The Ukrainian Literary Scene Today
In: Slavic Review, Jg. 31 (1972-12-01), S. 863-869
Online
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Zugriff:
The past decade was a time of intense change in the intellectual climate of the Soviet Ukraine. The roots of the change go back to the Twentieth Party Congress and Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy. After 1964, when the political course hardened considerably, Ukrainian writers and intellectuals were still carried on by the wave of discontent released by earlier events. The discontent with Stalinism was coupled with a search for new values and ideas, and in the world of art, for new forms and expressions. Despite reimposed controls, this search in the 1960s was successful and left its mark on contemporary Ukrainian literature and literary criticism. During the last seven years it has also given birth to a widespread movement of dissent. In order to understand the current literary situation in the Ukraine one must cast a glance over the past decade and detect the nature of the intellectual ferment during that period. One need not dwell here on those features of intellectual discontent with Stalinism which were also apparent in Russia, since they are generally well known. Demands for more creative freedom and voices raised in opposition to the sterile doctrine of socialist realism and party control over the arts were heard throughout the Soviet Union. In the Ukraine, however, the "thaw" had a distinctive flavor. National awareness-sternly suppressed under Stalin-reasserted itself, and a partial rehabilitation of the Ukrainian literature of the 1920s intensified the feeling of national identity. Yet-at first at least-the national element in Ukrainian literature was rather subdued. Not only because "nationalism" was still a dangerous label for those to whom it might be applied, but also because nationalism is asserted more subtly today than it was half a century ago. The most notable literary event of the 1960s was the rebirth of Ukrainian poetry. A group of young poets who were called shestydesiatnyky ("sixtiers") came into existence. Among them were Lina Kostenko, Ivan Drach, Vitalii Korotych, Mykola Vinhranovsky, and Vasyl Symonenko. Their greatest achievement was the rediscovery of the function of poetry. Stripped of socialist realist cliches, the poem was re-established as an essentially lyrical expression of the individual person. True, philosophical and social overtones are occasionally present, but the poem is judged first on its artistic and linguistic merits, not on any ideology, which indeed is absent. Some of the young poets (espe
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The Ukrainian Literary Scene Today
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Luckyj, George S. N. |
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Zeitschrift: | Slavic Review, Jg. 31 (1972-12-01), S. 863-869 |
Veröffentlichung: | Cambridge University Press (CUP), 1972 |
Medientyp: | unknown |
ISSN: | 2325-7784 (print) ; 0037-6779 (print) |
DOI: | 10.2307/2493768 |
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