Making Ukrainian Canadians: Identity, Politics, and Power in Cold War Canada

This dissertation examines the process by which a singular Ukrainian Canadian identity was constructed and entrenched throughout the twentieth century. It details how one of Canada’s largest and best organized diasporic communities, utilizing changing notions of cultural pluralism and the politics of the Cold War, crafted an increasingly nationalist, anti-communist version of identity that eradicated previously popular articulations of what it meant to be a Ukrainian in Canada. The traditional historiography posits that the community defined itself on its own terms, relying on individualized acts of agency and migrant resilience to entrench a version of Ukrainian-ness that was a democratic, bottom-up reflection of the collective. This project offers an alternative perspective by focusing on the battle over community narratives between communists, represented by the Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Association (ULFTA) and then the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (AUUC), and the nationalists, organized under the umbrella of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee (UCC). I show how, with the help of state officials, the nationalists overpowered their ideological enemies on the left, concreting their identity as hegemonic. Through this process of coherence, they further bound specific aspects of their own ideology, perceived as innocuous, apolitical, and simply common sense, into mainstream political consciousness. Beyond a simple community study, this dissertation is also a case study about the building of anti-communist hegemony in Canada. Chapter One examines the role of state surveillance and political policing to show how state officials collaborated with the UCC to weaken the domestic left. Chapter Two analyzes the rise and fall of a government bureaucracy that acculturated the nationalists so as to embed them in Canada’s structures of power and bolster their anti-communism. Chapter Three looks more closely at acts of anti-communist violence, which seriously deterred participation in the AUUC. The state’s refusal to condemn the violence also telegraphed its preferences and helped define Canada’s social, political, and judicial boundaries. Chapter Four focuses on the nationalists’ appropriation of cultural pluralism to further entrench their version of Ukrainian identity. Lastly, Chapter Five explores commemoration, where competing visions for certain cultural figures were articulated and, eventually, nationalist narratives were set.

https://thenewcanadianhistory.com/2018/10/05/making-ukrainian-canadians-a-reflection-on-identity-and-power/ ISBN: 9798496550642 https://cha-shc.ca/prize-winner/kassandra-l-luciuk/