Cultural and artistic life of the Izmail region in 1945-1953

Abstract

One of the latest trends in modern domestic historical science is the further regionalization
of research, in-depth attention of scientists to the cultural and artistic life of the regions of
Ukraine, which has its own specifics. Traditionally, the study of the postwar period covered
issues of reconstruction, economic development, and cultural development remained on the
periphery of research preferences. Izmail is no exception here. The specifics of the cultural life
of this region have not received proper coverage in Ukrainian historiography. At the present
stage, it distorts the understanding of values and worldviews of the population of the region,
leaves the possibility of various kinds of propaganda influences. Taking this into consideration,
the analysis of the cultural and artistic life of the Izmail region in 1945-1953 becomes especially
relevant.
Since cultural life is an extremely complex and diverse process of creative activity in all
spheres of human existence and consciousness, the author considers in the article only theatrical
and musical art and partly amateur art, analyzes the work of cultural and artistic institutions of
Izmail region in the postwar period.
The study comes to the conclusion that cultural life in the analyzed period in the region
was contradictory. It was characterized by extremely weak material and technical base, lack of
adequate funding and related problems, was under constant control of party and Soviet
government, which considered it as a tool for forming a new Soviet identity, gradually eroding
and devaluing the national culture of the region. Despite the socialist content of cultural
processes, centralization and ideological pressure, the network of cultural and artistic
institutions in the region was restored and significantly expanded, which allowed to raise the
cultural level of the population, to acquaint it with the works of Soviet and foreign artists. The
analysis of the publications of the regional newspaper «Prydunayska Pravda» made it possible
to supplement the archival materials for a fuller reproduction of cultural processes in the region.
The author of the article points out that such components of the cultural process as
education, science, literature, cinema, fine and applied arts, the specifics of urban and rural
cultural life, etc. need further in-depth study.