The Cultural Upsurge

The 1920s were a time of extraordinary growth, innovation, and ferment in Ukrainian culture. Some writers even refer to it as a period of cultural revolution or renaissance. This multifaceted outburst of creative energy was possible because the Communist party, concerned primarily with maintaining its political hegemony, had not as yet attempted to control cultural development.

It was, however, the effects of the revolution that provided the major thrust for this renaissance. Although the emigration of a large part of the old intelligentsia was a setback for cultural growth, it was more than offset by the emergence of a vast new pool of creative talents. Some of these young artists were apolitical and believed in the idea of “art for art’s sake.” Others were ardent revolutionaries who were associated with the Borotbisty and Ukrainian communists. When their hopes for independent statehood were frustrated, many of them saw cultural growth as an alternative means of expressing the national distinctiveness of their people.

The revolution also injected into cultural activity a sense of newness, a feeling that the old world and its restrictions had been swept away. Challenging and stimulating questions arose about the direction Ukrainian cultural development should take, the models it should utilize, and the kind of culture it ought to be. Inspired by a sense of mission and by a growing audience, writers, artists, and scholars plunged enthusiastically into the creation of a whole new cultural universe.

Nowhere was this vibrant new mood so evident as in literature. The Marxist writers espoused the view that in order to fulfill itself, the revolution would have to reach into the cultural as well as social and political realms. That is, the “bourgeois” art of the past would have to be supplanted by a new proletarian art. They were quick to add, however, that “proletarian art can attain international unity only by national paths.”¹³

In Russia the attempt to create a proletarian culture led to the formation of a literary organization called Proletcult, which was based on two key principles: that it was possible to create a proletarian culture without regard to the traditions and standards of the past, and that the masses should participate in the creation of this culture. Because Proletcult identified with urban Russian culture, the organization made little headway among Ukrainians. Still, its ideas were influential in the rise of the so-called mass literary organizations in Ukraine.

In 1922, Pluh, the first of the mass literary organizations, emerged in Kharkiv under the leadership of Serhii Pylypenko. Declaring that the masses (which in Ukraine meant primarily the peasants) should produce the kind of literature they wanted, the organization established a network of writing workshops that soon attracted about 200 writers and thousands of aspiring writers. A spokesman for the organization defined its attitude toward art: “The task of our time in the realm of art is to lower it, to bring it down to earth from its pedestal, to make it necessary and intelligible to all.”¹⁴ A year later, Vasyl Ellan-Blakytny organized Hart, a literary group that also wished to work for the formation of a proletarian culture in Ukraine. However, the members of Hart were wary of the idea of “massivism,” fearing that it might lead to a lowering of standards in the arts.

Alongside these Marxist organizations, small groups of ideologically uncommitted or “nonproletarian” writers and artists also sprang up.

When Blakytny died in 1925, Hart disintegrated. However, that same year many of its former members – led by Khvylovy and including the playwright Mykola Kulish, the poets Tychyna and Bazhan, and the prose writers Petro Panch, Iurii Ianovsky, and Ivan Senchenko – formed Vaplite (Free Academy of Proletarian Literature), an elitist literary organization. Worried that the pedagogic-enlightenment mentality (prosvitianstvo) and “massivism” of Pluh only encouraged Ukrainian provincialism, Khvylovy and his colleagues raised the demand for literary and artistic excellence in Ukrainian literature. They called for its orientation toward Europe and the traditional sources of world literature, and for a declaration of Ukrainian cultural independence from Moscow. Khvylovy’s forceful statement of these views sparked an important and far-ranging debate that lasted from 1925 to 1927 and is usually referred to as the “Literary Discussion.”

Not only did Pylypenko and other adherents of Pluh disagree with Vaplite, but the members of the Communist leadership in Ukraine also joined in the criticism of Vaplite’s “bourgeois-nationalist ideology.” Even Stalin pointed out the dangerousness of Khvylovy’s ideas. To combat the spread of nationalist ideas in literature, a pro-Soviet organization, VUSPP (the All-Ukrainian Association of Proletarian Writers), was formed in 1927 and the Communist party’s surveillance of literary activity increased.

In the midst of this ferment, there appeared literary works of high quality. Pavlo Tychyna and Maksym Rylsky, the two outstanding Ukrainian poets of the period, flourished at this time. Tychyna was immediately acclaimed a poet of genius when his first lyrical collection, Soniashni kliarnety, appeared in 1918. In subsequent publications, such as Zamist sonetiv i oktav (1920) and Viter z Ukrainy (1924), his artistic use of language, ability to evoke the rhythm and melody of folk songs, and lyrical descriptions of the countryside left no doubt that his works represented a milestone in the development of Ukrainian poetry. The son of a prominent 19th-century Ukrainophile, Rylsky presented a striking contrast to Tychyna. Rylsky’s poems, which appeared in such collections as Pid osinnymy zoriamy (1918), Synia dalechin (1922), and Trynadtsiata vesna (1926), were reserved, philosophical, and deeply rooted in Western classical traditions. Noteworthy among the many other poets that appeared at this time were Mykola Zerov, Pavlo Fylypovych, Mykhailo Drai-Khmara, Evhen Pluzhnyk, Volodymyr Sosiura, Mykola Bazhan, and Teofil Osmachka.

The predominant themes in the works of the prose writers were the effects of the revolution and Civil War on the individual and society. Written with a refined feeling for the power of words and with a mixture of romanticism and brutal realism, Khvylovy’s Syni Etiudy (1923) extolled the revolution, while his Osin (1924) and Ia (1924) reflected its contradictions and a growing sense of disillusionment. Hryhorii Kosynka, of poor peasant origin (as were many of his colleagues), masterfully portrayed the determination of peasants to resist outsiders in works such as V zhytakh (1926). In his novel Misto (1928), the skeptical, pessimistic Valerian Pidmohylny depicted how a Ukrainian peasant managed to prosper in the foreign city by shedding the best of his peasant values and retaining the worst. Ivan Senchenko, a master of satire, ridiculed the spineless flunkies that the Soviet system encouraged in his Iz zapysok kholiuia (1927). Meanwhile, Iurii Ianovsky’s novel Chotyry Shabli (1930) evoked the spirit of the Zaporozhian Cossacks with its vivid descriptions of peasant partisans.

Among the playwrights, Mykola Kulish was the most outstanding. His three most famous plays, Narodnyi Malakhii (1928), Myna Mazailo (1929), and Patetychna Sonata (1930), were sensations because of their modernistic form and tragicomic treatment of the new Soviet reality, Russian chauvinism, the “Little Russian” mentality, anachronistic Ukrainian nationalism, and the spiritual immaturity of doctrinaire communists. The first two plays were staged by Les Kurbas and his famous Berezil troupe. Scandalized party officials, however, banned the showing of Patetychna Sonata in Ukraine, although it played in Leningrad and Moscow to enthusiastic audiences. In the new field of filmmaking, Oleksander Dovzhenko achieved world fame with his Zveny-hora (1927), Arsenal (1929), and Zemlia (1930), all of which were based on the impact of the revolution and Soviet rule on Ukraine. Education and scholarship

Experimentation and innovation were also widespread in education. Because its goal was the creation of a new socioeconomic order, the Soviet government encouraged the establishment of new types of schools and approaches to teaching that would hasten the break with the “bourgeois past.” Soviet educators argued for the need to link education with the inculcation of communist values and ideology. Consequently, curricula that emphasized the combination of work and study, communal learning, and technical education were introduced into the schools. Meanwhile, the classics and the humanities in general were deemphasized and the study of religion completely banned. The theories of the famous pedagogue Antin Makarenko, stressing the predominance of environment over heredity in the development of children, gained in popularity.

Although the educational value of some of these experiments may have been questionable, the government was clearly successful in making education more accessible than it had ever been.

Higher education also underwent major change. The universities were reorganized into numerous institutes (Institutes of Popular Education – INO) that specialized in medicine, physics, engineering, agronomy, or pedagogy. Their goal was the preparation of specialists for the work force. Although most of these institutes charged fees, children of poor workers and peasants (who formed the majority of institute students) were exempted from payment. Of the approximately 30,000–40,000 institute students in Ukraine in the late 1920s, about 53% were Ukrainians, 20% were Russians, and 22% were Jews. In general, Ukrainians were concentrated in such fields as agronomy and teaching, Russians in administrative studies and the sciences, and Jews in medicine and commerce.

Scholarship, and especially Ukrainian studies, enjoyed a renaissance during the 1920s comparable to that in literature. As we have seen, the Ukrainian national governments had been quick to establish scholarly institutions, in part because scholarship in the humanities had played such an important role in the rise of Ukrainian national consciousness throughout the 19th century. Anxious to demonstrate that they stood for progress, the Bolsheviks also encouraged scholarship. In 1919, they not only co-opted the Academy of Sciences in Kiev that had been established by the Skoropadsky government, but they even claimed that it was their creation. During the next several years, the academy and its affiliates – not the universities – were transformed into centers of research. As long as their ideas did not directly challenge the Soviet system, scholars were given relative freedom to pursue their research, present their views, and develop foreign contacts.

Even though almost all the prominent scholars in Ukraine were non-Communists and some even open sympathizers of Ukrainian nationalism, the Soviet government had no choice but to make them the core of the academy. With the implementation of the Ukrainization policies of the mid 1920s, the Ukrainian Communists in control of the Ministry of Education made a concerted effort to induce many leading scholars who had gone abroad during the Civil War to return to their homeland. Consequently, in 1924, the dean of Ukrainian studies (and a political opponent of the Communists), Mykhailo Hrushevsky, returned to Kiev to become a full member of the academy, where he launched the systematic study of Ukrainian history. Numerous other scholars who lived abroad or in Western Ukraine followed Hrushevsky’s example. Thus, while the prestige of the academy rose rapidly, it remained a bastion of “bourgeois-nationalist” tendencies.

The first president of the academy was the renowned scientist Volodymyr Vernadsky. However, much of the academy’s growth resulted from the tireless efforts of its longtime vice-president Serhii Efremov and secretary Ahatanhel Krymsky. By 1924 the academy had 37 full members and about 400 associates. Its publications rose from 32 in 1923 to 136 in 1929. Of its three sections – the historical/philological, the physical/mathematical, and the socioeconomic – the first, in which Hrushevsky played the dominant role, was the most dynamic and important. It consisted of dozens of chairs, commissions, and committees that systematically studied all aspects of Ukrainian history, literature, and language. The section sponsored the publication of Ukraina, the leading journal of Ukrainian studies, and its members published a series of other periodicals as well as hundreds of monographs. Besides Hrushevsky, other important members of the section were the historians Dmytro Bahalii, Mykhailo Slabchenko, Oleksander Ohloblyn, and Osyp Hermaize; the literary specialists Serhii Efremov and Volodomyr Peretts; the ethnographer Andrii Loboda; the art historian Oleksii Novytsky; and the orientalist Krymsky.

In the socioeconomic section, Mykola Vasylenko produced an important work on the history of Ukrainian law, while Konstantyn Vobly pioneered the study of Ukraine’s economic geography. Although the science section of the academy was at the outset not as prominent as it became later, it, too, included a number of outstanding scholars, some of whom had international reputations. Among these were the mathematician Dmytro Grave, the physicist Mykola Krylov, and the chemists Lev Pysarzhevsky and Volodymyr Kistiakovsky. But while the academy in Kiev was the major center of scholarship in Ukraine, it was not the only one. Two of its members, the historians Bahalii and Slabchenko, set up research centers in Kharkiv and Odessa, respectively. Many smaller cities, such as Poltava, Chernihiv, and Dniepropetrovsk, also established research institutions.

To counterbalance the influence of the many non-Marxist scholars in the social sciences and humanities, the Soviet government founded the Institute of Marxism in Kharkiv in 1929. Its goal was to prepare specialists in philosophy, economics, and history who would teach their subjects from the Marxist point of view, study the history of the party and the revolution, and act as ideological defenders of the regime. The leading figure in this institute was Matvii Iavorsky, a Galician who attempted to interpret Ukrainian history in Marxist terms and who created a school of Ukrainian Marxist historians.