«He chose freedom, and freedom chose him»
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31558/3083-5771.2024.1.4Keywords:
Holodomor, collectivization, concentration camps, personality cult, national economy, totalitarianism, purgesAbstract
The study concerns a little-known figure of the Soviet era. It is connected with the analysis of Internet publications in the context of Putin’s Russian aggression against Ukraine. A relatively unknown Soviet «unreturned» bureaucrat, one of the leaders of the industrialization of the USSR under Stalinism, left a great mark on history. The coverage of this extraordinary figure works as a warning against the announced goals of the «special military operation» in its the rampant implementation of the «Russian world» idea. The goal of the study is to highlight the personality of an engineer and politician, who challenged the Stalinist regime for the sake of the future of his people.
The study uses historical-genetic and historical-comparative methods. The basis of the research source base was the original source – Viktor Kravchenko’s memoirs, translated in Ukrainian 2022. The Russian translation exists only on the Internet in short excerpts of chapters, and there are no chapters dedicated to collectivization and the Holodomor. The second source base is the Internet materials on the «Court of the Century».
The main results: the research demonstrates the role and place of upbringing in the family of a staff worker, the training of a future metallurgical engineer and his work in middle management positions at enterprises of Ukraine, Siberia, the Urals and Moscow. Based on his understanding of the Stalinist regime, he decided that he would only be able to tell the truth of history abroad.
Originality / usefulness. A deep look at the Soviet reality using the example of V. Kravchenko reveals the truth about the terrible reality of building a new society «according to communist teachings». The events can be considered the first open condemnation of the cult of personality in the USSR and its consequences in an open trial in Paris – the center of civilized post-war Europe. The court recognized the plaintiff’s claim for defamation. This gives grounds for re-considering the role and «first place» of M. Khrushchev’s report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, officially recognized in Soviet historiography, and O. Solzhenitsyn’s printed story «One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich» in debunking the personality cult of J. Stalin, as the Kravchenko trial took place prior to either event
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