The Executed Renaissance

An anthology compiled by Yurii Lavrinenko and published in 1959, gathering the work of Ukrainian writers of the 1920s and 1930s destroyed by repression. The title itself, proposed by the compiler, became the name for an entire generation of authors whose writing was withdrawn from circulation for decades. The book contains poetry, prose, drama and criticism — including texts by Mykola Zerov, executed in 1937 at Sandarmokh. The compilation carried biographical notes that long remained almost the only accessible source on the fates of many of those authors. The anthology played a decisive role in returning this body of texts to the Ukrainian reader. The anthology was reissued in Ukraine after 1991 and remains the principal entry point to the subject for new readers. The edition carries a reference apparatus and an index of names, which makes it suitable for research use as well.