“Slovo House” documentary on Stalin’s persecution of Ukrainians now in English

The “Slovo House” documentary about Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s torment of the Ukrainian intelligentsia class, released in 2017, is now available in the English language and is free to watch on YouTube.

Starting March 20, the film will also be screened in Ukraine with English subtitles. It is encouraged to be shown at Ukrainian cultural and community centers worldwide.

This initiative is part of Ukraine’s international project “Remember the Past – Fight for the Future,” aimed at preserving Ukrainian culture from destruction.

“Slovo House” serves as a powerful tool for initiating dialogue about the systemic destruction of Ukrainian culture by Russia, a process that has spanned centuries, the authors say.

Soviet policy during its inception in the wake of World War I was to subjugate people by first decimating its intelligentsia class that included teachers, artists, intellectuals and writers and then mold them into what it deemed a “Soviet” person.

The film tells the story of one of the greatest crimes committed by the Soviet regime – the destruction of a flourishing artistic movement that emerged in Kharkiv in the 1920s and 1930s.

The 66 apartments in the “Slovo” high-rise building housed some of Ukraine’s most prominent cultural figures, including writers, poets, artists, and filmmakers.

“Among them were Mykola Khvylovyi, Mykola Zhuk, Pavlo Tychyna, Natalia Uzhvii, Volodymyr Sosiura, Ostap Vyshnia, Oleksandr Dovzhenko, and many others. These intellectuals, gathered together in one place, were later repressed, executed, or coerced into supporting the [Communist] party’s agenda,” the authors write.

The script was written by Taras Tomenko and poet Liubov Yakymchuk. 

The filmmakers used only documentary materials, photographs, and footage taken from the archives of the Security Service of Ukraine, academic institutions, and universities – primary sources that were previously inaccessible to the public.

As the filmmakers note, “but ‘Slovo House’ is more than just a documentary film: the combination of thousands of quotes from the writers themselves, NKVD officers, party officials, and informants creates a powerful emotional and artistic experience.”

The English version of the film is available for viewing at this link.