Bon Oleksandr

Oleksandr Dovzhenko under the supervision of the SPA in 1920s

Section: Biographical research

Abstract: The purpose of the article. Oleksandr Dovzhenko is one of the most prominent representatives of the Ukrainian literary and artistic intelligentsia of 1920-1950s. As soon as his active participation in the struggle for Ukrainian statehood was mentioned in his biography, he was under the monitoring of Soviet punitive authorities from the very beginning of the Bolshevik regime. The SPA (State Political Administration) materials were later used for ideological harassment and pressure on the director, the artistic environment of Ukraine, and the formation of the Soviet grand narrative. The purpose of the article is to identify the main reasons for the surveillance of the young artist, director and screenwriter as well as set up of the main directions, forms and methods of surveillance by the Soviet secret services, and the impact of this process on the literary and artistic intelligentsia in the 1920s. The research methodologyis based on the principles of scientific objectivity, systematicity and historicism. Special historical methods were used: biographical, problematic and thematic, microhistorical, retrospective, prosopographic. Scientific novelty of the study. Since the ideological persecution and surveillance of the leading film director during the 1930s and 1950s have been studied in detail by historians and film scholars, the author focused on the 1920s, when O. Dovzhenko had not yet acquired the status of the most talented filmmaker in Ukraine. The documents of the State Political Administration clearly demonstrate the penetration of the repressive system into the literary and artistic intelligentsia as early as the 1920s. O. Dovzhenko was present in the weekly reports of the Secret Department of the SPA of the Ukrainian SSR in 1927-1929. The file on the artist, which was opened by the SPA, also provides valuable material. Conclusions. From the very beginning of the Bolshevik dictatorship, Soviet special services were interested in Oleksandr Dovzhenko, as he participated in the struggle for Ukrainian statehood and was a member of the Ukrainian Communist Party of Fighters. Over time, having occupied a prominent place in the literary and artistic process, film production, he was already considered an important object of monitoring. The materials of the SPA of 1920s were supplemented in 1930s and became alever of influence on the creativity and personality of the filmmaker and led to achange in the direction of his film activity and ideological transformation.

Keywords: Oleksandr Dovzhenko, State Political Administration (SPA), punitive bodies, surveillance, Ukrainian literary and artistic intelligentsia, 1920s.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.26.220     Citation

• Bon Oleksandr (Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University (Kyiv, Ukraine), [email protected]) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3287-5955

Cite:
Bon Oleksandr (2025). Oleksandr Dovzhenko under the supervision of the SPA in 1920s. Biographistica Ukrainica, (26) 220-238. (In Ukrainan). https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.26.220

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