Майк Йогансен

Activity: Culture
Date of birth: October 28, 1895
Date of death: October 27, 1937, Kyiv
Navigator: World Wars

A writer, translator, and screenwriter. Co-founder of the literary association VAPLITE. A representative of the Executed Renaissance.

Maik Johansen’s mother came from a family of Starobilsk Cossacks, while his father, a German language teacher, was from Latvia (Johansen himself later spread rumors about having either Norwegian or Swedish roots). “And although the roots of my genealogical tree reached back into the gray Zaporizhian past, my first poems, I, Maik Johansen, carved on the cellar door in German,” he later wrote in his Autobiography.
In 1917, Johansen graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of Kharkiv Imperial University, where he specialized in the study of classical and modern European languages; he also mastered some languages on his own. “Maik was an incredibly talented linguist,” his contemporaries said.
During the Soviet–Ukrainian War (1917–1921), Johansen witnessed the pogroms carried out by Denikin’s army, which, in his own words, forced him “to draw a sharp line in [his] worldview and embrace Marxism.” He began writing in Ukrainian and joined the circle of Kharkiv writers, including Vasyl Ellan-Blakytnyi, Volodymyr Sosiura, and Mykola Khvylovyi. Together, they founded the association of proletarian writers Hart, which promoted writing in Ukrainian while “striving to create a unified international culture.”
From 1923 to 1926, Maik Johansen worked as an editor at the All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration (VUFKU). He combined this work with literary творчість and translation, rendering into Ukrainian works by Friedrich Schiller, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, and H. G. Wells. Johansen co-authored the screenplay for Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s film Zvenyhora (1927), produced at the Odesa Film Factory—the first film in the famous trilogy that also includes Arsenal (1929) and Earth (1930).
In 1925, Johansen and a group of like-minded writers left Hart and founded the Free Academy of Proletarian Literature (VAPLITE). Its members criticized imperial Moscow policies, advocating national self-determination and the freedom of peoples. This drew the attention of the party leadership, and in 1928 the academy was forced to dissolve, while its members came under the scrutiny of the repressive apparatus.
After the liquidation of VAPLITE, Johansen joined the publication of the almanac Literary Fair, whose activities were constantly criticized by officials and were halted in 1930. He also initiated the creation of the “Techno-Artistic Group A,” which was likewise forced to disband in 1931.
On August 18, 1937, Maik Johansen was arrested in his apartment in the Kharkiv writers’ building “Slovo.” He was charged with participation in a nationalist organization, preparation of an anti-Soviet uprising, and terrorist activity. During interrogations, Johansen refused to recognize his colleagues as terrorists. He insisted that innocent people were being imprisoned and that “the arrests of Ukrainian writers are the result of confusion and helplessness of the leaders of the Party and the Soviet government.”
On October 24, Johansen was sentenced to death, and on the 27th he was executed in a Kyiv NKVD prison. His symbolic grave (cenotaph) is located at Lukianivske Cemetery; however, archival records indicate that his body was secretly buried in the Bykivnia forest, along with many other victims of Stalinist repressions.

Author: Olha Herasymenko