Depicting Genocide: 20th Century Responses to the Holodomor

Ukrainianization and renaissance

While Soviet rule in the 1920s was hardly a bed of roses, some of the government’s policies had a significant positive impact on Ukrainian society. In particular, the Soviets instituted a policy of "indigenization" ("korenizatsia"), which aimed to reduce Russian domination in regions and republics where ethnic Russians did not constitute a majority. The goal was to give each of the vast array of ethnicities in the Soviet Union a stake in the new nation and to grow local, indigenous Bolshevik cadres. In Ukraine, Ukrainianization led to the teaching of Ukrainian in schools, publication of Ukrainian newspapers, and the requirement that government officials learn Ukrainian. The result was a rapid increase in the prominence of the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture among the urban elite. This, combined with a relative lack of centralized Party control during the power struggle in Moscow after Lenin’s death in 1924, lead to a period of extraordinary creativity and innovation in Ukrainian literature and the arts.

The “old intelligentsia” that had been forced into exile by revolution was more than replaced by an explosion of young writers and artists. Some were diehard Communist revolutionaries, others believed in “art for art’s sake”, but all were inspired by a sense of freedom and a desire to create a new cultural landscape. Dozens of major cultural figures coalesced around a variety of artistic movements as diverse as the Western-influenced “VAPLITE” — with literary figures such as Mykola Kulish, Pavlo Tychyna, Mykola Bazhan, and Mayk Yohansen, as well as the avant-garde theater director Les’ Kurbas and filmmaker Oleksandr Dovzhenko (who will play a significant role in this exhibition); the avant-garde “Pan-Futurist” group (including poets Mykhayl Semenkó and Geo Shkurupii); and the Neoclassicists (such as the poets Mykola Zerov, Maksym Rylsky, and Mykhailo Drai-Khmara). The artist Yukhym Mykhailiv, the subject of the 2019-2020 UHEC exhibition Visible Music, was in the thick of this renaissance, and his family’s home became a “salon” for Kyiv’s intellectuals.

This Ukrainian renaissance even extended into the realm of religion. The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church that formed in 1921 under the leadership of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivskyi was based on the principles of administrative independence; jurisdictional administration through councils of laity, clergy, and bishops from the parish to the national level; and the use of Ukrainian language, song, customs, and rituals in its religious life.

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