Sheptytska Tetiana

Felix Yakubovsky as a representative of repressed Ukrainian literary criticism

Section: The person in historical context

Abstract: The article's aim is to clarify certain events of Felix Yakubovsky's biography, find out the details of the criminal investigation and the peculiarities of his accusation, determine the possible influence of critic’s professional activity on the causes of his political persecution based on an archival and criminal case. Other sources were also used to analyze Felix Yakubovsky's contribution to Ukrainian literary studies in the 1920s and 1930s. Methodology and methods. The author used anthropological and prosopographic approaches. Biographical, problem-chronological and hermeneutic methods were useful to achieve the goal of this research. Conclusions. In fact, the archival and criminal case of Felix Yakubovsky, who was shot in 1937 in Kyiv, hasn’t been a subject of scientific research before. The author clarified biographical facts about the repressed critic, in particular, about his father, student years etc. based on the archival materials that were published for the first time. The protocols of interrogation of F. Yakubovsky were also analyzed to make clear the circumstances of his arrest and the accusations that were/weren’t supported by facts. The author highlighted the facts of inconsistent between protocols of interrogation, the "guilt" that Felix Yakubovsky admitted and his public judgments about other writers. Besides, the author of this research also tried to compare the testimonies of the repressed literary critic with statements collected from archival and criminal cases of his colleagues. All these facts allowed to expose the groundless accusations against Felix Yakubowsky as well as to show how the NKVD officers created falsified evidence in cases in the period of time known as the Great Terror. Information collected from Felix Yakubowsky's protocols of interrogations also helped to find out the facts about his acquaintances and work in Polish educational institutions. New details were added to his biography and prosopographic portrait.

Keywords: Felix Yakubovsky, Executed Renaissance, repressed Ukrainian literary criticism, Great Terror, Bykivnia, mass political repressions.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/vuchk2020.02.220     Citation

• Sheptytska Tetiana (National historical and cultural reserve "Bykovnyanskie graves", Kyiv, shept@ukr.net) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9979-8328

Cite:
Sheptytska Tetiana (2020). Felix Yakubovsky as a representative of repressed Ukrainian literary criticism. From archives of VUChK–GPU–NKVD–KGB, ( 2 (54)) 220-238. (In Ukrainian). doi: https://doi.org/10.15407/vuchk2020.02.220

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