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TheExecuted Renaissance (Ukrainian:Розстріляне відродження,romanized: Rozstriliane vidrodzhennia), orRed Renaissance (Ukrainian:Червоний ренесанс,romanized: Chervonyi renesans),[1] was a generation ofUkrainian language poets, writers, and artists of the 1920s and early 1930s who lived in theUkrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and were killed by the Soviet regime. Following theBolshevik Revolution of 1917,Lenin's nationality policies ofKorenizatsiya (lit. "Indigenization") favored therevival ofminority andheritage languages, encouraging them to be taught in the schools and published and providing them with material support and visibility. The poets and writers of theUkrainianization generation were often residents of theSlovo Building inKharkiv, which was then the capital ofSoviet Ukraine.
With the 1929'sGreat Turn, or Great Break, newly appointed Soviet Premier andCPSU Secretary GeneralJoseph Stalin reversed those policies in favor of statecentralisation,socialist realism, andRussification. While outwardly pro-Soviet, Ukrainian language school teachers, poets, and writers refused to submit to Stalin's restoration ofTsarist policies oflinguistic imperialism. In retaliation, Ukrainian language schoolteachers, as well as poets, writers, and dramatists who wrote in the same language, were arrested en masse,deported to the Gulag, imprisoned or executed. Those victims were also part of Stalin's larger 1937–1938Great Purge, with its most infamous killing field being atSandarmokh forest, amass grave site inKarelia where an estimated 6,000political prisoners from theSolovki prison camp were secretly executed and buried by theNKVD.
As a term, "The Executed Renaissance" was first suggested in 1959 in Paris by anti-communistPolish émigré publisherJerzy Giedroyc of the influentialKultura magazine. He was writing toUkrainian émigré andliterary critic Yuriy Lavrinenko to recommend the title for the1959 anthology of the bestUkrainian literature by the Ukrainianization generation.[2] In a 2023 article forThe Guardian, Stalin's destruction of the Executed Renaissance was compared byCharlotte Higgins to a second alleged decimation of Ukrainian intellectuals by the Russian military duringVladimir Putin'sinvasion of Ukraine, with alleged killings on thebattlefronts,trenches as well asin strikes on civilian areas.[3]
The collapse of theRussian Empire during theFirst World War, the abolition of imperial censorship, the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state, and the cultural leniency of the Soviet regime in the 1920s together led to an astonishing renaissance of literary and cultural activities in Ukraine.[4] Scores of new writers and poets appeared and formed dozens of literary groups that changed the face of Ukrainian literature.[5] These processes were supported by the policies ofnativization (in Ukraine it was calledUkrainization), theNew Economic Policy ofstate capitalism (1921–1927), and the drive toeliminate illiteracy.
The term "Executed Renaissance" was first proposed in 1959 byJerzy Giedroyc, editor ofKultura publishers inParis, and it was devoted to publishing anti-communist writers from throughout thePolish diaspora.[6] In a 13 August 1958 letter to Yuriy Lavrinenko, Giedroyc referred to an anthology of recentUkrainian literature which Lavrinenko had prepared at Giedroyc's request:
"About the name. Could it be better to give it a generic name:Executed Renaissance. Anthology 1917–1933 etc. The name would then sound spectacular. On the other hand, the humble nameAnthology can only facilitate penetration by theIron Curtain. What do you think?"
"So be it," replied Lavrinenko.
The bookThe Executed Renaissance, An Anthology, 1917–1933: Poetry, Prose, Drama and the Essay, published in Paris byKultura (1959), remains one of the most important sources for the history of Ukrainian literature during the period.[7] It includes the best examples of Ukrainian poetry, prose, and essay-writing from the 1920s and early 1930s.
According to Ukrainian literary historian Yarina Tsymbal,The Executed Renaissance was "a good name for the anthology, but unsuitable for the whole generation of creativeintelligentsia." In her view, the "Red Renaissance" is a more apt metaphor because it was a self-description. The latter term first appeared in 1925 when Olexander Leites' bookThe Renaissance of Ukrainian Literature and the poem "The Call of the Red Renaissance" by Volodymyr Gadzinskyi[8] were published simultaneously and independently. That same year, the magazineNeo-Lif appeared with a preface by Gadzinskyi:[9] "For us the past is only a means of cognizing the present and future," he wrote, "a useful experience and an important practice in the great structure of the Red Renaissance."
Lavrinenko, however, saw the "Executed Renaissance" as more than just the title of an anthology. He promoted it as a term encapsulating the martyrdom of Ukrainian poets and their legacy and power to resurrectUkrainian culture.[6] The Executed Renaissance paradigm, together with the national-communist perspective and as a framework for the nationalization of Ukraine's early Soviet intellectuals, would later emerge as part of an effort to establish a national opposition to the Communist regime with the new intellectual elite, eventually contributing to a struggle for an independent and united country.[10]
The main elements in the outlook of the new Ukrainian intellectuals were rebellion, independent thought, and genuine belief in their own ideals. The intellectuals emphasised the individual rather than the masses. Like many other proponents ofinner emigration in apolice state, their outward "Sovietness" concealed deep searches and queries.
Arising from the lower classes (servants, families of priests, industrial workers, and peasants), the new generation of the Ukrainian elite often lacked the opportunity for systematic education because of war, famine, and the need to earn their daily bread. Working "on the brink of the possible", using every opportunity to get in contact with world culture and to spread the wings of their creativity, the new generation of the Ukrainian artistic elite was imbued with the latest trends and created truly topical art.
At this time, a new generation arose, bearing the moral burden of victories and defeats in the struggle for national independence, with an understanding of Ukraine's path in world history, independent in its judgements, with diverse ideas about the development of Ukrainian literature when, according toSolomiia Pavlychko,[11] literature
"got a much wider audience than ever before. The level of education of this audience has increased. For the first time, a large number of writers and intellectuals worked in literature. For the first time, Ukrainian scientists spoke to the audience of national universities. For the first time, different artistic directions, groups, and schools were rapidly differentiated. However, the tendency for the modernization of cultural life coexisted from the outset with a parallel tendency for its subordination to ideology and then to complete destruction."
For the most part writers were consolidated into literary organizations with different styles or positions. The period between 1925 and 1928 saw a "literary discussion" initiated byMykola Khvylovy. One of its objects was to determine the ways in which the new Ukrainian Soviet literature would develop and define the role of the writer in society. Khvylovy and his associates supported an orientation towards West European rather than Russian culture; they rejected "red graphomania" but did not rejectcommunism as a political ideology.
The main literary organizations of that time were:
The writers of the Ukrainian (Red) Renaissance divided prose in two: plot (narrative) prose and non-plot prose. In the non-plot works, it was not the sentence or the word that was paramount, but the subtext, the spirit, or as Khvylovyi put it, the "smell of the word".[17] The style of strong feelings and penetration of phenomena is called "neo-romanticism" or "expressionism". Among the many Ukrainian-language authors working in this style were Mykola Khvylovy ("Julia Shpol"), Yurii Yanovsky, Andrii Holovko, Oleksa Vlyko, Les Kurbas and Mykola Kulish.
The main themes of Khvylovy's novelYa (Romantyka) (I am (romance))[18] are disappointment in the Revolution, and the screaming contradictions and divided nature of human beings at that time. The main character is without a name, and therefore without personality or soul. For the sake of the Revolution he murders his mother and then reproves himself: "Was the Revolution worth such a sacrifice?" In Valeryan Pidmogylny's novelThe City, for the first time in Ukrainian literature, elements of existentialism emerged. In pursuit of pleasure its protagonist advances from the satisfaction of his physical desires to the highest religious needs. Even with such a complex subject matter, however, the author does not turn his novel into a simple narrative of "people's" philosophy, but grasps it creatively in its application to a national worldview.
In the Ukrainian-language poetry of the time, the most interesting development is the quest pursued by the SymbolistsOlexandr Oles and Pavlo Tychyna. InThe Clarinets of the Sun, Tychyna reflected the breadth of an educated and subtle mind contemplating the richness of his national heritage and striving to uncover its root causes. When theCommunist Party of theUSSR realized it could not control such writers[clarification needed], it began to use impermissible methods of repression: it forced them into silence, subjected them to crushing public criticism, and arrested or executed them. Writers faced a choice between suicide (Khvylovyi in 1933) and theconcentration camps (Gulag) (B. Antonenko-Davidovich andOstap Vyshnya); they could retreat into silence (Ivan Bahrianyi andV. Domontovich), leave Ukraine (V. Vynnychenko andYevhen Malaniuk), or write works that glorified the Communist Party (P. Tychyna andMykola Bazhan). Most artists of this brief Renaissance were arrested and imprisoned or shot.
In 1927, Stalin abolished theNew Economic Policy and turned to the forced industrialisation and thecollectivization of agriculture of the FirstFive-Year Plan. Changes in cultural politics also occurred. An early example was the 1930show trial of theUnion for the Freedom of Ukraine process at which 45 intellectuals, higher education professors, writers, a theologian and a priest were publicly prosecuted inKharkiv, then capital of Soviet Ukraine. Fifteen of the accused were executed, many more with links to the defendants (248) were sent to the camps; this was one of a series of contemporaryshow trials, held in the North Caucasus, 1929 in Shakhty, and in Moscow, the 1930 Industrial Party Trial and the1931 Menshevik Trial.
The systematic elimination of the Ukrainian intelligentsia dates back to May 1933 whenMykhailo Yalovyi was arrested; in responseMykola Khvylovy committed suicide in the "Slovo" (Word) Building inKharkiv. The campaign ran from 1934 to 1940, reaching a peak during theGreat Terror of 1937–1938. A total of 223 writers were arrested and in a number of cases imprisoned and shot. Almost three hundred representatives of the Ukrainian Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s were shot between 27 October and 4 November 1937 atSandarmokh, a massive killing field in Karelia (northwest Russia).[19] Some important representatives of this generation survived. Many remained in the Soviet Union:Oleksandr Dovzhenko,Pavlo Tychyna,Maksym Rylskyi,Borys Antonenko-Davydovych,Ostap Vyshnia, andMykola Bazhan. A few emigrated:Ulas Samchuk,George Shevelov, andIvan Bahrianyi.
Exact figures for Ukrainian intellectuals imprisoned and executed during theGreat Terror are not available. It is, by comparison, relatively straightforward to determine how many writers were involved. The "Slovo" Association (Ukrainian writers in emigration) sent its assessment on 20 December 1954 to the Second All-Union Congress of Writers in the USSR: in 1930, works by 259 Ukrainian writers were in print; after 1938 only 36 writers were published (13.9% of the earlier total). According to "Slovo", 192 of the "missing" 223 writers were deported, sent to the Gulag or executed; a further 16 disappeared; and eight writers committed suicide.[20]
These data are confirmed byThe Altar of Sorrow (ed., Olexii Musiienko), a martyrology of Ukrainian writers, which numbers 246 writer-victims of Stalin's terror.[21] Other sources indicate that 228 of 260 Ukrainian writers were deported, imprisoned or shot.[22]