UKRAINIAN NATIONAL REVOLUTION IN JURII LAVRINENKO’S CRITICAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

This article is dedicated to one of the key topics of Yurii Lavrinenko’s critical thinking — Ukrainian national revolution of 1917–1921. Yurii Lavrinenko was one of the most perceptive Ukrainian literary critics. He examined the political events of 1917–1921 as a part of phenomenon of Executed Renaissance dedicated his major works to it. Among them you can find publicistic series of articles “Ukraine — East” (Germany,
1949), and written in the USA English-language research “Ukrainian Communism and Soviet-Russian Policy Toward the Ukraine; An Annotated Bibliography 1917–1953”, fundamental anthology “Executed Renaissance”, essay diptych about Pavlo Tychyna — “On the Ways of Designing Clarinettism” and “Pavlo Tychyna and his Poem ‘Skovoroda’ on the Background of the Era”. We make an attempt to outline features of Yurii Lavrinenko’s critical method according to scenarios of his critical thinking in the series of the articles “Ukraine-East” and in the final essay of “Executed Renaissance” anthology — “Literature of Vitaiism”. Critic’s method is intertextual by its nature. Yurii Lavrinenko appeals to philosophical, cultural and historical, ethnic and national concepts of “Ukraine”, “Russia”, “East”, “West”, “empire”, “crime-revenge”, “rhythm of light” and proposes his own way of understanding of Europe as well as Ukraine in terms of their common spiritual
history. In these works Ukrainian national revolution of 1917–1921 is presented as the event of this common spiritual history.