WITH VASYL BLAKYTNYI AGAINST VALERIAN POLISHCHUK: FRAGMENTS OF THE SOCIAL AND LITERARY ACTIVITY OF YEVHEN KASIANENKO

Abstract

The paper covers unknown pages of Yevhen Kasianenko’s creative activity. Yevhen Kasianenko (1889—1937) was one of the pioneers of Ukrainian aircraft construction, a translator, and an active participant in the socio-political and literary movement of the 1910s—1930s.
 The study reconstructs the literary and business relations between Yevhen Kasianenko, Vasyl
 Ellan-Blakytnyi, and Valerian Polishchuk. The author analyzes their views on organizational
 and conceptual forms of Ukrainian literature. The analysis of the projects and polemics initiated
 by the writers tackles the question of the cultural and historical origins of the ‘Red Renaissance’ and the specifi cal formation of the Ukrainian proletarian literature.
 This paper explores Yevhen Kasianenko’s involvement in the press of the Ukrainian People’s Republic period, his participation in the emergence of Ukrainian-language Soviet periodicals, the first associations of proletarian writers, and Ukrainian publishing houses, as well as his role in communication between Soviet writers and emigre artists. The study analyses for the first time the criminal case against Kasianenko and outlines his extensive connections within the Ukrainian literary environment. Kasianenko was one of those whose activity the Russian Communist Party leadership used for Sovietization policies in Ukraine as well as for the Ukrainization of the Bolshevik policy. He contributed to legitimizing the party’s political practices and symbolic images. Kasianenko’s biography shows that in ideological, scholarly, and cultural aspects, the Soviet civilization project was not radically innovative, largely existing in the orbit of the pre-revolutionary socio-cultural movement.