MUTE− and ECHO+: The Executed Renaissance: Ukraine’s Silenced Writers and the Words That Came Back (First Edition)

Description

In the 1920s Ukrainian writers, poets and theatre makers made something new in their own language. Within about ten years most were silenced, many shot at Sandarmokh in 1937. This twelve-week course follows one fictional family’s trunk of letters, and how the words came back.

Full description

In the 1920s a generation of Ukrainian writers, poets, theatre makers, painters, scholars and translators made something new in their own language. Within about ten years most were silenced. In the autumn of 1937, 1,111 prisoners of the Solovky camp were shot at Sandarmokh in Karelia, among them Les Kurbas, Mykola Kulish and Mykola Zerov.

Ukrainians call it the Rozstriliane vidrodzhennia (Розстріляне відродження), “the Executed Renaissance,” after the anthology a survivor, Yurii Lavrinenko, published in exile in 1959. MUTE− names what power took: writers marked as “nationalists,” uprooted to the camps, tried in secret by troikas, the three-person tribunals, and executed. ECHO+ names what people kept: editions published abroad, copies hidden and kept, heirs and readers, and the words read out loud again. The book follows the long silence that came after, the Sixtiers (the young poets of the 1960s) and Vasyl Stus, and Russia’s war against Ukrainian writers today.

The book is a twelve-week course, one term. Each week follows the Lysenkos of No. 8 River Street, a fictional family: Yurii, the poet who went to Kharkiv, and the trunk of his letters. Every event behind their story is documented, with sources. Sister streets stand in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Solovky and Sandarmokh, and in the émigré world from Paris to Winnipeg.

We Remember keeps the people of culture taken in the 1920s and 1930s and since 2022, the Sandarmokh lists, Bykivnia, and Ukraine’s Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions. For Every Age gives four guides: The Poem in the Trunk, a story for children; six lessons for youth; a one-hour reading evening; and a guide for teachers and leaders.

For college and university courses in social work, history, literature, theatre, human rights and Ukrainian studies; for reading groups and families; and for readers of Ukrainian descent. Help shape the next edition: write to sasha@drokacademy.ca with corrections and family stories.

This is the first edition. Our goal is to find people with lived experience of what it describes, including Crimean Tatar and Lemko readers, survivors, their families and descendants, and their communities, and to review the book with them for accuracy. If you have lived this history, or you find something that is not accurate or something that is missing, please write to sasha@drokacademy.ca. The second edition will carry every correction, and the author is looking for co-authors who will shape it. A Ukrainian edition, КЛЯП− і ЛУНА+ (Kliap− i Luna+), is planned. We will keep working toward it and are asking people to help with translation and review: write to sasha@drokacademy.ca.

Inside

• Twelve weeks, one for each class of a course term, in four parts: CARE, POWER, the minus word and the plus word
• River Street: one fictional family and the documented history behind every week
• Every week read on three circles (personal, cultural, structural) and in four times: before, what the empire brought, since 1991, the future we choose
• Three readings a week, discussion questions, a research task and key terms
• We Remember: who the filter took, with dated, sourced counts, and where the names are kept
• For Every Age: four guides, for children, youth, a community evening, and teachers and leaders

The author takes no income from this book. Proceeds after production costs support students. The author supports student caregivers and those who stand with Ukraine.

Teaching it? Instructors can request a free review copy, and every student in a course that adopts the book receives it free. Write to sasha@drokacademy.ca.

Author line

Dr. Oleksandr Kondrashov (Sasha) is the founder of DROKACADEMY, a healing and writing space in Kamloops, British Columbia, and a social work educator who currently teaches at Thompson Rivers University. Born in Lviv, Ukraine, and in Canada since 2004, he has taught over 7,000 students across five Canadian universities. DROKACADEMY’s motto guides this series: Love. Care. Share. He finished Secondary School No. 76 in Lviv, renamed for the poet Vasyl Stus, and wrote Stus’s name on the cover of every notebook.