«Golgotha» by Les Gomin in the context of anti-religious / ateistic kitch of Ukrainian literature of the 1920–1930s

Abstract

The phenomenon of anti-religious / atheistic kitch as a poster-monumental variety of mass Ukrainian literature of the 1920–1930s is investigated. Cultural and historical factors that influenced Ukrainian literary process of the first third of the twentieth century (industrialization, collectivization, anti-church struggle on the one hand, the origin and formation of social realism as a «leading artistic method» on the other hand) are determined; general trends in the development of fiction within the framework of socialist-realistic canon are identified, the relationship between the most important phenomena of public life of the specified period with the thematic and ideological horizons of word art is established. Topicality of the study is due to the novelty of the topic which is understudied in domestic litera, as welture studiesl as an appeal to the works of Les Gomin – prose writer, literary and theatrical critic, journalist, scientist, teacher, an active participant in the literary life of his time, editor of literary and critical journals, researcher of Ukrainian folklore, repressed in the 30s.It is argued that the greatest impact on public life of the 20–30s of the twentieth century was made by industrialization, collectivization, and anti-religious propaganda – three directions of the policy of the Communist Party, which aimed to take control of three main areas of human life: craft / urban, completely rebuilt in accordance with the new realities; agricultural / rural, for centuries based on the relationship of the peasant with his mother-land; spiritual / religious, declared unnecessary, unwanted, obsolete remnant of the bourgeois era. As a result of this, three directions of the Soviet ideological kitch appear: production and household, rural / collective farm, anti-religious / atheistic. Each of them has its own markers, iconic details, emblematic images and thematic horizons. Their common features include artistic replication, artificiality, optimistic predictability, schematic types of characters declared by ideological censor of the 1920s and 1930s. The phenomenon of atheistic / anti-religious kitch is considered in a theoretical aspect; the features of the poetics of literary texts related to this variety of kitch are analyzed. It has been established that in the discourse of anti-religious / atheistic literature characters of hero-communist, endowed with a bright mind with clear party attitudes, and his indispensable antagonist-clergy (clerical) – a priest, church elder, watchman, key-keeper, etc. are formed. Depending on the plot and the author’s intention, the collective character of the crowd – «dark», uneducated, superstitious, or, on the contrary, resolutely opposed to «priests» who «deceived the people for centuries» may also appear in anti-religious works. However, it is noted that Ukrainian literature is not at all full of a large number of purely anti-religious works; as a rule, anticlerical motifs perform a secondary function in works of other subjects.The object of the article is Les Gomin’s novel «Golgotha» (1933), as well as ideological and thematic related stories of A. Liubchenko «Strangers» (1930), I. Mykytenko «From Hot Days» (1924), and the novel by A. Golovko «I can» (1922). Based on a comparative analysis of the above-mentioned works, the formation of an atheistic tradition in the literature of socialist realism is traced, the main components of which are a negative character of the clergy, the vulgarization of its representatives; the development of a special type of anti-hero – a priest or layperson as a representative of the enemy class opposed to the Soviet regime, a potential «enemy of the people»; condemnation of darkness and superstition allegedly generated by the blind fanatical faith of an uneducated population; emphasis on inhumanity of religious morality, which constantly prohibits something; levelling the very idea of God as a remnant of a pre-revolutionary bourgeois worldview.As a result of an attempt to read the above-mentioned works in line with postcolonial criticism, the ontological nature of the conflict in anti-religious / atheistic kitch is established, due to the tragedy of the disoriented personality in the system of dented values; it is noted that actualization in literature and other forms of art of atheistic motives in any historical period testifies not only to the levelling and vulgarization of religious truths, but also reflects the degradation of spiritual and moral appearance of the people, decline in its general culture.