On September 29, Ukraine honors the memory of the one biggest crimes victims of the Nazi regime – the mass murder of Kyiv's Jews in Babyn Yar. During the two days of September 29-30, 1941, soldiers of the Nazi Einsatz Group “C” killed almost 34,000 civilians – children, women, and the elderly. Later, Babyn Yar, a tract on the outskirts of Kyiv at the time, was turned into a place of mass murder of Soviet prisoners of war, patients of a psychiatric hospital, Roma, clergy and those who, in the opinion of the occupation administration, posed a threat to the so-called cannibalistic “new order”.
After the end of World War II, the memory of the Babyn Yar tragedy became a hostage of the Soviet censorship, which closely monitored any deviations from the officially recognized view of the events of the war and occupation. The site of Babyn Yar was turned into a landfill, used as a construction site, etc.; private and informal initiatives commemorating the tragedy were ruthlessly suppressed. Therefore, the memory of the Jews who died was preserved in the form of memories of the relatives of the victims of Nazi terror, as well as those Kyivans who were contemporaries of the Nazi occupation. One of them was 12-year-old Anatoliy Kuznetsov. Together with his mother, grandfather and grandmother, he lived in Kurenivka, a historical district of Kyiv bordering Babyn Yar. A few years before the beginning of the German-Soviet war, the boy began to keep a diary. In an ordinary general notebook, Tolya wrote down his childhood impressions of the events he was an eyewitness to. The boy continued his recordings during the German occupation. Thus, on the pages of the children's diary appeared descriptions of the first days of the establishment of the “new order”, the reactions of the people of Kyiv to the arrival of the occupiers, the shootings in Babyny Yar, the tragedy of the Soviet prisoners of war who were in the Syrets concentration camp, the collaborationism of local residents with the occupiers.
Since childhood, Anatoliy dreamed of becoming a writer, but during the days of Stalinist totalitarianism, he practically had no chance to realize his dream. Children's dreams were crossed out by the need to answer the question in the questionnaire: “Have you been in the territory occupied by the enemy.” The talented young man tried to realize himself as a ballet dancer, graduated from the Ballet Studio of the Kyiv Opera [1], and later studied at the studio of the Lesya Ukrainka Theater [2]. However, the desire to write did not disappear.
In the early 1950s, Kuznetsov went to work on the construction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, where he worked as a support worker, a carpenter, and also regularly contributed to the newspaper “Vsenarodne stroyka”. A short period of Soviet liberalization (the so-called “Khrushchev thaw”), as well as belonging to the “working class”, the presence of an ideologically verified journalistic work allowed him to enter the Literary Institute named after M. Gorky and publish his first book (“Continuation of the legend”, 1959), become a member of the Writers' Union of the USSR. It is worth noting that in the conditions of the Soviet reality, not talented texts and writing skills, namely belonging to this, fully controlled by the authorities, association gave a person the status of a writer with the privilege of publishing his works.
According to the memoirs of A. Kuznetsov, the first impetus for the appearance of a book based on the occupation diary was given by his mother, Maria Fedorivna. She accidentally found a notebook with her son's notes and, after reading it, advised him not to stop and to keep writing.
In 1961, the Russian poet Yevhen Yevtushenko came to Kyiv with his creative evening. According to him, even before his arrival, he knew about the circumstances of the shootings in Babyn Yar, and for many years he was under the strong impression of Leonid Ozerov's poem “Babyn Yar” (“I came to you, Babyn Yar...”). Twenty years after the tragedy, Yevtushenko, accompanied by A. Kuznetsov, went to the place of death of thousands of innocent victims, which had been turned into a landfill. Listening to Kuznetsov's memories of occupied Kyiv, as well as learning about the existence of a diary, the poet ultimatum declared that Anatoliy must write a book. The meeting with Kuznetsov and what he saw with his own eyes in Babyn Yar made a powerful emotional impression on Yevtushenko himself. Returning to the hotel, in just a few hours the poet wrote his own poem “Babyn Yar” (“There are no monuments above Babyn Yar”) and, despite the attempt of the local Kyiv authorities to disrupt the creative meeting, he read it the very next day in the October Palace of Kyiv [3].
In 1965, A. Kuznetsov dared to submit a manuscript of a book entitled “Babyn Yar. A novel-document” to the editors of the All-Union magazine “Yunist”. The magazine, founded in 1955, quickly gained popularity (in a short period of time its circulation increased tenfold and amounted to more than 1.5 million copies) and became famous as a publication that opened up the Soviet reader to young talented writers. However, like absolutely all the printed word, publications in the magazine were subject to censorship. The then editor-in-chief of “Youth” Borys Polevoy, a living classic of socialist realism (“The Tale of a Real Man”), told a young colleague that the book would not see the light of day without significant revisions. At the same time, wanting to absolve himself of responsibility, B. Polevoy, without Kuznetsov's knowledge, sent the manuscript to the appropriate department of the Central Committee of the CPSU. From there, the novel was returned with significant reductions, in particular, sections dedicated to the period of Soviet repression in the late 1930s were removed; fragments describing the retreat of the Red Army from Kyiv, the destruction of Khreschatyk by the Soviet special services, information about the Kureniv tragedy in 1961, etc. Shocked by the distortion of the book, Kuznetsov refused to publish it and demanded the return of the manuscript. However, taking into account the fact that high party officials (according to some sources, the infamous secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Mykhailo Suslov reviewed the text) had already put their stamp on the abridged version of the book, the manuscript was not returned and they began to prepare it for printing. In desperation, the young writer demanded from the editors to indicate that the novel was being published in an abbreviated form, hoping that in the future he would be able to publish the full version of the text. However, he was also denied this.
So, it was in this shortened and actually distorted version of A. Kuznetsov's “Babyn Yar” that it appeared in three issues of the magazine “Yunist” in 1966 (№ 8, 9, 10). The total circulation of the magazine at the time of publication was almost 4 million copies. By the way, visitors of Museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine” can see them in a permanent exhibition. They and other exhibits of the post-war era show how the Soviet authorities tried to formulate a distorted version of the memory of the Holocaust, obscuring and erasing the memory of the total extermination of the Jews.
During the year, “Babyn Yar” was published in book format. However, it is also in a shortened and carefully censored version.
In 1969, Kuznetsov, while on a business trip in London, appealed to the British authorities for political asylum. The request was granted, and thus the writer was able to escape from Soviet totalitarianism. In 1970, “Babyn Yar” was first published in the author's edition in Frankfurt am Main. For a decade, Anatoliy worked for Radio Liberty and repeatedly devoted his own programs to the history of the Holocaust of the Jews of Ukraine, as well as to the topic of the silence of the genocide in the Soviet Union.
In 2008, “Babyn Yar” by A. Kuznetsov was published for the first time in Ukrainian, translated by the writer's son, Oleksii. In 2009 – 80 years after the birth of the writer and 30 years after his death - a monument to Anatoliy Kuznetsov – a teenager who reads a German announcement about the obligation on the morning of September 29, 1941, all the Jews of Kyiv gathered at the corner of Degtyarivska (in the original – Dokterivska) and Melnikova streets. It was from there that thousands of Kyiv Jews set out on their last journey.
A. Kuznetsov's novel-document is not a scientific text. A professional historian will definitely find in its factual inaccuracies or emotionally colored exaggerations unacceptable for scientific style. However, “Babyn Yar” is an example of exceptional authorial courage and at the same time one of the most insightful texts about those who first became victims of the Nazi genocide, and later – of the Soviet policy of silence about it.
Yehor Vradii
[1]Now – Kyiv Municipal Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre for Children and Youth.
[2] Now – Lesya Ukrainka National Academic Theatre.
[3] Now – International Center of Culture and Arts.