FEATURES OF INDUSTRIAL PROSE IN UKRAINIAN SOVIET LITERATURE: THE SHORT STORY “BLAST FURNACES” BY DMYTRO BUZKO

Abstract

The paper highlights the features of ‘industrial’ prose in the Ukrainian Soviet literature of the 1930s clarifying the main formal and semantic characteristics of “industrial” genres, their reception in criticism, and such characteristics of this genre as style, plot, figurative and thematic principles. Based on D. Buzko’s text “Blast Furnaces”, the paper shows the transitional period between the free avant-garde artistic movement in Ukraine of the 1920s and the implementation of socialist realism as the only official style in Soviet art in the 1930s. As a representative of the futurist movement, deeply engaged in the elaboration of early cinema theories, Dmytro Byzko wrote a novel “Holiandiia”, which deconstructed official narratives and topics of the late 1920s. The comparison of the “Blast furnaces” with this novel helps not only to see the mentioned transition but also to notice the divergence of the “Blast furnaces” and more canonical pieces of this genre. Dmytro Buzko’s “Blast furnaces” extremely accurately reflects the expectations from literature at that time: the heroes explain the main stages of work at the metallurgical plant, and by their example, in words and deeds, agitate readers to become conscious builders of socialism. Although a large number of similar techniques, ideas, and even views of the author can be found in “Holiandiia” and “Blast furnaces”, the first novel is a sharp critique of the contemporary reality, while “Blast furnaces” is a text complementary to reality. The analysis of “Blast furnaces” shows the process of the search for an ideal and canonical protagonist as well as an antagonist for the Soviet literature. The last one in this text is represented by the typical for the whole Ukrainian literature covetous farmer who, in a new political reality, plays a role of a small evil ready to harm ordinary workers and socialistic future.