Another newly added title to the catalogue is a 2-volume set of sources from Soviet secret service archives about the filmmaker Oleksandr Dovz︠h︡enko.  I’ve written before about our holdings about Dovz︠h︡enko (eg here) but this new arrival is a significant addition and warrants its own blog post.

Oleksandr Dovz︠h︡enko : dokumenty i materialy spet︠s︡sluz︠h︡b (2021), compiled by Roman Rosli︠a︡k, contains the texts of original Ukrainian and Russian documents kept by the secret services on the director.  It’s an extraordinary resource, with the two volumes between them running to over 1,350 pages, and including a variety of sources such as internal memos and transcripts of tapped telephone conversations as well as transcripts of information from informants and other formal documents.  The publisher has uploaded on their site the full contents pages for volume 1 and for volume 2.  For those studying Ukrainian film and Dovz︠h︡enko in particular, the two volumes provide a surreal parallel timeline of the investigations into the filmmaker to be studied against his real life and work.

The Ukrainian journal Krytyka published a review of the set by Anna Veselovska, in which she refers to the fact that the date with which volume 2 ends (1989) comes long after Dovz︠h︡enko’s death (1956); while the files otherwise end in 1955, the final entry is a query about destroying the file as having “neither operational nor historical value” [wording from the review].  Like Veselovska, we should be glad that the suggestion was never acted on.  This set, as others like it, sheds light not only on the subject of the files and those around him but also on world of the state apparatus watching him.

Mel Bach