Writers' Union of Ukraine (Спілка письменників України; Spilka pysmennykiv Ukrainy, or СПУ; SPU). An organization of poets, prose writers, dramatists, and translators. From 1932 until 1991 it was the only litterateurs’ organization legally permitted in Soviet Ukraine. It was founded on 23 April 1932 following a resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), ‘On the Reconstruction of Literary and Artistic Organizations.’ In accordance with the resolution all previously existing literary organizations were dissolved (in Ukraine, the All-Ukrainian Association of Proletarian Writers, Pluh, Molodniak, Zakhidnia Ukraina), and a preparatory founding committee was formed to create the single Writers’ Union (SP) of the USSR and its republican branches. In the new organizational structure the writers’ unions of the republics were subordinated to the SP of the USSR and, thus, dependent on Moscow. Consequently the literatures of the nations of the USSR began to lose their previous national independence. The SP USSR and the SPU were formally established in 1934 at the first All-Union and the first Ukrainian congresses of Soviet writers, respectively. The statute of the SP of the USSR accepted at that meeting bound Soviet writers to active participation in building socialism and loyalty to Soviet state and Communist Party policies. The statute specified that the only method in Soviet literature permitted was that of socialist realism.

The highest body of the SPU was the Republic Conference. Beginning with the fifth conference (1966), it was called every five years. At those conferences the executive administration of the SPU was elected. Members nominated from among themselves a presidium and secretariat, chaired by the first secretary, to deal with current business. The SPU has been headed by Ivan Kulyk (1934), Ivan Mykytenko (1934–8), Oleksander Korniichuk (1938–41, 1946–53), Maksym Rylsky (1943–6), Mykola Bazhan (1953–9), Oles Honchar (1959–71), Yurii Smolych (1971–3), Vasyl Kozachenko (1973–8), Pavlo Zahrebelny (1978–86), and Yurii Mushketyk (after 1986).

In 1934, as a result of the Stalinist terror of the early 1930s, the membership of the SPU numbered only 206 writers. In 1945 there were 250, in 1958, 500, and during the seventh conference (1976), 922. Its members were writers who lived in the territory of the Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine), regardless of nationality. The members included a small number of Jews, Belarusians, and Moldavians, and a rather large number of Russians: by 1991 they constituted approximately 20 percent of the total membership. The SPU has had its own publications: Literaturna Ukraïna, Vitchyzna, Kyïv, Zhovten’ (now Dzvin), and Prapor (Kharkiv) (Berezil since 1991). Together with the Ukrainian Society for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, it published Vsesvit, and with the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, it published Slovo i chas (Radians’ke literaturoznavstvo until 1991) and the Russian-language Raduga. Among the assets of the SPU were the publishing house Radianskyi Pysmennyk and the Literary Fund. Until 1991 the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) directed the SPU through the Communist faction in the SPU, and the KGB played a more direct role in controlling the SPU. From 1971 the members of the SPU at the writers’ conferences were forced to elect KGB officers to so-called secretarial positions in the SPU for ‘organizational matters’ and thereby give the KGB control over the activities of the SPU and its affiliates. In 1971 Col I. Soldatenko was elected to a secretarial post; he was succeeded by P. Shabatyn in 1976.

The SPU was an organization with privileges based on nomenklatura and was directed by the CPU. Until the late 1980s it adhered to official Party policy. With its help the post-Stalinist literary revival was quashed, particularly the shistdesiatnyky, and the policy of Russification was implemented in the Ukrainian SSR. The SPU did not defend the activists of the opposition movement, and it banned from membership those writers (eg, Mykola Lukash, Oles Berdnyk, Hryhorii Kochur, and others) who opposed Russification and defended freedom of speech, Ukrainian language rights, and so forth.

Membership in the SPU continued to increase in the late 1980s. At the 1986 conference there were close to 1,100 members. During that conference the policy of the Executive of the SPU changed radically owing to the newly proclaimed policies of Perestroika and Glasnost. From that time, among official organizations, the SPU led the movement for the rebirth of Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian language, initiated the foundation of native-language societies, and actively worked to fill in the so-called ‘blank spots’ in history of Ukraine and Ukrainian literature (the rehabilitation of Borys Hrinchenko, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Mykola Khvylovy, Hnat Mykhailychenko, and many others, and the partial reprinting of their works). In the process those writers previously denied membership in or excluded from the SPU were granted memberships, and émigré writers were inducted as members. Among the writers and literary scholars involved in that work have been Oles Honchar, Dmytro Pavlychko, Ivan Drach, Yurii Mushketyk, Yurii Shcherbak, Serhii Plachynda, Mykola Zhulynsky, and Volodymyr Drozd. The 10th conference, in 1991, re-elected Mushketyk as head and declared the Writers’ Union separate and independent of the Writers’ Union of the USSR. In 1992 the SPU had 1,243 members.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Garrard, J.; Garrard, C. Inside the Soviet Writers’ Union (London 1991)

Ivan Koshelivets

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]