MEETING OF TWO UKRAINES: LITERARY KYIV AT THE END OF 1941 (HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT)
Authors:   Shevchenko Institute of Literature, National Academy of Science of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine, Vasylenko Vadym 
Published: November 2024

Background. The paper examines attempts to intensify Ukrainian literary life in Kyiv during the first months of the German occupation (October – December 1941), in particular, it traces the activities of the Kyiv Union of Ukrainian Writers and literary supplements to the "Ukrainian Word", which were called "Literature and Art" and "Timpani". Methods. The article used bibliographical (study of documents on the history of Ukrainian literature and the press at the end of 1941), contextual (taking into account the current perception of cultural events of that time, stories of people, some texts) and structural analysis of literary, artistic, critical and journalistic materials. Results. The main trends in the Kyiv literary process of that time are determined, and the principles of the editorial policy of the four numbers of the Kyiv "Timpani", published in November – December 1941 under the editorship of Olena Teliha, their thematic and problematic structure and artistic content are characterized. First of all, the policy articles of Olena Teliha and her ideological supporters (historian Oleh Lashchenko, publicist Oleh Shtul (Zhdanovych), etc.), marked be powerful state inspirations and a tendency towards rapprochement of literary and ideological discourses, are analyzed. Attention is draw to the revaluation by the authors of "Timpani" of Soviet literature policy, in particular, the work of cult figures of the Ukrainian 1920s (Mykola Khvylovy, Dmytro Falkivsky, Hryhoriy Kosynka, etc.). The ideological bias and political dogmatism in the approach of the authors of "Timpani" to the events, figures and texts of the 1920s is pointed out. It is noted that the basis of the editorial policy of "Timpani" was the desire to create a new type of nationalist literature through the internal interaction of art and ideology in the political and artistic-aesthetic spheres. The analysis involved artistic and literary-critical texts, as well as letters, diaries of contemporaries, shedding light on the sociocultural, historical, creative organizational contexts of that time. Conclusions. The short-term publication of the "Ukrainian Word" with the supplements "Literature and Art" and "Timpani", as well as the short-term activities of the Union of Ukrainians Writers and the Literary Club, were important for the activation of the Ukrainian literary process during the war and occupation, and the publications themselves reflected the main trends of literary politics at the end of 1941 (in particular, an attempts to create a new type of nationalists literature through the interaction of mainland of ideas and views formed in interwar emigration). Moreover, the mentioned literary publications were the only ones around which the cultural and creative forces of Kyiv were concentrated at that time, and after liquidation of these publications and the execution of their editors until the end of the German occupation (November 1943) literary life in Kyiv actually stopped (although it continued in other forms in Kharkiv and Lviv). In general, both by the fact of their own appearance and by their content – as symbolic acts of resistance – they shoved that in the conditions of military occupation reality, culture cannot be aloof from the main socio-political process and that it plays an important meaning-creating role.