Kyiv’s Minusnyky: Regime Bans for “Uncertain” Citizens

Abstract

The article deals with a special category of residents of the capital of Ukraine who were recognized as “socially dangerous” and punished by expulsion from the city, along with a ban on settling in a number of areas of the USSR; as well as with categories of citizens who were banned from living in Kyiv for other reasons. Those expelled by judicial, and more often extrajudicial, authorities received a sentence where the territories prohibited for them were designated as “minus 6”, “minus 12”, and “minus 15” (the numbers meant the number of designated areas, and the word “minus” entered Soviet slang as a root construction of the concept of “minusnyky”, which denoted the community repressed and discriminated against in this way). These and other persons mentioned above had a corresponding entry made in their passports, which made it impossible for them to stay in the capital of the Ukrainian SSR. The purpose of the article is to reveal the Kyivans-minusnyky population, a category of repressed people who for a long time were practically “invisible” to researchers. It also aims to transfer the concept of “minusnyky” with all its narrow and broad connotations from Soviet repressive slang to the academic historical dictionary. The research objectives are to analyze the logic behind the creation of regime prohibitions for “socially dangerous” persons, to highlight certain stages of “cleansing”/“sanitation” of the capital of the Ukrainian SSR and the 50-km zone around it, to consider the circumstances of punishment and discrimination, and to reconstruct the process of adaptation of minuscule population to the regime’s everyday life. The research methodology combines the tools of historical and legal analysis, social anthropology, and the concept of social creation of space. The scientific novelty is to expand the general understanding of political terror and its consequences for the Kyiv community. The atmosphere of regime rule in the capital of Ukraine is analysed as an organic component of the functioning of the totalitarian regime and the punitive and repressive mechanism, the first turns of which occurred simultaneously with the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. The author traces the progressive growth of the Kyiv minuscule group, the reasons for their acquisition of such a status and strategies for survival in exile. It is proved that in the arsenal of total terror, in addition to the most severe repressions, targeted geographical isolation was actively used against Kyiv residents, which became an effective means of “cleansing” the capital of the Ukrainian SSR from “socially dangerous” persons, a mechanism of social engineering of prolonged effect. The creation of a large detachment of Kyiv’s “minusnyky” was part of the process of atomization of society, construction of spatial hierarchy, and social alienation of people and territories.