My PhD
Ukrainian Science Fiction · Literary HistoryExploring the Development of Ukrainian Science Fiction
The genre of Ukrainian science fiction has undergone significant transformations shaped by the political, cultural, and technological shifts of each era. From its origins in the early 20th century to its contemporary manifestations, Ukrainian SF reflects a complex interplay of ideology, mysticism, and societal aspiration.
My PhD research explores how Ukrainian science fiction mirrors and responds to changing historical conditions and evolving national identity — positioning it within the broader global tradition while highlighting its unique intellectual contributions.
The Foundations of Ukrainian Science Fiction (1920s)
Although fantastical elements in Ukrainian literature can be traced as far back as The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery (13th century), these works do not qualify as science fiction. SF as a genre emerged as a response to positivism — the belief that scientific and technological progress is the primary path to human improvement. In Ukrainian SF, this philosophy became prominent in the 1920s, during rapid industrialisation and the utopian optimism of early Soviet socialism.
Sandro Kasyanyuk's Machining Humanity depicted harmony between humans and machines, presenting technology as a tool for building a socialist future. His later works pushed further: First Steps explored human-machine fusion, while New Utopia envisioned total technological abundance eliminating scarcity. Volodymyr Vynnychenko's Solar Machine and Volodymyr Vladko's Argonauts of the Universe framed interplanetary adventure within the same ideological lens — technology as the engine of proletarian liberation.
From Naive Optimism to Disillusionment (1960s)
The 1920s vision of techno-communism — combining Marxist materialism, faith in technological progress, and utopian social engineering — held until the pressures of Stalinism and then the post-war reconstruction made its idealism impossible to sustain. The Khrushchev Thaw of the late 1950s and early 1960s created a brief window of relative creative freedom. Ukrainian SF writers seized it.
Oles Berdnyk emerged as the defining figure of this transformation. He blended science fiction with spirituality and transcendence, challenging official ideology in ways that could not be ignored. His work led directly to his arrest and imprisonment in Soviet labour camps — demonstrating the political stakes of speculative imagination in a controlled literary environment.
The Golden Age of Ukrainian Science Fiction (1970s–1980s)
The 1970s and 1980s represent the peak of Ukrainian SF — a period of reduced ideological pressure, greater creative latitude, and deep philosophical engagement. Writers turned their attention inward: toward consciousness, identity, memory, and the nature of the self. These concerns anticipate the themes that would define global SF in the decades that followed.
Volodymyr Savchenko's Self-Discovery interrogated the nature of authentic selfhood. Ihor Rosokhovatskyi's The Guest and The Last Signal explored identity through encounter with radical otherness. Yevhen Filimonov examined the psychological effects of technology on individuals, while Viktor Polozhiy made memory, perception, and unreliable identity central to his work. Taken together, these writers established AI, cloning, and consciousness as the central concerns of Ukrainian SF — a decade before they became mainstream preoccupations in global literature.
Postmodernism and the 1990s Crisis
The collapse of the USSR created simultaneous crises: economic instability, cultural fragmentation, and an identity vacuum that postmodern irony was well-equipped to inhabit. For Ukrainian SF, the crisis was compounded by a structural problem: the shift toward Russian-language publishing threatened the very existence of the Ukrainian-language literary tradition.
Boris Stern reflected societal collapse through fragmented, ironic narratives that mirrored the chaos of the post-Soviet transition. Against this backdrop, Halyna Pahutyak's resistance stands out as exceptional. Her novel The Servant from Dobromyl drew on Ukrainian folklore and mythological tradition to critique Soviet imperialism and reinforce cultural identity — performing literary preservation at a moment when the tradition she was preserving was under active threat.
The Metamodern Revolution (2010s–present)
Contemporary Ukrainian SF synthesises the irony of postmodernism with the sincerity of modernism — a position theorists call metamodernism. Rather than choosing between the detached irony of the 1990s and the earnest engagement of an earlier era, contemporary writers hold both simultaneously.
Svetlana Taratorina's Lazarus blends cyberpunk aesthetics with post-Soviet psychological realism. Maxim Gah's The Fifth Park integrates political satire with speculative world-building rooted in Ukrainian geography and history. These works are legible within the global SF tradition while remaining unmistakably Ukrainian in their concerns, imagery, and emotional register.
The Importance of This Research
Ukrainian science fiction has evolved through five distinct phases: techno-utopian optimism, ideological control, philosophical exploration, postmodern fragmentation, and metamodern synthesis. My research maps this trajectory systematically for the first time — demonstrating that Ukrainian SF is not a peripheral variant of Soviet or Russian SF but a distinct tradition with its own intellectual lineage, political stakes, and aesthetic innovations.
Science fiction is not just literature — it is a tool for understanding how societies imagine their future under pressure. Through this research, I aim to establish Ukrainian science fiction as a distinct voice in the global conversation about technology, identity, and the human condition.
Historical eras
The five-stage evolution
Full research
Read the full PhD overview at sci-fi-ua.netlify.app/phd/