Ukrainian Modernism. Context | Kultura 2026
Date and time:
Wednesday 28 October, 2026
18:30 - 20:00
Location:
ONLINE
This introductory lecture outlines the political and social context in which Ukrainian modernism developed. Particular attention will be paid to the formation of Ukrainian culture in 1920s and 1930s Soviet Ukraine during the period of Ukrainization. We will examine the role of the party, cultural officials, Ukrainian cultural managers, and artists in shaping the cultural landscape, as well as the implications this had for the broader artistic map in the Soviet Union.
Lecturer
Dr Olena Palko, University of Basel
Olena Palko is Assistant Professor at the Chair for East European History at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Olena is an historian of Ukraine, the Soviet Union, and modern Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on minorities history. She has held several research fellowships, including at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, and the Slavic-Eurasian Research Centre, in Sapporo, Japan. She is the author of Making Ukraine Soviet. Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin (2021), and co-editor of Making Ukraine: Negotiating, Contesting, and Drawing the Borders in the Twentieth Century (2022).