ACTIVITY OF ALL-UKRAINIAN COMMITTEE OF ASSISTANCE TO SCIENTISTS IN KYIV IN 1920s: SOCIAL CONTROL

Abstract

The article studies the activity of the All-Ukrainian Committee of Assistance to Scientists in the hardest period of 1920–1925. During the Holodomor of 1921–1923 the Committee supported scientists, higher education establishments’ professors as well as the artists in the biggest scientific centre — Kyiv. Financial conditions of scientists and artists were critical. This situation was used by the regime to control intellectuals. It transferred from leading social force, which was determining a direction and establishing  of the Ukrainian state and was developing the culture, to ideologically and financially marginal social group. The subject matter of this article is to study the forms and methods of the All-Ukrainian Committee’s support to Kyiv intellectuals in the first half of 1920s. The archive of the All-Ukrainian Committee of Assistance to Scientists provides us with the opportunity to reveal insights on this issue. Mechanisms of the use of the following  support to social control of intellectuals by the Soviets are analysed. In the condition of whole-food and essential tools deficiency, which was in the USSR and, in particular,  in Kyiv in 1921–1923, scientists were sufficiently unprotected. It provided the state with a possibility to use budget financing / underfunding to influence intellectuals loyalty (in particular,  scientists and artists). The part of this support as well as leverage over the intellectuals means accommodation, sanitation, financial aid, food aid (food ration for academics), support to families of the dead.