The panels devoted to this period reveal that when Nikita Khrushchev came to
power after Stalin’s death and liquidated Lavrentii Beria, one of the most dangerous
and odious figures of the Stalinist period, the nature of the Communist regime did
not change. Khrushchev and his milieu resorted to a different tack: they simply
blamed all the flaws of the Bolshevik system on Stalin and began energetically
extolling the “good Lenin.” This is the context of Khrushchev’s speech at the XX
Party Congress in 1956. While monuments to Stalin were being torn down, myths
about Khrushchev were being simultaneously created–about his victory over Nazi
Germany, his exceptional statesmanship, and his talent.
The panels present elements of Khrushchev’s cult of personality, including the
text and notes of a song about Khrushchev, composed by Ukrainian musicians and
poets, and Khrushchev’s speech at the United Nations, where he behaved in a gross
and uncouth manner. Other exhibits include data on Khrushchev’s order to assassinate the leader of the OUN Stepan Bandera in Munich and materials on the
Hungarian Uprising of 1956, which was suppressed by the future General Secretary
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Yurii Andropov. At the time, Andropov
was the Soviet ambassador in Hungary, and based in Budapest.
Part of this panel is devoted to the “theme of corn,” as Khrushchev was a great
fan of this agricultural crop. This theme is evident in displayed examples of verse
devoted to planting corn. This poetry was part and parcel of the “folklore” of
Khrushchev’s era, as were Khrushchev’s lengthy speeches with which the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union sought to conceal its true nature.
It is entirely logical that once again resistance to this supposedly liberalized
system began to emerge. In Ukraine this movement attracted young people, like
Yevhen Sverstiuk, Alla Horska, Ivan Svitlychny, V’iacheslav Chornovil, and many
others who in the early 1950s had already begun to reflect on what was happening
in Ukraine. In the late 1950s Levko Luk’ianenko founded the Ukrainian
Workers’–Peasants’ Union, as a result of which he received the death sentence.
Also displayed in the panels is a photograph of the intellectuals of the day who
were subjected to criticism by the Soviet authorities, e.g., the Russian poet Andrei
Voznesensky and the Ukrainian poet Vasyl Symonenko, whose diary and poems
were circulated through samvydav/samizdat (hand to hand publishing and distribution) channels.
Many people realized what would happen in the Soviet Union after Leonid
Brezhnev came to power in October 1964. For this reason a panoramic view of the
Brezhnev era is portrayed on these stands. For Ukraine, his ascent to power, marking
the victory of neo–Stalinism, signified the intensification of enslavement, new tortures, and repressions. This is no exaggeration, as Brezhnev’s actions absolutely followed the well–trodden path of old Stalinist traditions.
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