Микола Хвильовий

Field of activity: Culture
Date of birth: December 13, 1893
Date of death: May 13, 1933
Navigator: World Wars

A poet, prose writer, publicist, and political figure of the Executed Renaissance era.

Mykola Khvylovy was born into a family of teachers. His father, a descendant of an impoverished noble family, was, according to Khvylovy himself, an extremely irresponsible person and an alcoholic. His parents divorced when Mykola was still a child, and his childhood passed in constant moving: sometimes staying with relatives, sometimes with his mother, who was searching for work.
Khvylovy’s restless nature showed early: he was expelled from gymnasiums twice—once for participating in a “so-called Ukrainian revolutionary circle,” and again for connections with the Socialist Revolutionaries. Surviving from one job to another, he traveled across Donbas. From 1916, he took part in World War I—an experience that shaped him into a committed Bolshevik. In 1918, he formed his own insurgent unit, which fought against the Germans, Poles, the “Whites,” and the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. During this period, he began writing and publishing his first works, mostly of a revolutionary and agitational nature.
In 1919, Khvylovy joined the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, and in 1921 he moved to Kharkiv. Working as a mechanic at a factory, he began active literary work: he published in newspapers and journals and joined the literary association “Hart,” whose ideologist was Vasyl Ellan-Blakytny, and whose fundamental requirement was writing in Ukrainian. During this period, Khvylovy published two literary collections: Blue Etudes (1923) and Autumn (1924), which contain most of his major texts, including the novella I (Romance).
In 1926, Khvylovy, a principled supporter of the policy of Ukrainization, stood at the origins of the literary association VAPLITE (Free Academy of Proletarian Literature). During the literary discussion of 1925–1928, his ideas were expressed in the concise slogan “Away from Moscow!”, although its exact authorship is unknown. “We are faced with the question: which of the world literatures should we follow? In any case, not the Russian one. Ukrainian poetry must flee from Russian literature and its influence as quickly as possible. The point is that Russian literature has for centuries weighed upon us like a master, accustoming the psyche to slavish imitation,” he insisted, also emphasizing the need for literary Eurocentrism. Members of VAPLITE included a whole constellation of Ukrainian writers: Arkadii Liubchenko, Mykhailo Yalovy, Mykola Kulish, Maik Yohansen, Hryhorii Epik, Pavlo Tychyna, Yurii Yanovskyi, Volodymyr Sosiura, and others.
Such a bold stance inevitably attracted the attention of party authorities. Khvylovy tried to prove that he was not calling for a political break with Russia, but his efforts were in vain. On April 26, 1926, Stalin personally, in a letter “To Comrade Kaganovich and other members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks),” pointed to Khvylovy as a source of dangerous anti-Russian sentiment. One of the three types of “national deviationism” was even named after him—“Khvylovism.”
Trying to save VAPLITE from dissolution, Khvylovy was forced to publicly renounce his views. However, the secret services had already begun to monitor him closely. “Khvylovy is a certain set of traits, an armed enemy, a manifestation of expanded nationalism, a phenomenon that carries weight and is therefore very dangerous,” declared Stanislav Kosior, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine.
On January 28, 1928, an already printed issue of the VAPLITE bimonthly was confiscated because it contained the second part of Khvylovy’s novel The Woodcocks, where motifs of disillusionment with the results of the revolution were clearly expressed. VAPLITE was forced to dissolve itself, and Khvylovy was compelled to write a penitential article. Having renounced himself, he found himself effectively isolated from the literary process.
In the 1930s, traveling through villages, Khvylovy witnessed firsthand the horrific consequences of collectivization. According to Arkadii Liubchenko, he admitted that “the famine was a deliberately organized phenomenon.” This deepened the writer’s depression, and he attempted to drown his despair in alcohol.
In 1933, Mykhailo Yalovy, Khvylovy’s friend, was arrested in the “Slovo” writers’ building. This became the final straw: on May 13 of the same year, the writer invited friends over and, saying he was going to read them a new work, went into another room and shot himself in the head. Ideologist of nationalism Dmytro Dontsov later remarked that “even if Khvylovy himself pulled the trigger, it was Moscow that placed the weapon in his hand.”

Author: Olha Herasymenko

Brief conclusions

Cultural figure and reformer — founder of several Ukrainian literary organizations (“VAPLITE,” “Hart,” “Urbino”) and an initiator of orienting Ukrainian literature toward European models instead of Moscow ones.
Public figure — fought for the independence of Ukrainian culture from Russian influence.
Creative output — authored the novella I (Romance), the short novel Sanatorium Zone, the novel The Woodcocks, and the pamphlet Ukraine or Little Russia?
Legacy — one of the most prominent representatives of Ukrainian literature of the first half of the 20th century and a symbol of the struggle for Ukrainian culture who perished under a totalitarian regime.

Editorial team of “Portal”