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How a home for Ukrainian intellectuals in the 1920's became a deadly trap.
In 1920's Kharkiv, when the city was the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, a group of Ukrainian writers championed the construction of an apartment complex that would be dedicated to housing members of the Ukrainian intellectual community. However, the initial promise of a home for Ukrainian writers and poets soon gave way to tragedy.
Entrapment: Ukraine’s House of Writers, the 1920s–1930 examines state violence perpetrated against the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the 1930s, and the creation of a place of surveillance, the famous House of Writers (Budynok Slovo), an apartment building that was conceived by an association of writers in Kharkiv in the 1920s. This building fashioned an important identity for Ukrainian intellectuals, which was altered under state pressure, terror, and arrests. Their creative art was gradually transformed into the art of living and surviving under the terror, a feature of a regimented society. In the 1930s, approximately 90 percent of the building’s residents were repressed. The book explores the anatomy of terror, the Soviet secret police’s strategies and tactics, and the writers’ behavior during arrests and interrogation. The objective of this research is to illuminate the historical continuity and consistency of Russia’s attempts to subvert Ukraine.
"The intelligentsia will always be a threat to dictatorial governance, regardless of where or when it occurs. A case in point is this exquisitely produced book, documenting the rich history of how a single location transforms individuals into a unified force. It is as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago, when Ukrainians struggled to free themselves from the Russian oppression under Stalin, representing both a physical and existential threat to the regime. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the human element of how a society thrives in warfare."
— Jan Goldman, Professor of Intelligence & Security Studies, The Citadel; Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence.
"This is an excellent piece of research, based on scrupulous reading of archival materials. It engages with relevant scholarly literature and has many original insights that challenge some long-established and now outdated opinions that lean in the direction of Soviet apologism. It will become the standard work on the period in Ukrainian studies of the 1930s, Stalinist repression in Ukraine, and secret police tactics."
— Myroslav Shkandrij, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Manitoba, Canada
"Based on documents from the GPU/NKVD/KGB archives in Kyiv and Kharkiv, Ukraine, Olga Bertelsen masterfully explores a social and cultural history of the House of Writers (Budynok Slovo) in Kharkiv during the Soviet era. Providing a glimpse of the repressive Stalinist regime and its purge of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the 1920s and 1930s, Bertelsen clearly reveals the existence of a distinct Ukrainian national identity demonstrated in the life and work of the first generations of the Soviet Ukrainian intelligentsia."
— Sergei Zhuk, Professor of History, Ball State University
“Entrapment is the first monograph on Kharkiv’s legendary House of Writer (Budynok Slovo) published in the West. Bertelsen meticulously reconstructs the spatial mechanics of the Stalin terror in Ukraine, drawing on a massive body of archival documents located in the former Soviet secret police archives in Kyiv and Kharkiv. Approximately, 89 percent of its residents—Ukraine’s intellectual elites—fell victim to the GPU-NKVD’s repression, the shadow architects of Soviet terror. This research is critically important for understanding the brutal nature and the continuity of Russian cultural imperialism, especially today when the “Slovo” building, as well as Ukrainian sovereignty, culture, and identity, are once again under Russian attack.”
— Dr. Andriy Kohut, Director of the Sectoral State Archive of Ukraine’s Security Service
“Deftly combining multidisciplinary analysis from below with analysis from above, Olga Bertelsen has transformed Kharkiv's House of Writer's into a microcosm of the rise and fall of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the hopeful 1920s and the violent 1930s. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand contemporary Ukraine and the mechanisms of its repression. Brava!”
— Alexander Motyl, professor of political science, Rutgers University-Newark
Olga Bertelsen is an Associate Professor of Global Security and Intelligence at Tiffin University. She is a co-director of the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE)’s Mid-West chapter, and sits on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals. She published broadly on state violence, Soviet/Russian intelligence, and influence operations.