Book Review: Cities on the Edge: How Ukrainian Modernism Anticipated a Century of Upheaval

Valerian Pidmohylnyi’s The City, in Maxim Tarnawsky’s lucid and nuanced translation, and V. Domontovych’s On Shaky Ground, brought into English with insight and stylistic sensitivity by Oksana Rozenblum, are not just landmarks of Ukrainian literary modernism, but engrossing novels in their own right. These are books that can be read in classrooms, but just as easily on a subway ride or on vacation. Both translators make these complex texts feel accessible and vibrant in English, while preserving the rich cultural, philosophical, and political layers that give the originals their depth and power.

Both novels emerge from one of the most challenging and transformative periods of Ukrainian history. In the 1920s and early 1930s, Ukraine underwent an intense experiment in cultural nation-building within the Soviet system. This was a decade marked by Ukrainization, rapid industrialization, shifting ideological pressures, and intense artistic innovation. During this short-lived renaissance, writers and artists could briefly imagine a modern, sovereign Ukrainian culture in dialogue with European trends.

That opening, however, was quickly and brutally closed. Repression, famine, censorship, and mass executions followed, destroying much of the cultural intelligentsia that had made the revival possible. When the Soviet Union collapsed decades later, the lasting significance of these early modernist works became newly visible. They still resonate with questions of identity, urban transformation, language, and political agency. And in today’s Ukraine – shaped by war, displacement, cultural destruction, and the defense of sovereignty – these novels feel uncannily contemporary.

The City, completed in 1927 and published the following year, is the first major Ukrainian novel to capture modern urban life. Pidmohylnyi tells the personal story of Stepan Radchenko against the backdrop of a country being reshaped by rapid modernization. Stepan leaves his village for Kyiv with idealistic aspirations, only to find himself transformed – at times lifted up, at others, morally tested – by the pace, opportunities, and temptations of the metropolis.

Tarnawsky’s translation conveys the novel’s psychological subtlety, irony, and philosophical depth, inviting English-language readers into Kyiv’s interwar cultural scene and the existential questions at its core. Stepan’s transformation mirrors that of Ukraine itself: hopeful, ambitious, full of creative energy, yet vulnerable to the pressures of ideological conformity and the threat of impending violence.

On Shaky Ground offers a complementary – and darker – perspective. Written in the late 1930s and early 1940s and published in Nazi-occupied Kharkiv in 1942, it reflects a moment when the optimism of the 1920s had given way to disillusionment and quiet dread.

Domontovych (the pen name of Viktor Petrov, an outstanding historian, archaeologist, and literary theorist – as well as a spy for the Soviets) crafts a novel in which ideological pressure, technological transformation, and the erosion of tradition result in profound dislocation.

The protagonist, art historian Rostyslav Mykhailovych, travels from Kharkiv to Katerynoslav (now Dnipro) ostensibly to save a church threatened by industrial development, but his true journey goes toward confronting the severed connection between past and present. The construction of the enormous Dniprelstan hydroelectric station – one of the largest industrial projects in Soviet Ukraine – provides a backdrop for reflections on identity, memory, ecological destruction, and the fragility of cultural heritage.

Rozenblum’s translation captures Domontovych’s intricate prose, understated irony, and philosophical dialogues with remarkable fidelity. The English version reads smoothly, making this intellectually demanding novel accessible alike to students and to general readers who appreciate thoughtful, elegant fiction.

Together, these novels show how Ukrainian writers confronted the pressures and paradoxes of life in the USSR during its formative decades: the clash between cultural renaissance and ideological coercion; modernization and loss; national identity and political repression. Reading them in English today – thanks to Tarnawsky’s and Rozenblum’s translations – allows readers to see how early 20th-century Ukrainian modernists grappled with questions that still define contemporary Ukraine: What does it mean to build and sustain a national culture under imperial domination? How do cities reshape identity? And how does literature bear witness to both destruction and resilience?

These translations are rigorous enough for academic study, yet engaging enough for leisure reading. They bring to life two profoundly important works from a period when Ukrainian culture was simultaneously flourishing and under threat—circumstances that echo strikingly in Ukraine today.

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