How the elite survived: Konstantin Shteppa in German-occupied Kiev (1941-1943)

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How the elite survived: Konstantin Shteppa in German-occupied Kiev (1941-1943)

Stefan Mashkevich

Аnnotation

The present article is a case study, aimed at contributing to the understanding of what was life under Nazi occupation like for the elite of the (Ukrainian) society of the time.

Ключові слова: Друга світова війна, нацистська окупація, еліта, колабораціонізм, Костянтин Штеппа.

It does not require proof that the living conditions of the population of the Soviet Union under the German occupation were extremely harsh. People had to struggle for their lives, suffering from hunger and malnutrition, living in extreme conditions, especially in winter time, deprived of proper medical assistance - and, on top of that, fearing for their freedom if not life itself. Those who had not been executed as part of an organized campaign - most prominently, the notorious "final solution" of the Jewish question - could still risk getting grabbed as hostages, in revenge for acts of sabotage, and shot, or "just" getting deported to Germany for forced labor.

Like everywhere else, in the prewar Soviet society there were the upper circles, the elite. Many of the members thereof - primarily, Communist party bosses - would have ended up among the first on the death row had they chosen to stay under the Germans, whose proclaimed policy included eradicating all traces of Bolshevism. Most of them realized this, had the means to evacuate, and evacuate they did. However, some could not and/or did not want to leave. Under the occupation, they formed the new local elite. As such, they had no choice but to collaborate with the Germans; but quite a few of them tended to (initially) regard the latter as their "liberators" from the Soviet regime, and therefore were quite willing to collaborate.

This evokes natural questions regarding the conditions that these new elite members were subjected to. Were they much better off than ordinary citizens? What were they entitled to that the average citizen was not? Did their high position in the society mean that they were largely spared the above-mentioned problems?

In this paper, we focus on one of the most prominent public figures in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev during the German occupation of that city in 1941-- 1943, Konstantin Shteppa, aka Shtepa (1896-1958). A historian, before the war he was professor at Kiev University. Under the occupation, he served as rector of said University in 1941-1942 and as editor-in-chief of the main city newspaper, Nove Ukrainske Slovo, in 1941-1943, as well as of the Russian- language weekly Poslednie Novosti in 1943. Shteppa and his family left Kiev for Germany in 1943, eventually settling down in the USA.

Specific questions that we will try to answer are the following:

1) Why did Shteppa choose to stay in Kiev and collaborate with the Germans?

2) As a member of the elite and a collaborator, what specifically did he, as well as his family, do or not do?

3) Last but not least, what did he get out of it? Could he feel safe? well off? privileged?

Because Shteppa did belong to the elite, his biography is rather well studied. The most significant work on the subject is a monograph by I. Verba and M. Samofalov1, published in 2010. However, the present paper is largely based upon an unpublished interview with Shteppa's daughter, Aglaya Gorman, nйe Shteppa (1924-2013), conducted by this author in Gulfport, Florida, USA in February 2012The author's interview with Aglaya Gorman, 11 February 2012 (hereafter refered to as `Gorman interview').. During the occupation, Ms Shteppa, the future Mrs Gorman, lived in Kiev with her parents. In the interview, I concentrated on issues related to the life of the family in that specific period.

Mrs Gorman has also published a book of her own, A Choice between Two Evils (meaning the Soviet power and the German occupation)Gorman A. A Choice between Two Evils, Xlibris Corp., 2006., part of which tells about her family's experience in occupied Kiev. It is necessary to stress that Mrs Gorman's claims, and especially her judgements, have to be assessed rather carefully. Generally, it is hard to remain objective when speaking of oneself and one's own family. Additionally, in this specific case, the fact that the interviewee regarded the occupants as "evil" (not that we disagree with her) means that she was likely to overestimate the amount of suffering that her family was subject to. In the sequel, I will produce an example of one of her claims not passing a fact check. Moreover, given the commonly accepted attitude towards the occupiers, an image of a high-profile family favored by the latter is something a member of that family would certainly try to avoid creating. Overall, this means that Shteppa and the family were probably better off in reality than in Mrs Gorman's account. However, there are facts that she conveyed which look quite plausible, and which enable us to make reasonable judgement calls of our own.

Konstantin Shteppa was born on 3 (15) December 1896 in a small town of Lokhvitsa, Poltava Governorate (nowadays Poltava Oblast), into a family of a priest. He graduated from a theological seminary in Poltava, but then got interested in history and enrolled as a student at the Department of History and Philology of Petrograd (St Petersburg) University. However, in 1916, he transferred to a military school and started his military career, eventually taking part in World War I and then in the Civil War. It was during the latter that his divergence with the newborn Soviet regime started - because he happened to pick the wrong side. As he would reveal later, Shteppa served in the White Army under General Wrangel (and at one point narrowly avoided getting killed in combat)Shteppa K. Yezhovschina, in: XX vek: Istoriya odnoy semyi. - Moscow, 2003. - P. 56-58.. This was a very dangerous biography detail for someone who was to live on in the Soviet Union. It was apparently in an attempt to hide this compromising fact that Shteppa got himself new identity papers, and that was how he became Shtepa, with one "p" (however, his daughter has confirmed that the double "p" is the correct original spelling, and we will adhere to it here).

This put a definitive end to his military career, and he switched back to history. He completed his studies at the Institute of People's Education (Pedagogical Institute, by modern terminology) in Nezhin, then got a teaching position there. In 1927 he defended a Ph. D. thesis and became professor. In 1930 he moved to Kiev and started teaching at the Institute of Professional Education, which was subsequently incorporated into a reconstituted Kiev University. However, on 18 March 1938, he was arrestedSBU Archive, Kiev, 6/49863-FP/7. in the course of Stalin's purges, aka the Great Terror.

A quarter of a century later, Shteppa would publish an autobiographical essay, Yezhovschina [The Yezhov Way], retelling his experience before and after the arrest. He describes his feelings of impending disaster, caused, in particular, by multiple arrests of his colleagues at the University. One of those whom Shteppa mentions by name is "Mashkevich, Professor of Russian History"Shteppa K. Yezhovschina, in: XX vek: Istoriya odnoy semyi. - Moscow, 2003. - P. 35.; that person happens to be the present author's grandfather, who was arrested in April 1937 and executed in July of the same yearSBU Archive, Kiev, 6/36113-FP.. Shteppa himself got more lucky, because he survived Yezhov's dismissal from his post of Minister of the Interior, which marked a wind-down of the terror. Shteppa was released on 28 September 1939SBU Archive, Kiev, 6/49863-FP/199. and was even allowed to return to his job as professor at the University. Students welcomed him back and bought him a cake with an inscription "Sharing your Happiness". Officials awarded him with a voucher to a sanatoriumGorman interview.. But his impression could not be erased.

Shteppa's first confrontation with the Soviet power, the Civil War affair, could be thought of as The Soviet Regime vs Shteppa. The 1938-1939 case, of course, started out the same way - the Soviet power being the claimant - but then Shteppa got acquitted. However, his spending a year and a half in jail on a false accusation must have meant that in his own mind, this second case had imprinted as Shteppa vs the Soviet Regime. He was the innocent; he could rightfully blame the regime. Obviously, this destroyed his loyalty towards the latter (if there had been any to begin with).

More was to come. When war with Germany broke out, some of Shteppas's colleagues who, like himself, had been arrested and then released, got arrested again, apparently on suspicion of potential disloyalty. Some were denounced as "spies" - a popular accusation in the initial months of the war. Shteppa moved to an acquaintance's place for a couple of weeks; he retold his daughter that the janitor at their apartment block had told him that two people had come and asked for him. Thus, he was left with an impression that the regime wanted to arrest him again (whether or not this was actually true).

A few weeks later, Shteppa, then 44 years old, got drafted into the army. However, his military train got under bombardment near Kharkov, Shteppa got wounded and obtained permission to come back to Kiev. The city had not been occupied yet, but there was little doubt that it would fall. Shteppa came back under the pretext of wishing to evacuate with his family. However, Mrs Gorman stressed that her father did not want to leave. Many people, including University professors, wanted to evacuate but could not obtain permission. Shteppa deliberately chose to stay putGorman interview..

Thus, there were at least two clear reasons for Shteppa to not wish to align with the retreating Soviets. First, his experience as an object of the Great Terror; second, his sense of danger at the beginning of the war. Combined with a very well known fact: many Kievans remembered the first German occupation of their city, in 1918, as a time of (relative) order and calmness, and were expecting something similar the second time around - it is no surprise at all that staying looked like the lesser evil.

According to Mrs Gorman, the Germans came to see Shteppa, not the other way around. That was in the very first days of the occupation of Kiev, before the Kreschatik explosions (Kiev fell on 19 September 1941; the mines planted by the Soviet secret agents began exploding on 24 September). Those first days were those of "courtship" between the occupiers and the local population. Many Kievans did greet the incoming troops and treat them with flowers and souvenirs. They had not the slightest idea what would happen ten days later (Babi Yar), leave alone how it all would end. Those who chose to stay as well as those who could not leave must have felt that the Soviet power had "abandoned" them. Thus, collaboration - whether active or passive - should be regarded pretty much as a "natural choice".

Shteppa came back to the University. Officially, it had been evacuated, but, as already mentioned, many professors had involuntarily stayed behind. Therefore, the University effectively got split into two. In the part that remained, Shteppa was elected and then appointed rector. As per Mrs Gorman, there was some teaching activity at the University - seminars, drawing classes - but it was rather irregular, without schedule. Shteppa did not go to the University on a daily basis. Professors were all but jobless, and apparently did not get paid. As rector, one of the things Shteppa tried to do was procure food rationing cards for those professors, to try and save them from starvationGorman interview..

Apparently, at some point during the winter or spring 1942 the University shut down altogether, although Shteppa may not have been formally dismissed.

Much more "real" was his job as editor-in-chief of the main city newspaper. Even before the Germans took Kiev, a Ukrainian-language daily, Ukrainske Slovo, started coming out in Zhitomir. Then its editorial office got transferred to Kiev. The editor-in-chief of that paper was Ivan Rohach, an OUN member. That newspaper was absolutely loyal to the occupiers, portraying them exclusively as "liberators", sharing their stance towards Jews, including after the Babi Yar massacre. However, in December 1941 Rohach and the other members of the editorial board were arrested. The paper was "rebranded" into Nove Ukrainske Slovo, and Shteppa appointed its editor-inchief. He held that position up until September 1943, when the paper ceased to exist. In 1943, he also became editor-in-chief of a Russian weekly newspaper Poslednie novosti, taking over from his colleague Lev Dudin.

According to Mrs Gorman, her father only enjoyed limited freedom in his editorial policies. He could publish some articles on his own (of course, any disloyalty was out of question), but:

Sometimes Father would come home and say: here, the Germans have brought me an article... Governor General or whoever; whether I want it or not, I have to publish it.

This mostly happened when the Germans needed to "convey some message" to the locals. Shteppa might have disagreed with the contents of the article, but had no option to refuse.

Work at the newspaper, unlike the University, constituted his daily routine. His daughter and her brother Erasm would visit the editorial office from time to time, "to see what's going on there"Gorman interview..

Thus, during the period of 1941-1943 Shteppa held two prominent positions in the local hierarchy: rector of the University and editor-in-chief of the main city newspaper. We are not aware of any evidence of his assisting in any way with the German repressions against the local populace, but there is no doubt, either, that he remained loyal, at least superficially, to the new regime.

What did Shteppa and his family gain from their high-profile status?

According to his daughter, the main privilege that they obtained was the possibility to move to a better apartment. Before the war and through the beginning of the occupation, the family lived at Korolenko (present-day Volodymyrska), 37 - ironically, just next to the NKVD building (nowadays the headquarters of the Security Service of Ukraine). They occupied a single big room, divided with wooden partitions into three. Then, apparently at some point in 1942, they moved into the so-called Moroz house (Dom Moroza), a prestigious apartment house built in the 1910s, at the corner of Korolenko and Tolstogo, next to the University building. Shteppa obtained an order to occupy the apartment from the City government (uprava).

Several people had lived in that apartment; however, Father said, "Well, nobody lives here now"... They [the Soviet power - S. M.] had promised him an apartment all his life...Gorman interview.

That is, the previous tenants had either evacuated, or perhaps gone to Babi Yar. To let people occupy vacant apartments was rather common practice at the time.

One of Shteppa's neighbors, occupying an apartment on the same landing, was Volodymyr Bahaziy, then Bьrgermeister (Mayor) of Kiev. Unsurprisingly, Shteppa personally knew all three occupation-era Kiev Bьrgermeisters: Alexander Ogloblin (Shteppa's colleague: before the war, they co-authored a few scientific papers; during the occupation, Ogloblin got appointed professor at the University with Shteppa's help), Volodymyr Bahaziy, Leontiy Foros- tovskiy. However, Mrs Gorman claimed that these connections did not really help them. They only became neighbors with Bahaziy (who was subsequently arrested by the Germans during their purge of Ukrainian nationalists, and most likely executed) by chance.

Shteppa had to walk to his job at the newspaper, as his position did not entitle him to a service automobile. (Granted, his home and office were but a few city blocks apart.) Moreover, as per Mrs Gorman:

We never took a tram [during the occupation]. Nur fьr Deutsche! <...> Trams were for the military personnel only. <...> Myself, I had to walk to my job at Goloseev, as they wouldn't let us use public transportation.

While the first sentence might well be true, the claim that civilians were banned from trams altogether does not pass a fact check. There were indeed periods when this was the case (in particular, from January through June 1942), but at other times, local population could use themMashkevich S. Hromadskyi transport Kieva za chasiv nimetskoi okupatsii. Etnichna istoriya narodiv Evropy. - 2010. - № 3. - P. 127-135.. Thus, my interviewee seems to have exaggerated the scale of their hardship somewhat. Nevertheless, her claim, repeated more than once, that the Germans treated the Ukrainian population as second-rank citizens, does of course fall in line with numerous other reminiscences of the period. There were indeed Nur fьr Deutsche establishments, strictly off-limits for the locals. Shteppa's family did not even try to visit those.

All essential decision-making was a full prerogative of the occupiers; "Ukrainians did not decide anything", according to Mrs Gorman. It was the Germans ("probably the Generalkomissariat") who made the decision to appoint Shteppa editor-in-chief of the newspaper. As already mentioned, the Germans could - and did - enforce their editorial policies upon him.

Food was a big problem for the population. One might surmise that the Germans would have tried to help their loyal collaborators with food products. As per Mrs Gorman, that was not the case, at least not with her family. She claimed they did not or almost did not receive any food rations. Here, once again, the accurateness of her account should probably be questioned. However, one episode looks quite telling. My interviewee recalled how her mother had managed to trade a family-owned piano for 4 kilograms of lard (salo):

This was a big achievement for us. The peasants came and carried away the piano by themselves. This lard kept us afloat up until the retreat [when they left Kiev with the retreating Germans].

At the beginning of the occupation, a kilogram of lard in Kiev cost 1000 karbovanets at the market, while the average salary was 477 karbovanets a monthZabolotna T. Zhyttya ta pobut mis'koho naselennya naperedodni ta v roky okupatsii (1941-1944 rr.) [Everyday Life of City Population on the Eve and during Occupation (19411944)], in: Ukraiina v Druhii svitovii viini: pohliad z XXI st.: istorychni narysy u dvokh knyhakh. - Kiev, 2011. - Vol. 2. - P. 21.. The University rector's salary was much higher than the average, namely 2000 karbovanets a monthDAKO, R-2412/2/23/33., although, as noted above, it is not certain that Shteppa actually received it. In any case, both the "exchange rate" and the fact that the family was surviving on a few kilograms of lard speak for themselves.

Another problem was that citizens could get abducted and deported to Germany for forced labor. This was often done by means of raiding the city's markets. Police would come suddenly, surround a market, and check the papers. Those who could not produce an Arbeitskarte, to confirm their employment status, were subject to deportation. In Soviet society, quite commonly, families of members of the elite would get various kinds of preferential treatment. Not so in this particular case. Mrs Gorman recounted at length what she had to do in order to avoid getting deported to Germany. Initially, she got a job as a nurse at a sanitary station. However, by 1943, word had it that single young women could be deported even if they were employed - whereas married women were exempt. That was how she got her parents' blessing to marry her boyfriend ("were it not for this, my parents would never let me do that", she said).

Collaborants (and the population in general) could not have known how it was going to end. History knows numerous examples of foreign occupation lasting for more than a generation. In this case, however, by the fall of 1943 it became clear that the Germans would not be able to hold Kiev.

Father did not think the Germans would abandon Kiev: he believed in them. However, when it became clear that they would, staying was out of the question.

Indeed, had Shteppa chosen to stay and witness the return of Soviet power, there is no doubt he would be arrested again - or worse. This time, he was able to make his wish to leave come true. The Germans, said Mrs Gorman, "helped those who had been loyal to them, if they could". So, this was another "privilege" accorded to loyal collaborants - a possibility to emigrate to Germany. On the one hand, this came to be pretty much a matter of life and death. On the other hand, it only became an issue because the occupiers themselves were about to leave; that is, one could argue that it was the Germans' "fault" that their loyalists came to need this kind of privilege. Be that as it may, in September 1943, Shteppa and his family, including his newlywed daughter, got into a railway car transporting military equipment and left Kiev, heading west. For my interviewee, this quickly turned into a personal tragedy: after they passed Sarny in western Ukraine, the train was ambushed, there was an explosion, and Aglaya's husband was killed. She was then pregnant with their daughter Mary (born in 1944).

To summarize, at the beginning of the war, Konstantin Shteppa, a member of the elite, did have a choice - to align or not to align with the Germans. His previous relation with the Soviet power (a "dark spot" in his biography dating back to the Civil War, and especially his jail time in 1938-1939) only got aggravated in the first months of the war, with a threat of a new arrest. Therefore, in 1941 he made what seemed to be the obvious choice. However, the initial enthusiasm faded away quickly. There is little doubt - and his daughter has confirmed it - that, just like the vast majority of Ukrainians, Shteppa's disappointment with the new "masters" was fast and deep. Nor was he able to reap significant benefits from his elite position and his collaboration, save for improving his living conditions (but in this respect, he was "one of the many" rather than "one of the few", given how many Kievans had evacuated and how many had gone to Babi Yar). Of course his family were better off than the average citizen; still, given in particular their food situation, our assessment is that they were "struggling to survive". But, given his high profile, he had no way back. In 1943, when the question "to stay or to leave?" surfaced again, there was pretty much no choice. Switching loyalties again would probably amount to death. The family's decision to leave with the Germans in September 1943 was their only option for survival.

References

1. Gorman, A. (2006). A Choice between Two Evils, Xlibris Corp.

2. Mashkevich, S. (2010). Hromadskyi transport Kieva za chasiv nimetskoi okupatsii. Etnichna istoriya narodiv Evropy, 3, 127-135. [in Ukrainian].

3. Shteppa, K (2003). Yezhovschina, in: XXvek: Istoriya odnoy semyi. Moscow. [in Russian].

4. The author's interview with Aglaya Gorman, 11 February 2012 (hereafter refered to as `Gorman interview').

5. Verba, I. V., Samofalov, M. O. (2010). Kost' Shteppa: Lyudyna, vchenyj, pedagog [Konstantin Shteppa: A person, a Scientist, a Teacher]. Kiev. [in Ukrainian].

6. Zabolotna, T (2011) Zhyttya ta pobut mis'koho naselennya naperedodni ta v roky okupatsii (1941-1944 rr.) [Everyday Life of City Population on the Eve and during Occupation (1941-1944)], in: Smolij, V. A., Boriak, H. V., Levenets', Yu. A.,

7. Lytvyn, V. M., & Lysenko, O. Ye. (Ed.). (2011). Ukraina v Druhij svitovij vijni: pohliad z XXIstolittia: Istorychni narysy. (Vol. 2, р. 21). Kyiv: Naukova dumka. [in Ukrainian].

8. Стефан Машкевич, історичний факультет, Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка, (Київ) Україна

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