer seemed manageable. Unpredictability and spontaneity were a natural aspect of modernization, but Moscow held fast to the principle of social engineering in its most brutal and bloody form.

One of the most striking and tragic residents of the Slovo Building was Mykola Khvylovy. The leader of the avant-garde literary association VAPLITE (Vilna Academy of Proletarian Literature), he was also perhaps the most important Ukrainian writer of his generation. Better than anyone, Khvylovy expressed the internal contradictions and value conflicts of the era, both in his work and in his own life. He was committed to communism to the very end. At the same time, he clearly, loudly, uncompromisingly defined the key principles of Ukraine’s national cultural revival. His program slogans “Away from Moscow!” and “Give us Europe” cautioned against Russian colonization, brought attention to the need for a European path of development for Ukraine, and, as history has shown, turned out to be frighteningly prescient. The tragedy was that in real life the two components of Khvylovy’s worldview could not exist together.

Dreams of an independent and free Ukraine quickly came into conflict with the official “party line” and the Bolsheviks’ objectives. Khvylovy observed firsthand the speed at which the policy of Ukrainization was curtailed and former hopes and ideals were shattered. Khvylovy’s colleague and ally in VAPLITE, Mykhailo Yalovy, was arrested in his apartment in the Slovo Building in May 1933. The next day, when his writer friends and neighbors, Mykola Kulish and Oles Dosvitny, came to visit Mykola Khvylovy committed suicide. For the Ukrainian intelligentsia, Khvylovy’s death became a tragic symbol of the end of an era of hope and the beginning of a terrible period of reprisals against its main representatives. The Slovo Building is marked by the gloomy image of a place of repression and arrests. Thirty-three residents of the house were shot, 13 were sent to camps. Most of them were killed in the mass execution of the Ukrainian intellectual elite by  NKVD

People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs

also:

NKVD

NKVD is the abbreviation for the Russian term Narodny kommissariat vnutrennyih del (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) and was the name of the Soviet Ministry of the Interior from 1934 to 1946. Its area of responsibility also included the activities of a secret service. In practice, the NKVD was tasked with eliminating political opponents, so that it was involved in numerous purges as part of the so-called Red Terror, including the mass execution of the Ukrainian intelligentsia at Sandarmokh on November 3, 1937, mentioned here. Another well-known crime committed by the NKVD was the mass shootings at Katyn in 1940.  officers in the Sandarmokh tract (Karelia) “in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution” on November 3rd, 1937. Among the victims of the execution were Mykhailo Yalovy, Les Kurbas, and Mykola Kulish. Maik Yohansen had been shot a week earlier in Kyiv. “Executed Renaissance” is the firmly established term for this generation of Ukrainian cultural elites wiped out by Stalinist repression. Kharkiv will forever remain the locus of this generation’s formation and the symbol of its heyday.

Kharkiv lost its status as the capital as quickly and unexpectedly as it had gained it. The Moscow authorities decided to move the capital to Kyiv in early 1934, and by summer a solemn train was carrying the Ukrainian party elite to their new place of work. As was the case with the decision to make Kharkiv the capital, the reasons for its transfer are not clear. But whatever the reason, the loss of its official status did not diminish the city’s importance. Kharkiv has retained its ambitions, special position, and capital flare. It is a megalopolis, the most important transport hub, a city of students, a reference point of development, and a center of culture for people from various regions and countries. Kharkiv’s geographical location at an intersection of diverse cultures and traditions has determined its multinational character, openness, and vitality.
 
This special aura of Kharkiv is metaphorically embodied in the texts of the famous Ukrainian writer and nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature Serhiy Zhadan. In one of his most lyrical books, a collection of short stories Mesopotamia, Kharkiv appears in the image of Mesopotamia, the space between the rivers, a special civilization, a self-sufficient space, immersed in its unique rhythm and weaving together elements of different ways of life and experiences.

The city of Kharkiv went from being a city on the border to being a city on the front of war in 2014. With the beginning of the conflict in Donbass and Russia’s partial occupation of Ukrainian territories, Kharkiv became a place of unrest, but managed to maintain its independence. Then, in February 2022, Kharkiv’s residential buildings, universities, hospitals, churches, theaters, libraries, stadiums, and numerous architectural monuments became the object of regular massive shelling, rocket attacks, and bombing. One those hardest hit during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the city has suffered large-scale destruction not seen since World War II. The beautiful, stately center of what had once been Ukraine’s capital has been reduced to ruins before our eyes. In total, more than 6000 houses and buildings were destroyed or damaged during the first year of the war, among them, the Slovo Building. Damaged in a shelling attack during the second week of the war on March 7, 2022, this tragic monument of modern Ukrainian history became a grisly reminder that Ukraine’s struggle for affirmation and for its very right to cultural existence continues.

English translation: Sara Kathleen Hayden Billion