INTERNATSIONALISM ILI RUSIFIKATSIYA? [“INTERNATIONALISM OR RUSSIFICATION?”]

 766915.11.2006

“Internatsionalism ili rusifikatsiya?” [“Internationalism or Russification?”]  - a book by the literary critic and publicist Ivan DZIUBA, completed at the end of 1965.  In studying the position of the Ukrainian nation under threat within the Soviet Union the author based his investigation on official Soviet sources and used Marxist-Leninist methodology. On the basis of official statements from the authorities, shorthand records from Party congresses and on the basis of the works of Lenin, I. DZIUBA addressed a rather specific accusation to the authorities of betraying Leninist principles of national policy and called for a free and honest open discussion of all aspects of the national question. Not only as regards Ukraine, he added, but for all other nationalities in the USSR.

DZIUBA sent the manuscript to the Ukrainian leadership (adding to it a letter in support of Ukrainian dissidents arrested by the KGB during the first wave of arrests).

The book was circulated very widely in Ukrainian samvydav [samizdat], and in the second half of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s it was basically the program document for the Ukrainian national liberation movement.

In 1968 the book was published abroad in Ukrainian and in English, then later in French, Italian, Chinese and Vietnamese. It was published in Russian in 1973.