THE STRUGGLE OF THE NATIONALITIES 117
nationalists were congregated." But further argument to the
effect that, under the cloak of the Academy, "an open chauvinist
propaganda for the separation of the Ukraine from the Soviet
Union was set on foot" has a more than incredible ring. He
says: "It is a fact that in 1930, in the schoolbook The History
of Ukrainian Culture., the Ukrainians expressed the following
view: cln its relation to Asia the Ukraine has always been
culturally a corner of Europe, and it is impossible to appreciate
its culture and its art without this connection with European
art. Ukrainian art is a part of the general European process of
evolution.'" Imagine this truth, to which no one is likely to
take exception, being used by Postyschev to claim that the
Kiev Academy had demanded that Ukrainian culture should
look towards the west and away from "Asiatic Moscow"! (his
own quotation marks). What would M. Herriot say—M. Herriot,
who declared that the synthesis between Moscow centralism
and Ukrainian nationalism had been achieved—if he learned
that a remark like the one just quoted was enough to render
the Ukrainian Academy suspect of separatism and even of
treason?
Postyschev's judgment on Ukrainian art and literature is
summary and unburdened by investigation or reflection.
"Nationalistic productions of a unique insolence and blatancy
which for years filled the libraries and bookshops, in order to
instil the poison of chauvinism into various groups of workers
and Soviet farm labourers." It would be hard to announce
more clearly than Postyschev does here that the campaign
directed against Ukrainian Commurdsts of every grade3 against
teachers^ the students and the intellectual classes in their
entirety, was not directed against the alleged treason of "the
agents of Sir Henri Deterding,1 the Polish magnates and
the German barons," but solely and exclusively against the
Ukrainian national-*cultural aspirations as such.
The second task in Postyschev's campaign in the Ukraine
was "to introduce proved Bolshevik elements in every depart-
1 The well-known oil magnate.