Executed Renaissance: Ivan Dneprovskiy. Mike Yogansen

Weloveua proceeding with acquaintance of our dearest readers with series of material about creative and talent Ukrainians, whose lives and works ranks to the Executed Renaissance epoch.

Ivan Dneprovskiy (1895 — 1934)

Famous Ukrainian writer from Kharkiv. Analysts named he the “gray cardinal”of Ukrainian literature. Ivan Dneprovskiy was born in Kherson region. He became an orphan in early childhood. He studied at Oleshkovskaya gymnasium, where he met with another figure of future Renaissance – Nikolay Kulish.  After this familiarity Ivan started to write first poems and edit magazines.

He was a participant of  the First World War and after the end he worked at the magazine “Armeyskiy vesnik”. After the revolution, he went over to the Bolsheviks. In 1923 he graduated from the historical-philological faculty of Kamyanetz-Podolsk institute.

After the graduation, young writer, like the majority of creative persons, came to Kharkiv – the capital of Ukrainian Republic. For some time his name was on everyone’s lips – at one of the meeting young writers, he demonstratively tore “Kobzar” written by Taras Shevchenko. According to critics’ minds, he wanted to show that his work departs from tradition Shevchenko realist poems, his poems written in neo-romanticism style. Curiously, that real surname of the poet was Shevchenko, and one more assumed name, except Dnipro, that he used was Taras Kobzarenko.

Many young writers supported him for his rebellion. Step by step Ivan Dneprovskiy became one of the leader of Ukrainian Renaissance.  In 1925 his plays were staged in the theatre and Ivan Dniprovskyi became famous like playwright.

In 1933 Soviet authorities started demarche against Ukrainian nationalists in Kharkiv. Hundreds of writers, playwrights, actors, scientists were arrested and condemned to death.  At that time Dniprovskyi was the editor of the magazine “Krasnyi put’”. In this magazine many writers started their careers. Ivan Dniprovskyi made a mistake, he saved all correspondence with arrested writers. Later those letters became known, cause Ivan’s wife saved them all over 50 years. But, who knows, maybe if Ivan Dniprovskyi destroyed pieces of evidence of correspondence, maybe some of the writers would remain alive. However today this correspondence gives us a broad view of the Executed Renaissance epoch in Ukrainian history and its great figures.

Ironically, Ivan Dniprovskyi wasn’t under arrest. He was sick about 10 years and died of tuberculosis.

Mike (Michael) Yogansen (1895 — 1937)

Was born in Kharkov in the family from Latvia. His father was teacher of German language.

Mike studied in the local school, and then graduated from the Philological Faculty of Kharkov University.

Mike fluent in ten languages, but wrote only in Ukrainian. He started writing poems since childhood, though in German and Russian. Later he learned Ukrainian in the gymnasium. Note that when he started to write in this language, he burned all his foreign-language works.

In the early 1920s Yogansen made friends with other Ukrainian writers such as Vladimir Sosura and Nikolai Khvylovy, which founded the Union of Writers “Harth”. Two years later, he and other members of the Union left it and created another – VAPLITE.

In the early 1930s, Mike Yogansen met with director Alexander Dovzhenko and began to work at the film industry.He wrote about 10 scripts. After the movie “Zvenigora”, Dovzhenko and Yogansen quarreled and did not communicate anymore.

Talking about Mike, it is worth noting that he loved sport – playing soccer, tennis and billiards. Once he played with Vladimir Mayakovskiy and won. In terms of game, as Mayakovskiy had lost, he had to crawl under the table and recite Pushkin’s poems.

His work was not related to politics, and was dedicated to the lives of ordinary people. But in 1937 the writer was arrested on of standard charges – terrorism and Ukrainian nationalism. Yogansen was moved to Kiev and after two months of torture shoted. In 1960 he was rehabilitated for lack of evidence.

In 2015 Ukrainian authorities organized the celebration the 120^th anniversary of birth of the Ukrainian writer.

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