Futurism in Ukraine
Departure, Upheaval, Termination
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Ukrainian Futurism flourished after the First World War. Authors such as Mykhail' Semenko, Mykola Khvyl'ovyi, and Maik Yohansen broke with tradition, knocked the national poet Shevchenko off his pedestal, and experimented with language, forms, and genres. In the artists’ association VAPLITE, they wrestled with the orientation of Ukrainian literature. Some were concerned with aesthetic renewal, others with the development of proletarian art. The language question was of particular importance. Ukrainian was to become the language of emancipation and internationalism. Starting at the end of the 1920s, the communist regime increasingly intervened in cultural life, and in 1932, all independent literary associations were dissolved. Khvyl'ovyi evaded repression by committing suicide. Semenko and Johansen were arrested in 1937 and shot along with hundreds of members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. The Ukrainian avantgarde fell into oblivion.
(Osteuropa 12/2023, pp. 149–162)