Kryzhanivsky, Andrii

Kryzhanivsky, Andrii [Крижанівський, Андрій; Kryžanivs'kyj, Andrij; pseudonym: Sviatoslav Dolenga, alias: Zając], b 13 March 1907 in Radom, Congress Kingdom of Poland, d 1950s in West Germany. Ukrainian prose writer, literary critic, political publicist, and editor. A son of Mykola Kryzhanivsky—a political leader active in the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR)—Andrii learned about the Ukrainian struggle for independence (1917–20) from his father. Later he managed to portray this time period in his prose works so convincingly that one might be tempted to assume that he was a direct participant of the described events. This instance resembles the case of Taras Shevchenko who vividly depicted an 18th-century Koliivshchyna rebellion in his narrative poem ‘Haidamaky’ on the basis of stories heard from his grandfather, a participant of that uprising. In a similar way, Kryzhanivsky’s neoromantic UNR-era prose is factually precise and full of well-informed detail and is it presented in a refined and nuanced, and never one-dimensionally propagandistic manner.

Following the defeat of the Ukrainian National Republic, Kryzhanivsky moved with his parents to Brest, where he graduated from a private gymnasium around 1926 and where he was involved in the activities of the local Polisia region Prosvita society. In 1928–29 he studied law at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow; in 1930–33 he continued his studies at the Poznań Higher School of Commerce. In the early 1930s he became associated with the literary group Tank, later My (We), also known as the Warsaw Group, which established the Variah publishing house and published a quarterly My in Warsaw from 1933 to 1939. Variah printed Kryzhanivsky’s two political brochures, discussing the politics of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky and Dmytro Dontsov— Skoropadshchyna (1934), Dontsovshchyna (1938); both appeared under the pseudonym S. Dolenga. He published his Polish-language political and polemical writings under his own surname in the weekly Biuletyn Polsko-Ukraiński. His literary works appeared in the journals Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk and My. Together with Ivan Dubytsky, Kryzhanivskyi edited My from 1933 to 1937, and he was a leading literary critic of this magazine (he penned articles about Yevhen Malaniuk, Yurii Lypa, Oleksa Vlyzko, Iryna Vilde, and others). Kryzhanivsky and other contributors to My were involved in a sharp ideological polemic with Dmytro Dontsov’s journal Vistnyk and they strongly opposed Dontsov’s politicized notion that adhering to the ideology of nationalism may automatically ensure high quality of a given author’s literary work.

Kryzhanivsky’s prose falls into two distinct periods. His early period includes works published in Literaturno-naukovyi vistnyk, such as his debut novella ‘Skhidnyi poizd’ (The Eastern Train, 1927) and the short stories ‘Sotnіa’ (The Hundred, 1928), ‘Dorohy’ (The Roads, 1929), ‘Pisnia pro smert'’ (The Song about Death, 1931), and ‘Eshelony’ (The Echelons, 1932). The second period of his creative work was associated with the journal My and featured his stories ‘Mista i liudy’ (Cities and People, 1933), ‘Ochi v truni’ (Eyes in the Coffin, 1934), and ‘Frahmenty z shchodennyka’ (Excerpts from a Diary, 1934), the novel Sontse v piskakh (The Sun in the Sands, 1934), and a modernist novella based on historical material Istoriia odnoho vahona (The Story of One Train Car, 1936–37). In most of these stories Kryzhanivsky was concerned with the issues of historical truth versus myth of the national liberation struggle. He was captivated by figures of heroic individuals set against the background of revolutionary upheavals and he also dealt with themes of the degeneration and decay of petty-bourgeois milieu and the expansion of the East westward into Europe. Stylistically Kryzhanivsky’s prose is very much in the vein of Mykola Khvylovy’s early lyrical stories from the latter’s collection Syni etiudy (Blue Etudes, 1923), but Kryzhanivsky has a tendency to move further away from impressionism toward expressionist modes of writing. His novel The Sun in the Sands was written under the influence of the prose of Knut Hamsun. Overall, in contrast to Khvylovy, Kryzhanivsky was genuinely fascinated with the ethos of the Ukrainian National Republic—a subject matter that Khvylovy became disenchanted with in the late 1918 or early 1919. Although rather modest in volume, Kryzhanivsky’s body of literary work is important as a testimony to the era of Ukraine’s struggle for independence (1917–20) and as a sophisticated artistic portrayal of the UNR and its leader Symon Petliura.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Young, R. ‘Literatura ukraińska najmłodszych,’ Biuletyn Polsko-Ukraiński no 30 (Warsaw 1933)
Livytska-Kholodna, N. ‘Vydavnytstvo “Variah,”’ Suchasnist’ no 11 (1980)
Strumins'kyi, B., Skorups'ka, M. (comp.) ‘Materiialy do istoriï literatury i hromads'koï dumky: lystuvannia z amerykans'kykh arkhiviv 1857–1933’ vol 3 (New York 1992)
Kutsenko, L. ‘Dykyi tatarchuk,’ Slovo i Chas no 7 (1999)
Il’in, O. ‘Andrii Kryzhanivs'kyi – ukraïns'kyi pys'mennyk-neoromantyk iz Beresteis'koho Polissia,’ Sprava: Biełaruska-ŭkrainski almanach Tavarystva ŭkrainskaj litaratury pry Sajuzie biełaruskich piśmieńnikaŭ no 3 (2016)

Roksana Kharchuk

[This article was written in 2026.]