Zoziv’s Artil “Tkach”: From a Unique Art-Industrial Center to a Unified Sovietized Enterprise

Author

Koliastruk Olha

a Doctor of History, a professor, a head of Culture, Methods of Teaching History and Auxiliary Historical Disciplines Department at Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi Vinnytsia State Pedagogical University (Vinnytsia, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1099-5868

Zoziv’s Artil “Tkach”:
From a Unique Art-Industrial Center
to a Unified Sovietized Enterprise

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to show, using the example of the Zoziv Embroidery Artil, how the Soviet state has used the artistic and industrial entrepreneurship of the peasants to root its system in Ukrainian society and solve acute economic problems. The archival fund of the Vinnytsia Interregional Artistic Industrial Union serves as the primary source base for the research. Attention is paid to the fact that the breakdown of self-sufficient rural entrepreneurship is caused by forcible collectivization, when deportations and terror through hunger has destroyed physically the enterprising and conscious part of the peasantry, and the rest suffered moral trauma. Ukrainian village continued to be subjected to brutal exploitation and political manipulations on the background of war devastation and human losses in the first post-war decade. As a result, during the period of Stalinism, the foundations of the Soviet identity were laid, in which essential national characteristics were emasculated and formalized to the maximum. Ukrainian traditional culture was finally leveled and marginalized, reduced to ”sharovarshchyna” because of the rigid and consistent system of Soviet political ritualism of the post-war period. The transformation was based on deception and repressive propaganda methodology. The pretended state interest and patronage of artistic crafts were actually aimed at a) establishing total control over the village and maximum use of its resources; b) providing the population with consumer goods at the lowest state costs; c) further adaptation of the Soviet way of life through apparent appreciation of folk culture; d) confirmation of the Soviet ideology of friendship of peoples both inside the country and abroad. On the other hand, it is not possible to achieve the final destruction of Ukrainianness as the peasants have adapted Soviet institutions and structures for survival and tacit resistance at the family level.

Keywords

Zoziv artil ”Tkach”, handicraft production, artistic and industrial artil, weaving, embroidery, consumer goods, decoration, joint workshops, folk craftsmen, homemakers.

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