Mykola Khvylovyi's "Asian Renaissance": cultural transfer in the times of Soviet nation-building in Ukraine (1920s)

This article is dedicated to an analysis of the historiosophic concept of “Asian Renaissance,” as elaborated by the writer and polemist Mykola Khvylovyi, who was an ideologist of Ukrainian national communism. It will focus on his ideas expressed during the Literary Discussion of the 1925–1928 period in Soviet Ukraine. The objective of this article is to examine Khvylovyi’s ideas within the broader context of the most significant ideological constructs that emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These include Nikolai Danilevsky’s “Bible of Pan‑Slavism,” “Europe and Russia,” Oswald Spengler’s concept of “The Decline of the West,” the circle of ideas known as “Yellow Peril,” Russian “Scythianism,” and the Marxist‑Leninist approach to history and politics. All of these concepts found their further development within Russian Symbolism and Futurists. It has been largely overlooked by scholars that Khvylovyi’s call for “psychological Europe” and his concept of “Asian Renaissance” can be situated within the broader ideological context of the evolution of Pan‑Mongolism. The article also contextualizes Khvylovyi’s concept of “Europe” and its further political and ideological applications in the contemporary Ukrainian media. Finally, Khvylovyi’s writings are discussed in the context of Ukrainian nation building of the 1920s within a broader frame of Soviet modernization.