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Ukrainian by Choice. Introduction to the Case of Ihor Kostetsky

By Tetiana Shestopalova

This paper is devoted to Ihor Kostetsky (1913–1983), a writer, editor, and publisher, who often is described as “a personality made up of contradictions” (Hryhorii Kostiuk),[1] “a figure that does not fit into any measurements” (Serhiy Grabovsky),[2] and at the same time, as “one of the key figures of [Ukrainian. – T.Sh.] literature of the 20th century” (Solomiya Pavlychko),[3] and “a writer of the stream that Ukrainian literature so often lacks” (Maksym Strikha).[4]

Kostetsky was a huge enthusiast and promoter of Ukrainian culture. He belonged to a group of popular figures who identified as “Ukrainians by choice” in twentieth century Ukraine, among them the philologist Yurii (Georg) Shevelov (1908–2002), the writers Moses Fishbein (1946–2020) and Emma Andijewska (born 1931), and others. This choice was a conscious decision of the individuals to associate themselves with the colonized Ukrainian nation. Ukrainians by choice were mostly intellectuals of various ethnic origins (mixed Ukrainian-Russian, Polish, Jewish, Austrian, German, Spanish) who were scientists, professors, politicians, writers, artists, and military leaders. They took responsibility for the preservation and full development of the Ukrainian nation and its culture in threatening times, and advocated the idea of a sovereign Ukraine, independent of neighboring states with imperial ambitions.

The decision to be Ukrainian was primarily a value-driven and ethical one, as it aimed to restore justice to Ukraine, which, due to its frontier location, was constantly at the intersection of the interests of stronger neighbors who seized its territory and pursued a policy of forced assimilation. The greatest threat to Ukrainian identity and statehood in the twentieth century was Russia/the USSR. Yurii Shevelov outlined the Ukrainian choice he made at the beginning of the mass repression of Ukrainians in the 1930s by the Russian Bolshevik regime: “Ukrainians have now been turned into what English-speaking people describe by the word underdog […].” They were “being trampled, yet standing up. The former evoked sympathy, the latter encouraged me to move together. No matter how strange and illogical it may seem from the outside, my Ukrainianness fully developed at that time.”[5]

Against the backdrop of Russia’s first hybrid (2014) and then full-scale (2022) invasion of Ukraine, the appeal to the historical cases of Ukrainians by choice correlates, on the one hand, with the current processes of reidentification in Ukraine, which are dominated by civic position rather than ethnic origin.[6] On the other hand, these cases enrich the understanding of Ukrainians’ spiritual and moral resistance to the Russian imperial project and help to visualize their presence and the results of their activities in the world.

This paper aims to reveal the factors behind Ihor Kostetsky’s Ukrainian choice and to characterize the peculiarities of his “volitional approach” (M.R. Stech)[7] to being a Ukrainian. Kostetsky’s self-identification as Ukrainian is not so much based on ethnicity as on the promotion of freedom of choice in national identity, which, in his opinion, was the embodiment of the struggle for independence.

Image of Kostetsky, 22.09.1980. Photo from the collection ‘FSO 01-242, Ihor Kostetzky’ in the archives of the East European Research Centre of the University of Bremen.

In 1942, he was transported from Vinnytsia (Ukraine), where his family lived, to Germany along with thousands of so-called Ostarbeiter of the Nazi regime to work in the mines of Bochum. After World War II, he became one of the founders and members of the Mystetskyi Ukrainskyi Rukh (The Artistic Ukrainian Movement) or MUR (1945–1949), that united Ukrainian writers and artists who had fled the Soviet Union and found themselves in DP-camps on the territory of the post-war Germany and Austria. Having avoided repatriation, he remained in Germany, unlike many other Ukrainian cultural figures who moved to America. Here, Kostetsky wrote all his works in Ukrainian and German. With his wife, the German writer and translator Elisabeth Kottmeier (1902–1983), he founded the private publishing house Na Hori, which played an outstanding role in the Ukrainian literary process with several dozen translations of works of world literature into Ukrainian. Among them were works by Shakespeare, Ezra Pound, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Jean Anouilh, Stefan George, Juan Ramón Jiménez and Federico García Lorca. In addition, since the late 1960s, he has been adapting several of his dramas for presentation in the German-speaking artistic space. As a result, the German newspaper Die Welt highly praised his drama A Play About the Great Man (1965); his drama The Nuns (1967) was successfully staged in German in Groningen, the Netherlands; and German radio broadcasted his radio dramas, in particular Letizia.[8]

In his artistic, literary, and publishing activities, Kostetsky pursued the task of modernizing Ukrainian literature and establishing a dialogue between the Ukrainian culture and other cultures. He confirmed the permanence of his decision to associate himself with Ukrainians in the late 1970s:

“I did not associate myself with the Ukrainian nation for nothing. Our destinies have a lot in common – hers and mine. She and I could have become anything, not somewhere in the spontaneous haze of Babylon but before the eyes of contemporary humanity. As for me personally, I could have successfully become a Russian, a Pole, or even a Jew. For each of these identities, I had the spiritual gifts. I became a Ukrainian.”[9]

The Canadian literary scholar Marko Robert Stech already drew attention to Kostetsky’s choice to belong to the Ukrainians.[10] In the 1980s, he recognized Kostetsky’s uniqueness in Ukrainian culture, searched for his archive in West Germany, and prepared selected literary works for publication in the 2000s.[11] The peculiarity of my attempt is that I use Kostetsky’s memoirs, letters, and rare essays stored in archival collections to clarify the unexplored background of Kostetsky’s choice to be Ukrainian rather than Russian.[12]

Merzliakov vs. Kostetsky

Ihor Kostetsky was born in Kyiv into a Ukrainian-Russian family, a Ukrainian mother, Natalia Kostetska, from an old noble family, and a Russian father, Vyacheslav Merzliakov, originally from Bashkiria (Bashkortostan). Until 1941, he bore his father’s surname – Merzliakov. I will trace the events that led to the change of his surname, while I still refer to him as ‘Kostetsky,’ even when talking about events before 1941, to distinguish him from his relatives with the same surname, ‘Merzliakov,’ and to avoid confusion.

During his childhood and youth in Vinnytsia (a city in central Ukraine) and Kyiv, Kostetsky lived in a mostly bilingual Ukrainian-Russian family. Although his maternal grandmother, Maria Lavrentieva (“Grandma Masha”), also taught him Polish language and literature as a reminder of their family’s deep Polish-Lithuanian roots, this language did not enter the family’s daily life.[13] Kostetsky’s letters from Germany, where he remained after World War II, to relatives in Vinnytsia show the constant presence of two languages in family communication. He wrote to his mother and father in Russian, sometimes adding Ukrainian words to emphasise the details of the situations he described,[14] and his maternal aunt, Olena Kostetska, Lialia, and brother, Andrii, in Ukrainian. During his childhood his parents spoke Russian with him, so Kostetsky’s letters to his mother mention whole verses of children’s songs in Russian from his childhood in Vinnytsia. Polish remained a tool of Kostetsky’s epistolary communication with Jerzy Niemojowski and other Polish writers as well as a factor in intercultural dialogue in his translations into Ukrainian of works by Jerzy Hordyński and Stanisław Jerzy Letz.

Andrii Merzliakov noted that the family primarily spoke Ukrainian, and he and Ihor went to school without knowing Russian well. He also claimed Ihor took advantage of various opportunities to improve and enrich his Ukrainian throughout his youth.[15] Why is that? Kostetsky’s letter provides the answer: “We [he and Andrii. – T.Sh.] were brought up directly by Grandma Masha and Lialia.” If Maria Lavrentieva gave her grandchildren a basic, scientific, and ethical knowledge of the world and of art,[16] Olena Kostetska imbued him and his brother Andrii with a ‘Ukrainian national feeling,’[17] of which the Ukrainian language is an integral part.

Andrii Merzliakov indirectly emphasized the dominance of the Ukrainian language in their communication with his brother in Kyiv in 1925/1926–1933, when Kostetsky initiated the handwritten journal Artistic Eclecticism (‘Hudozhestvennaia eklektika’):[18] “I cannot explain why it was published in Russian.”[19] This remark may have been caused, on the one hand, by the inconsistency of the journal’s language with the policy of indigenization (‘Ukrainization’ in Ukraine) that lasted from the 1920s to the early 1930s,[20] and, on the other hand, by the fact that the journal was created by a group of Ukrainian-speaking boys, including Andrii Merzliakov and Ihor Kostetsky. Although Kostetsky studied for a technical profession, he devoted all his free time to writing for the journal, reading books on theatre, cinema, and other fine arts, and, thanks to membership in the artistic and political council of the Kyiv Opera House, attending theatre performances in Kyiv.

Moreover, a group of creative youth emerged around Kostetsky. Among them were the children from well-known Ukrainian families, of the singer of the chapel Dumka, of the graphic artist Heorhii Narbut, and of the politician and literary critic Andrii Nikovsky. Together, they sang arias from world-famous operas and Ukrainian folk songs. Coming of age together, they became familiar and experimented with different contemporary artistic movements like realism, modernism, avant-garde, and impressionism. Kostetsky and his interpretations of the respective movements were the driving force of the group’s dynamic. Contemporary cultural life was also a recurring topic of conversation.

These young people could have become the strong force of Ukrainian national culture, but it’s impressive rise of the 1920s was quickly and deadly repressed by Stalin at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1929, Andrii Nikovsky got arrested in a fabricated political case of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine[21] and was sentenced to death. The sentence was changed to ten years in prison in northern Russia. Volodymyr Durdukivsky,[22] the director of Kyiv First Labor School (formerly the First Ukrainian Gymnasium in Kyiv), where Kostetsky studied, was falsely accused of counter-revolutionary activity and was shot dead a few years later. In the spring of 1933, the renowned Ukrainian modernist writer Mykola Khvylovy committed suicide, protesting against the arrests and Russian Bolshevik repression of Ukrainian politicians and intellectuals. Shocked by his death, Kostetsky published an obituary of Khvylovy in Artistic Eclecticism. These and other tragedies struck Kostetsky and his fellows and could not but affect their plans for the future.

From 1932 to 1933, Ukraine experienced the Holodomor, a famine organized by the Soviet regime. Andrii Merzliakov recalled that in Kyiv, where he and Kostetsky lived in the early 1930s, peasants were dying in the streets as they made their way from starving villages to the big city on foot, hoping to get some food and to escape death.[23] Stalin’s experiment to destroy the social foundation of the Ukrainian nation, the peasantry, foreshadowed the following stages of the regime’s bloody repression of other segments of Ukrainian society, including the creative intellectual field.

In 1933, Kostetsky studied theatre, first in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and then in Moscow in 1935. There is no evidence about his reasons for moving to Russia. Of course, at first, his ambition to find recognition in the major cities of the Soviet Union may have initially lured him there. His open mind, leadership skills, cultural knowledge, and artistic and adventurous nature could explain his decision as well. However, he probably also simply fled Ukraine, which was being strangled by the Bolshevik regime with repressions and the famine. Furthermore, his half-Russian origin could have been the impetus for his attempt to belong to the Russians, given the dangers of being Ukrainian in Ukraine.

After studying in Moscow, Kostetsky found a position at a theater in the Urals, the southern part of which runs through his father’s small homeland, Bashkiria. This may indicate his intention to take root in Russia through his father’s lineage and the theatrical and artistic environment provided by his studies and subsequent work in a theater somewhere in the Urals.

However, the further course of his life shows that he did not find a connection to Russia and the Russian environment. The reasons could be the fundamental value and cultural and ideological differences between Ukrainians, among whom Kostetsky grew up, and Russians, whom, except for his father, he came to know much later. In 1953, Kostetsky articulated these differences in his essay Ukrainian-Russian Etudes (Ukrainsko-rosiiski etiudy’). I will turn to this text in the last part of this article.

In the fall of 1938, while still in the Urals, Kostetsky “consciously realized that he is Ukrainian.”[24] A turning point for its self-identification was the proclamation of Subcarpathian Rus’s autonomy and Carpathian Ukraine’s independence (October 1938 until March 1939), events he regarded as “a revolution that would forever free the human intellect from the obligation to bend and cringe in front of the outside world.”[25] While the bigger part of the Ukrainian people was drowning in the blood of the Bolshevik Great Terror of 1937–1938, the smaller part continued to fight for independence within the borders of another state. Such a manifestation of Ukrainian vitality could have been a strong impetus for Kostetsky to recognize himself as a representative of a nation that seeks to survive and assert its freedom despite the tremendous obstacles. This observation refers to Kostetsky’s words from 1946:

“There is no desperate situation in the world…, no crisis that cannot be overcome, no goal that cannot be achieved… This is the truth that neither our Easterners nor our Westerners [In the Ukrainian everyday speech, ‘skhidniaky’ і ‘zakhidniaky’ are residents of Ukraine’s eastern and western parts, respectively. – T.Sh.] doubt. Ukrainian youth from all over the world have absorbed this truth with mother’s milk, wherever Ukrainians set foot.”[26]

I agree with Stech, who described Kostetsky’s “optimism” as “the conviction that a person has the freedom to shape life even in the most unfavorable, inhuman circumstances.”[27]

Simultaneously, the local victory of Western Ukrainians in the struggle for independence in 1938–39 probably made a lasting impression on Kostetsky and caused fundamental changes in his life and self-determination, precisely because his five-year stay in Russia did not give him a sense of belonging. Thus, Kostetsky returned home to Vinnytsia. 

Changing his Russian surname Merzliakov to the equally distinctive Ukrainian name Kostetsky indicates his intention to fix the national identity in the name. This change correlated with his anti-Communist and anti-Moscow articles in the ‘Vinnytski visti’ (Vinnytsia News) from 1941 and 1942, which he signed with this new surname[28] as well as with his participation (albeit temporary) in the underground Ukrainian national movement.[29] Later, Kostetsky confirmed his ancestral right to bear this surname: “Kostetsky is a very old Volyn family… I really belong to it…”[30] Once in Germany, Kostetsky used the name in all his documents and, at the first opportunity, joined the enthusiastic Ukrainian refugees for the foundation of the above-mentioned The Artistic Ukrainian Movement (‘MUR’) and participation in it. As early as the 1950s, he was actively engaged in the Ukrainian literary process as a writer, translator, editor, and publisher.

Members of the Artistic Ukrainian Movement in 1947. From left to right standing: Vasyl Barka, Ulas Samchuk, Ihor Kostetsky; sitting: Yevhen Malaniuk, Yurii Shevelov. Photo from the collection of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S.

Some traces of the reason to become Ukrainian in Kostetsky’s Ukrainian-Russian Etudes (1953)

Against the background of Kostetsky’s publications and archival materials, his essay Ukrainian-Russian Etudes (1953) can be considered a rare source of information about the role of politics in Kostetsky’s Ukrainian choice. In other cases, he shows a more apolitical attitude, proclaiming culture and art as his only interests.

In this essay, Kostetsky gives two definitions of Ukrainians. Firstly, they are those who have overcome the age-old complex of self-humiliation before Russians (so-called ‘Little Russianism’ or ‘malorossianism’), by asserting their pride in belonging to a separate Ukrainian nation.[31] Secondly, Ukrainians are those “who, regardless of origin or even language, consider the cause of Ukraine’s political independence from Russia to be a non-negotiable issue.”[32]

He defines Russians as the result of the implementation of the imperial project, first on the autochthonous lands of the ‘Great Russians’ as the population of the former northeastern principality marginal to medieval Kyiv, and then on the territories of other peoples conquered by Russia.

Kostetsky calls the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 the culmination of the transformation of Great Russians into Russians. He writes that the Bolsheviks played on the “most distorted” and “darkest” sides of the “Great Russian soul,” reinforcing them with similar features of the “souls of other peoples.”[33] As a result, Kostetsky distanced himself from Russia and consciously decided to be Ukrainian at that time.

Why does the question of national belonging, in all its breadth and multilayeredness, permeate Kostetsky’s writings and often serves as a starting point for researchers of his work? Kostestky believed that every human being is born and lives to reveal his or her individuality, and that the nation is the most natural environment for this.[34] According to the Ukrainian-Russian Etudes, the separation (in fact, purification) of ‘psychological Ukraine’ from ‘psychological Russia’ and ‘Russianism,’[35] allowing the Ukrainian national identity to exist and develop naturally and freely. Moreover, overcoming ‘psychological Russianism’ is a task for every individual and the entire national community.

“I am every person, every one of us, who carries the God-given free will to choose between good and evil from the day of our birth. Each of us, each Ukrainian, can stop being a Russian at any moment.”[36]

In my opinion, Kostecky’s cultural activism in Germany can be considered as a preparation of the Ukrainians to get rid of the burden of Russian psychology that fueled their inferiority complex (Ukrainians as ‘Little Russians,’ who considered themselves less worthy than ethnic Russians). A close look at Kostetsky’s person and legacy makes it possible to understand his achievements and failures on the path to being a Ukrainian. Kostetsky’s project of belonging to the Ukrainian world included enormous efforts to prove Ukraine’s right and ability to exist on the cultural map of the modern world.

Continuing the study of the archival collections of Ihor Kostetsky, who was considered incomprehensible and unpredictable (‘woven’ of contradictions) by a number of well-known and influential figures of the Ukrainian post-war emigration, allows us to introduce new facts into the picture of his life, which clarify the vicissitudes of his work, his thought process, decisions, and actions. This will help to understand his role in exile, from which he made an important contribution to modern Ukrainian culture.

Against the backdrop of the current threat to the existence of Ukraine caused by the Russian invasion, Kostetsky’s case has gained particular relevance, as it also shows challenges for contemporary Ukraine. Among them are the decisions of all individuals to fully belong to the national community based on the cherished ideal of freedom, the effective affiliation of an emigrant as a cultural unit to the national community, the liberation of Ukraine from the grip of the Russian Empire (overcoming ‘psychological Russianness,’ as Kostetsky called it), the popularization of Ukrainian culture abroad and the building of cultural bridges and interaction between mainland Ukraine and the diaspora to ensure the existence of a united nation.


Notes

[1] Hryhorii Kostiuk, Letter to Yurii Shevelov, 26 July 1986, in: Spadshchyna: Literaturne dzhereloznavstvo. Tekstolohiia (Heritage: Literary Source Studies. Textology), Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv:VD ‘Stylos,’ Vol.5, 2010, 392. [author’s trans.]

[2] “‘Kraina Inkohnito’: Ihor Kostetskyi” (“‘Country Incognito’: Ihor Kostetsky”), https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/905372.html [accessed: 05.04.2025] [author’s trans.]

[3] Solomiia Pavlychko, “Ihor Kostetskyi ta Ezra Paund” (“Ihor Kostetskyi and Ezra Paund”), suchasnist 11, 1992, 135. [author’s trans.]

[4] “‘Kraina Inkohnito’: Ihor Kostetskyi” (“‘Country Incognito’: Ihor Kostetsky”), https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/905372.html [accessed: 05.04.2025] [author’s trans.]

[5] See more: Tetiana Shestopalova and Nataliia Torkut, “The Jewish World of Yurii Shevelov (Based on Memoirs and Essays),” Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal, 11, 2024, 179–203, DOI: https://doi.org/10.18523/2313-4895.11.2024.179-203

[6] Volodymyr Kulyk, “Khto nalezhyt do ukrainskoi natsii?” (“Who belongs to the Ukrainian nation?”) Istorychna Pravda, 2023, 29 September, https://www.istpravda.com.ua/columns/2023/09/29/163184/ [accessed: 05.04.2025].

[7] Marko Robert Stech, “Poliptykh pro Ihoria Kostetskoho. Mit” (“The Polyptych About Ihor Kostetsky. The Myth”), in: Yuri Buriak (ed.), Essays in the search for sources, Kyiv: Penmen, 2016, 345. [author’s trans.]

[8] Inna Yurova, Tvorcha osobystist I.Kostetskoho u literaturnomu dyskursi II polovyny XX stolittia (I. Kostetsky’s Creative Personality in the Literary Discourse of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century), Dissertation, Donetsk, 2007, 3-4. [author’s trans.]

[9] Ihor Kostetskyi, Tobi nalezhyt tsilyi svit (The whole world belongs to you), ed. Marko Robert Stech, Kyiv: Krytyka, 2005, 519. [author’s trans.]

[10] Ihor Kostetskyi, Tobi nalezhyt tsilyi svit (The whole world belongs to you), 87-91.

[11] In particular, Stech’s essays and Kostetskyi’s writings in the journal Kurier Kryvbasu 117 (1999), 134, 139, 141, 142 (2001), 206-207, 210-211, 212-213, 214-215, 216-217 (2007), 226-227, 228-229 (2008), 230-231, 232-233 (2009); in the journal Krytyka 1-2 (2001), 1-2 (2002).

[12] The archival materials are stored in Kyiv and Bremen. Kostetsky’s letters to his family in Vinnytsia and the memoirs of Kostetsky’s brother, Andriy Merzliakov, which provide insight into the preconditions for his Ukrainian choice, are kept in the Department of Manuscript Collections and Textual Studies at the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv.

[13] Ihor Kostetsky, “Letter to Vyacheslav Merzliakov, 26 September 1965,” Literaturni konteksty XX stolittia, 304. [author’s trans.]

[14] Ihor Kostetsky, “Letter to Nataliia Merzliakova, 1 January-16 March,1968,” Ibid., 320, 321, 330, 331, 337, 340; Ihor Kostetsky, “Letter to Vyacheslav Merzliakov, 26 September 1965,” Ibid., 305.

[15] Andrii Merzliakov, “Spohady” (“Memoires”), Literaturni konteksty XX stolittia, 267, 279.

[16] Ihor Kostetsky, “Letter to Andrii Merzliakov, 7 March 1975,” Ibid., 359. [author’s trans.]

[17] Stepan Mechnyk, “Ihor Kostetskyi-Merzliakov (uryvok zi spohadiv Pochatok nevidomoho)” (“Ihor Kostetskyi-Merzliakov (excerpt from the memoirs The Beginning of the Unknown),” vyzvolnyi shliakh 11, 1984, 1384. [author’s trans.]

[18] Information about this journal is taken from Andrii Merzliakov’s memoirs.  The journal was ‘published’ in one handwritten copy by a small group of 15-16-year-old boys in Kyiv. The handwritten journal had its own publishing house called KARAPOVZER. The name came from a random set of letters as a ‘hidden protest against the stereotype.’ In total, three issues of Artistic Eclecticism were published. See: Andrii Merzliakov, “Spohady” (“Memoires”), Ibid., 275, 276.

[19] Ibid., 275.

[20] Ukrainiazation, https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CU%5CK%5CUkrainization.htm [accessed: 05.04.2025].

[21] Spilka vyzvolennia Ukrainy, or SVU (Union for the Liberation of Ukraine), a “counter-revolutionary organization” invented by the Bolshevik authorities, which allegedly existed in the Ukrainian SSR since 1926 and united anti-Soviet Ukrainians around it, http://www.history.org.ua/?termin=Spilka_vyzvolennia [accessed: 05.04.2025].

[22] Volodymyr Durdukivskyi (1874–1938), a teacher, educational organizer, and researcher of history and literature, was arrested in 1930 and 1937 for counter-revolutionary activities and executed in early 1938, http://www.history.org.ua/?termin=Durdukivsky_V [accessed: 05.04.2025].

[23] Andrii Merzliakov, “Spohady” (“Memoires”), Ibid., 270.

[24] Ihor Kostetskyi, Tobi nalezhyt tsilyi svit, 89.

[25] Marko Robert Stech, “Ihor Kostetskyi: nacherky tvorchoho portretu” (“Ihor Kostetskyi: sketches of an artistic portrait”), https://www.ji-magazine.lviv.ua/anons2013/Stech_Kosteckyj_nacherky_tvorch_portretu.htm [accessed: 05.04.2025]. [author’s trans.]

[26] Ihor Kostetskyi, Tobi nalezhyt tsilyi svit, 524.

[27] Marko Robert Stech, Eseistyka u poshukakh dzherel (Essays in search of sources), 641.

[28] Ihor Kostetskyi, Tobi nalezhyt tsilyi svit, 90; Stepan Mechnyk, “Ihor Kostetskyi-Merzliakov (uryvok zi spohadiv Pochatok nevidomoho)” (“Ihor Kostetskyi-Merzliakov (excerpt from the memoirs The Beginning of the Unknown), 1384.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Ihor Kostetskyi, Tobi nalezhyt tsilyi svit, 90. [author’s trans.]

[31] Ihor Kostetskyi, “Etiudy ukrainsko-rosiiski” (“Ukrainian-Russian Etudes”), ukraina i svit 10-11, 1953, 23.

[32] Ibid., 12, 1953, 21.

[33] Ibid., 16.

[34] Ibid., 9.

[35] Ibid., 9.

[36] Ibid., 12, 1953, 22.


About the Author

Tetiana Shestopalova is a Dr. of Philological Sciences, Professor at Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University (Mykolaiv, Ukraine), a Fulbright visiting scholar at Columbia University (New York, USA, 2006–2007 and 2014–2015), a Visiting Scholar at Saarland University (Saarbrucken, Germany, 2022–present). Her research interests are focused on modern Ukrainian literary criticism and the legacy of Ukrainian literary emigration after WW II. In the course of her last research project, ‘Beyond Border’ Discourse of the Ukrainian Literary Process in Germany After World War II in the archival collection of Ihor (Eaghor G.) Kostetzky, supported by DAAD, Prof. Shestopalova had the opportunity to work with the archival collection of Ihor Kostetskyi at the Eastern European Research Center at the University of Bremen.


Citation: Tetiana Shestopalova, Ukrainian by Choice. Introduction to the Case of Ihor Kostetsky, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 29.04.2025, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/58076


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Forum Transregionale Studien (April 29, 2025). Ukrainian by Choice. Introduction to the Case of Ihor Kostetsky. TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. Retrieved May 19, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/13u1u


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