Writers and the National Movements in the Soviet Western Republics, 1985-1991

• In Event: Left Perspectives on Decolonization and Geopolitics I: Geopolitical and Class Agendas among Post-Stalin-Era Multinational Soviet Writers and National Intelligentsias

Abstract

In the late 1980s, Soviet writers played a prominent role in the national movements in the western republics of the USSR. The Moldovan writer Ion Druță (an early supporter of the Moldovan national movement) wrote in 2011 about the ubiquity of writers during this period: “At the meetings, at the rostrum, on radio and television, all writers and writers.” Drawing examples from Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, and Ukraine, this paper will explore why writers played key organizational and leadership roles in the national movements. The gradual Russification of the public sphere under Brezhnev had eroded the readership for national literature, leaving many national writers demoralized and disgruntled. As the political sphere began to open up under Gorbachev, dissidents in several republics sought to organize popular movements. Yet their efforts were ultimately less successful than those of the writers, who could draw on their high status within the Soviet system and name recognition among the general public to gain support for the emerging national movements. Under the banner of support for perestroika, writers called for official status for national and languages and greater respect for national culture more generally. This in turn attracted support from the rural population, who were less linguistically Russified than the urban population. This paper will explore how the prominent role of intellectuals shaped the course of events in the western borderlands in the years leading up to the collapse of the USSR.

Author

• Erin Hutchinson, U of Colorado at Boulder