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[UKRAINIAN WEST VS EAST] Galyts’ka ta bukovyns’ka poeziia XX viku [i.e. Galician and Bukovinian Poetry of the 20th Century

Kharkiv: Knygospilka, 1930. Item #1220

LXX, 184 pp. 18,5x13,5 cm. In contemporary cardboards; original covers with constructivist design glued above. Rubbed, some tears of inner edge of the title page, last page of the table of contents lost, otherwise good and clean.

One of 4000 copies. Very rare collection of Ukrainian poetry of Galicia and Bukovina and its analyses by East Ukrainian (socialist) critic. Most likely, the edition was banned in the USSR.
The historical region Galicia was annexed by Kievan Rus in the 10th century turning into the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia by the 12th century. It was a strategically important and large territory. This principality pursued an active international policy in Eastern and Central Europe and then became a contested ground between European countries for a long time. Bukovina had a similar history being a subject of disputes between different countries. Almost half of the population was represented by Ukrainians. In the late 19th century, the development of Ukrainian culture in these lands arose. A network of Ukrainian educational institutions was built - and closed in the 1920s due to programs of Romanization. At the same time, East Galicia considered itself the West Ukrainian People’s Republic for nine months. In the 1920s, East and West Ukraines had separate territories and parallel cultures with different economics.
The collection includes poems by 15 representatives of “old, young and youngest generations”. Their poetry was examined by Ukrainian literary historian Boris Iakubskii (1889-1944). His academic activity saw its heyday in the 1920s when he prolifically worked as a literary theorist and researcher of T. Shevchenko’s works. He worked as a newspaper editor in the occupied Kiev in the 1940s, later was arrested by Soviet authorities and died in a prison.
Iakubskii started from B. Lepkyi and P. Karmanskii, as poets who published works during the rise of Ukrainian culture and then shifted to younger generations. Sharpest criticism fell on Stepan Semchuk (1899-1984) and Olexander Mokh (pseud. Orest Petriichuk; 1900-1975). Each of them published one collection of poems in 1924. Iakubskii only casually wrote about them, noting that he brought their poems into the anthology only in order to show “how contemporary Galician poetry came down”. Mokh actually published the only book of his poems and then became a literary critic, but Semchuk kept up this activity. He released 9 more books of poems. Both emigrated to Canada and contributed to literature of the local diaspora.
This particular edition covered Galician and Bukovinian poetry published in the first 25 years of the 20th century, included short biographies and/or bibliographies.
Among the poets listed, five persons were executed by Soviet authorities through NKVD itself or GULAG camps in 1938-1941. Ostap Lutski (1883-1941), Frants Kokovski (1885-1940), Meletii Kichura (1881-1938) and Vasil Bobinsky (1898-1938) were murdered. Yuri Shkrumeliak (1895-1965) survived a 10-year sentence in camp and was rehabilitated.

Not found in Worldcat.

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