ARTISTIC UKRAINIAN MOVEMENT AS A PHENOMENON AND FACT OF THE POST-WAR LITERARY PROCESS

Abstract

The paper deals with the most important events and processes in the history of the Artistic Ukrainian Movement (MUR) as a literary and artistic organization of Ukrainian writers and a phenomenon of Ukrainian literary life in the post-war period. The article focuses upon the content of the artistic, aesthetic and ideological foundations on which the MUR was formed, as well as some organizational aspects of its literary activity. The study deals with the role of the MUR in the literary and artistic life of the post-war Ukrainian emigration is analyzed, in particular, the content of three writer’s congresses (1945, 1947, and 1948) and three conferences (1946) devoted to the problems of the development of literary criticism and drama, and their historical and cultural, and intellectual worldview contexts. The rticle touches upon the issues of continuity of the ideological, creative and organizational principles of the MUR, in particular, the orientation of its creators onto the tradition of VAPLITE; there is a continuation of the MUR’s traditions in the association of Ukrainian writers in exile "Slovo" ("The Word"), which arose later, is noted. The topic of the discussion between the MUR and the idealistic group that separated from MUR, which was called "Svitannia" ("The Dawn"), and soon turned into opposition to it, is revealed. The article argues that the MUR played an important role in restoring Ukrainian literary life in emigration, and the congresses and conferences it held demonstrated the productivity of artistic and literary-critical developments of Ukrainian writers and literary critics, the fruitfulness and diversity of their ideological and aesthetic searches. The analysis involved memoirs, letters, articles of Ukrainian writers and literary critics involved in the creation and activities of the MUR.