Managing the Arts in Soviet Ukraine

Abstract

Recent years have seen a renewed interest in Ukrainian culture of the early Soviet period, a topic that has previously enjoyed sparse academic attention among Western and English-language scholars. The landmark studies by eminent North American Ukrainian scholars such as George Luckyj, Oleh Ilnytzky, Myroslava Mudrak, or George Grabowicz have long stood as notable exceptions to this trend.1 Over the last ten years or so, new studies have built on this valuable work, as well as on the increasingly impressive achievements of Ukrainian scholars in Ukraine (Solomiia Pavlychko, Rostyslav Mel ́nykiv, Yaryna Tsymbal, Vira Aheieva, and others).2 Of particular significance, and 1 George Luckyj, Literary Politics in the Soviet Ukraine, 1917–1934 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990; repr. of 1956 Columbia University Press ed.); Oleh Ilnytzky, Ukrainian Futurism 1914–1930: A Historical and Critical Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Institute, 1997); Myroslava Mudrak, The New Generation and Artistic Modernism in the Ukraine (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1986). 2 Solomiia Pavlychko, Dyskurs modernizmu v ukrains ́kii literaturi (Kyiv: Lybid, 1997); Rostyslav Mel ́nykiv, Literaturni 1920-ti: Postati (narysy, obrazky, etiudy) (Kharkiv: Maidan, 2013); Vira Aheieva, Apolohiia modernu: Obrys XX viku (Kyiv: Hrani-T, 2011); Galina Babak