In Ukraine, they are known as the “Executed Renaissance,” pioneering literary artists whose lives were snuffed out by Stalin’s brutal purges in the 1930s.
Living together in an apartment building and embracing experimental art forms, these writers, poets and directors spearheaded a flourishing of Ukrainian culture and identity about a century ago.
But that golden age was short-lived. The Soviet regime soon began to surveil, arrest and ultimately execute about half of the writers in an effort to stifle Ukrainian culture. For decades, their works were banned and their legacy nearly erased.
Until now.
In the face of Russia’s invasion, the story of the Executed Renaissance has been given new resonance as many Ukrainians seek to reclaim their cultural heritage. The lives of the writers are being told in a musical, a feature movie and a memoir. There is even a fashion line themed around them, with sweatshirts riddled with bullet holes to symbolize their killings.
“It’s a big trend,” said Yaryna Tsymbal, the author of “Our Twenties,” an anthology of Ukrainian literature from the 1920s. She said the demand for projects about the artists came “from everywhere: publishing houses, magazines, theaters.”
The sudden interest after a century of silence reflects a broader phenomenon in wartime Ukraine. Many people have embraced Ukrainian culture — like folk songs, poetry and overlooked painters — to affirm their identity and counter Moscow’s attempts to erase their country’s cultural heritage.
But the story of the artists has particularly struck a chord with Ukrainians, because they have viewed it as a warning of what could happen if Ukraine loses the war: the silencing of their culture, once again.
“What they seek in this story of the Executed Renaissance is the inspiration to keep fighting,” said Oleksandr Khomenko, the director of the musical. “They don’t want history to repeat itself.”
At the center of this story is Slovo House, a writers’ residence named after the Ukrainian for “word.” Completed in 1929 in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, then the capital of Soviet Ukraine, it was a modern building in which each apartment had its own bathroom and telephone, a luxury at the time, said Tetiana Pylypchuk, the head of the Kharkiv Literature Museum.
The 60 or so writers who lived there with their families partly financed the project, but its completion relied on Soviet approval and funding, scholars say. At the time, the Communist leadership in Moscow sought to build loyalty across the Soviet Union by promoting national cultures, in a reversal of czarist-era Russification policies.
Ukrainian culture thrived as a result, and Slovo House, with its vibrant community of writers and playwrights living under one roof, symbolized this renaissance. There was Mykola Khvyliovyi, a charismatic novelist who wrote of breaking free from Moscow’s yoke, and Mykhail Semenko, a poet whose futurist verses revitalized Ukrainian literature.
Another resident, the avant-garde director Les Kurbas, drew admirers from across the Soviet Union with theater productions blending live performances with film projections.
“These were truly gifted artists,” Ms. Pylypchuk said. “It was a pivotal period for Ukrainian culture.”
But that all did not last.
The Kremlin realized that promoting Ukrainian culture was driving Ukrainians away from the Soviet project rather than creating the kind of loyalty it had originally hoped for. Stalin complained about Mr. Khvyliovyi, who expressed his yearning for independence with a slogan that later became famous: “Away from Moscow!”
In 1933, around the same time Moscow imposed a human-made famine on Ukraine known as the Holodomor, Stalin began a crackdown on Ukrainian culture.
Slovo House, once a vibrant creative hub, became a deathtrap.
The Soviet secret police began arresting the residents of Slovo House one by one. On May 13, 1933, Mr. Khvyliovyi gathered fellow writers in his apartment to discuss the situation. During the meeting, he went into his room and shot himself in the head.
“Khvyliovyi did that to send a warning, to show what was coming,” said Taras Tomenko, the director of “Slovo House: Unfinished Novel,” a feature film about the artists’ residency that was one of the most-watched Ukrainian movies this year.
Some 30 Slovo House writers were executed, and a few others sent to penal colonies, Ms. Tsymbal said. Their work was banned and disappeared from public view, replaced by Kremlin-approved Russian-language books and plays.
Ms. Tsymbal recalled how, while studying at Harvard in 1998, she discovered the existence of a novel by Mike Johansen, one of the killed Slovo House writers. The university had kept in its archives a 1930 copy of the book, which had never been reprinted in Ukraine, she said. It has since been published again in Ukraine.
Even after Ukraine’s independence, Russian literature, songs and movies continued to dominate. Interest in Slovo House was so low that when Mr. Tomenko first pitched his idea for his film in 2012, “nobody cared,” he said.
“At that time, Ukrainian culture wasn’t even on the radar,” he added.
Russia’s cultural dominance was such that Mr. Khomenko, the musical’s director, long thought that Ukrainian writers were “boring,” he acknowledged. He said he “grew up loving Russian literature,” staging plays in Kyiv, the capital, about Russian writers.
Then came Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Trapped in Russian-occupied territory for the first month of the invasion, with no cellphone network in the countryside house where he had taken refuge, Mr. Khomenko said, he “had a lot of time to reconsider his past choices,” realizing that he had spent years promoting the culture of a country that was now erasing his own.
Back in Kyiv in April 2022, he made a decision to focus on the Ukrainian artists he had long overlooked. He set his sights on the Slovo House residents, recognizing in them a compelling, untold story. Along with friends, he recorded an album inspired by their tragic lives, called “You [Romance],” before turning it into a musical.
On a recent evening in Kyiv, a packed theater resonated with the cheers of spectators who had flocked to watch the musical, which mixes rock, pop and rap music. The musical has attracted more than 85,000 people since April, organizers said.
“I didn’t know the story of the Slovo House before this performance,” said Anastasiia Lisohub, 26, her eyes swollen from the tears she shed during the scenes depicting the artists’ executions. “These writers were incredibly modern.”
But pride in the writers has also come with a painful realization of all that was lost. Many Ukrainians say that if this generation of writers had not been killed, the country’s trajectory, especially its long subjugation to Moscow, might have been different.
“Ukraine would have flourished,” said Nataliia Kovalchuk, 40, as she left a screening of the movie about Slovo House. “If they were alive today, what kind of culture would we have? How different we would be? It chills me to the bone.”
Like many in Ukraine, Ms. Kovalchuk now fears that history is repeating itself.
Dozens of Ukrainian cultural figures have been killed in today’s war, stifling the country’s cultural potential. They have been called the “New Executed Renaissance.” At the end of the Slovo House musical in Kyiv, actors wore black T-shirts emblazoned with the names of recently killed artists, drawing a direct link between the two artistic generations.
Slovo House itself is also helping build a bridge between the two periods.
The building itself still stands, though it has long ceased being a writers’ residency and is now made up of ordinary apartments. In 2020, the Kharkiv Literature Museum purchased one, offering temporary stays to artists and cultural researchers. Despite near-daily Russian bombings on Kharkiv, which have damaged the building, the program continues.
In August, Khrystyna Semeryn, a Ukrainian researcher, joined the program to work on a series of articles on topics including Ukrainian scientists killed during the war, Jewish heritage in Ukraine and the history of German settlers in the country.
“I’m very inspired here,” she said with a smile. “This legacy of the 1920s, it reverberates through you.”
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