PIOSENKA TRWAJĄCA WIECZNOŚĆ: SOWIECKI APARAT REPRESJI WOBEC UKRAIŃSKIEGO FOLKLORU POLITYCZNEGO
The neverending song: The Soviet apparatus of repression against Ukrainian political folklore

Summary/Abstract: In the Soviet Ukraine, political folklore was a powerful channel of unofficial com-munication for a large part of that country’s population. Telling jokes and performing songs that ridiculed communist authorities as early as in the 1920s was a widespread way of expressing mass resistance against totalitarianism for many Ukrainians. In the 1930s-50s’, the Soviet apparatus of repression applied punishments of imprisonment lasting 3 to 10 years to those disseminating folkloric political satire along with confisca-tion of their property. Some people who were repressed for carrying out political folklore never returned from the GULAG. This article is based on folklore materials gleaned from criminal cases found in former NKVD and KGB archives, which were made available to researchers in 2015 in the Ukraine.

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