This month’s Spotlight comes from Hub member Ian Ross Singleton, a teacher of Writing and Critical Inquiry at the State University of New York-Albany. Ian provides us a historical picture of dynamic Ukrainian writing in the post-Revolutionary period, explaining how Russian domination, both linguistic and cultural, was resisted and unique Ukrainian forms were pioneered. These include forms we may be familiar with today, such as “the coat of arms that we now see on Volodymyr Zelensky’s shirt while he talks to Donald Trump.”

 

Ukrainophone Novel—Russophone Setting

As the author of a novel about Odesa which is not written in Russian (Two Big Differences, published in 2021), I became very intrigued by Майстер корабля (Maister korablia) a novel by Yuri Yanovsky about Odesa which is also not written in Russian but rather in Ukrainian. While I have been translating and doing research about the context of this novel, I have begun to imagine a hopeful period, perhaps the “salad days” of Soviet Ukraine, in which avant-garde artists such as Yanovsky were crafting work in Ukrainian that could resist Russian colonialism. This novel is innovative and daring, revolutionary to this day in its depiction of the Soviet Hollywood that Odesa once was. But most of all, in a time when streets are being renamed to de-Russify Odesa, it is both an avant-garde work of literature and a Ukrainian classic about a part of Ukraine often ignored because its inhabitants have in the past been overwhelmingly Russian-speaking. 

Why is it that the people of Odesa, Ukraine almost unanimously spoke Russian until recently? An easy, initial answer might be that Russian as a dominant language was enforced by the Soviet Union. But that explanation only goes back to 1917 at the earliest, of course, whereas the Ems Ukaz of 1876, enacted by Tsar Alexander II, banned the Ukrainian language in print in Odesa as well as every other part of the Russian Empire. There is already a bit of Odesan irony in that this ukase¹ was enacted by a tsar whom many consider to have been a reformer or a “good emperor”. This irony is a result of a kind of re-interpretation of history, of epistemology, or what people from Odesa might call an anekdot.² Some historians ³ undertaking such work, but why? Is it truly that significant whether Tsar Alexander II was good or bad when the Bolsheviks’ rise to power neutralized the Ems Ukaz along with all other tsarist law?

The 1920s in Soviet Ukraine and VUFKU

Here we are back in 1917. The Bolsheviks (bad or good, depending on who you ask) were supposed to have taken care of this language ban. Yet even before 1917, Ukrainian Marxists such as Lev Yurkevych opposed Lenin’s “internationalist” idea that Russian should remain dominant for the sake of “commercial relations” (Lenin as quoted by Perekhoda). Paraphrasing this criticism of Lenin by Yurkevych, Perekhoda writes, “Advocating for ‘equality’ of languages within such entrenched social and cultural inequalities effectively endorses the law of the strongest. However, what Yurkevych perceived as an expression of both cynicism and imperialism is, for Lenin, a consistent internationalist stance.” Despite what sounds like a continuation of Russian colonialism from Lenin and the Bolsheviks, there was a period of relative cultural freedom in the setting of the 1920s in Soviet Ukraine.

One large piece of evidence supporting this idea of a period of relative cultural freedom is the existence and success of the film studio known as ВУФКУ (VUFKU), or the All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration, which became the most successful studio of the entire Soviet Union for almost a decade (Nebesio 160). VUFKU released films such as Arsenal and Earth by Oleksandr Dovzhenko as well as the very well-known Man With a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov. Vertov, who quite significantly had been expelled from Sovkino in Moscow, found the atmosphere of VUFKU to be less restrictive (172).

Where the Ship Was Built

And yet another artist who worked at VUFKU was Yuri Yanovsky. Most likely reflecting on this experience, Yanovsky wrote the 1928 novel Майстер корабля (Maister korablia), a novel disguised as the memoir of a former scenarist (who today would be called a screenwriter) at a film studio in a city by the sea. The memoir frame to the novel depicts the process of making a film about life at sea, inspired by a character who washes up on the shores of the city by the sea where the film studio is located. In addition, there is a whole chapter describing the building of a ship by “the Professor,” a master (or maister) in terms of craft who also does various set and furniture design for the film studio. 

The novel also includes innovative use of filmic technique in its literary style. Yet it’s written in Ukrainian. Ukrainian literature, in many readers’ imaginations, is most often about Cossacks in vyshyvankas, folksy dancing people who perhaps have never even seen the sea. Perhaps one of the most famous Ukrainian writers, Nikolai Gogol (known by the Russian version of his name for his stories written in Russian), is responsible for these imaginary expectations. Indeed, Yanovsky even includes a quotation from Gogol’s Dead Souls as one of the epigraphs to his novel.

Perhaps it is anticipation of the oddity of the Russophone setting of Odesa for a Ukrainophone novel that led Yanovsky not to identify Odesa by name in the novel. Instead, he refers to the city by the sea as simply “the City” (Місто, or Misto, capitalized as a proper noun throughout the novel). But the place certainly is Odesa. Among other things, including its location by the sea, an internationally recognized film studio resides there. The city’s inhabitants mispronounce the letter И (transliterated as Y in Ukrainian, as I in Russian), a commonly known feature of the Odesan accent or, if you will, language. Finally, Yanovsky also wrote a short essay entitled “Hollywood on the Shore of the Black Sea,” which explicitly describes Odesa as the site of a film shooting and draws parallels between the American capital of filmmaking and what he calls “Hollywood on the Black Sea,” where Charlie Chaplin was born in Moldavanka, Odesa’s Jewish neighborhood, to a man by the name of Kaplan.

The Significance of Language

The change in language in this relationship to the setting is significant both with regard to the novel as a cultural artifact as well as in the meaning of the novel itself. For example, in a scene in which the young filmmakers rescue a man who has washed ashore, he at first speaks English, then German. The young filmmakers ask him if he’s German. And, after a short period of time, he finally shouts out something in Ukrainian (Yanovsky 37). The novel includes passages in Russian, German, French, and Latin. So, while the setting might have been Russophone, Yanovsky is interested in a truly international perspective for his Ukrainian novel.

However, it would make sense that an artist interested in innovation, an avant-garde writer such as Yanovsky, would write in the supposedly more “cosmopolitan,” as Lenin would have said, more widely understood (in cities, at least), previously (and soon-to-be again) dominant, imperial Russian language. And it is true that Yanovsky’s first publication, written under the pseudonym Georgii Nei, was a poem in Russian entitled “The Sea” (Proletarskaia Pravda, 1922).

All writing done by Yanovsky afterward was, however, in Ukrainian. Yanovsky chose Ukrainian as his primary artistic language. Yet he also chose to do what Anna Chukur refers to as self-conscious work against both traditions and stereotypes of Ukrainian literature, perhaps stereotypes reinforced by Gogol’s stories written in Russian and involving, again, Cossacks and vyshyvankas.

Innovating Ukrainian Literature

While there is a photograph of a man in a vyshyvanka in Майстер корабля (Maister korablia), there’s also a description of the basic process by which photography led to motion pictures. In her dissertation Film Aesthetic in the Ukrainian Novel of the 1920s: the Novel as Experiment, Chukur focuses on Майстер корабля (Maister korablia) as one of two⁴ major examples of Ukrainian writers employing cinematic technique in their writing:

By emulating cinema aesthetics, experimental novels redefined the boundaries of
the novel genre and tested the limits of artistic formal experimentation. In
particular, the writers explicitly modeled their fiction on film production. They
emulated cinematic narrative modes and techniques in their prose in order to
reshape traditional representation, narrative perspective, narrative construction,
and exposition of characters. (xii)

In order to innovate Ukrainian literature, Yanovsky employed this technique in the style in which he wrote Майстер корабля (Maister korablia). An example is the shift between past and present tense in the novel. While such a shift was not necessarily unprecedented, Yanovsky employs it to a dramatic effect as if tense and narrative time were a metaphor for a camera lens moving from a wide shot to a closer one, or an “objective” angle to a “subjective” ⁵  one:

We left the Professor’s, warmed by him. The quiet streets of the City were filled
with the wind of the storm, crossing squares like a lord. The sea beat along the
shore with ferocity and ire. I gazed into the eternally serene eyes of Tayakh. At
intersections, we stopped because the wind felt as if it were dancing around us.

We kissed, not paying attention to any passerby, then went to another intersection.
There we kissed again, and I whistled with pleasure against my fingers. But the
wind whistled harder.
“Come in, dearest,” says Tayakh when we come up to her hotel, “this will be our
last evening. Tomorrow I’m leaving for Genoa. It’ll be months before we next see each other.”⁶

While the whole scene is in the first person, the collective first person is more at play in the first paragraph, while the second switches to the present tense and the third (below) includes a description in this tense that falls more into the perspective of the narrator himself, as if moving closer toward into the thoughts of the narrator:

Passing through the corridors of the hotel, we notice a note on Sev’s doors, Took
Bohdan to the hospital. I’ll be back late. We write underneath, Goodnight. Then
we enter Tayakh’s room. The room of a young, attractive woman always look like
a ship’s cabin. Such fresh air can only come from a porthole! The cabin’s adorned
with a rug, the walls are purple silk, and blue gauze hangs from the chandelier.
The bed’s up high and looks cozy, a real berth. It can put a tired person to sleep.⁷

In another chapter, there’s a blended overlap between the narrator’s voice as a storyteller and his voice within the narrative itself, or the narrative instance and the narrative time.⁸ It could be akin to a film in which voiceover overlaps with dialogue in a scene. Initially, the narrator writes, “But, my esteemed youth, it’s not my genre to teach nor to expose bitterness. I proudly bear the flag of old age. My recollections I dedicate to the young, the bold, and the thoughtful.”⁹ However, the tone of this address spills over into a speech given by the narrator in the recollected scene: “‘Creativity,’ I say, ‘is an understanding that’s both egotistical and egocentric in its deep essence.’ (Now I don’t think so!)¹⁰.” It’s important to note the tense parallel here. While both passages are in present tense, the first is in the narrative instance while the second is in the narrative time. Nonetheless, the narrator’s tone is very similar in both. Additionally, in the latter, he includes a parenthesis addressed to the reader in the narrative instance rather than the audience of the quoted speech in narrative time.

According to Anna Chukur, tense shift is not the only method employed by Yanovsky in the array of his filmic technique, a literary approach seldom used even up until today. The reason for the rarity of this approach may be the uneasy and sometimes jarring effect such an avant-garde technique creates. It is not only innovative. Such literature is revolutionary. It’s no wonder then that Yanovsky identified himself, at least at the time when he wrote Майстер корабля (Maister korablia), with the February Revolution and the society and culture that it fostered.

A Lack of Understanding Persists

Yet, does a Ukrainian novelist identifying with the Revolution ring true to an average reader of Ukrainian literature? While there is abundant history to back up such an idea, an average Western reader of Ukrainian literature may be surprised by it. And while this surprise might have to do with why a Ukrainian classic such as Майстер корабля (Maister korablia) is being translated into English only now, that lack of previous translation doesn’t explain the assumption by an average Western reader that Ukrainian literature is not the place in which they’ll find avant-garde experimentation such as the employment of filmic technique. It simply doesn’t seem to be a part of the Western imagination’s view of Ukrainian culture.

Perhaps here is another place for re-interpretation and for epistemology of the salad days of Soviet Ukraine. The person who inspired the “Professor” character in the first passage above is Vasyl’ Krychevsky, the artist who designed the Ukrainian coat of arms at the request of Mykhailo Hrushevsky in 1918. It’s this same coat of arms that we now see on Volodymyr Zelensky’s shirt while he talks to Donald Trump. Its letters spell out the word В О Л Я (V O L IA) or freedom. This period involves innovative and progressive figures who were supportive of a Ukrainian republic in the wake of 1917. It was during this time that Ukrainian Futurists such as Mykhail Semenko, who worked with Yanovsky at VUFKU, enjoyed relatively greater freedom than their Russian avant-garde counterparts (Nebesio 172). Furthermore, the 1924 Soviet Constitution guaranteed Soviet republics such as Ukraine full jurisdiction over their cultures (Maximenkov as cited by Nebesio 174). Майстер корабля (Maister korablia) is an artifact of this time that calls for re-interpretation of the Western view of Ukraine. Yet the “reshaping” of tradition identified by Chukur and discussed here is, unfortunately, often still overlooked in literary history.

Co-optation of the Colonizer

In part, this oversight has to do with co-optation. Take the case of an avant-garde artist in the visual arts, Kazimir Malevich (or perhaps his name should be typed Kazymyr Malevych). Malevych is still considered a “Russian” artist, although he was born in Kyiv (to Polish parents) and, more significantly, studied art there and, after his time in Russia, returned to Kyiv to participate in the 1920s Ukrainian avant-garde. In other words, the famous painter of The Black Square, widely regarded as a key rupture between representational and abstract painting, is Ukrainian, at least by birthright.

Speaking more to this idea of re-interpretation, Malevych wrote articles for the Ukrainian avant-garde journal New Generation (Нова ґенерація) while simultaneously turning down a request to write articles for a Moscow-based journal Contemporary Architecture (Современная архитектура). This event is described in detail in “New Generation: the Apogee and the Finale of Ukrainian Futurism” («Нова генерація: апогей і фінал українського футуризму») by Yaryna Tsymbal in Chytomo (Читомо) and includes specifics about the languages involved. According to Tsymbal, Malevych continued sending his collections of conceptual writings to New Generation. And this journal included many other well-known artists of the Modern era.

Yet Malevych is still spelled with an I instead of a Y, is still categorized and identified as a Russian artist. While he may have written in Russian, it is apparent that he preferred a Ukrainophone audience considering that his articles in New Generation were translated and published in Ukrainian.

The Ukrainian Language Resists

Language is important here of course, but, on the one hand, even if Malevych preferred the Russian language, perhaps language is not as important as the experience and background of the artist. On the other hand, there are also (often in the literary arts where language is of the utmost importance) examples of Ukrainian-born artists being identified as Russian because of the language in which they wrote and not because of the particular subject matter or setting or experiences depicted in their writing.

Isaak Babel is a good literary example. Babel writes about Odesa, Ukraine, about the population of this major city of Ukraine. In light of the content of his writing, Babel should be a Ukrainian writer.

Yanovsky, a writer not from Odesa but who did write about Odesa, at least about artists from outside Odesa during their time in Odesa, and who never actually names Odesa in his work of art, is unarguably a Ukrainian writer, perhaps purely based on language. And his writing, having come from the same period as Babel’s, is, unlike Babel’s, only now coming into translation.

The difference (yes, I’ll write it, the two big differences) is that Babel’s Russian, while not saving the writer himself, makes it possible to deny his Ukrainian birthright and experience (notwithstanding whether he would want to keep it or not) while Yanovsky’s Ukrainian, while certainly not saving the writer, makes it impossible for Russian culture to co-opt his avant-garde, experimental, and revolutionary writing. Does that mean it resists Russian co-optation and perhaps Russian colonialism? 

I leave that question open for the time being. This period of cultural freedom came to an end due to a 1929 statement by Joseph Stalin. During a meeting of the Writers’ Union, Stalin declared policy regarding “nationalist” culture (Maximenkov as cited by Nebesio 174), introducing a contradictory notion of some kind of “international” culture for the Soviet Union that nonetheless would uphold only one language from the many cultures of the Union. It’s quite obvious which language Stalin chose. This policy, which echoes Lenin’s pre-1917 policies as well as tsarist linguistic policy, was barely veiled Russian colonialism, enforced now by Stalin instead of Lenin or the tsar.

Майстер корабля (Maister korablia) by Yuri Yanovsky is a cultural artifact that worked against this cultural colonialism from a time of hope that could have been. Perhaps almost one hundred years later, it can become a work marking a turning point of how the world views Ukraine.

Works Cited

Chukur, Anna. “Film Aesthetic in the Ukrainian Novel of the 1920s: The Novel as Experiment.” ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2016.

Genette, G. (1980). Narrative discourse (J. E. Lewin, Trans.; J. Culler, Foreword). Cornell University Press.

Nebesio, Bohdan Y. “Competition from Ukraine: VUFKU and the Soviet Film Industry in the 1920s.” Historical journal of film, radio, and television 29.2 (2009): 159–180.

Perekhoda, Hanna. “Re-Examining Lenin’s Writings on the National Question: An Early Marxist Critique from the Imperial Periphery.” Revolutionary Russia (2025): 1–9.

Plokhy, Serhii. The Russo-Ukrainian War : The Return of History. First edition. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2023.

IA︡novsʹkyĭ, IU. (1930). Maĭster korabli︠a︡ : roman (Vyd. 2). Knihospilka.

IA︡novsʹkyĭ, IU. Maĭster korabli︠a︡. Kharkiv: Vivat, 2024.

Tenenbaum, M. (2024, August 29). Objective vs. subjective camera perspectives: Providing character perspective through visual storytelling in film. EditMentor. https://editmentor.com/blog/objective-vs-subjective-camera-perspectives-providing-character-perspective-through-visual-storytelling-in-film/

Tsymbal, Y. (n.d.). Нова генерація: апогей і фінал українського футуризму. Chytomo. Retrieved March 20, 2025, from https://chytomo.com/ekzempliary-xx/nova-heneratsiia/

“Ukase.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ukase. Accessed 21 Mar. 2025.

Дорошевич В. М. Одесса, одесситы и одесситки. — Одесса: Издание Ю. Сандомирского, 1895. — С. 48.

“Русский язык Одессы.” Википедия, Wikimedia Foundation, https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Русский_язык_Одессы. Accessed 20 Mar. 2025.

Footnotes

¹ I use this word very intentionally because of its specificity but also because it came into use in the English language in the early 18th century according to Merriam-Webster.

² While the calque might be familiar, I refer here to the specific form of humorous tale often told in Odesan culture, often involving the character of Rabinovich.

³ The best example of such a historian is Serhii Plokhy at Harvard University, whose historiography has challenged ideas of the origins of Kievan Rus’

⁴The other example is Інтеліґент (Inteligent) by Leonid Skrypnyk.

⁵ For the idea of “objective” versus “subjective” camera shots, I refer to “Objective vs. Subjective Camera Perspectives” by Misha Tenenbaum on EditMentor blog (Aug. 29, 2024).

⁶ My translation of: Ми вийшли від Професора, зігріті теплом цієї людини. Тихі вулиці Міста були повні штормового вітру. Він проходив площами, як господар. Море билося десь об берег скажено й грізно. Я зазирав у безконечно лагідні очі Тайах. На перехрестях вулиць ми зупинялися, бо вітер наче танцював навкруги нас. Ми цілувалися, не звертаючи уваги на прохожих, і йшли до іншого перехрестя. Там цілувалися знову, і я свистів з насолодою в пальці. Але вітер свистів дужче. — Заходь, дружочок, — каже Тайах, коли ми рівняємося з її готелем, — це ж останній вечір. Завтра я від’їздю до Генуї. Доки ми знову побачимося, пройдуть місяці.

⁷ My translation of: Проходячи коридорами готелю, ми помічаємо на Дверях Сева записку: “Повіз Богдана до лікарні. Повернуся пізно”. Ми пишемо нижче: “На добраніч” — і заходимо до кімнати Тайах. Кімната молодої, привабливої жінки завше нагадує каюту. Тільки в ілюмінатор може литися таке свіже повітря! Каюту застелено килимом, по стінах пурпуровий шовк, блакитний газ повис на люстрі, високе ліжко виглядає затишно — справжня койка. Вона може приспати натомлену людину.

⁸ I take these terms from Gérard Genette’s Narrative Discourse: an Essay in Method, translated by Jane E. Lewin.

⁹ My translation of: Але — не мій жанр, шановні, навчати й виказувати гіркість. Я достойно несу прапор старості. Мої спогади я присвячую молодим, сміливим і чуйним.

¹⁰ My translation of: — Творчість, — кажу я, — поняття егоїстичне й навіть егоцентричне в своїй глибокій суті. (Нині я не так думаю!)./p>