The Ethics of Solidarity in Soviet Camps: a Ukrainian-Jewish Dialogue
By Yuliia Kravchenko
The history of Soviet camps contains little-known yet inspiring pages from the lives of political prisoners. One of them is the story of the humanity and dignity demonstrated by dissidents, against which the repressive system was powerless. In particular, it shows how the relationships between Ukrainians and Jews in the camps challenged the authoritarian system. Their mutual understanding and cooperation defining the struggle for their rights was a way of asserting their agency. Researching this is highly relevant in the context of the contemporary discussion around the deimperialisation of Russia and the decolonisation of Ukrainian studies. The following text is based on the memoirs and testimonies of dissidents, which were published in the journals Suchasnist, Dialohy (Dialogs), and Ukraine-Israel, as well as in memoirs, including those of two well-known dissidents, who were imprisoned for their views: Myroslav Marynovych1 and Mikhail Kheifets2.
In an unexpected and unforeseen development in the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviet prison camps, which earlier had been part of the GULAG3, became places in which ethnic and religious xenophobia and discrimination were overcome. Individuals from different national groups met, cooperated, expressed support and solidarity for one another. According to the Ukrainian dissident Myroslav Marynovych, “the camp helped all those groups that were predisposed to dislike one another to hear each group’s arguments.” 4
This essay focuses on individuals who identified themselves primarily as either Ukrainians or Jews and whose cooperation would later play a transformative role in relations between Ukrainian and Jewish communities far beyond the prison camps, in what prisoners described as “the big camp,” meaning the Soviet Union as a whole.
The terms “Ukrainian” and “Jew” are, of course, not without their complexities. In the memoirs on which this study is based, some figures, like Arye Vudka, preferred to identify themselves as Jews. Others, like Josef Zissels, preferred to identify themselves as Ukrainian Jews. Both were born in Ukraine and both were of Jewish background. Zissels became, and still remains, a leader of the Jewish community in Ukraine. The practice in this essay has been to use the form of self-identification chosen by each individual.
Overall, the dissidents clearly identified themselves either as Ukrainians or Jews. The criteria for self-identification as Jewish varied. Generally, it meant belonging to the Jewish ethno-cultural community; often this also meant identifying with a religious community.
Within the Soviet Union all citizens were officially identified by “nationality.” This was inscribed in the “Fifth Line” of their identity record. Often people chose to be identified as Russian, because this was convenient for social and economic reasons. Many individuals who came from Ukrainian, Lithuanian or Jewish backgrounds obtained Russian nationality in their identity record. In this way the “Fifth Line” became a political instrument in the formation of each person’s national identity.
Another complexity stems from the fact that the Soviet regime made efforts to set groups against each other. This divide et impera tactic was especially prevalent in the camps, where it was used to sow an atmosphere of distrust between minorities, to fan antagonisms so as to set them against one another. For example, the Jewish political prisoner Avraam Shifrin describes the situation as follows:
“Soviet citizens were constantly informed by their red propaganda that Ukrainian nationalists were enemies who helped the Germans during the war. It is worth comparing this to the other lie of the communists: that ‘Zionists always cooperated with fascists.” 5
When dissidents from different groups refused to play along, and instead cooperated with one another, this became a form of decolonising activity, a rejection of attempts by the authorities to manipulate them, to dissolve particular communities and to create an atomised mass that could more easily be controlled.
The Jewish writer David Markish, who as a child witnessed Stalin’s repression of his family in the 1950s, explained the politics behind this representation as follows:
“Ukrainian nationalism is today in the USSR the strongest and best organised force that is directed against Russian communism. That is why the Kremlin makes every effort to revive the anachronistic hostility between Jews and Ukrainians, which helps to distract both Ukrainians and Jews from their struggle for national rights and to prevent them from uniting.” 6
However, despite the enormous power and brutality of the punitive camp system, very often it was precisely in the camps that Ukrainians and Jews met and discovered common ground and unity.
On Meeting at the camps
It was a policy of the Soviet administration to move people from place to place, either in an openly violent way by deporting entire nationalities and large groups (as happened with the Crimean Tatars, and Ukrainians in western parts of Ukraine), or in a covert but forced way (as happened with the recruitment of people to building the Baikal-Amursk railway line, or the settlement of Russians in parts of Ukraine). At the same time representatives of different ethnic groups often lacked the experience of communicating with one another and therefore knowledge about the cultures, languages and traditions of other groups.
Most dissidents, like Ukrainian literary critic Yevhen Sverstiuk7, remember:
“the memoirs of GULAG prisoners of all generations are full of touching moments that describe a prisoner being introduced to another culture when a cellmate was randomly assigned to them. Moreover, these discoveries were unexpected and accompanied by particularly intense emotions.” 8
Similarly, Yosef Mendelevych, who was born in Latvia, writes:
“However strange it may appear, I was only able to become acquainted with the Ukrainian people in prison. Before that I knew several Ukrainians in Riga, but it was hard there to distinguish individuals whose surnames end in ‘o’ from Russian occupiers.” 9
Another Jewish prisoner Arye Vudka, did not have contacts with Ukrainian intellectuals. In his own words, although he grew up in Ukraine, he only “discovered Ukraine in the concentration camps.” 10
In the camps many Jewish dissidents were able to speak with Ukrainians about the history and culture of Ukraine. Lack of information turned the dissidents themselves into so-called “living libraries” for one another. Learning languages, religious traditions and the history of other peoples, without the obstruction of censorship, produced an intellectual decolonisation. By interacting with Vasyl Stus, Mikhail Kheifets could broaden his understanding of Ukrainian literature, especially regarding the writings of Ahatanhel Krymsky, Lesia Ukrainka11, Mykola Bazhan12, and Pavlo Tychyna13. Yosef Mendelevych in dialogue with Yevhen Sverstiuk discovered the sophistication of Taras Shevchenko’s works, especially in those texts where Shevchenko is sometimes accused of antisemitism.14
On Support and Cooperation
Mutual support led to working together, and vice versa. In most cases the support from a group began on a political prisoner’s first days in the «zone» (the territory of the prison camp). Sometimes prisoners were already waiting for the arrival of one of their own, who were being transported over the staging posts (known as etapy), because they had received information about a court decision through their own secret channels. Mostly, the prisoner would initially be greeted by people who were not from their own dissident circle – in particular, by the camp administration’s informants (stukachi), who wanted immediately to establish a relationship of trust, so that they could gather information. However, after a short time, the character of people and the roles they played in the zone became common knowledge.
The imprisoned dissidents helped one another in everyday life: in fulfilling the daily work load (“norms”), in observing religious customs, as far as this was possible.
“I will never forget, Stepan [Mamchur],” wrote Hilel Butman, a Jewish dissident, “how you stood by the entry to my section to give me a small piece of lard, torn from your own ration (which occurred just after I was released from solitary confinement).” 15
According to Yakov Suslensky, Jews and Ukrainians worked closely together in an organised way in one of the most important aspects of camp life – the transfer of information out of the zone, some of which made its way abroad.16
There were also unexpected moments of synergy. Arye Vudka provides an example of a unique action. In order to save at least a part of the poetry of Ukrainian writers in the camps, he learned them by heart. The dissident had a phenomenal memory, which he used for this purpose. After he was released in 1976, the poetry collection Poetry from Behind the Barbed Wire: Voices of Ukrainian Poets Repressed by Moscow17 appeared in Munich. It contained verses written by Yevhen Sverstiuk, Ivan Svitlychny, Vasyl Stus, Zinoviy Krasivsky, Oleksa Riznykiv, Mykhailo Lutsyk.
Another example of cooperation is the creation in Camp 36 of an (unofficial) Hymn to Jerusalem18. The work resulted from the joint efforts of the Jew Hilel Butman, the Armenian Bahrat Shakhverdian and the Ukrainian Mykola Horbal. Bahrat Shakhverdian was inspired by the stories he heard about Israel and the songs sung by Jews to create a composition in Armenian which he called A Hymn to Jerusalem. He sang it to himself without attaching any importance to it. Hilel Butman heard him and was struck by the motif of the national hymn Hatikva (Hope) which was part of Shakhverdian’s song. Butman translated the text into Russian so that he could then translate it into Hebrew. Since Shalkhverdian lacked an education in music, Mykola Horbal wrote the musical notation. It was a challenge to send it beyond the camp. Fortunately, this was achieved and the work arrived in Israel, where professional musicians worked with it and where it was also translated from Hebrew into Yiddish. In the end the hymn was played in concerts at the The People’s House,19 while Hilel Butman, Bahrat Shakhverdian and Mykola Horbal were still behind the camp’s barbed wires.
On Solidarity
The camps had their own laws of communication, laws of survival and support. People were united most frequently by their values, their general orientation toward the world, and their attitude toward a common enemy. Arye Vudka wrote:
“We had a common enemy, we had a similar goal, and therefore we had to support one another. We saw how the authorities tried to spread hostility between various nationalities in the camp. […] Therefore our goal became overcoming this hostility […] and working together, helping one another. Not only in a personal sense, but as communities.” 20
The camp administration tried to provoke conflicts by reminding prisoners of difficult episodes in history, such as during the times of Khmelnytsky or the Second World War. However, the solidarity among dissidents was stronger than this manipulation. Myroslav Marynovych has illustrated this with an example from his own experience.
“One time,” he says, “while walking in the zone, I witnessed a characteristic scene, in which Serhii Kovalov, in the presence of many other prisoners, was arguing with one of the camp’s guards. The guard tried to convince everyone that the soldiers of the UPA [Ukrainian Insurgent Army] were criminals, while Kovalov defended the opinion that they were simply freedom fighters. One can imagine the shock of this worker in the punitive organs [camp security service], when he heard support for the armed struggle of the Ukrainian people against the communist regime coming not from a Ukrainian but a Russian!” 21
The strongest expressions of solidarity, in my opinion, were the protest actions of prisoners against the arbitrary behaviour of camp authorities. Protests took the form of hunger strikes, refusals to come out for work, as well as the writing of letters to the authorities of the camp and the regime. There are many examples in the already quoted memoirs of Myroslav Marynovych, Mykhailo Kheifets, and Yakiv Suslensky.22
Despite the danger, their struggle led to success. As punishment for these protests people were sent to solitary confinement, where they lost their health; they were prevented from corresponding, receiving parcels or having rare meetings with relatives. Nevertheless, in their memoirs, dissidents describe common actions, when prisoners of various nationalities together announced a hunger strike on the occasion of the Day of the Prisoner on January 12, or as a response to the punishment of a fellow prisoner. This is how Myroslav Marynovych describes one incident:
On June 22 [1979] I began a hunger strike in solidarity with and support for Sergei Kovalov [a Russian dissident], who had announced his own hunger strike a week earlier after being driven to despair by the blocking of his correspondence and meetings with family, and a little earlier the possibility of meeting with the lawyer who had travelled to the zone to see him. The tension in the camp at that moment reached a critical level and through this solidarity with Kovalov I was able to at least lighten my own psychological distress, which was caused by seeing the punishment of prisoners without being able to do anything about it.23
How the Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue has contributed to the decolonisation of Central-European studies
In Jerusalem in 1979, the Committee for Jewish-Ukrainian Friendship was created and in 1981 was renamed the Society for Jewish-Ukrainian Relations. It was the initiative of Yakov Suslensky and Aleksandr Feldman, Jews who had experienced the Soviet camps. These dissidents were so moved by the support they received from Ukrainians during their imprisonment that after their release to freedom they felt it was their duty to do everything possible to help and develop the dialogue that had begun in the camps. For decades, Western studies in the humanities (history, politics, literature) had viewed Eastern and Central Europe through the imperial, Russocentric lens. Dissidents bore witness to the fact that occupied and oppressed peoples of the Soviet Union were able to communicate with one another without the imperial mediator. In 1983, the McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, hosted a conference titled “Jewish-Ukrainian Relations in Historical Perspective,” which covered the history of relations between the two peoples from the Rus’ era to the present. Over 30 scholars from the United States, Canada, and Israel participated in the event. In his review of the conference, journalist Bohdan Osadchuk identified the cooperation between Ukrainian and Jewish dissidents in Soviet concentration camps as one of the key factors that prompted such an event.24
Valuable documentation describing the work of the Committee and Society is contained in its publications. At first it issued the bulletin Kontakt (three issues of which appeared. Later it published a quarterly socio-political and literary journal Dialohy (Dialogues)). The Society for Jewish-Ukrainian Relations planned to publish the journal in four languages: Hebrew, Ukrainian, Russian, and English. Because of financial difficulties, it eventually appeared only in Ukrainian and Russian. Their initiative was a bold one and was at the time met with some criticism in Israel, but also among some parts of the Ukrainian diaspora. Of course, Soviet authorities voiced violent opposition to it. The journal’s name reflected its content. It developed not only dialogues but discussions on complex and difficult topics in Ukrainian-Jewish relations. The editors conducted surveys of their readership, one of which asked the question “Jewish-Ukrainian contacts – for or against?”25 The results of the survey showed that respondents saw the benefits of Jewish-Ukrainian contacts for both groups but also for other peoples, because a common struggle “can and should be of international importance.” 26The Ukrainian-Jewish understanding was described as a good example for other peoples who find themselves in poor mutual relations, because “in the past Ukrainian-Jewish mutual relations were almost the worst.”27 Some respondents mentioned the importance of an independent Ukrainian state in which human rights are respected, among them the rights of the Jewish minority.”28 Thus, the journal pioneered a discussion of relations between the two communities and raised the broader question of historical issues, memory studies and cultural cooperation.
The Ukrainian-Jewish dialogue challenged Moscow’s imperial patterns. Originating in Soviet camps, it expanded to an international level as an independent and self-sufficient interaction between the representatives of the two communities. Knowledge of Ukrainian-Jewish cooperation enriches the history and collective memory of the Central-European region29, rendering both communities visible with their own agency and historical subjecthood.
References:
1 https://victimsofcommunism.org/award/myroslav-marynovych/
2 https://chronicle-of-current-events.com/2020/08/22/the-trial-of-mikhail-kheifets-9-13-september-1974-34-2/
3 Soviet prison camps in Mordovia – collectively known as Dubravlag (ZhKh-385) – which had grown out of the earlier Stalin-era GULAG system and, from the 1960s onward, held the majority of the USSR’s political prisoners – Ukrainian dissidents, samvydav writers, national-rights activists, and Jewish refuseniks alike, all convicted under the same ‘anti-Soviet agitation’ statutes. https://museum.khpg.org/en/1164240891
4 Myroslav Marynovych, Vsesvit za koliuchym drotom: spohady i rozdumy dysydenta (Lviv: Vydavnytstvo Ukrainskoho katolytskoho universytetu, 2022), p.280
5 A. Shyfrin, “Spohady pro ukrainskykh politviazniv [Memoirs of Ukrainian political prisoners],” in Inozemtsi pro ukrainskykh politviazniv: Spohady [Foreigners about Ukrainian political prisoners: Memoirs], ed. O. Holub (Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2013), 667.
6 D. Markish, Dialohy, [Dialogs] no. 3–4 (1984): 25.
7 https://museum.khpg.org/en/1113995602
8Ye. Sverstiuk, “Dity riznykh narodiv [Children of different nations],” introduction to Inozemtsi pro ukrainskykh politviazniv: Spohady [Foreigners about Ukrainian political prisoners: Memoirs], comp. Olena Holub (Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2013), 1.
9 Yo. Mendelevych, “Spohad pro ukrainskykh politviazniv [Memoirs of Ukrainian political prisoners],” Suchasnist, no. 7–8 (1985): 197.
10 I. Chruślińska and P. Tyma, Dialohy porozuminnia: ukrainsko-polski vzaiemyny [Dialogues of Understanding: Ukrainian-Polish Relations], trans. L. Lysenko (Kyiv: Dukh i Litera, 2011), 152.
The explanation why it was not possible for him before lies in the general lack of knowledge about Ukrainian history and culture and the idea, installed by the Soviet government, that Ukrainian culture had little to offer because it was backward, peasant-based and unsophisticated. Many Soviet citizens accepted this evaluation simply because they had never been exposed to a different point of view, but accepted Russification as inevitable and, in fact, desirable. Ivan Dzyuba in his Internationalism or Russification? (written in 1965) analyses the Soviet policy of making Ukrainian history and culture appear impoverished and lacking in attractive traditions. (See: Dziuba, I. Internatsionalizm chy rusyfikatsiia? А Study in the Soviet Nationalities Problem. Suchasnist, (1968): 179). He also points out how this discriminatory policy differed from the Ukrainization policy of the 1920s.
11 M. Kheyfets, “V ukrainskii poezii bilshoho nemaie… [There is no one greater in Ukrainian poetry…],” in Ukrainski syluety [Ukrainian silhouettes] (Munich: Suchasnist, 1983), 36.
12 Ibid, 26.
13 Ibid, 27.
14Ye. Sverstiuk, “Iz zony strazhdan [From the zone of suffering],” Ukraina – Izrail: Journal Literature, Art and Politics, no. 1 (1992): 53–54.
15 H. Butman, “Tabirnyi spohad [Camp memoir],” in Dobrookyi: Spohady pro Ivana Svitlychnoho [The Clear-Eyed One: Memoirs about Ivan Svitlychnyi], eds. L. Svitlychna and Yu. Badzio (Kyiv: Chas, 1998), 475.
16 Ya. Suslenskyi, “Pro yevreisko-ukrainski vzaiemyny v taborakh i tiurmakh dlia politychnykh viazniv SRSR [On Jewish-Ukrainian relations in camps and prisons for political prisoners in the USSR],” Suchasnist, no. 1 (1979): 93.
17 Poetry from Behind the Barbed Wire: Voices of Ukrainian Poets Repressed by Moscow (Munich: Shliakh Peremohy, 1978), 183.
18 A. Belov, “Gimn Ierusalimu, sozdannyj v Sovetskom konclagere no. 26 [Hymn to Jerusalem, created in Soviet concentration camp no. 26],” in Menora: 1973–2013, chief ed. P. Goldshtein (Jerusalem, 2012), 91–94 (last accessed 24.04.2026 https://berkovich-zametki.com/Kiosk/Menora_40.pdf).
19 A. Belov, “Gimn Ierusalimu, sozdannyj v Sovetskom konclagere no. 26 [Hymn to Jerusalem, created in Soviet concentration camp no. 26],” in Menora: 1973–2013, chief ed. P. Goldshtein (Jerusalem, 2012), 91–94 (last accessed 24.04.2026 https://berkovich-zametki.com/Kiosk/Menora_40.pdf) Today, this historic cultural center is known as the Gerard Behar Center, located in the center of Jerusalem on Bezalel Street: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Behar_Center.
20 I. Chruślińska and P. Tyma, Dialohy porozuminnia: ukrainsko-polski vzaiemyny [Dialogues of Understanding: Ukrainian-Polish Relations], trans. L. Lysenko (Kyiv: Dukh i Litera, 2011), 154.
21 Myroslav Marynovych, Vsesvit za koliuchym drotom: spohady i rozdumy dysydenta (Lviv: Vydavnytstvo Ukrainskoho katolytskoho universytetu, 2022), 279-280.
22 For examples see Marynovych, 251-310; Kheifets, 7-126 ; Suslensky 84-103.
23 Ibid, 268
24 B. Osadchuk, “Ukraintsi ta yevreii [Ukrainians and Jews],” Dialohy [Dialogues], no. 5–6 (1984): 143.
25 “Yevreisko-ukrainski kontakty – za ta proty [Jewish-Ukrainian contacts – pros and cons],” Dialohy [Dialogues], no. 3–4 (1984): 20.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 “Central-European region” here refers to the countries that historically existed in the buffer zone between competing empires – the lands caught between the Habsburg, Russian and Ottoman imperial spheres of influence. See: Robert Okey, “Central Europe / Eastern Europe: Behind the Definitions” (University of Glasgow reading): https://www.gla.ac.uk/0t4/crcees/files/summerschool/readings/school10/reading_list/okey.pdf
30 https://www.judaicacenter.kyiv.ua/
About the Author:
Yuliia Kravchenko, Ph.D. (Kandydat Nauk), is a researcher at the Center for the Study of the History and Culture of East European Jewry of the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.”30 She founded and organised “The 1960s and the Dissident Movement: A Festival for Young People” (2017–2022), an annual event that brought together students and teachers at the National Center “Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.” She was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University (2021–2022), and a non-residential Fellow at Indiana University (2024–2025).
This publication was produced in partnership with UNESCO with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of UNESCO and the European Union.
Citation: Yuliia Kravchenko,The Ethics of Solidarity in Soviet Camps: a Ukrainian-Jewish Dialogue, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 20.08.2026, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/67606
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