Ukrainian Renaissance

The term Executed Renaissance (Ukrainian: Розстріляне відродження, Rozstrilyane vidrodzhennya) is used to describe the generation of Ukrainian writers and artists of 1920s and early 1930s who were performing in the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic and were executed or repressed by Stalin's totalitarian regime. The term was firstly suggested by Polish publicist Jerzy Giedroyc in his letter to Ukrainian literature researcher Yuriy Lavrinenko who later used it as a title for the collection of the best literary works of that generation.

The downfall of the Russian Empire after the First World War, the resulting abolition of imperial censorship, the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state (even if for a very short time), and the relative leniency of the Soviet regime in the 1920s all led to an astonishing renaissance of literary and cultural activity in Ukraine. Scores of new writers and poets appeared and formed dozens of literary groups that changed the face of Ukrainian literature. These processes were supported by politics of nativization (in Ukraine it was called Ukrainization), New Economic Policy (state capitalism) and elimination of illiteracy.

Writers mostly were consolidated into literary organizations with different styles or positions. The period between 1925 and 1928 was characterized by "literature discussion" on the initiative of Mykola Khvylovy. An object of the discussion was ways of development for new Ukrainian Soviet literature and role of writer in society. Khvylovy and his associates were supporting an orientation towards Western European culture instead of Russian, they were rejecting "red graphomania" (though they weren't rejecting Communism as political ideology).

The main literary organizations of that time were:

In late 1920s Stalin abolished the New Economic Policy and returned to forced collectivization. In this context changes in cultural politics occurred as well. The first example of these changes was the Union for the Freedom of Ukraine process in 1930, a show trial of 474 people (mostly scientists), 15 of whom were executed and 248 sent to prison.

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