Contenu du sommaire

Andrea Graziosi, "Letters front Kharkov" . The famine in the Ukraine and Northern Caucasus through the reports sent by the Italian diplomats, 1932-1934. The reader is presented with a selection of the reports sent to Rome by the Italian ambassador in Moscow and by the consuls and viceconsuls in Kharkov, Batum and Novorossijsk between 1932 and 1934. But for four exceptions, these documents had never been published before. The originals, written in Italian, are in the Archives of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Collectivization and the famine in the Ukraine and in the Kuban, 1932-1934, are the events they describe and, given their uniqueness and their exceptional quality, it can be said that these reports form at present one of the most important available source on those tragic phenomena. The problems they present to the Soviet historian are briefly discussed in the introduction, which also inform on the people who wrote them and on the conditions in which they were written.

Jean-Claude Lanne, Benedikt Livshits, an Нуlean poet. В. Livshits is the least known of poets belonging to the "Cubo-Futurist" group. Yet, his poetry and his poetic theory are characterized by their fundamental originality and utmost intransigence. His whole poetic work, since the first collection Fleita Marsiia (Marsyas' flute, 1911) till Krotonskii polderi (Midday at Crotone, 1928) is a continuous research of formal perfection. Applied to the art of Livshits, the term "Hylean" is fairly suitable for a style that hesitates between symbolism and neo-classicism through the most extremist vanguardism noticeable in the Futurist collection Volch'e solntse (Sun of wolves, 1914). At this stage of his poetic itinerary, Livshits appears as the most radical of "futurians". Adjusting the liberation of poetical speech to the pictorial model, he produces hermetic poems of perfect workmanship that defy all efforts at interpretation. With the poems published in Volch'e solntse, the reader finds himself - paradoxically - in the centre of the highly respected tradition of "formal poetry". It is nevertheless certain that the poetry of Livshits constitutes an extension of the prestigious line of modern European poetry, particularly that of the French poets (Rimbaud, Mallarmé). The prose text "Liudi v peizazhe" (People in a landscape), placed at the end of the collection, could be considered as a daring effort to build Futurist prose, a true sample of syntactic zaum.

Vadim Kozovoj, The word and the voice. On the poetry of Benedikt Livshits. The poetic evolution of Benedikt Livshits (1886-1938) seems all the more significant because in a precise historical context - which questions the very existence of poetry - it is accompanied by a radical enough reflection on this context (often viewed in terms of language) and on the possibilities of the poet himself viewed as an objective. Consequently, the analysis of this evolution allows us to formulate certain problems of a larger dimension such as the distinction in poetry between the voice and the vocality, the image and the unimaginable, the reason and the unreasonableness. And since the poetry of Livshits is situated with reference to certain Greek mythologems, we are entitled to examine the exact part played by those "sources" in the space of their private world and see how finally sirens avenge themselves upon Ulysses by destroying his poetical vessel and where this strange disembodied orphism, so clearly expressed in Livshits' poetry after his participation in the Futurist movement, is leading to.

Götz Hillig, Regarding the problem of A.S. Makarenko's national identity. This article will examine the question, which has received little attention from researchers, of whether the pedagogue and writer A.S. Makarenko understood himself to be a Ukrainian, or a Russian. In addition to published sources, the author was able to draw on materials from Soviet archives, as well as statements from witnesses. In spite of the fact that Makarenko spent most of this life in the Ukraine, he always understood himself to be a Russian and was spiritually oriented toward Moscow. One can even note a certain anti-Ukrainian attitude which was prevalent in the home of his parents. Makarenko wrote his pedagogical and literary texts, as well as his letters, in Russian. He also gave his speeches and lectures in this language. During the time of forced Ukrainisation in all areas of public life in the Ukrainian SSR, Makarenko identified himself on a personal data form, in 1924, as a Ukrainian. Obviously he did this to avoid losing his position as Director of the Gor'kij-Colony, an educational institution which was placed directly under the Ukrainian Government. He adhered to this decision from them on. This article will also pursue the questions of how extensively Makarenko mastered the Ukrainian language, which he had to learn at the latest in the 1920's; and to what extent, in his literary works, he used Ukrainisms with conscious intention, or to what extent these Ukrainisms merely "flowed in" from the local environment.