In 1923 the Soviet Ukrainian government proclaimed a policy of Ukrainization. In the years of relative autonomy that followed, a wide-ranging debate took place that raised issues of vital importance for Ukrainian culture. What was to be the character of Ukrainian literature? How would it be affected by the cultural values of the past? What would be its relations with Russian literature? How would the Revolution affect the production of new literary works?

More than any other figure, Mykola Khvylovy, dominated this debate, which came to be known as the Literary Discussion. He argued in his pamphlets that Ukrainian literature should take an independent path, abandoning its former reliance on Russian models and seeking inspiration from European sources. His outspoken advocacy of this course soon brought him into conflict with Stalin's regime and drove him to suicide in 1933.

After Khvylovy's death, his works were banned in the Soviet Union, and the name of this most prominent Ukrainian prose writer of the post-revolutionary years was systematically expunged from the record books. The issues that he raised have, however, survived both him and his antagonists. This volume represents the first English-language collection of his polemical writings.