Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma University of Oklahoma Ukrainian Literature: The Last Twenty-Five Years Author(s): George Luckyj Source: Books Abroad, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Spring, 1956), pp. 133-140 Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40095373 . Accessed: 22/06/2014 06:29 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma and University of Oklahoma are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Books Abroad. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 91.229.248.204 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 06:29:17 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions GEORGE LUCKYJ (see page 133) MILO DOR (see page 141) This content downloaded from 91.229.248.204 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 06:29:17 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BOOKS ABROAD Ukrainian Literature The Last Twenty-five Years By GEORGE LUCKYJ p u Twenty-five years ago Ukrainian lit- ian patriots. In one sense, therefore, the || erature* was in full bloom. In the Revolution of 1917 put an end to national- JL Soviet Ukraine the poems of Tychyna, ism in Ukrainian literature, since it lib- Rylsky, Bazhan, Sosyura, Zerov, Pluzhnyk, erated it from the constant preoccupation the novels of Yanovsky, Pidmohylny, with the problems of national freedom, Antonenko-Davydovych, the short stories revolution, and self-fulfillment. Conditions of Kosynka, Khvylovy, Slisarenko, Sen- createdby the Revolution of 1917were such chenko, Panch, Lyubchenko, Vyshnya, and that Ukrainian writers could become pri- the plays of Mykola Kulish were definite marily interested in man, not only in signs of achievement. All these writers Ukrainian man. Not that man exists in lit- reached artistic maturity under the Soviet erature as a nationless abstraction. After regime, yet most of them, regardless of all, the goal of the moderns, and the suc- whether they belonged to the so-called pro- cessful achievement of some nineteenth letarian or non-proletarianliterary organi- century Ukrainian writers, was to show nizations, wrote in the Western European Ukrainian man in relation to life, not mere- literary tradition. In their works modern ly in his reaction to Ukrainian or Russian Ukrainian literature came of age. In the life, though sometimes the more limited early 1920's it appeared likely that the treatment may reach universality through process of "Europeanization," begun in the magic mirror of art. Ukrainian literature long before the Revo- The early work of the poet of the Ukrain- lution of 1917, was successfully nearing ian revolution, Pavlo Tychyna ("The completion. This meant that Ukrainian Clarinets of the Sun," 1918; "Plough," writers no longer felt compelled to empha- 1920;"The Wind from the Ukraine," 1924), size the national and folk aspects of their provides the best example of complete "Eu- art in order to emancipate themselves from ropeanization" and emancipation of mod- the Russian political and cultural domina- ern Ukrainian literature. This Ukrainian tion which had stifled literary life in the Symbolist, writing about the revolution in Ukraine for two centuries prior to 1917. the Ukraine as an event of universal, almost They could now transcend the limits of cosmic significance, succeeded in creating "ethnographic"literature more easily than images of unequalled rhythmical beauty their predecessorsin the nineteenth century through the blending of folksong and po- who had attempted to imitate Western etry. Tychyna's early poems stand in sharp European masterswhile remaining Ukrain- contrast to his later Stalinist panegyrics; with the * they belong, together contempo- This article is part of our survey of the world's vari- works the and Zerov, ous national literatures during the past quarter century. rary by poets Rylsky - The Editors. to the modern Western patrimony. This content downloaded from 91.229.248.204 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 06:29:17 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 134 BOOKS ABROAD Had the Communist regime in the it increased in the years immediately fol- Ukraine succeeded in solving the national lowing, partly as a result of the vigorous problem in that republic, it is very likely self-defense put up by the Ukrainian writ- that Ukrainian literature would have fol- ers against attacks from Moscow. In 1925, lowed an independent course, oriented apart from the Symbolists, Futurists, Neo- towards Western Europe, though without classicists, and the fellow-traveler group attempting to emulate it. However, the han\a, none of which was in the least na- national problem, which provided the fo- tionalist, there were two other literary - cus of attention for pre-Revolutionary groups Pluh, an organization of peasant Ukrainian literature, remained unsolved; writers, and VAPLITE, an organization moreover, it became more acute than ever of proletarianwriters. Only the lattergroup, before. In the ensuing discussion of na- which exhibited the most communist spirit tionalism in Ukrainian literatureit must be of all the literary groups, could be classi- always borne in mind that, essentially, the fied as nationalist, although national-com- "nationalproblem" within the Soviet Union munist would be a more appropriateterm. is but one aspect of the more fundamental Taking advantage of the liberal attitude issue of individual freedom. to literature, expressed by the Party in the The large measure of political and cul- 1925 resolution on literature, these Ukrain- tural independence granted to the Ukraine ian literary groups were, each in their own in 1919 by the Communists was a tempo- way, preoccupied with aesthetic rather rary concession dictated by necessity and than political problems. expediency rather than by reasons of prin- VAPLITE, descended ideologically from ciple. Lenin's policy of granting the the Ukrainian Communist Party "Borot- Ukrainians the right to self-government ba," was led by the fiery and gifted writer was qualified by a very important condition Khvylovy, who openly expressed what which in reality negated that right: that many Ukrainian Communists felt at that the Ukraine should stay in closest union time. Impatient with Moscow's reserved with Russia. Ukrainian culture and litera- attitude towards the unfettered develop- ture were encouraged purely as a means of ment of Ukrainian culture, he claimed the strengthening socialist and communist ide- right of the Ukrainian Communists to gov- ology among the masses. The Soviet rulers ern their own affairs and called on his were disappointed in their hope that the countrymen to turn away from Moscow Ukrainians would embrace this ideology, and to behave like an independent nation presented to them in their national form, which, nominally, they were. Although he for the official policy actually tended to in- drew upon himself and the VAPLITE the tensify Ukrainian resistance to Russian in- ire of the Kremlin and was subjected to fluence. As soon as the Bolsheviks realized severe castigation by Stalin (1926), he con- that Ukrainian literature was bent on fol- tinued to organize an effective resistance lowing an independent path they applied to Party control of the literature and cul- firm controls, while branding it as "na- ture of the Ukraine. tionalist." After 1925, the problem of "na- One of Khvylovy's major successes was tionalism" in Soviet Ukrainian literature the initiation of the so-called "Literary became, therefore, a burning issue, leading Discussion" (1925-28) in which hundreds finally to the complete subjection of this of writers participated in the press and in literature to the Communist Party. literary meetings at which questions of lit- However, the charges of "nationalism" erary theory and ideology were very thor- were only partly true. In the mid-Twenties, oughly discussed. This last free debate to when they were first levelled, nationalism take place in Soviet Ukrainian literature in Ukrainian literature was fairly mild; produced results which the Party found im- This content downloaded from 91.229.248.204 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 06:29:17 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions UKRAINIAN LITERATURE 135 possible to accept. These may be summed ers would be given a measure of autonomy. up in three most important conclusions: During 1929-30 he helped to publish the (i) Ukrainian literature should follow magazine "LiteraryFair" which, in Aesop- Western rather than Russian models ian language, contained some of the most (Khvylovy) ; (2) it should occupy itself caustic satire on the Soviet regime ever with the study of the sources of Western written in the U.S.S.R. After the suppres- civilization and literature (Zerov); (3) it sion of this periodical Khvylovy organized should not aim at satisfying the masses at a new literary group, Politfront, and when the expense of quality, but should attempt this was dissolved, he and many of his nu- to reach the highest artistic standards. merous followers joined the Party-spon- The Party's reaction to this was to dis- sored All-Ukrainian Union of Proletarian solve VAPLITE and to issue (in 1927) a Writers. In 1932, following a new Party resolution on literature in which other lit- resolution on literature, all literary organi- erary groups (the Neoclassicists) also came zations in the U.S.S.R. were dissolved in under fire as bourgeois nationalists. The order to clear the way for the Pan-Soviet resolution stated that the development of Writers' Union.