Myroslav Shkandrij - Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910-1930 - Contested Memory-Academic Studies Press (2019)

Avant-Garde
Art in Ukraine
1910–1930
Con tested M e mo r y
Avant-Garde
Art in Ukraine
1910–1930
Co nt e s t e d M em o r y
M YR O SL AV SHKAN D RIJ
BOSTON
2019
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Shkandrij, Myroslav, 1950- author.

Title: Avant-garde art in Ukraine, 1910-1930 : contested memory / Myroslav
Shkandrij.
Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical
references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018058734 (print) | LCCN 2018061401 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781618119766 (ebook) | ISBN 9781618119759 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Art, Ukrainian–20th century. | Avant-garde
(Aesthetics)–Ukraine–History–20th century.
Classification: LCC N7255.U47 (ebook) | LCC N7255.U47 S55 2019 (print) |
DDC 700.9477/09041–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018058734
Copyright © 2018 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-61811-975-9 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-61811-976-6 (ebook)
Book design by Lapiz Digital Services.
Cover design by Ivan Grave.

On the cover Mykhailo Boichuk (attributed). Shevchenko Day, 1920.
Published by Academic Studies Press

1577 Beacon St.
Brookline, MA, 02446, USA
press@academicstudiespress.com
www.academicstudiespress.com
Acknowledgments
The author gratefully acknowledges the following:

Zorya Fine Art Gallery for permission to reproduce a modified ver-
sion of “Kyiv to Paris: Ukrainian Art in the European Avant-Garde, 1910–
30,” which appeared in 2005 on the Zorya Fine Art website at http://www.
zoryafineart.com/publications/view/11.
The Ukrainian Museum in New York for permission to reproduce
material from Propaganda and Slogans: The Political Poster in Soviet
Ukraine, 1919–1921 (2013). The posters in the above publication were
donated to the Museum by D. Jurij Rybak and Anna Ortynsky: Drive Off
the Kulaks (page 32), Ivan Franko (42), Shevchenko Day (44), Peasant,
the Worker Has Joined the Red Army (46), First Aid for the Wounded (50),
Comrade Peasants! Hand in Your Grain Tax (60), and The Hungry Await
Help (64).
The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada for permission
to reprint with modifications “Jews in the Artistic and Cultural Life
of Ukraine in the 1920s,” which appeared in Jewish Life and Times: A
Collection of Essays, Vol. 9, edited by Dan Stone and Annalee Greenberg,
85–99 (Winnipeg: Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, 2009).
The University of Toronto Press for allowing me to reprint a shortened
and modified form of “Politics and the Ukrainian Avant-Garde,” which
appeared in Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation, edited by Irena
R. Makaryk and Virlana Tkacz, 219–97 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2010).
East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies for permission to reproduce
material from “The Steppe as Inspiration in David Burliuk’s Art,” Journal of
Ukrainian Studies 30.2 (2005): 51–67.
Indiana University Press for permission to reprint parts of the arti-
cle “National Modernism in Post-Revolutionary Society: The Ukrainian
Renaissance and Jewish Revival, 1917–1930,” which first appeared in
Shatterzones of Empire: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg,
vi Acknowledgments
Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands, 238–48, edited by Omer Bartov and

Eric D. Weitz, 2013.
Mary Holt Burliuk and the Winnipeg Art Gallery for permission
to reproduce David Burliuk’s works and photographs from her family
collection.
Brigitta Vadimovna Vetrova for permission to reproduce photographs
and works by Nina Henke and Vadym Meller from her family collection,
and Nina Vetrova-Robinson for permission to reproduce Carnival from her
family collection.
The National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv and the Lviv National
Art Gallery for permission to reproduce Mykhailo Boichuk’s photograph
and works.
Contents
Acknowledgementsv
Introduction: The “Historic” Avant-Garde of 1910–30 xi
Forging the European Connection 1

1. Kyiv to Paris: Ukrainian Art in the European Avant-Garde, 1910–30 3
Politics and Painting 23

2. Politics and the Ukrainian Avant-Garde 25
3. Political Posters 1919–21 and the Boichuk School 38
4. Jews in the Artistic and Cultural Life of Ukraine in the 1920s 56
5. National Modernism in Post-Revolutionary Society:
Ukrainian Renaissance and Jewish Revival, 1917–30 67
Artists in the Maelstrom: Five Case Studies 79

6. David Burliuk and Steppe as Avant-Garde Identity 81
7. Kazimir Malevich’s Autobiography and Art 102
8. Vadym Meller and Sources of Inspiration in Theater Art 116
9. Ivan Kavaleridze’s Contested Identity 135
10. Dziga Vertov’s Enthusiasm, Kharkiv and Cultural Revolution 149
The Avant-Garde in Today’s Cultural Memory 163

11. Remembering the Avant-Garde 165
Bibliography169
Index178
List of Illustrations
1. Mykhailo Boichuk (attributed). Shevchenko Day, 1920.

2. Peasant, the Worker Has Joined the Red Army. Now It’s Your Turn, 1920.
3. First Aid for the Wounded—A Quick Death to the Whites, 1921.
4. Oleksii (Aleksei) Marenkov. Comrade Peasants! Hand in Your Grain
Tax. The Workers and the Red Army Are Waiting for Bread! The Tax
Will Help Overcome Hunger. Help All Laboring People! 1921.
5. The Hungry Await Help from Their Soviet Rule. Timely Collection of the
Food Tax Will Save Everyone, 1921.
6. Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov. Drive Off the Kulaks! 1920.
7. Vasyl Yermilov. Ivan Franko, 1920.
8. Mykhailo Boichuk in the restoration studio at the Lviv National

Museum, 1911–12.
9. Mykhailo Boichuk. Head of the Savior, 1910s.
10. Mykhailo Boichuk. Prophet Isaiah, 1912–13.
11. David Burliuk in the 1910s. Photographer unknown.
12. David Burliuk. Man with Two Faces, 1912.
13. David Burliuk. Cossack Mamai, 1908.
14. David Burliuk. Lenin and Tolstoy, 1925–30 (repainted in 1943).
15. David Burliuk. Two Ukrainian Girls, 1948.
16. David Burliuk. Uncle and His Niece, 1950s.
17. Vadym Meller. Sketch for a painting in cubo-futurist style, 1910s.
18. Vadym Meller in the early 1920s. Photographer unknown.
19. Nina Henke in the 1920s. Photographer unknown.
20. Nina Henke. Suprematist composition produced by Verbivka folk artists,
1910s.
21. Nina Henke. Suprematist composition, 1910s.
22. Vadym Meller. Blue Dancer, from Mephisto, to music of Liszt, 1919–20.
23. Vadym Meller. Mask, to music of Chopin, 1920.
x List of Illustrations
24. Vadym Meller. Carnival, 1923.

25. Ivan Kavaleridze. Princess Olga, original 1911, restored 1996. Square of
St. Michael’s, Kyiv.
26. Ivan Kavaleridze. Yaroslav the Wise, 1997, after a model made by the
artist in the 1960s. Golden Gates, Kyiv.
27. Ivan Kavaleridze. Artem, 1924. A still from Dziga Vertov’s Enthusiasm,
1930.
Introduction: The “Historic”
Avant-Garde of 1910–30
In the second and third decades of the twentieth century the avant-garde
generated a prodigious cultural ferment among artists from Ukraine. One
of the first avant-garde art exhibitions in the Russian Empire, the Link
Exhibition of 1908, took place in Kyiv, and Ukrainians participated heavily
in all the early displays in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the pre-war years
they worked among avant-gardists in Paris, Munich, St. Petersburg, and
Moscow. Early in their careers some of the great innovators of Ukrainian
art, such as Volodymyr (Vladimir) Tatlin, Alexander Archipenko,
Alexandra Exter, David Burliuk, Ivan Kavaleridze, Vadym Meller, and
Mykhailo Boichuk, spent time in Paris, Munich, or Berlin. Burliuk and
Meller exhibited with Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group in Munich
in 1912. Influences traveled from East to West, as well as West to East. Exter,
for example, participated in the Link Exhibition, then in Paris, where she
met Picasso, Braque, Léger, and Apollinaire, along with other artists from
Ukraine, such as Archipenko, Nathan Altman, David Shterenberg, and
Wladimir (Volodymyr) Baranoff-Rossiné (Baranov) living in the city. Up
to the time she finally emigrated to the French capital in 1924, she divided
her time between Paris, Moscow and Kyiv.
Ukrainian artists made major contributions to the international avant-
garde. Kazimir Malevich’s suprematism, Tatlin’s constructivism, Burliuk’s
futurism, Archipenko’s cubist sculptures, Exter’s theater art, and Boichuk’s
monumentalism or neo-Byzantinism represent only a few examples of
their experimentation. Yet, as part of a specifically Ukrainian avant-garde
they have been understudied. Even the connections between them have
frequently gone unrecognized. This has obscured their contribution as a
group to the international movement.
xii Introduction: The “Historic” Avant-Garde of 1910–30
The present volume brings together exploratory essays with the aim
of introducing readers to this avant-garde and tracing what in fact was a
generational experience that stretched from the pre-war years in Paris and
Western European capitals, through the turmoil of 1917–22, to the end of
the Soviet 1920s.
Throughout the twentieth century the goal of international recogni-
tion remained something of an idée fixe for Ukrainians, who often made
conscious efforts to bring the country’s unique traditions, sensibility, and
worldview to the European cultural high table. Ironically, this goal was per-
haps most successfully accomplished by the century’s first and, one might
argue, least self-conscious generation, the avant-garde. It was in many
respects the most closely integrated into Western European culture. Today
the achievements of individual artists have been recognized in many cases,
but the Ukrainian dimension to their legacy has not. Somewhat paradox-
ically, celebrated artists from Ukraine seldom have their roots and sense
of identity acknowledged. This aspect of the interpretative matrix is not
applied to them—neither, for example, to Burliuk and Malevich, who iden-
tified themselves as Ukrainians, nor to Sonia Delauney, Exter, Archipenko,
and Tatlin, who linked their work to a Ukrainian inspiration. The essays
that follow explore the meaning of such self-identification in specific cases
and the distinct accent these artists brought to international art. Five of the
essays have been modified and updated from earlier publications.
The first half of the book records the emergence of artistic schools and
styles, and the attempt by artists to deal with urgent political and cultural
issues. Several essays deal with the cultural and political background in the
1920s. They indicate that the experience of the avant-garde in Ukraine was
not the same as in Russia, a fact deliberately ignored in Soviet times and
one that has so far attracted insufficient attention among Western research-
ers. The “Cultural Renaissance” of the 1920s in Soviet Ukraine, the Jewish
artistic revival in the country during this decade, the final hurrah of the
avant-garde in Kharkiv in the years 1928 to 1930, when experimentation
had already been closed down in Moscow and Leningrad—all of this cre-
ated a situation different from the one that existed in Russia. After contact
with the West was broken off at the end of the twenties, Ukrainians were
only allowed to participate in “all-Soviet” exhibitions and any attribution
of particularism to their work was most commonly defined as “bourgeois
nationalism.” Research into the avant-garde and a fuller understanding
of this period only became possible when in the 1990s exhibitions were
mounted and new materials became available following the opening of
Ukrainian archives.
Introduction: The “Historic” Avant-Garde of 1910–30 xiii
The second half of the book focuses on five individuals: David Burliuk,
Kazimir Malevich, Vadym Meller, Ivan Kavaleridze, and Dziga Vertov.
These essays challenge some long-established views, arguing, for example,
that the Ukrainian context throws light on crucial aspects in the lives and
work of these figures. Each individual artist presents particular problems
of interpretation, but by situating their work within an analysis of personal
biography and cultural context, the essays aim to provide a better under-
standing of artistic achievement. The focus is mainly on the development
of visual arts: painting (Burliuk, Malevich), propaganda posters (Boichuk),
theater art (Meller), sculpture (Kavaleridze), and film (Vertov) are exam-
ined. Most of these artists experimented with different media. Some, such
as Burliuk and Kavaleridze, were also writers, a fact only tangentially
discussed in this volume.
The achievements of this generation were remarkable—all the more
so, it could be argued, because they were accomplished in a time of rapid
cultural transformation and political upheaval. Today this legacy resonates
with many contemporaries, particularly in Ukraine, where the avant-garde
plays a prominent role in debates around cultural memory. The tensions that
have surfaced in these debates indicate the importance of understanding
the experience of the great innovators who worked in the early twentieth
century. This book examines both the nexus between art and politics and
the lives and works of some brilliant and still controversial figures. The
search of these avant-gardists for self-awareness and a new modern identity
still provides many valuable lessons for contemporaries.
Forging the European
Connection
Kyiv to Paris: Ukrainian Art in
the European Avant-Garde,
1910–301
Modernism emerged at the end of the nineteenth century as an interna-

tional movement in the arts that emphasized the idea of a radical break
with the past and the possibility of a transformed world. Rejecting real-
ism and naturalism, it searched for new literary and artistic forms, often
under the influence of photography, cinema, new technologies, and recent
discoveries in the sciences. Pre-1914 European modernism is today often
associated with the movements of impressionism, symbolism, cubism, and
abstractionism. The second wave of modernism, which spanned the years
1914 to 1930, is linked with futurism, constructivism, expressionism, and
surrealism, and is also commonly identified with the avant-garde, largely
because many of its members were strongly influenced by the rise of radical
politics, and sometimes saw themselves as a culturally advanced party pre-
paring the way for revolutionary change.
Boris Groys has argued that the Russian avant-garde was implicated
in the totalitarian politics of the twenties and thirties by virtue of its desire
to restructure the world “according to a unitary artistic plan” (Groys 1992,
21). However, radical ways of seeing were as often as not rejected by the
Bolshevik Party and its acolytes, particularly after they achieved power. The
Ukrainian avant-garde in particular cannot be unambiguously identified
with the Bolshevik Revolution. It preceded this revolution, frequently chal-
lenged it, and was ultimately destroyed by it.
The propagandistic aspects of the Soviet avant-garde, which became
dominant, even overwhelmingly so, in the late twenties, have attracted
1 This chapter is adapted from an article that appeared on the Zorya Fine Art website in
2005: http://www.zoryafineart.com/publications/view/11.
4 Forging the European Connection
disproportionate attention among many scholars, who frequently allowed

this political and ideological focus to overshadow other innovations. When
the West rediscovered the “Eastern” avant-garde in the last decades of the
twentieth century, the primary focus was often on its visionary politics and
achievements in abstract art. But this movement in the arts was always a
complex phenomenon, full of competing crosscurrents. In the 1990s, as
new information long suppressed under Soviet rule surfaced, it became
clear that the “Eastern” avant-garde not only differed significantly from the
“Western,” but was more differentiated internally than had been assumed.
Numerous exhibitions at this time explored the different national back-
grounds of avant-gardists.2
Pre-war Paris was visited by numerous artists from Ukraine. Among
them were Alexander Archipenko, Alexandra Exter, Mykhailo Boichuk,
David Burliuk, Wladimir Baranoff-Rossiné (Baranov), Sofiia Levytska
(Sonia Lewitska), Abram Manevych, Yosyp Chaikov (Joseph Tchaikov),
Vladimir (Volodymyr) Tatlin, and Vadym Meller. They joined prominent
older modernists already living there, such as Oleksandr Murashko, Lev
Kramarenko, Mykola Burachek, and Ivan Trush.3 It was common at the time
for students from Ukraine to be sent to France and Germany as part of their
education. In fact, from 1908 to 1914 there were so many Ukrainian artists
in the city that they had their own club called the “Cercle des Ukrainiens
à Paris” situated in the Latin Quarter at rue Thouin 14, which housed a
library with periodicals from Ukraine. Archipenko was an active member,
sang in the choir and conducted tours of Paris salons (Popovych 1977, 14).4
Travel appears to have been relatively easy. Ivan Kavaleridze has recalled
how simple it was to obtain a visa in Kyiv. After producing his passport and
ten roubles, he picked up his visa the following day, purchased a train ticket
for thirty-two roubles and sixty kopecks and caught the train (Kavaleridze
2017a, 102–3). From Western Ukraine, then part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, travel was even more straightforward. Although the First World
War and the 1917 Revolution in the Russian Empire sealed borders and
restricted movement, some artists, such as Oleksander Hryshchenko
2 These exhibitions are mentioned in chapter 11. For post-Soviet reassessments of the
avant-garde by Russian scholars see Krusanov 1996, 2003, Petrova 2001. For fresh
approaches by Western scholars see Antonova and Merkert 1996, Rowell and Wye 2002.
For the best recent volume on Ukrainian artists in Paris see Susak 2010.
3 For a list of 250 Ukrainian artists in Paris see Susak 2010, 361–90. She writes that in
1910, there were 120 members in the Hromada, the colony of émigré Ukrainian artists
in Paris (48).
4 On Archipenko’s years in Paris see Susak 2010, 67–73.
Kyiv to Paris: Ukrainian Art in the European Avant-Garde, 1910–30 5
(Alexis Gritchenko, Grischenko) and Mykhailo Andriienko-Nechytailo

(Michel Andreenko), still found their way to Paris.5
Some figures were only briefly in the West, but still made a large impact
on the international avant-garde. Tatlin visited Berlin and Paris. His mother
was Ukrainian and he was known for wearing an embroidered Ukrainian
shirt, singing dumas and other ancient songs, and even constructing ban-
duras. In 1913 he found himself in Germany with an orchestra of Ukrainian
bandura players, pretending to be a blind musician.6 Apparently the Kaiser
himself expressed an interest in his playing and singing. Later in France,
Picasso was reportedly thrilled by his performance and invited the player to
his studio. Here the blind man opened his eyes in enthusiastic appreciation
of Picasso’s art. In spite of Tatlin’s offer to be an assistant (washing brushes,
preparing canvases), Picasso is said to have shown him the door (Bazhan
2004, 77). Since Archipenko was creating his early constructivist forms in
Paris at the time, it is likely that Tatlin saw them. After returning from Paris,
he began to make his own, now famous counter-reliefs in 1914 and 1915.
Other cities, such as Munich, Berlin and Geneva, also attracted artists,
among them Meller, Burliuk and Archipenko. After 1922, the work of Tatlin,
Malevich and Exter became known in Germany, where it had a strong reso-
nance. Malevich was in Berlin in 1927, and Boichuk visited the Bauhaus in
1926 and 1927. The latter’s Mezhyhiria Art and Ceramics Institute, created
in 1928, was partly modeled after the German art school.7 Numerous artists
from Lviv in Western Ukraine also worked in Archipenko’s Berlin studio in
the early twenties before moving on to Paris, although the strongest contin-
gent of artists was always in the French capital.
Conceptualization of the Ukrainian avant-garde has been hampered
by the fact that it has often been subsumed under the term “Russian.” For
some artists this might be an adequate characterization, especially for
those who were originally from Ukraine, spent time in Western Europe
before the First World War, but then lived most of their creative lives in
Moscow or St. Petersburg (Petrograd/Leningrad). Among them one might
count Aleksandr (Oleksandr) Shevchenko, who was born in Kharkiv,
5 On the Parisian life of Hryshchenko and Andriienko see Susak 2016, 98–105, 112–19.
6 The bandura is Ukraine’s national instrument. It became popular in the sixteenth
century, when wandering minstrels used it to accompany the singing of epic ballads.
The instrument has between thirty-two and fifty-five strings and combines features of
the lute and harp.
7 The Mezhyhiria Art and Ceramics School was founded in 1921 and 1922. It was
renamed the Mezhyhiria Art and Ceramics Technicum in 1923, the Mezhyhiria Art and
Ceramics Institute in 1928, and the Ukrainian Technological Institute of Ceramics and
Glass in 1931.
and then worked at Eugene Carrière’s studio and the Académie Julian
in Paris (1905–6); Nathan Altman, who was born in Vinnytsia, studied
under Kiriak Kostandi at the Odesa School of Art, and was in Paris on
two occasions (1911–12 and 1928–35); and David Shterenberg, who was
born in Zhytomyr, studied in a private studio in Odesa (1905) and then in
the École des Beaux-Arts, the Vitty studio in Paris (1906–12) and Fernand
Léger’s studio, exhibiting in various Paris salons before moving to Russia.
However, the identity issue is a complex one. Interaction among Ukrainian
artists, even when they lived in one of the two Russian capitals, was often
intense, and their links with colleagues in Ukraine frequently remained
strong. Shevchenko’s close collaboration with Hryshchenko (Gritchenko)
in Moscow is one such case. Aware of these difficulties, art historians have
sometimes identified these artists as members of both the Russian and
Ukrainian avant-gardes. Another complication is the fact that many art-
ists from Ukraine were of Jewish origin. Often their careers began in Kyiv
and then moved, sometimes via Paris or German cities, to Moscow.8 They,
of course, brought their own perspective to the rich interaction that pro-
duced avant-garde experimentation. As a result, many figures simultane-
ously belonged to, and are claimed by, the Ukrainian, Russian, Jewish, and
Western European avant-gardes.
Nonetheless, it is clear that a number of the most prominent figures in
this European avant-garde not only came from Ukraine but drew attention
to this fact. Such a self-identification was made by Burliuk and Malevich.
The work of a number of others, among them Sonia Delauney, Archipenko,
Exter and Tatlin, can be linked to a Ukrainian inspiration. This raises some
rarely examined questions. How was their work in Europe and interaction
with Western artists influenced by their origins? Are there common fea-
tures among avant-garde artists who came from Ukraine? As members of
Western European, Russian or other avant-garde circles, to what extent
were these artists also part of the Ukrainian avant-garde movement, one
with its own distinct traits and sensibility?
Even a cursory examination of the artists’ biographies reveals a star-
tling amount of travel, which, of course, facilitated the exchange of creative
ideas. Discussions of the “Eastern” avant-garde have usually conceptual-
ized influences as flowing from West (Paris, Munich, Berlin, Vienna) to
East, although this view has always been challenged.9 It is now more widely
8 On Jewish artists from Ukraine who worked in Paris see Susak 2010, 122–53.
9 During the third trip of his Kamernyi Teatr to Germany in 1930, the Moscow theater
director Aleksandr (Oleksandr) Tairov, who was born in Ukraine, declared that the
“influence is from East to West and not the opposite” (quoted in Koliazin 1996, 174).
accepted that influences in the pre- and post-war years also ran from East to
West. However, artists from Ukraine also traveled in large numbers north,
to the two Russian capitals. Since the focus of art historians and critics has
generally been on events in these cities, they have invariably conceptualized
the flow of influences as traveling exclusively from North (St. Petersburg
and Moscow) to South.10 The reality here is also more complex. A pioneer-
ing, democratizing, anti-establishment impetus originated in the “South” in
part as the expression of a marginalized identity. This suggests that a bet-
ter conceptualization of “traffic patterns” is required, one that would allow
developments in Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Chornianka (Chernianka), and
other nodal points to be seen in a context that accounts for the Ukrainian
dimension. A brief look at the career of Exter, for example, demonstrates
the important role played by the creative ferment in Kyiv.
Exter
Exter appeared regularly in Paris after completing the Kyiv Art School in
1906. She studied in Carlo Delvall’s studio in the Académie de la Grande-
Chaumière in Paris (1909), and contributed to the earliest avant-garde
exhibitions in the Russian Empire, including the Link (Zveno or Lanka)
Exhibition in Kyiv (1908). Through Serhii Yastrebtsov, with whom she had
entered the Kyiv Art School and who wrote French poetry under the pseu-
donym Serge Ferat, she was introduced to Guillaume Apollinaire’s circle.
Joining forces with Picasso, Braque and Léger, she began exploring cubism.
In 1911 she met Sonia Delauney and was affected by the latter’s chromatic
futurism. From Paris Exter then brought back to Kyiv works for Oleksandr
Bohomazov, the Burliuk brothers, and others to see. In 1914 she produced
the first monograph on Picasso.
The interaction of the Kyiv futurists (especially of Exter, Bohomazov
and Burliuk) generated some of the first avant-garde activities within the
10 Krusanov speaks of the “advance of the left into the provinces” but also admits that
between January 1915 and February 1917 there were over ninety various futurist events
outside Moscow and Petersburg and about sixty in the two cities (Krusanov 2003, book
2, 9). His book is constructed as a study of the dissemination of futurist ideas from
the two capitals to the provinces and shows no interest in local or indigenous agency,
even though he admits that from October 1917 until the Spring of 1922 Ukraine,
Crimea and Southern Russia were cut off from “the center of the country” (Krusanov,
75). When he does turn to Ukraine, he focuses heavily on the activities of Russians
and Russian-language publications, even though their activities in the twenties were
marginal as compared to those of the Ukrainians.
Russian Empire. All three were influential in teaching and publicizing

the new art. They first presented themselves in the November 1908 Link
Exhibition in Kyiv, where the main contributors were David and Vladimir
(Volodymyr) Burliuk, Bohomazov, Exter, and Baranoff-Rossiné (Baranov).
They again exhibited together in Kyiv in 1914 at the Ring (Russian: Koltso,
Ukrainian: Kiltse) Exhibition. Artists from Russia also participated in
these exhibitions and the Kyivans exhibited in Moscow and St. Petersburg,
but during the years of war and revolutionary upheaval (1914–22), when
Kyiv was cut off from both Western Europe and Russia, a strong indige-
nous avant-garde appeared. During these years an intimate awareness of
Western artistic developments allowed Exter to create a unique style in
both painting and set design. Beginning in 1918 Exter and Vadym Meller
designed costumes for Bronislava Nijinska’s dance studio and a number of
theaters in Kyiv and Moscow. Exter taught at her own studio in Kyiv (1918–
20), then at the Higher Art and Technical Studios in Moscow (1921–22)
before emigrating to Paris in 1924, where she opened another personal stu-
dio. She also exhibited at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs
et Industriels Modernes and taught at Fernand Léger’s Académie d’Art
Moderne. Her influence was also exerted indirectly through the work of
numerous outstanding painters and stage designers whom she trained.
They included numerous Jewish artists: Nisson Shifrin, Isaak Rabinovich,
Isaak Rabichev, Boris (Borys) Aronson, Solomon Nikritin, and Aleksandr
(Oleksandr) Tyshler.
Exter’s international reputation was secured by her permanent move
to Paris, where she was able to spread an “Eastern” influence. She blended
cubism, constructivism, and primitivism in her theater designs, cos-
tumes, and art. It is less well known that in Kyiv she supported “naïve”
artists, usually women artisans from villages who produced embroidered
scarves and towels or woven rugs. Her interest in brightly colored folk
murals, embroideries, and Easter eggs was stimulated in Kyiv, where she
prepared posters for an exhibition entitled “The Folk Art of Bukovyna
and Galicia,” which opened on April 16, 1917, and where on March 31,
1918, at the opening of an exhibition devoted to the decorative works
of Yevheniia Prybylska and Hanna Sobachko, she gave a talk describing
the colors and rhythms of decorative folk art, linking the popular love of
color in “young” Slavic nations to ancient icons (Exter 1990, 18).
In post-war years the Ukrainian influence in Paris was strengthened
by the arrival of immigrants, who brought an awareness of the distinctive
work produced in Kyiv by Exter, Meller, Bohomazov, Issakhar-Ber Rybak,
and their circle.
Generalizing, one could say that Ukrainian artists in both Kyiv and
Paris made important contributions to the international avant-garde in two
areas. Firstly, they rekindled the already existing interest in primitivism, fil-
tering it through an awareness of their own folk art and icon. Secondly, they
infused the avant-garde with a love of color, texture and movement. Exter
and Sonia Delauney (who was originally from Ukraine) are credited with
transforming the muted grays and browns of Western cubism by intro-
ducing bright colors into modern design.11 Although initially criticized
by Léger for her exuberant use of color, Exter insisted that this was the
“Eastern” contribution to cubism. Archipenko was one of the first artists
to color sculptures. After the war, Hryshchenko (Gritchenko), Baranoff-
Rossiné and Andriienko-Nechytailo (Andreenko) augmented the influence
of these “Eastern” colorists.
Archipenko
Primitivism stimulated interest in ancient art and monumental forms, the
study of which enabled Archipenko to make an international reputation as
a sculptor. His paternal grandfather had been an icon painter, and his father
was an inventor and professor of engineering at the University of Kyiv. At
an early age the artist became interested in the relationship between mathe-
matics and art, as well as in Byzantine art. He studied at the Kyiv Art School
from 1902 to 1905 until he was expelled, according to one account, for
criticizing teachers as “too old-fashioned and academic,” and, according
to another, for participating in a strike. In 1906 he held his first solo exhi-
bition in Ukraine, then went to Moscow and in 1908 at the age of twenty
moved to Paris. He quit the École des Beaux-Arts after two weeks because
he found the academic system confining and tedious, and then studied
independently. The Parisian years (1908–21) were his most productive. In
1909 he began making revolutionary sculptures, which he exhibited in the
11 Sonia Delauney (Terk-Delauney) was born in the Ukrainian town of Hradyzhsk near
Poltava, but from age five she was raised by an uncle in St. Petersburg. Her memoirs,
written late in life, begin by recognizing the profound effect on her work of her childhood
in Ukraine. They provide a rhapsodic account of these early years. She studied in the
Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe before moving to Paris in 1905, where she married
the French artist Robert Delauney in 1910. She imitated the patchwork quilt styles of
peasant women and was best known for her instinctive color sense and her refusal
to accept facile distinctions between the fine arts and applied or decorative arts. She
was known for her robust primary colors, her work with fabric, fashion, textile, and
costume design, and her color rhythms, dubbed “orphism” by Apollinaire.
Salon des Indépendants each year from 1910 to 1914, and the Salon d’Au-
tomne in 1911, 1912, 1913, and 1919. In 1912 he opened his own art stu-
dio in Montparnasse, working alongside Modigliani and Gaudier-Brzeska.
Abstract, transparent, and painted sculptures were among his many inno-
vations. He made Medrano 1 (1912), the first sculpture in various painted
materials (wood, glass, metal sheet, wire), created reliefs named “sculp-
to-peintures,” which were generally made of painted plaster, and produced
the first modern sculptures formed with negative space (concaves and voids
that created implied volumes). He called for a renewal of “ancient poly-
chromy which is far richer than the contemporary non-colored sculpture”
(Archipenko 1969, 23) and in 1913 exhibited the highly colored sculpture
Pierrot at Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin. Boxing (1914) was one of the most
abstract modern sculptures done to that date. From 1919 to 1921 he exhib-
ited in various European cities: Geneva, Zurich, Paris, London, Brussels,
Athens, Berlin, and Munich. His solo exhibition in the Venice Biennale was
ridiculed in the June 11, 1920 edition of Il Telegrafo Livorno, and Cardinal
La Fontaine, Patriarch of Venice, advised the faithful not to attend. In 1921
he opened his own art school in Berlin, and then in 1923 moved to the
United States.
Like other avant-garde artists of the time Archipenko tried not to
copy forms in nature but to apprehend them spiritually and then cap-
ture their essence. The charm of his works, wrote Apollinaire, comes from
an effortless sense of inward order (Apollinaire 1969; quoted in Karshan
1969, 12). It is a sense that comes from an awareness of ancient art:
Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Scythian, Byzantine, and Greek. In his student
days the artist had taken part in archaeological expeditions, and some
critics maintain that early works such as his Woman and Suzanna (1909–
10) recall the simple but powerful expressiveness of ancient stone idols
that can be found in the steppe (Olenska-Petryshyn 1997, 490). The pro-
found influence of these statues has been indicated by the artist himself,
who recalled how as a small child he played on one of them, climbing over
it. However, during dark evenings, he avoided passing it, because it struck
terror into him. This same statue now stands in front of the National Art
Museum in Kyiv. His interest in ancient art was probably linked to his fas-
cination with cosmic dynamism, the sense of a unity between the highest
and lowest forms, between solar systems and the cells of organisms. Art
for him reflected the forces of the universe, and he felt that the best art
crystallized intuitively sensed forms. Apollinaire was convinced that this
aspect of his work reflected the presence of ancient belief-systems (see
Karshan 1969, 12–14).
Burliuk
David Burliuk, another major figure in the avant-garde, attended the Royal
Academy of Arts in Munich (1902–3) and the Académie Fernand Cormon
in Paris (1904–5), participated in the Link Exhibition in Kyiv (1908) and
was a driving force behind many of the early avant-garde exhibitions in
the Russian Empire. His countless lectures on the new art included one
in Exter’s Kyiv studio, and he exhibited continually, both in the empire
and at Western European venues, such as the Neue Kunstlervereinigung
(New Artists’ Association) exhibition in Munich (1910), the Paul Cassirer
Gallery in Berlin (1911), and the famous Der Blaue Reiter exhibition in
Munich (1912), whose almanac of the same name published his article “Die
‘Wilden’ Russlands.” In 1912 he made a second trip to Western Europe trav-
eling through Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy. During the years
of revolution he gave improvised lectures, performances, and exhibitions,
eventually bringing his family across Siberia to Vladivostok and across the
sea to Japan before emigrating to the United States in 1922.
Burliuk had an important early link to the Western avant-garde in
Kandinsky, who had spent some of his childhood in Odesa. Partly as a result of
this connection, the ground-breaking Izdebskii salons took place in Ukraine.
The first, which exhibited many Westerners, was held in Odesa (December 4,
1909 to January 24, 1910) and Kyiv (February 12 to March 14 1910), before
traveling to St. Petersburg and Riga. The second, which included scores
of paintings by Exter, Burliuk, Konchalovskii, Lentulov, Tatlin, Larionov,
Goncharova, and Kandinsky, began in Odesa (February 6 to April 3, 1911)
and then traveled to Mykolaiv (Nikolaev) and Kherson (Krusanov 2003, Book
2, 6). It made an enormous impression, because it announced the presence of
an indigenous avant-garde art within the borders of the Russian Empire.
Burliuk’s links to Ukraine, as will be argued in a later essay, were stronger
than is often admitted. David began by extolling a “wild, new beauty” that he
associated with the forceful, simple and direct expression in folk creativity
and ancient Scythian forms. In the course of a long creative life he would
always return to this primary inspiration. Like Archipenko, he was fascinated
by the powerful hidden energies within nature. The painterly expression of
his intuitive apprehension of things can be found in his steppe landscapes.
Sophia Levytska (Sonia Lewitzka)

The Ukrainian expatriates in Paris were a varied group. Sophia Levytska
was an early member. She completed the Paris Academy of Art in 1905.
Beginning as a cubist and fauvist, she moved into a post-impressionist

style and became known for her illustrations of limited edition books,
including Paul Valéry’s Ébauche d’un Serpent (1922) and a French transla-
tion of Gogol’s Ukrainian stories. Apollinaire followed her exhibitions and
commented on the resemblance of her works to those of Sonia Delauney.
Her Parisian contacts were many and her home was a frequent meet-
ing place for Ukrainian artists. In 1931 she organized an exhibition that
included Hryshchenko, Andriienko-Nechytailo, Vasyl Khmeliuk, Mykola
Krychevskyi, Vasyl Perebyinis, and herself.12
Boichuk
In the years preceding the First World War, restoration work conducted
on numerous icons had proven conclusively that they had originally been
brightly colored. This came as a revelation to many. Since the late nineteenth
century, excitement had also been generated by the restoration of frescoes in
the most ancient Ukrainian churches, some of which like St. Sophia’s Church
and St. Michael’s Church of the Golden Domes dated back to the eleventh
century. In the years 1907 to 1909, Mykhailo Boichuk brought awareness of
this art to Paris, where he organized a studio in which young Ukrainian and
Polish artists experimented with a neo-Byzantine style, combining influences
from the Ukrainian icon and folk arts, and the fresco art of the Italian quat-
trocento (the so-called “primitives”).13 The group’s exhibition was reviewed by
Apollinaire, who was himself of Polish background and had Ukrainian sym-
pathies. He wrote favorably of the Zaporozhian Cossacks and produced his
own French version of the famous, apocryphal “Letter of the Zaporozhians to
the Sultan.” It is possible that Archipenko provided him with a “copy” of the
legendary letter and information about Ukrainian history.
Hryshchenko (Alexis Gritchenko)

Hryshchenko, who arrived in Paris after the revolution, also had a strong
interest in the icon. He had specializing in biology in Kyiv and Moscow uni-
versities, but had also studied art in these cities and became involved in the
modern art movement in Russia. During a brief earlier stay in Paris in 1911,
12 On Levytska see Susak 2010, 75–81.

13 On Boichuk in Paris see Susak 2016, 36–46.
he had met Andre Lhote, Archipenko, and Le Fauconnier, and developed

an interest in cubism. He had also taken a trip to Italy to study the early
Renaissance. In analyzing the Italian art of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-
turies and the icons of ancient Rus, he found that the old masters applied
“cubist” solutions to problems of space and color. In this way Hryshchenko
traced a link between the contemporary avant-garde, the so-called “prim-
itives” of the early Renaissance and the icon. He was convinced that a full
understanding of the icon had only become possible with the appearance
of modern art. Like Andre Benois and Aleksandr (Oleksandr) Shevchenko,
he found formal similarities between ancient icons and the work of Matisse
and Picasso. Although the debate on the icon had been stimulated around
1910 by the final refutation of its darkness, the icon’s formal, painterly qual-
ities (as opposed to its religious importance or Christian symbolism) had
never been investigated in the way Hryshchenko did in his two monographs,
O sviaziakh russkoi zhivopisi s Vizantiei i Zapadom (On the Links of Russian
Painting with Byzantium and the West, 1913) and Russkaia ikona kak iskus-
stvo zhivopisi (The Russian Icon as an Art of Painting, 1917). His own work
blended a cosmopolitan worldview with formal features of Byzantine sacred
art. In 1919, together with Shevchenko, he mounted an exhibition in Moscow
called “Tsvetodinamos i tekhtonicheskii primitivism” (Colordynamos and
Tekhtonic Primitivism), which was conceived as a counterbalance to pro-
duction art. The two artists announced that only color, composition and
“faktura” interested them. From 1919 to 1921 Hryshchenko lived in Istanbul,
where he painted hundreds of watercolors. He then moved to France, where
he became known for his exotic streams of oriental color.
In his Moscow years Hryshchenko played a prominent role in the
avant-garde, both as a painter and theorist. He was able to reconcile the
Western and Eastern avant-gardes and explain their common concerns and
interests. Unfortunately, his importance was never recognized in the Soviet
Union, partly because his avant-gardism was painterly and not political,
and partly because the regime considered him a traitor for leaving the coun-
try. As a result, his canvases were cut up and given to students in Moscow’s
Higher Art and Technical Studios (Vkhutemas) to practice upon, and his
name removed from art history. Later he exhibited in leading Parisian
art galleries. He also displayed in Lviv in the 1930s at the Association of
Independent Ukrainian Artists (ANUM, Asotsiiatsiia nezalezhnykh mystt-
siv Ukrainy) and had personal shows in New York and Philadelphia. In
1963 he donated seventy works to the Ukrainian Institute of America in
New York. These have now been transferred to Kyiv.
Andriienko-Nechytailo (Andreenko)
Mykhailo Andriienko-Nechytailo (Michel Andreenko) studied in Kherson
before the war and placed his first cubist and abstract works in a Leipzig
exhibition (1916–17). He worked in Petrograd, before returning via Kyiv
to Kherson in 1918. In 1919 he studied in Odesa with Exter, and worked
for the theater. The city was divided into zones and he had to cross the bor-
ders with a military escort of get to the theater and back. He then worked
as a set designer in Bucharest and Prague, and finally settled in Paris in
1923. Influenced by de Chirico and the surrealists, his works in the 1930s
expressed the loneliness and isolation of the individual, as well as the mys-
teriousness of things. In later decades he developed a naïve art that searched
for harmonious forms and childlike innocence.
Baranoff-Rossiné (Baranov)
Wladimir Baranoff-Rossiné was also born near Kherson, and studied at
the Odesa School of Art (1903–7) and the Imperial Academy of Arts in St.
Petersburg (1908–9). He contributed to the Link (1908) and many early
avant-garde exhibitions in the empire before moving to Paris in 1910,
where he exhibited under the name of Daniel Rossiné from 1911 to 1914.
In 1917 he returned to Russia, exhibiting in Petrograd and Moscow before
emigrating to Paris in 1925. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendents
and other venues until 1942. In the 1910s he developed a style that repre-
sented a moderate futurism that was decorative, weightless, and full of light,
spiral-shaped elements with silky textures. Like Andriienko’s, his work was
not politically engaged, but borrowed from the visual charm and spiritual
harmony of the icon.
Redko
Klyment Redko studied icon painting in the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves
from 1910 to 1914. Here he met Vasilii Chekrigin, with whom he discussed
cubism, futurism, and other modern art movements, while examining
reproductions of Picasso, Braque, Matisse, and other artists. He then stud-
ied at the Moscow Art School (1913), the Petrograd in the Society for the
Advancement of Art (1914–18), and the Ukrainian Academy of Arts in
Kyiv (1918–19). He was a friend of Nikritin and Boichuk. In 1920 he found
himself in Kharkiv with Nikritin and Shterenberg, and then studied in the
Moscow Vkhutemas (1920–22) where he associated with Nikritin, Tyshler,
and other artists from Ukraine. In the eight years he spent in Paris (1927–
35) before returning to the Soviet Union he participated in the Salon d’Au-
tomne (1927), had four personal exhibitions, and met Picasso and other
leading figures. Boichuk, Sedliar and Taran spent time with him when they
visited the city in 1927. Redko’s early art is abstract and constructivist, but
in the twenties he moved toward a realist style.
Avant-garde film
Ukrainians also made contribution to other, related art forms, notably the
cinema. At the same time as Oleksandr Dovzhenko and Ivan Kavaleridze
were producing avant-garde films in Ukraine, Yevhen Slavchenko (Eugene
Deslaw) was making a reputation as an avant-garde film maker in Paris. He
emigrated as part of the exodus that followed the defeat of the Ukrainian
People’s Republic (1917–20). Deslaw studied in Paris in the 1920s and at
the École Technique Photo-Cinema in 1927. In that year he assisted Abel
Gance in making the early French film epic, Napoléon. His abstract and
experimental films include Marche des Machines (1928), La Nuit Électrique
(1930), Montparnasse (1931), Négatifs (1932), and Robots (1932). He
worked with Boris Kaufmann (a collaborator on Marche des Machines),
Alfred Zinnemann (the photographer on Marche des Machines), Luis
Bunuel, and Marcel Carné (his assistants on Montparnasse). Until 1930 he
corresponded with the Ukrainian futurist journal Nova generatsiia (New
Generation) and with Dovzhenko, whom he met in Paris in 1930. Deslaw
is considered part of the so-called second wave of the French avant-garde,
which included Fernand Léger, René Claire, Henri Chaumet, Man Ray, and
Germaine Dulac.
Lviv
Even after the Soviet borders were closed to them, Ukrainians living in Paris
could maintain contacts with Lviv, which during the inter-war years found
itself within the Polish state. They worked closely with ANUM and a num-
ber of them, including Andriienko, Hryshchenko, Hlushchenko, Khmeliuk,
and Perebyinis, sent works to Lviv for display in the 1930s. At the end of
the 1920s a group of fourteen Jewish avant-garde artists from Lviv, many of
whom had spent time in Paris, formed the organization ARTES (1929–35).
They held thirteen exhibitions in Lviv, Ternopil, Stanislaviv (now Ivano-
Frankivsk), Krakow, and also in Warsaw and Lodz in the years 1930–32
(Kotliar and Susak 2005, 323).
Kyiv milieu
It is clear from even such a short survey that a cohort of remarkably talented
artists from Ukraine worked in Paris in the heyday of the avant-garde. The
milieus that produced them (Kherson, Odesa, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv) and the
connections between them have seldom been investigated. It is impossi-
ble in an overview to examine these milieus, but a glance at one, Kyiv, is
instructive. The city is particularly interesting and important, because it
radiated a distinct influence and style throughout the years 1910 to 1930.
Why was it such a powerful generator of avant-garde activity? Perhaps
because radical transformations were already occurring there early in the
twentieth century due to population migration and growth, industrializa-
tion, and modernization. It was reputedly the first city within the empire
and the second in Europe to have an electric tramway (streetcar), whose
image figures strongly in Bohomazov’s futurist paintings, symbolizing
movement and modernity’s galvanizing impact on urban life. The shock
of the new, combined with the discovery of a rich and vibrant indigenous
folk culture, seem to have provided the initial creative spark for the Kyiv
avant-garde.
Another factor was the Kyiv Art School, which from 1901 to 1920
produced many great talents, among them Exter, Meller, Kavaleridze,
Archipenko, Bohomazov, Abram Manevych, Anton Pevzner (Antoine
Pevsner), Aristarkh Lentulov, Isaak Rabinovich, Aleksandr (Oleksandr)
Tyshler, Mark (Moisei) Epstein, Solomon Nikritin, Issakhar-Ber Rybak,
and Anatolii Petrytskyi. It accepted Jewish students in substantial numbers,
sometimes in opposition to the desires of government authorities. From
1901 to 1920, almost half the students in the School were of Jewish back-
ground. The resulting mix of talented and ambitious artists from different
backgrounds had much to do with the generation of an innovative, creative
atmosphere.
At least three other reasons were important in producing the artis-
tic ferment in Kyiv, particularly during the revolutionary years and the
twenties. One was the creation by the Ukrainian government (the UNR
or Ukrainian People’s Republic, 1917–20) of a Ukrainian Academy of Arts
in 1917–18. It brought together some of the most talented professors, such

as Vasyl Krychevskyi, Yurii Narbut, Abram Manevych, and Mykhailo
Boichuk, and many gifted students. Although the institution went through
two name changes under Soviet rule, it continued to exert a strong influ-
ence on artistic life in Ukraine throughout this period.14
A second was the creation of the Kultur-Lige by the same government.
In pre-war years, Jewish students had graduated from a number of aca-
demic institutions such as the Kyiv Art School. Along with Jewish artists
who were escaping revolutionary events in Russia, in 1918 they began par-
ticipating in the work of the Kyiv Kultur-Lige, making the city into one
of the world’s most dynamic centers of Yiddish culture and the Jewish
avant-garde. Although, after the organization’s Sovietization in 1920, some
prominent figures left, it continued its work until 1925, while its publishing
house and art school survived into the thirties.
A third factor was the supportive atmosphere provided in the late
twenties by the Kyiv Art Institute. In 1928, at a time when doors were clos-
ing to avant-gardists in Moscow and Leningrad, Malevich joined Tatlin,
Bohomazov, Boichuk, and Palmov on the Institute’s teaching faculty.
Archipenko was also invited to teach there, although he declined the offer.
The Institute was already the third largest post-secondary art school in the
Soviet Union. Its able director Ivan Vrona dreamed of making it and the
related Mezhyhiria Art and Ceramics Institute into a “Bauhaus of the East.”
The connections forged at the Institute between Malevich, Tatlin, Palmov,
Bohomazov, and Boichuk have yet to be fully analyzed, but they obviously
stimulated creative activity. As a result of all these factors, the late twenties
produced a final blossoming of the avant-garde in the city. In these years
the futurist journal Nova generatsiia (New Generation) published many
innovative works, such as Malevich’s history of art. In this way the Kyiv
milieus nourished the avant-garde in its early years and provided it with a
final refuge.
There may have been deeper historical reasons for the existence of
supportive ground in Kyiv. It could be argued that the country had long
been a meeting ground of cultural influences and was therefore prepared
to confront and even welcome novelty. Already in the seventeenth century
a distinct Western culture had arisen there, one that was baroque, Latin,
and relatively cosmopolitan. Ukrainian Orthodox, Polish Catholic, Jewish
rabbinical and later Hassidic cultures interacted or rubbed shoulders, and
continued to do so for many generations. In the nineteenth century these
14 The Ukrainian State Academy of Arts was created in 1917. It was renamed the Kyiv
Institute of Plastic Arts in 1922, then renamed the Kyiv Art Institute in 1924.
interactions were overlaid by a Russian imperial and bureaucratic cul-

ture. As a result, in the twentieth century, members of the avant-garde in
Ukraine could, for example, be of Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, or Jewish
origins, and might sometimes mix imperial and national or Christian and
Jewish imagery in their art, much as occurred in the various literatures that
were produced in Ukraine (among them Ukrainian, Russian and Yiddish).
The coexistence of different viewpoints, and the possibility of shifting per-
spectives, is a feature of the avant-garde art from this period.
Moreover, it is too rarely noted that substantial contacts with Western
art in the pre-war decades had prepared the ground for the Ukrainian
avant-garde. The Viennese and Munich Secessions had a strong resonance
in Ukraine. The different expressions of modernity in Paris, Munich, Berlin,
and Vienna were accessible to Ukrainians directly from the sources. They
developed their own versions of European movements, and were from the
beginning prepared not only to witness but also to participate in the cre-
ation of a new art. As a result of their interaction with Europe the Kyivans
already developed a new style in the pre-war years, one that was differ-
ent from that of the Western and the Moscow fauvists and cubists. Exter’s
early works, such as Genoa (1913), Constructivist Composition (1916–18)
and City at Night (1919), when compared with Bohomazov’s Bouquet of
Flowers (1914–15), Meller’s Composition (1917–18) and Urban Landscape
(1912–13), or Rybak’s City (1917) indicate a close affinity.
Distinct character
In the years 1908 to 1930 Kyiv produced an avant-garde with a distinct
character. At the risk of misrepresenting some aspects of a varied, evolving
and dynamic milieu, generalizations about its uniqueness have been made.
Its style, according to Nakov, was less aggressive formally, but structurally
and compositionally more solid (Nakov 1991, 18). On the whole, the Kyiv
milieu focused more on skill and knowledge of a craft. Bohomazov, for
example, considered artists to be superior craft workers. What Nakov calls
a “modestie artisanale” (Nakov, 21) differed from the constructivism that
developed in the late twenties and aimed at complete mastery of technique,
materials and conception. A similar concern with artisanal skills and profi-
ciency in a craft can be seen in Boichuk, Archipenko and the Kharkiv artist
Vasyl Yermilov. Nakov has also suggested that the work of the Ukrainian
avant-garde as a whole is less haunted by a sense of metaphysical angst
and more concerned with inner harmony. The Kyivans were less attracted
to grand philosophical constructions or extravagant world-changing the-

ories and more focused on researching color and rhythm or the energy
of materials (Nakov, 21). The Boichuk School, perhaps as a result of the
search for inner harmony, often preferred a subdued, delicately graded pal-
ette with quiet, “faded” colors. But a preference for “earth-like” colors was
popular with a number of artists from around 1918 until the mid-twenties,
including Anatolii Petrytskyi, Issakhar-Ber Rybak and artists associated
with the Kultur-Lige.
Bohomazov in a number of ways typifies the Kyiv milieu. He studied in
the Kyiv Art School (1902–5). After being expelled along with Archipenko
in 1906, he worked with Hryshchenko in Crimea, painting in the open
air, then studied in Moscow (1906–7) before returning to the Kyiv school
(1908–11). He was co-organizer with Exter of the Link Exhibition (1908) and
organizer of the Ring Exhibition (1914). He taught design in a commercial
lycée, and in Kyiv’s Jewish lycée, and in 1922 began lecturing in the Kyiv Art
Institute. In 1914 he wrote “The Art of Painting,” an unpublished text that
became a manual of instruction at the Institute. It traced the evolution of
the new painting through German expressionism, Kandinsky and Larionov,
and offered the view that art was the distinct rhythm of its constitutive ele-
ments, of forms regulated by a complex inner logic. Like Archipenko and
Burliuk, Bohomazov was fascinated with the hidden energy within matter.
He saw the world as dynamic, constantly in movement and transformation.
For him all forms changed as they impinged upon one another. Myroslava
Mudrak has written that the artist instructed his students to “penetrate
the pulsating features of their environment to draw out its qualitative and
quantitative living movement” (Mudrak 1987, 138). She relates his idea of
“internal agitation” to Archipenko’s attempts in his “Archipentura” to cap-
ture real motion in painting (Mudrak, 138). Bohomazov’s belief that sensa-
tion was “a physical, tactile and material sensibility” and should dictate an
artist’s method aligns him with other Ukrainian artists who tended to focus
on the real world, the surrounding human and natural environment, and
the artist’s sensations (Mudrak, 139).
Ukrainians were often concerned with discoveries that were of local
provenance or inspiration. They explored folk roots, painted local scenes, and
found novelty in marginalized art forms, such as hand-painted sign boards,
amateur carvings, embroideries, and popular icons. By celebrating local
crafts, they implicitly challenged the division between high and low genres, or
between applied art and easel painting. This democratic impulse often turned
into a validation of national cultural traditions. It guided not only Kyivan art-
ists who were of Ukrainian origin, but also those who were of Jewish origin.
Like the international avant-garde as a whole, the Ukrainian, in both

its Kyivan and Parisian manifestations, had a visionary component. It
aimed at a liberation of the imagination, brought important theoretical
insights, and challenged accepted ways of perceiving the world by rejecting
nineteenth-century forms. Stylistic integrity was more of a consideration for
the Boichuk School and the Kultur-Lige, both of which aimed at the creation
of an art with national roots, but most avant-gardists were more interested
in personal moments of illumination and in breakthroughs to new ways of
seeing and feeling. These kinds of inspired moments were sought primarily in
primitivism, which for these artists usually meant folk art, ancient art or the
icon. Gombrich has argued that throughout history the primitive has been
extolled as a reaction to kitsch in art, to what was perceived as sugary and
insipid. The primitive has been valued for providing the required antidote of
a bracing, invigorating effect. The rediscovery of the icon played a similar role
in overcoming established tastes. It challenged the idea, widespread in the late
nineteenth century, that Western art had been making steady progress after
the setback of the Middle Ages, and that this progress essentially meant mov-
ing away from the “clumsy and ugly manner of the Byzantines,” through the
“skillful, but still hard and angular style of the quattrocento,” to the polish and
sophistication of the Renaissance (Gombrich 2002, 8). The Ukrainian and
Russian avant-gardists rejected this dismissive view of Byzantine art. They
rediscovered the (often refined) beauty of the icon and the quattrocento, and
confronted contemporary “realist” tastes with this revelation. The Boichuk
School, in particular, made a cornerstone of these views and vigorously
defended them in the 1920s. Boichuk’s careful, balanced compositions and
quiet color tones aimed at portraying characters in a state of grace. In this
respect he differed from Burliuk and some Russian artists, whose rework-
ing of the icon reveled in the “crude” and “grotesque.” Their art was more
reminiscent of popular lubok (broadsheet) prints and signboard art, with its
strong colors and simple lines.
Theoretical concerns were sometimes animated by what Nakov has
called a “euphorie coloriste” (Nakov 1991, 24). Considerable research
and theorizing was devoted to color by a number of figures, among them
Bohomazov, Palmov, Malevich, and Hryshchenko. Both the “Kyivan” and
“Parisian” Ukrainians explored the possibilities of color in their artistic
practice with great intensity. Much theorizing was also focused on the
energy of materials. Ukrainians seem to have drawn inspiration from phys-
ical processes occurring in living organisms (the steppe, rural landscapes,
the impact of city scenes on human perceptions). This focus on the rural
or natural world made them different from Italian and, to a great extent,
Russian futurists, in whose works the urban often predominated, and who
glorified the city and technology as forces capable of overcoming chaos
and shaping nature. Malevich, as will be argued later, hesitated between
the urban and rural, particularly when he fell under the influence of the
Kyiv milieu in the late twenties. In fact, many Ukrainian artists, includ-
ing Malevich, Burliuk, Palmov, Bohomazov, and Boichuk, seem to have
rebelled against the tendency to glorify the urban, the mechanical, and the
depersonalized. Instead, they presented the natural world as an alternative
ideal. Although some constructivists and production artists were inter-
ested, at least for a time, in the mechanized collective, there was consider-
able resistance to this aesthetic among Ukrainians in both Kyiv and Paris.
Artists from Ukraine living in the West generally had little interest in
extolling the machine age or political utopias, particularly in the late 1920s,
when these trends became part of an almost mandatory, militantly political
style in the Soviet Union. Their own negative experiences of the Bolshevik
Revolution made them recoil from violence and treat impersonal mechanisms
with suspicion. In general, they viewed the drive for political correctness as
fundamentally destructive. This was true not only of the Parisian Ukrainians,
but also of Burliuk. Even though he worked for Russkii golos (Russian Voice),
a pro-communist newspaper in New York, and maintained a pro-Soviet line,
he was profoundly ambivalent about the direction the regime and its art were
taking. His return in the 1930s to a naïve art of innocent rural scenes aligns
him with the anti-urban art favored by many of his compatriots. Ukrainians
in particular were not prepared to see peasants and workers as dumb, pas-
sive raw material to be manipulated by a bolshevik vanguard. Their work,
even in the Soviet Union, was usually an implicit, and sometimes an explicit,
rejection of this approach. “Stalinist” constructivism, which came along in
the late twenties and early thirties, and which exuded puritanical, humorless
and conformist messages, led to a wrenching apart of the Kyivan avant-garde
collectivity and a crushing of its creative inspiration.
Also important for this generation was what Nakov has called a “charge
mystique” and “une élévation philosophique” (Nakov, 15). The interest
in mysticism had been an important part of Russian modernism and its
so-called Silver Age. However, in the case of many Ukrainian avant-gardists
the search for the inexpressible and intuitive appears to have been rooted
not in metaphysical or political abstraction but in the observation of nature.
If the artist was to develop a new, universal consciousness, they seemed to
be saying, it would have to be done through a greater awareness of physical
processes. The steppe became for them a metaphor for nature writ large, and
beyond this for the cosmos. For a number—Burliuk and Malevich among
them—it represented animation, the interaction of numerous life forms,

a life process sensed rather than understood. It also represented nature’s
vastness, abundance, and profusion. It was nature’s power, rather than the
machine’s that fascinated them. This might also explain why the work of a
number of artists, including Boichuk, Hryshchenko, Baranoff-Rossiné, and
Bohomazov, has a softer, more organic appearance, as though dictated by
natural growth, rather than by the superimposition of the observer’s own
dissecting analysis. The sculptures of Archipenko and Tatlin are also not
inspired by the machine aesthetic but by an intuitively sensed inner har-
mony based on ancient forms, or by an artisan’s awareness of the “natural”
possibilities within materials and of the best work produced by craftsmen
who work these materials. Tatlin’s monument to the Third International
has often been interpreted as the communist answer to the Tower of Babel,
a propagandistic, militant, visionary political statement. It has rarely been
suggested that its construction resembles the splayed wooden strips used to
make the bandura, a gracefully constructed, elegant and functional instru-
ment. Seen in this way, the tower’s formal perfection is a tribute to human
skill and ingenuity, both of which are rooted in a long artisanal tradition. In
such an interpretation, Tatlin’s work is not simply a call to an unattainable
future. (The tower, after all, leads nowhere.) It can equally well represent
harmonious design, artistry, and joy in human achievement.
Finally, it should be noted that, when seen in the broader European con-
text, the importance of personal lyricism to the Kyivan and Parisian Ukrainians
becomes apparent. Although initially attracted to analytical cubism, many
quickly moved on to a gently intuitive, subjective expression of the visible.
The Ukrainian avant-garde’s distinctiveness was therefore precondi-
tioned by its emergence from a specific milieu (the Kyiv Art School, the
Ukrainian Academy of Arts, the Kultur-Lige, the Kyiv Art Institute, and the
national movement). Among its dominant traits were a passion for color;
a romance with primitivism and kinetic energy; a focus on the local and
national elements that were often rooted in the ancient past; a fascination
with natural processes; and a concern with inner harmony and personal
lyricism. Through these traits it brought its own distinct accent to the inter-
national avant-garde.
Politics and Painting
Politics and the Ukrainian
Avant-Garde1
The twenty years in which the historical avant-garde burst upon the scene
(1908–28) were a time of great political turmoil and intense ideological
debate. Although primarily concerned with pursuing new forms of expres-
sion, many avant-gardists were both politically motivated and concerned
with linking new ways of perceiving the world to the business of remaking it.
Their aesthetico-cultural and political projects were often, therefore, coupled
or fused. However, by the late twenties and early thirties, the era that Boris
Groys dubbed “total art-politics” had taken over, and a radical simplification
of form, a stridency of tone, and uniformity of expression came to dominate
Soviet literature and art. Groys, Andrei Siniavsky and others have argued
that the shift to this politicization of art had been psychologically prepared
earlier and that the avant-garde played a significant role in the process. Most
commentators, however, have viewed the two decades that preceded Stalin’s
“cultural revolution” of 1928–33 as fundamentally different from the years
that followed. A more sympathetic view of the historical avant-garde has
situated it in a tradition going back to Kant and the romantics, a tradition in
which the intellectual tried to forge a new world by an act of will, often by
retreating into the inner world of the spirit. In the 1908–28 period, such uto-
pian world-construction produced visionary, ground-breaking works. It was
only in the late twenties that these visionary artist-communards received the
seductive proposal of managing a great cultural-political transformation, of
becoming “engineers of human souls.” Some accepted the invitation, but
1 This chapter is a shortened and modified version of my chapter “Politics and the
Ukrainian Avant-Garde,” in Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation, edited by
Irena R. Makaryk and Virlana Tkacz, 219-97 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2010).
26 Politics and Painting
Stalin’s “cultural revolution” of 1928–33 and the ensuing purges and terror
should be distinguished from the earlier period.
For one thing, the post-1928 period demanded a fundamental reinter-
pretation of the nature and function of literature and art. In literature, for
instance, from the time of the romantics, as Tzvetan Todorov has pointed
out, a decisive contrast had been made between belles lettres or creative
writing on the one hand, and the utilitarian or practical use of language on
the other (Todorov 1987, 17–18). Belles lettres found its justification within
itself (was autotelic), while the practical use of language subordinated
itself to external goals (was heterotelic). The autotelic view was accepted
by Ukrainian modernists and symbolists for whom literature dealt with
symbolic facts, mythical and metaphorical frameworks that rearranged
patterns of experience and revealed the world by transcending reality. In
their first collection, Sbornik po teorii poeticheskogo iazyka (The Anthology
of the Theory of Poetic Language, 1916), the Russian formalists also con-
trasted the “autonomous value of linguistic representations” with the
“practical goal” of language (Todorov, 11). Literature, according to them,
foregrounded the use of language as device.
The counterposition that became hegemonic in the thirties stressed
the primacy of social function: literature and the arts were to serve the par-
ty’s educational and agitational tasks. Any foregrounding of artistic devices
was condemned as “formalism.” To a degree, this position had indeed been
prepared earlier by avant-garde groups. Mikhail Semenko, the leader of the
Ukrainian futurists, had early in the twenties called the notion of art as a
“self-serving category” both “inappropriate and dangerous.” According to
him, it was permissible only to “exploit” the devices of art with the goal of
agitating for the ideals of the working class (Semenko 1924, 227). He put
forward a harder version of this line in April 1929 in a debate entitled “Who
Needs Art?” when he insisted that art as an emotional category was dying:
it had to be subordinated to reason and forced to perform socially useful
tasks (Semenko 1929).
Nonetheless, most avant-gardists found the concept of political educa-
tion espoused by the party in the late twenties to be far too narrow. Writers
and artists were at this time instructed to serve the party in immediate,
practical ways: they were told to praise industrial projects, hail the Five-Year
Plan, or denounce the regime’s critics. A crude “political” interpretation of
texts and art works was used to assess “class sympathies.” Overt propaganda,
absolute loyalty and a militant posture were demanded. In 1930 the dec-
laration of the All-Ukrainian Federation of Revolutionary Soviet Writers
stated: “Every revolutionary Soviet writer should be an active builder of
Politics and the Ukrainian Avant-Garde 27
socialism, a disciplined fighter on the front of class war—this is our slogan

and our command to the Army of Ukrainian Revolutionary Soviet Writers”
(Deklaratsiia 1930, 124).
Toward an art-politics
Although neither the intransigent tone, the mandatory optimism, nor the
parade-ground rhetoric were new, to be accused of “Hamletism,” or “psy-
chologism” or “tearful lyricism” could now, in the new atmosphere prove
fatal. A political charge expressed in poetry or prose carried a deadly men-
ace, making even apparently harmless literary exchanges dangerous. This
was a departure from all recent practice. At some deep level a break had
occurred from the humanist tradition that celebrated the blossoming of the
individual personality, and welcomed the excitement produced by original,
even transgressive, thought and feelings. Whereas most “civic” writers and
artists had previously attempted to assimilate political awareness to a wider
spiritual culture, to integrate politics into art, from 1928 the move was to
entirely assimilate literature and art to politics. The structuring of human
perceptions and feelings around slogans became a conscious aim, affecting
the tone, diction, imagery, and rhetorical devices of poetry, prose, drama,
and the visual arts. The demand was for a simple message, narrative closure,
conventional psychological portrayal, and plot structure.
Works that could not be reduced to easily demonstrable political cate-
gories, that remained puzzlingly complex or sophisticated, or that challenged
simple categories and schemes came under attack. After the last burst of for-
mal innovation by the avant-garde in 1929–30, stylistic novelty and parody
were eschewed. In this last fling, it appeared to many that “left art” had been
used by the party in order to complete the task of “destroying” previous sys-
tems; from this moment on “left art” could be harnessed to the purpose of
“constructing” whatever the regime judged to be new and useful. Ironically,
both in Russia and Ukraine writers and artists who had been educated on
revolt and iconoclasm appeared suddenly to have been transformed into
conformist political instruments. Some, of course, refused the role. Others,
although they managed to produce what Jacques Ellul has called the “overt”
forms of propaganda, seemed genuinely incapable of producing the “covert,”
spontaneous or subconscious ones (Ellul 1973, 61–87). Indeed, the literature
and art of the late twenties and early thirties, as well as much later Soviet cul-
tural production, can profitably be analyzed as revealing a tension or conflict
between these overt and covert messages. Dovzhenko’s film Zemlia (Earth,
1930), on the surface a call for collectivization, is at a deeper level a hymn

to the countryside and ancient ways. Yurii Yanovskyi’s novel Chotyry sha-
bli (Four Swords, 1930), which treats the revolution as national resistance,
Volodymyr Gzhytskyi’s novel Chorne ozero (Black Lake, 1929), which views
Soviet expansion as the spread of Russian hegemony, and Les Kurbas’s deflat-
ing production of Ivan Mykytenko’s play Dyktatura (Dictatorship, 1929)—all
are prominent examples of works with ambiguous and subversive messages.
Kazimir Malevich’s peasant portraits of 1928–30, as will be argued later, also
resound with subversive undertones.
Another category of works shuffled the evaluative signs to make it dif-
ficult for a reader to identify positive and negative characters, thus demand-
ing of the reader a more thoughtful assessment of events. Hryhorii Epik’s
novel Persha vesna (First Spring, 1931) is an example. But almost all writers
knuckled under in some way, even rewriting their works to fit the new
requirements. A much-lauded classic of socialist realism and a work given
the status of a patristic text, Andrii Holovko’s Maty (Mother) now exists in
two editions, the 1932 original and the 1935 revision. The same hold true
for his Burian (Weeds, 1927 and 1932), Petro Panch’s Holubi eshelony (Blue
Echelons, 1926 and 1928), and Gzhytskyi’s Chorne ozero (1929 and, after
many rejected revisions, 1956). Yanovskyi’s Chotyry shabli was criticized
so strongly that the author felt obliged to write Vershnyky (Riders, 1935)
as an act of literary-political contrition. Students of the literary heritage
today often have to deal with several possible versions of the same book—
palimpsests in which imposed political sentiments and stylistic features
obscure the original inspiration.
Before the late 1920s the introduction of a radically new sensibility
had been interpreted by most avant-gardists in a broad aesthetico-cultural
and philosophical sense. It was seen as the awakening and refinement of
the mind and emotions, and involvement in politics as a response to per-
ceived inadequacies. Writers and artists criticized narrow-mindedness,
backwardness, obscurantism, and prejudice. However, they were gradually
compelled to voice some concerns and avoid others. For instance, the atti-
tude to the past—a crucial indicator of political preference—went through
a rapid change. Many avant-gardists who earlier appeared prepared to jetti-
son all past values, had by the late twenties begun to conform to Moscow’s
demands and refrained from criticizing the Russian imperial past.
In Ukraine, the political situation was defined by the existence of two
powerful revolutionary political movements—socialism and nationalism.
Each claimed a different kind of awakened and transformed consciousness.
Writers and artists contended with the two competing visions of liberation.
In fact, in the early twenties they often found themselves attempting

to reconcile them. By the end of the decade any suggestion of ambigu-
ous and divided loyalties had been suppressed by the Soviet regime. The
involvement in the struggle to create an independent Ukrainian People’s
Republic (1917–20) of most intellectuals, including prominent figures like
Dovzhenko and the poet Volodymyr Sosiura, could not be mentioned.
National difference
The Ukrainian avant-garde negotiated four political transitions in the
1920s: the national revolution (1917–19), the establishment of bolshevik
power (1919–23), the period of Ukrainization (1923–28), and the impo-
sition of Stalinist rule (1928–33). Most individuals prudently shifted their
ground, aligning their views and artistic production with changing polit-
ical imperatives. Accordingly, some supported the national movement,
then Ukrainization movement, and then attacked prominent figures in
this movement for “bourgeois nationalism” and “formalism” in the years
1928–33.
It was convenient for cultural workers to forget that prior to 1917 a
nationally conscious public had emerged, which had then participated in
building the UNR by lending support in turn to the Central Rada (1917–18),
the German-backed Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky (1918) and the Directory
(1918–19). This public had supported the creation of cultural institutions
such as the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Arts, and had provided
the readers, viewers and audiences for publications, visual and performing
arts. The legacy of state and nation-building in these years was unwillingly
inherited by many bolsheviks who had initially rejected the call for an inde-
pendent or even autonomous Ukrainian state as counter-revolutionary.
Some had even disputed the fact that a separate Ukrainian nation existed.
Many had, in fact, regarded the revolution as primarily a war against sep-
aratism and considered Ukrainian culture subversive almost by definition,
denouncing it as “counter-revolutionary,” “Petliurite,” or “a German inven-
tion.” Others dismissed it as derivative and incomplete, merely a branch of
Russian, or condemned it as fundamentally flawed: inchoate, unrefined or
antisemitic.
Moreover, in the early years of Soviet rule some bolsheviks felt enti-
tled to repress all expressions of Ukrainian identity as an act of revenge
against what they had been conditioned to see as “counter-revolution.” This
was relatively easy in the early years of Soviet rule because the composition
of the Communist Party (bolsheviks) of Ukraine (CP(b)U) was predom-

inantly Russian and contained a substantial number of non-Ukrainians,
among whom Jews constituted the largest component.2 Moreover, until
1926 Ukrainians made up less than half, and often less than a third, of the
population in major cities. Not surprisingly, therefore, from 1919 until
April 1923 one group in the CP(b)U leadership put forward a “struggle of
two cultures” theory, according to which Russian was viewed as the “cul-
ture of the city” and Ukrainian as the “culture of the village.” The latter
was branded as representing the backward, peasant element. According to
this theory the two cultures would compete for supremacy until the final
inevitable victory of the higher and more progressive culture, which was,
naturally, assumed to be Russian. This view was most closely associated
with Dmytro Lebed, a secretary of the CP(b)U, but it had strong support in
Moscow. Grigorii Zinovev, for example, raised the same arguments repeat-
edly throughout the 1920s. As a consequence of this ideological influence,
Ukrainian institution-building was severely hampered in the early years
of Soviet rule; support for Ukrainian newspapers, publishing houses and
schools was withdrawn or withheld; and Ukrainian activists within the
party were frequently treated with suspicion. In fact, long after the “strug-
gle of two cultures” theory had been officially rejected, much of the party
leadership still espoused it and continued to oppose the development of
Ukrainian cultural and educational institutions. Their revolutionary expe-
rience had convinced these individuals that all Ukrainians were potential
nationalists and separatists. In his memoirs Nikita Khrushchev recalled
that Stalin’s henchman in Ukraine, Lazar Kaganovich, “was fond of saying
that every Ukrainian is potentially a nationalist” (Khrushchev 1970, 172).
The situation began to change gradually. First, when the Ukrainian
Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed a constituent member of the
Soviet Union (on the last day of 1922 and the first of 1923), and then
when Russian chauvinism was condemned at the Twelfth Congress of the
Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks) in April, 1923. On August 1, 1923,
the CP(b)U announced a policy of Ukrainization, which included sup-
port for the development of Ukrainian language in schools, educational
2 The party census from 1922 gave the total figure of CP(b)U members as 54,818. Out
of these 4,647 had come from Russian and Jewish parties, while the Ukrainian parties,
namely the so-called Borotbists and the Ukrainian Communist Party (UCP, which had
emerged from the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party), contributed only 118 and 34
members, respectively. The breakdown of the CP(b)U’s total membership in 1923 was
51,236. Of these 27,490 (53.6%) were listed as Russians, 11,920 (23.3%) as Ukrainians,
6,981 (13.6%) as Jews, 1,241 (2.6%) as Poles, and 3,604 (7.1%) as belonging to other
nationalities. See Ravich-Cherkasskii 1923, 239.
institutions and government. These concessions, Moscow realized, were

required in order to obtain peace in Ukraine and to win over large sec-
tions of the population. Little, however, was done to implement the pol-
icy until 1925. During that year Ukrainians became a majority within the
CP(b)U and the pressure for change increased. In May, Stalin dispatched
Lazar Kaganovich to the new capital, Kharkiv, to become the First Secretary
of the CP(b)U. His instructions were to instill life into the Ukrainization
policy, but to keep it under close political supervision. A number of com-
mentators have suggested that a deal had been struck between Stalin’s fac-
tion in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the leaders backing
Ukrainization in the CP(b)U, with the latter agreeing to support Stalin on
all-Union issues in return for a faster pace of Ukrainization.
In June 1926, the Central Committee of the CP(b)U adopted further
measures, which proved to be the government’s most sympathetic statement
on the national question in Ukraine. However, a crucial issue emerged: the
need for decisive results in Ukrainianizing the party itself.
In the view of many communist party members, Ukrainization meant
an “indigenization” (korenizatsiia) that would draw the local population
into the party and the work of government. This would be accomplished
by nourishing a Ukrainian culture that was national in form but socialist
in content; in other words, one that differed only in language and modes
of delivery, but whose content would be formulated in and broadcast from
Moscow and Leningrad. Those who held this view were soon disappointed.
In fact, as soon as the schools, media and government institutions began
to actively support the use of Ukrainian, the pressure for transferring real
decision-making to Kharkiv became unstoppable. Moreover, Ukrainian
culture began to exhibit great vitality and assimilative power. Instead of
willingly assimilating to the “superior” Russian culture, a scenario that
many party leaders had assumed to be the inevitable outcome, the pop-
ulation began to develop cultural institutions that challenged their local
Russian competitors. Those who had until then been educated in a Russian
cultural environment were confronted with an identity whose existence
they had never suspected and whose presence seemed foreign to them.
The twenties can therefore be characterized as a struggle between
Russian centralizing and hegemonist views on the one hand and demands
for autonomy among national republics on the other. When, in mid-decade,
Ukrainian leaders insisted upon a full emancipation of their cultural
life, a conflict with russificatory tendencies came to a head. The Literary
Discussion of 1925–28 was the critical turning point. In its final stages
Mykola Skrypnyk, the powerful Commissar for Education in Ukraine,
urged participants to behave with decorum, devote themselves to artistic

production and avoid politics. By then, however, the political atmosphere
had deteriorated, and the final debate (which was devoted to the theater
and held in Kyiv on May 29 and Kharkiv from June 8 to 11, 1929) bore
the character of an inquisition. During this debate the theater director Les
Kurbas and the playwright Mykola Kulish faced a hostile gallery of con-
demnatory critics.
By 1928, the party had closed down VAPLITE (the acronym for the
Vilna Akademiia Proletarskoi Literatury; Free Academy of Proletarian
Literature), an organization and eponymous journal that had conducted
a vigorous critique of Soviet policy and party attitudes. The group’s leader
Mykola Khvylovyi signed an admission of political errors and destroyed
the second part of his controversial, still unpublished novel Valdshnepy
(Woodsnipes, 1927). To many observers this was a signal that the tide had
turned against the Ukrainization policy and the “national communists” who
championed it. The show trials of 1928 signaled the beginning of a frontal
attack on the entire Ukrainian intellectual and creative strata. The most
famous of these trials took place in 1930. It was a kangaroo court staged in
a public theater in Kharkiv, then the Ukrainian capital. Forty-five academ-
ics were accused of belonging to an underground counter-revolutionary
organization, the Spilka Vyzvolennia Ukrainy (Union for the Liberation
of Ukraine). The charges were entirely trumped-up and the forced con-
fessions served as pretexts for a massive wave of arrests. By 1932–33, as
collectivization, grain-requisitioning and hunger took four million lives,
almost anyone could be accused of “bourgeois nationalism” and summarily
executed or exiled to Siberia. Thousands of cultural activists met this fate.
Skrypnyk, Khvylovyi and several other prominent Ukrainian communists
committed suicide in 1933.
Skrypnyk had stressed the parallel and equal development of Russian
and Ukrainian languages and cultures in Ukraine. In his final years he had
tried to continue Ukrainization by supporting, for example, the opening
of Ukrainian theater and opera companies. However, when “local nation-
alism,” rather than “Russian great-nation chauvinism,” was singled out in
1928 as the principle enemy (a reversal of the stance taken in 1923) it was
clear to all that a major shift in policy had occurred.
Avant-gardists in the political cross-fire

It was still possible in the mid-twenties to criticize imperialism and chau-
vinism as vestiges of tsarist rule, but attention to these issues began to draw
sharp rebukes from authorities, particularly in Ukraine. Mykola Kulish’s

plays, which ridiculed psychological servility and contempt for Ukrainian
culture as hangovers from imperial rule, produced an orchestrated
response. Kurbas’s theater was closed in 1933 and the director disappeared
in the gulag.
At this time, Soviet Russia began “rediscovering” its own national
history and traditions, revising, for example, its negative attitude toward
imperial conquest, state expansion and Russian nationalism. Symptomatic
of this reassessment was the enormous success, due to the sympathetic
portrayal of tsarist forces, of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel Belaia gvardiia (The
White Guard, 1925) and his play Dni Turbinykh (Days of the Turbins, 1926)
in the Moscow Art Theater, and the publication of Aleksei Tolstoi’s Petr
Pervyi (Peter the First, 1929).
The success of Kurbas and Kulish was part of the issue. In the years
1926–33 when they collaborated with the designer Vadym Meller and the
composer Yurii Meitus, the Berezil Theater’s productions dazzled Kharkiv
audiences, altering perceptions of Ukrainian culture. Berezil became the
city’s leading theater. Entertaining, politically relevant and avant-garde, it
eclipsed the achievements of Nikolai Sinelnikov in Kharkiv and Nikolai
Solovtsov in Kyiv, the two Russian directors who had set the tone with
their productions of Ibsen and Hauptmann. This was an unexpected and
unwelcome development for those who had assumed that the Russian stage
would be the sole producer of serious talent. In fact, after Kurbas’s theater
was forcibly disbanded in 1933, the aging Sinelnikov was again instructed
to head Kharkiv’s Russian theater—a symbolic attempt, it appeared to
many, to restore pre-revolutionary Russian cultural hegemony (Revutskyi
1955, 17).
Kurbas’s productions of Kulish’s “national trilogy”—the plays Narodnyi
Malakhii (The People’s Malachii, 1929), Myna Mazailo (1929) and Sonata
Pathétique (1930)—carried a forceful anti-colonial message. Here is how
one viewer described their successes in 1931:
The Ukrainian theater learned to mock the living lord [pan]. The theater used
a language that cultured families of former Russian officialdom [chynushi]
had employed only in barber-shops and at the Central Workers’ Cooperative.
In the past, theater had tried to amuse the all-powerful russifiers, and had
brought sentimental tears to the eyes of those who represented beekeeping/
melon-growing capitalists. Suddenly, this same theater recalled that
Ukrainian carvers had once been the equals of the Venetians and dared to
compete with the theatrical culture of its time. Could Sinelnikov’s apologists
forgive this? (Khmuryi 1948, 15)
According to this account, the despised national backwardness was

being presented in the theater as the product of national oppression and
hegemonist views—attitudes that were still richly present in ruling circles.
If we accept such an assessment, the role of the Ukrainian avant-garde
should be seen as negotiating different views of modernity among viewers
and audiences, attempting to create a new Soviet culture while nurturing a
positive attitude toward Ukrainian culture. The dual imperatives of national
and social change therefore gave the Ukrainian avant-garde a unique pro-
file, but at the same time made its situation particularly complex.
With or without the past?

The avant-garde’s aesthetico-cultural positions expressed a rejection of and
simultaneously a dependence on links with the past. The struggle for the
new involved eradicating aspects of tsarist rule, such as the colonizer’s con-
temptuous attitude and the local’s inferiority complex. Counterposed to
this, however, was a celebration of the primitive and exotic, as thrilling to
Ukrainian avant-gardists as the African and tribal was for French cubists.
Moreover, for some an allure of the politically forbidden was attached to the
repressed national past.
There were avant-gardists who appeared to reject the past entirely.
Mikhail Semenko and the futurists, for example, aligned themselves with
those aspects of international modernism that embraced “rational” ways
of perceiving and changing the world. They admired the analytical mind
capable of dismantling and then recombining elements in a deliberate pro-
cess. In the later twenties they were even attracted to the idea of human-
ity’s liberation from its own biological nature, an issue raised in Viktor
Domontovych’s Doktor Serafikus (written in the twenties but published
in 1947) and in Leonid Skrypnyk’s Intelihent (Intellectual, 1929). The sub-
text to this attraction was the belief that civilization could be transformed
through a rational, planned process.
However, the faith in political rationality and, even less, in forced
radical social-biological experimentation was not widely shared. Most
Ukrainian avant-gardists felt a stronger ownership of the “primitive,” to
which in their opinion they had privileged access in their rich folk cre-
ativity. In Kharkiv, the capital of “proletarian” Ukraine, Maria Syniakova
produced childlike paintings and sought inspiration in the tradition of tile
painting which dates back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She
enjoyed presenting herself as an unschooled student of nature, although
her entourage was sophisticated, including the poets Boris Pasternak and
Velimir Khlebnikov, and the painter Mikhail Matiushin. Like Boichuk,
Burliuk and Malevich, she linked her art to folk creativity. These artists were
not depicting an encounter with a foreign Other, but rather were expressing
admiration for the creativity of their “own” peasantry.
A number of scholars have underscored the idea that European “prim-
itivism” had a deeply ambivalent relationship with Western imperialism
and capitalist modernity. It has been noted that Picasso’s Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon is riven by a conflict stemming from “an internal psychological
division between attraction and repulsion, classical superego and primitive
libido, and results in an aggressive attack on the image of women which may
disguise a deep fear” (Butler 1994, 108–9). Richard Sheppard has argued
that “whichever way one reads the painting, its violence and shock derive
to a considerable extent from Picasso’s experience of the loss of tradition
within which he had previously been able to work but which a part of him
was trying, unsuccessfully, to retain” (Sheppard 2000, 28). The Ukrainian
variant of primitivism did not suffer these complexes because it saw itself as
rediscovering its own tradition. Its intimate relationship with primitivism
is an additional reason why the leap to a conceptual and abstract art was
quickly achieved by many artists in these years: color symbolism and sim-
plified, abstract forms were already familiar to most artists from icon and
folk art. As has been seen in the case of Exter, the search for inspiration in
native traditions was also stimulated by the belief that Slavic civilizations
displayed unique, non-Western features.
Democratic, multi-disciplinary spirit

The Ukrainian avant-garde embraced a large range of Western cultural
experiments. Osip Mandelshtam, while living alongside the Berezil com-
pany, noted that “in Berezil’s work there is something that is common to the
work of all founders: it tries in the shortest possible time to give examples
of the most varied genres, to outline all the possibilities, to master all the
forms” (quoted in Hirniak 1982, 225).
An exploration of Western cultural forms was linked to a strong
belief among Ukrainians in democratic norms. One historian has argued
that Ukraine’s political culture is defined by a Western attitude toward
individual rights and the separation of church and state. For this reason
its territories in the nineteenth century were the strongest supporters of
liberalism and constitutionalism. By contrast, the grafting of Byzantine

theocracy onto Muscovy, a state already organized along the lines of the
Golden Horde, produced in Russia a political culture defined by a central-
izing, despotic state (Lysiak-Rudnytskyi 1973, 15). The result, as more than
one scholar has argued, was a Russian messianism that left its mark on the
Slavophiles, the radical intelligentsia and the bolsheviks in the form of an
inverted religiosity and maximalism (Sinyavsky 1990, 4–13).
For this reason, it might be argued, the aggressive, maximalist-utopian
strain was less prevalent in the Ukrainian avant-garde, even during the
revolutionary years. A coexistence of different schools and tendencies
could be observed in the art community, including the avant-garde: in the
Academy of Arts formed in 1917–18 and in its later reincarnation as the
(avant-gardist) Kyiv Art Institute during the 1920s, in the Berezil Theater’s
deliberate policy of continual experimentation and their welcoming of all
political groups, and in Boichuk’s collective and collaborative work within
his studios of monumentalism.
Developing a local idiom

Myroslava Mudrak has argued that the Ukrainian avant-garde exhibited a
principled localism, a determination to develop its own idiom out of locally
available resources:
The avant-garde art of Ukraine of the 1910s to 1930s was precariously hinged
on an oscillating pendulum between the present and past, local traditions
and cosmopolitan practices. Abstraction helped to identify the problematic
and to explore and experiment with artistic systems that could direct this
process into the future. What is avant-garde about Ukrainian art, then, is not
its inventiveness in ‘breaking the mold’ but in its deliberate and conscious
re-education and reformulation of art’s function in a national culture. By not
placing novelty as a premium, but operating instead within the framework of
the enduring qualities of tradition, the Ukrainian avant-garde made claims
on the aesthetic past to restore it to the dignity deserving of a modernist
present (Mudrak 2001, 29).
The tendency among Ukrainians was to make wider use of indigenous

art forms and also to assert independence from cultural processes elsewhere,
in both Russia and the West.
Escape from marginalization

The utopian project of a reformed human nature did attract Ukrainians,
but primarily as a way out of their political marginalization. The visionary
dreamers of Kulish’s plays, Khvylovyi’s disillusioned revolutionaries,
Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s attraction to “concordism,” Pavlo Krat’s uto-
pian novel Koly ziishlo sontse (When the Sun Rose, 1913), or Dovzhenko’s
Zvenyhora (1927)—all present unsatisfied yearnings for, or utopian
projections of a reformed human order within which the Ukrainian nation
is allowed to take its respected place alongside others.
This no doubt formed a bedrock motivation for many avant-gardists
and guided their concern with national and social emancipation. The
combined revolutionary drives strengthened conviction that citadels of
reaction required toppling, but also that individuals were free to borrow
from an entire spectrum of liberationist currents in developing visions of
an emancipated world. Freedom from imperialistic or chauvinistic attitudes
played an important role in the avant-garde’s picture of a spiritually
reformed humanity. Perhaps a particular fascination with human and
universal energy, limitless expanses, even “cosmic” dimensions can be
linked to this emancipatory drive.
To what extent was the avant-garde—an internationalist and
pan-European phenomenon—Ukrainian in inspiration? The question
is never asked of writers, or cultural figures like Kurbas and Dovzhenko,
because the evidence for their inspiration seems obvious. But what of
artists? The answer will of course be different in each particular case.
For some, Ukrainian concerns were not necessarily significant. Nor do
the works of many figures require knowledge of a Ukrainian context for
appreciation. Many artists, including those who emigrated permanently
to Paris, Moscow, or other centers, were assimilated to various traditions
and became part of other narratives. Nonetheless, the strength of the social
and national liberationist currents in Ukraine in the 1910s and 1920s had
a powerful effect on the entire avant-garde, as did the fascination with the
past, the primitive and the locally crafted. The remarkable burst of creativity
in the two decades between 1910 and 1930 can be better understood when
avant-gardists are seen as reacting to the ideological and cultural debates in
Ukraine and simultaneously responding to the experiences of fellow artists.
Political Posters 1919–21 and
the Boichuk School1
Political posters played an important role in the years that followed the
1917 revolution. Between 1919 and 1921 the Red Army fought Symon
Petliura, who spearheaded the struggle for Ukraine’s independence, the
Russian White Armies under General Anton Denikin, and Polish inter-
ventionists under Marshal Josef Pilsudski. During this period the entire
country seethed with revolts as the peasantry resisted the imposition of
bolshevik rule. The political poster became a political weapon by provid-
ing vivid and immediately comprehensible propaganda on behalf of the
Communist Party and Red Army. However, the poster was also a powerful
medium of artistic expression. It was admired for its formal qualities and
quickly gained an important cultural status, which it retained over seven
decades of Soviet rule. Posters were produced in tens of thousands of cop-
ies. They adorned streets and shop windows, and served as backgrounds
to numerous political rituals, such as processions and public meetings. In
later years the poster was used to reinforce Soviet directives and convey a
positive image of the new regime.
A number of prominent Ukrainian avant-gardists were involved
in designing these posters, among them Mykhailo Boichuk and Vasyl
Yermilov. The question is why? Were they endorsing bolshevik power? How
should we interpret their imagery? And how can their appearance be con-
textualized, both in terms of message and artistry?
The overarching symbolism of these posters cannot be missed. They
tell the story of human emancipation—from foreign intervention, from
the bourgeoisie, from capitalism, and from human want. They hold out the
promise of a radiant future, signified by the rising sun, the distant perspec-
tive, and the bountiful harvest. Peace and prosperity are always the horizon
1 Sections of this essay appeared in Shkandrij, 2013.

Political Posters 1919–21 and the Boichuk School 39
of expectation. The road to this goal, it is made clear, requires military vic-
tory and personal sacrifices. The art illustrates a story of political liberation
through struggle.
Today’s viewer cannot help but juxtapose this message to the real-
ity of what came only a few years later. The rhetoric and slogans of bol-
shevism appear hollow in light of the collectivization of 1929–31 and the
Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932–1933, which laid waste the country.
Hundreds of thousands were deported to Siberia in these years, and mil-
lions died. There is enormous irony, therefore, in the call these posters
make to the peasantry urging them to give up their grain for the revolu-
tionary cause. At that time it was the starving cities that needed saving.
As awareness of the Holodomor has spread and scholarship has analyzed
various aspects of the tragedy, readers today will be tempted to decipher the
message of these posters less as an enthusiastic endorsement of the bolshe-
vik regime and more as a lesson in disinformation and population control.
The propaganda and slogans emanated of course from the Communist
Party leadership in Moscow, which was then trying to impose its rule
throughout Ukraine. It had defeated the armies of the UNR, Poland (which
launched an invasion in 1920), and the White Armies (who wanted to
restore Russian imperial rule). The posters were commissioned to serve
primarily political and military imperatives. They were directed mainly at
the Ukrainian peasantry—over 80 percent of the population—whom they
call upon to deliver their grain and support the Red Army.
The collection of grain was accomplished by force. Food products
were ruthlessly requisitioned. The regime had not established control over
large parts of the country, and the posters therefore attempted to win over
the population. They emphasized the message that Soviet rule represented
peace and future prosperity, and that the worker was the peasant’s ally. The
devastation caused by years of war and repeated requisitioning, coupled
with a drought, resulted in a massive famine in 1921 during which an esti-
mated one million people died. Nonetheless, the posters from that year
plead with farmers not to resist giving up their grain. As we know, ten years
later the requisitioning process was repeated, leading to the Holodomor.
In retrospect, the posters, therefore, raise another question: did the regime
learn from this requisitioning of 1921 how to extract grain by force and
how to control the population through hunger? Was this, in short, a precur-
sor to the even greater violence and famine that came later?
Today it is difficult to estimate the reaction these posters would have
elicited when they first appeared. In all likelihood there would have been
a wide range of responses, depending on who stood to benefit from Soviet
rule, who suffered from the imposition of a monoparty dictatorship, req-

uisitioning, or the punitive expeditions that were putting down revolts.
The contemporary viewer has the luxury of distance from these events and
is more able to appreciate the artistic qualities of the works. Some of the
country’s best and most innovative artists were drafted into producing
them. In this bleak time of hunger and unemployment, they often wel-
comed the assignment, for which they received payment either in currency
or in food products.
The viewer will immediately notice the depiction of multitudes. The
peasant crowd and the marching army form part of the language of polit-
ical persuasion. Often the large-scale figure of an individual worker or
peasant is superimposed or placed in the foreground. They symbolize the
broad masses, who can be seen in the distance. This figure emerges from
the masses, and represents the collective will. Those who oppose bolshevik
rule are associated with mass exploitation and destruction, which are often
symbolized by rows of gallows or a ravaged landscape.
The posters introduced the public to totems of Soviet rule: the acronyms
of the new Ukrainian state (URSR, or USRR), the red flag, the hammer and
sickle, the unity of proletarian and peasant, soldier and laborer. It should be
noted, however, that the Communist Party’s dictatorship, Lenin, or Marxist
doctrine are entirely absent—an indication of how unpopular was the notion
of rule imposed from outside, particularly from Moscow. In order to coun-
teract this resistance, the symbolism in the posters underlines a specifically
Ukrainian reality: yellow wheat fields, luxurious flowers, blue skies, colorful
peasant dress, quotations from the classics of Ukrainian literature. The land
itself is treated as sacred; it is honorable to protect it, and to die for it. The
posters work in this way to emphasize objects that create a link between the
land, the Ukrainian collective, and the new state. An early bolshevik slogan,
after all, had promised to return “the land to the peasants.”
The art makes use of abstract forms, bold lines, arresting poses, and
strong colors. Traditions of popular painting are blended with a stream-
lined modern graphic art. Such a combination sends a subliminal message:
Ukraine is moving into a new world of technology, urbanization and the
machine aesthetic, but retains its links to past forms sanctified by custom.
A particular feature of these posters was the style developed in the
Boichuk School. Sometimes referred to as neo-Byzantinism or monumen-
talism, it drew on the icon (particularly the folk icon of Western Ukraine)
and Italian Renaissance painting. The School included Ivan Padalka, Vasyl
Sedliar and Oksana Pavlenko. As is evident from the poster art of 1919–21
it developed a style that was used to appeal to the Ukrainian masses in an
idiom they understood.
Mykhailo Boichuk (attributed). Shevchenko Day, 1920.
Shevchenko Day (Shevchenkivske sviato, 1920) was produced in Kyiv

and is attributed to Boichuk. The words on the poster are taken from Taras
Shevchenko’s poem “Zapovit” (Testament), a second national anthem and
frequently sung at patriotic gatherings: “Bury me and arise, break your
chains and let the blood of your enemies baptize freedom.” The message
supports popular rebellion in the name of freedom. However, its political
alignment is ambiguous. Only the red flag suggests a pro-bolshevik stance.
Peasant, the Worker Has Joined the Red Army. Now It’s Your Turn, 1920.
Peasant, the Worker Has Joined the Red Army. Now It’s Your Turn
(Selianyn, robitnyk pishov v chervonu armiiu. Cherha za toboiu, 1920) was
produced in Kyiv as a recruitment poster. It shows marching armies and a
larger-than-life figure of what appears to be a peasant. The shirts of this fig-
ure and the other recruits resemble peasant smocks. The slogan reads “Join
your worker-peasant army.” The words “Long live the Red Army” are writ-
ten on the banner. The representation of buildings is highly stylized. They
are copied from icon art and eighteenth-century graphics. Such a distinc-
tive style was developed by Ivan Padalka in Kharkiv in the 1920s. He would
later be arrested and shot for “formalism” and “Ukrainian nationalism” in
1937, along with Boichuk and Sedliar.
On the back of this particular poster are telegram forms of the
Ukrainian State Bank from the time of the UNR in 1917–19, a reminder of
the fluid political situation. The city of Kyiv changed hands a dozen times
during the revolutionary period.
First Aid for the Wounded—A Quick Death to the Whites,

1921.
First Aid for the Wounded—A Quick Death to the Whites (Skoraia
pomoshch ranenomu, skoraia gibel belogvardeishchiny, 1921) was pro-
duced in Kharkiv and also recalls the graphic art of Padalka and the Boichuk
School. The poses of the woman and soldier are strongly reminiscent of
icons, as is the stylized treatment of fingers and the clouds of smoke. The flag
shows the army of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Socialist Federal Republic)
attacking the White forces, who fly the Russian tsarist flag. The creation of
the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR) was only declared on the January 1, 1923. The language
of the poster is Russian. It was issued by the Committee to Help Sick and
Wounded Red Army Soldiers and created by the Art Department of the
Ukrainian Rosta (Telegraph Agency).
Oleksii (Aleksei) Marenkov. Comrade Peasants! Hand

in Your Grain Tax. The Workers and the Red Army Are
Waiting for Bread! The Tax Will Help Overcome Hunger.
Help All Laboring People!, 1921.
Comrade Peasants! Hand in Your Grain Tax. The Workers and the Red
Army Are Waiting for Bread! The Тax Will Help Overcome Hunger. Help All
Laboring People! (Tovaryshi seliane! Zdavaite khlibnyi podatok. Robitnyky i
Chervona Armiia zhdut khliba! Podatok peremozhe holod. Otzhe na dopo-
mohu vsim trudiashchym!, 1921) was produced in Kyiv and is attributed to
Oleksii (Aleksei) Marenkov. It is notable for its elegant composition, harmo-
nious use of color, and stylized lettering that recalls wood carving. This style
of graphic art strongly influenced by wood carving was a distinct feature of
Ukrainian art. In the interwar period it was popularized in the book design
art of Lviv and among émigrés in Prague by artists such as Pavlo Kovzhun
and Robert Lisovskyi, both of whom began as avant-gardists in Kyiv.
The Hungry Await Help from Their Soviet Rule. Timely Collection of the Food Tax
Will Save Everyone, 1921.
The Hungry Await Help from their Soviet Rule. Timely Collection of the
Food Tax Will Save Everyone (Vid svoiei radianskoi vlady holodni chekaiut
dopomohy. Vriatuie vsikh zibranyi v svii chas prodpodatok, 1921) was
produced in Kyiv. An eye-catching example of graphic art, it is notable for
the unexpected poses, and an unusual and arresting composition. Facial
expressions offer psychological insight into the suffering of individuals, and
the use of color adds drama.
Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov. Drive Off the

Kulaks! 1920.
Drive Off the Kulaks! (Gonite v sheiu kulakov!, 1920) was produced in
Kharkiv and is the work of Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov. Its subject is
“class war” in the village. The bolshevik regime attempted at the time to split
the village community by mobilizing poor peasants against their neigh-
bors. The Council (“Rada” in Ukrainian, “Soviet” in Russian) of Worker
and Peasant Deputies is shown meeting in the background. This is indi-
cated by the plaque over the entrance to the building, written in Ukrainian.
However, the language of the rest of this poster is Russian. The slogan reads:
“Elect the poor and middle-peasants to the Council.” The Art Department
of the Ukrainian Rosta (Telegraph Agency) is identified as the poster’s pro-
ducer. It made many agitational posters at the time. Khvostenko-Khvostov
became a well-known theater artist in the 1920s.
Vasyl Yermilov. Ivan Franko, 1920.
Ivan Franko (1920) was produced in Kharkiv by Vasyl Yermilov. The

quotations from Franko’s popular poem “Kameniari” (Stone Masons) are
used as encouragement to work for a better future. The graphic design is
typical of Yermilov, a Kharkiv artist well-known for his love of clean, light
and polished surfaces. Noteworthy are the innovative lettering and the
manner in which graphics representing flora approach abstract designs.
Both are signatures of Yermilov’s work. The words Ukrainian Socialist
Soviet Republic (USRR) appear at the top of the poster along with the
slogan “Proletarians of all countries unite!” The poster was issued by
the All-Ukrainian State Publishers in Kharkiv. The city was the capital of
the Ukrainian Republic from 1923 to 1934.
Since the Boichuk School was the inspiration behind many of these
posters, it is useful to glance at the artist’s career. When one does so the
School’s involvement with bolshevik poster art in 1919–21 appears paradox-
ical. In pre-revolutionary years Boichuk attempted to produce a synthetic
national art. He drew on sources which, in his opinion, had the deepest
roots in Ukrainian culture, in particular Byzantine art and folk creativity

in its many manifestations. In these he saw the best expression of Ukraine’s
unique cultural profile: a fusion of both Eastern and Western influences.
He explored Egyptian and Assyrian art, which he felt had left their mark
through monumental classical and Byzantine art on early Ukrainian cul-
ture. He also examined reflections of the Byzantine tradition in the early
Renaissance, especially in the Italian quattrocento, when, following the fall
of Constantinople to the Turks, escaping artists had brought their talents
to Italy.
The continuities Boichuk sought were in the millennium of recorded
Ukrainian history, which began with the first great culturally formative
period of the princely era, the tenth to fourteenth centuries in Kyiv and
Galicia. It was then, he thought, that disparate elements had first come
together to form a recognizable cultural entity. This privileging of the medi-
eval period marked a departure from the self-image favored by Ukrainian
populists in the last third of the nineteenth century, who tended to associate
the period of Kyivan Rus with the Russian state tradition more than with
the Ukrainian past. In envisioning a thousand-year-old culture centered
in Kyiv and Lviv, Boichuk was following the historiography of Mykhailo
Hrushevskyi, the historian who became president of the Ukrainian People’s
Republic when the Russian Empire disintegrated in 1917. Boichuk was
indebted not only to Hrushevskyi, but also to the Metropolitan Andrei
Sheptytskyi, and the Shevchenko Scientific Society of Lviv for his educa-
tion.2 The UNR initiated many of the political and cultural transformations
which, even after its collapse three years later, continued to shape Soviet
rule. In emphasizing continuity with the medieval past, Boichuk was also
breaking ranks with Russian historians who, in their almost unanimous
adherence to accepted imperial teleology, appropriated this period exclu-
sively for Russia. Because he linked contemporary cultural forms to the
medieval past through the channels of Byzantine painting and folk creativ-
ity, in the 1930s Boichuk would be branded a nationalist and his School
destroyed. In this decade, while members of the School were being arrested
2 The Shevchenko Scientific Society, which Hrushevskyi directed from 1897, provided
financial support for Boichuk’s studies. In 1899 the artist traveled to Vienna, where
he was enrolled in a private studio. After his return to Lviv, on the recommendation
of the painter Ivan Trush, he enrolled in the Krakow Academy of Arts, again with a
scholarship from the Society, and spent the following five years in Poland. In 1905, after
contributing a number of portraits to the First All-Ukrainian Art Exhibition organized
by Ivan Trush in Lviv, he left for Munich, where he studied with Franz Herterich and
Franz von Stuck, the teacher of Kandinsky and Klee. In the Spring of 1907, thanks to
Sheptytskyi’s support, he spent the next four years in Paris.
and shot, many of Kyiv’s earliest monuments, such as the Monastery of St.
Michael of the Golden Domes (to which Boichuk had taken students to
study the unrivaled collection of mosaics and frescoes) and the Mezhyhiria
Monastery (on the site of which his students revived a famous ceramic fac-
tory), were demolished and their treasures destroyed.
The second important factor in Boichuk’s cultural program, the con-
nection with the international art movement of the twentieth century, has
not attracted the attention it deserves. In Munich and Paris, Boichuk stud-
ied with and was influenced by some of the major teachers and artists of
the early twentieth century—figures such as Franz von Stuck (the teacher
of Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee), Paul Serusier and Maurice Denis.
His connection with modernism’s high-minded cult of form and his com-
petitive but close relationship with avant-gardists such as Malevich are fre-
quently overlooked. Boichuk’s work can be seen both as a strand in the
modernist exploration of form and a foil to the avant-garde’s aesthetic of
rupture.3 In short, he was a product both of the national revival and the
contemporary art movement, and searched throughout his career for forms
that would draw upon ancient roots but still speak to a modern viewer.
Boichuk sought epic, monumental images representing Ukraine’s
princely past (suggesting lost statehood and majesty), the peasantry (signify-
ing the eternal, natural world), and ideal characters (archetypes of devotion,
mercy and industry). The purpose was to develop a concept of Ukrainianness
that embraced the past, present and future. Accordingly, his aesthetic of
harmony, synthesis and moderation shunned the eccentric or accidental in
favor of the significant, representative, and unchanging. His quest was for the
essential that lay beneath the shimmering surface of modernity.
There was another important feature to Boichuk’s art. He had been
born into a peasant family, and endeavored to elevate village culture by cel-
ebrating its life-affirming qualities, and affirming the wisdom encoded in its
traditions and relationship to nature. His village roots not only accounted
for his interest in the arts and crafts movement, but also explain his strong
social conscience and ecological sensitivity.
After living through the revolution years of 1917–21, Boichuk would
witness the industrialization and modernization drive of the 1920s and
1930s. In these decades the bolshevik attitude to the peasantry could be
characterized by two beliefs. The first was “victory” of the city over the vil-
lage. The second, which became increasingly prominent in the 1930s, was
3 For Boichuk’s relationship to modernism and the avant-garde see Shkandrij, 1994.
the primacy of Russian culture over Ukrainian. In the minds of some bol-
shevik leaders and many urbanites the two dogmas were connected.
In the political context of the late 1920s and early 1930s many observ-
ers felt that the avant-garde’s aesthetic of rupture, with its celebration of
mastery over human biology, nature, the countryside, and national particu-
larity, spoke a dangerous language of hegemony, subordination and control.
Bolshevik leaders in the 1930s turned this language against the countryside.
Raymond Williams has spoken of “certain metropolitan intellectuals” who
had inherited “a long contempt [...] of the peasant, the boor, the rural clown
[...] How many socialists, for example, have refused to pick up that settling
archival sentence about the ‘idiocy of rural life’?” (Williams 1973, 36). It
was in large degree the easy collusion between communist industrializa-
tion and a Russian imperial reflex that set the stage for the horrors of the
1930s. At that time the assumption that Russian, “advanced” urban society
was beseiged by “rural idiocy” and “barbarism” was used to justify the vio-
lence against rural and non-Russian populations. This explains why the war
against “reactionary” Ukrainian intellectuals in the 1930s coincided with a
war against the Ukrainian village. The fact that so many Western intellectu-
als for many decades avoided discussing, or even registering, these events is
a reminder of how powerful the bolshevik propaganda campaign was and
how deeply rooted were prejudices against peasantry. Because Boichuk’s
aesthetic challenged people to see the world through different eyes, his
works and School suffered destruction and for many decades was expunged
from cultural memory.
The School existed in three separate periods: in Paris (1907–11), pre-
war Lviv (1911–14), and postwar Kyiv (1918–36).4 In Paris, after attending
the Académie Vitti (1907), and the Académie Ranson (1908), he created his
own studio in 1909, which was attended by Mykola Kasperovych from the
Chernihiv region and the three Sophias from Saint Petersburg: Nalepinska
(whom he later married), Segno and Baudouin de Courtenay. They had
recently arrived after completing their studies in Munich. Soon afterwards
they were joined by Helena Szramm, Janina Lewakowska, Olga Shaginian,
Yevhen Bachynskyi, and Yosyp Pelenskyi. The School exhibited in the Salon
d’Automne in 1909 and the Salon des Indépendants in 1910. At the end of
1910 Boichuk returned to Lviv.
4 For an overview of his life and art see Ripko and Prystalenko, 1991.
Mykhailo Boichuk in the restoration studio at the Lviv

National Museum, 1911–12.
In Lviv societal expectations for him were formidable. He was seen as

a chosen son, destined to produce a civic art of enormous didactic value
for the national movement. Metropolitan Sheptytskyi commissioned him
and Kasperovych to produce a series of paintings in the Chapel of the Holy
Ghost, in the Cantors’ Residence of St. George’s Cathedral in Lviv. The
icons Prophet Isaiah and The Last Supper were made by Boichuk for the
chapel interior in 1911–13. He created idealized images that personified the
national character, stressing its spiritual vitality, moral uprightness, dignity
and sincerity. The director of the National Museum, Ilarion Svientsitskyi,
offered him a position as icon restorer, which Boichuk accepted. Together
with Kasperovych and Nalepinska he worked on a number of icons dating
from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries in the museum’s collections.
Mykhailo Boichuk. Head of the Savior,

1910s.
In 1917, when Mykhailo Hrushevskyi and the Central Rada created a

Ukrainian State Academy of Arts, Boichuk was selected to lead the studio
of monumental painting.5 The Academy officially opened on December 5,
1917 (November 22 according to the old-style calendar).
Given this earlier history the involvement with the Soviet regime
requires some explanation. The regime gave commissions to artists and
purchased their work, in this way saving many from hunger. Its relation-
ship with artists was defined by the need to integrate their work into pro-
paganda campaigns, which soon became a way of life in the new society.
The state enlisted artists to produce a new visual language, a sense of cul-
tural revival, and to stimulate political support within the population. The
Boichuk School could only compromise and retreat from its original prin-
ciples. It was gradually compelled to work within the framework of the
new “class” ideology, to select images and themes dictated by the Bolshevik
Party for the decoration of streets, squares and architectural objects during
revolutionary festivals, the painting of agit-trains and agit-ships, and the
5 Fedor Krychevsky, the elected president, headed the Studio of Historical and Scenic
Painting, Engraving and Sculpture; Oleksandr Murashko, portrait painting; Mykhailo
Zhuk, decorative painting; Vasyl Krychevsky, Ukrainian architectural and folk arts;
Abram Manevych, decorative landscape; Mykola Burachek, lyrical landscape and
lithography; Heorhii (Hryhorii) Narbut, graphic art. Boichuk’s studio was to teach
religious painting, mosaic, fresco, and icon painting.
Mykhailo Boichuk. Prophet Isaiah, 1912–13.
reproduction of countless posters on topical issues. Boichuk used every

opportunity to develop the practical work of his students. Oksana Pavlenko
recalls that he called upon students to regard this kind of work not as a “dis-
traction” that interfered with the study process, but as a required practicum
aimed at strengthening their theoretical knowledge
Early in 1919 his students prepared the Kyiv Opera Theater for the First
Congress of Regional Executive Committee Representatives. Numerous
large tableaux decorated the building externally and internally, celebrating
the event in brightly colored, allegorical subject-matter generally taken
from village life. These propagandistic paintings on boards were in practice
the first public exhibition of Boichuk’s Kyiv School, which was linked to
the earlier one in Paris in its general conception and formal principles,
but focused more attention on scenes from the daily life of contemporary
society. Some idea of the paintings can be gleaned from an examination of
surviving sketches and black-and-white reproductions of tableaux by Taisa
Tsymlova, Maria Trubetska, Padalka and Tymofii Boichuk.6
In the Spring of 1919, Boichuk’s students decorated the prem-
ises of the Lutsk Army Barracks.7 Fourteen thematic compositions,
some in an ornamental framework, and two figures—a woman in tradi-
tional Ukrainian dress, symbolizing the revolution, and a Cossack, her
6 The sketches were obtained by Oksana Pavlenko from the sculptor F. Balavensky and
donated by her to the Zaporizhia Art Museum. Some black and white reproductions of
the art were published in Khmuryi 1932.
7 They were destroyed during a renovation which in 1922 demolished the rooms.
protector—illuminated the walls of rooms, staircases and arches. The polit-

ical slogans, which had been commissioned, were transformed by the art-
ists into accessible subject-matter: the collective Workers Beating the Hydra
of Counter-Revolution, The Internationale, The Red and the White, The
Demonstration, Tymofii Boichuk’s The Red Army Camp and Tsymlova’s The
Workers. Students were encouraged to rework the vocabulary of folk paint-
ing with which they were familiar. Accordingly Tymofii Boichuk produced
By the Apple Tree, Ploughing, and From the Meadow, Padalka produced
Return from the Fields, and Uliana Horban produced Women in a Field,
while the entire collective produced Cutting of Bread. The color scheme,
Ukrainian character-types, clothing, ornaments, use of humor, and epi-
graphs echoed vernacular sources.
Life in the Academy of Arts was difficult. Pavlenko later recalled “sitting
in the studio, painting, to the accompaniment of heavy cannon-fire [...] the
street seemed to have been swept clean by some gigantic broom—not a per-
son anywhere. And one would just continue painting.” Food shortages made
the physical survival of each student a concern: “On one occasion, Dmytro,
the middle Boichuk brother, brought a sack of wheat from home. We soaked
it until it swelled, ground some poppyseed for flavor, and that’s how Boichuk
fed us” (Cherevatenko 1987, 370, 372). Illness and deprivation caused the
death of Taisa Tsymlova, Oleksandr Lozovskyi and Tymofii Boichuk.
It was in these years that Boichuk produced several posters, two of
which have survived: Shevchenko Celebration and Bring Presents for the Red
Army.8 After that his integration into Soviet art proceeded rapidly. Early in
1921 he received a commission to decorate a Kharkiv theater for the Fifth
All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets that was to take place on March 2. He
set out from Kyiv with his students on a trip that took almost two weeks
because of frequent stoppages during which the group would cut wood to
feed the train’s steam engine. When they reached Kharkiv there was only
enough time to hurriedly produce several slogans and ornaments.
Then in mid-1921, during their final practicum year at the Academy,
Sedliar, Pavlenko and Ivanchenko came to Mezhyhiria to restore a ceram-
ics factory. Living in penury, with little equipment and few instructors, they
spent months of hard work setting up the facility.9 Their vision was to make
8 These posters are now held in the National Art Museum of Ukraine (NKhMU).
9 In 1919 an initiative had been put forward to reorganize the Myrhorod School of
Ceramics into an Institute. As a result, the Hlynske Ceramic School was reorganized
with Lev Kramarenko as its new director, and early in 1920 was transferred from
Hlynske to ancient Mezhyhiria (now Novi Petrivtsi), a village situated on a high bank of
the Dnipro about thirty kilometres north of Kyiv, near Vyshhorod. In the years 1798 to
Mezhyhiria a school of industrial arts producing both artists and technologists

of ceramic manufacture. Early in 1922 they began producing decorated table-
ware of majolica in designs that appealed to the tastes of the mass consumer.
In September 1922, the first exhibition, containing more than a thousand
products, took place in Kyiv, featuring dippers, dishes, plates, pots, wheel-
and barrel-shaped jugs, candle-holders, pipes, toys, whistles, and other items.
The Ukrainian agency, Zovnishtorh, began ordering works for export, pay-
ing in food products, which at the time served as currency. Ivanchenko later
recalled that this enabled them to survive the famine of 1922: “Zovnishtorh
began periodically sending us either a large sack of rye flour or grain, or a
barrel of fish oil, and we began to eat rye dumplings with fish fat.”10
In 1925 the Boichuk School was instrumental in creating ARMU (the
Association of Revolutionary Art of Ukraine).11 In public debates Sedliar,
the organization’s main theorist, maintained that the creation of Soviet
artistic culture could only be achieved through the study, development
and elevation of Ukrainian artistic forms. ARMU’s main opponent in these
debates was AKhRR (the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia),
which denounced formal experimentation and refused to recognize con-
temporary and past European achievements. By 1929 a campaign of crit-
icism against Boichuk was coordinated with the overall attack upon the
Ukrainian intelligentsia and village. The baiting of Boichuk began early that
year on the pages of Vechirnii Kyiv (Evening Kyiv) and soon spilled out into
public discussions.12 Eventually Boichuk was arrested in the mid-thirties
and shot in 1937, along with the other leading members of his School.
This background enables one to see the bolshevik propaganda post-
ers of 1919–21 as the products of a transitional time. The difficult circum-
stances and ambiguous situations in which artists worked, along with the
compromises they had to make, are reflected in the tensions and subtexts
that the viewer can read into these works.
1874 its rich variety of clays had served a factory that produced household items famous
for their quality, their relief ornaments, their malachite and turquoise glazes, and their
yellow to violet spectrum of colors. The old equipment had been sold off in 1880, leaving
nothing behind.
10 Pavlo Ivanchenko’s letter dated 4 November 1988 was addressed to Nelli Prystalenko
and was in the latter’s archive.
11 ARMU included some of the best known figures in Ukrainian art, including Bohomazov,
Yermilov, Khvostenko, Meller, Viktor Palmov, Andrii Taran, Pavlo Holubiatnykov,
Vasyl Kasiian, Bernard Kratko, and Semen Prokhorov. Boichuk’s students were the
most influential part of ARMU. They defined the direction of its work and insisted
upon the importance of understanding social psychology.
12 See Shkandrij 1992, 163–68.
Jews in the Artistic and
Cultural Life of Ukraine in the
1920s1
Jews have lived on the territory of today’s Ukraine for over a millennium.
Their interaction in the eleventh century with the local population was
already recorded in one of Kyiv’s earliest written records, the Paterik of
the Kyivan Caves Monastery. Throughout this long history the Jewish and
Ukrainian communities were not always “two solitudes,” as sometimes
described. In fact, at various points in history they were allies in the strug-
gle for civil rights and national emancipation. This was particularly true
of the years preceding the February 1917 Revolution, when the Ukrainian
and Jewish intelligentsias worked together politically, motivated by the
realization that both peoples “had to mend their mutual relations, because
circumstances had dictated that they were to live side by side” (Goldelman
1921, 5). When the Russian Empire fell, the Ukrainian government (first the
Central Rada and then the Ukrainian National Republic) proclaimed and
built national-cultural autonomy for Jews. The Jewish population was given
freedom in matters of self-government, education and culture. A minis-
ter (called a secretary) for nationality affairs was established, with three
vice-ministers for Jewish, Russian and Polish affairs. After the declaration
of independence, the vice-minister for Jewish affairs became a full minister
responsible for community self-government, education and culture. Even
Ukrainian banknotes included wording in Yiddish.
The UNR hoped that support for Jewish education would help to coun-
terbalance the influence of Russian culture, which had been dominant in
1 This article first appeared in Jewish Life and Times: A Collection of Essays, Vol. 9, edited
by Dan Stone and Annalee Greenberg, 85–99 (Winnipeg: Jewish Heritage Centre of
Western Canada, 2009).
Jews in the Artistic and Cultural Life of Ukraine in the 1920s 57
urban centers for close to two centuries, during which time the Ukrainian
written word had been banned. Two networks of Jewish secular schools
were created, one using Yiddish, the other Hebrew. Jewish research sections
were created within Ukrainian academic institutions. Private, religious
Jewish organizations, such as the heders, Talmud-Torahs, and yeshivas,
were not subordinated to the Ministry. It is worth recalling that in 1917
most Jews supported the Ukrainian government. They were “united on the
question of the right of the Ukrainian people to determine their ultimate
political destiny” and delighted that parliament showed “more willingness
to grant concessions to Jews than had any other constituent assembly in
history” (Margolin 1922, 18). In 1917 Yosef Shekhtman, one of Jabotinsky’s
closest allies, published Ievrei ta ukraintsi (Jews and Ukrainians) in which
he wrote:
Who if not we, children of an oppressed people, are capable of understanding
the feelings and sufferings of a neighbor, who along with us has endured
the cruelty and abuse of the old regime! We have been united by common
aspirations and common goals. The moment has arrived when these
aspirations are close to realization. Our common path is still a long one,
but we believe, that a free Ukrainian people will support us on this path!
(Quoted in Kleiner 2000, 61)
One important reason for this alliance lay in the fact that Ukrainians
formed a minority of the urban population. Realizing that neither the
Polish nor the Russian minorities were well disposed toward it, the new
government looked for allies in the Jewish minority. Several commenta-
tors have described the pervasive optimistic faith in the fruitfulness of the
Ukrainian-Jewish accord (Vynnychenko 1920, 297–8; Goldelman 1967,
21). The Ukrainian leadership viewed the parallel development of Jewish
cultural autonomy and Ukrainian national-territorial autonomy as a linch-
pin in its political strategy. Loyalty to the territory and its people, not to
Ukrainian nationality or ancestry, was proclaimed as the new government’s
principal requirement of the residents of Ukraine by Mykhailo Hrushevskyi,
the first head of state. With the declaration of that principle, “Hrushevsky
was laying the cornerstone of Ukraine’s proposed relations with its national
minoritites” (Plokhy 2005, 77). Prominent Jewish figures served in the gov-
ernment, among them Solomon Goldelman, Arnold Margolin, who was
vice-minister for Foreign Affairs, Moisei Zilberfarb, who was minister for
Jewish Affairs, and the historian Mark Vishnitzer, who was a secretary
of the English mission (Margolin 1922, 18–9). Jews were also part of the
press and secretarial sections of the government missions to France and
the Netherlands. In November 1918 Margolin personally read “proclama-

tions issued by the government strongly condemning pogroms, explain-
ing to the people that the Jews were fellow-citizens and brothers who were
helping in the evolution of the Ukrainian state, and to whom the fullest
rights were due” (Margolin, 19). He tendered his resignation in March 1919
because although he “was aware that the government was not to blame for
the pogroms,” as a Jew, he could not retain an official position in a country
where his “bretheren were being massacred” (Margolin, 19). When asked to
stay on and work abroad as a diplomat for the UNR, he accepted, attending
international conferences and serving as the government’s representative
in London. The Folkspartei, Poale Zion, and the United Bund worked with
the Jewish ministry. However, events leading up to the defeat of the UNR,
and, in particular, the appalling wave of pogroms in 1919, in which demor-
alized units ostensibly loyal to the UNR participated, badly damaged this
rapprochement.
Under Soviet rule in the years 1923–28 the policy of Ukrainization
or indigenization—a concession that the bolsheviks had to make to gain
support in Ukraine—was accompanied by a great surge of interest in
Ukrainian culture, a fact that shocked Russian urbanites, who had expected
Ukrainians to willingly dissolve their identity in Russian. Instead they wit-
nessed a great, spontaneous cultural revolution. Ten thousand people gave
“poet” as their occupation during a census in Kyiv. In 1927 the newspaper
Kultura i pobut (Culture and Life) claimed there ware 6,000 dramatic groups
in Ukraine serving 12 million spectators. In the following year the journal
Nove mystetstvo (New Art) informed that 70,000 people were involved in
amateur theatricals and over 5,000 laid claim to being dramatists (Makaryk
2004, 143).
The indigenization policy allowed for the continued development of
not only Ukrainian, but also of Jewish secular cultural life, including the
formation of Jewish institutions and structures. In the pre-revolutionary
and immediate post-revolutionary years, Jews made up the second-largest
urban population in Ukraine, second only to the Russian. In Kyiv, for exam-
ple, where before 1903 Jews had practically been forbidden permanent resi-
dence, their numbers grew from 50,792 (10.84 percent) in 1910, to 117,041
(21.04 percent) in 1919, and to 128,041 (31.95 percent) in 1923 (Khiterer
1999, 143) Whereas other populations fled the city for the villages during
the Revolution and its aftermath, or emigrated, the Jews often stayed. By
1926 they made up 26 percent of the city’s population. The Soviet Ukrainian
government, like the UNR before it, sought the support of this popu-
lation and continued, in modified form, the UNR’s policy of developing
Jewish institutions and cultural life, also as part of the effort to win over
the local population. The government in Kyiv hoped for Jewish support in
the Ukrainization movement it had initiated. Jewish newspapers, libraries,
clubs, and theaters were created. Although religious schools were banned,
national schools for Jews were at first continued. The authorities set up a
network of Jewish secondary institutions (technicums, or professional-
technical schools). All this came to an end, however, in the late twenties,
when Stalin came to power and declared local nationalism (as opposed
to Russian “great-power chauvinism”) the “main enemy.” This became the
signal to curtail both the Ukrainization movement and the movement for
Jewish cultural autonomy.
Nonetheless, in the twenties, as a result of the indigenization policy,
Ukrainians and Jews became cultural allies. Interaction was intense as
parallel institutions were created and parallel tasks embarked upon. A
flowering of both Ukrainian and Yiddish literatures and cultures took
place in Ukraine in this decade. Relations between Ukrainian and Yiddish
writers were often cordial and close. Skuratovskyi has described the two
literatures as “pointedly loyal in their mutual relations” (Skuratovskyi 1998,
54). Some important friendships were forged. For example, the two poets
Leib Kvitko and Pavlo Tychyna worked together from 1926. Kvitko was also
close to Andrii Chuzhyi (pseudonym of Andrii Antonovych Storozhuk)
and the Kharkiv journal Avanhard (Avant-Garde). Der Nister (Pinchus
Kahanovich) was a close friend of the writers Yurii Smolych and Maik
Yohansen. The famous actor Solomon Mikhoels and a number of Jewish
theater directors worked with the theater director Les Kurbas.
Smolych has pointed out that many Jews in the 1920s were “native
speakers” of Ukrainian. They came from Ukrainian villages and towns,
lived and grew up among Ukrainians, were born of parents who knew only
Yiddish and Ukrainian. If they knew Russian, they did so badly. It was,
writes Smolych, only the later, post-Stalin generation of Jews that grew up
without speaking Ukrainian and was prejudiced toward it: “Along the way,”
he writes, “we lost a good colleague in our cultural process” (Smolych 1990,
161). During the twenties many Jews played prominent roles in the creation
of a modern Ukrainian culture and identity, making major contributions
to literature, art, cinema, and scholarship, “creating a home” for themselves
in the culture and simultaneously helping to define the culture itself as
diverse and complex. Olena Kurylo, for example, was a leading linguist who
explored Ukrainian dialects and folklore. Osyp Hermaize was a leading
historian. Abram Leites, Samiilo Shchupak, Volodymyr Koriak, and Yarema
Aizenshtok were important critics. The last worked on the complete edition
of Shevchenko’s Diary, wrote on Shevchenko and folklore, and produced

studies of Ukrainian classics such as Kvitka, Koliarevskyi, Kotsiubynskyi,
and Franko. Accused of Ukrainian nationalism in the thirties, he was
forced to move to Leningrad (Revutsky 1985, 164–65). Important figures of
Jewish origin entered and made a name for themselves in Ukrainian litera-
ture in the 1920s, among them Leonid Pervomaiskyi (Illia Hurevych), Sava
Holovanivskyi, Ivan (Izrail) Kulyk, Aron Kopstein, and Raisa Troianker.
These and other Jewish writers contributed heavily to a number of literary
journals, in particular Molodniak (Youth), the organ of the Komsomol or
communist youth organization, and Hart (Tempering), which defined itself
as the organ of proletarian writers.
Many talented individuals of Jewish origin participated in the
Ukrainian film industry. Oleksandr Voznesenskyi, who was also know
as the writer Ilia Rents, in 1918–23 created a Kyiv film studio called “Art
Screen.” Arrested in the thirties, he died in Kazakhstan in 1939. Mykhailo
Kapchynskyi headed the Odesa film studios, which began construction
in 1922. He reorganized film theaters, helping to create the cinema boom
of the twenties. By the middle of the decade Ukrainian film production,
headed by the All-Ukrainian Film Photo-Cinema Management (VUFKU)
was enjoying rapid growth. In the years 1925–30 it produced outstand-
ing films and laid the foundation of a national industry. By the end of the
decade the Odesa and Kyiv factories expected to produce a hundred films
each year. A push was made for films that would be appreciated by the large
Jewish minority of 1.5 million in Ukraine, and also to make films about
Jews for the Ukrainian public. As a result, a range of films describing Jewish
life were made. Screen versions of the works of Sholem Aleichem, who was
canonized by the regime as an “official” classic of Jewish literature, depicted
the poverty of Jews in the Russian Empire. Other films depicted Jewish life
under the Soviet regime, and propagandistic films were also made about
enemies of the regime. Tini Belvedera (Shadows of Belvedere, 1928), for
example, tells the story of a love affair between an aristocratic Polish offi-
cer and a poor Jewish girl, depicting aristocratic Poland as antisemitic. All
films on Jewish themes were stopped in 1930, when VUFKU’s autonomous
status was liquidated.
Perhaps the most important Jewish organization in Ukraine was the
Kultur-Lige. It represented, more than any other institution, the face of
Jewish cultural autonomy. Headquartered in Kyiv, in the years 1918–25
it actively promoted Jewish cultural life, publishing, organizing musical
and theatrical performances, art exhibitions, an art school, a school of
music, libraries, museums, university courses, and kindergartens. Created
in January 1918 in Kyiv under the UNR government in order to develop

Yiddish language culture, the organization initially emphasized the cre-
ation of evening classes and clubs. By the end of 1918 it had 120 branches
throughout Ukraine. More branches were later created in Russia, Lithuania,
Romania, and Poland. Kyiv’s role in the Eastern European Jewish world
became particularly important at this time because of the isolation and rel-
ative decline of cultural activity in such traditional centers of Yiddish cul-
ture as Warsaw and Vilnius during the First World War. Kyiv also attracted
some of the most active figures in Jewish culture and politics as they escaped
from Petersburg and Moscow in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution.
They contributed to the flourishing growth in the Ukrainian capital of
Yiddish-language culture in education, theater, book publishing, and art.
The main organizers and literary figures in the Kyiv Kultur-Lige were
David Bergelson, David Gofstein, Moishe Litvakov, Yokhezkel Dobrushin,
Der Nister (Pinchus Kahanovich), and Nakhman Maizil. Others included
Perets Markish, Leib (Lev) Kvitko, Nakhum Oislender, and Lypa Reznik.
In the mid-twenties a younger group appeared that included Itsyk (Itzik)
Fefer, Itsyk (Itzik) Kipnis, Noiakh Lurie, Zinovia Tokachev, and Shloimo
Cherniavskyi. Since it grouped together leading individuals from a num-
ber of Jewish political organizations, the Kultur-Lige also acted as a kind
of inter-party association. It was an independent organization from 1918
until 1920. However, after Soviet rule had been imposed, its central com-
mittee was dismissed by a decree of 17 December 1920 and replaced with
communists who saw it as merely an instrument of Soviet rule. In 1924 all
the organization’s educational institutions were subordinated to the gov-
ernment, although the publishing house survived until 1930.
The organization was committed to preserving and furthering the
autonomous national life of Jews as a diasporic people by developing a con-
temporary Jewish culture in Yiddish, which at the time was the conversa-
tional language of most East European and American Jews. The Kultur-Lige
saw the Yiddish language not simply as a means of communication, but as a
unified cultural phenomenon, the product of a collective national creativity.
It aimed at developing a modern Yiddish culture that would be a synthesis
of the old and new, the national and universal, a culture of the whole Jewish
diaspora “from Moscow to New York and from London to Johannesburg.”
The artistic section was particularly successful. Formed in July 1918,
it promoted a “Jewish style” in art, one that fused leanings toward abstrac-
tion with the devices of folk art. It included Boris (Barukh) Aronson, Mark
(Moisei) Epstein, Issakhar-Ber Rybak, Aleksandr (Oleksandr) Tyshler,
Yosyf Elman, Isaak Rabichev, Solomon Nikritin, Yudel Ioffe, Isaak Pailes,
Mordekai (Maks) Kaganovich, Nisson Shifrin, and Sara Shor. They were
soon joined by El (Lazar) Lissitzky, Yosyf Chaikov, Polina Khentova,
and Mark Sheikhel, who arrived from Petersburg and Moscow. Abram
Manevych joined early in 1919. In spite of all the difficulties posed by the
political situation, the period 1918–21 was the most productive. Artists
decorated theater studios of the Kultur-Lige, participated in discussions on
the nature of national art in the Jewish Literary-Artistic Club. Chaikov and
Rabinovich taught drawing and sculpture in the Kyiv Jewish High School
of the Kultur-Lige. In 1919, a Jewish art and theater studio was opened
in Kyiv which continued to exist as a part of the Kultur-Lige until 1924,
when it became the Jewish Art-Industrial School. With Mark Epstein as
director, it was one of three Jewish art institutes in the world—more left-
ist than the Bezalel Arts Academy in Jerusalem, and more focused on the
national tradition in art than the Educational Alliance Art School in New
York. Children’s books were published in the Kultur-Lige’s own printing
house during the 1918–20 period and were illustrated by artists such as El
Lissitzky, Natan Rybak, Sara Shor, and Mark Chagall. These illustrations
are today considered some of the best of Jewish book art in the twentieth
century. An exhibition of the artistic section opened in Kyiv on February
8, 1920 and a second exhibition in April–May, 1922. A museum exhibition
opened on September 10, 1921. Influenced by Exter, whose studio most had
attended, these artists showed a love of geometrical, flattened forms. They
contributed to a variant of Ukrainian cubo-futurism that was less static and
monochrome than the French. Like the art of Ukrainian modernists and
avant-gardists, their work combined cubism with the archaic, and gravi-
tated towards simplified monumental sculptural forms.
The dream of the Kultur-Lige artists during this period was the cre-
ation of a new Jewish national art, one that would “fuse Jewish artistic
traditions and the achievements of the European avant-garde” (Kazovsky
2003, 91). To this end, they explored ethnography and folk art. They were
inspired by the contemporary rediscovery of folk creativity in Ukraine,
which owed much to the great ethnographic expeditions through the
Pale of Settlement directed by S. An-sky (Shlome Zanvla Rappoport) in
1912–14. In 1913 Nathan Altman copied ancient tombstones in Jewish
cemeteries, while in 1915–16 Lissitzky and Rybak studied wooden syn-
agogues along the Dnipro, making about 200 drawings of their interiors
for the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society. Solomon Yudovyn had
participated in ethnographic expeditions in which he painted tombstones
and ritual objects. Elman, Chaikov and Kratko had studied the designs on
Jewish silverware. This work allowed the artists to discover the shtetl as
a distinctive topos in art. Jewish primitive art and children’s art became
topics of special investigation. One commentator has written: “Lubok and
gingerbread figures, toys and stencils—all these offer a complete program
of contemporary applied aesthetics” (Efros 1918, 301; quoted in Kazovsky
2003, 87) Like Ukrainian artists, they linked the new abstract art to what
they described as their own “national sense of form” (Rybak and Aronson
1919, 123; quoted in Kazovsky 2003, 91). The remarkable graphic art pro-
duced for the Kultur-Lige’s publications testifies to the surge of creativity in
the years 1918–22.2 In these years of intensive work, El Lissitzky illustrated
around ten Yiddish publications, while Rybak worked as a book illustrator
and a decorator for Jewish theaters.
The influence of this Kyiv milieu was soon felt abroad. Aronson, the son
of Kyiv’s chief rabbi, who had studied set-design in Exter’s studio in 1917–18,
subsequently worked in over a hundred productions in the United States.
Shifrin and Tyshler, who also studied in Exter’s studio, moved to Moscow in
the twenties, where they became well-known theatrical designers. A num-
ber of artists emigrated to Europe. Issakhar-Ber Rybak moved to Berlin and
then Paris in the twenties, where he published albums of lithographs (in
1923 and 1924) that brought him fame. The images in these albums are of
the Ukrainian shtetl and its Jewish figures. After a visit to study the Jewish
agricultural colonies in Ukraine, he published an album on them (Paris,
1926), and his final album (1932) was based on his reminiscences.
There was also a large contingent of Jewish artists in the largest and
most important Ukrainian school of the twenties, that of Boichuk. The need
to combine the international with the national, the universal with the folk-
loric, was common to both Jewish and Ukrainian artists and explains the
presence of artists such as Nisson Shifrin, Emanuil Shekhtman and Teofil
Fraierman in Boichuk’s School. Their works often depicted Jewish life in
small towns and villages. The search for types (sometimes even archetypes)
was also a common interest of Boichukists (such as Antonina Ivanova,
Vasyl Sedliar, Oksana Pavlenko), and for artists close to the Kultur-Lige
(such as Rybak and Mark Epstein). These portraits today constitute a gal-
lery of types, a record of the appearance and behavior of Ukrainian and
Jewish villagers and townspeople.
It has generally gone unrecognized that the brief but powerful artis-
tic ferment of 1919–21 made Kyiv the center of both a Ukrainian and a
Jewish avant-garde art that radiated an international influence. Moreover,
2 For reproductions of these works see Kazovsky 2007.

throughout the 1920s both Ukrainian and Jewish avant-gardists continued

to produce significant work.
As has already been suggested, one reason for the remarkable artis-
tic achievements in Ukraine in the immediate pre- and post-revolutionary
years was the Kyiv Art School, which from 1901–20 developed many great
talents, among them Exter, Meller, Kavaleridze, Archipenko, Bohomazov,
Manevych, Pevzner (Antoine Pevsner), Tyshler, Epstein, Aristarkh Lentulov,
Isaak Rabinovich, Solomon Nikritin, Issakhar-Ber Rybak, and Anatolii
Petrytskyi. Another was the creation in 1917–18 by the Ukrainian People’s
Republic of a Ukrainian Academy of Arts. Although this institution went
through two name changes under Soviet rule, it continued to exert a strong
influence on artistic life in Ukraine throughout this period.3 A third was
the Kultur-Lige. Although, after its Sovietization in 1920, some prominent
figures left, the organization continued to exist until 1925 and the art school
it created survived into the thirties.
The subsequent fate of both Jewish and Ukrainian artists of the avant-
garde is in almost all cases a tragic story. The Jewish intelligentsia was
split between those who were more concerned with promoting cultural
and national values, and those who gave pride of place to political-ideo-
logical issues. The most important figures in the Kyiv Kultur-Lige, for
example, leaned in the former direction—toward the spreading of secu-
lar Jewish culture in Ukraine. They were challenged by the second group.
One historian has written: “Those members of the Kyiv group who had
nothing to express but their ideological orthodoxy looked for support
from the so-called Jewish sections [evsektsii—national sections of the
various communist organizations] and acted in their name, according to
their instructions” (Petrovskii 1996, 239). When the communist groups
demanded complete subordination to themselves, the conflict between
the two tendencies among Jewish intellectuals in Kyiv flared up. Nakhman
Maizelson and other leaders left for Warsaw. Many activists (for exam-
ple, most of the artistic section) moved to Moscow. Lev Kvitko and Perets
Markish left for Germany; David Gofstein, the oldest and best known poet
of the Kyiv group, went to Palestine. Disillusioned by the situation abroad,
most soon returned to Ukraine, where they shared the same fate as the rest
of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Many were killed in the thirties. Some who
survived the purges, such as Lev Kvitko and thirteen other members of the
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, were murdered by the KGB in 1952.
3 The Ukrainian State Academy of Arts was created in 1917. It was renamed the Kyiv
Institute of Plastic Arts in 1922, then renamed the Kyiv Art Institute in 1924.
Although the Soviet government made attempts in the 1920s to deal

with antisemitism, its own fierce anti-religious agitation, which specifically
targeted Judaism and Zionism, only served to exacerbate the problem. In
the post-revolutionary years synagogues were forcibly closed and Judaism
was branded as the most reactionary of religions. The struggle between
Hebrew and Yiddish was presented as a class war. In August 1919 the bol-
sheviks prohibited the teaching of Hebrew (Orlianskii 2000, 43). In June
1919, a law was passed liquidating all Zionist organizations, as well as all
Jewish party, political, professional, and cultural organizations created
under the UNR. Immediately afterwards the confiscation of the money and
property of local Jewish communities began. In spite of, or perhaps because
of this, the growth of Zionist parties mushroomed. Show trials against the
“Jewish counter-revolution” began in 1922 and sentenced over a thousand
individuals to prison terms or Siberian exile. The anti-religious campaign
was spearheaded in 1921–22 by the Jewish sections of the communist party.
A strong reaction to these measures made the sections retreat temporarily,
but they went on the offensive again in the late twenties and early thirties.
Severe limitations on expressions of religious life were made law in 1929,
and all non-government organizations were liquidated in the 1930s. The
last synagogue in Kyiv was closed in 1936. Many of the closings have been
preserved on newsreel in Ukrainian archives (Khiterer 2002, 10).
Under Soviet rule, all Jewish educational institutions were subordi-
nated to the People’s Commissariat of Education of the Ukrainian SSR. In
the mid-twenties and early thirties Soviet authorities set up a network of
Jewish secondary institutions (technicums, professional-technical schools)
all of which were shut down in the second half of the thirties. By that time
the policy of supporting Jewish schools was associated with nationalism.
Most Jewish political parties and organizations that had been formed
in the revolutionary years or under the UNR were liquidated in the twen-
ties. Almost all underground Zionist organizations were destroyed. Only
the Jewish sections of the communist party were allowed to exist in the
twenties in order to build a loyal communist Jewish culture in Yiddish.
After 1930, this initiative was not supported by the government. At that
time many members of the Jewish sections were treated with suspicion
because their non-communist affiliations prior to 1919.
Many Ukrainians in the Soviet leadership in Kyiv had also held
non-communist affiliations prior to 1919. In the twenties these figures fre-
quently supported Ukrainization, saw Jewish culture as an ally, and sup-
ported Jewish scholarship. For example, in 1918 the newly created Ukrainian
Academy of Sciences formed two research centers for the collection
and study of Jewish materials: the Jewish Historical-Archaeographical

Commission (1919–29) headed by Ilia Galant, and the Jewish section at
the National Library of Ukraine. They continued their work under Soviet
rule. In 1928–29, when the Society for the Spreading of Enlightenment
among Jews in Russia (Obshchestvo dlia rasprostranenia prosveshcheniia
mezhdu evreiami v Rossii—OPE, 1863–1929) and the Jewish Historical-
Ethnographic Society (Evreiskoe istoriko-etnograficheskoe obshchestvo—
EIEO, 1908–30) were closed down, their valuable collections were sent
from Leningrad to the National Library in Kyiv.
At the end of the twenties the Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture
in Kyiv (1929–36) became the main research center for Jewish history
and culture in the USSR. By the mid-thirties its library and archives had
100,000 items. In 1936 it was told to transfer its holdings to the National
Library in Kyiv. Evacuated to Ufa during the Second World War, this col-
lection was returned to Kyiv but not made available to readers. It contained
unique collection of folk music and recordings made by S. An-sky during
his famous ethnographic expeditions (1911–13), and by Yu. Engel and M.
Berehovsky made between 1911 and 1948. In 1950 the Soviet government
closed the collection and destroyed the catalogues. Until 1990 it was kept
in reserve vaults, where it survived almost entirely intact thanks to the staff.
From 1929–30 the Soviet authorities began to close all non-communist
academic institutions, and to throw out of work all academic experts
of pre-revolutionary training. Soon afterwards, in the thirties, the
pro-communist Jewish scientific organizations were also shut down. The
only exception was the Cabinet for the Study of Soviet Jewish Literature,
Language and Folklore (later called the Cabinet of Jewish Culture) in the
Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which survived until 1949.
The preconditions for an extended Ukrainian–Jewish dialogue existed
in the post-revolutionary decade, but political circumstances intervened to
cut short the rapprochement. As Russian hegemony was reasserted under
Stalin, the dream of an independent, albeit communist, Ukraine collapsed.
Along with it died the vision of Jewish cultural autonomy. By the end of the
twenties, Jews were no longer drawn into the work of Ukrainization, Jewish
education and scholarship in Ukraine were liquidated, and the development
of Jewish literature and culture was undermined. The achievements of
Jewish artists and writers in the 1920s is now being researched by a new
generation of scholars.
National Modernism in
Post-Revolutionary Society:
Ukrainian Renaissance and
Jewish Revival, 1917–301
In the early twentieth century Ukrainians and Jews struggled to establish

their cultural and political identity. Both were heavily concentrated in bor-
dering empires—the Austro-Hungarian and Russian. Their increasing asser-
tiveness at this time expressed itself in a growing number of publications,
and a sharper focus in their literature and art on national self-representa-
tion and self-definition. One reflection of this assertiveness was the pro-
motion of an identity that combined a modernist style with elements of the
national tradition, a development that arguably reached its peak in Ukraine
in the years immediately following the 1917 revolution. Revolutionary
Ukrainian society—first the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) in the
years 1917–20 and then the Soviet Ukrainian state from 1923—conducted
a policy of Ukrainization that created what is often referred to as a “Cultural
Renaissance.” Simultaneously the Jewish Kultur-Lige, which was head-
quartered in Kyiv, pioneered a Jewish “Cultural Revival.” The two move-
ments were connected: both came out of the Ukrainian revolution, and
both embraced modernism (often in its most radical, avant-garde forms).
The emergence of this “national modernism” was an important aspect of
post-revolutionary life, and one that offers the possibility of reconceptual-
izing cultural developments in the 1920s.
1 This is an adaptation of an article originally published in Shatterzones of Empire:

Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands,
238–48, edited by Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz, Indiana University Press, 2013.
The collapse of the tsarist state provided Ukrainian and Jewish intel-
lectuals with a hitherto unavailable opportunity to explore and develop the
idea of their cultural uniqueness. At the same time, the rapid pace of rev-
olutionary transformations demanded an immediate and radical re-imag-
ining of all identities, including the national-cultural. When Mykola
Khvylovyi formed his organization VAPLITE (Free Academy of Proletarian
Literature) and initiated the great Literary Discussion of 1925–28, his aim
was to accelerate the Ukrainization process, which had been proclaimed by
the Soviet Ukrainian government in 1923 and which, he felt, had stalled.
But it was also to promote a new Ukrainian identity. How to achieve both
these aims is the question that dominates his polemical pamphlets and fic-
tion.2 These writings represent one of the best expressions of the yearning
for the new in the literature of the twenties and inspired a vigorous debate
on the future of Ukrainian culture. Khvylovyi argued that the culture had to
be modern, European, and had to chart a course of its own, independently
of Russia. This last, controversial call to escape Russian cultural hegemony
has attracted most critical and scholarly attention. The party’s decision to
close down the debate, VAPLITE’s dissolution, and the writer’s suicide in
1933 inevitably made him a martyr in the eyes of many commentators. By
contrast, his attitude toward modernism’s aesthetic of rupture and renewal,
and its promise of a new community has been understudied.
Khvylovyi produced daring, innovative work in the immediate
post-revolutionary years, especially two collections of short stories Syni
etiudy (Blue Etudes, 1923) and Osin (Autumn, 1924). They already show
evidence that the nation-building imperative, especially the articulation of
a new national identity, was pulling him, as it was other writers (such as
Pavlo Tychyna, the major poet of these years) toward historical allusions
and narratives that could serve as allegories of the nation’s fate. As a result,
Khvylovyi, like most other “revolutionary” writers, found himself elaborat-
ing a modernist sensibility that both rejected traditionalism and continu-
ally invented ways of including and reconfiguring within it elements of the
national tradition. The ambivalent tone of these early stories emerges from
attempts to reconcile rejection of the past with historical references, to bal-
ance the rational with the intuitive, and to make the urban, as opposed to
the rural, the stylistic matrix of a new culture.
World revolution was linked to the dream of modernity, access to the
wider world, and the triumph of justice. Many young people felt, like Lev
Kopelev, that this world would have “no borders, no capitalists and no fascists
2 For pamphlets, see Khvylovyi, 1986. For translations into English of selected stories, see
Khvylovyi, 1960.
National Modernism in Post-Revolutionary Society 69
at all,” and that Moscow, Kharkiv and Kyiv “would become just as enor-
mous, just as well built, as Berlin, Hamburg, New York,” with skyscrapers;
streets full of automobiles and bicycles; workers and peasants in fine clothes,
wearing hats and watches; airplanes and dirigibles (Kopelev 1980, 183–84).
Kopelev’s picture of the future is based on the assumption that modernity
would be culturally Russian, perhaps uniformly so. These sentiments were
echoed by others. Benedikt Livshits has described how he thought of David
Burliuk and the early futurists “who had destroyed poetical and painterly
traditions and had founded a new aesthetics as stateless Martians, uncon-
nected in any way with any nationality, much less with our planet” (Livshits
1977, 39). Khvylovyi described the early post-revolutionary years differently:
“some kind of joyful alarm grips my heart. I see my descendants and see with
what envy they look at me—a contemporary and eyewitness of my Eurasian
renaissance. Just think, only a few years and such achievements […] What
wonderful prospects appear in the future for this country, when these cou-
rageous innovators finally overcome the inertia of the centuries” (Khvylovyi
1926, 10). It was not material but cultural achievements that inspired him,
and his focus was not on some abstract borderless, geographical space, but
on Ukraine (“this country’) as the pathblazer of a new culture (“my Eurasian
renaissance”). However, the excitement and fervor resemble Kopelev’s. In his
memoirs another Ukrainian writer of the twenties, Yurii Smolych, reflects
this fervent faith in the arrival of the new: “This generation was called to liq-
uidate the ruins of the war period and to create the first beginnings of the new
way of life. And this took place at the break of two epochs—the destruction
of the old worldly, reactionary norms and customs and the search for new
customs and norms” (Smolych 1986, 384).
What fascinates in this creative excitement is the combination of the
avant-gardist, revolutionary and national. A vehement rejection of the
past is linked to the belief that the modern would be built on the release of
long-suppressed, untapped national energies. The structure of Khvylovyi’s
stories is built on this kind of “argument.” His characters have often
emerged from the whirlwind of revolutionary ideas and find themselves
thrown into confusion by the horrors of the revolution. They are dissatisfied
with revolutionary society, but find no inspiration in the pre-revolutionary
world, which they associate with symbolism and aestheticism, a search
for self-knowledge through retreat from the world. These characters suf-
fer from arrested inner growth. Divorced from their surroundings, they
focus obsessively on a beautiful illusion, the distant future, in which, they
believe, the dreams of many past generations will become reality. However,
the path to this future has been blocked. The vision recedes year after year,
and is eventually entirely blotted out by the corruption of urban civiliza-

tion. People from the countryside who have thrown in their lot with the
revolution bring freshness, innocence and idealism to the construction
of revolutionary society, but soon succumb to the city’s sterility and cyn-
icism. Their vitality and excitement are extinguished. The loss of faith is
caused in large part by the blocking of the national cultural movement,
which authorities treat as something embarrassing, or even reactionary. As
a result, Ukrainian protagonists develop a feeling of self-hatred. The same
message is carried in the famous polemical pamphlets, in which Khvylovyi
challenges young people to create a cultural renaissance.
There is an underlying pull of mythic structures in the stories and
pamphlets: illusions are destroyed by reality, heroism is disappointed by
cowardice, and idealism is stifled by cynicism. Because of this, the stories
can be given allegorical or symbolic readings, to which the pamphlets hold
the interpretative key. The individual who is unable to tell his story openly
can be seen as the nation that is not allowed to express itself, whose dreams
of cultural development have been dashed. In this way, the fictional works
recount a familiar tale of national oppression and the need for emancipa-
tion, albeit in a fragmented and mysteriously allusive modernist style.
Nonetheless, the writer remained a caustic critic of conservative
and populist views. He probed darkness at the heart of the village idyll,
explored disturbing and anarchic forces in the human psyche, and exposed
clichés such as romantic love. Like much of the literature and art of the
early post-revolutionary period Khvylovyi’s writings show an aversion to
populism and a refusal to embrace ethnographic traditions uncritically.
Inspired by a vision of a blended social and national liberation, and by the
prospect of introducing a new Ukrainian culture onto the world stage, his
writings draw sustenance from the palingenetic myth (the idea of rebirth,
regeneration, revival) that has been widely observed in twentieth-century
modernism. The crucial concept is that of genesis. Both artists and writers
sought to identify key elements out of which the culture had been formed.
Thus the writers who contributed to the VAPLITE journal and to the next
journal formed by Khvylovyi, Literaturnyi iarmarok (Literary Marketplace,
December 1928–February 1930) searched for elements of the cultural code
that represented the national experience and identity as it had evolved
over the centuries. They examined archetypal forms, characters, canoni-
cal images and works, and then recoded these into a new format and a
new identity. Abstraction, along with the idea of investigating fundamental
concepts, played an important role—whether in literature, painting, or the-
ater. The search for the “grammatical structure” of national identity became
analogous to experimentation with pure color and form in painting, or

with the search for basic patterns of sound and meaning in poetry, which
were also typical of the avant-garde in the twenties. It was thought that,
once discovered, these basic elements could by some mysterious alchemy
be transformed into a new synthesis.
Others negotiated attitudes to the past in similarly ambiguous ways.
The example of art is particularly instructive. Exter’s studio in Kyiv in the
years 1917–20 was a good example of the modernist transformation of
tradition. It blended cubo-futurism, constructivism, and folk-primitivism
in innovative ways. Her interest in arts and crafts at this time led to col-
laboration with artists such as Yevheniia Prybylska and Nina Henke, who
developed workshops in which local women mass-produced textiles and
other products using patterns inspired both by folk motifs or by suprema-
tist art. These were shown in major exhibitions in Moscow and Paris to
great acclaim. Exter’s studio educated many important artists, including
leading Jewish figures such as Boris Aronson, Isaak Rabinovich, Nisson
Shifrin, Aleksandr (Oleksandr) Tyshler, and was visited by many figures
from Moscow and Petrograd who found themselves in Kyiv at the time,
such as Illia Ehrenburg, Benedikt Livshits, Osip Mandelshtam, Viktor
Shklovsky, and Natan Vengrov. Malevich’s suprematist art can also be seen
as a kind of recreation in an abstract and mystical key of the ancient and
ethnographic; and Boichuk’s monumentalist or neo-Byzantinist school
also turned to national sources in its search for primitive, ethnographic
and folk features. The Boichuk School came out of the thrilling “redis-
covery” in pre-revolutionary years of the icon as not only a popular but
also a sophisticated form that could be linked to cubist and avant-gardist
experimentation. The artist turned to the icon and folk arts for national
forms, and attempted to crystallize these traditional elements into a mod-
ern synthesis and a national style. Other artists, who were not part of the
avant-garde, where also feeding this interest in the past. Heorhii Narbut
and Vasyl Krychevskyi, for example, were famous for translating ornamen-
tal images into modern graphic art, particularly in book design: Narbut
reworked baroque images and Krychevskyi folk art patterns. Like the
“national modernist” writers grouped around Khvylovyi, they were guided
by a desire to give old, often very ancient forms a new expression.
These writers and artists felt no dichotomy between “ethnic loyalty”
and participation in international modernism. Their interest in the tradi-
tional aimed at uncovering its deeper generative principles. Figures such
as Archipenko, Malevich, Exter, and Burliuk succeeded in bringing their
discoveries to the international community. Like these artists, writers did
not desire to remain strictly within the limits of their particular national
tradition, but recognized the dialectical relationship between the national
and international in art.
Abstracting, translating, or transforming tradition into modernist form
became something of an obsession in Ukrainian culture in the following
decades, and a major part of the continuing search for self-definition. In the
forties, for example, Sviatoslav Hordynskyi, an artist, poet, and art critic who
began exhibiting and writing in Lviv in the thirties (then part of the Polish
state) before moving to the United States wrote an article in which he argued
for an abstract national art in terms very close to those used in the early
twenties. He suggested that international modernism’s interest in form had
compelled twentieth-century Ukrainian artists to abandon historical styles
and genre painting and forced them to study the compositional techniques
and colors of their own popular traditions. The “strong, formalist features
of the old Ukrainian art, its anti-naturalism” allowed them to create in an
abstract manner that simultaneously echoed traditional forms (Hordynskyi
1947, 15). Hordynskyi singled out the Boichuk School of the 1920s as an
exemplary synthesis of traditionalism and formalism, and thought that the
search for this synthesis continued to drive many contemporary artists.
A comparison with the key concepts of the Jewish revival is reveal-
ing. In the years 1918–20 Kyiv’s Kultur-Lige championed the idea of a
secular Yiddish culture that would be international and modern. Created
on January 9, 1918, the organization had established a hundred and
twenty branches throughout Ukraine by the end of the year. Eponymous
organizations were created in Petrograd, Crimea, Minsk, Grodny, Vilnius,
Bialystok, Chernowets (in Romania; today’s Chernivtsi in Ukraine),
Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, and the far-eastern cities of Chita, Irkutsk and
Harbin. When at the end of 1920 the Kyiv center came under bolshevik con-
trol, some members left in order to reproduce the organization in Warsaw
in 1921 and Berlin in 1922. A Kultur-Lige was created in Riga (Latvia)
in 1922, New York and Chicago in 1926, Bucharest in 1931, and Mexico
and Argentina in 1935. The Ukrainian organization was the largest and
strongest in the years 1918–20, and provided the model for developments
elsewhere. Claims were made for its having “four evening folk universities,
twelve grammar schools, twenty large libraries with reading rooms, seventy
kindergartens and orphanages, forty evening programs, ten playing fields,
three gymnasiums [high schools], twenty dramatic circles, choruses, and
troupes” (Der Fraytog, Berlin, 1 August 1919, 36; quoted in Wolitz 1988, 35)
The organization opened art studios, an art museum, a teachers’ seminary,
and a Jewish People’s University. In 1918 its press accounted for over forty
percent of all titles in Yiddish produced in the lands of the former empire.3
Kyiv at this time became the center of an international Jewish avant-garde
art. The book graphic art produced in these years is today universally
admired precisely for the blending of modernism and national tradition
that it was able to achieve. Two major art exhibitions were held in Kyiv (in
1920 and 1922) and another in New York (in 1924).
Kultur-Lige’s growth and the Jewish cultural revival took place against
the background of the 1917–20 revolution. The revolutionary Ukrainian
government (initially the Central Rada, then the UNR) approved a
multicultural policy, offering support in particular to the Jewish, Polish and
Russian minorities. The Ukrainian intelligentsia saw Jewish cultural devel-
opment as parallel to its own Ukrainization policy and an ally in the strug-
gle to reverse the process of russification that was a legacy of tsarist rule.
The Kultur-Lige was formed in Kyiv, a day before the UNR’s law on
national-personal autonomy was proclaimed on 9 January 1918. The orga-
nization’s statue was approved on 15 January. Its creation was supported
by a coalition of Jewish socialist parties: the Bund, Fareinigte, Poale Zion
and Folkspartei (United Jewish Socialist Workers’ Party). Since Moisei
Zilberfarb, the Central Rada’s Minister of Jewish Affairs was in the Kultur-
Lige’s leadership, the organization was effectively an auxiliary organ of the
Ministry. The Kultur-Lige continued to expand its activities under Hetmanate
rule (from April to November 1918 Pavlo Skoropadsky ruled as Hetman
with German backing), when it “assumed the role of the organ of Jewish
autonomy in Ukraine” (Kazovsky 2007, 27). At this time it created a univer-
sity, a major library, and developed its program of extra-mural education.
The university began operating after a circular on national higher education
allowing “teaching in the languages used in schools” was promulgated on 5
August by the Minister of Education and Art. When the UNR government
returned to Kyiv under the leadership of the Directory (November 1918 to
January 1919), lecturers from the Kultur-Lige’s teacher-training school in
Kyiv formed the Department of Education in its Ministry of Jewish Affairs.
The Kultur-Lige therefore embodied the concept of cultural autonomy
under successive Ukrainian governments, receiving financial support from
them, while at the same time also raising its own funds. In 1918 it employed
around 260 people, and of the twenty one individuals on its governing board
three were ministers in the governments of the UNR. When the organization
was brought under the control of the Communist Party in December, 1920,
the original leadership was squeezed out. By 1922 all branches throughout
3 Apter-Gabriel (1988) has provided a bibliography, and titles published in Ukraine are
listed in Rybakov (2001), 163–64, and 176–87.
Ukraine had been subordinated to the Evsektsii (the Jewish Sections of the
Commissariat of Education). Initially the bolsheviks supported aspects of
the Kultur-Lige’s work, such as the university and theaters, but the Jewish
sections of the Bolshevik Party argued that the Kultur-Lige was a class enemy
and nationalist. More to the point, the Kultur-Lige presented a rival to the
Jewish sections, which wanted exclusive control over organized Jewish cul-
tural life (Gitelman 1972, 273–76). The collapse of the UNR government
was accompanied by the terrible wave of pogroms in 1919, in which troops
ostensibly loyal to this government participated. These pogroms did much
to destroy the Ukrainian-Jewish rapprochement, and encouraged some Jews
to support the bolsheviks.
In spite of its short existence, the Kultur-Lige achieved astonishing suc-
cesses, including the development of a network of Jewish schools throughout
Ukraine, a flowering of Yiddish literature, and the creation of an avant-garde
art of international fame. Even after the Soviet takeover, many aspects of its
work continued under other names. The music school was sponsored by a
trade union organization; the major library in Kyiv continued to function
under other names; the art school was active until 1931; the Kultur-Lige’s
Jewish theater began working in Kharkiv in 1924; and the publishing house
continued using the organization’s name until the end of the twenties.
It is hard to convey today how thrilling the vision of a cultural rebirth
was to participants. In his memoirs Arthur Golomb, who lived in Kyiv
in the years 1917–21 describes how in January of 1918, as the bolsheviks
began to sow disorder in Kyiv and the Red Army commenced an artillery
bombardment of the Ukrainian capital from the left bank of the Dnipro,
he was running down the street to the Jewish student kitchen when he met
Zelig Melamed, who called out: “It’s ready!” He had in his pocket the statute
of Kultur-Lige. Both friends were so excited by the news that they stood up,
forgetting entirely about the danger, and ignoring the flying bullets and the
roar of the cannonade (Kazovsky 2007, 24–25)
The new culture was to be modern. For some this meant that it should
be politically leftist and activist. Perets Markish, a leading figure in Kyiv’s
Yiddish revival, who moved to Warsaw and then to Moscow in the thirties,
was remarkably pro-Soviet, even after the regime repressed the Kultur-
Lige. However, other members of the organization were not. When the Kyiv
organization was shut down, some of the main figures, such as I.I. Zinger,
Moisei Zilberfarb, Melamed and Maizil moved to Warsaw, hoping that this
city would become the base of a Yiddish cultural flowering and that Jews in
Poland would be granted the same cultural autonomy as they had received
from the Ukrainian government (Ravich 2008, 8). Here, and wherever the
members of the Kyiv Kultur-Lige moved, they promoted their dream of a

modern but archetypically Jewish culture, a national sensibility that was
modern (even avant-gardist), secular, progressive, and global.
The artistic section perhaps provided the clearest expression of national
modernist theory and style. Several artists had been involved in the search
for cultural roots in pre-revolutionary years. Nathan Altman had in 1913
copied ancient tombstones on Jewish cemeteries in Shepetivka; Issakhar-
Ber Rybak and El Lissitsky had in 1915 made drawings of the interiors of
ancient synagogues in Right-Bank Ukraine; Solomon Yudovkin had taken
over 1,500 photographs of pinkas (Jewish community books); Chaikov,
Elman and Kratko had studied Jewish embossed silver. The motivation in
each case was the development of an art that drew on tradition in order
to rework archetypal forms. In the Kultur-Lige period these same artists
attempted to translate the traditional into an avant-garde idiom with the
idea of abstract form as the purest expression of the national. The approach
was defended by Boris Aronson and Issakhar-Ber Rybak in an influential
article published in 1919 in the Kyiv journal Oyfgang (Dawn), which criti-
cized the idea of an art focused on recognizably Jewish themes. Instead, the
authors argued, the national could best be explored by examining formal
qualities, such as the use of color and rhythm, and traditional ornamental
patterns. The ensuing discussion on this subject evolved into an entire
discourse in which Jewish journals in Berlin, Moscow, Lodz, and Vilnius
participated.
Aronson developed this view in Sovremennaia evreiskaia grafika
(Contemporary Jewish Graphic Art, 1924), which he published in Berlin.
He elaborated the concept of a Jewish art based on specifically Jewish forms
of ornamentation, compositional qualities, and archetypal imagery, all of
which, he felt, could already be found “in the distant sources of ethnog-
raphy and in the first manuscript publications of sacred books” (Aronson
1924, 24). A Jewish art, in his opinion, could be distilled from the entire
range of objects that were used in rituals and daily life. However, the
distillation could not be mere copying or stylization; it had to be a new
individualization, as practiced by artists such as Altman and Chagall, who
had shown how popular elements could be transformed into unique and
original combinations. By the time the book appeared, Aronson already
felt that the search for a new national style had failed. Not only had the
Kyiv Kultur-Lige’s great experiment been cut short, but a different artistic
sensibility was in the ascendant—one that stressed dynamism, mechanics
and fragmentation, and seemed to deny the possibility of stable, recurring
forms. However, he still claimed “one priceless achievement” for the earlier
inspiration: “it enlivened a whole range of historical materials, blew the dust
from the living face of grave stones, animated with warmth the relations
between tradition and craft” (Aronson, 104). The traditional and ethno-
graphic, he still maintained, could be reworked into a modernist idiom. In
fact this combination was now in vogue, since primitivism had been widely
embraced as a programmatic feature of modernism.
John Bowlt has emphasized the contradiction between loyalty to
the community and commitment to the international art world, arguing
that the attempt to create an international style in architecture and the
plastic arts had to win out. According to him, these artists sympathized
“with the sincere attempts of their linguistic colleagues to accelerate the
application of Esperanto. In the immediate context of Jewish art and the
Russian avant-garde, this argument held a particular logic: few modern
Jewish artists derived all their artistic inspiration from the patriarchal
traditions of Jewish culture observed in the tortured environment of the
shtetl, although, certainly, Chagall, Ryback, and Yudovkin did. In many
cases, they attempted to interweave these traditions with the aesthetic sys-
tems of Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism, etc.” (Bowlt 1988, 45). This line
of argumentation misses a crucial point: for many of these artists the road
to an international style or abstraction passed through the national. After
all, they suggested, why should this route be any less acceptable than the
exploration of “exotic” African or Polynesian art?
In the early Kultur-Lige years Aronson felt that Jewish folk tradi-
tions could be fused with contemporary art “to create a modern Jewish
plastic art which seeks its own organic national form, color and rhythm”
(Kultur-Lige Zamlung, Kyiv, November 1919, 38; quoted in Wolitz 1988,
35). This suggested a Jewish path to abstraction. Rybak and Aronson in
the above-mentioned article of 1919 argued that even if the artist’s work
was successful internationally, it would still reveal the specific, spiritual
construction and emotions of the creator`s milieu and the national element
in its style, structure, and organization. However, at the same time, these
leaders of Kultur-Lige believed that “traditional shtetl life was atrophied
and a modern, secular, national culture should replace it. The role of art
was to give aesthetic definition to new national and cultural longings”
(Wolitz 1988, 36). Under the impact of bolshevik pressure, the emphasis on
national specificity was gradually removed. Abstraction came to mean not
the refinement of a particular tradition, but the erasure of recognizable tra-
ditions and the embracing instead of a universalism that masked or denied
national specificity.
The practical application of Aronson’s theoretical premises can be seen

in the work of many artists. Mark Epstein’s cubist compositions, such as The
Cello-Player (1920) and Family Group (1919–20), or Yosyf Chaikov’s The
Seamstress (1922), Soyfer (The Scribe, 1922), and The Violin-Player (1922)
treat traditional themes in a cubist manner. Rybak’s decorative forms, such
as his Sketch for the Almanac Eygns (Native, 1920) give a modern graphic
interpretation to the forms he had copied from synagogue murals and
carved tombstones. And the now famous book illustrations from 1917–24
by El Lissitsky, Rybak and Sara Shor represent an avant-garde graphic art
inspired by Jewish folk arts. These did not present a clash between the old
and new, but the achievement of a new aesthetic consciousness created by
the mingling of tradition and modernism. There were, of course, works in
which the tension between the old and new worlds was emphasized. Joseph
Chaikov’s image for the cover of the magazine Baginen (Beginnings, 1919)
captures this tension. It depicts the artist with one eye open to the future
and a second closed to the past, blind to the rural world he has left behind.4
The theorizing of a Ukrainian “renaissance” and Jewish “revival” throw
light on both movements. The literature and art produced in one find analo-
gous works in the other. This is to be expected, since there were often strong
connections between individuals in both groups, and both movements
were inspired by the international avant-garde. Many artists had spent
time abroad (especially in Paris, Munich and Berlin) in pre-revolutionary
years. They had often come through the same art schools, in particular the
Kyiv Art School, Murashko Art School, Exter’s studio, and Boichuk’s stu-
dio of monumental art in the Ukrainian Academy of Arts. They exhibited
together in the earliest avant-garde exhibitions within the Russian Empire
(in Kyiv, Moscow and Petrograd) and continued to work together, both in
the years 1917–24 when the Kultur-Lige was most active, and later.
As a literary and artistic current, national modernism was strongly in
evidence in the twenties. It was most forcefully articulated by Khvylovyi on
behalf of VAPLITE and by Aronson on behalf of Kultur-Lige. The Ukrainian
and Jewish modernists associated with these groups saw the new literature
and art as an expression of national identity, and attempted to theorize it
accordingly. Their rhetoric and imagery were often aggressive. They left
no doubt that the past was to be dismissed: it bore responsibility for the
catastrophic present. However, they simultaneously argued that, because
the tsarist past had oppressed, denied or marginalized national culture, the
repressed energies and unexplored potential of the national culture could
4 For reproductions of works by these and other artists of the Kultur-Lige see Kazovsky,
2003, 2007 and 2011.
be used to create new, popular and progressive artistic forms. Utopianism

and a faith in the future were, of course, a part of this modernism, but it
is also clear that these groups saw the local as the vehicle for reaching this
desired future.
In the twentieth century’s early decades the explosion of modernity
simultaneously transformed millions of Ukrainians and Jews in analogous
ways. In response to modernity’s pressures, both national revivals aimed
at developing secular cultures that accepted European genres and modes
of discourse, but simultaneously infused them with elements of their own
tradition. A key to understanding the semiotics of this art lies in the cultural
discourse out of which it grew.
Artists in the Maelstrom:
Five Case Studies
David Burliuk and Steppe as
Avant-Garde Identity1
The literary myth of the steppe has played a fundamental role in defining
Ukraine, its historical origins and cultural characteristics. Depictions of
the country as a wild, beautiful and dangerous borderland already made
their appearance in Polish literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. They were particularly prominent in Polish and Ukrainian
romanticism. In the 1830s and 1840s Ukrainians who wrote in Russian,
such as Nikolai Gogol (Mykola Hohol in Ukrainian) and Evgenii Grebenka
(Yevhen Hrebinka in Ukrainian), reshaped the image of the steppe into an
icon of vitality—a frontier land settled by a vigorous, colorful and coura-
geous people. Shortly afterwards several classics of Ukrainian literature,
notably Taras Shevchenko and Panteleimon Kulish, refashioned the literary
steppe into a foundation myth for a people who were attempting to escape
subjugation and colonization. In the “Cultural Renaissance” of the 1920s
writers such as Khvylovyi, Vynnychenko, Valerian Pidmohylnyi, Yohansen,
Yanovskyi, Yevhen Kosynka, and Geo Shkurupii reinterpreted the steppe
either as an anarchic zone of conflict, or a fertile and mysterious realm that
incubated strong, rebellious natures. These constructs were also reflected in
nineteenth-century paintings, notably by Shevchenko, Ilia Repin, Arkhyp
Kuindzhi, Serhii Vasylkivskyi, and Fotii Krasytskyi. Their iconic images,
reproduced countless times, became deeply ingrained in contemporary
popular consciousness.
It is less well recognized, however, that before the First World War the
futurists grouped around David Burliuk also aligned themselves with a
Ukrainophilic “myth” of the steppe. They counterposed a positive image of
wildness to the negative one represented in works such as Anton Chekhov’s
1 This chapter adapts sections from my article “The Steppe as Inspiration in David
Burliuk’s Art,” Journal of Ukrainian Studies 30.2 (2005): 51–67.
82 Artists in the Maelstrom: Five Case Studies
Step (Steppe, 1888) or Ivan Bunin’s Derevnia (Countryside, 1910). Burliuk’s

literary and artistic mythologizing of the steppe played a key role in defining
pre-revolutionary futurism and challenging the symbolist aesthetic.
Hylaea and Chornianka (Chernianka)

There is almost universal agreement that Burliuk was the crucial figure
in the creation of futurism within the Russian Empire. He was its tire-
less promoter, the stimulus behind its first exhibitions and publica-
tions, a participant in all the performances and public interventions that
scandalized polite society and brought notoriety to the group. Vladimir
Markov thought that without Burliuk there would have been no futurism
in the empire (1968b, 9) and drew attention to the crucial importance of the
early cohort who called themselves Hylaea (Gileia in Russian) in 1907–13,
asserting that the “history of Russian futurism is actually the history of the
Gileya group” (1968a, 8).
In the early years of the twentieth century Burliuk’s father, an estate
supervisor, found work managing the property of Count Sviatopolk Mirskii
at Zolota Balka, by the Dnipro River. David began painting at the time. He
decorated the walls of old Zaporozhian homesteads and in the summer of
1902 painted portraits of villagers and hundreds of canvases of Zaporozhian
mazanki (cottages of daubed wood), along with “azure horizons and wil-
lows, black poplars and steppe burial mounds” (Burliuk 1994, 113). After
spending time in Munich as the student of Anton Azhbe and Willi Dietz,
he returned to the estate and continued to paint intensively. In 1904 he
traveled to Paris, but was soon back in Ukraine again, first in Kherson
and then at an estate near Konstantynohrad in Poltava gubernia, where he
painted landscapes and portraits of villagers. In 1906 he spent time on an
estate in Romen county, Poltava gubernia, and then in the Ekaterinoslav
gubernia (now Dnipro oblast). By 1907, when his father began managing
Chornianka (Chernianka in Russian), the huge estate of Count Aleksandr
Mordvinov near Kherson that bordered on the Askania Nova reservation,
Burliuk had already produced hundreds of impressionist steppe landscapes
and village portraits.
Between 1907 and 1913 many noted artists, writers, and cultural figures
stayed at Chornianka, including Aleksei Kruchenykh, Velimir Khlebnikov,
Benedikt Livshits, Vladimir Maiakovsky, Vasilii Kamenskii, Wassily
Kandinsky, Vladimir Izdebskii, Aristarkh Lentulov, and Mikhail Larionov.
The Hylaea group, which formed in 1910–11, consisted of the three Burliuk
David Burliuk and Steppe as Avant-Garde Identity 83
brothers (David, Vladimir and Nikolai), Livshits, Kamenskii, Khlebnikov,

Elena Guro (whose St. Petersburg home they often visited and which
became a second base for the Hylaeans), Maiakovsky, and Kruchenykh.
Sojourns in Chornianka, were often long. Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh
stayed several months each year. A number of exhibitions were conceived
there, to be realized later in St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Moscow, and Odesa. Boris
Lavrentev has noted that several books were also organized there and later
published in Kherson or Kachovnia (Lavrentev 1959, 62–3).
David Burliuk in the 1910s. Photographer

unknown.
David Burliuk. Man with Two Faces, 1912.
The word “Hylaea” was derived from the Greek term for the Scythian
territories by the Dnipro’s outlet into the Black Sea. Hylaea and the
Scythians are described in Herodotus’ Histories in connection with the
feats of Hercules. The idea of calling the group by this name may have been
inspired by drawings on old maps in the estate’s library, which showed
Hercules resting by the Dnipro after his victories. The Burliuk family, who
were all tall and physically powerful, would have identified with this figure.
Volodymyr, for example, was jokingly advised by Aleksei Remizov to go
about naked except for a tiger skin around his loins and carrying a club, a
remark that David, in his memoirs, took as a supercilious reference to the
“simple and savage life, so inimical to the lords and the effeminate tsarist
gentry” (Burliuk 1994, 25).
This area of southern Ukraine had in the 1880s been described in
popular Russian-language novels written by Grigorii Danilevskii (whose
Ukrainian name was Hryhorii Danylevskyi) as a land of dramatic clashes
between escaped serfs and ruthless landlords. The writer presented it
as a frontier where enormous fortunes could be made, and where old,

conservative traditions were being supplanted by a new ambitious and
enterprising farming class. Both Herodotus’ account of Hercules and
Danilevskii’s vision of a self-confident entrepreneurial class contributed to
Burliuk’s image of the southern Ukrainian steppe as the incubator of a new
world. A sense of vital energy and creativity is captured in the description
of Chornianka and Hylaea in Livshits’ One and a Half-Eyed Archer (Livshits
1977, 35–68). His image of a bucolic paradise, set among vast fields and
worked by giants with insatiable appetites, is superimposed upon heroic
ancient tales associated with Hesiod and Homer.
Burliuk appropriated the idea of barbarian vitality and strength for the
Hylaeans, who, after 1913, began calling themselves futurists. A Hellenized
Black Sea littoral incorporating imagery from Hesiod, Homer and
Herodotus served as a foil to the identification with Greek culture among
Russian symbolists such as Viacheslav Ivanov. His Hafiz salon of 1906–7,
a meeting-place for the erudite and cultivated, discussed Platonic love,
homosexuality, Dionysian ecstasy, and art. Visitors assumed pseudonyms,
wore classical attire, and reclined on couches while drinking wine, as
though imitating characters from Plato’s Symposium. This world of the St.
Petersburg symbolists was viewed by Hylaeans as over-refined and artificial,
and its metaphysical and religious concerns were treated with suspicion. By
contrast, Burliuk’s coterie identified with the image of a robust Greek civ-
ilization that constantly interacted with the war-like Scythians. Moreover,
they felt connected to this world in an immediate and direct manner. In
the years 1907–12 the Burliuk brothers conducted archaeological research
in Crimea, excavating about fifty burial mounds, in which they found
Scythian artifacts which were later delivered either to the Kherson Museum,
to their “family museum” in Chornianka, or to their house in Mikhaleve,
near Moscow. They also brought back stone sculptures (kamiani baby in
Ukrainian), ancient fertility symbols, that can be found throughout the
steppe. Scythian forms, such as the symbolic depictions of horses, appeared
in the art of both David and Vladimir, and kamiani baby influenced David’s
depictions of nudes. The archaeological excavation of the ancient world
continued during the First World War. Volodymyr, for example, in 1917
was conducting a dig in Salonica before the attack in which he died. In
his last letter he described a hundred marble antique pieces he was send-
ing to the old house their mother had bought in Mikhaleve. This was the
family museum while the family lived there from 1914 until 1918. When
the house had to be evacuated after the 1917 Revolution, it contained two
hundred and fifty icons, paintings by Kandinsky, Goncharova, Javlensky,
Franz Marc, Lentulov, Exter, and others, as well as the contents of Scythian
tombs, including seventy skeletons and two hundred sculls.
Although most studies consider St. Petersburg and Moscow in the
years 1910–12 to be the birthplaces of futurism in the Russian Empire, the
1908 Link Exhibition in Kyiv and the Chornianka period can also make that
claim. Livshits, for example, in his wonderful chapter on Hylaea, states that
the Link Exhibition held in Kyiv from November 2 to 20, 1908, to which
David, Liudmyla and Volodymyr Burliuk, Exter, Bohomazov, Prybylska,
Goncharova, Larionov, and others contributed, may be regarded as the first
futurist exhibition in the Russian Empire, especially since the participants
issued a collective manifesto (Livshits 1977, 65).
David Burliuk. Cossack Mamai, 1908.
Zaporozhians
Burliuk’s imaginary steppe also drew heavily on family history. He was
proud of his Zaporozhian ancestry, as his son Nicholas has related:
In his youth, my father was very fond of visiting the little cemetery near
Riabushki [the family estate near Sumy, where he was born and grew up].
Surrounded by the solitude of the steppes, under massive oak crosses, his
beloved ancestors rested. The aroma of wild flowers added to the melancholy
beauty of the sacred place. He would stand and listen to the sighing of the
wind in the pines and willows.
“There they lie,” he would say. “From them I received the spark of life to
carry to the world and be, myself, a living connecting link between the past
and the future” (Nicholas Burliuk n.d., 18).
At every opportunity he emphasized his family connection to the land

and its history:
Ukraine was and remains my homeland, because I was born in Ukraine, […]
the bones of my ancestors, free Cossacks, who fought in the name of glory,
power and freedom are buried there […] What unites them into one general
type? Determination, character, the desire to obtain a set goal. All my life I
have felt these traits within me [...] However, my determination was aimed
at overcoming an old, outdated taste and at introducing a new art, a wild
beauty into life [...]
In 1915, I painted the picture Sviatoslav in the style of ancient Ukrainian
painting. As far as the dominance of one or another color scheme in my
work, I have to say, that in my person Ukraine has its most faithful son.
My color schemes are deeply national. Orange, greenish-yellow, red, and
blue tones gush like Niagaras from beneath my brush […] A child of the
Ukrainian steppes, I have always been most partial to horizontal formats
[...] It would be a good idea to transfer a part of my paintings to Ukraine, my
beloved homeland. (Horbachov 1996, 373–4)
On their expeditions to archaeological sites in Crimea, the Burliuk

brothers would listen to the stories of local people and meet bandura play-
ers. David’s habit of wearing one earring in the right ear was, according to
his son, “in the style of a Ukrainian Cossack” (Horbachov 1996, 87, 111).
Throughout his life Burliuk identified himself as Ukrainian and
attached importance to this self-definition. Three documents written by
him and one by his sister indicate that his ancestors served as secretaries in
the Zaporozhian Sich prior to 1775, and that oil paintings of them hung on
the walls of his great grandfather’s home.2 Moreover, Burliuk’s father was
described in family lore as the model for the enormous, shirtless Cossack
sitting on a barrel in Repin’s famous painting Zaporozhians Writing a Letter
2 Two of these documents are attached to Evdaev 2002. They are “Lestnitsa moikh let” by
David Burliuk (297–304) and “Fragmenty semeinoi khroniki” by Liudmila Kuznetsova-
Burliuk (305–313). The latter appeared as “Fragmenty khronologii roda Burliukov”
in Color and Rhyme 48 (1961–62): 43–7. Two further documents can be found in
Horbachov, 1996. They are “Predky moi” (373–74) and “Frahmenty zi spohadiv
futurysta, Za sorok rokiv 1890–1930 (373). The originals are in the State Public Library
in Saint Petersburg, Manuscript Section, f. 552, no. 1.
to the Sultan of Turkey. David attributed his own character and view of life
to his Ukrainian Cossack background.3
The Zaporozhian imagery was associated by Burliuk with elemental
force. In one poem he compared the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the powerful
flow of the Dnipro, suggesting that, like water passing through turbines,
they provided the “electrical power” of revolutions (Burliuk 1928, 14). A
similar sense of the elemental is also attached to the descriptions of Taras
Shevchenko and Petro Sahaidachnyi, the seventeenth-century Cossack
leader, which occur in Burliuk’s poetry.
His memoirs continually juxtapose Zaporozhian “freedoms” [volnosti]
with contempt for the city dweller [meshchanin]. In an essay entitled “My
Ancestors” he speaks with admiration of his forerunners, making the point
that the Cossack settlers and pioneers lived in freedom and prosperity,
enjoyed good harvests, and were surrounded by apiaries and windmills on
clear streams: “Serfdom […] had not put down as deep roots in Ukraine
and was not as evident to the eye, and did not reduced the people to misery.
There were many descendants in Ukraine of the recently free Zaporozhians,
whose families had avoided the wretched fate of serfdom” (Burliuk 1994,
101–2). David was particularly proud of the endurance, stubbornness and
industriousness of his forerunners, qualities which, he felt, he had inherited,
and which nurtured his own determination to inject into contemporary
culture “a new art, a wild beauty” (Horbachov 1996, 104).
Khlebnikov, whose mother was Ukrainian, in his poem “Burliuk”
(1919) describes the impression made by David’s self-identification as a
Cossack type. After mentioning the fact that in Munich Azhbe had called
him “the wild mare of Russia’s black earth,” a definition that Burliuk
accepted proudly and repeated often, Khlebnikov goes on:
Russia enlarged the continent of Europe
And greatly amplified the voice of the West,
Like the voice of a monster amplified a thousand times,
You plump giant, your laughter rang through all Russia.
And the stem of the Dnieper’s mouth
Constricted you into a fist,
Fighter for the right of the people in an art of titans,
You gave Russia’s soul an outlet to the sea.
A strange break-up of painterly worlds
3 In Burliuk’s archive in Syracuse University there is a family tree drawn by his brother-
in-law, the Czech artist Vaclav Fiala, which shows his Cossack ancestry (Syracuse
University, Burliuk collection, box 6).
Was the forerunner of freedom, a liberation from chains…

……………………….
And the mouth of the Dnieper like an ear of grain,
People like lumps of earth
Were obedient to you.
With the heartbeat of a giant
You moved the deep waters of cast iron
With your fat laughter alone.
Songs of revenge and sadness
Were heard in your voice,
Across the burial mound of iron wealth
And a Hercules you came out of the burial mound
Of your ancient native land.4
David’s continued interest in Cossack history was expressed in his later

reading of authors who had described the Zaporozhians, such as Gogol
and Shevchenko (Nicholai Burliuk n.d., 26, 51). His archive at Syracuse
University reveals that he spoke at various functions on Shevchenko, and
4 Rosiia—razshirennyi materik Evropy

I golos zapada gromadno uvelichila,
Kak budto by donessia krik
Chudovishcha, chto bolshe v tysiachi raz,
Ty zhirnyi velikan, tvoi khokhot prozvuchal po vsei Rossii.
I stebel dneprovskogo ustia, im ty zazhat byl v kulake,
Borets za pravo naroda v iskusstve titanov,
Dushe Rossii dal morskie berega.
Strannaia lomka mirov zhivopysnykh
Byla predtecheiu svobod; osvobozhdeniem ot tsepei…
…………………………………………………………….
I kolos ustia Dnepra,
Komia gliny liudei
Byli poslushny tebe.
S velikanskim serdtsa udarom
Dvigal ty glyby voli chuguna
Odnim svoim zhirnymi [sic] khokhotom.
Pesni mesti I pechali
V tvoem golose zvuchali,
Cherez kurgan chugunnogo bogatstva
I, bogatyr ty vyshel iz kurgana
Rodiny drevnei tvoei. (Khlebnikov 30)
tried to obtain the works of the Ukrainian émigré writer Yurii Kosach, who
had written on the Cossacks.5
He also painted several versions of the Cossack Mamai figure, a popular
Ukrainian folk painting. Mamai is always portrayed as a Zaporozhian,
seated, with his horse and sword nearby, food and drink in front of him. The
figure represents independence, self-sufficiency and rugged individualism.
The artist also incorporated the medieval, or princely era of Kyivan Rus
into his art. For example, the painting Sviatoslav Drinking His Own Blood
(1915), conceived as a protest against the horrors of the First World War,
was described by him as done “in the style of ancient Ukrainian painting”
(Burliuk 1994, 124–5).
The positive idea of the steppe’s “wildness” was communicated to other
Hylaeans, notably Khlebnikov, whose poetry contains images of kamiani
baby, Kyivan Rus, and Cossack rebels such as Ostrianytsia and Morozenko,
as well as numerous Ukrainianisms.
Primitivism
Another aspect of the myth was primitivism, which Burliuk associated
with biological and psychological health. He frequently used the terms
“simple,” “laconic,” “coarse” [gruboe] and perhaps described his artistic
ideal most memorably as “a wild beauty” (Burliuk 1994, 104). Wildness
was aligned with intensity, vitality, joie de vivre, and eroticism. Primitivist
qualities appeared in his art as clear outlines, bright colors, and a deliberate
coarseness in texture and imagery. These features were counterposed to
what he considered effete and decadent in symbolism. David even saw the
juxtaposition of colors as a kind of erotically charged primitivism: “When I
paint, it seems to me, that I am a savage rubbing the stick of one color against
another in order to obtain a certain color effect. The effect of burning. The
effect of passion, the sexual arousal of one color’s characteristic features and
peculiarities by another” (Burliuk 1994, 142).
These ideas, along with Burliuk’s personality, had a strong effect on
contemporaries, as Viktor Shklovsky has testified:
He had been abroad. His drawings were powerful and he knew anatomy to
perfection […] Skill had deprived academic drawing of any authority for him.
5 Burliuk’s interest in Ukrainian literature appears to have been deeper than most
commentators suspect. In the early thirties he and his wife read Vasyl Stefanyk, Ivan
Mykytenko, Arkadii Liubchenko, and Ostap Vyshnia (Burliuk, Marussia 1961–62, 23).
He could draw better than any professor and, now, had become indifferent
to academic drawing […] David Burliuk had grown up in the Steppe […]
They even had their own sculpture gallery: a Scythian idol, found in a burial
mound. When David’s father subsequently lost his position, the family took
this idol to Moscow […] This Scythian idol, which had traveled to Moscow
by mistake, somehow came to rest […] near a barn where students of the art
school gathered. (Shklovsky 1972, 19–21)
David’s impact on Moscow’s art world was like an elemental force: “In
springtime, when the water is going down and the rafts are running aground,
the willow branches that tie the logs together are cut apart. Loose tree trunks,
racing after one another, jostling one another, drenched by the waves, take
off from the sandbanks and float toward the sea. One-eyed Burliuk had
set everything in his pictures adrift long ago. This is what he brought to
Moscow” (Shklovsky, 22–23). When Burliuk initiated Maiakovsky into art,
his impact was immediately magnified. Shklovsky sees the latter’s poetry,
which employed “declarations, and fragmentary, dislocated and distorted
images,” thrusting “image into image,” as analogous to “the methods of con-
temporary painting” which had been learned from Burliuk (Shklovsky, 35).
The primitive and elemental were employed in an assault on established
taste. New forms, Burliuk mused later, “appear absurd,” and therefore it
took courage to defend them “against critics from around the whole world,
who know and love only the old, already dried-out, mummified” (Burliuk
1994, 152).
In his view primitivism was an expression of the forceful, simple and
direct in popular art, something that he associated with the ancient past,
folklore, Scythian artifacts, and peasant art. Markov has described some
of these influences: meandering ornamental patterns on houses, Scythian
arrows discovered in mounds, and ancient stone sculptures that can be
found throughout the steppe (Markov 1968b, 33, 35). The Scythian forms
he appropriated included symbolic depictions of animals, especially horses,
and the integration of multiple possible viewing points, a device that was
used in Scythian art to depict movement. It reveals new subjects as it is
rotated and viewed from various sides. The Burliuk brothers employed “a
similar lack of fixed orientation: animals and other figures are depicted
upside down, at ninety-degree rotations, and running in various directions
along the borders of an image [...] David Burliuk combines the principle
of rotation with the Scythians’ tendency to place disparate images in dense
arrangement” (Ash 2002, 37). Like his repeated painting of the Cossack
Mamai, these features can be seen as part of the turn to a “primitive” art of
local provenance.
Burliuk showed an enormous respect for folk, naïve and children’s art.
Among other things he collected hand-painted signboards. Linked to this
inspiration was his democratic attitude to artistic creativity. It was expressed
in his attempts to kindle creativity in those around him, often by drawing
attention to the artistic power in surrounding objects and popular creativ-
ity, and in his praise for the work of folk artists, children, friends, and family
members—all of whom he encouraged to paint. His mother participated in
the Link Exhibition (1908) under her maiden name Mikhnevych (Evdaev
2002, 32). A painting by his five-year-old son was shown in the First
Exhibition of Russian Paintings in Japan in 1920. Livshits reports:
Among the many inhabitants of Chernianka who used to come and stare
at the “boss’s little ones” was a man who was much enticed by the Burliuk’s
painting and saw it as his own vocation.
He was a bearded man, not young, either a merchant or a carpenter,
who served in one of the estates. His surname was Kovalenko. The Burliuks
furnished him with canvas, brushes and paints and made him into a second
Rousseau, exhibiting his paintings alongside theirs. (Livshits 1977, 53)
Like much folk art, Burliuk’s paintings demonstrate a fascination

with surface texture. Painting was for him a “tactile, sensuous experience”
(Bowlt 1986, 31). Livshits has famously described the Burliuks dragging a
new canvas outside and flinging it into the liquid dirt, then painting over
the bits of clay and sand, so that the landscape would “become the flesh and
blood of the Hylaean land” (Livshits 1977, 51). This deliberate cultivation
of coarseness was no doubt a way of challenging symbolist refinement, but
it was also served Burliuk’s attraction to the immediate and close-up, which
he saw as a way of being true-to-life. In opposition to the World of Art
group, Andre Benois and the salon public in the capital cities, he embraced
the roughly textured, disproportional and asymmetrical.
In his memoirs David describes nature as a vast archive of marvelous
forms that can be read in details seen close up as much as in panoramas.
Every puddle, he says, contains the scent of the ocean, every stone the breath
of the desert: “In painting the simple can express the infinitely complex”
(Burliuk 1994, 151). He provides the following examples: the flat surfaces
of sand-banks with drawings on them left by the tides, the surface patterns
of trees and lichen, the white walls of daubed cottages covered with the
shadows of leaves and branches, the frosting on window-panes” (Burliuk
1994, 154). By studying these forms, the artist can grasp the macrocosm
encoded in microcosms.
The tactile, textural quality of painting was related to Burliuk’s
blindness in one eye, the result of a childhood accident, his insights often
came through studying close up details. He once wrote:
Let your eyes rest upon the surfaces, faces of my pictures […] I throw
pigments with brushes, with palette knife, smear them on my fingers, and
squeeze and splash the colors from the tubes […] Visual topography is the
appreciation of paintings from the point of view of the characteristics of
their surfaces. The surfaces of my paintings are laminated, soft, glossy, glassy,
tender as the female breast, slick as the lips of a maiden or the petals of a
rose, flat and dusty, flat and dull, smooth, even and mossy, dead, sand, hairy,
deeply shelled, shallow shelled, shell-like, roughly hewn, faintly cratered,
grained, splintery, mountainous, rocky, crater-like, thorny, prickly, camel-
backed, etc. In my works you will find every kind of a surface one is able to
imagine or to meet in the life’s labyrinths. (Burliuk 1949, 8)
Nature’s coarse, ruffled, unpolished character attracted him. It also

provided a model for personal deportment and appearance. He, for
example, wrote rather favorably of Khlebnikov’s unkemptness and honesty,
and altogether negatively of Igor Severianin’s affectation and controlled
acting (Burliuk 1994, 58, 64–73). We learn from Burliuk’s memoirs that
Khlebnikov visited a number of prominent writers, among them Dmitrii
Merezhkovskii, Aleksei Remizov and Viacheslav Ivanov, but, according to
Burliuk, was met with condescension: “the symbolists found him ‘inac-
curate’ [nechetkim], ungroomed […] No one could groom Vitia; he was
grandly tousled by nature.” Khlebnikov is described rather admiringly as a
“wild, phenomenal organism continually creating words […] with all the
voraciousness of fecundity” (Burliuk 1994, 57–8).
Burliuk’s primitivism was also related to his understanding of the emo-
tional, subconscious and mystical. He believed, for example, in invisible
realms outside the normal sphere of human perception, realms that could be
sensed by artists, but did not submit to rational analysis. This faith appears
to have originated from encounters with soothsayers, miracle-workers
and gypsies during his archaeological expeditions (Nicholas Burliuk n.d.,
86–93). As a youth he asked to be allowed to spend the night in a haunted
house (ibid., 93–5).
He was fascinated by hidden processes taking place outside the nor-
mal sphere of human perception. In the 1910–12 he painted a series of
abstract works showing the movement of parts of the atom, and in the
1920s he painted radio waves and energy forces, perhaps convinced that
they could be at least sensed. Most notably, his impressionistic paintings
of the steppe completed before 1917 attempt to capture things invisible to
the naked eye. These works pulsate with energy that seems to be gener-
ated by the interaction of millions of living particles. The canvases typically
depict a summer scene under the bright sun. In the earliest works he uses
a pointillistic technique; later paintings are reminiscent of Van Gogh’s
intense juxtaposition of colors. In all cases, the impression produced is
of a shimmering surface teeming with activity and displaying a myriad of
intricate patterns. The viewer is offered a vision of an endlessly productive,
bountiful and mysterious natural world. He later reproduced the same
impressionistic patterning in the landscape paintings completed in Japan
during the years 1920–22, and then again in paintings done at various times
in the United States.
Burliuk also revealed a desire to see the world holistically, something
that expressed itself as an ecological consciousness. What has been
described as his Naturphilosophie did not appealed to Soviet critics, who
only mentioned it to expressed displeasure with what they described mys-
tical tendencies (Postupalskii 1932, 15).
As with other artists, primitivism allowed Burliuk to avoid following the
beaten path, and to articulate an authentic, personal view of life. Sometimes
he deliberately included the ugly, “brutal” detail, or simultaneously showed
several sides of an image in order to break down accepted patterns of think-
ing and to construct a more “dynamic” and personal model of perception.
But his primitivism is perhaps best grasped as an almost mystical union
with the earth and the vitality of common people. His works celebrate psy-
chological, cultural and biological health. Even the last paintings of flowers
and summer landscapes are full of brilliant sunshine and bursting energy, a
final tribute to nature’s beauty and power.
His character and sensibility was referred to by contemporaries as
Ukrainian. Gollerbakh mentions his “khokhol goodnaturedness” and “stub-
bornness” (Gollerbakh 1930, 16). Lentulov and Livshits saw the optimism
and hospitality in Chornianka as evidence of a Ukrainian background.
These qualities they associated with his love of the prolific and irrepressible.
Burliuk was proud of his own artistic productivity, and lauded it in oth-
ers. He commented favorably that Khlebnikov “wrote ceaselessly. He was
a great graphomaniac […] Every external impulse stirred him to a stream
of words” (Burliuk 1994, 44). Like natural phenomena, both Burliuk and
Khlebnikov produced innumerable works that have been lost, forgotten, or

were destroyed. However, their sheer abundance has guaranteed that many
would survive.
These qualities are all related to the overarching myth of Arcadia, of
steppe Ukraine as an unspoiled, fertile land overflowing with powerful
energies.
Critical reception in the United States

Burliuk entered the United States in 1924, after spending two years in
Japan and two years before that traveling throughout Siberia. By the late
thirties, when he began to paint Long Island fishing ports, village and town
scenes, his focus was on relaxed, cheerful interaction between people.
From 1949, as he traveled through the United States, Mexico and Europe,
painting scenes in these countries. This turn to ethnographic naturalism,
as it has been called, occurred at the same time that he began to paint
reminiscences of his early life in Ukraine. American critics, who began
to take a closer look at Burliuk during the Second World War, greeted
these works favorably. In 1942 George Baer voiced his protest that the
American art world had neglected Burliuk. Baer praised the vitality and
humanism of his “folk art” paintings and the fact that Burliuk had “never
given up his identity with the folk art of his native land.” Most dear to
the hearts of true Burliuk enthusiasts, he wrote, “are the small pictures of
farm life with animals—the gnome-like peasants with blue, yellow, green
or red cows and horses. The sensuous textures of the lavish pigments are
in remarkable harmony with the luxury and joy of these segments of folk
fantasy” (Baer 1942).
Herman Baron wrote at this time: “Burliuk is a folk painter
fundamentally. His native ability glows very bright whenever he touches
any subject that is related to the soil” (Baron 1944, 2). Even Michael Gold,
a leading communist-party member and a firm proponent of revolution-
ary art, expressed the view that the “best of Burliuk” were his peasant
paintings: “Here he returns to the green fields and whitewashed thatch-
roof villages of his Ukrainian childhood. This is the deepest core of the
man” (Gold 1944, 8). Gold felt that these works, full of bright colors and
a profound sense of tranquility, showed Burliuk tapping into his earliest
sources of inspiration.
David Burliuk. Lenin and Tolstoy, 1925–30 (repainted in 1943).
In the 1920s and 1930s Burliuk worked for the pro-communist

Russkii golos (Russian Voice) as a proof-reader and art editor. Although
he occasional produced propagandistic painting, his revolutionary
enthusiasm sat rather uncomfortably alongside a reverence for the land and
agricultural labor. Lenin and Tolstoy can serve as an example. The painting
exists in two versions (1925–40, 1944). The first was exhibited in New York
in 1930 and then, renamed Unconquerable Russia by Katherine Dreier, was
displayed in New York’s ACA Gallery in 1943, at a time when the USA
and the USSR were wartime allies. The allegorical meaning, even after a
reading of Burliuk’s explanation, remains obscure. He interpreted the
painting as follows: Russia in the first two decades of the twentieth century
found its best expression in two names, Tolstoy and Lenin. Tolstoy was the
“symbol and mirror” of old, pre-revolutionary Russia, while Lenin was the
“plowman” of the new era. The figure of Tolstoy, the “titan of the past,” is
bathed in the light of the moon, which symbolizes the reflected light of
the past, of romanticism, religion and goodness. Lenin, the “titan of the
future,” has the sun in his trousers. This is the light of the approaching, as
yet unknown day. The new government is merciless and cruel.
If this is indeed the meaning, it raises the problem of Lenin’s ambiguous
characterization. Tolstoy, whose anarchism and pro-peasant stance Burliuk
admired, and whose pacifism and belief in equality inspired many followers,
seems in the painting to have been demoted to a beast of burden. He pulls the
plow, while Lenin directs it. The painting could equally well be interpreted
as suggesting that Lenin and Tolstoy represent very different ideas. Burliuk’s
own sympathies seem to have been closer to Tolstoy’s. In his memoirs he
describes his early enthusiasm for “the simplicity” of Tolstoy and Thoreau
(Burliuk 1994, 107). Among Burliuk’s many jottings in his Syracuse archive
can be found Tolstoy’s words on the powerful urge to happiness, one that
moves outside known rules and desires to capture everything around itself in
threads of love, like a spider. This message was, in the end, far more congenial
to Burliuk than Lenin’s bolshevism. The attempt to conjoin the two figures in
this painting therefore appears incoherent in ideological terms. The persistent
fascination with Tolstoy is all the more interesting because in 1912, when the
futurists had scandalized Petersburg society during their performances at the
Brodiachaia Sobaka (Wandering Dog) restaurant in which they denounced
all the art of the past, Burliuk had described Tolstoy as a “society gossip”
(svetskaia spletnitsa), a comment that caused an uproar and caused an elderly
lady to be carried out after fainting (Krusanov 2003, 105).
In 1929 Burliuk published a long poem entitled “Velikii krotkii
bolshevik” (The Great Gentle Bolshevik). Here Tolstoy emerges as a “shep-
herd” concerned with the fate of the poor and the values of a simple life.
Burliuk sees in the writer an early expression of the “bolshevik nature” and
refers to him as “the most gentle bolshevik” (Burliuk 1928–29, 12–13).
In general, Burliuk’s attempts to describe his intuitions were not
helpful. A bemused reporter for the New York’s Sun from 25 March 1929
has recreated a conversation with the artist, who is described as wearing a
“twelve-color waistcoat” and sporting a “five-legged, chicken-headed bull”
painted in bright red upon his left cheek. He is reported as discussing an
art which will express the soul, not gross, material things. It is the soul that
counts, always. This is the very heart of Mr. Burliuk’s credo:
Like the Hindu yogis he has been able, by contemplation, to throw himself
into such an ineffable state of mind that he can perceive the imperceptible,
vision the invisible, behold the unseeable and put down upon canvas
that which not only does not exist but never did exist. This is the fourth
dimensional idea in the new art, and it takes a rattling good man to get away
with that stuff.
[…] “Man’s organism embraces the world through his senses,”
Mr. Burliuk continued, “but the hypothesis of five senses is incorrect. There
are more. There are physical and metaphysical objects. Between two ‘real’
physical skyscrapers there exists a third created at the intersection of the
mentally prolonged surfaces of the ‘real’ structures. Between two living
beings there is always a third—the abstract and metaphysical.” (Hill 1929)
In a more lucid explanation he denies the idea that art copies nature,
advancing instead the idea that it is analogous to musical expression, and
goes on to highlight the elements of rhythm, movement, color, special con-
struction, and texture (Burliuk 1994, 131). Art, he assures us, requires a
special sensitivity and can only be revolutionary in the novelty of its forms.
He categorically rejects the rationalist and utilitarian views of Nikolai
Chernyshevskii, Dmitrii Pisarev and of Russia’s critical realists, in this way
indirectly criticizing socialist realism (Burliuk 1994, 136). In opposition to
these utilitarian approaches to art he defends modernism and the vision of
the individual artist. The fact that in making these points he immediately
turns to a discussion of Tolstoy suggests a link between his impressionistic
paintings of the living, breathing steppe and a Tolstoyan sense of awe before
the infinite complexity and intricacy of nature’s designs.
Most frequently Burliuk preferred to describe the process of creating
new forms as the product of intuition guided by the observation of nature.
In the end, therefore, he did not bring a “wild beauty” into art simply in
order to scandalize accepted taste, but was also an artist who had at an
early age been enchanted by the earth’s abundance and beauty. This second
Burliuk was perhaps the deeper one.
One of his nature poems is called “Nezabvennaia vesna” (Unforgettable
Spring):
I dreamed of silent steppes
Away from the railway lines
Where we wandered in those golden years
Of our excitement in youthful word praise
[…………………………………]
I remember the ancient home that sheltered us,
The shadow of the green lampshade,
A picture dear to my heart:
Peaceful daily life and the labor of the countryside
……………………………………
I shall never forget how you said
Quiet! Listen how the grass grows!
This is the urge for vital ideals,
This is the head of a new life!6
6 Mne prigrezilis stepi glukhie,

V storone ot zheleznykh dorog,
Gde bluzhdali my v gody zlatye,
Svoi mladoi slavoslovia vostorg.
[……………………………….]
Like Antaeus who needed to touch the earth in order to regain strength,
the artist kept returning to the mysterious powers he had first sensed in the
steppe. The memory always rejuvenated him. Even towards the end of his
life, on 22 June 1959, he wrote:
I have reached seventy-eight today.
And I stand at the threshold of discoveries.
The stubbornest of Cossacks ever ready to campaign
For the sake of another pole Achievement!7
David Burliuk. Two Ukrainian Girls, 1948.
Pomniu dom, nas iutivshii, starinnyi,

Abazhura zelenogo ten,—
Doroguiu dlia serdtsa kartinu:
Byt pokoinyi i trud dereven.
………………………………….
Ne zabudu kak ty mne skazala
Tishe! Slushai rastet kak trava!
Zdes stremlene k zhivym idealam,
Zdes—noveishaia zhizn glava! (Syracuse University, box 7)
7 Mne semdesiat vosmoi poshel segodnia god.
I ia stoiu na grani otkrovenii.
Uporneishii kazak, vsegda gotov pokhod
Vo imia poliusa inogo dostizhenia! (“Stikhi” 6)
David Burliuk. Uncle and His Niece, 1950s.
Even when dealing with urban themes, Burliuk’s art and poetry
maintain an anti-urban stance and draws on the outsider’s viewpoint.
Postupalskii has explained the artist’s turn to the archaic and appeals to
“nature” as the result of drawing on subconscious impressions formed
during childhood (Postupalskii 1932, 7). The ability to constantly stand in
wonder at the world gave his art a freshness and vigor that appealed to
many. Henry Miller was an admirer. He wrote to Burliuk on 15 November
1954 from Big Sur, California, that he had “often stood enraptured” before
the artist’s canvases, particularly his “Southern scenes” which “were orgias-
tic in color and rhythm” (Syracuse University, Correspondence, Miller). In
fact, Burliuk’s ability to capture nature had been noticed by his earliest crit-
ics. In 1909, Andre Benois had written: “His pictures […] are full of a great
feeling for nature and portray with originality the august despondency of
the steppe expanse” (Benois 1909; quoted in Basner 1995, 24).
These considerations lead one to think that the interpretation of
Burliuk’s art has been too narrowly focused on an aesthetic of rupture, a
“futurist” desire to surprise or shock. This feature of his work has deflected
attention from the cult of vitality that sustained him through a long
career. Not only do his early paintings of the steppe delight in a universe
alive with countless life forms, so do his pictures of Japanese landscapes,
Mexican street scenes, and Long Island villages. Significantly, people in

these pictures melt into the landscape, becoming part of nature’s universe.
Individuality is deemphasized, seemingly humbled and dwarfed against the
vastness of the sky and the open plain. Perhaps the original inspiration for
this art, and the key to understanding his evolution, lies in his feeling for
the steppe as an Arcadia, an unspoiled, fertile land with links to ancient cul-
tures. Contemplating the steppe provided Burliuk with a repertoire of ways
to make art new, and to stimulate intense creative excitement in himself.
Although the turn to primitivism first appeared in the Hylaean period, it
remained an inspiration throughout his life. He took elements of the steppe
“myth” that already existed in Polish, Russian and Ukrainian cultures,
and refashioned them with an eye to both affronting and enlightening the
contemporary public.
Kazimir Malevich’s
Autobiography and Art
In 1988–91 retrospective exhibitions of Malevich’s work were held in St.

Petersburg (then still named Leningrad), Moscow, Amsterdam, Los Angeles,
Washington, and New York. They signaled belated recognition in the West
of the artist as a major force in the avant-garde, and were the first significant
presentations of his art since the retrospective in Kyiv in 1930, which was also
the last to be held during Malevich’s lifetime.1 His life and work have contin-
ued to attract interest. He is now sometimes called the central figure in the
Russian avant-garde (Vakar and Mikhienko 2004, vol. 1, 5). At the same time,
however, the continued appearance of new materials culled from recently
opened archives and the publication of a substantial memoir literature on the
artist have not clarified many puzzling questions. The impressive two-volume
collection of writings, letters and memoirs published in 2004 by Irina Vakar
and Tatiana Mikhienko brought to light previously unknown facts about
the artist’s life and his relations with other figures in the art world. Tetiana
Filevska’s volume published in 2016 made available Malevich’s Ukrainian-
language articles, minutes of meetings, exhibition catalogue, four previously
unpublished articles, and notes taken during Malevich’s seminars. The mate-
rials were found in 2015 in the personal archive of Marian Kropyvnytskyi,
Malevich’s assistant during the time he worked in Kyiv. These discoveries,
however, have not produced a consensus among scholars concerning key
issues in the artist’s biography and work. In fact, to some degree they have
highlighted the conflicting judgements and polarizing viewpoints that have
characterized discussions for more than a century.
1 Two exhibition catalogues were produced, both entitled Kazimir Malevich 1878–1935.
The first, edited by W.A.L. Beeren and J.M. Joosten, at the Amsterdam: Stedelijk
Museum in 1988, and the second, edited by Jeanne D’Andrea, in Los Angeles at the
Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center in 1990.
Kazimir Malevich’s Autobiography and Art 103
Over the last three decades art critics in the West have frequently
described Malevich as “an enigmatic figure” (Golding 1991, 16). Although
hopeful comments have occasionally been made that the meaning of his
paintings are “beginning to be adequately understood” (Crone and Moos
1991, 8), in the 2004 Irina Vakar noted that enormous challenges still face
those who try to interpret the artist’s work: readers often find Malevich’s
own attempts to explain his art impenetrable, and at a deep level his
belief system continues to mystify (Vakar 2004, 577). According to Vakar,
Malevich realized that he was unable to explain his insights. He was “a for-
eigner in every social milieu” and his devotion to an art that was “in the
highest degree elitist [elitarnomy] made him inaccessible to most people
surrounding him.” As a result, he became convinced that society and the
“new art” were incompatible (Vakar, 578).
The new materials have, however, allowed Malevich to be viewed
as a figure not formed exclusively by the atmosphere of Moscow and
St. Petersburg (named Petrograd in 1914, Leningrad in 1924, and again
St. Petersburg in 1991), or by the years immediate preceding and following
1917.2 Even so, his youth, family life and existence prior to the move to
Moscow in August 1904 at the age of twenty-six are still under researched.
In Vakar’s words they have remained “an almost complete blank spot”
(Vakar, 578).
In this situation his autobiographies represent an important key to
understanding his work and provide reference points for many events in
his life. Since the longer of the two was written near the end of his life,
it was conceived with the purpose of presenting a final retrospective and
guide to his entire development. These writings focus heavily on his early
life in Ukrainian villages and small towns, and explain his debt to the icon
and folk arts. One of the crucial and most puzzling issue they raise is the
artist’s continual focus on the rural-urban divide, which appears to con-
found any narrative that concentrates on Malevich as a defender of a revo-
lutionary, urban, machine art. Instead, the first commissar of the Bolshevik
Revolution and theorist of the visionary new emerges in these autobiogra-
phies as an artist inspired by peasant primitivism.
Two autobiographies
The evidence offered by his autobiographical essays deserves closer atten-
tion than it has received. The shorter one from 1923–25, and especially
2 This has often been the case. See, for example, John E. Bowlt 1990.
the second, much longer account from 1933 represent Malevich’s attempt
to explain his evolution up to the moment when suprematism’s appear-
ance was announced at the “0-10” exhibition, the so-called “Last Futurist
Exhibition” held in Petrograd in 1915. It was the first to included a large
number of suprematist paintings.3
Malevich’s celebration of the village and aversion to factory life might
come as a shock to readers more familiar with his Moscow and Petersburg
periods. This validation of his early life presents some difficulties for biog-
raphers and critics alike. In the 1933 text Malevich describes his earliest
memories of sugar-beet plantations in Ukraine, where his father worked
as an assistant director and a sort of technical engineer. Because Seweryn
Malevich found work in different places during the 1880s and 1890s,
Kazimir’s entire childhood and youth were spent traveling with his family
throughout the length and breadth of Ukraine.4 He lived in the town of
Yampil (Yampol in Russian) near Kamianets-Podilsk until the age of twelve,
then in Avdiivka (Avdeevka) and Koriukivka (Koriukovka) near Chernihiv,
in Maivka (Maevka) near the border with Bessarabia, in Parkhomivka
(Parkhomovka) and Vovchok (Volchok) near Kharkiv, and then, until he
was about seventeen, in Konotop and Bilopillia (Belopole), towns situated
between Chernihiv and Sumy.
The autobiography describes his earliest impressions, which are of
young women in colorful dress working enormous fields. Thousands of
acres required cultivation by thousands of people in order to supply the
sugar refineries. He contrasts the beauty of the land and peasant life with
the ugliness and oppressive nature of factory existence. The young Malevich
perceives machines as predatory creatures, the most dangerous of which
must be caged like dogs to prevent them from injuring a person (Vakar
and Mikhienko, vol. 1, 18). The food eaten by peasants is far superior to
the buckwheat and stinking cabbage soup that is the daily fare of factory
workers. He describes the diet of peasants as consisting of pure fatback with
garlic; Ukrainian borshch made with fresh beans, potato and turnip; bread
(palianytsi), knyshes with onions, mamalyga (corn meal) with milk, butter
3 A translation into English of the first autobiography, made by Xenia Glowacki-

Prus and Arnold McMillin, appeared in Andersen 1968, vol. 2, 147–54 as “IZ 1/42:
Avtobiograficheskie zametki, 1923–1925.” The second autobiography was first published
in Khardzhiev 1976, 85–127. An English translation, made by Alan Upchurch, appeared
in Malevich 1985. Abridged and revised translations were published in Malevich 1990,
169–75. The two autobiographies are republished in full in Vakar and Mikhienko, vol. 1,
17–45.
4 Seweryn is the Polish spelling. It is Severin in Russian, Severyn in Ukrainian.
and sour cream. The life of the peasantry fills him with wonder: “In the
winter, while the factory laborers work day and night, the peasants weave
amazing materials, sew clothes; the girls sew and embroider, sing songs and
dance; the boys play violins” (Vakar and Mikhienko, 19). Factory workers
have none of this. Even their sugar is inferior to the honey produced by the
villagers. This sets him to thinking that apiaries should replace sugar beet
fields, making unnecessary the production of sugar in dismal, regimented
factories. If that were to occur he would be able to listen to the endless stories
of old men “who know everything about bees” (Vakar and Mikhienko, 19).
His preference for village children over those of factory workers is so strong
that he organizes a pitched battle, leading the village youth in heroic and
victorious combat.
In this way Malevich describes his childhood as a psychological
transformation, a “going native” that results in an almost complete iden-
tification with the peasantry. He spends half the narrative describing how
this process occurred: “I imitated the entire life of the peasants. I rubbed
the bread crust with garlic, ate fat back while holding it in my fingers, ran
barefoot and refused to wear shoes” (Vakar and Mikhienko, 20). He mar-
vels at the way the peasants make their own clothes, dress up “in colorful
patterns” for special occasions, engage in dignified ceremonies and rituals,
such as the custom for a bride and bridesmaids to travel through the village
solemnly inviting families to the planned wedding.
However, it was not simply the food, dress and customs that thrilled
the young Malevich. The autobiography makes clear that his contact with
the peasantry imprinted him with an aesthetic. He thought of village
people as “clean and well dressed” (chistymi i nariadnymi), two adjectives
that become shorthand for his description of the qualities he admired in
art (Vakar and Mikhienko, 20). At the end of his description of life in the
countryside, he emphasizes that his sympathies for the village lies above all
in the way the people practiced art: “I watched with great excitement how
the peasants made wall paintings, and would help them cover the floors
of their huts with clay and make designs on the stove. The peasant women
were excellent at drawing roosters, horses and flowers. The paints were all
prepared on the spot from various clays and dyes. I tried to transfer this
culture onto the stoves in my own house, but it didn’t work. They told me I
was making a mess, so I worked on fences, barn walls, etc.” This, concludes
the author, “was the background against which the feeling for art and
artistry [khudozhestvu] developed within me” (Vakar and Mikhienko, 20).
The Malevich family led a liminal existence, situated between town
and village, urban and rural life. The autobiography demonstrates that
the young artist loved the countryside, but it also shows that the modern,
urban world provided employment. Kazimir and his brother worked on
the railway. His father Seweryn, as a factory supervisor, would visit Kyiv
annually to sign contracts for the sugar refineries, or would converse with
engineers in Konotop and other towns. The family led a liminal life in other
ways also. On Seweryn’s side it could trace its descent from sixteenth-cen-
tury Polish gentry (Vakar and Mikhienko, 372–73). Nonetheless, Seweryn’s
working life was spent in factories, where he often put in twelve-hours
shifts, frequently at night. The rest of his life included interaction with the
rural intelligentsia, mainly with Ukrainian doctors, priests, agronomists,
and teachers. Seweryn was a skeptical man who attended both Orthodox
and Catholic church services and, to amuse himself, occasionally invited a
priest from both churches to his house at the same time. Kazimir’s mother,
Ludwika, kept a record of neighboring Polish families. She wrote poems in
Polish and sang songs in the language. Although the family was Catholic, at
least in outward form in the case of Seweryn and Kazimir, both his father
and the young Malevich appear to have spoken ironically about religion.
The language of communication in the family was Polish, but Kazimir grew
up also speaking Ukrainian, which he knew well, as his sister has attested
(Naiden and Horbachov 1993, 221). This, of course, was only natural given
his surroundings. At one point he describes his impressions as a child when
icon painters from Russia arrived to work in Bilopillia. Significantly, he
remembers clearly the fact that they spoke Russian, a detail that his mind
retained as memorable and unusual (Naiden and Horbachov, 23).
Awareness of the city’s art came gradually, first through pictures seen
in shop windows in Kyiv, then through a meeting with the painter Mykola
(Nikolai) Pymonenko, whose works made a powerful impression on him.
On many of the easels he saw in Pymonenko’s studio, he informs, “stood pic-
tures representing life in Ukraine” (Naiden and Horbachov, 25). Pymonenko
taught in the Kyiv School of Drawing, to which Malevich applied and which
he may have visited in 1894–96 (Naiden and Horbachov, 25). It was at this
time that he decided to become a painter. Charlotte Douglas has noted that
Pymonenko’s subjects, “drawn from rural life—villagers at work, haying
scenes, and full-length portraits of peasants—later became Malevich’s own”
(Douglas 1994, 8). One of Malevich’s most famous late paintings from 1930,
The Flower Girl, recalls the eponymous work by Pymonenko and was con-
ceived, no doubt, as a way of paying homage to the older painter.
In 1896 the family moved to Kursk, where the young Malevich was
influenced by Shishkin, Repin and other Wanderers (Peredvizhniki), whom
he studied from reproductions. His intensive contacts with Ukrainians,
however, continued. It is worth noting that this Russian province neigh-

boring Ukraine had a mixed Russian-Ukrainian population at the time. In
1926 over half a million people, or 19.1 percent of the oblast, identified as
Ukrainian. Ethnographically, some areas were, in fact, entirely Ukrainian,
and were considered such by contemporaries.5 It is not surprising, there-
fore, that the painter’s closest friends in Kursk were often Ukrainians. The
list included the artist Lev Kvachevskyi, with whom Malevich continued
to correspond in future years, Valentyn Loboda, who had studied art with
the great Ukrainian modernist Oleksandr Murashko, and Mykola (Nikolai
Roslavets), the avant-garde composer and conductor who later moved to
Kharkiv. Malevich underlines Kvachevskyi’s Ukrainian background: “Lev
Kvachevskyi was my very best friend. We couldn’t live without each another
[...] Every day in summer, spring and winter we’d walk thirty versts for our
sketching sessions [...] While we ate we’d discuss various matters, or rem-
inisce about Ukraine. We were both Ukrainians” (Vakar and Mikhienko,
vol. 1, 26). In 1904 at the age of twenty-six Malevich moved to Moscow.
Even then he spent his summers in Kursk, only making the complete move
with his family in 1907.
Kursk did, however, produce a change in his views. Vakar has
suggested that during his time there he underwent a radicalization, which
was expressed in his atheism (he apparently refused to baptize his children)
and in his anger over the police supervision of his two brothers, Anton and
Mechislav, and Mechislav’s wife Maria (whose maiden name was Zgleits).
It is likely that the stay in Kursk transformed Malevich from a “respectable
young man into a rebel and nihilist” (Vakar 2004, 582).
However, it was in Moscow, where he attended the studio of Fedor
Rerberg and visited local galleries, that an even more radical transformation
took place. He discovered that icons had an unexpectedly strong impact
on him: “I felt something familiar and wonderful in them” (Vakar and
Mikhienko 2004, 28). At that moment he recalled his childhood, “the
horses, flowers and roosters of the primitive murals and wood carvings,”
and sensed a bond between peasant art and the icon. The emotional and
spiritual elements in icon art suddenly revealed to him the “high-cultural
form of peasant art” (Vakar and Mikhienko, 28). His autobiography
continues: “I came to understand the peasants through the icon, saw in the
5 The region of Ostrogozhsk, for example, had been settled by Ukrainian Cossacks, who
after 1783 had mostly been enserfed by Catherine the Great. The 1897 census revealed
that this area was still over ninety percent Ukrainian. This is why after 1917 the Central
Rada wanted to include it within the borders of the Ukrainian People’s Republic as
province to be named Podon. See Zhyvotko 1943, 10.
faces not saints, but ordinary people. And [I understood] the colors and the
painter’s attitude” (Vakar and Mikhienko, 28).
Moscow was therefore a further stage in his development. Through
the art of the icon, he tells us, he was able to grasp the emotional art of
the peasantry, which he had loved earlier but had been incapable of
explaining to himself. As a result, Malevich rejected perspective, anatomy
and the entire realist-naturalist approach that he had cultivated while
studying the Wanderers. He decided that icon painters had achieved a high
degree of technical mastery, and had succeeded in conveying content in
an anti-anatomical way, outside the laws of perspective. They created color
and form through a purely emotional way of approaching a theme.
It was then, he tells us, that he realized there was a direct artistic
connection between the icon, on the one hand, and the little horses and
roosters on peasant walls, along with peasant costumes and domestic tools,
on the other. He informs the reader that he decided not to follow the classi-
cal art of antiquity, nor its revival in the Renaissance, which he now viewed
as an art for beauty (dlia krasoty). Nor did he follow the realist art of the
Wanderers (Peredvizhniki), which he now characterized as propaganda art.
Instead, he decided to remain “on the side of peasant art” and “began paint-
ing pictures in the primitive spirit” (Vakar and Mikhienko, 29). In 1910–13
he first imitated icons, then painted peasants at work, people in suburbs
and small town, and finally explored the world of town signs.
This narrative in large part contradicts the idea of Malevich’s artis-
tic life as beginning with his move to Moscow, where he supposedly
embraced the new art of the city and the machine. In critical literature there
has been a tendency to focus heavily on the exhibitions in Moscow and
St. Petersburg/Leningrad, and to ignore his previous life. This is to some
degree understandable given the amount of information available about
the artist’s life during the latter periods. Naturally, he was keen to escape
provincial surroundings and to gain artistic enlightenment, and his artis-
tic projects in both Moscow and St. Petersburg succeeded in placing him
indisputably in the forefront of artistic innovation. One can agree that
these two cities “were places that spoke of reform and revolution” and that
they represented for Malevich centers both of “thought” and “intrigue”
(Crone and Moos 1991, 51–52). However, Vakar describes the Moscow
period as still one of the least studied and most interesting in the artist’s
life: “In ten years, from a completely unknown self-taught provincial he
was transformed into the leader of the newest artistic movement, one sum-
moned to complete the development of contemporary painting” (Vakar
2004, 583). A reader who takes seriously the description of his evolution
presented in the autobiography must deal with an inescapable irony: he

rejected the established, long respected art of the city’s academies and gal-
leries, and rediscovered the art of the rural folk from whom he had recently
departed.
It is sometimes overlooked that radical experimentation can be
inspired and conducted outside “centers,” and that the latter frequently serve
as bastions of reactionary, imperialist or authoritarian thinking. Young
people who journey to capitals can and often do make the trip with a view
to overthrowing dominant intellectual and artistic trends, and to introduc-
ing a radical perspective that they have incubated elsewhere. This kind of
oppositional stance toward the imperial capitals has frequently appeared in
Ukrainian cultural history as an anti-colonial reflex. It can be read clearly,
for example, in the work of Taras Shevchenko, who elevated Ukrainian his-
tory and culture as part of a romantic rediscovery of native traditions. Both
tsarist officials and metropolitan intellectuals quickly rejected this poet’s
construction of what they considered a highly problematic identity and
assessed his writings as an anti-colonial “writing back” against imperial
civilization.
To be sure, Malevich’s autobiographical sketches might have been
conceived as part of a longer, never completed account, one that that would
probably have given more space to his life in Moscow and Petersburg/
Leningrad. This, however, is doubtful. Malevich wrote a great deal about
his life in the two Russian capitals elsewhere. In his Ukrainian essays pub-
lished in 1928–30 he described, for example, his own evolution in the
Russian cities against the background of modern art’s development.6 The
point of the autobiographical essays is to underline the importance of peas-
ant traditions as wellsprings of inspiration throughout the artist’s life. It is
telling that when translations of the 1933 autobiography were first pub-
lished, the sections dealing with the painter’s early life and his Ukrainian
connections were sometimes omitted.7 This part of Malevich’s narrative
wrenches attention away from his life in the two capitals, and offers in
place of the city, technology and machine a startlingly different interpretive
matrix. His “apologia of the peasantry,” as Vakar has noted, began as a rejec-
tion of positivism. Although in his cubo-futurist years, 1910–13, the artist
demonstrated a typically futurist attraction to the machine and dynamism,
the autobiography suggests that all along he was steadily working toward
6 These appeared mostly in the journal Nova generatsiia and have been republished in
Horbachov 2006, 28–161, and Filevska 2016, 29–120.
7 This is the case, for example, both in the Upchurch translation (Malevich 1985) and in
the version published in Kazimir Malevich 1990.
solving other issues. Vakar argues that Malevich found constraining the
antithesis between village and city, nature and civilization: “His imagina-
tion reached for the limitless, in which earthly antinomies would be over-
come” (Vakar 2004, 580). According to this interpretation, his early life and
experiences must be seen as crucial. They continually inspired his visionary
work and stimulated his insights into the power and nature of art.
As will be seen, suprematism’s links to peasant crafts can be traced
throughout the post-1915 period. Its designs were introduced to folk peas-
ant artists by Exter (Birnie Danzker 1993, 15, 104–5).8 Along with two other
Ukrainian women artists, Yevheniia Prybylska and Natalia Davydova, she
facilitated joint projects between avant-gardists like Malevich and “peas-
ant-futurists,” by whom she meant folk artists from the cooperatives of
Skoptsi near Poltava and Verbivka near Kyiv. In 1915–16 embroideries
on scarves and pillows, and patterns on kilims—all based on suprematist
designs—were produced in these village cooperatives and sold in Kyiv,
Poltava, Moscow, and Berlin as examples of folk production (Naiden and
Horbachov 1993, 221). However, the influences also flowed continually in
the other direction. Exter introduced traditional folk elements into avant-
garde art, and Malevich himself painted stoves in the traditional Ukrainian
manner (Zhdanova 1982, 34).
In this context the clash with ideas expressed by Malevich in his Non-
Objective World, published in German translation in 1927, is arresting. He
made the following claim:
The pictorial culture of the provinces is incensed at the art of the big
city (Futurism, etc.) and seeks to combat it, because it is not objective-
representational and consequently seems unsound. If the viewpoint that
Cubism, Futurism, and Suprematism are abnormal were correct, one would
necessarily have to conclude that the city itself, the dynamic center is an
unwholesome phenomenon because it is largely responsible for the “morbid
alteration” in art and the creators of art.
The new art movements can exist only in a society that has absorbed the
tempo of the big city, the metallic quality of industry. No Futurism can exist
where society still maintains an idyllic, rural way of life (Chipp 1971, 339).9
8 For Exter’s comments on Sobachko-Shostak, see “On the Works of Evgenia Pribilska
and Ganna Sobachko,” in Ukrajinska Avangarda, 1990.
9 The work was originally published in a German translation from the original Russian in
Kasimir Malevich, Die Gegenstandslose Welt, Bauhaus Book II (Munich: Langen, 1927).
For an English translation, see Malevich, The Non-Objective World (1959).
How should one explain Malevich’s fulminations in the 1920s against

the dominance of “provincial” art in the cities. A number of comments
can be offered. Firstly, by “provincial” Malevich did not mean folk
primitivism, but realist and representational art. He says precisely this
in his autobiography when he argues that, although the futurists rejected
Renaissance classics and the authority of the ancients, along with artists
who subordinated themselves to societal demands, “we never rejected [ne
borolis protiv] folk art or icon painters, or talented sign painters [vyvesoch-
nikov]” (Vakar and Mikhienko 2004, vol. 1, 37).
Secondly, he opposed the idea of “reviving” the icon or the fresco in the
sense of providing a stylization, a copy of old examples. The key thing, he
argues in his autobiography, is the emotional power encoded in a work by a
peasant artist, sign or icon painter. Therefore, the primitivists he was close
to—Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova and David Burliuk—“belonged
to a style [that represented] the peasant attitude toward phenomena,
worked with the same emotional forms” (Vakar and Mikhienko, 37). They
merely added to them elements learned in the city schools.
Thirdly, Malevich’s outlook probably changed after 1927, as his views
on urbanism, industrialism and the “metallization” of culture underwent a
transformation. As will be argued, his works from the Kyiv period of 1928–
30 suggest an implicit rejection of earlier opinions, such as the following
passage from Non-Objective World:
The provinces fight for their tranquility. They sense in metallization the
expression of a new way of life in which small, primitive establishments
and the comforts of country living will come to an end. The provinces
therefore protest against everything which comes from the city, everything
which seems new and unfamiliar, even when this happens to be new farm
machinery (Chipp 1971, 339).
Although it is widely recognized that much modernist and avant-garde

art drew inspiration from primitivism, in Malevich’s case the connection
has been obscured by his image as a bolshevik revolutionary and defender
of machine civilization. The autobiography challenges this image and sug-
gests that he was drawing intuitively on the power of ancient, peasant forms
in art.
There are, of course, other ways of interpreting his artistic evolution.
Charlotte Douglas has pointed to a mixture of aesthetic and intellectual influ-
ences contributing to the genesis of the first suprematist paintings in 1915.
These include Henri Bergson, Umberto Boccioni and contemporary specu-
lation concerning the fourth dimension (Douglas 1980, 1, 3, 67). Oleksandr
Naiden and Dmytro Horbachov have made a case for the artist’s roots in spe-
cifically Ukrainian folklore of Yampol county in the Podillia region, where
he spent his early years: “Only in 1976 when his autobiography, in which
he spoke of his love of the peasantry, appeared in print in Stockholm did it
become clear that the closest analogy to his suprematism are the geomet-
rical forms of wall paintings in the homes of Podillia, the pysanky [painted
Easter eggs] with their astral signs, the patterns of the plakhta [woven wom-
an’s skirt]—[all of which express] the magical code of universal elements
(fire, earth, water). His pictures, in which sharply delineated patterns are
scattered on a white background, capture the spirit of folk cosmology. The
only difference is that the established order, embodied in the harmony of the
peasant ornamental ‘tree of life’ is disturbed, dramatized and made dynamic
in the spirit of the breakneck twentieth century” (Naiden and Horbachov
1993, 221–22).
These two Ukrainian researchers point out that the black square, circle
and cross have for many centuries performed a symbolic function in folk
beliefs and customs. Their presence is widespread in houses, graveyards
and on clothing. The cross, for example, performs decorative, ritualistic
and symbolic functions. The Yampil region is known both for its short,
stone crosses and its tall, light wooden ones, which are often painted. These
abound not only in graveyards but also on roadsides, and crosses as details
appear on pysanky, kilims and embroideries. They symbolize salvation and
protection. In combination with the vase and bird the cross represents the
tree of life (Naiden and Horbachov, 216). A simple black cross on the face
was also typical of dolls made by peasants from Podillia. This image was
used by Malevich in his works from 1928–30.10
The years 1928–30 in Kyiv

Recently published memoirs indicate that even when he lived in Moscow
and Petrograd/Leningrad Malevich was often in contact with “countrymen”
from Ukraine, among whom there was a strong contingent of avant-gardists
with an interest in primitivism. These included Tatlin, who was his constant
competitor for primacy in the avant-garde, Alexander (Oleksandr)
Shevchenko, and David Burliuk.
From 1926, when the government closed the Leningrad State Institute
of Artistic Culture (GINKhUK) and merged its staff with the State Institute
for Art History (GIII), Malevich was pressured to close his laboratories. In
10 For illustrations see Naiden and Horbachov 1993, 217, 219.

1927 he traveled abroad to exhibit his work in Berlin and Warsaw. In the
latter city he described himself as Polish in an effort to obtain a job in that
country. He then visited relatives in Kyiv, where Tatlin, who left Leningrad
in 1925, was teaching at the Kyiv Art Institute (KKhI). Two other friends,
Andrii Taran and Lev Kramarenko, were also lecturing there, along with
Oleksandr Bohomazov and Viktor Palmov, who were exploring the use of
color. The Institute’s ambitious director, Ivan Vrona, hoped that Archipenko
would join the faculty in 1929, but the latter, who was in the United States
at that time, declined the invitation. Vrona, however, convinced Malevich
to lecture at the Kyiv Art Institute in the years 1928–30.
In these two years Malevich published fourteen articles in Ukrainian
in the Kharkiv monthly Nova generatsiia (New Generation), and the Kyiv
Avanhard-Almanakh (Avant-garde Almanac, 1930). He planned to develop
these articles into a book on the history and theory of the new art. Under
the title “Izologia” (Artology) it was rejected by Russian publishers. At this
time Matiushin’s long essay on the fourth dimension, motion and expanded
vision appeared in Nova generatsiia.11 Increasing attacks on the avant-garde
made this journal one of very few available publishing outlets for Malevich
and Matiushin.
Nova generatsiia promoted itself as an international journal, publishing
versions of its articles in English, French, German or Esperanto, and pro-
viding abstracts in foreign languages. The editorial board included figures
such as László Moholy-Nagy and Johannes Becher, and the journal’s cover
displayed the names of Russian avant-gardists, including Osip Brik, Aleksei
Gan, Sergei Eisenstein, Vladimir Maiakovsky, and Viktor Shklovsky. Like
the Kyiv Art Institute it emphasized formal, constructivist concerns, and
an international perspective. Malevich found a supportive environment in
Kyiv and made a point of identifying himself as a Ukrainian. His younger
sister Victoria (married name Zaitseva) recalled that he always recorded
his nationality as Ukrainian on official documents, and insisted that other
family members should do the same (Naiden and Horbachov 1993, 221).12
Mykhailo Boichuk also found a refuge in the Kyiv Art Institute in these
years. Boichuk and Malevich met frequently for discussions in 1928–30.
Boichuk came from a peasant background in the same Podillia region
that Malevich had lived in as a child. While both had been influenced by
symbolism and the Nabis artists, Boichuk had actually studied in a Parisian
11 See: M. Matiushyn, “Sproba novoho vidchuttia prostorony” (Attempt at a New Feeling

for Space), Nova generatsiia 11 (1928): 311–22. For an English translation see Mudrak
1986, 227–43.
12 He did this on all forms. For an example see Vakar and Mikhienko 2004, vol. 1, 549.
studio of the Nabis. Both also had studied the forms and symbolic codes of
iconic and primitive art.
Malevich’s arguments with his Kyiv colleagues were candidly expressed
in lectures, articles and letters.13 His criticisms of Boichuk’s monumentalism
were published in 1930 in an article for Avanhard-Almanakh (Avant-garde
Almanach). In it Malevich opposed the use of a fresco form that he felt had
developed out of monastic principles and canons and was inappropriate in
a proletarian state (Malevich 2016, 117). However, it has been suggested
that the argument between Boichuk and Malevych was between two indi-
viduals who began from a common departure point, the icon, and had then
moved in different directions (Naiden and Horbachov 1993, 229).
The heavy attacks on Boichuk and his school in these years may have
spurred Malevich into rethinking his views of the rural/urban dichotomy.
Moreover, his discussions with Boichuk may have inspired him to return
to painting the peasantry in the years 1928–30 and then later to rework the
genre of Renaissance portraiture, in which Boichuk was intensely interested.
However, it is Malevich’s now famous series of peasant paintings from
1928–30 that have attracted most attention. They differ markedly from
those done in the serene style of 1911–13 that evokes a stable commu-
nity living close to nature. These later works with their disturbing blank
faces and armless figures floating in space are now often read as a protest
against the treatment of villagers who were being collectivized, arrested or
deported. The peasants in these portraits appear helpless, isolated and dis-
placed. Untitled (Man Running) (1928–30) portrays a figure running from a
sword toward a cross. On the back of A Complex Presentiment (Half-Length
Figure in a Yellow Shirt) (1928–32), Malevich wrote: “The composition is
made up of the elements of the sensation of emptiness, loneliness and the
hopelessness of life. 1913, Kuntsevo.” This picture, like many others, was
backdated because such images and sentiments, if they referenced con-
temporary reality, were punishable with imprisonment. Sarabianov has
described the figure in the last picture as follows: “cramped by the expanse,
the neck is stretched, the arms extended. Edged to the right, the figure has
lost its dominant position on the surface of the canvas and is torn from the
center. These devices symbolize the uprooting of mankind, its proximity
and muteness, its captivity and doom” (Sarabianov 1991, 146). Today many
13 His discussions with Viktor Palmov and the spectralists were recorded by a student,
Marian Kropyvynskyi, and have now been published in Filevska 2016, 298–329. For
a selection of his letters to Lev Kramarenko and Iryna Zhdanko see Filevska 2016,
263–79. For minutes of meetings in which Malevich participated while in Kyiv see
Filevska 2016, 171–98.
viewers interpret these paintings as Malevich’s presentiment of the enor-

mous tragedy that was about to engulf the peasantry.
His drawings from the period show images of a coffin, a hammer and
sickle, and an Orthodox cross on the faces of peasants. Malevich may in
this way have been recording the widespread sense of an imminent apoc-
alyptic event. In rural areas mass movements had appeared foretelling the
end of the world and the coming of the Antichrist. In folk-songs, which
have survived from these movements, symbols of death, salvation and the
Antichrist were common. They can be linked to the images in Malevich’s
paintings (Naiden and Horbachov 1993, 220). The artist would have been
aware of these movements among the peasantry and likely used symbols
familiar to the popular psyche in order to convey his sense of imminent
disaster.
In spite of the increasingly threatening tone in public discourse,
Malevich was able to hold an exhibition in Moscow at the Tretiakov Gallery
in late 1929, one that was given almost no publicity. Then in Kyiv in 1930
he held what would prove to be his last exhibition. It was a retrospective
for which he selected forty-five works, although a number had been freshly
painted and backdated to avoid the charge that he was commenting on con-
temporary events. At the start of the 1930–31 academic year he also made
plans to take up a permanent teaching post at the Kyiv Art Institute and to
transfer all his works to the city. However, a government order dismissed all
professors who were not members of the party, and Malevich, Boichuk and
Kramarenko, found themselves among those who were fired.
The autobiography was written shortly after this, in 1933, two years
before his death. It can be interpreted as evidence that Malevich was setting
the record straight concerning the sources of his inspiration, reconsidering
some earlier views, and perhaps even expressing a veiled protest against the
forced collectivization, grain requisitioning and the famine that occurred
in that year. These events, which constituted a war on the Ukrainian
countryside and people, led to the death of an estimated four million
peasants. Artists and writers of this period found various ways of encoding
resistance to the régime’s policies and actions. One of the best known is
Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s film Earth (Zemlia, 1930), which ostensibly lauds
the benefits of collectivization, but in fact derives its power from a depiction
of the vitality and beauty of peasant life. Malevich’s autobiography, like his
art of 1928–30, might be viewed as a similar encryption of an oppositional
stance.
Vadym Meller and Sources of
Inspiration in Theater Art1
Vadym Meller is known as one of the most important Ukrainian theater

artists of the twentieth century. Although his contribution to theater design
spanned over forty years, from 1919 until 1961, a period in which he made
sets and costumes for the most prominent Ukrainian stage directors, it was
his work with Bronislava Nijinska’s ballets in 1919–21 and for Les Kurbas’s
Berezil Theater that has come to represent artistic excellence in theater art.
Meller’s long career as chief artistic designer for over a hundred produc-
tions in several leading theaters has left a rich legacy. His artistic evolution
is a complex story. During the twenties, his most creative years, he explored
cubo-futurism and constructivism, before introducing satirical and playful
features, and finally realist, even grotesque, elements into his costume and
set designs. Each phase produced memorable innovative productions and
he became widely known for his versatility and skill.2 It is less well known
that in the years after 1917 he collaborated with the suprematist artist Nina
Henke and the cottage craft industry. Henke, whom he married on August
11, 1919, was a key link between the avant-garde and cottage workers. She
strengthened Meller’s interest in folk decorative arts and introduced him to
the designs of craft workers.
The ethnic and family roots of both Meller and Henke were not in
Ukraine; nor were their origins in any sense proletarian. Meller was born in St.
Petersburg on April 13, 1884 (April 26th, according to the Julian Calendar) to
Georgii and Elena Meller. Georgii served in the Ministry of Justice and became
1 A Ukrainian-language version of this article appeared as “Henii Vadym Mellera: Tanets

ta dekoratyvne mystetstvo v ukrainskomu avanhardi” in Kurbasivski chytannia 7
(2012): 122–37. I would like to thank Brigitta Vadymivna Vetrova for providing access
to materials and for their advice in the preparation of this article. Many of the ideas
expressed here are taken from conversations with her in Kyiv.
2 A noteworthy exhibitions of his work occurred in 2009 at the Museum of Theater, Music
and Cinema Art in Kyiv which presented 54 works from the period 1919–33, including
posters designed by Meller for the Berezil Theater’s productions.
Vadym Meller and Sources of Inspiration in Theater Art 117
a state counselor (statskii sovetnik), the fourth highest rank in the imperial
hierarchy. He was granted the status of hereditary noble (potomstvennyi dvori-
anin) and converted from the Lutheran faith to Orthodoxy in order to accept
the rank. From the time of Peter the Great all Georgii’s relatives had been
Lutherans of Swedish origin. He was the first to marry a non-Swede. Vadym’s
mother Elena was born in Italy of an Italian father and a Greek mother.
Vadym Meller’s personal modesty and sense of restraint have often been
attributed to his Swedish Lutheran background. However, they might also
have been the product of some painful experiences early in life. He was the
younger of two sons. When his older brother, the parent’s favorite, drowned
while swimming in the Dnipro, his mother reportedly turned grey overnight.
For the rest of his life Vadym feared water and dreaded the prospect of any-
one close to him becoming ill. Always careful and meticulous, he developed
a gift for translating every inspiration into harmonious composition.
He entered Kyiv University to study law, but in December 1905 in order
to avoid the revolutionary disturbances that had broken out in the city
his father sent him to Geneva, where he studied art with Franz Roubaud
(Rubo). Upon his return he published his first caricatures in the newspa-
per Kievskaia myst (Kyiv Thought) in 1907, then graduated in law from St.
Vladimir’s University (now Kyiv State University) in 1908. At the time he
was also taking classes at the Kyiv Art School. Upon Roubaud’s recommen-
dation he was able to enter Heinrich Knirr’s school of drawing in Munich,
and then attended the Munich Academy of Arts from 1908–12, where he
met Paul Klee and was introduced by the latter to Kandinsky and other Der
Blaue Reiter artists. In the years 1912–14 he worked in Paris, first in private
studios, then in his own. His work was noted in the press and he was invited
to exhibit in the Salon d’Automne.
Vadym Meller. Sketch for a paint-

ing in cubo-futurist style, 1910s.
Vadym Meller in the early 1920s.

Photographer unknown.
In June 1914, shortly before the First World War broke out, he returned
to Kyiv. Although not required to do military service, he joined a support
organization attached to the Third Army, which served on the Western
front. In the summer of 1918 he returned to Kyiv and in the years 1919–21
worked with Exter and with Bronislava Nijinska’s dance studio.
Nina Henke worked as a student assistant to Exter in the latter’s Kyiv
studio in 1916, where she met Meller.3 Nina’s family on her father’s side
had emigrated from the Netherlands in the days of the Spanish Empire in
order to avoid religious persecution. Her father directed a merchant’s office
in Moscow; her mother was Russian. Nina completed Kyiv’s Levandovska
Gymnasium for girls in 1912 and studied at the Hlukhiv Teachers’ Institute
in 1914. She lost her first job when a teaching supervisor and well-known
reactionary called Derevytskyi charged her with “malicious perversion of
historical facts” and “contact with the Jewish population.” As a result, she
was transferred to the village of Skoptsi near Poltava, where she taught his-
tory, geography and drawing. It was in this now famous village that she met
and began working for Yevheniia Prybylska, a design artist and organizer
of the local cottage industry.
3 Meller’s first wife, Carmen, whom he met while in Paris, and who was of Spanish origin,
returned to France.
From 1916 to 1920 she worked closely with Exter in the latter’s Kyiv studio,
filling orders from Moscow theaters. She helped Exter make the designs for
Alexander (Oleksandr) Tairov’s production of Famira Kifared in the Kamernyi
Theater. Based on the tragedy by Innokentii Annenskii, the production has
been described as “a magnificent parade of Cubism” and is credited with mak-
ing a revolution in theater art (Ratanova 2010, 314). According to Horbachov,
Exter presented antiquity as humanity’s childhood against an intensely blue
background that recalled Sobachko’s paintings (Horbachov 2000, 502). From
1915 Henke also worked independently, completing her own costume designs
and theater backdrops, and producing decorative work for woven materials.
Nina Henke in the 1920s. Photographer

unknown.
Nina Henke. Suprematist Nina Henke. Suprematist

composition produced by composition, 1910s.
Verbivka folk artists, 1910s.
Already in 1915 she headed the Verbivka center in the Kyiv region, and
in this way became a leader of the Kyiv Cottage Industry Society. Prybylska
meanwhile continued to head the center in Skoptsi. These two were in con-
tact with other points of production, such Kaminka (Kamenka in Russian,
in the Kherson region) and Zoziv (Zozov in Russian, near Kyiv). In 1917
Henke traveled to Moscow to organize an exhibition of Verbivka’s products
in the city’s Lemercier Gallery. She returning to Kyiv in the autumn of 1918,
and worked for the Society until 1922.
Through his contact with Exter, Henke and Prybylska, Meller was drawn
into the work of peasant collectives. He became a member of the Cottage
Industry Society’s directorate in the months before the October Revolution.
This interaction with craft workers strengthened his appreciation for the
exuberance and vitality of folk creativity.
Dance and movement

Meller’s work was shaped initially by the contemporary fascination with
the human figure as displayed in dance and movement, which accounts
for much of the elegance, gracefulness and poise of his work. In Kyiv,
while collaborating with Nijinska’s innovative École de Mouvement in the
years 1919–21, both he and Exter explored movement. Nijinska, who was
the sister of the legendary Vaclav Nijinsky, had come from Paris to St.
Petersburg in the summer of 1914. Prevented by the war from returning,
in 1915 she staged ballets by the modernist Mikhail Fokine at the Kyiv
Opera House. After her return to Paris in 1921 she became known as
“one of the greatest ballet innovators of the twentieth century,” particu-
larly for her 1923 staging of Les Noces to Stravinsky’s music (Ratanova
2010, 313–14). During her Kyiv period she worked with Exter, Meller
and other artists. Her school, which initially set itself the task of training
dancers for her brother’s troupe in London, resembled an art studio, in
which dancing classes alternated with classes in visual arts and stage
design (Ratanova, 314).
Vadym Meller. Blue Dancer, from Mephisto,

to music of Liszt, 1919–20.
Meller’s costume sketches of dancers hung on the school’s walls. At that

time Exter and Meller were introducing cubo-futurist elements into their
designs. Both had attended the Kyiv Art School, and had been friends since
meeting in Paris in 1912. Exter was by then an influential creative force in
the Kyiv. From 1918 her apartment became a club in which artists, writ-
ers, directors, and musicians mixed. Besides Nijinska and Meller, visitors
included the stage director Les Kurbas, the theater designers Oleksandr
(Alexander) Khvostenko-Khvostov, Aleksandr Tyshler, Isaak Rabinovich,
and the artist Nisson Shifrin.
Art deco was another strong influence on Meller. The term was
coined following the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et
Industriels Modernes in 1925, which has been described as “one of the most
important artistic events of the twentieth century” (Makaryk 2010, 479).
Meller won the gold medal at the exposition for his set model of the Berezil
Theater’s production of Sekretar profspilky (The Trade Union Secretary,
1924). Art deco is associated with a decorative environment that blends the
“exotic” with the contemporary, and which often makes use of the sleek,
refined figure of a dancer in an elegant pose recalling classical sculptures
and vase paintings. Meller’s costume sketches for Nijinska’s ballets fit this
description. Some, such as his figures for Assyrians, Masks, Mephisto and
other dances have now become internationally famous. Art deco’s geomet-
rical forms and color contrasts, designed to produce a luxurious look, are
also evident in Meller’s costume sketches, which are composed of unusual
surfaces such as silver paper, rich colors such as cherry reds, and unex-
pected contrasts.
Vadym Meller. Mask, to music of Chopin,

1920.
Meller’s paintings of figures were broken down into curves, triangular

or sharpened forms, and parabolas. He positioned these in ways that create
a dynamic tension and sense of movement. In describing Meller’s Mephisto
figure Ihor Dychenko felt it represented the ontology of dance: “It’s as if you
have a photograph of the ‘biology’ of dance, its magnetic lines, its elevated
simplicity in the curve of the body and the poetically sad positions of the
arms.” According to Dychenko, what singled out Meller was his “unique
spiritualism, the arrangement of forms as if devoid of a spatially objective
subtext. It’s as if he ‘raised’ the body, as a plastic material, to the height of
movement spiritually rich in content” (quoted in Makaryk 2004, 51).
In 1921–22, when the constructivist infatuation with metal,

machine-produced objects, and geometrical patterns began, Meller started
designing in this style for the theater. Elements of the satirical and gro-
tesque also first appeared at this time. But his portrayal of character through
movement and gesture, his love of elegance, and use of unexpected color
contrasts remained constant throughout the decade.
In their set designs both Exter and Meller eschewed naturalistic
conventions, experimenting instead with rhythmically organized space.
They arrived simultaneously at the idea of balancing mass in space through
intersecting planes and verticals. These principles were employed to
fill theatrical theater space from top to bottom with bridges, platforms,
ladders, and banners. Both artists adapted cubist and then constructivist
ideas with elegance and simplicity. However, Exter had been active in Paris
since 1910, where she had been strongly influenced by cubism and color
experimentation. She showed a fascination with the kilim designs, color
clashes and movement for its own sake. The work of Meller, who had been
trained in drawing and composition in Geneva and Munich, was more
restrained. He concentrated on analyzing the human form, used more
subtle color schemes, and admired poise as much as movement. Already
in Paris in 1913 his work had been described as dance produced in a
decorative manner (in Le Lynx, 21 June 1913; quoted in Krasylnikova 2000,
112). This love of the graceful was later communicated to Meller’s students,
among whom Vasyl Shkliaiev demonstrated a similar fascination with the
deco-like figure and luxurious color.
A comparison of perhaps the three greatest Ukrainian theater artists
of the twenties is revealing. The costumes sketches of Exter are known
for celebrating the wild energy of movement; those of Anatolii Petrytskyi
disconcert or shock the viewer; Meller’s work, in contrast, always remains a
study in balance and harmony.
Folk decorative impulse

The folk decorative arts were the other major influence on Meller in the
post-revolutionary years. Many Eastern European avant-gardists were
captivated by a discovery of the exotic that had been “hidden in plain view”—
namely their own folk art. As previous chapters have shown, artists from
Ukraine exploited their native folk arts in remarkably original ways. Part of
this attraction to folk creativity was inspired by patriotism. Around the time
of the First World War and in the immediate postwar years, folk design and
ornamentation in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Ukraine was used

in an effort to create uniquely “national” styles. The avant-garde interaction
with local, international with national, modern with ancient, gave a par-
ticularly exciting, even transgressive tone to artistic experimentation. Exter
even claimed in 1919 that color intensity was “typical of young nations,
particularly Slavs” (Exter 1990, 209). Meller’s artistic development could
not remain unaffected by this rediscovery of village culture, particularly
after he was drawn into the project, championed by Henke and Prybylska,
of connecting local artisans with the art world with a view to changing
societal attitudes toward the decorative arts.
Yevheniia Prybylska
Although Prybylska’s name is not widely known, she had a profound impact
on the story of the Ukrainian avant-garde and its relationship to folk crea-
tivity. After graduating from the Kyiv Art School in 1907 she began helping
the textile workers in Skoptsi in 1910. At the Second All-Russian Cottage
Industry Exhibition in St. Petersburg held in 1913 she was awarded the sil-
ver medal for an exhibition of products from this village. This proved to be
her first major breakthrough. That autumn she also showed the work of the
Skoptsi women in Kyiv, and in the following year in Berlin and Paris in the
Salon d’Automne. Exhibitions followed in Moscow’s Gallery Lemercier in
1914 and 1915. While in Paris she met the artists Raoul Dufy and Charles
Dufresne who worked with woven materials, and who were excited by her
collection of peasant drawings.
However, contacts were cut off when the war intervened, isolating the
peasant craft industry in Ukraine from Western markets and denying it
materials, which were needed at the front. Nonetheless, as part of their con-
tribution to overcoming wartime hardship, an initiative group organized
production points in Galicia and Bukovyna, two regions of Western Ukraine
that were rich in folk arts. Ten workshops were set up by 1916, and an exhi-
bition of their products took place in the Kyiv Museum in April 1917, and
then in August and September in the Moscow’s Lemercier Gallery. In May
1919, with the help of Henke and Meller, Prybylska organized an exhibition
in Kyiv which displayed work from Skoptsi and the Poltava area.
These exhibitions had a strong influence. Prybylska has written that
after viewing the works many individuals changed their opinion about
peasant art, which until then they had considered “crude and vulgar”
(Pribilska n.d., 8). After moving to Moscow in 1922 she continued to
order designs from cottage workers in Ukraine. In 1924, when the overseas
market began to grow again, she organized a major exhibition of Ukrainian
folk arts in Berlin and Dresden, drawing on her own, by then substantial,
collection. In later years she organized exhibitions of Ukrainian art in
Russia and continued to write articles for various journals.
The story of how Prybylska became interested in peasant designs and
developed an international market for them has rarely been told. When
as a student she began exploring the rich collection of decorative folk arts
in Kyiv’s museums, she was so taken by what she found that she “fell in
love with decorative art” and decided to devote herself completely to “the
study of Ukrainian folk art and its ancient images” (Pribilska, 9). She made
many copies from pieces both in museums and in private collections, and
worked on her own decorative compositions. The copies she made from
eighteenth-century weavings and embroideries in the Museum of St.
Sophia Cathedral (Sofiiskyi Sobor)4 and the collections belonging to the
Monastery of the Caves (Pecherska Lavra) attracted two figures in Kyiv: the
art historian Adriian Prakhov and the artist Mykhailo Nesterov, a member
of the Kyiv Cottage Society. This led to a request from the Society and the
Poltava Gubernia Zemstvo (County Council) for more drawings of embroi-
deries and compositions. Soon afterwards, Prybylska received an invitation
to work with Nikolai Vartram in Moscow at the toy museum of the Cottage
Industry Technicum, which he directed, and as a researcher in the Academy
of Artistic Sciences’ peasant art section, which he headed (Pribilska, 10).
A delegation of cottage industry workers had learned of her inten-
tion of traveling to Moscow, and approached her with a proposal that she
should sell “for money or food products” a large collection of their designs.
She immediately realized the value of these, and the fact that when they
were put into production for profit the workers would receive only token
payment. Therefore, she decided to act as an intermediary and to put the
Moscow workshops in direct touch with the designers themselves. As a
result, the products of the craft workshops were soon being exhibited and
sold internationally.
Like other artists who were then discovering the folk arts, Prybylska
was not simply a copyist but made original designs in the spirit of folk
traditions. Both as an artist and exhibition curator she tried to promote a
wider awareness of the beauty and power of the designs she had discovered.
There were many individuals who did not share her enthusiasm. Initially,
for example, the Poltava Zemstvo and Kyiv merchants refused to display
4 Now the Archive-Museum of Literature and Art.

or sell the work, which they considered too colorful and therefore vulgar.
The situation changed after the work of individual peasant artists such
as Yevheniia Pshechenko from Skoptsi were greeted with acclaim in the
Gallery Lemercier in 1914 and 1915. Exter’s enthusiastic endorsement at
the opening of the Kyiv exhibition in 1919 also served as legitimization.
In her address Exter noted folk art’s “two-dimensional solution of vege-
tal, animal, and architectural pattern” in woven cloth and rugs, embroi-
dery and printing. She argued that color intensity had been replaced by the
public’s taste for “the muted patina of time, which conveyed an impression
of authenticity and the charm of the antique.” Such an understanding of
popular art “was not based on in-depth research into the roots and laws
which dictate the choice of color, of lines and composition” (Exter 1990,
209). Prybylska’s drawings, she said, were related to the works of Matisse,
who was also “inspired by the East, by its ornaments and colours.” In
the workshops where the embroidery and weaving was done Prybylska’s
drawings were treated “both as embroidery patterns and as creative art”
(Exter, 210). The exhibition demonstrated that Sobachko had “emerged as a
distinct personality, establishing by her choice of color and her composi-
tion a style of her own” (Exter, 210).
Henke and suprematism

The public’s reassessment of folk art came at a time when avant-garde
artists such as Liubov Popova, Alexandra Exter and Olga Rozanova were
looking to introduce color and dynamism into their works. Henke and
Prybylska were able to recruit them for their project, with the resulting
unexpected marriage of high and popular art. The fusion of suprematism
with peasant art was largely the result of collaboration between these four
talented women artists—Prybylska, Exter, Henke, and Davydova. Through
their efforts the villages of Skoptsi, Verbivka and Zoziv (near Kyiv) became
laboratories in which “the ultra-modern fused with the ancient” (Papeta
2006, 123).
Henke’s role was crucial. Initially she had directed the work at Skoptsi.
In 1916, while working with Exter on the designs for Famira Kifared, she
developed contacts with suprematist artists. In this way she became the
link between avant-garde artists in Moscow and St. Petersburg, including
Kazimir Malevich’s Supremus group, of which she was a member, and the
craft workers in Ukraine. She maintained both networks in later years,
keeping in regular contact with Rozanova, Popova, Nadezhda Udaltsova,
Ivan Puni, and Ivan Kliun, preparing their sketches for the embroiderers in
the craft workshops, and also creating her own suprematist compositions
for them (Papeta, 124–25).
Lost works
Many of the works produced by Henke and Meller have been lost, along
with them a portion of this period’s history. Meller’s prewar works were
lost in 1914 when he moved back to Kyiv from Paris. The outbreak of the
First World War prevented their shipment, and they were never seen again.
Only a few photographs now exist of paintings done in cubo-futurist style,
produced in Munich and Paris, and shown at the Salon des Indépendants,
Salon de Printemps and Salon d’Automne. Another loss occurred during
the Second World War, when in 1941 many works were removed from the
Kyiv apartment of Meller and Henke by German soldiers. The fate of these
works also remains unknown. Most of Henke’s works were removed from
the Kyiv apartment during this confiscation. As a result, her contribution
to suprematism and post-revolutionary graphic art is not well known. Only
a few cover designs made for futurist publications in the twenties and a
couple of suprematist works hastily packed during the evacuation have sur-
vived.5 Although the full story of the avant-garde’s collaboration with the
folk arts still requires reconstructing, is clear that Henke and Meller were at
the center of an important interaction between innovative art trends, folk
designs and commercial production.
In spite of the losses, today Kyiv’s Museum of Theater, Music and
Cinema Arts, which is located on the grounds of the Monastery of the Caves
(Pecherska Lavra), contains 420 works by Meller, including sketches for
costumes and decorations for 59 performances. His work can also be found
is several private collections and museums.6 Meller’s legacy also includes
the students that he trained and his collaborative work with playwrights
and directors, such as Vakhtang Beridze, Les Kurbas, Mykola Kulish, and
Marian Krushelnytskyi.7
5 For two examples, see Lahutenko 2007, 10, 27.

6 These include the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv, the Bakhrushinskii Museum
in Moscow, the Shevchenko Theater Museum (formerly the Berezil Theater) in Kharkiv,
and the Archive-Museum of Literature and Art in Kyiv.
7 His students included Dmytro Vlasiuk, Yevhen Torbin, Vasyl Shkliaiev, and Mylytsia
Symashkevych.
His reputation always remained high, and his work popular with the
public. A tribute, of sorts, to Meller’s enduring popularity is the fact that his
works reputedly provide the largest number of forgeries of Ukrainian art
found on the market.8
Meller in avant-garde theater

Under the Soviet regime Meller avoided being drafted into the Red Army
when on May 30, 1919 his work in the field of art was deemed to be of
state importance. In 1921 he helped to organize the Kyiv Art Institute, the
major post-revolutionary art school in Ukraine, and lectured there from
1921–25.9
Meller designed numerous displays for the Soviet Ukrainian repub-
lic. He was in Magdeburg at the German theater exhibition in 1927 and
in Cologne for the Press exhibition in 1928, for which he designed the
Ukrainian section. Later he organized state exhibitions that took place in
England, France and Japan. In the years 1921–26 he worked in the Odesa
and Moscow film studios, collaborating with Les Kurbas on Makdonald
(MacDonald, 1925), Arsenaltsy (The Arsenal Workers, 1926) and Vendetta
(Vendetta, 1926).10 He also exhibited his own work in various international
art exhibitions in Paris, Prague, Cologne, Geneva, and New York, most
famously winning the gold medal in 1925 at the World Exhibition in Paris
for the set model he made for Berezil’s 1924 Sekretar profspilky (The Trade
Union Secretary).
From 1922–46 he was the leading artist of the Berezil Theater (renamed
the Shevchenko Art Theater in 1934), where he collaborated closely with
the stage director Kurbas and the playwright Kulish. Known affectionately
8 In 1994 Sotheby’s sold his costume sketches for the 1920 production of Haz, but
attributed them mistakenly to Exter. In the same year, a forgery of his Blue Dancer,
made for Nijinska’s ballet Mephisto, was also offered for sale shortly after the original
was exhibited in Toulouse, allowing enterprising forgers to made a copy (Kucherenko
1997, 342). The forged works, it might be noted, are sometimes reproduced on websites
as originals. They generally lack the graceful balance that the artist always demanded. A
perfectionist, he made many variations of a work before settling on a final version and
carefully destroyed any remaining versions.
9 A list of his students is available in the Central State Archive of Higher Organs of Power
(TsDAVO): f. 166, op. 2, spr. 377, ark. 38 contains a list eleven students for 15 November
1921); f. 166, op. 2, spr. 1553, ark. 21–21 contains an outline of Meller’s course for
1922–23.
10 Kurbas was arrested in 1933. The films disappeared and appear to have been lost or
destroyed.
as the “three musketeers,” they together transformed the Ukrainian stage,

making Kharkiv into a leading theatrical innovator. Meller designed the
sets for their greatest successes, which included Narodnii Malakhii (The
People’s Malakhii, 1928), Myna Mazailo (1930) and Maklena Grasa (1933).
Unfortunately, detailed records of these productions have not survived.
They appear to have been destroyed after Kurbas’s arrest in 1933 and his
execution in 1937. Although Meller himself was not arrested, for the rest of
his life he was deeply pained by the fate of his colleagues. The expression-
istic style he employed in Maklena Grasa (1933) and other productions at
this time conveyed the sense of anxiety he and the public felt during this
period of mass arrests.11
Already in his early agitational works for Berezil, which included Haz
(Gas, 1923), RUR (Ruhr, 1923), Jimmy Higgins (1923), Mashynobortsi (The
Machine Wreckers, 1923), and Liudyna masa (Mass Man, 1924), Meller
had introduced elements of constructivism and expressionism. These pro-
ductions were characterized by asceticism and emphasis on dynamic, quick
scene changes. The production of Macbeth (1924) was the culmination of
this experimental phase and brought him recognition as Ukraine’s leading
theater artist.12 He emptied the stage. Instead of traditional decorations, the
place of action was designated by enormous screens on which were written:
“Hall,” “Field,” “Gates to the Castle,” and so on. Only the most essential
furnishing was used and some actors were dressed in contemporary worker’s
overalls covered with short coats to remind the audience of the medieval
setting (Tsybenko 1967, 159). “The characters were the equivalent of cubist
geometric forms in new, discontinuous relations with each other and with
the world around them. Raised or lowered when needed at the sound of a
gong, the screens served as more than background. They gave each scene
a particular rhythmic character. […] Lowered at the same time, they indi-
cated the simultaneity of the action in different parts of Scotland. At other
times, they moved in slow, stately rhythm to underscore the emotions of
the lead actors, to emphasize tension, the dynamics of the action, or even
to interfere in the action—as, for example, in the banquet scene, where
they physically blocked off Macbeth’s attempt to follow Banquo’s ghost—
represented by a spotlight” (Makaryk 2004, 84).
The constructivist aesthetic of the early twenties was justified by many
commentators in ideological terms as appropriate for the “mechanization”
11 After the Second World War he worked for the Theater of Musical Comedy (1948–51)
and the Franko Ukrainian Theater (1952–59), both in Kyiv.
12 For a discussion of this production see Makaryk 2004, 65–112. Meller’s art and stage
sets are also discussed in several articles in Makaryk and Tkacz 2010.
required by the times. In the years 1921–22 it was common to speak of

the rhythms of the factory worker and peasant as completely different
from those of the banker or diplomat. The cultural worker was urged to
create what were perceived as the new and superior rhythms of industry.
For example, the leading Kharkiv journal Chervonyi shliakh (Red Path) in
1923 published an article that applauded Meller’s artistic studio for pre-
paring new theatrical artists who could work with contemporary directors
and theaters (“Maliarska maisternia” 1923, 221). The studio made posters
for Gas and other shows, and illustrations for the Red Cross. Under the
influence of the machine aesthetic, the silk- and velvet-like textures of the
early post-revolutionary period gave way to functional black and white
forms, while individual characteristics were submerged in depictions of the
collective.
Vadym Meller. Carnival, 1923.
In the mid-twenties Meller began exploring the satirical. Productions

such as Sekretar profspilky (The Trade Union Secretary, 1924) allowed him
to introduce local color and indulge his love of the whimsical. Playfulness
was already evident in the costume designs for Nijinska’s ballets Marriage of
Figaro and Metr Patlen (both, 1919), but they came to the fore in the Berezil
productions of Jimmy Higgins (1923), and in Karnaval (Carnival, 1923),
Zolote cherevo (Les Tripes d’Or, 1924) and Sedi (1926) directed by Kurbas.
Meller’s costume sketches and paintings from this period reveal an ability
to capture essential traits. He had a remarkable ability to mimic. He spoke
French, Russian and Ukrainian, and later learned German in Munich,
and Spanish from his first wife. On one occasion in a train he imitated
the sounds of the English language in a made-up gibberish, pretending to
have a discussion with his partner in front of an astonished English couple
sitting opposite them. The ability to mimic and reproduce personality traits
became useful in the thirties, when Soviet authorities demanded positive
heroes and heroic social “types.”
During Berezil’s heydays of 1927–31 Meller experimented with designs
for various genres: the oratorio, the tragicomedy, the operetta, and the
revue. His signature productions were Zhovtnevyi ohliad (October Survey,
1927), Narodnii Malakhii (The People’s Malakhii, 1928), and Allo, na khvyli
477 (Hello on Channel 477, 1929). In the first, Meller fused various scenes
into a poetic whole by presenting the action as though taking place around
a globe, which lit up from the inside in different places, suggesting that
the action was occurring at different spots around the earth. In Narodnii
Malakhii the use of details added associations to the action. Thus, when
Shevchenko’s poem was sung (the opening lines are “Reve ta stohne Dnipr
shyrokyi,” The Dnipro roars and groans), the moon, poplars and sunflowers
appeared, reenforcing stereotypical images of Ukraine. However, the play’s
action, which ridicules Malakhii’s utopian dreams, worked against these
associations. For the review Allo, na khvyli 477 (Hello on Channel 477)
Meller made use of a central cone which would light up different scenes and
movable backdrops that continually covered or opened parts of the stage.
This allowed for quick kaleidoscopic changes of scenery, and a dynamic
production. Viewers were mesmerized.
For both Meller and Kurbas art was about finding the right equivalent,
the key gesture, feature or device, which would stimulate intuitive
associations in the viewer. Kurbas’s system demanded “transformations,”
or the discovery of condensed images that were symbolic generalizations
capable of interpreting an event, condition or phenomenon. Meller’s skill
in finding these “transformations” was one of the most important reasons
for his theater successes in the twenties and early thirties. Even when, after
a theatrical performance, ideologically driven critics found fault with a
production, Meller’s stage and costume designs still garnered enthusiastic
reviews. He succeeded in making every play, even those of pedestrian

writers, into a delightful visual spectacle, a gift that made him useful to
consecutive cultural and artistic commissars.
In later stage productions Meller translated gestures into characteristic
mannerisms and essential features, magnifying them until they appeared to
fill an entire space. The individual gesture represented a character, and the
character harmonized with the entire set design, producing a total effect.
Sometimes he would criticize other theater artists precisely for the inability
to fill the entire stage or production with this kind of unified conception, to
translate a governing idea into what he called “the large form.” It was partly
for this reason that he loved the classical Greek aesthetic, which represented
for him not simply the ideals of harmony, balance and restraint, but above
all monumentalism, the ability to capture and reproduce form as a totality
and finished product. According to his daughter, the artist perceived a link
between the Ukrainian aesthetic and that of classical Greece, seeing grace,
poise, restraint, and inner harmony as characteristic of both.13
Some critics were offended by Meller’s satirical treatment of Soviet life,
especially by his ridiculing of low quality consumer goods. For example,
the fact that he made fun of the lack of galoshes raised a complaint from
a certain M. in Kharkivska hazeta (Kharkiv Gazette) on January 11, 1929.
During the “anti-cosmopolitan campaign” (a euphemism for an anti-Jew-
ish campaign) that occurred in the last years of Stalin’s life, roughly from
1949–53, Meller was accused of encouraging formalism. An antisemitic
article entitled “Proty kosmopolitychnykh proiaviv u arkhitekturi” (Against
Cosmopolitan Features in Architecture) appeared in Kyivska pravda (Kyiv
Truth) on April 5, 1949, attacking Jewish architects for embracing mod-
ernist and American styles and denouncing Meller as a “confirmed aes-
thete and formalist” who admired “the decadent art of the West.” It accused
him of being a “bourgeois cosmopolitan” who found places for Jews in the
Institute of Monumental Sculpture and Art, which was part of the Academy
of Architecture. Ironically, only a few years earlier, Meller had received
the highest citations and had been celebrated as a living link to the earlier
Soviet past (one of the few that remained after the mass imprisonments and
executions of the thirties).
Meller’s best work resulted from a fusion of stylistic influences. In the
early twenties his interest in the human figure and the decorative aesthetic
blended with the avant-garde’s attraction to folk design, constructivism,
and his interest in the playful, satirical and grotesque. Although much of
13 Based on personal interviews with Brigitta Vetrova.

the visual evidence associated with his successful productions disappeared

in the 1930s during the years of mass arrests, a significant amount has sur-
vived, and can today be found in various museums and private collections.
The existing sketches for costumes, photographs of set designs, eyewitness
accounts, and memoir literature allow for a reconstruction of his legacy and
his role in the creative ferment of the twenties.
Appendix
A list of theatrical productions in which Meller was the chief artist from 1918
to 1933
Choreographic Studio of Bronislava Nijinska

Masky (Masks) by Nijinska, music of Frederick Chopin (1918)
Asyriiski tantsi (Assyrian Dances) by Bronislava Nijinska (1919)
Mephisto by Bronislava Nijinska, music of Franz Liszt (1920)
Misto (The City) by Bronislava Nijinska, music of Sergei Prokofiev (1921)
Russian Traveling Theater

Marriage of Figaro by P. Beaumarchais, directed by O. Smirnov (1919)
Metr Patlen, directed by Faust Lopatynskyi (1919)
Shevchenko First State Theater

Mazepa by Juliusz Slowacki, directed by K. Berezhnyi (1921)
H. Mykhailychenko Theater of Mass Action

Nebo horyt (The Sky Is Burning), directed by Marko Tereshchenko and
Vadym Meller (1921)
Universalnyi nekropol, after Ilia Ehrenburg, directed by Marko Tereshchenko
(1922)
Karnaval (Carnival), after Romain Rolland, directed by Marko Tereshchenko
(1923)
Berezil Theater (1922–26 in Kyiv, 1926–34 in Kharkiv; renamed Shevchenko

Academic Ukrainian Drama Theater in 1934)
Zhovten (October), directed by Les Kurbas (1922)
RUR (Ruhr), directed by Les Kurbas (1923)
Haz (Gas) by Georg Kaiser, directed by Les Kurbas (1923)
Jimmy Higgins, after Upton Sinclair, directed by Les Kurbas (1923)

Mashynobortsi (The Machine Wreckers) by Ernst Toller, directed by Faust
Lopatynskyi (1924)
Liudyna masa (Mass Man) by Ernst Toller, directed by Hnat Ihnatovych
(1924)
Protyhazy (Gas Masks) by Sergei Tretiakov, directed by Les Kurbas and
Borys Tiahno (1924)
Sekretar profspilky (The Trade Union Secretary), directed by Borys Tiahno
(1924)
Zolote cherevo (Les Tripes d’Or) by Fernand Crommelnyck, directed by Les
Kurbas (1926)
Sedi (Sadie) by Somerset Maughan and D. Coulton, directed by Valerii
Inkizhunov (1926)
Mikado, after Gilbert and Sullivan (reinterpreted by Maik Yohansen and
Ostap Vyshnia), directed by Valerii Inkizhunov (1927)
Zhovtnevyi ohliad (October Survey), directed by Les Kurbas and Borys
Tiahno (1927)
Narodnii Malakhii (The People’s Malakhii) by Mykola Kulish, directed by Les
Kurbas (1928)
Allo, na khvyli 477 (Hello on Channel 477), directed by V. Skliarenko (1929)
Myna Mazailo by Mykola Kulish, directed by Les Kurbas (1929)
97 by Mykola Kulish, directed by Les Dubovyk (1930)
Dyktatura (Dictatorship) by Ivan Mykytenko, directed by Les Kurbas (1930)
1905 rik na KhPZ (The Year 1905 at the Kharkiv Train-building Factory),
directed by Les Kurbas and Les Dubovyk (1931)
Chotyry Chemberleny (Four Chamberlains), directed by Artem Baloban
(1931)
Narodzhennia veletnia (Birth of a Giant), directed by Les Kurbas (1931)
Tetnuld by Sh. Dagiani, directed by Volodymyr Skliarenko (1932)
Khaziain (The Landlord) by Ivan Karpenko Karyi, directed by V. Skliarenko
(1932)
Chotyry Chemberleny (Four Chamberlains), directed by V. Skliarenko (1933)
Maklena Grasa by Mykola Kulish, directed by Les Kurbas (1933)
Zahybel eskadry (Death of a Squadron) by Oleksandr Korniichuk, directed
by Borys Tiahno (1933)
Ivan Kavaleridze’s Contested
Identity
The Ukrainian avant-garde has long presented interpreters with puzzles

and problems. One need only consider the ambiguities and contradictions
attached to the identities and the work of artists such as David Burliuk,
Kazimir Malevich, Volodymyr (Vladimir) Tatlin, Oleksandr Dovzhenko,
and Dziga Vertov. These ambiguities are nowhere more salient than in the
life and work of Ivan Kavaleridze (1897–1978). He has long been recognized
as one of the great twentieth-century avant-gardists; an early influence on
cubist sculpture—along with Alexander (Oleksandr) Archipenko—and a
founder, of Soviet Ukrainian cinema—along with Dovzhenko and Vertov—
he is one of the least analyzed of the great avant-gardist of the 1920s. In
recent articles he has been described as a “forgotten outsider,” part of the
“national museum of cultural mummies,” an artist who has been “canon-
ized without being understood” (Menzelevskyi 2017, 11–12).
Moreover, his work and identity have been appropriated by both
nationalists and communists, traditionalists and innovators. The interpre-
tation of Kavaleridze’s achievement has always found itself in the crossfire
of incompatible narratives. Both the sculptures and films were initially
praised, then strongly criticized. A number were destroyed only to be
reproduced and gain iconic stature in later years.1 The present struggle to
juggle these narratives and redefine his legacy provides insights into how
1 Kavaleridze’s most important sculptures are Princess Olga, Kyiv, 1911, partially destroyed
in 1919 and 1923, restored in 1996; Shevchenko, Romny, 1918; Yaroslav Mudryi, grounds
of St. Sophia Cathedral and grounds of the Golden Gates, 1997; Hryhorii Skovoroda,
Kyiv, 1977, Lohvyn, 1922, bronze version, 1972; Artem, Artemivsk, 1924; Artem,
Slavianohirst, Sviatohirsk, 1927; Shevchenko, Poltava, 1926. His most important films
are Zlyva, 1926; Perekop, 1930; Shturmovi nochi, 1931; Koliivshchyna, 1933; Prometei,
1936; Natalka Poltavka, 1936; Zaporozhets za Dunaiem, 1937; Hryhorii Skovoroda, 1959;
Poviia (Huliashcha), 1961.
Ukraine’s national identity and cultural memory are being constructed. It is

instructive to examine how his work has been repeatedly reinterpreted, and
why it has been both celebrated and condemned.
When Kavaleridze died in 1978 at the age of ninety-one his career in
art had spanned seven decades. The building in which he worked on 21
Andriivskyi uzviz was opened in 1993 as a museum of his work. It was here
(incidentally a few doors from the Mikhail Bulgakov museum and child-
hood home) that Kavaleridze worked on his monument to Princess Olga
(Synko 2002, 5). Although the UNESCO calendar recognizes the centenary
of his birth, his life and legacy remain poorly understood. In particular,
many biographical episodes have never been adequately explained. They
are glossed or passed over in silence in his autobiographical writings,
extracts of which were published in 1978 and 1988. Only after the original
manuscript was retrieved from the archives and published in 2017 could
readers access the full version.2
Biography
Born into a mixed Georgian-Ukrainian family in Ladanskyi Khutir, Sumska
oblast, Kavaleridze moved to Kyiv in 1899, where he lived with his uncle
Serhii Mazaraki, an artist and archeologist who worked in the Scythian sec-
tion of the Kyiv Archaeological Museum and whose friends included the
painters Ilia Repin, Arkhyp Kuindzhi, Serhii Svitoslavskyi, Fotii Krasytskyi,
Ivan Trush, and many artists who worked in the Lyiv Opera, such as Porfyrii
Martynovych, Opanas Slaston, Ivan Seleznov, and Serhii Vasylkivskyi. Ivan’s
studies in the private gymnasium (high school) were interrupted by the 1905
revolution. Suspected by the police of “conducting agitation against the exist-
ing order,” he was forced to quit the school (Nimenko 1967, 6). In 1906 he
enrolled in the Kyiv Art School and worked during the evenings as a stat-
istician in the Kyiv Opera Theater. His early sculptures from 1908 were of
theater artists. In 1909 he made a bust of the great opera star Fedor Shaliapin
(Chaliapin) while the latter was performing in the city. Kavaleridze then
attended the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1909, before moving in 1910
to the Paris studio of the sculptor Naum (Naoum) Aronson. Here he recon-
nected with his friend Alexander Archipenko, met Auguste Rodin, Claude
Debussy, the Jewish poet Hayim Bialik, and numerous other prominent fig-
ures (Kozlenko and Menzelevskyi, 112).
2 For the full version, see Kozlenko and Menzelevskyi, 81–230.

Ivan Kavaleridze’s Contested Identity 137
Ivan Kavaleridze. Princess Olga, original 1911,

restored 1996. Square of St. Michael’s, Kyiv.
Princess Olga (1911)

In 1910 a competition was announced for sculptures of ancient Kyiv. It
resulted in Kavaleridze’s first big commission. He and a fellow student, P.
Snytkin, submitted a project for four sculptures: Princess Olga, Cyril and
Methodius and the Apostle Andrew. It was accepted, and commentators
celebrated the unveiling of Kavaleridze’s Princess Olga in August 1911
as marking the arrival of a promising new talent. The sculptures were
destroyed in 1923 in circumstances that remain poorly documented. In
1996, five years after Ukraine gained its independence, they were restored
in accordance with the original designs and placed in their original loca-
tion outside St. Michael’s Cathedral (Mykhailivskyi Sobor), which was also
rebuilt at that time.
The destruction of Princess Olga in 1923 occurred at a time when
many of the sculptor’s students and coworkers were being arrested under
bolshevik rule. Kavaleridze has written that the sculpture was buried in
the ground (Kavaleridze 1988, 5). However, even before its construc-
tion, the original project for Princess Olga had been criticized and revi-
sions required. Metropolitan Flavian in 1911 had demanded that Olga
lose her sword and have a cross placed around her neck, a demand
to which the sculptor agreed. A mother superior complained that the
author had given the sculpture breasts that were too large. It is not clear
whether Kavaleridze made this particular adjustment to the final version
(Kavaleridze 2017a, 119).
In 1915 he was mobilized into the imperial army and assigned to the
Winter Palace, where he commanded soldiers guarding Tsar Nicholas II.
After the February Revolution he was sent by the Provision Government
of Alexander Kerensky to attend the All-Ukrainian Army Congress called
by the Central Rada in Kyiv. Here he met Petliura, who advised him to stay
out of politics and concentrate on art. He then traveled to Romny, where
the revolutionary chaos overtook him. He was assigned by the bolsheviks
to work in popular education and was reportedly mobilized to build a
Shevchenko monument in Romny, in what is today the Sumska oblast. This
part of his biography is particularly unreliable. In 1918 the bolsheviks had
been driven out of the country by the government of Pavlo Skoropadsky,
which was installed by the German army from April 29 until it was ousted
in November by a popular uprising led by Petliura. The artist may have
been assigned the task of building the Shevchenko monument under the
first bolshevik occupation during February and March, but the unveiling
of the monument on October 27 must have taken place under the rule
of the Hetmanate. A moment of great national pride, it was attended by
many important figures in Ukraine’s cultural life. These facts have until
recently been suppressed, or, as in the autobiography, presented in a con-
fused way. The inspiration behind the two Romny monuments produced
in 1918, Shevchenko and Heroes of the Revolution, has never been clearly
explained. Kavaleridze’s autobiographies are also evasive when he describes
his wounding on a bolshevik agitational train during the revolutionary
years, and his near death from typhoid.
Avant-gardism
What remains evident is the link between Kavaleridze’s avant-gardism
and the earlier pre-revolutionary period. He has long been recognized as a
seminal influence in avant-garde sculpture. His works of the early 1920s in
particular have been praised for their “geometric generalizations” (Pevnyi
1992, 11). The early films have also been admired for their monumental
quality, “carved” screen images, and their epic-like plots taken from crucial
episodes in the nation’s life (Kapelhorodskyi et al. 2007, 7). However, only in
the post-independence period have his links to pre-revolutionary dramatic
artists attracted attention. As a child he met the great dramatic actors and
directors Marko Kropyvnytskyi, Maria Zankovetska, Mykola Sadovskyi,
Panas Saksahanskyi and developed an interest in the art of capturing
expressions and gestures. It is also now widely acknowledged that, like
Archipenko, his classmate in his Kyiv Art Institute, he introduced cubism
into sculpture. The inspiration for this innovation was, as with Archipenko,
a fascinated with ancient times.
It is also now recognized that the great architectural designer Vladyslav
Horodetskyi, who produced stunningly innovative work in concrete prior
to the revolution of 1917, introduced Kavaleridze to the Orlenko brothers.
The latter were able to make concrete sculptures resemble marble. They first
met Kavaleridze in 1911, when he was working on the Olga monument, but
their collaboration continued into the 1920s, when they helped make the
Artem sculptures.
Ivan Kavaleridze. Yaroslav the Wise, 1997, after a model made by the artist in the
1960s. Golden Gates, Kyiv.
On December 23, 1922 Kavaleridze’s sculpture of Skovoroda was

unveiled in Lohvyn. He later produced sculptures of Shevchenko in Poltava
in 1925, and Sumy in 1926. The sculptor’s interest in Shevchenko and
Skovoroda continued throughout his career, as viewers of the many proj-
ects and smaller works on display in his museum in Kyiv can attest. So
did his fascination with the age of Kyivan Rus. A sculpture of Yaroslav the
Wise, which Kavaleridze wanted to be placed on the grounds of St. Sophia
Cathedral, was erected there only after his death. The same project became
the basis for a statue erected in 1997 outside the Golden Gates of Kyiv. This
focus on national heroes sat somewhat uncomfortably with his glorification
of bolshevik leaders, whose models are also on display in the Kyiv museum.
Ivan Kavaleridze. Artem, 1924. A still from Dziga Vertov’s Enthusiasm, 1930.
However, the avant-garde period is best captured by his two Artem

statues. His most famous avant-garde monument, the Artem of 1924, was
named after the first head of the Soviet (or Council) of People’s Commissars
(Radnarkom) of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Unveiled in
Bakhmut in the Donetsk oblast on July 27, 1924, it immediately became a
symbol of the new proletarian and constructivist age. It figured prominently
in various posters and publications, and in Dziga Vertov’s film Entuziazm
(Enthusiasm, 1930). Made of reinforced concrete, a material that itself
symbolized power and endurance, the statue produced an overpowering
effect on viewers. Much of the construction work was done in a synagogue
commandeered by the regime (Nimenko 1967, 21).
There has been resistance to telling the full story about the decision to
destroy this monument. Although it had been damaged during the Second
World War, the details were saved, and it could have been restored. After
all, it was described in the twenties as embodying the epoch, symbolizing
the whole liberated working class (Kapelhorodskyi et al. 2007, 21).
Nonetheless, in the postwar period the city administration decided upon a
traditional image and a naturalistic depiction, which replaced the statue in
1959 (Kapelhorodskyi et al., 21).
Kavaleridze then produced a sculpture of Lenin in Shostka in 1926
and a second avant-garde Artem monument in Sviatohirsk in 1927. Almost
thirty meters high, this colossus still dominates the skyline. Kavaleridze
set it on a high bluff overlooking the Pivnichnyi Donets (Dinets) River.
Like the earlier Artem, it has a geometrical quality. Produced in layers, it
resembles a multi-story building. One observer commented: “Artem rose
up as a severe and hard monument against the background of shapeless
[rozplyvchatykh] mountain lines, like organized, materialized will dom-
inating the soggy river and soft surfaces of distant fields” (Gorev 1927).
The Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party (bolsheviks) of
Ukraine insisted that Kavaleridze carve into the sculpture Artem’s phrase:
“I find the sight of unorganized masses insufferable” (Nimenko 1967, 27).
Over time the work gained enormous popularity. It also proved
impregnable. Although the first Artem sculpture was destroyed along with
several of other Kavaleridze sculptures, this second Artem survived not
only plans by Soviet authorities to take it down (by the thirties they no
longer tolerated the avant-garde), but also German attempts to destroy it
during the war (they viewed it as an example of degenerate modernism). Its
pock-marked surface testifies to its being fired upon by guns and cannons
(Kavaleridze 1977, 122).
This surviving monument, like Kavaleridze’s posthumously erected

sculptures, have now acquired a new symbolic meaning. The statue
in Sviatohirsk (known until 1964 as Bannovskoe and in 1964–2003 as
Slavianohirsk) now finds itself on the boundary of the Donetsk, Luhansk
and Kharkiv oblasts. Situated not far from Kramatorsk, the center of
Ukrainian-ruled Donetsk oblast, the statue is now interpreted as represent-
ing the strength of the local worker—today, of course, the Ukrainian rather
than the communist or pro-Moscow worker. Originally described as a mon-
ument to Artem and the working class, from 2007 it has been described as
symbolizing the “young industrial Donbas,” and, because Sviatohirsk is on
the Ukrainian side in the war, in the ongoing conflict the sculpture now
represents national, rather than communist, endurance.
Of course, the historical and cultural context has radically changed
since the twenties. In 1922, under Soviet rule, a monastery located in
Sviatohirsk was closed down and a rest home created on the premises. The
monastery was reopened in 1992 and in 2004 obtained the status of a Lavra.
The mineral waters of the town that made it a health resort in pre-Soviet
days are being restored, and the city is proud of its location in a national
park called Sviati Hory (Sacred Hills). Today, like the statue, the new con-
text presents a rebuke to Soviet history.
Critics have not found disentangling this layered symbolism an easy
task, the more so since throughout his career the sculptor continued to
produce works depicting leading figures in both Russian and Ukrainian
cultural history, and bolshevik political leaders. For example, alongside
sculptures of figures such as Pushkin, Gogol, Mussorgskii, and Shevchenko,
in the postwar period he made many models for sculptures of party leaders.
Film
A similar identity contest surrounds his films. In 1911–15 Kavaleridze
worked as a sculptor and artistic director for “P. Timan and F. Reinhardt”
films, and in both Moscow and Kyiv with the film directors Yakov Protazanov
and Vladimir Gardin. In the 1920s he became a founder of Ukrainian film.
He was initially richly praised for his Zlyva (The Downpour, 1929), Perekop
(1930), Shturmovi nochi (Storm Nights, 1931), one of the first sound films
Koliivshchyna (The Koliivshchyna Rebellion, 1933), Prometei (Prometheus,
1936), the first Ukrainian opera put to film Natalka Poltavka (1936), and
Zaporozhets za Dunaiem (The Cossack beyond the Danube, 1938).
The early avant-garde films in particular reveal a sculptural and

monumental quality. However, their fate parallels that of his sculptures.
Zlyva was criticized, destroyed and lost. Today it is described as “one of
the most sought after lost films” (Kozlenko 2017, 64). The others films,
particularly Koliivshchyna, Prometei and Poviia, came under attack and
were removed from circulation. They remain difficult to find and are rarely
analyzed by scholars.
The cinema criticism has now been republished by Kozlenko and
Menzelevskyi in their 2017 volume. It demonstrates that the attack on
Kavaleridze in 1936 for his Prometei was an important turning point
in Soviet cinema and art history, paralleling the attack at the time on
Shostakovich for the latter’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Kavaleridze is
described by Menzelevskyi as resisting the main trends of socialist realism,
including the rehabilitation of great leaders and Russian imperial history,
which was occurring at the time (Mendzelevskyi 2017, 37–38).
Already in the 1930s Kavaleridze had a reputation for being unruly and
a “dissident.” This explains why a number of his films, such as Koliivshchyna
and Prometei, were not allowed distribution and why in that decade
several of his statues were destroyed, something that Soviet-era articles
on Kavaleridze failed to admit. The topic of their destruction was either
avoided or blamed on the Second World War (Nimenko 1967, 44–45).
Moreover, several projects proposed by the artist were never built.
For example, a postwar monument to Shevchenko was first proposed for
Kyiv, then Leningrad, then Moscow, but was turned aside each time. The
monument that actually went up in Moscow resembles Kavaleridze’s project
of 1944. In fact, he worked on it with the sculptor who received the commis-
sion. However, Kavaleridze’s name could not be associated with the finished
work (Synko 2002, 19–20).3 Nikita Khrushchev complained publicly of the
sculptor’s work. Kavaleridze had spoken positively about modernism in
private conversations. His words were conveyed to Khrushchev, who on
March 8, 1963, while polemicizing with Evgenii Evtushenko over realism
and formalism, said: “After the civil war in the town of Artemivk in Ukraine
3 When Kavaleridze offered his model for the postwar Shevchenko monument to St.
Petersburg, it was originally accepted and only later rejected. The Canadian sculptor
Leo Mol (Leonid Molodozhanyn) proposed his own sculpture at this time to the city’s
mayor Anatolii Sobchak. In the early sixties Mol also received the commission for
the Shevchenko monument in Washington. As a result, the two most innovative and
famous Ukrainian sculptors of the twentieth century, Arkhipenko and Kavaleridze, who
had both studied together in the Kyiv Art School, had their projects for the Shevchenko
statues in St. Petersburg and Washington rejected at approximately the same time. Mol’s
Shevchenko statue was erected in Washington in 1964.
a monstrous formalist monument was erected [a reference to the Artem

monument of 1924], whose author was the cubist sculptor Kavaleridze. Its
appearance was horrible, but the cubists loved it. The author of this formalist
monument, when he was on the territory occupied by the fascists, behaved
in an undignified manner” (Kavaleridze 1988, 6). Following these remarks
the sculptor’s Shevchenko in Sumy was destroyed. In response Kavaleridze
wrote a telegram to Khrushchev. He received no answer but was eventually
called to the offices of the city council, where he was informed that there
had been a misunderstanding and those who had prepared the leader’s
text had been punished (Kavaleridze 1988, 6). After that, no other existing
monuments created by him were touched.
Another iconic statue by Kavaleridze, the Skovoroda that now stands in
Podol, also had a difficult fate. It was to be unveiled in 1971, but the event
was delayed until 1977, shortly before the artist’s death, because of com-
plaints from a party authority named Malanchuk, who was concerned that
Skovoroda was portrayed barefoot. Malanchuk demanded that the figure
be given shoes, and therefore cheap bast shoes appeared in the final version
(Kavaleridze 1988, 5).
In his memoirs, the sculptor complained about similar intrusions
into the production of his films. For example, when working on his Poviia
(Harlot, 1961), which was based on Panas Myrnyi’s nineteenth-century
realist novel, he was told that the heroine, a prostitute, had to act modestly
in every scene. No embraces, kisses or sex could be shown. By then what
Kavaleridze describes as a “lacquered, primitivized” style had come to
dominate art and film making (Kavaleridze 1988, 6).
The puzzle of the wartime years

Although the sculptor was already treated with suspicion during the
“revolutionary” twenties and even more so during the Stalinist thirties,
he fell into complete disfavor after the Second World War mainly because
he had been behind enemy lines during the German occupation. Shortly
before the war he had received permission to travel (from May 19 to July
2, 1941) to Lviv to work on a film about Oleksa Dovbush, the Ukrainian
equivalent of Robin Hood. On his way to the Carpathians to begin filming,
he found himself stranded behind German lines and was forced to walk
back to Kyiv, where he lived throughout 1943–46 in the film studios of
Kinostudia. Kavaleridze has described how he was approached to do a bust
of Hitler but refused, saying that he was already working on another statue,
that of Apollo. After the war, it turned out that the German officer who had
approached him had been a Soviet spy (Kavaleridze 1988, 5). Nonetheless,
anyone who had not been evacuated could be viewed by Soviet authorities
as a traitor, and in 1944 Kavaleridze was included in a blacklist of artists
who had “spent time under occupation.” Although in the postwar period
he was allowed back into the Union of Artists, the classification “spent time
under occupation” disqualified him from most commissions. Therefore,
after the restoration of Soviet rule his theater work remained under an
unannounced boycott in Kyiv (even though some plays were produced in
other cities), and his films were not shown.
It is entirely possible that his negative experience in Stalin’s Soviet
Union prompted him to work during the war years in the Kyiv city
administration under German occupation. From 1941 he headed the City
of Kyiv’s Department of Culture and Art, where he tried to renew the
Kyiv Cinema Studios as a private enterprise (Samchuk 1990, 24, 28). He
is described as having big plans for developing film studies in Kyiv and
other cities (Kozlenko 2017, 61). Many people in the administration of
German-occupied Kyiv were in touch with him until February 1942, when
the arrests and executions of Ukrainians associated with Andrii Melnyk’s
wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists began. It was this wing
that had set up in Kyiv the local administration with which Kavaleridze
worked. The artist continued to be an influential figure until September
1944 (Kozlenko, 62). It appears that when Soviet troops approached Kyiv
he simulated injury to avoid evacuation to the West. Kavaleridze puts a
pro-Soviet spin on these events in his writings, particularly in his play
Votaniv mech (Wotan’s Sword, 1965–70), which was an attempt to “reha-
bilitate” his reputation before Soviet authorities. It describes life in Kyiv
under occupation, portraying those who expect positive change from the
Germans, nationalists who try to defend the population from the ruth-
lessness of occupying forces, members of the “Soviet” underground who
work under cover (their leader is disguised as a priest), and even a Soviet
spy in German uniform.
Ulas Samchuk and Dokia Humenna, who knew him at the time and
later emigrated to the West, tell a different story. Samchuk met him in 1941,
first in Rivne and then in Kyiv. This leading interwar writer, who repre-
sented the nationalist viewpoint and was close to members of the OUN’s
Melnyk wing, stayed with Kavaleridze when in Kyiv. They developed a
close relationship, as is clear from Samchuk’s wartime memoir, Na koni
voronomu (On a Dark Horse, 1990), in which he provides a description
of Kavaleridze’s apartment, a guided tour of Kyiv given by their host, and
discussions in Kavaleridze’s home with the city’s mayor Danylo Bahazii

(Samchuk 1990, 6–7, 8, 14, 16–18). These discussions often centered on
how to make culture less socialist realist and more national in both style
and content (Samchuk 1990, 17–18). The memoirs show that Samchuk
was enthralled by his host, whom he calls a great artist. The film Zlyva,
made in the Odesa film studio, is described as “etchings for a history of
the haidamakas [peasant revolutionaries].” Samchuk makes it clear that it
was singled out for having a dangerous ideological subtext—an incorrect
interpretation of Russian imperialism. Soviet officials, reports Samchuk,
saw the film as “an artificial amalgamation” of the haidamakas of late
eighteenth century with “the haidamakas” of the twentieth, an approach
that in their view did not “take account of the concrete historical cir-
cumstances” (Samchuk 1990, 20). The director, according to the critic
I. S. Kornienko, “failed to show the strivings of the Ukrainian people to
unite with the brotherly Russian people” (Samchuk 1990, 21). Kavaleridze
constantly had to face similar criticism. His film Perekop did not restore
him to official favor, even though it showed the defeat of Wrangel, the
seeding of the conquered land by peasants, and the taking apart of houses
for blast furnaces. This “melodrama,” according to Samchuk, convinced
no one (Samchuk 1990, 21).
Kavaleridze appears to have been equally attracted to Samchuk. He
read the latter’s Volyn (Volhynia), which so impressed him that he appar-
ently proposed making a film based on it (Samchuk 1990, 41). Dokia
Humenna’s portrayal of Kavaleridze in her novel Khreshchatyi iar, which
was based on a diary she kept during the occupation, is much more crit-
ical of Kavaleridze. Herself a product of the Soviet period, she had been
expelled from the Union of Writers. Humenna detected a cautiousness and
craftiness in Kavaleridze’s behavior, something she felt that émigrés from
abroad like Samchuk failed to see.4
Nonetheless, both depictions of Kavaleridze are decidedly at odds with
the image of a loyal Soviet citizen, which was painted by the artist him-
self and his early biographer Nimenko. The artist’s life in wartime Kyiv has
therefore remained a mystery. He was elected to his post on the city council.
When Bahazii, the mayor, was executed by the Germans, the council was
liquidated, and the OUN members who helped to create it were arrested
and shot. Kavaleridze somehow survived.
4 See Humenna 1956. The protagonist in the book who resembles Kavaleridze is called
Viktor Prudyus.
Post-independence ambiguities in cultural memory

Kavaleridze has had many faces, all of which are reflected in contempo-
rary cultural memory: a persona non grata under the tsarist regime, a
Ukrainian patriot during the years of national state building in 1917–20,
a celebrated Soviet avant-gardist, a condemned Ukrainian nationalist
and formalist, and finally, after independence, a forgotten founder of the
Ukrainian avant-garde in art and cinema. Unsurprisingly, ambiguities
persist.
In the current “decommunization” period, the image of a “Soviet”
Kavaleridze is for some a source of embarrassment. After completing the
Artem statue of 1924, he moved to Kharkiv, the capital of Soviet Ukraine
at the time, and worked as an artist and sculptor with the publishing house
Komunist (Communist), where he produced a series of sculptures of Soviet
leaders, including Vlas Chubar and Hryhorii Petrovskyi, and met with
the writer Yurii Yanovskyi and the film director Oleksandr Dovzhenko.
However, in spite of these credentials, his monument to Lenin in Sumy
was taken down in 1957 and replaced with a naturalistic one. Moreover,
although he was continually described as “one of the most significant direc-
tors of Soviet cinema,” in Ukraine his films remained under a boycott and
were never serious studied (Kozlenko and Menzelevskyi 2017, 19). His
Zlyva was based on Shevchenko’s poem, Haidamaky. When it premiered in
Moscow and Kyiv in April 1919 it was accepted as a courageous experiment
but destroyed soon afterward as formalist. Perekop premiered on November
21, 1930 in Moscow. His Koliivshchyna (1933), an early Ukrainian sound
film, was sent back to the director seventeen times by party authorities
with orders to make changes. Prometei (1936) was immediately criticized.
Kavaleridze’s relations with Soviet film authorities still require exploration.
Finally, there is the unknown Kavaleridze. As a writer he remains
practically unexamined. Although banned in Kyiv, several of his plays were
staged in the 1960s outside the capital. Nonetheless, they were never pub-
lished and could not be read by contemporaries. They are now available in
the 2017 volume edited by Kozlenko and Menzelevskyi.
The many puzzles in his creative and personal history pose problems
for contemporary researchers. A recent attempt to investigate his autobiog-
raphy cautiously describes the author as trying to “leave a picture of his age,”
breaking with the Soviet canon but never becoming a dissident, “uncriti-
cally maneuvering between discourses and critical canons” (Papash 2017,
29–30). It is clear, however, that at different times Kavaleridze’s various pro-
files as an avant-gardist, national patriot and Soviet artist have been either
embraced or rejected, depending on the political sympathies and aesthetic

tastes of commentators. Only recently has a sifting through the evidence
become possible. As a result, a new composite and still contentious image
of the artist’s identity is still emerging.
Dziga Vertov: Enthusiasm,
Kharkiv and Cultural
Revolution
Literary Kharkiv in the minds of most contemporary Ukrainians is probably

composed of several layered images, including a picture of the early settlement
in the steppe founded by the legendary Kharko, the world described in the
1830s by Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, and the one depicted in the 1860s by
the humorist Oleksa Storozhenko. These representations convey an ebullient
natural vitality and an optimistic faith in the future. However, the city became
most closely identified with the idea of transformative cultural energy during
the “Cultural Renaissance” of the 1920s, when it was the capital of the newly
created Soviet Ukrainian republic. At this time Kharkiv’s writers and artists
set themselves the ambitious project of creating a radically new identity. It
soon became clear that there were different views of what this identity should
be. At least three distinct cultural visions lay behind the “enthusiasms” that
motivated writers and artists in the 1920s and early 1930s, each of which can
be linked to particular aesthetic and formal-artistic concerns.
The first current emphasized the idea of cultural revolution as a national
transformation: the creation of a reconfigured, modern literature and art
devoted to Ukrainian culture, history and identity. A Ukrainization policy
was embraced with fervor by many after 1923; the Ukrainian language was
standardized in the so-called Kharkiv orthography of 1928; and different
literary and artistic groups each promoted their own version of an innova-
tive, intellectual, modern, and urban creativity. The result was experimen-
tal work often of a high-quality in literature and the arts. Enthusiasts of
the national transformation (today frequently referred to as the “Cultural
Renaissance”) frequently relied on the resources of Ukraine’s past, even
when they broke from tradition, and explicitly refused to subordinate
cultural development to trends in Russia. The resulting cultural élan gener-

ated a burst of energy that produced remarkable achievements in literature,
art, theater, and film.
A second current heralded the creation of a proletarian culture, per-
ceived as something entirely new, even on a global scale. Kharkiv’s mission
was, according to this project, to break decisively with the rural, bourgeois
and individual, and become a center of working-class creativity. The image
of newness for those closest to this current was associated with interna-
tionalization, machinery, speed, technique, technical innovation, and col-
lective work. Like the “national-cultural,” the “proletarian” dimension of
the Renaissance demanded a new language, new forms in literature and
art. Writers, for example, often introduced acronyms and technical terms.
In the arts technical experimentation was often modeled on the use of
the camera and montage in films: it exploited quick transitions, fragmen-
tation, unexpected recombinations, and views (“shots”) from surprising
angles. The search for the “modern” and “industrial” led to a revolt against
established genres. Attempts were made to write texts collectively, to mix
media (such as poetry and art), and to create entirely new genres (such as
a “literature of facts,” and a “cinema vérité” in documentary filmmaking).
Much daring experimentation occurred in the late twenties, with the year
1928, for example, produced an entire spate of works in literature driven by
formal innovations and new processes of creation, while the late twenties
and early thirties produced some of the boldest new ideas in filmmaking, as
evidenced by the work of Oleksandr Dovzhenko and Dziga Vertov.
The enthusiasm released by this second, “proletarian,” project
sometimes contradicted or clashed with the vision underpinning the first.
In the cultural debates of the mid-1920s some asked: Was the Ukrainian
language an apt vehicle for the proletarian reworking of culture? Should
Ukraine’s cultural past be discarded as predominantly peasant, or was it,
on the contrary, Russia’s past that first needed to be jettisoned as imperial
and reactionary? Where, in any case, were the sources of the new culture,
and who was responsible for creating it? In this way questions of politics,
organization and ideology quickly became entangled with creative endeav-
ors. This led to discord. Only a few years later, in the early thirties, many
Ukrainian writers and artists who formed part of the “Cultural Renaissance”
were arrested, imprisoned, exiled, or shot.
Of course, neither the “national” nor the “proletarian” current stood
outside the political and ideological commitments of the day. In both
cases how the new manifest itself in terms of aesthetic sensibility and form
varied from creator to creator and group to group. A simple juxtaposition
Dziga Vertov: Enthusiasm, Kharkiv and Cultural Revolution 151
of opposites, as some have proposed, in terms of “modernists” versus “mas-

sists,” “aesthetics” versus “ethics,” pro-Ukrainian versus pro-Russian, or
sophisticated versus primitive, fails to capture the complex manner in which
competing visions interacted (Movchan 2008, 204). The term “modernist,”
after all, also encompasses the experiments of those who felt they were cre-
ating a radically “proletarian” culture. Attempts to set up an interpretive
matrix marked by such stark contrasts has more often than not been guided
by political or ideological considerations, and is usually undermined by a
closer examination of the creative works themselves.
The entire “Cultural Renaissance” and the avant-garde creativity that
accompanied it were ultimately crushed during the period of the First Five-
Year Plan, 1928–33. This turning point, described by some as Stalin’s “sec-
ond revolution,” saw the collectivization of agriculture and rapid forced
industrialization, the Great Famine (Holodomor), and the first curtailment
of the Ukrainization policy. However, at least in some circles, this “Stalinist”
revolution initially also produced its own upsurge of enthusiasm. It claimed
to be making a rupture with the past that was more complete than envi-
sioned by the “national” or “proletarian” revolutions. It viewed collective
work in uncompromising terms—not simply as a collaboration between
willing participants but as a collectivism whose hallmarks were the cult of
discipline and uniformity, the militarization of society, and complete sub-
ordination to central authority, which included Kharkiv’s acquiescence to
Moscow. Emphasis in the Stalinist revolution shifted away from elevat-
ing the worker and toward glorifying the state. This third “enthusiasm”
demanded its own forms of expression in literature and the arts, along
with a new, monolithic organizational order and a new ideology. In terms
of artistic expression it moved away from celebrating human ingenuity
to admiring gigantism in state-sponsored projects, such as hydro-electric
dams, factory complexes and smokestacks. It turned away from exploiting
natural rhythms to breaking them. Because Ukrainian scholarship has not
paid much attention to the aesthetics of this third, Stalinist “enthusiasm,” it
has often failed to identify it as a distinct phenomenon. Few scholars have
suggested that there might even be an aesthetic here worth exploring.
In short, when examined more closely, the creative energy of the
twenties and early thirties reveals different sources of inspiration: the quest
for sophistication and the romanticization of national cultural development;
the thrill of creating a new proletarian world; and the excitement of belong-
ing to a strong unified industrial state. Each source produced a different
aesthetic current, its own appreciation of the beautiful, and generated its
own forms of expression. Of course, because today’s researchers look back
on the twenties with an awareness of what came later—the Holodomor, the

waves of arrests and purges, the Great Terror, and the crushing of an entire
generation of creative people—there is a tendency to overlook or deny the
enthusiasms of the day. However ambiguous, contradictory and often con-
fused, they were in many cases real. They motivated millions and drove
much of the creativity during this period.
Yurii Sherekh captured some of the excitement felt by participants
in the “Cultural Renaissance” in his marvelous essays and sketches. His
“Khvylovyi bez polityky” (Khvylovyi without Politics) today reads like a
manifesto of the national-cultural project. Yurii Lavrinenko’s classic text
Rozstriliane vidrodzhennia (The Executed Renaissance) similarly brims
with the passionate commitment and thrilling sense of discovery felt by this
generation. And, of course, Mykola Khvylovyi’s pamphlets and the Literary
Discussion of 1925–28 bear witness to the bold aspirations of writers and
artists associated with this current.
In his essay, Sherekh indicates several features that can be seen as the
artistic platform of the Khvylovyi group: a love of and playful delight in
language; a desire for the full, unedited and uncensored human experience;
a life-affirming joy that brings with it a kind of wise optimism. He
writes: “Khvylovyi’s circle—of word-lovers, life-lovers, people-lovers—was
nonetheless unsentimental. At least in the sense that they did not fear the
tortures and pains of life, struggle and death” (Sherekh 1964, 56). When
discussing their delight in language he quotes a passage from Khvylovyi
in which the narrator says: “Maria! You are being naïve. Nothing of the
kind happened. All I wanted was to bring you the fragrance of the word.”1
Sherekh comments that this word-fragrance can be ironic, mystical or
sacred. Unfortunately, he says, literature in the twenty years that followed
“almost completely lost the ability to sense and recreate the fragrance of
words” (54).
On love of life and people he quotes several now well-known pas-
sages. Among them Pavlo Tychyna’s “Aeroplanes and all the achievement
of technology—what are they worth if people do not look one another in
the eye?”2 He also cites a passage from Ivan Senchenko: “I am a citizen who
1 The original is: “Маріє! Ти наївнічаєш. Нічого подібного не було. Я тільки приніс
тобі запах слова.”
2 In the original: “Аероплани й усе довершенство техніки—до чого ж це, коли люди
одне одному в вічі не дивляться?”
cares about the full-blooded health of his contemporaries—I have to call

out: down with skepticism, with sarcasms and ironies.”3
Sherekh says that this generation’s optimism was not built on ignoring
“the monstrous in the world and the human being.” It included “not only
the smile but also tears, not only life but also death” (58). This generation
of optimists “felt the tragedy and fatedness [pryrechenist] of life…” (58).
On the desire for a full, unedited experience Sherekh quotes Yurii
Yanovskyi’s words: “we know all the harmfulness and falseness of simplified
emotions” (60). These writers explored taboo topics in the realm of the
erotic, the psychological and philosophical. In Sherekh’s words, their
ultimate goal was to model a rich image of the “fully developed Ukrainian
individual,” and to express the complex “music in the human soul” (67).4
Openness to new experiences and interest in exploring trends in recent
Western literature led them to formal explorations, which have variously
been defined as neo-romanticism, impressionism, expressionism, and
symbolism (Movchan 2008, 207).
At the same time Sherekh describes in highly negative terms those
who opposed the national-cultural revolution, who denied the creation
of what he called the “Third” Kharkiv (Sherekh 1978, 204). In his estima-
tion the “First” had been formed by the declining Ukrainian gentry in the
1830s (Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s age), and the “Second” was represented by
the sleepy Russian provincialism of the late nineteenth century (Chekhov’s
age). Sherekh’s anger at people he considers compromisers and collabora-
tors is boundless. The “other” Soviet literature, he says, talked nonsense
“about Stakhanovites, life being better and happier, about flowering cities in
a flowering Ukraine” (Sherekh 1978, 208). Such compromisers belonged to
a system that created “ersatz feelings,” manufactured “a false happiness,” one
that had to be uniform for everyone. He recalls being proudly told in one
restaurant: “We have the same menu for everyone” (Sherekh 1978, 212–13).
The enthusiasm of the first current, the national-cultural renaissance,
with which Sherekh identifies was crushed. But here is the difficult part:
What are we to do with the other two forms of enthusiasm? How do we
integrate them into a narrative of the period? It is not enough to say that
they broke with tradition. The plans and projects of the “proletarian revo-
lution” and the second “Stalinist” revolution lashed out at the old, but so
did the national-cultural revolution associated with Khvylovyi and the
vidrodzhentsi (people of the Renaissance), who also demanded radical
3 Original: “Я громадянини, якому дороге повнокровне здоров’я своїх сучасників—

я мушу гукати: геть із скептичизмом, із сарказмами й іроніями.”
4 In the original: “за чи проти існування повноцінної української люлини.”
change. We can argue that the vision of the vidrodzhentsi was different: they
saw national liberation as coinciding with social and personal liberation. In
their minds the new beginning was to be built upon old foundations. The
image of Urbino is perhaps a good way of capturing this. It was the name of
a group Khvylovyi tried to form out of the organization Hart (Tempering)
in the early 1920s. The name “Urbino” not only stood for the urbanization
of culture, but also referred to the town in Italy that in the fifteenth century
became a center of Renaissance humanism. On orders of the Duke of
Urbino, artists made use of pre-existing structures to construct a unique
city in the form of an asymmetrical palace, an edifice of symphonic com-
plexity and grandeur.5 The palace may be seen as a metaphor for what the
vidrodzhentsi were trying to accomplish—their “new” was to be European
and sophisticated; it was to break with the outdated and backward, but to
maintain links with the Ukrainian past.
This message is embedded in the literature and art of many avant-garde
groups in the twenties. It is manifest, for example, in Dovzhenko’s great
silent films, where the old and new are contrasted but linked, revealing
deep continuities at the philosophical and spiritual level. By contrast, the
“proletarian” and the “Stalinist” revolutions often viewed any depiction that
found elements in the Ukrainian past that were admirable, or worthy of
sophisticated artistic treatment, as suspicious, or, worse still, as retrograde
and counter-revolutionary.
All three forms of enthusiasm had common features, many of which
were associated with avant-gardism. The idea of change, modernity and
urbanization captured the imaginations of those who thought that the artist
ought to be a visionary, even a fanatic. Exceptional talent, recognition of the
ability to break through to new forms of consciousness, to “dare” [derzat’],
to use Khvylovyi’s word, were celebrated. This, incidentally, was true not
only of writing within Soviet Ukraine, but also of the so-called “nationalist”
writings produced in the interwar emigration and in Galicia. Oleh Olzhych,
the OUN’s spokesperson on cultural affairs, Yevhen Malaniuk, Yurii Lypa,
and other leading figures in emigration glorified the demiurge, the artist
ahead of his time, and they particularly admired the drive and radicalism
of the literature produced in Kharkiv in the twenties.
Avant-gardism, the pursuit of the new and visionary, was therefore
something that all three revolutionary enthusiasms shared. This is evident
in the attraction to the dynamic and vital, which expressed itself in vari-
ous forms, one of which was the cult of health, strength and endurance.
5 See Shkandrij 1992, 40–41.

It can be found in writers such as Yurii Yanovskyi, Oleksa Vlyzko, Arkadii

Liubchenko, Maik Yohansen, and Mykola Khvylovyi. It was also picked
up by Olzhych, Lypa, Olena Teliha, and many other Ukrainian writ-
ers living in Central Europe and Western Ukraine. The human body, its
psychological and physical powers (Yanovskyi, Khvylovyi), animalistic
urges (Liubchenko), even the energy contained in landscapes (Yohansen)
revealed an optimistic faith in human and physical nature, the ability to
overcome obstacles and to create the new. The individual artist who had the
courage to explore new horizons, “colonize” new territory, was celebrated.
In the “proletarian” current the avant-garde attraction to vitality was
translated into a glorification of the working class’s drive and accomplish-
ments. We are perhaps most familiar today with the powerful, bronze-like
figures of laborers, whose bodies are admiringly captured in films. This
current elevated the innocent, childlike, unspoiled, naïve, even primitive,
in opposition to the excessively sophisticated, Westernized and bourgeois.
The worker in the writings of many authors. including, for example, Petro
Panch and Andrii Holovko, is portrayed as direct, untutored and hence
trustworthy. This fascination with the proletarian also manifest itself as an
enthusiasm for technique, technical innovation and experimentation, link-
ing these qualities to the ingenuity of the worker-creator.
In the third, Stalinist enthusiasm, the idea of the avant-garde and
vitality is reworked into something more robotic, sometimes infantile.
The worker becomes all muscle and no reflection, all marching rhythms
and nursery rhymes. Unabashed propaganda replaces critical thought. For
many readers, Pavlo Tychyna’s strange, doggerel-like verse from the late
twenties and early thirties—of which “Partiia vede” (“The Party Leads”) of
1933 is an example—falls into this category, along with many of the pane-
gyrics to the leader, party, plan, army, and state that soon became typical of
socialist realism.
We are now most familiar with this kind of cultural production in the
works that have been categorized as socialist realism and that were pro-
duced in the thirties and ensuing two decades. However, the seeds of this
thinking were already present in the twenties. In 1927 Mykola Skrypnyk
wrote: “The issue is not to discover and correctly build the link between
cultural work and the economy, but to now view cultural-educational
work as the industrialization of man’s brain, the industrialization of
qualified human material” (Skrypnyk 1927, 124).6 The ambition of this
third revolutionary enthusiasm was not to release the genius within the
6 The phrasing in the original is: “Справа стоїть не в тому, щоб знайти і правильно
збудувати звязок між культурною роботою і господаркою, а в тому, щоб тепер
individual, but to glorify utilitarianism and functionalism. Brilliance was

not attached to the individual or even the group creator, but to the plan,
which had sprung from the mind of the great leader. The idea of com-
pletely transforming people in this way was already evident in 1927, when
Mikhail Semenko spoke of forming a new psyche, a new person, even “a
new race” (Semenko 1927, 43).
These three enthusiasms appear to have stimulated many creative
individuals and numerous formal experiments. Writers and artists were,
of course, not free even in the twenties. All were watched in one way or
another by state authorities and instructed by the party, but there was still
in the mid-twenties a greater degree of freedom of expression and a greater
capacity for resisting party pressures. As the national renaissance morphed
into the proletarian revolution and then the Stalinist second revolution, the
degree of freedom became progressively circumscribed.
This can be illustrated in a number of ways. Theater gradually moved
from the national romanticism of Mykola Kulish’s plays to the Stalinist
vision of Ivan Mykytenko’s Dyktatura (Dictatorship, 1930). Film moved
from the depiction of national transformation in Dovzhenko’s Zvenyhora
(1927), Arsenal (1929) and Zemlia (Earth, 1930), to the glorification of
proletarian vigor and construction in his Ivan (1932). In each case the
movement was from celebrating natural rhythms to subduing and chan-
neling these rhythms by the proletarian strongman, and finally to the tri-
umph of the impersonal Plan. A similar shift is evident in Dziga Vertov’s
films. Whereas Cholovik z kinoaparatom (Man with the Movie Camera,
1930) admires personal ingenuity and creativity, in this way suggesting the
ideal of the individual’s liberation from an outdated, false consciousness,
his Entuziazm (Enthusiasm, 1931) is dominated by scenes of proletarian
masses and individual workers who pledge to work harder for the benefit
of the state. These films move from celebrating human creativity to prais-
ing the Plan and the great planner. Exploring links to the country’s history
is replaced by celebrating the erasure of links to history—perhaps most
clearly suggested by images of vast dams that submerge the countryside
and scenes recording the destruction of churches and their conversion into
Komsomol clubs.
Nonetheless, both Vertov films were remarkable artistic experiments
and much lauded achievements. The aesthetic that underpins them,
especially the less frequently analyzed Enthusiasm, deserves closer inves-
tigation. Filmed in 1930, Enthusiasm was the first sound film produced by
культурно-освітню роботу розглядати як індустріялізацію чоловічого мозку,

індустріялізацію кваліфікованого людського матеріялу).”
Ukrainian film studios. It was based on footage made mostly in Kharkiv,

Odesa and the Donbas. The director took his crew to Kharkiv to film the
Eleventh All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets and then to the factories and
coal-mines of Donetsk. The film, subtitled “Symphony of the Donbas,”
promotes itself as both a documentation of how the new culture is being
created and a representation of this new culture. Like Man with the Movie
Camera, this was an experimental production—only this time in the new
genre of sound film. It incorporated a musical montage of voice recordings,
industrial sounds (trains, factories and machines), and music from Dmitri
Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 1. Vertov’s crew designed and redesigned
their recording apparatus while filming. Much of the original sound was
lost or proved unusable, and therefore to make the final product the film
had to be changed on the cutting board. The crew had little transportation
and were often obliged to carry equipment into locations themselves. The
recording devices were taken onto the roofs of trains and deep into mine
shafts. Lacking playback possibilities the crew was unable to listen to the
footage produced or to check devices. The resulting trembling of sound
made some recordings unusable. The final editing was done in a frantic
fifty days and nights. Nonetheless, the resulting soundtrack is a fascinat-
ing montage that combines clanging iron, roaring fires, shuddering sounds
on the factory floor, rushing trains, radio addresses, speeches, marching
bands, and crowds. Charlie Chaplin found it stunning and commented on
the “beauty of mechanical sounds.”
The film, in fact, can be interpreted as combining all three enthusi-
asms mentioned. There are references to the national dimension and
Ukrainization; to the glorification of proletarian culture; and to the Stalinist
drive for standardization, mechanization and militarization, even of the
human body. Uniting them all is the avant-garde cult of natural and phys-
ical vitality. Moreover, today’s viewer can read into the film an unresolved
tension between these three currents or dimensions.
The national dimension is present in the images of Ukrainization.
Throughout the film the viewer is exposed to the use of Ukrainian in street
signs, the film’s headings and subtitles. Ukrainian identity markers can
be found in the chronicling of specific events, such as the All-Ukrainian
Congress of Soviets held in Kharkiv in 1931 and in the behavior of the
people, which the camera attempts to capture as “life unawares,” a man-
ner that would later in the 1960s be dubbed cinema vérité. There are no
professional actors. Instead, ordinary people are shown going about their
business; many scenes are clearly not staged. This allows footage to reveal,
for example, the widespread use of Ukrainian in publications, institutions,
and parades. Although Jeremy Hicks sees in the film an attempt to erase
Ukraine as a place “in favor of a universal, international, Communist space,
“this is debatable, because the spectator would have been attuned to local
specifics in geography, personal appearance and culture” (Hicks 2007, 74).
The proletarian dimension is present in the glorification of workers,
factory life and solidarity. Speaking of Vertov’s The Eleventh Year, Hicks
writes: “Superimpositions show apparently giant workers hammering
flat huge rocky outcroppings. The incredible energy of the bolsheviks
transforms the physical properties of earth, so that by the end of the film it is
not static but seething with activity above and below ground” (Hicks 2007,
59). Vertov’s next two films also serve up similar metaphors for renewal
and transformation, with electricity and hydro-electric power dams sym-
bolizing change (Hicks, 59). They thematize movement and energy (in hos-
tile opposition to the stasis associated with the past). Rushing water, for
example, becomes a metaphor for the unstoppable force of history. However,
the focus of Enthusiasm is on the awakening of an invigorated and active
spectator to the new, particularly to the sounds of a new civilization, and
to the images of working class life, which is presented with much greater
frankness than would later be allowed. The viewer sees laborers trudging to
and from the factory with their lunch boxes, as well as dangerous factory
conditions and industrial sites.
The Stalinist dimension is also everywhere to be seen in these films,
especially in the serried masses of marching columns, the choral singing,
the mechanized and almost robotic movements of workers, the marching
music and military metaphors. Man with the Movie Camera also contains
within it the dominant idea of “total surveillance” by the camera eye, which
the film suggests, like the state and secret police, has a right to be every-
where (Hicks, 70).
The opening sections of Enthusiasm are about overcoming false
consciousness, symbolized by a church being turned into a workers’ club.
However, the later sections focus on the need for the entire society to work
harder, to produce more coal and fulfill the Plan. They attempt to show
workers’ faces radiating “joy, health and vitality,” but this is not entirely
successful (Hicks, 74). In fact, the film received a hostile reception, partly
because the audience had difficulty understanding it, but also because it
reveals the way workers are manipulated, and the poverty of their circum-
stances. In fact, from the party’s point of views some scenes were considered
too candid. These included shots of the population’s religiosity, of alcoholics
and destitute people living on the streets ten years after the revolution, and
the reactions of bystanders to the destruction of their church.
In this sense the film was a propaganda failure, which led to its being
attacked for the “fetishization of fact,” a charge essentially aimed at its
excessive honesty in portraying Soviet life. “Life caught unawares,” a motto
of Vertov, brought his art too close to reality. By the early thirties staged
reality was promoted as a superior way of showing mass enthusiasm.
Articles appeared criticizing documentalism, now dubbed formalist
(Hicks, 84). “Dispassionate objectivism” had now become an obstacle to
party propaganda and Vertov was forced to reorient toward scripted, staged
documentaries. Instead of filming “life caught unawares,” meetings and
speeches were reenacted in the studio or in public. As one commentator
put it in 1933: “We are not against moments of staging. Just because we
shoot this or that real shock-worker in more convenient circumstances for
recording, the essence of the shock-worker will not change” (Hicks, 87).
Clearly, political persuasion was too important a goal “to be potentially sac-
rificed to the niceties of recording unprovoked events” (Hicks, 88). Hicks
has pointed out that by staging events it was easier for the filmmaker to
show what should be occurring rather than what actually was occurring
(Hicks, 88).
In the end Enthusiasm’s “life caught unawares” produced a more honest
picture than Stalin’s cultural commissars were prepared to allow, and this
led to the film’s quick removal from circulation. An attentive viewer could
detect an enthusiasm that is manufactured and at times forced. Some
in the marching columns and gathered crowds appear to be distinctly
unenthusiastic, as they cast furtive glances and self-conscious smiles. An
Orwellian tone dominates much of the film: the dominant image is of
masses being driven to listen and obey, while anonymous radio voices or
speeches delivered for the camera by shock workers urge overfulfillment
of production norms. The towering smokestacks and factories make less of
an impression on today’s viewer than an awareness of the appalling work-
ing conditions, management’s bombast, the browbeating of workers during
mass meetings, and the demands for ever-greater sacrifices to maintain
the forced pace of industrialization. The commissar gives his speech, the
stakhanovites (record setters) announce their commitments, but the effects
of these calls to discipline are shown in the actual lives of workers—in their
training and the conditions on the factory floor. It takes little imagination
to grasp the punitive work regime and the lack of attention to safety and
health.
Although the film attempts to intertwine and mix the three enthusiasms,
almost in the form of three “motifs,” the result is dissonance rather than
harmony, cacophony and incongruity rather than unified composition.
The viewer is left wondering what lies behind the surface expression of this
enthusiasm.
Their final impression is that the political message (the narrative of
transition from degeneration to the onward-and-upward of Stalinist indus-
trialization) lacks conviction. In fact, for the contemporary spectator, this
film is a demonstration of how propaganda can be used to distort or hide
reality. Ironically, the final scenes of happy peasants dancing in the fields
during harvesting cannot help but draw the attention of today’s viewer to
the Great Famine that gripped the country in the wake of collectivization
just two years after the film premiered.
As with other outstanding films made at this time, such as Dovzhenko’s
Arsenal (1929) and Earth (1930), and Vertov’s Man with the Movie Camera
(1929), party authorities expected a clear message contrasting a degenerate
past with a radiant future. However, the audience inevitably would have
noticed the military metaphor with which Enthusiasm ends (“With song
into battle”), the Orwellian Big Brother voice, and the message that the
individual is nothing while the state is everything. The idea that individual
lives have to be mechanized, industrialized and forced to produce more at
a faster pace evokes resistance in today’s viewer, and would probably have
done the same for most viewers in the thirties. It is a message that serves
to condemn the system more than celebrate it. This may be an indication
that Vertov’s failure to produce what the party leadership considered a
convincing film was, in fact, due to his own inner resistance to the required
message. His faith in individual creativity and in the cinema vérité method
were at odds with the new propaganda strictures.
The hopes and dreams of writers and artists who witnessed the cultural
revolutions of the twenties and early thirties were intermingled with
varying degrees of cynicism and political apprehension. Ukraine had, after
all, been ravaged by wars fought against the Red Army, which had largely
been recruited in and sent from Russia in three separate attempts (1918,
1919, and 1920) to establish bolshevik rule. Nonetheless, the enthusiasm of
some local people for economic and cultural reconstruction was genuine,
widely noted, and often reported by Western visitors, many of whom
were prepared to embrace what they interpreted as a civilizational break-
through. These Western enthusiasts came in many varieties. Not all were,
or remained for long “useful idiots” in the manner of the duped George
Bernard Shaw and Edouard Herriot, or the deceitful Walter Duranty. In
fact, most journalists who spent more than a few days time in Russia and
Ukraine also reported critically on the economic and political situation,
and noted the presence of dissent.
In 1926 René Fueloep-Miller spoke of the old world that had ceased
to exist and the potential beginning of a “new humanity” (Fueloep-Miller
1965, x). However, this German visitor cautioned that Soviet Russians
believed excessively in “naïve magic formulas” and attached “almost reli-
gious ecstatic emphasis” to the notion “scientific” (Fueloep-Miller, 18).
Ukrainian writers, with Viktor Domontovych (pseudonym of Viktor
Petrov) perhaps the most salient example, warned at the time against
precisely such an irrational faith in science and technology. Domontovych’s
great works from the twenties are Divchynka z vedmedykom (Girl with a
Teddy Bear, 1928), Doktor Serafikus (Doctor Seraphicus, 1947) and Bez
gruntu (Rootless, 1948). The last two were published in emigration after the
war, but were written earlier. They portray the experimenters and enthu-
siasts of the twenties with a detached amusement and in a jaded tone that
recalls Khvylovyi’s stories from the same period.
An amusing portrait of visiting Western enthusiasts is provided in
E. M. Delafield’s I Visit the Soviets (1937). While most of her Western
companions declare that they never want to return, some, such as the
Englishwoman Mrs. Pansy Baker, are gushing: “How splendid it all is, they
cry, and how fine to see everybody busy, happy and cared for. As for the
institutions—the crèches, the schools, the public parks and the prisons—
all, without any qualification whatsoever, are perfect. Russia has nothing
left to learn” (Delafield 1937, 316).
Even many Western visitors who were critical of their surroundings
admired the collective spirit and the perceived strength of Stalin. Sherwood
Eddy, who wrote in 1934 of Russia: “All life is focused in a central purpose. It
is directed to a single high end and energized by such powerful and glowing
motivation that life seems to have supreme significance. It releases a flood of
joyous and strenuous activity” (Eddy 1934, 177). Much of the enthusiasm,
however, was a throwback, an attempt to re-galvanize the military fervor
that characterized the early years of bolshevik rule. Extravagant forecasts
by bolshevik leaders in the years 1918–21 had set the tone, but the distance
between “imagination and creativity and the demands of Bolshevik cre-
ativity rapidly widened” and that it was not long before “the excitement of
the early period vanished, along with most of its participants” (Rosenberg
1990, 11). By the late twenties, as the earlier dreamers lost faith, the young-
est generation entered the work force for the first time. Many accepted the
promise of a transformed life and devoted their vigor and (often naïve)
optimism to its realization.
On the other hand, many Westerners, like many Soviet citizens, saw
through the bombast. By the late twenties Ukrainians were witnessing the
repression of their national leaders, restrictions placed on their language

and cultural identity, and they were aware of the treatment of the peas-
antry. Consequently, they were less likely to be duped by party propaganda.
This fact was also noted by Western visitors who spent time in Ukraine and
made attempts to examine the devastation caused by collectivization and
the Great Famine of 1932–33. Here is Louis Fischer writing in 1935:
The Bolsheviks were carrying out a major policy on which the strength and
character of their regime depended. The peasants were reacting as normal
human beings would. Let no one minimize the sadness of the phenomenon.
But from the larger point of view the effect was the final entrenchment of
collectivization. The peasantry will never again undertake passive resistance.
And the Bolsheviks—one hopes—have learned that they must not compel
the peasantry to attempt such resistance.” (Fischer 1973, 171–72)
To his credit, Fischer changed his views. He soon dropped his apologias
for collectivization and the mass violence and starvation that accompanied
it. In 1949 he published Thirteen Who Fled, in which former Soviet cit-
izens from all walks of life recount their experiences under Stalin’s rule.
A similar path of apologism followed by disillusionment was traveled by
Arthur Koestler, Alexander Weissburg and a host of Soviet sympathizers,
who eventually saw through the mendacity and grasped “the larger point
of view” in an entirely different manner. Many Soviet citizens experienced
a similar change of attitude.
The picture of local enthusiasm is therefore a complex one in which
degrees of hope and commitment mingled with disenchantment and fear
of repression. Nonetheless, during the years it served as the capital of the
Ukrainian Soviet republic, Kharkiv acted as the symbolic center, generating
in Ukraine the three currents of “enthusiasm” outlined above, which today
color our understanding of literature, film, and art produced in these years.
The achievements of the period might be fruitfully examined by locating
tensions within and between the different imagined projects, as well as the
aesthetic that underpinned them, the forms of expression they generated,
and, finally, the disillusionment that eventually overcame enthusiasts.
The Avant-Garde in
Today’s Cultural Memory
Remembering the
Avant-Garde
In the early decades of the twentieth century, scores of young people from
Ukraine made their way to France and Germany, where they completed
their education and then made major contributions to the international
avant-garde, including in its French, German, Russian, and Jewish dimen-
sions. Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991 there has been an effort by the
country’s curators and scholars to return these sometimes long-neglected
figures to the country’s cultural history.
Numerous exhibitions around the world have been devoted to
members of the École de Paris, the epicenter of the artistic revolution that
swept through Europe during the first three decades of the century. Various
retrospective displays have focused on members who were Russians
(Paris, 1961), Italians (Milan, 1971), Jews (New York, 1975), émigrés in
Montparnasse (Paris, 1992), Spaniards (Madrid, 1993), and Poles (Warsaw,
1996). The Ukrainian contribution to modernism and the avant-garde
has been the subject of exhibitions in Zagreb (1990–91), Munich (1993),
Toulouse (1993–94), Winnipeg (2001), Hamilton (2002), and New York
(2006). In Paris UNESCO organized an exhibition of artists of Ukrainian
descent who contributed to modern French art in the years 1900–60 (2000).1
In Ukraine itself the Lviv Art Gallery has held exhibitions devoted to
Ukrainian, Polish and Russian artists who worked in Paris in the first half of
the century under the title “Nerozhadanyi rebus ‘Paryzh’” (The Unexplained
Rebus ‘Paris’) (2000), while Kyiv’s National Art Museum of Ukraine has
devoted numerous exhibitions to avant-gardists of the 1920s, to those who
1 For the best recent volume on Ukrainian artists in Paris, see Susak 2010. For earlier
references to Ukrainian artists in Paris, see Ladzhynskyi 1973, and Popovych 1968,
1977, 1983.Exhibition catalogues that have drawn on the works in the National Art
Museum of Ukraine include Phenomenon of the Ukrainian Avant-garde 2001, and
Ukrainian Modernism 2006.
166 The Avant-Garde in Today’s Cultural Memory
worked abroad as well as in Ukraine. This effort of reclamation constitutes

part of a wider project aimed at restoring neglected chapters of cultural
history. Today, galleries and museums in Ukraine explore not only of the
avant-garde and modernism, but also medieval and baroque art, icons, folk
traditions, underground and dissident art, and new experimental trends.
Narratives are being rewritten to incorporate “native” artists into European
history, and European trends into the story of Ukraine’s cultural devel-
opment. There is now a greater public awareness that many figures, such
as Archipenko, Burliuk, Malevich, Exter, and Hryshchenko (Gritchenko)
were part of both “European” and “Ukrainian” art. The reconstruction of
this history has sometimes been contentious, largely because it has coin-
cided with a vigorous debate over cultural memory and identity.
Artistic modernism and avant-gardism in Ukraine have frequently been
described as “interrupted projects.” The great achievements of 1910–30 were
denied recognition and deliberately obscured from public view after the early
thirties. Some aspects of the history resurfaced briefly in the 1960s before
full disclosure became possible in the 1990s. Since then, public awareness
of the “historic” avant-garde has served as an inspiration for many contem-
poraries. In the decade following independence, many in the artistic and lit-
erary communities rejected all forms of realism and populism, as they were
considered compromised by association with the Soviet regime. Younger art-
ists and writers embraced various forms of avant-gardism or turned to post-
modernism as a “hallmark of high culture and orientation towards European
values” (Shumylovych 2006, 87). However, the post-independence years also
revealed a significant and growing tension between individuals who aspired
to ground their art in the national heritage, however broadly conceived, and
those who wanted to deconstruct mythologies or who were interested in
artistic experimentation for its own sake.
Today members of the first camp are often conscious of their roles and
responsibilities as representatives of the nation. They feel a need to explore
their own culture, to examine, for example, the connection between folk
and elite values, or continuities between the historical past and the present.
Sometimes this leads to the adoption of a more widely comprehensible
idiom, a strategy that tends to be popular with the mainstream viewer.
Those in the second camp tend to embrace the idea of multiple discourses,
different tendencies, and modern technologies. They have sometimes been
accused of grafting Western ideas, theories and methodologies onto local
soil in a way that produces not meaning but chaos.
Ola Hnatiuk has argued persuasively that there have been attempts to
manipulate this cultural discourse into a clash between “modernists” and
Remembering the Avant-Garde 167
“nativists” (Hnatiuk 2006). It is instructive in this context to consider the expe-

rience of the avant-garde in the years 1910–30. As these essays indicate, the
earlier generation of innovators had to deal with similar tensions between the
new and traditional, the international and national, the ironic and intuitive.
The discourse at that time was also politicized and was subjected to manipu-
lation, as it was in later decades. The experience of the “historic” avant-garde
therefore provides useful lessons with regard to current debates. Its ideas, like
those of contemporaries, were conditioned by a similar discourse around cre-
ative freedom, identity and relations with Europe. The tensions within this
discourse proved artistically productive until in the late twenties a rigid cen-
sorship was imposed and prescriptive demands were made of all artists.
The earlier conflicts between proponents of the old and new still
resonate with contemporaries and provide parallels with today’s situation.
The need to choose between the local-national and European-international
was a challenge faced by the earlier avant-garde, one that it accepted enthusi-
astically and often solved brilliantly. The dilemmas presented by this choice
were central to the great Literary Discussion of the 1920s, the last great
open debate before Stalinism effectively prevented many from engaging in
a personal dialogue with the non-Soviet world.
Among contemporary researchers there is less controversy attached to
some figures. Archipenko and Bohomazov, for example, have been restored
to a position of prominence in Ukrainian cultural history, and this has in
turn benefitted their reputations abroad.2 Kavaleridze, Meller, and Boichuk
still await definitive studies in Ukraine and recognition abroad, although
the first has been the beneficiary of an excellent recent study and collection
(in 2017), which, it is to be hoped, will lead to a rediscovery of his films and
an in-depth study of his life and art.3
Burliuk’s legacy has proved to be more problematic. The 1995
exhibition of his work in St. Petersburg in 1995, the publication of
Evdaev’s work on the artist’s life in the United States, and Krusanov’s vol-
umes devoted to the early futurists, show little awareness of the Ukrainian
context in the artist’s work.4 The artist’s case is symptomatic of the gap
in understanding among Russia critics concerning many figures from
Ukraine.
2 See, for example, the two exhibitions Alexander Archipenko 2005, held in New York, and
Alexandre Bogomazov 1991, held in Toulouse.
3 Kozlenko and Menzelevskyi 2017.
4 See David Burliuk, 1882–1967 1995, and Evdaev 2002, and Krusanov 1996–2003. For a
counter-position, see Futurism and After: David Burliuk 1882–1967 2008
168 The Avant-Garde in Today’s Cultural Memory
The same can be said of Malevich, whose links to Ukraine have been
similarly ignored in most exhibitions and publications originating in Russia.
The exhibition that traveled to Los Angeles, Washington and New York in
1990–91 was conceived as a contribution to détente and good relations
between Russia and the United States. The catalogue contains forewords
from George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Raisa Gorbacheva. Given
these circumstances it is hardly surprising that the painter is introduced
as a “renowned Russian artist,” the “greatest and most original spokesman
of the entire Russian avant-garde.” This catalogue also omits the first half
of Malevich’s 1933 autobiography. The translated text only begins from the
moment the artist left Ukraine for Russia. Such omissions have contributed
to an interpretive bias and a reluctance to consider different evidence.
By neglecting the Ukrainian dimension scholars miss an opportunity to
refresh and enrich the analysis of Malevich. Recently, Ukrainian scholars
have provided previously unknown documentation, which has led to new
insights into this artist’s life and work.5
Some marked biases, of course, also affect the analysis of other
important figures. Vertov, too, would benefit, as has been argued here,
from a better scholarly understanding in the West of political and cultural
realities in the Ukrainian film industry at the time he produced his greatest
films. He still awaits this contextualization.
The situation with scholarship on the Jewish avant-garde in Ukraine is
more positive. We now have a number of excellent works on the Kultur-Lige
and interest in these and other avant-gardists of Jewish origin has continued to
grow with publication of articles in Ukrainian journals and increased attention
in Western publications.6 It should be noted, however, that the lives of many
individuals are not well known. Even in some cases, awareness of their Jewish
origins and connections are lacking. More research is required into both their
biographies and art, and into their interaction with other figures—those who
remained in Ukraine and those who emigrated from the country.
Discussions concerning the biographies, identities, and works of
Ukraine’s avant-gardists now involve scholars in Ukraine, Russia and the
West. Collections, archives, and documentary materials from around
the world continue to yield fresh information. In spite of the conflicting
judgements—and, in some cases, a hotly contested history—in the last
three decades this avant-garde has gained increasing recognition as a
phenomenon with its own internal dynamic and characteristic traits. It now
commands attention as a richly rewarding topic of study in its own right.
5 See especially Nayden and Horbachov 1993, Horbachov 2006, and Filevska 2010.
6 See especially Kazovsky 2003, 2007, and 2011; Orlianskii 2000; Rybakov 2001.
Bibliography
Alexander Archipenko: Vision and Continuity. 2005. Exhibition catalogue. Curator Jaroslaw
Leshko. New York: The Ukrainian Museum.
Alexandre Bogomazov Jampol, 1880—Kiev, 1930. 1991. Exhibition catalogue. Musee d’Art
Moderne. Exhibition catalogue. Toulouse: Arpap.
Andersen, Troels ed. 1968. K. S. Malevich: Essays on Art: 1915–1933, vol. 2. 1928–1933.
Copenhagen: Borgen.
Antonova, Irina, and Iorn Merkert. 1996. Moskva-Berlin/Berlin-Moskva, 1900–1950.
Munich-New York: Prestel and Moscow: Galart.
Apollinaire, Guillaume. 1969. “Alexandre Archipenko.” Der Sturm. Siebzehnte Ausstellung:
Alexander Archipenko. March 12, 1914. (English translation in Karshan, 1969, 12–14.)
Apter-Gabriel, Ruth, ed. 1988. Tradition and Revolution: The Jewish Renaissance in Russian
Avant-Garde Art 1912–1928. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum.
Archipenko, Alexander. 1969. “Polychrone Manifesto.” In Karshan, 23–24.
Aronson, B. 1924. Sovremennaia evreiskaia grafika. Berlin : Petropolis. (Partial English
translation in Apter-Gabriel 235–38.)
Ash, Jared. 2002. “Primitivism in Russian Futurist Book Design 1910–14.” In Margit Rowell
and Deborah Wye, eds. The Russian Avant-Garde Book, 1910–1934, 33–40. New York:
The Museum of Modern Art.
Baer, George. 1942. “Brave and Adventurous Painter,” New York Herald Tribune. December
31.
Baron, Herman. 1944. Introduction to Michael Gold, David Burliuk, Artist-Scholar: Father
of Russian Futurism, 2. NY: ACA Gallery.
Basner, Elena. 1995. “The Phenomenon of David Burliuk in the History of the Russian
Avant-Garde Movement.” In David Burliuk, 1882–1967, 11–32.
Bazhan, M. 2004. “Pid ukrainskym nebom,” Muzeinyi provulok 2: 74–77.
Benois, Andre. 1909. “Rech.” March 22.
Birnie Danzker, Jo-Anne, Igor Jassenjawsky and Joseph Kiblitsky, eds. 1993. Avantgarde and
Ukraine. Munich: Klinkhardt and Biermann.
Bowlt, John E. 1986. “David Burliuk, the Father of Russian Futurism.” Canadian-American
Slavic Studies 20.1–2: 25–35.
170 Bibliography
———. 1988. “From the Pale of Settlement to the Reconstruction of the World?” In Apter-
Gariel, 43–60.
———. 1990. “Kazimir Malevich and the Energy of Language,” in Kazimir Malevich, ed.
D’Andrea, 179–86.
Burliuk, David. 1928–29. “Velikii krotkii bolshevik.” In his Tolstoy, Gorkii. Poemy, 5–21.
New York: Izdatelstvo Marii Nikiforovny Burliuk.
———. [1949] Color and Rhyme 1: Burliuk in 1947–48. Eighth exhibition at ACA. Hampton
Bays.
———. 1994. Fragmenty iz vospominanii futurista. Pisma. Stikhotvoreniia. St. Petersburg.
———. 2002. “Lestnits moikh let.” In Evdaev, 297–304.
Burliuk, Marussia. 1961–62. “Stranitsy zhizni v Amerike. Dnevnik 1930 g.” Color and Rhyme
48: 16–30.
Burliuk, Nicholas. N.d. “The First Hippie: David Davidovich Burliuk.” Mary Holt family
archive.
Butler, Christopher. 1994. Early Modernism: Music and Painting in Europe 1900–1916.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cherevatenko, Leonid. 1987. “’Promovte zhyttia moie – i strymaite slozy’ ... Khudozhnyk
Oksana Pavlenko zhaluie, rozpovidaie.” In Nauka i kultura. Ukraina. Shchorichnyk.
Vypusk 21: 370–79.
Chipp, Heershcell B. ed., 1971. Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Crone, Rainer and David Moos. 1991. Kazimir Malevich: The Climax of Disclosure. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
David Burliuk, 1882–1967: Exhibition of Works from the State Russian Museum and Museums
and Private Collections of Russia, USA and Germany. 1995. St. Petersburg: Palace Editions.
“Deklaratsiia Vseukrainskoi federatsii revolutsiinykh radianskykh pysmennykiv.” 1930.
Molodniak 1: 124.
Delafield, E. M. 1937. I Visit the Soviets: The Provincial Lady Looks at Russia. New York:
Harper and Brothers Publishers.
Demosfenova, Galina L., Evgeniia A. Petrova, et al., eds. 1990. Malevitch: Artiste et théoricien.
Paris, Flammarion.
Domontovych, Viktor. 1928. Divchynka z vedmedykom: nepravdopodibni istyny. Kyiv: Siiavo.
———. 1947. Doktor Serafikus. Munich: Nakladom Vydavnytstva Ukrainska Trybuna.
———. 1948. Bez gruntu: Povist. Regensburg: Vydavnytstvo Mykhaila Boretskoho.
Douglas, Charlotte. 1980. Swans of Other Worlds: Kazimir Malevich and the Origins of
Abstraction in Russia. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press.
———. 1994. Kazimir Malevich. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Drak, A. 1985. “Maister stsenohrafii Vadym Meller.” Obrazotvorche mystetstvo 3: 23–24.
———. 1997. “Stsenohrafiia epokhy Kurbasa.” Ukrainskyi teatr 2: 16.
Dychenko, I. 1984. “Toi nyzhnii vykhor barv (Tvorchyi portret ukr. teatr. khudozhnyka V.
Mellera).” Ukraina 13: 16–20.
Bibliography 171
———. 2004. “Arystokrat v avangarde.” Stolichnye novosti. December 14–20.

Eddy, Sherwood. 1934. Russia Today: What We Can Learn from It? New York: Farrar and
Rinehart Incorporated.
Efros, A. 1918. ‘Lampa Alladina.’ Evreiskii mir: Literaturnye sborniki. Moscow.
Ellul, Jacques. 1973. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. New York: Vintage
Books.
Evdaev, Norbert. 2002. David Burliuk v Amerike: Materialy k biografii. Moscow: Nauka.
Exter, Alexandra. 1919. “The Artist in the Theater. From an Interview Recorded by Filipp
Goziason.” Odesskii listok, 4. November 26.
———. 1990. “On the Works of Evgeniia Pribilska and Ganna Sobachko.” In Ukrajinska
Avangarda, 1910–1930. Exhibition catalogue, 209–10. Ed. Marijan Suslovski. Zagreb:
Galerije grada Zagreba. (Orig. pub. In Teatralnaia zhizn Kyiv 9 (1918): 18.)
Filevska, Tetiana, ed. 2016. Kazymyr Malevych: Kyivskyi period, 1928–1930. Kyiv: Rodovid.
Fischer, Louis. 1973. Soviet Journey. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. (Orig. pub.
New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Hass, 1935.)
Fueloep-Miller, René.1965. The Mind and Face of Bolshevism: An Examination of Cultural
Life in Soviet Russia. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. (Orig. pub. in German as
Geist und Gesicht des Bolschewismus, 1926. (First published in English in the United
States and England by G. P. Putnam’s Sons Ltd. in 1927.)
Futurism and After: David Burliuk 1882–1967. Curated by Myroslav Shkandrij. Winnipeg:
Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2008.
Gitelman, Zvi Y. 1972. Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU,
1917–1930. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gold, Michael. 1944. David Burliuk, Artist-Scholar: Father of Russian Futurism. NY: ACA
Gallery.
Goldelman, Solomon. 1921. Lysty zhydivskoho sotsial-demokrata pro Ukrainu: Materialy do
istorii ukrainsko-zhydivskykh vidnosyn za chas revoliutsii. Vienna: Zhydivske vydavnytstvo
“Hamoin” na Ukraini.
———. 1967. Zhydivska natsionalna avtonomiia v Ukraini 1917–1920. Zapysky Naukovoho
Tovarystva im. Shevchenka, vol. 182. Munich: Dniprova khvylia.
Golding, John. 1991. “Supreme Suprematist.” The New York Review, January 17.
Gombrich, E. H. 2002. The Preference for the Primitive: Episodes in the History of Western
Taste and Art. London: Phaidon Press.
Gollerbakh, E. 1930. Iskusstvo Davida Burliuka. New York: Izdanie M. N. Burliuk.
Gorbachev, Dmitrii, and Aleksandr Pavlov. 2000. “Evreiskie khudozhniki v Kieve (pervaia
tret XX veka).” Egupets 6: 290–337.
Gorev, I. 1927. “S Lysoi gory.” Kharkovskii proletarii. September 13.
Groys, Boris. 1992. The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and
Beyond. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hicks, Jeremy. 2007. Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film. London: I. B. Tauris.
Hill, Edwin C. 1929. “Burliuk Paints What Isn’t There.” Sun (New York City), March 25.
172 Bibliography
Hirniak, Iosyp. 1982. Spomyny. New York: Suchasnist.

Hnatiuk, Ola. 2006. “Nativists vs. Westernizers: Problems of Cultural Identity in Ukrainian
Literature of the 1990s.” Slavic and East European Journal 50.3: 434–51.
Horbachov, Dmytro. 2000. “Oleksandra Ekster u Kyievi i v Paryzhi.” Khronika 2000 35–36:
499–506.
———. 2006. “Vin ta ia buly Ukraintsi”: Malevych ta Ukraina. Kyiv: Sim Studiia.
Horbachov, Dmytro, ed. 1996. Ukrainskyi avanhard 1910–1930 rokiv: Albom. Kyiv:
Mystetstvo.
Hordynskyi, Sviatoslav. 1947. “Na velykykh shliakhakh: Do problem sohochasnoho
ukrainskoho obrazotvorchoho mystetstva.” Ukrainske mystetstvo: Almanakh I, 26–30.
Munich: Spilka.
———. 2007.”Mysttsi pro mystetstvo.” Artaniia 8: 13–15.
Humenna, Dolia. 1956. Khreshchatyi iar (Kyiv 1941–43: Roman-khronika). New York: Slovo.
Kapelhorodskyi, N. M., O. R. Synko, H. Ia. Skliarenko, L. I. Baraban, Iu. D. Shlapak. 2007.
Ivan Kavaleridze: zhyttia i tvorchist. Kyiv: KYI.
Karshan, Donald H. 1969. Archipenko: International Visionary. Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press.
Kavaleridze, Ivan. 1978. “Paryzh, Paryzh … Iz spohadiv myttsia.” Vitchyzna 1: 121–30.
———. 1977. “Ranok krainy.” Vitchyzna 7, Nicolas, 112–22.
———. 1988. Sbornik statei i vospominanii. Kyiv: Mystetstvo.
———. 2017a. “Prokazhennyi Ivan,” 81–230. In Kozlenko, Ivan and Stanislav Menzelevskyi,
81–230.
———. 2017b. “Tini.” In Kozlenko, Ivan and Stanislav Menzelevskyi, 231–55.
Kazimir Malevich 1878–1935. 1988. Exhibition catalogue. Ed. W. A. L. Beeren and J. M.
Joosten. Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum.
Kazimir Malevich 1878–1935. 1990. Exhibition catalogue. Ed. Jeanne D’Andrea. Los Angeles:
The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center.
Kazovsky, Hillel (Gregory). 2003. The Artists of the Kultur-Lige. Jerusalem: Gesharim and
Moscow: Mosty Kultury.
———. 2011. The Book Design of Kultur-Lige Artists. Kyiv: Dukh i Litera.
———., ed. 2007. Kultur-Lige: Artistic Avant-garde of the 1910s and 1920s. Kyiv: Dukh i
litera.
Khardzhiev, N. 1976. K istorii russkogo avangarda. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell Intern.
Khiterer, Viktoria. 1999. Dokumenty sobrannye Evreiskoi istoriko-arkheograficheskoi
komissiei Vseukrainskoi Akademii Nauk. Kyiv: Institut iudaiki, and Jerusalem: Gesharim.
———. 2002. “Konfiskatsiia evreiskikh dokumentalnykh materialov i evreiskoi sobstvennosti
v Ukraine v 1919–1930 gg.” In Aronov and Finberh, 10.
Khlebnikov, V. 1964–65. “Burliuk.” Color and Rhyme 55: 30.
Khmuryi, Vasyl. 1930. “Vadym Meller.” Kultrobitnyk 3: 35–37.
———. 1948. “Iosyp Hirniak: Etiud.” In V. Khmuryi, Iu. Dyvnych and Ie. Blakytnyi, V
maskakh epokhy: Iosyp Hirniak, 11–46. N.p.; Ukraina. (Orig. pub. Kharkiv: Rukh, 1931.)
Bibliography 173
Khvylovyi, Mykola. 1926. “Une lettre.” Nove mystetstvo 26: 10–11.

———. 1960. Stories from the Ukraine. New York: Wisdom Library.
———. 1986. The Cultural Renaissance in Ukraine: Polemical Pamphlets, 1925–1926. Ed.
Myroslav Shkandrij. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of
Alberta.
Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich. 1970. Khrushchev Remembers. Ed. Strobe Talbott. Boston:
Little, Brown.
Kleiner, Israel. 2000. From Nationalism to Universalism: Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky and the
Ukrainian Question. Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.
Koliazin, Vladimir. 1996. “Gastroli russkikh teatrov 20-kh–30-kh godov v Berline: S Vostoka
na Zapad, ot Tairova k Meierkholdu.” In Antonova and Merkert, 173–76.
Kopelev, Lev. 1980. The Education of a True Believer. New York.
Kotliar, Ie. and V. Susak. 2005. “Ievreiske mystetstvo: tradytsiia i novyi chas.” In Leonid
Finberh and Volodymyr Liubchenko, eds., Narysy z istorii ta kultury ievreiv Ukrainy,
300–29. Kyiv: Dukh i litera.
Kozlenko, Ivan. 2017. “Kavaleridze: Kinokubistychne zhytiie.” In Kozlenko and
Menzelevskyi, 59–80.
Kozlenko, Ivan and Stanislav Menzelevskyi, eds. 2017. Ivan Kavaleridze: Memuary,
dramaturhiia, publitsystyka. Kyiv: Natsionalnyi tsentr Oleksandra Dovzhenka.
Krasylnikova, O. V. 2000. “Oleksandra Ekster i Vadym Meller.” In Ukrainske mystetstvo ta
arkhitektura kintsia XIX–pochatku XX st., 106–19. Ed. P. O. Biletskyi. Kyiv: Naukova
dumka.
Krusanov, A. V. 1996. Russkii avangard: 1907–1932: Istoricheskii obzor. Vol. 1. Boevoe
desiatiletie. St. Petersburg: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.
———. 2003. Futuristicheskaia revoliutsiia 1917–1921: Istoricheskii obzor. Vol. 2. Books 1
and 2. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.
Kucherenko, Z. V. 1975. Vadym Meller. Kyiv: Mystetstvo.
Kucherenko, Zoia. 1997. “Vadym Meller,” Khronika 2000 19–20: 325–43.
Ladzhynskyi, V. 1973. “Ukrainski mysttsi v Paryzhi.” Notatky z mystetstva (Philadelphia) 13:
17–33.
Lahutenko, Olha. 2007. Graphein Hrafiky: Narysy z istorii ukrainskoi hrafiky XX stolittia.
Kyiv: Hrani-T, 2007.
Lavrentev, Boris. 1959. “Avtobiografiia.” Novyi mir 4: 56–63.
Lavrinenko, Iurii. 1959. Rozstriliane vidrodzhennia: Antolohiia 1917–1933. Poeziia—Proza—
Drama—Esei. Munich: Instytut Literacki.
Livshits, Benedikt. 1977. The One and a Half-Eyed Archer. Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental
Research Partners.
Lubchak, Vadym. 2012. “Anti-imperialistic film by Ivan Kavaleridze.” Den, May 15. https://
day.kyiv.ua/en/article/culture/anti-imperialistic-film-ivan-kavaleridze.
Lysiak-Rudnytskyi, Ivan. 1973. Mizh istoriieiu i politykoiu: Statti do istorii ta krytyky
ukrainskoi, suspilno-politychnoi dumky. N.p.: Suchasnist.
174 Bibliography
Makaryk, Irena R. 2004. Shakespeare in the Undiscovered Bourn: Les Kurbas, Ukrainian
Modernism and Early Soviet Cultural Politics. Toronto : University of Toronto Press.
———. 2010. “On the World Stage: The Berezil in Paris and New York.” In Makaryk and
Tkacz, 479–513.
Makaryk, Irena R. and Virlana Tkacz, eds. 2010. Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Malevich, Kazimir [Malevych, Kazymyr]. 2016. “Arkhitektura, stankove maliarstvo ta
skulptura,” 117–20. In Filevska 2016. (Orig. pub. Avanhard-Almanakh, B (1930): 91–93.)
———. [Malevych, Kazymyr]. 1928. “Sproba novoho vidchuttia prostorony.” Nova
generatsiia 11: 311–22.
———. 1959. The Non-Objective World. Chicago: Theobald.
———. 1976. “Glavy iz avtobiografii khudozhnika.” In Khardzhiev, K istorii russkogo
avangarda, 85–127.
———. 1985. “Chapters from an Artists’ Autobiography.” Trans. Alan Upchurch. October
34: 25–34.
———. 1990. “From 1/42: Autobiographical Notes, 1923–1925.” In Kazimir Malevich, ed.
D’Andrea, 169–72.
“Maliarska maisternia prof. V. Mellera.” 1923. Chervonyi shliakh 6–7: 221–22.
Margolin, Arnold. 1922. Ukraina i politika Antany. (Zapiski evreia i grazhdanina). Berlin:
Izdatelstvo S. Efron. (English translation as Ukraine and Policy of the Entente, 1976.)
Markov, Vladimir. 1968a. “Predislovie.” In V. V. Khlebnikov, Sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 1.
Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
———. 1968b. Russian Futurism: A History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press.
Menzelevskyi, Stanislav. 2017. “Avto/Bio/Kino.” In Kozlenko and Menzelevskyi, 11–18.
Milner, John. 1984. Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian Avant-Garde. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Movchan, Raisa. 2008. “Proletarska literature 1920-kh rokiv i modernizm.” In T. I.
Hundorova, ed., Modernizm pislia postmodernu, 203–11. Kyiv: Polihrafichnyi tsentr
Foliant.
Mudrak, Myroslava M. 1986. The New Generation and Artistic Modernism in Ukraine. Ann
Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press.
———. 1987. “The Painted Surface in the Ukrainian Avant-garde: from Facture to
Construction.” Pantheon 45: 138–43.
———. 2001. “Rupture or Continuum? Ukraine’s ‘Avant-Garde’ In Search of a System.” In
Phenomenon 2001, 25–29.
Nakov, Andre. 1991. “De l’expression futuriste au formalisme construit.” In Alexandre
Bogomazov, Jampol, 1880—Kiev, 1930, 13–24. Musee d’Art Moderne, Refectoire des
Jacobins, Toulouse. N.p.: Editions Arpap.
Naiden, Oleksandr and Dmytro Horbachov. 1993. “Malevych muzhytskyi.” Khronika 2000
3–4: 210–31. (Reprinted in Horbachov 2006, 199–209.)
Bibliography 175
Nimenko, A. 1967. Kavaleridze-skulptor. Kyiv: Mystetstvo.

Olenska-Petryshyn, Arkadiia. 1997. “Arkhypenko—peredovyi novator skulptury XX viku,”
Khronika 2000 19–20: 486–98.
Orlianskii, V. S. 2000. Ievrei Ukrainy v 20–30 roky XX storichchia: sotsialno-politychnyi
aspect. Zaporizhzhia: Zaporizkyi derzhavnyi universytet, Zaporizke miske viddilennia
tavarystva ‘Ukraina-Izrail’.
Papash, Olha. 2017. “Ivan Kavaleridze: Mizh istoriieiu i mopvchanniam.” In Kozlenko and
Menzelevskyi, 21–32.
Papeta, S. P. 2006. “Nina Henke-Meller: Vid narodnoho suprematyzmu do
radianskoho mystetstva.” Vistnyk KhDADM 2: 121–27. http://www.nbuv.gov.ua/
articles/2006/06pspssa.pdf. Accessed January 15, 2012.
Pavlyshyn, Marko. 1997. “Ukrainska kultura z pohliadu postmodernizmu.” In his Kanon ta
ikonostas, 213–22. Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo Chas.
“Peredmova do katalohu pershoi vystavky ‘Kultur-Ligy’.” 2003. In Kazovsky 2007, 78–79.
(Orig. Yiddish Kultur-Lige. Biuliten numer 2. Kyiv, 1920, 15–20. Partial English translation
in Apter-Gabriel, 230.)
Petrovskii, Miron. 1996. “Lev Kvitko v krugu ukrainskikh pisatelei.” In Wolf Moskovich, et
al., eds., Jews and Slavs, vol. 5, 238–54. Jerusalem.
Petrova, Yevgenia. 2001. “Futurism in Russian Fine Art.” In The Russian Avant-Garde:
Representation and Interpretation. Ed. Yevgenia Petrova. St. Petersburg: The State
Russian Museum, Palace Editions.
Pevnyi, Bohdan. 1992. “Pid zakhystom Bohorodytsi.” Ukraina 15: 11.
Phenomenon of the Ukrainian Avant-Garde, 1910–1935. 2001. Exhibition catalogue. Ed.
Myroslav Shkandrij. Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Plokhy, Serhii. 2005. Unmaking Imperial Russia. Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of
Ukrainian History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Popovych, Volodymyr. 1968. “Sofiia Levytska (1874–1937).” Notatky z mystetstva
(Philadelphia) 7: 33–42.
———. 1977. “Arkhypenko u Frantsii.” Notatky z mystetstva (Phladelphia) 17: 5–18.
———. 1983. “Mykhailo Andriienko-Nechytailo.” Notatky z mystetstva (Philadelphia) 23:
15–23.
Postupalskii, Igor. 1932. Literaturnyi trud Davida D. Burliuka. New York: Izdanie Marii
Burliuk.
Pribilska, Evgeniia Ivanovna. N.d. “Zhizneopisanie.” Archive of Brigitta Vadymivna Vetrova.
Propaganda and Slogans: The Political Poster in Soviet Ukraine 1919–1921. 2013. Exhibition
catalogue. Curated by Myroslav Shkandrij. New York: The Ukrainian Museum.
Ratanova, Maria. 2010. “The Choreographic Avant-garde in Kyiv, 1916–1921: Bronislava
Nijinska and Her Ecole do Mouvement.” In Makaryk and Tkacz, 311–20.
Ravich, Meilekh. 2008. “Kratkaia istoriia dinamicheskoi gruppy trekh poetov v Varshave,
1921–1925,” 2–15. In Grigorii Kazovskii, “O ‘Khaliastre’,” http://members.tripod.
com/~barabash/zerkalo/19-20/Kazovsky.htm. Accessed August 31, 2008.
176 Bibliography
Ravich-Cherkasskii, M. 1923. Istoriia Kommunisticheskoi Partii (b-ov) Ukrainy. Kharkiv:

Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo Ukrainy, 1923.
Revutskyi, Valerian. 1955. Piat velykykh aktoriv ukrainskoi stseny. Paris: Vydannia pershoi
ukrainskoi drukarni u Frantsii.
———. 1985. “Zustrich z Iaremoiu Aizenshtokom.” Diialohy 9–10: 164–5.
Ripko, Olena and Nelli Prystalenko. 1991. Boichuk i boichukisty, boichukizm. Kataloh
vystavky. Lviv: LKG.
Rowell, Margit, and Deborah Wye. 2002. The Russian Avant-Garde Book, 1910–1934. New
York: The Museum of Modern Art.
Rosenberg, William G. 1990. Bolshevik Visions: First Phase of the Cultural Revolution in Soviet
Russia. 2nd ed. University of Michigan Press. (Orig. pub. Ardis Publishers, 1984.)
Rybak, Isakhar-Ber and Borys Aronson. 1919. “Di vegn fun der yiddisher moleray. (Rayoynes
fun kinstler).” Ufgang. Erster zamlbukh. Kyiv.
———. 2007. “Shliaky ievreiskoho mystetstva (Rozdumy myttsia).” In Kazovsky 2007,
64–74. (Original Yiddish in I. Rybak and B. Aronson, “Di vegn fun der yiddisher moleray.
(Rayoynes fun kinstler).” Oyfgang – ershter zamlbukh. Kyiv: Farlag Kultur-Lige, 1919.
Partially translated into English in Apter-Gabriel, 229.)
Rybakov, M. O. 2001. Pravda istorii: diialnist ievreiskoi kulturno-prosvitnytskoi orhanizatsii
‘Kulturna liha’ u Kyievi (1918–1925): Zbirnyk dokumentiv i materialiv. 2nd ed. Kyiv: Kyiv.
Samchuk, Ulas. 1980. Na bilomu koni: spomyny i vrazhennia. 3rd ed. Winnipeg: Volyn.
———. 1990. Na koni voronomu: spomyny i vrazhennia. 2nd ed. Winnipeg: Volyn.
Sarabianov, Dmitry. 1991. “Malevich at the Time of the ‘Great Break’.” In Malevich: Artist
and Theoretician, ed. Galina Demosfenova. Paris: Flammarion.
Semenko, Mikhail. 1924. “Mystetstvo iak kult.” Chervonyi shliakh 3: 222–29.
———. 1927. “Prohrama i otochennia livykh.” Nova generatsiia 1: 39–43.
———. 1929. “Komu potribne mystetstvo.” Literaturna hazeta, May 1.
Sherekh, Iurii. [Shevelov]. 1964. “Khvylovyi bez polityky,” 53–676. In his Ne dlia ditei. N.p.:
Prolog. (Originally published in Novi dni, 1953.)
———. 1978. “Chetvertyi Kharkiv,” 204–20. In his Druha cherha. N.p.: Suchasnist, 1978.
(Originally published in Studentskyi vistnyk, 1948.)
Shkandrij, Myroslav. 1992. Modernists, Marxists and the Nation: The Ukrainian Literary
Discussion of the 1920s. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.
———. 1994. “Modernism, the Avant-Garde and Mykhailo Boichuk’s Aesthetic.” Journal of
Ukrainian Studies 2: 43–58.
Shklovsky, Viktor. 1972. Mayakovsky and His Circle. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company.
Shlegel, Hans-Ioakhim. 2017. “Onovlennia kinematohrafa z dukhu skulptury.” In Kozlenko
and Menzelevskyi, 19–20.
Shumylovych, Bohdan. 2006. “Do We Really Need Methodology from the West in Ukrainian
Art Education?” In Egle Rindzeviciute, ed. Contemporary Change in Ukraine. Sodertorns
hogskola: Center for Baltic and East European Studies.
Sichynsky, Vol. 1934. M. Andriienko-Nechytailo, Lviv.
Bibliography 177
Sinyavsky, Andrei. 1990. Soviet Civilization: A Cultural History. New York: Arcade.
Skuratovskyi, Vadym. 1998. “Do ievreisko-ukrainskykh literaturnykh zviazkiv: Poperedni
notatky.” Khronika 2000 21–22: 44–57.
Smolych, Iurii. 1986. Tvory u 8 tomakh. Vol. 8. Kyiv: Dnipro.
———. 1990. “Z ‘Zapysiv na skhyli viku’.” Prapor 9: 160–78.
———. 1977. Pro teatr: zbirnykstatei, retsenzii, narysiv. Kyiv: Mystetstvo.
“Stikhi Davida Burliuka.” 1964–65. Color and Rhyme 55: 5–23.
Stone, Dan and Annalee Greenberg, eds. Jewish Life and Times: A Collection of Essays. Vol.
9. Winnipeg: Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, 2009.
Susak, Vita. 2010. Ukrainian Artists in Paris, 1910–1939. Kyiv: Rodovid.
Synko, Rostyslav. 2002. Na zlamakh epokj: I. Kavaleridze i otochennia: Ese, Spohady, rozdumy.
Kyiv: Avdi.
Todorov, Tzvetan. 1987. Literature and Its Theorists: A Personal View of Twentieth- Century
Criticism. Trans. Catherine Porter. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Tsybenko, P. A. 1967. “Teatralne-dekoratyvne mystetstvo.” Istoriia ukrainskoho mystetstva
v shesty tomakh. Vol. 5. Radianske mystetstvo 1917–1941 rokiv, 157–65. Kyiv: AN URSR.
Ukrainian Modernism 1910–1930. 2006. Ed. Anatolii Melnyk. Kyiv: Natsionalnyi
khudozhnii muzei Ukrainy.
Vadym Meller (1884–1962): Teatralno-dekoratsiine mystetstvo, zhyvopys, hrafika. Exhibition
catalogue. 1984. Kyiv: Spilka khudozhnykiv Ukrainy. Kyiv.
Van Norman Baer, Nancy. 1986. Bronislava Nijinska. The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.
———. 1991. Theatre in Revolution: Russian Avant-Garde Stage Design, 1913–1935. Thames
and Hudson, The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.
Vakar, I. A. 2004. “Posleslovie,” 577–621. In Vakar and Mikhnenko.
Vakar, I. A. and T. N. Mikhienko, eds. 2004. Malevich o sebe: Sovremenniki o Maleviche.
2 vols. Moscow: RA.
Vynnychenko, Volodymyr. 1920. Vidrodzhennia natsii. Vol. 1. Kyiv-Vienna: n.p.
“What is the Kultur-Liga?” 2003. In Kazovsky, 16–40. (Original Yiddish: “Vos iz di Kultur-
Lige?” Kultur-Lige. Biuliten 2. Kyiv, 1920, 15–20.)
Williams, Raymond. 1973. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wolitz, S. I. 1981. “Di Khalyastre, the Yiddish Modernist Movement in Poland: An
Overview,” Yiddish 3: 5–19.
———. 1988. “The Jewish National Art Renaissance in Russia.” In Apter-Gabriel, Tradition
and Revolution, 21–42.
———. 1991. “Between Folk and Freedom: The Failure of the Yiddish Modernist Movement
in Poland,” Yiddish 1: 26–51.
Zhdanova, Larissa A. 1982. Malevich: Suprematism and Revolution in Russian Art 1910–
1930. London: Thames and Hudson.
Zhyvotko, A. 1943. Podon (Ukrainska voronizhchyna) v kulturnomu zhytti Ukrainy. Prague:
Vyd-vo Iu. Tyshchenka.
Index
A Apollo, 145
abstractionism, 3, 21, 36, 61, 70, 76 Archipenko, Alexander (Oleksandr), xi–
ACA Gallery (NY), 96 xii, 4–6, 9–13, 16–19, 22, 64, 71, 113,
Académie d’Art Moderne, 8 135–136, 139, 166–167
Académie de la Grande-Chaumière, 7 Boxing, 10
Académie Fernand Cormon, 11 Medrano 1, 10
Académie Julian, 6 Pierrot, 10
Académie Ranson, 50 Suzanna, 10
Académie Vitti, 50 Woman, 10
Academy of Artistic Sciences’ (Rossiiskaia ARMU (Association of Revolutionary Art of
akademiia khudozhestvennykh nauk), Ukraine), 55
125 Aronson, Boris (Borys; Barukh), 8, 61, 63,
Aizenshtok, Yarema, 59 71, 75–77
AKhRR (Association of Artists of Revolu- Aronson, Naum (Naoum), 136
tionary Russia), 55 Arsenaltsy (1926), 128
Aleichem, Sholem, 60 Art Department of the Ukrainian Rosta
All-Ukrainian Army Congress, 138 (Telegraph Agency), 43, 46
All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets (1921, “Art Screen,” 60
V), 54 Artemivk, 143
All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets (1931, ARTES (an organization of Jewish
XI), 157 avant-garde artists from Lviv), 16
All-Ukrainian Federation of Revolutionary Association of Independent Ukrainian Art-
Soviet Writers, 26 ists (Asotsiiatsiia nezalezhnykh mysttsiv
Allo, na khvyli 477 (1929), 131 Ukrainy), see ANUM
Altman, Nathan, xi, 6, 62, 75 Assyrians (ballet), 122
An-sky, S. (Shlome Zanvla Rappoport), 62, Athens, 10
66 Avanhard-Almanakh, 59, 113–114
Andriienko-Nechytailo, Mykhailo (Michel Azhbe, Anton, 82, 88
Andreenko) 5, 9, 12, 14–15
antisemitism, 29, 60, 65, 132 B
ANUM (Association of Independent Bachynskyi, Yevhen, 50
Ukrainian Artists; Asotsiiatsiia Baer, George, 95
nezalezhnykh mysttsiv Ukrainy), 13, 15 Baginen, 77
Apollinaire, Guillaume, xi, 7, 9n11, 10, 12 Bahazii, Danylo, 146
Index 179
Baranoff-Rossiné, Wladimir (Volodomyr Bunuel, Luis, 15

Baranov), xi, 4, 8–9, 14, 22 Burachek, Mykola, 4, 52n5
Baron, Herman, 95 Burliuk, David, xi–xiii, 4–8, 11, 19–21, 35,
Baudouin de Courtenay, Sophia, 50 69, 71, 81–101, 111, 112, 135, 166
Bauhaus, 5, 17 Lenin and Tolstoy (Unconquerable
Becher, Johannes, 113 Russia), 96
Benois, Andre, 13, 92, 100 “My Ancestors,” 88
Berehovsky, M., 66 “Nezabvennaia vesna,” 98
Berezil Theater, 33, 35–36, 116, 121, Sviatoslav Drinking His Own Blood, 90
128–129, 131 “Velikii krotkii bolshevik,” 97
Bergelson, David, 61 Burliuk, Liudmyla, 86
Bergson, Henri, 111 Burliuk, Nicholas (son), 86
Beridze, Vakhtang, 127 Burliuk, Nikolai (brother), 7, 82–83, 85, 91
Berlin, xi, 5–6, 10–11, 18, 63, 69, 72, 75, 77, Burliuk, Vladimir (Volodymyr), 7–8, 82–86,
110, 113, 124–125 91
Bezazel Arts Academy (Jerusalem), 62 Bush, George, 168
Bialik, Hayim, 136 Byzantine art, see neo-Byzantinism
Blaue Reiter, Der (The Blue Rider), xi, 11,
117 C
Boccioni, Umberto, 111 Cabinet for the Study of Soviet Jewish
Bohomazov, Oleksandr, 7–8, 16, 17–22, Literature, Language and Folklore (also
55n11, 64, 86, 113, 167 Cabinet of Jewish Culture), 66
Bouquet of Flowers, 18 Carné, Marcel, 15
Boichuk, Mykhailo, vi, xi, xiii, 4–5, 12, Carrière, Eugene, 6
14–15, 17–22, 35–36, 38–55, 63, 71–72, Catholicism, 17, 106
77, 113–115, 167 Chagall, Mark, 62, 75–76
Bring Presents for the Red Army, 54 Chaikov, Yosyp (Joseph Tchaikov), 4, 62,
From the Meadow, 54 75, 77
Head of the Savior, 52 Seamstress, The, 77
Last Supper, The, 51 Soyfer, 77
Ploughing, 54 Violin-Player, The, 77
Prophet Isaiah, 51, 53 Chaplin, Charlie, 157
Red Army Camp, The, 54 Chaumet, Henri, 15
Shevchenko Celebration, 54 Chekhov, Anton, 81, 153
Boichuk School, 19–20, 36, 38–55, 63, Step, 82
71–72, 77, 114 Cherniavskyi, Shloimo, 61
bolsheviks, 3, 21, 29–31, 38, 40–41, 46–50, Chernyshevskii, Nikolai, 98
52, 55, 58, 61, 65, 72, 74, 76, 97, 103, Chervonyi shliakh, 130
111, 137–138, 138, 140, 141–142, 158, Chirico, Giorgio de, 14
160–161 Chopin, Frederick, 122
“bourgeois nationalism,” xii, 29, 32 Chornianka, 7, 82–83, 85–86, 92, 94
Bowlt, John, 76 Chubar, Vlas, 147
Braque, Georges, xi, 7, 14 Claire, René, 15
Brik, Osip, 113 Committee to Help Sick and Wounded Red
Brodiachaia Sobaka, 97 Army Soldiers, 43
Brussels, 10 Communist Party (bolsheviks) of Ukraine
Bucharest, 14, 72 (CP(b)U), 30–31, 141
Bulgakov, Mikhail, 33, 136 Congress of the Russian Communist Party
Belaia gvardiia (The White Guard), 33 (1923, XII), 30
Dni Turbinykh (Days of the Turbins), 33 constructivism, xi, 3, 5, 8, 15, 18, 21, 71, 113,
Bund, 58, 73 116, 123, 129, 132, 141
Bunin, Ivan, 82 Cossack Mamai, 86, 90. See also Mamai,
Derevnia, 82 Cossack
180 Index
Cossacks (also Zaporozhians), 12, 53, 82, École des Beaux-Arts, 6, 9

86–91, 99, 107n5, 142 École Technique Photo-Cinema, 15
Crimea, 19, 72, 85, 87 Eddy, Sherwoood, 161
cubism, xi, 3, 7–9, 12–14, 22, 62, 71, 77, 110, Educational Alliance Art School in New
119, 123, 129, 135, 139, 144 York, 62
cubo-futurism, 62, 71, 109, 116–117, 121, Ehrenburg, Illia, 71
127 Eisenstein, Sergei, 113
“Cultural Renaissance,” xii, 67–78, 81, Ellul, Jacques, 27
149–154 Elman, Yosyf, 61–62, 75
“cultural revolution” of 1928–33, 25–26, Engel, Yu., 66
149–162 Epik, Hryhorii, 28
Persha vesna, 28
D Epstein, Mark (Moisei), 16, 61–64, 77
Danilevskii, Grigorii, 84–85 Cello-Player, The, 77
Davydova, Natalia, 110, 126 Family Group, 77
Debussy, Claude, 136 Evdaev, Norbert, 167
Delafield, E. M., 161 Evtushenko, Evgenii, 143
I Visit the Soviets, 161 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décorat-
Delauney, Sonia, xii, 6, 7, 9, 12 ifs et Industriels Modernes, 8, 121
Delvall, Carlo, 7 expressionism, 3, 19, 129, 153
Denikin, General Anton, 38 Exter, Alexandra, xi–xii, 4–9, 11, 14, 16,
Denis, Maurice, 49 18–19, 35, 62–64, 71, 77, 86, 110,
Deslaw, Eugene, see Slavchenko, Yevhen 118–121, 123–124, 126, 128, 166
Dietz, Willi, 82 City at Night, 18
Directory, 29, 73 Constructivist Composition, 18
Dobrushin, Yokhezkel, 61 Genoa, 18
Domontovych, Viktor (Viktor Petrov), 34,
161 F
Bez gruntu, 161 Famira Kifared, 119, 126
Doktor Serafikus, 34, 161 Fareinigte, 73
Dvchynka z vedmedykom, 161 fauvism, 12, 18
Douglas, Charlotte, 106, 111 Fefer, Itsyk (Itzik), 61
Dovbush, Oleksa, 144 Fischer, Louis, 162
Dovzhenko, Oleksandr, 15, 27, 29, 37, 115, Thirteen Who Fled, 162
135, 147, 150, 154, 156, 160 Flavian, Metropolitan, 138
Arsenal, 156, 160 Fokine, Mikhail, 120
Divchynka z vedmedykom, 161 folk art (also folklore), 8–9, 12, 20, 35,
Ivan, 156 59–63, 71, 77, 91–92, 95, 103, 110–112,
Zemlia, 27, 115, 156 119, 123–127
Zvenyhora, 37, 156 “Folk Art of Bukovyna and Galicia, The,” 8
Dreier, Katherine, 96 Folkspartei (United Jewish Socialist Work-
Dresden, 125 ers’ Party), 58, 73
Dufresne, Charles, 124 Franko, Ivan, 47, 60
Dufy, Raoul, 124 “Kameniari” (Stone Masons), 47
Dulac, Germaine, 15 Franko, Ivan, 47, 60
dumas, 5 Free Academy of Proletarian Literature, see
Duranty, Walter, 160 VAPLITE
Dychenko, Ihor, 122 Fueloep-Miller, René, 161
futurism, xi, 3, 7, 14–17, 21, 26, 34, 62,
E 69, 71, 76, 81–82, 85–86, 97, 100, 104,
École de Mouvement, 120 109–111, 116–117, 121, 127, 167
École de Paris, 165
Index 181
G Horban, Uliana, 54
Gan, Aleksei, 113 Women in a Field, 54
Gance, Abel, 15 Horodetskyi, Vladyslav, 139
Gardin, Vladimir, 142 Hrushevskyi, Mykhailo, 48, 52, 57
Gaudier-Brzeska, Henri, 10 Hryshchenko, Oleksander (Alexis Gritch-
Geneva, 5, 10, 117, 123, 128 enko, Grischenko), 4–6, 9, 12–13, 15,
Gofstein, David, 61, 64 19–20, 22, 166
Gogol, Nikolai, 12, 81, 89, 142 O sviaziakh russkoi zhivopisi s Vizantiei
Gold, Michael, 95 i Zapadom (On the Links of
Goldelman, Solomon, 57 Russian Painting with Byzantium
Golden Horde, 36 and the West), 13
Gollerbakh, E., 94 Russkaia ikona kak iskusstvo zhivopisi
Golomb, Arthur, 74 (The Russian Icon as an Art of
Gombrich, Ernst, 20 Painting), 13
Goncharova, Natalia, 11, 85, 86, 111 Humenna, Dokia, 145–146
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 168 Khreshchatyi iar, 146
Gorbacheva, Raisa, 168 Hungry Await Help from Their Soviet Rule.
Great Famine, see Holodomor Timely Collection of the Food Tax Will
Grebenka, Evgenii (Yevhen Hrebinka), 81 Save Everyone, The, v, 45
Groys, Boris, 3, 25 Hylaea (Gileia), 82–86, 90, 92, 101
Guro, Elena, 83
Gzhytskyi, Volodymyr, 28 I
Chorne ozero (Black Lake), 28 Ibsen, Henrik, 33
icon, 9, 12–14, 20, 27, 35, 40, 42–43, 51–52,
H 71, 81, 85, 103, 106–108, 111, 114, 166
Hafiz salon, 85 Imperial Academy of Arts (St. Petersburg),
haidamakas, 146 14, 136
Hart, 60, 154 impressionism, 3, 12, 82, 94, 98, 153
Hauptmann, Gerhart, 33 indigenization (korenizatsiia), 31, 58–59. See
Haz (Gas, 1923), 128n8, 129–130 also Ukrainization
Hebrew language, 65, 67 Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture in
Henke, Nina, vi, 71, 116, 118–120, 124, Kyiv, 66
126–127 Ioffe, Yudel, 61
Hermaize, Osyp, 59 Italy, 11, 13, 48, 117, 154
Herodotus, 84–85 Ivanov, Viacheslav, 85, 93
Herriot, Edouard, 160 Izdebskii, Vladimir, 11, 82
Hesiod, 85
Hicks, Jeremy, 158–159 J
Hitler, Adolph, 144 Jabotinsky, Ze’ev, 57
Hlukhiv Teachers’ Institute, 118 Javlensky, Aleksei, 85
Hlynske Ceramic School, 54n9 Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, 64
Hnatiuk, Ola, 166 Jewish culture, xii, 6, 8, 15–19, 30n2, 56–77,
Holodomor (Great Famine), 39, 151–152, 118, 132, 136, 165, 168
160, 162 Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society
Holovanivskyi, Sava, 60 (Evreiskoe istoriko-etnograficheskoe
Holovko, Andrii, 28, 155 obshchestvo; EIEO), 62, 66
Burian, 28 Jewish Literary-Artistic Club, 62
Maty, 28 Jewish ministry, 58
Holubiatnykov, Pavlo, 55n11 Jewish People’s University, 72
Homer, 85 Jimmy Higgins (1923), 129, 131
Hood, Robin, 144 Judaism, 17, 65
Horbachov, Dmytro, 112
182 Index
K Valdshnepy, 32
Kaganovich, Lazar, 30–31 Kievskaia myst, 117
Kaganovich, Mordekai (Maks), 62 Kinostudia (Kyiv), 144
Kamenskii, Vasilii, 82–83 Kipnis, Itsyk (Itzik), 61
Kamernyi Theater, 6n9, 119 Klee, Paul, 49, 117
Kaminka (Kamenka), 120 Kliun, Ivan, 126
Kandinsky, Wassily, 11, 19, 49, 82, 85, 117 Knirr, Heinrich, 117
Kant, Immanuil, 25 Koestler, Arthur, 162
Kapchynskyi, Mykhailo, 60 Koliarevskyi, Ivan, 60
Karnaval (1923), 131 Komsomol, 60, 156
Kasiian, Vasyl, 55n11 Konchalovskii, Piotr, 11
Kasperovych, Mykola, 50–51 Kopstein, Aron, 60
Kaufmann, Boris, 15 Koriak, Volodymyr, 59
Kavaleridze, Ivan, xi, xiii, 4, 15–16, 64, Kornienko, I. S., 146
135–148, 167 Kosach, Yurii, 90
Apostle Andrew, 137 Kostandi, Kiriak, 6
Artem, 139–144, 147 Kosynka, Yevhen, 81
Cyril and Methodius, 137 Kotsiubynskyi, Mykhailo, 60
Heroes of the Revolution, 138 Kovzhun, Pavlo, 44
Koliivshchyna, 142–143, 147 Kozlenko, 143, 147
Natalka Poltavka, 142 Kramarenko, 4, 54, 113, 114, 115
Perekop, 142, 146–147 Kramarenko, Lev, 4, 54n9, 113, 114n13, 115
Povia, 144 Krasytskyi, Fotii, 81, 136
Princess Olga, 135, 137–139 Krat, Pavlo, 37
Prometei, 142–143, 147 Koly ziishlo sontse, 37
Shevchenko, 138, 144 Kratko, Bernard, 55n11, 62, 75
Shturmovi nochi, 142 Kropyvnytskyi, Marian, 102
Skovoroda, 140, 144 Kropyvnytskyi, Marko, 139
Votaniv mech, 145 Kruchenykh, Aleksei, 82–83
Yaroslav the Wise, 139–140 Krusanov, A. V., 7n10, 167
Zaporozhets za Dunaiem, 142 Krushelnytskyi, Marian, 127
Zlyva, 142–143, 146–147 Krychevsky, Fedir, 52n5
Kerensky, Alexander, 138 Krychevskyi, Mykola, 12,
Kharkiv, xii, 6–7, 15–16, 18, 31–34, 42–43, Krychevskyi, Vasyl, 17, 52n5, 71
46–47, 54, 59, 69, 74, 104, 107, 113, Kuindzhi, Arkhyp, 81, 136
129–130, 132, 142, 147, 149–151, Kulish, Mykola, 32–33, 37, 127–128, 156
153–154, 157, 162 Kulish, Panteleimon, 81
Kharkivska hazeta, 132 Kultur-Lige, 17, 19–20, 22, 60–64, 67, 72–77,
Khentova, Polina, 62 168
Kherson, 11, 14, 16, 82–83, 120 Kultura i pobut, 58
Kherson Museum, 85 Kulyk, Ivan (Izrail), 60
Khlebnikov, Velimir, 35, 82–83, 88–90, Kurbas, Les, 28, 32–33, 37, 59, 116, 121,
93–95 127–129, 131
“Burliuk,” 88 Kurylo, Olena, 59
Khmeliuk, Vasyl, 12, 15 Kvachevskyi, Lev, 107
Khrushchev, Nikita, 30, 143–144 Kvitka-Osnovianenko, Hryhorii, 60, 149
Khvostenko-Khvostov, Oleksandr, 46, Kvitko, Lev (Leib), 59, 61, 64
55n11, 121 Kyiv Art Institute, see Ukranian Academy
Drive Off the Kulaks!, 46 of Arts
Khvylovyi, Mykola, 32, 37, 68–71, 77, 81, Kyiv Art School, see Ukranian Academy of
152–155, 161 Arts
Osin, 68 Kyiv Cottage Industry Society, 120, 125
Syni etiudy, 68 Kyiv Opera, 53, 120, 136
Index 183
Kyiv University, 9, 12, 117 Maklena Grasa (1933), 129

Kyiv’s Levandovska Gymnasium, 118 Malaniuk, Yevhen, 154
Kyivan Rus (also ancient Rus), 13, 48, 90, 140 Malevich, Kazimir, xi, xii–xiii, 5–6, 17,
Kyivska pravda, 132 20–21, 28, 35, 49, 71, 102–115, 126, 135,
166, 168
L A Complex Presentiment (Half-Length
La Fontaine, Pietro, 10 Figure in a Yellow Shirt), 114
Larionov, Mikhail, 11, 19, 82, 86, 111 Flower Girl, The, 106
Lavrinenko, Yurii, 152 Non-Objective World, 110–111
Rozstriliane vidrodzhennia, 152 Untitled (Man Running), 114
Le Fauconnier, Henri, 13 Malevich, Seweryn, 104, 106
Lebed, Dmytro, 30 Mamai, Cossack, 90–92
Léger, Fernand, xi, 6–9, 15 Mandelshtam, Osip, 35, 71
Leites, Abram, 59 Manevych, Abram, 4, 16–17, 52n5, 62, 64
Lemercier, Gallery, 120, 124, 126 Marc, Franz, 85
Lenin, Vladimir, 40, 96, 141, 147 Marenkov, Oleksii (Aleksei), 44
Leningrad State Institute of Artistic Culture Comrade Peasants! Hand in Your Grain
(GINKhUK), 112 Tax, v, 44
Lentulov, Aristarkh, 11, 16, 64, 82, 86, 94 Margolin, Arnold, 57–58
Les Noces, 120 Markish, Perets, 61, 64, 74
Levytska, Sophia (Sonia Lewitzka), 4, 11–12 Markov, Vladimir, 82, 91
Lewakowska, Janina, 50 Marriage of Figaro (1919), 131
Lhote, Andre, 13 Martynovych, Porfyrii, 136
Link Exhibition (1908), xi, 7–8, 11, 14, 19, Mashynobortsi (1923), 129
86, 92 Masks (ballet), 122
Lisovskyi, Robert, 44 Matiushin, Mikhail, 35, 113
Lissitzky, El (Lazar), 62–63 Meitus, Yurii, 33
Liszt, Franz, 121 Melamed, Zelig, 74
Literary Discussion of the 1920s, 31, 68, Meller, Elena, 116–117
152, 167 Meller, Georgii, 116–117
Literaturnyi iarmarok, 70 Meller, Vadym, vi, xi, xiii, 4–5, 8, 16, 18, 33,
Litvakov, Moishe, 61 55n11, 64, 116–132, 167
Liubchenko, Arkadii, 90n5, 155 Composition (1917–18), 18
Liudyna masa (1924), 129 Urban Landscape (1912–13), 18
Livshits, Benedikt, 69, 71, 82–83, 85–86, Melnyk, Andrii, 145
92, 94 Menzelevskyi, Stanislav, 143, 147
One and a Half-Eyed Archer, 85 Mephisto (1919–20), 121, 122, 128n8
Loboda, Valentyn, 107 Merezhkovskii, Dmitrii, 93
Lodz, 16, 75 Metr Patlen (1919), 131
London, 10, 58, 61, 120 Mezhyhiria, 54–55
lubok, 20, 63 Mezhyhiria Art and Ceramics School, 5, 17
Lurie, Noiakh, 61 Mezhyhiria Monastery, 49
Lviv, 5, 13, 15–16, 44, 48, 50–51, 72, 144 Mikhienko, Tatiana, 102–111
Lviv Art Gallery, vi, 165 Mikhoels, Solomon, 59
Lviv National Museum, 51 Miller, Henry, 100
Lyiv Opera, 136 Mirskii, Sviatopolk, 82
Lypa, Yurii, 154–155 Modigliani, Amedeo, 10
Moholy-Nagy, László, 113
M Mol, Leo (Leonid Molodozhanyn), 143n3
Macbeth (1924), 129 Molodniak, 60
Maiakovsky, Vladimir, 83, 91, 113 Monastery of the Caves, 14, 125, 127
Maizil, Nakhman, 61, 74 monumentalism, xi, 36, 40, 71, 114, 132
Makdonald (1925), 128 Mordvinov, Aleksandr, 82
184 Index
Mudrak, Myroslava, 19, 36 Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists

Munich, xi, 5–6, 10–11, 18, 48n2, 49–50, 77, (OUN), 145–146, 154
82, 88, 117, 123, 127, 131, 165 Orlenko brothers, 139
Murashko, Oleksandr, 4, 52n5, 77, 107 Orthodox Christianity, 17, 106, 115, 117
Murashko Art School, 77 Orwell, George, 159–160
Muscovy, 36 Oyfgang, 75
Mussorgskii, Modest, 142
Mykolaiv (Nikolaev), 11 P
Mykytenko, Ivan, 28, 90n5, 156 Padalka, Ivan, 40, 42–43, 53–54
Dyktatura, 28, 156 By the Apple Tree, Ploughing, 54
Myna Mazailo (1929), 33, 129 Return from the Fields, 54
Myrhorod School of Ceramics, 54n9 Pailes, Isaak, 61
Myrnyi, Panas, 144 Pale of Settlement, 62
Palmov, Victor, 17, 20, 21, 55n11, 113, 114n13
N Panch, 28, 155
Nabis, 113–114 Holubi eshelony, 28
Naiden, Oleksandr, 111–112 and Paris, xi–xii, 3–22, 37, 48n2, 49–50, 53, 63,
Nakov, Andre, 18–21 71, 77, 82, 113, 117, 118n3, 120–121,
Nalepinska, Sophia, 50–51 123–124, 127–128, 136, 165
Napoléon (film, 1927), 15 Paris Academy of Art, 11
Narbut, Heorhii (Yurii; Hryhorii), 17, 52n5, Paul Cassirer Gallery, 11
71 Pavlenko, Oksana, 40, 53–54, 63
Narodnii Malakhii (1928), 33, 129, 131 Pelenskyi, Yosyp, 50
National Art Museum of Ukraine, vi, 10, Perebyinis, Vasyl, 12, 15
54n9, 127n6, 127, 165 Pervomaiskyi, Leonid (Illia Hurevych), 60
national revolution (1917–19), 29, 49, 53, 73 Petliura, Symon, 38, 138
nationalism, 28–30, 32–33, 42, 48, 59–60, Petrovskyi, Hryhorii, 147
65, 74, 145, 147, 154 Petrytskyi, Anatolii, 16, 19, 64, 123
naturalism, 3, 72, 95, 108, 123, 141, 147 Pevzner, Anton (Antoine Pevsner), 16, 64
neo-Byzantinism (also Byzantine art), xi, Picasso, Pablo, xi, 5, 7, 13–15, 35
9–10, 12–13, 20, 36, 40, 48, 71 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 35
“Nerozhadanyi rebus ‘Paryzh’” (The Unex- Pidmohylnyi, Valerian, 81
plained Rebus ‘Paris,’ 2000), 165 Pilsudski, Josef, 38
Neue Kunstlervereinigung, 11 Pisarev, Dmitrii, 98
New York, 13, 21, 61–62, 69, 72–73, 96–97, Plato, 85
102, 128, 165, 167n2, 168 Poale Zion, 58, 73
Nicholas II, 138 Popova, Liubov, 126
Nijinska, Bronislava, 8, 116, 118, 120–122, Poviia (film), 143
128n8, 131 Prague, 14, 44, 128
Nijinsky, Vaclav, 120 primitivism, 8–9, 13, 20, 22, 35, 71, 76,
Nikritin, Solomon, 8, 14–16, 61, 64 90–95, 101, 103, 111–112, 144
Nimenko, A. (Kavaleridze’s biographer), 146 Prokhorov, Semen, 55n11
Nister, Der (Pinchus Kahanovich), 59, 61 Protazanov, Yakov, 142
Nova generatsiia (New Generation), 15, 17, Prybylska, Yevheniia, 8, 71, 86, 110, 118,
109n6, 113 120, 124–126
Nove mystetstvo, 58 Puni, Ivan, 127
Pushkin, Alexander, 142
O Pymonenko, Mykola (Nikolai), 106
Odesa, 6–7, 11, 14, 16, 60, 83, 128, 146, 157
Odesa School of Art, 6, 14 R
Oislender, Nakhum, 61 Rabichev, Isaak, 8, 61
Olzhych, Oleh, 154–155 Rabinovich, Isaak, 8, 16, 62, 64, 71, 121
Rada, Central, 29, 46, 52, 56, 73, 107n5, 138
Index 185
Ray, Man, 15 Semenko, Mikhail, 26, 34, 156

realism, 3, 15, 20, 28, 98, 108, 111, 116, “Who Needs Art?,” 26
143–144, 146, 155, 166 Senchenko, Ivan, 152
Red and the White, The, 54 Serusier, Paul, 49
Red Army, 38–39, 42–44, 74, 128, 160 Shaginian, Olga, 50
Red Cross, 130 Shaliapin (Chaliapin), Fedor, 136
Remizov, Aleksei, 84, 93 Shaw, George Bernard, 160
Renaissance, 13, 20, 40, 48, 108, 111, 114, Shchupak, Samiilo, 59
154 Sheikhel, Mark, 62
Rents, Ilia, 60 Shekhtman, Emanuil, 63
Repin, Ilia, 81, 87, 106, 136 Shekhtman, Yosef, 57
Zaporozhians Writing a Letter to the Ievrei ta ukraintsi, 57
Sultan of Turkey, 87 Shepetivka, 75
Rerberg, Fedor, 107 Sheppard, Richard, 35
Reznik, Lypa, 61 Sheptytskyi, Metropolitan Andrei, 48, 51
Riga, 11, 72 Sherekh, Yurii, 152–153
Ring Exhibition (1914; Koltso; Kiltse), 8, 19 “Khvylovyi bez polityky,” 152
Rodin, Auguste, 136 Shevchenko, Aleksandr (Oleksandr), 5–6,
Roslavets, Nikolai (Mykola), 107 13, 112
Roubaund (Rubo), Franz, 117 Shevchenko, Taras, 41, 59–60, 81, 88–89,
Royal Academy of Arts (Munich), 11, 117 109, 131, 138, 140, 142–144
Rozanova, Olga, 126 Diary, 59
RUR (1923), 129 Shevchenko Scientific Society of Lviv, 48
Russian Revolution, 3–4, 11–12, 16–17, Shifrin, Nisson, 8, 62–63, 71, 121
21, 38, 58, 61, 85, 103, 111, 120, 136, Shishkin, Ivan, 106
138–139 Shkliaiev, Vasyl, 123
Russkii golos (Russian Voice), 21, 96 Shklovsky, Viktor, 71, 90–91, 113
Rybak, D. Jurij, v Shkurupii, Geo, 81
Rybak, Issakhar-Ber, 8, 16, 18–19, 61–64, Shor, Sara, 62, 77,
75–77, 168 Shostakovich, Dmitri, 143, 157
City, 18 Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, 143
Sketch for the Almanac Eygns, 77 Shterenberg, David, xi, 6, 15
Rybak, Natan, 62 shtetl, 62–63, 76
Sinelnikov, Nikolai, 33, 34
S Siniavsky, Andrei, 25
Sadovskyi, Mykola, 139 Skoptsi, 110, 118, 120, 124, 126
Sahaidachnyi, Petro, 88 Skoropadsky, Pavlo, 29, 73, 138
Saksahanskyi, Panas, 139 Skovoroda, Hryhorii, 140, 144
Salon d’Automne, 10, 15, 50, 117, 124, 127 Skrypnyk, Leonid, 34
Salon des Indépendants, 10, 50, 127 Intelihent, 34
Samchuk, Ulas, 145–146 Skrypnyk, Mikola, 31–32, 155
Na koni voronomu, 145 Slaston, Opanas, 136
Volyn, 146 Slavchenko, Yevhen (Eugene Deslaw), 15
Sbornik po teorii poeticheskogo iazyka (The La Nuit Électrique, 15
Anthology of the Theory of Poetic Lan- Marche des Machines, 15
guage, 1916), 26 Montparnasse, 15
Scythians, 10–11, 84–86, 91, 136 Négatifs, 15
Sedi (1926), 131 Robots, 15
Sedliar, Vasyl, 15, 40, 42, 54–55, 63 Slavophiles, 36
Sedliar, Vasyl, 15, 40, 42, 54–55, 63 Smolych, Yurii, 59, 69
Segno, Sophia, 50 Snytkin, P., 137
Sekretar profspilky (1924), 121, 128, 130 Sobachko, Hanna, 8, 119, 126
Seleznov, Ivan, 136 Society for the Advancement of Art, 14
186 Index
Society for the Spreading of Enlightenment Troianker, Raisa, 60

among Jews in Russia (Obshchestvo dlia Trubetska, Maria, 53
rasprostranenia prosveshcheniia mezh- Trush, Ivan, 4, 48n2, 136
du evreiami v Rossii; OPE), 66 Tsymlova, Taisa, 53–54
Solovtsov, Nikolai, 33 Workers, The, 54
Sonata Pathétique, 33 Tychyna, Pavlo, 59, 68, 152, 158
Sosiura, Volodymyr, 29 “Partiia vede,” 155
Sovremennaia evreiskaia grafika, 75 Tyshler, Aleksandr (Oleksandr), 8, 15–16,
Spilka Vyzvolennia Ukrainy (Union for the 61, 63–64, 71, 121
Liberation of Ukraine), 32
St. George’s Cathedral (Lviv), 51 U
St. Michael Church of the Golden Domes, Udaltsova, Nadezhda, 126
12, 49, 137 Ukrainian Institute of America, 13
St. Sophia Cathedral, 12, 125, 140 Ukrainian Museum in New York, v
Stalin, Joseph, 31, 59, 66, 132, 161 Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR), 15–16,
Stalin’s terror; purges, 26, 64, 152 29, 39, 42, 48, 56, 58, 61, 64–65, 67, 73–74
State Institute for Art History (GIII), 112, Ukrainian Rosta (Telegraph Agency), 43, 46
119 Ukrainization, 29–32, 58–59, 65–68, 73,
Stefanyk, Vasyl, 90n5 149, 151, 157. See also indigenization
Storozhuk (Chuzhyi), Andrii, 59 (korenizatsiia)
Stravinsky, Igor, 120 Ukranian Academy of Arts (also Kyiv Art
Stuck, Franz von, 49 School; Kyiv Art Institute), 7–9, 14,
Sturm Gallery, Der, 10 16–17, 19, 22, 29, 36, 52, 54, 64, 77, 113,
Sun (New York), 97 115, 117, 121, 124, 128, 136, 139
suprematism, xi, 71, 76, 104, 110–112, 116, Ukranian Academy of Sciences, 29, 65–66
119, 126–127
surrealism, 3, 14 V
Svientsitskyi, Ilarion, 51 Vakar, Irina, 102–111
Svitoslavskyi, Serhii, 136 Valéry, Paul, 12
symbolism, 3, 26, 35, 38, 40, 69, 82, 85, 90, Ébauche d’un Serpent, 12
92–93, 113, 142, 153 Van Gogh, Vincent, 94
Syniakova, Maria, 34 VAPLITE (Free Academy of Proletarian Lit-
Syracuse University, 88n3, 89 erature; Vilna Akademiia Proletarskoi
Szramm, Helena, 50 Literatury), 32, 68, 70, 77
Vasylkivskyi, Serhii, 81, 136
T Vechirnii Kyiv, 55
Tairov, Alexander (Oleksandr), 6n9, 119 Vendetta (1936), 128
Taran, Andrii, 15, 55n11, 113 Vengrov, Natan, 71
Tatlin, Volodymyr (Vladimir), xi–xii, 4–6, Venice Biennale, 10
11, 17, 22, 112–113, 135 Verbivka, 110, 119–120
Tatlin’s Tower (Monument to the Third Vertov, Dziga, xiii, 135, 140, 141, 149–162,
International), 22 168
Telegrafo Livorno, Il, 10 Eleventh Year, The, 158
Teliha, Olena, 155 Enthusiasm, 140–141, 149–162
Ternopil, 16 Man with the Movie Camera, 156–158,
“Timan and F. Reinhardt, P.” films, 142 160
Tini Belvedera, 60 Vetrova, Brigitta, vi, 116n1, 132
Todorov, Tzvetan, 26 Vienna, 6, 18, 48n2
Tokachev, Zinovia, 61 Vilna Akademiia Proletarskoi Literatury, see
Tolstoi, Aleksei, 33 VAPLITE
Petr Pervyi (Peter the First), 33 Vilnius, 61, 72, 75
Tolstoy, Leo, 96–98 Vishnitzer, Mark, 57
Tretiakov Gallery, 115
Index 187
Vkhutemas (Higher Art and Technical Yastrebtsov, Serhii, 7

Studios), 8, 13, 15 Yermilov, Vasyl, 18, 38, 47, 55n11
Vlyzko, Oleksa, 155 Ivan Franko, v, 47
Voznesenskyi, Oleksandr, 60 Yiddish culture, 17–18, 56, 57, 59, 61, 63,
Vrona, Ivan, 17, 113 65, 72–74
VUFKU (All-Ukrainian Film Photo-Cinema Yohansen, Maik, 59, 81, 155
Management), 60 Yudovkin, Solomon, 75–76
Vynnychenko, Volodymyr, 37, 81
Vyshnia, Ostap, 90n5 Z
Zankovetska, Maria, 139
W Zaporozhians, see Cossacks
Wanderers (Peredvizhniki), 106, 108 Zhovtnevyi ohliad (1927), 131
Weissburg, Alexander, 162 Zhuk, Mykhailo, 52n5
White Armies, 38–39, 43 Zhytomyr, 6
Workers Beating the Hydra, 54 Zilberfarb, Moisei, 57, 73–74
World War, First, 4–5, 12, 61, 81, 85, 90, 118, Zinger, I. I., 74
123, 127 Zinnemann, Alfred, 15
World War, Second, 66, 95, 127, 141, Zinovev, Grigorii, 30
143–144 Zionism, 65
Wrangel, Pyotr, 146 Zolote cherevo (1924), 131
Zovnishtorh, 55
Y Zoziv (Zozov), 120, 126
Yanovskyi, Yurii, 28, 81, 147, 153, 155 Zurich, 10
Chotyry shabli, 28
Vershnyky, 28

Myroslav Shkandrij - Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910-1930 - Contested Memory-Academic Studies Press (2019)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Myroslav Shkandrij - Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910-1930 - Contested Memory-Academic Studies Press (2019)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Myroslav Shkandrij - Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910-1930 - Contested Memory-Academic Studies Press (2019)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Avant-Garde

Names: Shkandrij, Myroslav, 1950- author.

Copyright © 2018 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-61811-975-9 (hardcover)

Book design by Lapiz Digital Services.

Cover design by Ivan Grave.

Published by Academic Studies Press

The author gratefully acknowledges the following:

Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands, 238–48, edited by Omer Bartov and

Forging the European Connection 1

Politics and Painting 23

Artists in the Maelstrom: Five Case Studies 79

The Avant-Garde in Today’s Cultural Memory 163

1. Mykhailo Boichuk (attributed). Shevchenko Day, 1920.

24. Vadym Meller. Carnival, 1923.

Modernism emerged at the end of the nineteenth century as an interna-

disproportionate attention among many scholars, who frequently allowed

(Alexis Gritchenko, Grischenko) and Mykhailo Andriienko-Nechytailo

Russian Empire. All three were influential in teaching and publicizing

Sophia Levytska (Sonia Lewitzka)

Beginning as a cubist and fauvist, she moved into a post-impressionist

Hryshchenko (Alexis Gritchenko)

12 On Levytska see Susak 2010, 75–81.

he had met Andre Lhote, Archipenko, and Le Fauconnier, and developed

in 1917–18. It brought together some of the most talented professors, such

interactions were overlaid by a Russian imperial and bureaucratic cul-

to grand philosophical constructions or extravagant world-changing the-

Like the international avant-garde as a whole, the Ukrainian, in both

them—it represented animation, the interaction of numerous life forms,

socialism, a disciplined fighter on the front of class war—this is our slogan

1930), on the surface a call for collectivization, is at a deeper level a hymn

In fact, in the early twenties they often found themselves attempting

of the Communist Party (bolsheviks) of Ukraine (CP(b)U) was predom-

institutions and government. These concessions, Moscow realized, were

urged participants to behave with decorum, devote themselves to artistic

Avant-gardists in the political cross-fire

sharp rebukes from authorities, particularly in Ukraine. Mykola Kulish’s

According to this account, the despised national backwardness was

With or without the past?

Democratic, multi-disciplinary spirit

liberalism and constitutionalism. By contrast, the grafting of Byzantine

Developing a local idiom

The tendency among Ukrainians was to make wider use of indigenous

Escape from marginalization

1 Sections of this essay appeared in Shkandrij, 2013.

rule, who suffered from the imposition of a monoparty dictatorship, req-

Mykhailo Boichuk (attributed). Shevchenko Day, 1920.

Shevchenko Day (Shevchenkivske sviato, 1920) was produced in Kyiv

First Aid for the Wounded—A Quick Death to the Whites,

Oleksii (Aleksei) Marenkov. Comrade Peasants! Hand

Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov. Drive Off the

Vasyl Yermilov. Ivan Franko, 1920.

Ivan Franko (1920) was produced in Kharkiv by Vasyl Yermilov. The

roots in Ukrainian culture, in particular Byzantine art and folk creativity

Mykhailo Boichuk in the restoration studio at the Lviv

In Lviv societal expectations for him were formidable. He was seen as

Mykhailo Boichuk. Head of the Savior,

In 1917, when Mykhailo Hrushevskyi and the Central Rada created a

Forging the European Connection 1

Politics and Painting 23

Artists in the Maelstrom: Five Case Studies 79

The Avant-Garde in Today’s Cultural Memory 163