LITERATURE ASSOCIATION «PLUH» IN MEMOIRS OF VOLODYMYR HZHYTSKYI

Abstract

Сrucial source is analysed in this article – memoirs of a writer Volodymyr Hzhytskyi ‘Memoirs of the past’. It reveals controversial processes in the socium of the literature and art clerisy in 1920th in Kharkiv. It was written at the end of 1960th with a purpose to memorise author’s colleagues from the literature association ‘Pluh’ but it reveals a wider context. Full version of this source was published in 2011 with some sufficient comments. In these texts, Volodymyr Hzhytskyi strikingly shows literature environment of Kharkiv with its ideological controversies between different literature groups. With a background of his biography and development as an author, he created truthful characters of main actors of a literature environment in the capital city of the soviet Ukraine. He describes an atmosphere of literary soirees, his joining to the association. Also, there are some memoirs about speeches of Pavlo Tychyna, Volodymyr Sosiura, Mykola Khvylovyi, participation in the literature and art process of Oleksandr Dovzhenko, Serhii Pylypenko et al. It was very courageous, as for second half of the 1960th, to mention his other works which were criticised by the authorities and censored as ‘too nationally oriented’. Also, memoirs reflect a process of author’s self-censorship – forced change of his novel «Black Lake». Being a political prisoner for 22 years, writer wrote about his purged colleagues – D. Zahula, M. Irchan, L. Kurbas, et al. Also, in the memoirs, he describes the life of his purged and kept in detention camps friends from Kharkiv V. Bobynskyi and O. Vyshnia, with whom he spent years in the camps for political prisoners. Among writers, he also mentions Yakiv Kovalchuk, who was in a collaboration with punitive authorities of totalitarian state. In an outstanding way he describes life of Maik Yohansen, Mykola Khvylovyi, Oles Dosvitnii, Yurii Yanovskyi, Mykhail Semenko. His description of life of occupants of the writers’ house «Slovo» is of great value.