Authors

Discussion

This paper highlights the linguistic diversity of Ukrainian literature on the borderlands of the early Soviet empire. The focus is on the legacy of Eduard Bagritskii and Isaac Babel, the two modernist Jewish authors from Odesa, Ukraine, who wrote in Russian. This paper decouples language use from identification emphasizing that Ukraine has always been a multicultural and multilingual space – the fact that has been obscured by the empires. In doing so, this paper redefines Ukrainian literature by expanding its dimensions from a monolingual literature to one that is multi-lingual, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural, which deals with Ukraine and its diverse history, geography and populace. This paper highlights Bagritskii’s and Babel’s profound Ukrainian legacy and reclaims their writing as belonging to Ukrainian multi-lingual and multi-cultural literary canon.