Turning the pages back... December 14, 1893 (12/08/91)

Turning the pages back...

December 14, 1893

Mykola Khvylovy was born on December 14, 1893. He was a writer and a communist who urged Ukrainians to create art without diluting it with Russian influences.

Mr. Khvylovy sounded the "most direct and emotional call for rejecting the 'Russian road,' " according to Orest Subtelny's Ukraine: A History.

Mr. Subtelny goes on: "This remarkable individual, whose real name was Fitilov, grew up in eastern Ukraine as the son of a petty Russian nobleman. A committed internationalist, he joined the Bolsheviks during the Civil War in hopes of helping to create a truly universal and equitable communist society. After the Civil War, Mr. Khvylovy became one of the most popular Soviet Ukrainian writers, an organizer of the avant-garde literary organization Vaplite, and a frequent commentator on Ukrainian/ Russian relations, particularly in the area of culture.

An idealistic communist, Mr. Khvylovy was bitterly disillusioned by the glaring discrepancies that existed between Bolshevik nationality theory and practice, and also by the Russian chauvinism of party bureaucrats, who, as he put it, masked their bias 'behind Marx's beard.'

To save the revolution from the pernicious impact of Russian nationalism, Mr. Khvylovy resolved to expose it. Couching his message in literary terms, he claimed that 'passive-pessimistic Russian literature had reached its limits and stopped at the crossroads' and he advised Ukrainians to distance themselves from it: 'Insofar as our literature can at last follow its own path of development, the question before us is: toward which of the world's literatures must it chart its course? In no case toward the Russian. This is absolute and unconditional...The essence of the matter is that Russian literature has weighed us down for centuries. Being the master of the situation, it accustomed our psyche to slavish imitation. For our young art to nourish itself [on Russian literature] would mean stunting its growth. Our orientation is toward the art of Western Europe, toward its style, toward its reception. ...'

Mr. Khvylovy's impassioned pleas for Ukrainians to strike out in their own gave rise to the famous slogan: 'Away from Moscow!'

While Mr. Khvylovy directed his ideas primarily at young writers searching for literary models, his message clearly had political implications. It should be stressed, however, that his anti-Russianism was not so much a product of Ukrainian nationalism as of revolutionary internationalism. Mr. Khvylovy was convinced that the global revolution would never succeed if one nation, in this case the Russians, attempted to monopolize it.

He led the formation of Vaplite (Free Academy of Proletarian Literature), an elitist literary organization. Worried that the pedagogic-enlightenment mentality (prosvitianstvo) and 'massivism' of Pluh only encouraged Ukrainian provincialism, Mr. Khvylovy and his colleagues raised the demand for literary and artistic excellence in Ukrainian literature. They called for its orientation toward Europe and the traditional sources of world literature, and for a declaration of Ukrainian cultural independence from Moscow. Mr. Khvylovy's forceful statement of these views sparked an important and far-ranging debate that lasted from 1925 to 1927 and is usually referred to as the 'Literary Discussion. ...'

Members of the Communist leadership in Ukraine joined in the criticism of Vaplite's 'bourgeois-nationalist ideology.' Even Stalin pointed out the dangerousness of Khvylovy's ideas. To combat the spread of nationalist ideas in literature, a pro-Soviet organization, VUSPP (the All-Ukrainian Association of Proletarian Writers), was formed in 1927 and the Communist party's surveillance of literary activity increased."

The Encyclopedia of Ukraine writes: "Thenceforth Mr. Khvylovy was subjected to unrelenting persecution and was forced to move gradually from an offensive to a defensive tactic. To save Vaplite from forced dissolution, in December 1926 he was compelled to admit his 'errors,' and in January 1927 he agreed to expulsion from Vaplite. From December 1927 to March 1928 Mr. Khvylovy lived in Berlin and Vienna, and according to some accounts in Paris. In January 1928, before returning to Ukraine, he sent an open letter from Vienna to the newspaper Komunist renouncing his slogan 'Away from Moscow' and recanting his views. ...

By the early 1930s Mr. Khvylovy's every opportunity to live, write, and fight for his ideas was blocked.

Disillusioned by the Communist Party practices and helpless to do anything about it, he committed suicide on May 13, 1933 in protest against the famine of 1933 and the Postyshev terror, which was done to "end Ukrainianization, purge the Ukrainian party, complete collectivization...and 'end the isolation of the Ukrainian workers from the positive influence of Russian culture.' "

"Immediately after his death, Mr. Khvylovy's works and even his name were banned from the public domain. Even after the post-Stalin thaw, when many other writers were 'rehabilitated' and selected works of some were published, the ban on his works and ideas has been enforced."