Book Discussion | Simone Attilio Bellezza | "The Shore of Expectations: A Cultural Study of the Shistdesiatnyky"

This event is a continuation of a series of book discussions and launches of recent publications in Ukrainian studies organized by the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research and the CIUS Press. This series will concentrate on books in English and Ukrainian sponsored by the Centre, including its Program for the Study of Modern Ukrainian History and Society in Lviv, and/or published by the CIUS Press. The organizers of this series are Professor Frank Sysyn, director of the Centre, Professor Yaroslav Hrytsak, director of the Program, and Dr. Marko R. Stech, executive director of CIUS Press.

This second session in the series will be an interview conducted by Dr. Mark Andryczyk of the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University with Dr. Simone Attilio Bellezza of the University of Naples Federico II. The session, which will include questions and discussion from the audience, will be devoted to Dr. Bellezza’s recent English-language monograph on the shistdesiatnyky movement (the 1960s generation) in Ukraine. Introductory remarks about the book and its topic will be presented by Professor Heather Coleman of the University of Alberta.

In his monograph The Shore of Expectations: A Cultural Study of the Shistdesiatnyky Simone Bellezza reconstructs the history of the shistdesiatnyky—the generation of Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals who spearheaded the renaissance of Ukrainian national culture in the 1960s. His analysis begins with the awakening of artistic and literary expression during the so-called Soviet Thaw and describes the varied relationship that Ukrainian artists and writers had with the Soviet authorities until the mass arrests and repressions of intellectuals in January 1972. Dr. Bellezza has consulted a wide range of sources: official and samvydav (samizdat) publications, archival documents (including those preserved in the former archive of the KGB in Kyiv), interviews, and many unpublished sources that were previously ignored in the historiography of the period. He presents the movement of the shistdesiatnyky in all of its complexity and offers a very original interpretation of this phenomenon.

This book was the winner of the 2020 Omeljan Pritsak Book Prize in Ukrainian Studies for a distinguished book in the field of Ukrainian studies (awarded by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies).

Simone Attilio Bellezza’s The Shore of Expectations: A Study on the Culture of the Ukrainian Shistdesiatnyky is on sale at a 25% discount on the CIUS Press website prior to and during this event. 

Click to purchase the book