Scientism as a component of the proletarian literary concept (based on Valeryan Polishchuk’s works)

in Ukrainian

  • Olesia Omelchuk Department of Theory Literature, Shevchenko Institute of Literature NAS of Ukraine
Keywords: proletarian literature, scientific organization of labor, psychotechnics, nature, blood transfusions, V. Polischuk, O. Bogdanov


The aim of this paper is to show the influence of scientific and natural ideas and scientific directions (scientific organization of labor, psychotechnics, blood transfusion) on the development of the Ukrainian proletarian cultural concept and on the literary activity of Valeryan Polishchuk. Research methods: basic principles of academic historical and literary approach. Results of the research. In the first half of the 1920s, the ideas of the political, cultural, and scientific revolution were directed toward a single goal, which was to form a new society of the proletarian type. Scientism has become an important component of many artistic theories and practices, acquiring different interpretations from different authors. For Polishchuk, scientism was a means of cognition, an organic element of worldview, a thematic landmark, and a semantic principle in various genres of literary practices. The psycho-physiological state of the writer becomes the object of reflection and is integrated into the artistic text. Scientific novelty. For the first time, the influence of theories and practices of the naturalsciences on the Ukrainian literary process of the 1920s in general, and on V.Polishchuk's work in particular, was taken into account, analyzed and illustrated in Ukrainian literary studies. Practical meaning. The article widens the understanding of the basic tendencies of the historical and literary process of 1920s in Ukraine and outlines the prospect for his further researches in the aspect of influence of natural sciences on the writer's outlook, aesthetics and artistic practice.

Ukrainian literature