The Slovo Building ( uk, Будинок «Слово») is a residential, multi-story building in the Shevchenkivskyi district of Kharkiv. The shape of the building reflects the letter C or S in the Ukrainian language, the first letter of слово ("slovo") or "word". The shape of the building symbolized its construction to house prominent Ukrainian writers, who lived there in over sixty apartments. Built in the late 1920s, it accommodated Ukrainian writers and poets, many of whom were later shot by the Communist authorities at

Sandarmokh Sandarmokh (russian: Сандармох; krl, Sandarmoh) is a forest massif from Medvezhyegorsk in the Republic of Karelia where possibly thousands of victims of Stalin's Great Terror were executed. More than 58 nationalities were shot and bu ...

in Karelia. Today they are known as the " Executed Renaissance".

Construction

Kharkiv was the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic from 19 December 1919 to 24 June 1934, and the city became the center of the

Ukrainian economy The economy of Ukraine is an Emerging market, emerging, mixed economy located in Eastern Europe. It grew rapidly from 2000 until 2008 when the Great Recession began worldwide and 2008–2009 Ukrainian financial crisis, reached Ukraine. The econo ...

. Its population grew rapidly from 285,000 in 1920 to 423,000 in 1927, and housing shortages became a major problem. This affected the literary community, which had moved to Kharkiv from Kyiv because of the Ukrainization policy. Writers who could not afford the higher cost of housing lived in their offices or improvised homes: some poorly-housed writers stored their manuscripts in pots to keep

mice A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...

from nibbling at the paper. One writer who lived at his office was Pavlo Tychyna, after he became chief executive of the '' Chervony Shliakh''

magazine A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combinatio ...

in 1923. In the mid-1920s, Ostap Vyshnya, at that time part of a writers' organization called ''плуг'', meaning the "

Plough A plough or plow ( US; both ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or ...

", asked the Soviet government to build an apartment complex to accommodate the most important Ukrainian intellectuals. The idea was almost immediately approved by the Soviet authorities, who saw it as a way to keep tabs on the Ukrainian intellectuals, who would all live in the same building. The new complex was designed in September 1927 by architect Mytrophan Dashkevych, who designed the building in the shape of the letter ''C'' in the Cyrillic alphabet to stand for the first letter of ''слово'', meaning '' word'', and the building was named Слово (Slovo). As the building still lacked funds to complete its construction, Vyshnya went to Moscow in February 1929 and asked Joseph Stalin to fund the construction. Stalin agreed and gave the money the same day (on the condition that the residents paid it back within 15 years). The Slovo Building was completed on 25 December 1929. It was built in lavish fashion by contemporary standards. Each apartment had 3–5 rooms, which was luxurious for the

interwar In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War. The interwar period was relativel ...

Soviet Union. Five storeys high, the Slovo Building contained 66 apartments, made of the best materials then available. A

solarium Solarium may refer to: * A sunroom, a room built largely of glass to afford exposure to the sun * A terrace (building) or flat housetop * The '' Solarium Augusti'', a monumental meridian line (or perhaps a sundial) erected in Rome by Emperor Augu ...

and a

shower A shower is a place in which a person bathes under a spray of typically warm or hot water. Indoors, there is a drain in the floor. Most showers have temperature, spray pressure and adjustable showerhead nozzle. The simplest showers have a ...

were built on the roof, with a preschool kindergarten in the

basement A basement or cellar is one or more floors of a building that are completely or partly below the ground floor. It generally is used as a utility space for a building, where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, ...

. Late, in 1929, the residents moved in although the central heating was not installed until after New Year's Day 1930. They were nicknamed ''Slovyans'' by others. Each apartment had its own bathroom, central heating system, and telephones. Artists were given

studio A studio is an artist or worker's workroom. This can be for the purpose of acting, architecture, painting, pottery (ceramics), sculpture, origami, woodworking, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, industrial design ...

s in the building. After the " Great Patriotic War", an elevator was installed, providing access only to the ground and fifth floors. The building was slightly damaged by a Russian shelling on March 7, 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Executed Renaissance

Through the tapping of telephones and other methods, the occupants of the Slovo Building were kept under close surveillance and in constant danger of being reported by their neighbors and arrested. Actress Halyna Mnevska was the first to be arrested on 20 January 1931 because she did not want to denounce her husband, Klym Polishchuk; in 1937 he was shot at

in Karelia. Mnevska was arrested and sentenced to five years imprisonment; she would never be allowed to return to Ukraine. The second to be arrested was

Pavlo Khrystiuk Pavlo Khrystiuk ( ua, Павло Оникійович Христюк; 1880 – September 19, 1941) was a Ukrainian cooperator, historian, journalist, political activist, and statesman. Biography Khrystiuk was born in the Kuban Oblast. He ...

on 2 March 1931, and on 16 March 1932 a third resident of the Slovo Building Ivan Bahrianyi was arrested because of his counter-revolutionary movement. Their fate paralleled that of the residents of the House on the Embankment in Moscow. As the years passed, more and more arrests were made. The largest number was in 1933. Ukrainian writer, Mykhailo Yalovy was arrested on 12 May 1933, accused of espionage and planning to assassinate the first secretary of the Kharkiv Party Committee Pavel Postyshev; he would be later to be executed at

on 11 March 1937. The day after Yalovy's arrest,

Mykola Khvylovy Mykola Khvylovy ( ; – May 13, 1933) (who also used the pseudonyms "Yuliya Umanets", "Stefan Karol", and "Dyadko Mykola") was a Ukrainian novelist, poet, publicist, and political activist, one of the founders of post-revolutionary Ukraini ...

Mykola Kulish Mykola Hurovych Kulish ( uk, Микола Гурович Куліш) (19 December 1892 – 3 November 1937) was a Ukrainian prose writer, playwright, pedagogue, veteran of World War I, and Red Army veteran. He is considered to be one of the le ...

and Oles Dosvitniy met to discuss what was going on. During their conversation, Khvylovy returned to his room. There he shot himself on 13 May 1933, revealing the despair the occupants of the Slovo Building now felt. Not only did they live under constant threat of arrest or death, the country was also living through the man-made famine of the

Holodomor The Holodomor ( uk, Голодомо́р, Holodomor, ; derived from uk, морити голодом, lit=to kill by starvation, translit=moryty holodom, label=none), also known as the Terror-Famine or the Great Famine, was a man-made famin ...

. The writer Serhiy Pylypenko was executed without trial on 23 February 1934. Others were arrested and sent to the

Solovki prison camp The Solovki special camp (later the Solovki special prison), was set up in 1923 on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea as a remote and inaccessible place of detention, primarily intended for socialist opponents of Soviet Russia's new Bolshev ...

in the White Sea:

Les Kurbas Oleksandr-Zenon Stepanovych Kurbas ( ua , Олександр-Зенон Степанович Курбас; 24 February 1887– 30 November 1937), was a Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something rel ...

, Ostap Vyshnya, Mykola Kulish and

Hryhorii Epik Hryhorii Danylovych Epik ( uk, 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 ...

. Subsequently, they were all executed at

, except for Vyshnya (Cherry) who survived because he was ill. Forty of the 66 apartments in the Slovo Building were affected. A total of 33 were executed; five were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment in the Gulag; one committed suicide and another died in unclear circumstances. Many were accused and convicted of being "spies", "terrorists" and of "conspiring" against the Soviet regime. In 1934, the capital moved from Kharkiv to Kyiv, partly due to the famine or

and to the arrests, imprisonment and executions. The surviving writers moved to the RoLit (Russian Literature) Apartment Block in the new capital of Soviet Ukraine. When the Germans started to bomb Kyiv in 1941 during the " Great Patriotic War" people commented, "One bomb on RoLit would be enough, and Ukrainian literature will cease to exist."

Remembrance

On 21 August 2019, the Slovo Building was added to the

State Register of Immovable Landmarks of Ukraine The State Register of Immovable (Tangible) Monuments of Ukraine ( uk, Державний реєстр нерухомих пам'яток України) is a register of some 3,300 objects of cultural heritage in Ukraine. An object of cultural herit ...

. A memorial plaque recording the names of all its famous inhabitants was added to the building on 24 August 2003, replacing an old plaque which had already been destroyed. * Jeremiah Eisenstock * Ivan Bagmut * Ivan Bahrianyi (1906-1963) * Mykola Bazhan (1904-1983) * Pavlo Baidebura * Jacob Bash * Dmitro Bedzyk * Boris the homeless * Mykhailo Bykovets * Sergey Borzenko * Gennady Brezhnev * Dmitry Buzko * Raphael Brusylovsky * Alexey Petrovich * Ivan Virhan * David Vyshnevsky * Ostap Cherry (1889-1956) * Vasily Vrazhlivy * Yuriy Vukhnalʹ * Lev Galkin * Yukhym Gedz * Gregory Gelfandbein * Yuri Gerasimenko * Vladimir Gzhitsky * Andriy Golovko * Ilya Gonimov * Kost Hordiyenko * Yaroslav Grimailo * Oles Gromiv * Mykola Dashkiev * Oleksa Desnyak * Antin Dykyy * Ivan Dniprovsky * Mykhailo Dolengo (1896-1981) * Oles Dosvitniy * Oles Donchenko * Mykola Dukin *

(1901-1937, shot at Sandarmokh) * Natalya Zabila * Mike Johansen (1895-1937, shot at Sandarmokh) * Ivan Kalyannik * Jacob Kalnytsky * Eugene Kasyanenko * Zelman Katz * Leib Kvitko (1890-1952, shot in Moscow) * Іvan Kirilenko *

Pylyp Kozytskiy Pylyp Omelyanovych Kozytskiy ( uk, Пилип Омелянович Козицький; 23 October, 1893 – 27 April, 1960) was a Soviet and Ukrainian composer, musicologist, professor, head of the department of history of music at the Kyiv Con ...

* Alexander Kopylenko * Aaron Kopstein * Vladimir Koryak *

Hryhoriy Kostyuk Hryhoriy ( uk, Григо́рій, Hryhórij ), sometimes Hryhory, may refer to: * Hryhory Alchevsky (1866–1920), prominent Ukrainian and minor Russian composer * Hryhoriy Baranets (born 1986), professional Ukrainian football midfielder * Hryhor ...

Boris Kotlyarov Boris Yakovlevich Kotlyarov (russian: Борис Яковлевич Котляров, 1913-82) was a Soviet ethnomusicologist, violinist and pedagogue. He was mainly known for his work on composers George Enescu and Alan Bush, as well as his ext ...

* Gordiy Kotsyuba * Stepan Kryzhanivsky * Antin Krushelnytsky * Ivan Kulyk (1897-1937, shot in Kyiv) *

(1892-1937, shot at Sandarmokh) * Oleksa Kundzich *

(1887-1937, shot at Sandarmokh) * Ivan Lakiza * Khan Levin * Alexander Leites * Mykola Ledyanko * Petro Lisovyy * Arkadiy Lyubchenko * Іvan Malovichko * Yakiv Mamontiv * Teren Masenko * Varvara Maslyuchenko * Vadym Meller * Іvan Miroshnikov *

Ivan Mykytenko Ivan () is a Slavic male given name, connected with the variant of the Greek name (English: John) from Hebrew meaning 'God is gracious'. It is associated worldwide with Slavic countries. The earliest person known to bear the name was Bulgar ...

* Igor Muratov * Mykola Nagnybida * Halyna Orlivna *

Ivan Padalka Ivan Ivanovych Padalka (Ukrainian: Івaн Івaнович Пaдалка: 15 November 1894, Zhornoklyovy, currently Cherkasy Raion — 13 July 1937, Kiev) was a Ukrainian painter, art professor and author who was shot during the Great Terror. ...

(1894-1937, shot) * Andriy Paniv *

Petro Panch Petro Yosypovych Panch ( uk, Петро Йосипович Панч; born in Valky, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire – died 1 December 1978 in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union) was a Ukrainian writer and playwright, one of founders o ...

* Leonid Pervomayskiy * Anatol Petrytsky * Maria Pylynska *Sergey Pylypenko * Valerian Pidmohylny (1901-1937, shot at Sandarmokh) * Mykhailo Pinchevsky * Luciana Piontek * Ivan Plakhtin * Valerian Polishchuk * Alexey Poltoratsky * Andriy Richytsky * Maria Romanivska *

Vasily Sedlyar Vasily Teofanovych Sedlyar (Ukrainian: Васи́ль Теофанович Седля́р: 12 April 1899, Khristyvka, Shyshaky Raion — 13 July 1937, Kiev) was a Ukrainian painter, illustrator and art teacher; executed in the Great Purge. He was ...

* Mikhail Semenko (1892-1937, ?shot at Sandarmokh) * Ivan Senchenko * Mykola Skazbush * Oleksa Slisarenko * Yuriy Smolych * Heliy Snyehirʹov * Vasily Sokil *

Volodymyr Sosiura Volodymyr Mikolayovich Sosiura ( uk , Володимир Сосюра; January 6, 1898, in Debaltseve, Yekaterinoslav Governorate (today Donetsk Oblast) of the Russian Empire – January 8, 1965, in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union) w ...

* Sumnyy Semen Makarovych * Pavlo Tychyna * Robert Tretyakov * Mykola Trublaini *

Natalia Uzhviy Natalia Mykhailivna Uzhviy ( uk, Наталія Михайлівна Ужвій; 22 or 29 July 1986) was a Ukrainian actress. Biography Natalia Uzhviy was born on 8 September 1898 in Liuboml and was the oldest of 7 children. Works ...

* Pavlo Usenko * Mykola Fuklev * Alexander Khazin *

(1893-1933, committed suicide) *

(1880-1941, Sevvostlag) * Leonid Chernov * Маrk Chernyakov * Valentina Chistyakova *

Mykola Shapoval Mykola Shapoval ( uk, Микола Юхимович Шаповал, Mykola Yukhymovych Shapoval) (1886–1948) was a military, public and political figure, Major General of the Ukrainian People's Army. He was a brother to Mykyta Shapoval and Artem S ...

* Antin Shmygelsky * Yuri Shovkoplias * Nikita Shumilo * Ivan Shutov * Samylo Shchupak * Vladimir Yurezansky *

Leonid Yukhvid Leonid (russian: Леонид ; uk, Леонід ; be, Леанід, Ljeaníd ) is a Slavic version of the given name Leonidas. The French version is Leonide. People with the name include: * Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919), Russian playwright a ...

* Mykhailo Yalovy (1895-1937, shot at Sandarmokh) *

Yuri Yanovsky Yuri may refer to: People and fictional characters Given name *Yuri (Slavic name), the Slavic masculine form of the given name George, including a list of people with the given name Yuri, Yury, etc. *Yuri (Japanese name), also Yūri, feminine Jap ...

{{Div col end

Memorial project

In March 2017, the ''ProSlovo Project'' was launched across Ukraine. The research project is dedicated to Slovo House and its past residents. All results, memoirs and images are being published on a web page in interactive form. In English or Ukrainian the audience can observe the timeline of the building, 3D visualization of each apartment, photographs of each resident, maps, and memoirs. During 2017, a documentary film about this building was also released. It was written by Liubov Yakymchuk and Taras Tomenko; it was directed by Tomenko. The film "

Slovo House Slovo House is a 2017 Ukrainian documentary film directed by Taras Tomenko and written by Lyuba Yakimchuk. The Ukrainian premiere of the film took place on October 27, 2017, in Kharkiv. The film participated in the official competition program ...

" included a walkthrough of each apartment accompanied by memoirs and eyewitness accounts.

Sources

*http://proslovo.com/kulish-slovoproslovo *https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Ukraine/Ukraine-Slovo-from-house-of-the-word-to-nightmare-201601 *https://warsawinstitute.org/slovo-house/ *http://euromaidanpress.com/2020/03/12/slovo-house-how-a-special-soviet-apartment-block-for-writers-became-their-prison/

References

External links

Pro Slovo
*Salimonovych, L.
Unread "Slovo" (Непрочитане «Слово»)
'. Ukrayina Moloda. 12 August 2005 History of Ukrainian literature Crimes of the communist regime in Ukraine against Ukrainians Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Political repression in Ukraine Massacres of Ukrainians Cultural history of Ukraine Stalinism in Ukraine Anti-Ukrainian sentiment Buildings and structures completed in 1928 Shevchenkivskyi District (Kharkiv) 1928 establishments in Ukraine Buildings and structures destroyed during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine