Hryhorii Epik
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Hryhorii Epik Григорій Данилович Епік | |
|---|---|
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| Born | January 17, 1901 |
| Died | November 3, 1937 (aged 36) |
| Occupation | Writer, journalist |
| Nationality | Ukrainian |
Hryhorii Danylovych Epik (Ukrainian: Григорій Данилович Епік) (January 17, 1901 – November 3, 1937) was a Ukrainian writer and journalist. He supported the Soviet Ukrainization during the 1920s, which likely led to his arrest and execution during the Great Purge in the 1930s.
After studies at a rural school in the big village of Kamianske, Yekaterinoslav Governorate (pop. ~20,000), he started to work at a railway workshop office. He was fired from his job in 1918 after he had taken part in the anti-Hetmanate uprising. In 1919, he joined the staff of the first volunteer Moscow regiment and took part in revolutionary events.
In early 1920, he joined the Communist Party and the Revolutionary committee in Kamianske. He later moved to Poltava, where he worked as a political instructor, secretary and chairman of the district executive committee. During the period of 1922–1924, Epik worked within the regional board of the Ukrainian branch of Komsomol and from 1924 to 1925, as an editor of Chervonyi Shliakh (Red Road) in Kharkiv.[1]
Between 1925 and 1929, he studied in the department of Ukrainian history at the Kharkiv Institute of Red Professors. After graduating, he became the director of the Derzhlitvydav publishing house (State Publishing House).[2]
Epik participated in the activities of cultural and educational societies, was a member of the Union of Peasant Writers "Plough", and later joined the VAPLITE group led by Mykola Khvyliovyi.
Writings
Epik's writings started to appear in print in 1923. He was a member of several Ukrainian literary organizations such as the Plough, Prolitfront and VAPLITE (Free Academy of Proletarian Literature).[2] These organizations gathered many young members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, who in the 1930s suffered severely during the Great Purge.[3]
In Epik's prose from the 1920s, he sharply criticized different aspects of the Soviet regime, particularly in Bez gruntu (1928), in which he harshly branded the conformists, whom he called "paperoids", who have developed a system of their existence: complete submission to the strong and merciless bullying of the weak. The novel "Autumn" shows the type of communist-regenerate who rules with impunity in a housing cooperative. In the novel "First Spring" (1931), Epic managed to truthfully show the desperate resistance of the peasantry to violent collectivization.
His last novels from the 1930s, however, were written in the Stalinist spirit.[2] In 1932, he published the pro-Komsomol novel "Petro Romain", where he praised the growth of the Soviet technical intelligentsia.
During the late 1920s, Epik also was a screenwriter for the growing Ukrainian film industry.[4]
