The 'minor renaissance' of ukrainian literature in the 1940s

Immediately after World War II, in the second half of the 1940s, Ukrainian literature outside of Soviet Ukraine experienced an unusually intensive period of development in the displaced persons' camps in western Germany and Austria. These camps, which had become home to over 200,000 Ukrainian war refugees, including a significant number of writers and literary scholars, represented a hub of fervent cultural activity, so much so that the period 1945-1949 is often referred to by scholars as the 'minor renaissance' of Ukrainian literature. Thrown together from various regions of Ukraine, writers managed to replay on a small scale the activity of the 1920s. They convened congresses, organized literary associations, and published almanacs, journals, and books. A key role in the period's most important literary organization, MUR, was played by the linguist, scholar, and literary critic, George Yurii Shevelov and the novelist Ulas Samchuk. Other most notable members of MUR included the dramatist, prose writer, essayist, and publisher Ihor Kostetsky; the writer and scholar Viktor Petrov (V. Domontovych), the politically ambivalent Yurii Kosach, and the poet Vasyl Barka. This 'minor renaissance' of Ukrainian literature came to an end in the early 1950s as the majority of the authors emigrated to North America and continued their literary work there

MUR (Mystetskyi ukrainskyi rukh [The Artistic Ukrainian Movement]). An artistic-literary organization of Ukrainian émigrés in Europe. It was founded on 25 September 1945 in Fürth, Germany, on the initiative of a committee consisting of Ivan Bahriany, V. Domontovych (Viktor Petrov), Yurii Kosach, Ihor Kostetsky, Ivan Maistrenko, and Yu. Sherekh (George Yurii Shevelov). MUR organized three writers' congresses (1945, 1947, and 1948) as well as three conferences devoted to various aspects of literary activity (28–29 January 1946, general theory; 4–5 October 1946, literary criticism; and 5–6 November 1947, drama). The head of the organization during its whole duration was Ulas Samchuk, and its membership (both full and candidate members) numbered 61.

The objectives of MUR were to gather Ukrainian writers scattered by the Second World War, to organize the publication of their works, and to become a center, within a comprehensive national ideology, for creative dialogues among members representing various styles and literary aims. MUR played a positive role in that it managed to organize almost all of the noted émigré writers and provide them with a forum for discussion while it stimulated an interest in literature among the public at large. But despite various attempts during the difficult times in postwar Germany, MUR did not succeed at establishing its own printing house or a permanent journal, nor was it really successful in transforming into a united body the writers of various ideologies and disparate Ukrainian backgrounds. Although there were plans to continue the organization in the New World (see Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile), with Ulas Samchuk's departure for Canada in 1948 the organization, for all practical purposes, ceased to exist.

Despite its inability to establish a printing house, MUR published three miscellanies (MUR Zbirnyk I, April 1946; MUR Zbirnyk II, September 1946; MUR Zbirnyk III, early 1947), one almanac (MUR Al’manakh, late 1946), and several editions of the series Mala biblioteka MUR-u. It also formed its own publishing firm, Zolota Brama, whose name was used by many of the member authors to show sponsorship of MUR. Some books of Ivan Bahriany, Vasyl Barka, V. Domontovych (Viktor Petrov), Dokiia Humenna, Yurii Klen, Yurii Kosach, Ihor Kostetsky, Bohdan Kravtsiv, Teodosii Osmachka, Ulas Samchuk, Yar Slavutych, Sofiia Parfanovych, and other writers appeared with that imprint.

Shevelov, George Yurii (pseuds: Yurii Sherekh, Hryhorii Shevchuk, Yur. Sher., Yu. Sh., Hr. Sh., et al), b 17 December 1908 in Kharkiv, d 12 April 2002 in New York. Slavic linguist, philologist, essayist, literary historian, and literary critic; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society since 1949 and of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1945. After studying under Leonid Bulakhovsky at Kharkiv University (candidate 1939) he lectured there in Slavic linguistics (1939–43). Having emigrated to Germany, he taught at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich (1946–9) and obtained a doctorate there (1949). He was also vice-president of the MUR literary association (1945–9) and edited a monthly journal Arka. After settling in the United States he served as lecturer in Russian and Ukrainian at Harvard University (1952–4), associate professor (1954–8) and professor of Slavic philology at Columbia University (1958–77), and president of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences (1959–61, 1981–6). He was a founding member of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile. In 1978–81 he was editor in-chief of the journal Suchasnist’. In 1991 Shevelov became a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Shevelov is the author of some 500 articles, reviews, and books on Slavic philology and linguistics and the history of literature. In Slavic linguistics he has contributed to such areas as phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicology, etymology, literary languages, and onomastics. He has devoted special attention to Old Church Slavonic, Belarusian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Serbo-Croation, Macedonian, and above all Ukrainian. In his most important work, A Historical Phonology of the Ukrainian Language (1979), Shevelov demonstrated the historical continuity of the language. His numerous articles in the field of literature, literary criticism, and theater were collected in Ne dlia ditei (Not for Children, 1964 He was one of the organizers of émigré literary life in Germany after the Second World War. Shevelov was editor or coeditor of many scholarly and literary journals, serials, books, and other publications. He was also linguistics subject editor for Entsyklopediia ukraïnoznavstva (Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 1949–52, 1955–89), Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia (vol 1, 1963), and Encyclopedia of Ukraine (vols 1–2, 1984, 1988), to which he contributed numerous articles.

Kosach, Yurii b 5 December 1909 in Kyiv, d 10 January 1990 in Passaic, New Jersey. Poet, writer, and dramatist; nephew of Lesia Ukrainka. Kosach studied at Warsaw University and in Paris. After the war he lived in displaced persons camps in Germany and was an active member of the writers' organization MUR. In 1949 he immigrated to the United States. While in New York he initially edited an interesting literary newspaper Obrii; later he began publishing a pro-Soviet journal, Za synim obriiem, which was notable primarily for its strident anti-émigré attacks. A prolific author excelling in the genre of the historical novel, he is also the author of several collections of rather average poetry, often marked by his interest in history and mythology. His dramatic works consist of Obloha (The Siege, 1943)—a dramatic poem—and the tragedy Diistvo pro Iuriia Peremozhtsia (Play about Yurii the Conqueror, 1947).

By far the largest and most interesting body of work is Kosach's prose, written prior to his emigration to the United States. Dynamic and with a great emphasis on plot, it consists of several collections of historical novellas and short stories.

Barka, Vasyl, b 16 July 1908 in the village of Solonytsia near Lubny, Poltava gubernia, d 11 April 2003 in Liberty, New York State. Poet, writer, literary critic, translator. An émigré from 1943, he lived in Germany, where he was active in the MUR literary association, before settling in the United States in 1949.

Barka’s orphic works require intuitive rather than logical comprehension. Drawing on the early works of Pavlo Tychyna for his pantheistic descriptions of nature and for his folkish idiom, he derived his originality from extreme abstraction, intensified metaphor, and a unique revitalization of accepted folk imagery through sudden and unexpected juxtapositions. Barka’s poetry developed and grew in stature, from the early lyrical collections Shliakhy (Pathways, 1930), Tsekhy (Guilds, 1932), Apostoly (Apostles, 1946), and Bilyi svit (The White World, 1947), through a biblically inspired intensification in Troiandnyi roman (The Rose Novel, 1957) and Psalom holubynoho polia (The Psalm of the Dovelike Field, 1958) and the syncretic Okean (Ocean, 1959, 1979, 1992), to the monumental 4,000-strophe epic novel in verse Svidok dlia sontsia shestykrylykh (The Witness for the Sun of Seraphims, 1981), addressed to the theme of reconciliation between ‘man and the Creator.’ The monumental poetic works he wrote in the 1980s were published in Ukraine in the 1990s.

Barka's prose is marked by lyrical and folkish idiom with a rather static narrative flow. His first novel, Rai (Paradise, 1953), deals with the Soviet ‘paradise’; a revised and expanded version was published in Ukraine as Dushi edemitiv (The Edemites’ Souls, 1994). His second novel, Zhovtyi kniaz' (The Yellow Prince, 1962, 1968), about the Famine-Genocide of 1932–3, was translated into French (Le prince jaune, Paris 1981) and served as the basis for Oles Yanchuk’s 1993 Ukrainian feature film Holod-33 (Famine-33).