On Nov. 7, 1926, Valerian Pidmohylnyi, Yevhen Pluzhnyk, and Hryhorii Kosynka founded the Maisternia Revoliutsiinoho Slova (MARS) in Kyiv. The group emerged from the dissolution of "Lanka" and announced itself through a press release listing 10 founding members. They rejected Soviet mandates that reduced literature to a political tool for promoting Bolshevik ideals. Instead, MARS championed literature as a lens for exploring the human condition. Their brief experiment lasted only until late 1927 when internal disagreements forced the group to dissolve itself.
No manifesto, no safety
Literary scholar Yaryna Tsymbal notes that MARS had no platform, no bylaws, and no manifesto. The writers simply felt it was better to exist as a group rather than operate independently. During this period, cultural production had to align with state policies to shape public consciousness. MARS sought independence, which attracted suspicion from the Soviet secret police. An informant codenamed "Polishchuk" regularly reported on meetings to determine loyalties and root out dissent. The informant claimed MARS was closest to the Kharkiv-based VAPLITE group in its literary theories and tactics. However, he also reported that MARS did not share the views of VAPLITE’s more right-wing faction, which supposedly included founder Mykola Khvylovy. Khvylovy argued that Ukrainian culture aligned more with Europe than Moscow. Stalin identified Khvylovy as a political problem, and the writer committed suicide in 1933. Tsymbal wrote that such comparisons harmed MARS members given the danger of being accused of "Khvylovism."
Executions and silence
The brutal repression that followed killed most of the group’s prominent figures. Kosynka and Dmytro Falkivskyi were shot in Kyiv in 1934. Pluzhnyk received a death sentence that year but had it commuted to 10 years in a labor camp, where he died in 1936. Pidmohylnyi was among hundreds executed at Sandarmokh near the Finnish-Russian border in 1937. Volodymyr Yaroshenko was shot in Kyiv in 1937, while Borys Teneta died by suicide in detention in 1935. Only Antonenko-Davydovych and Osmachka survived the initial wave of executions. The group’s short existence means it lacks collective achievements to secure its place in history independently. Yet its work offers a glimpse of approaches Ukrainian literature might have explored under free conditions. Tsymbal states that the significance of the group is the sum of the significance of its individual members. Each writer was already a formidable creative force and an established figure in their own right, and they remained so afterward.
