In the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic the problem of communism forced itself ever more to the foreground. It became imperative for the authors to write on those themes and in that manner which was regarded as politically reliable by the authorities. At first for errors recantation was regarded as sufficient punishment, but from about 1928, the Soviet critics denounce in scathing language as bourgeois Ukrainian nationalists all those authors who went beyond the appointed line and that line varied with the exigencies of Soviet politics in Moscow. Some of the writers as Tychyna made their peace with the Soviets and the Soviet Encyclopedias can speak of his growing revolutionary optimism in his later works. He had been one of the masters of the younger generation with his melodic songs on the rebirth of Ukraine. Now he became another of the Communist poets writing in praise of the Party and sharply condemning their foes. On the other hand, Mikola Khvylovy (b. 1893), one of the more talented of the prose writers, passed on an opposite course. Khvylovy had been far to the left and had counted himself one of the first Ukrainian proletarian writers. As the pressure grew, he sought and sought in vain to establish in Ukrainian literature a reliance and a contact with Western culture in contrast to the ever increasing dependence upon Moscow. This was interpreted as a Fascist plan for the development of Ukraine. Thus A. Khvylya, a Soviet critic, wrote about Khvylovy’s novel _Wood Snipes_, “Khvylovy carries his heroes on a literary horse to prove that Soviet Ukraine is not Soviet, that the dictatorship of the proletariat is not the dictatorship of the proletariat, that the national policy is only deceit; that the Ukrainian people is exclusively a benighted, unfree people, that a rebirth is coming, that finally the party itself is an organization of hypocrites. Khvylovy in a very talented way sets forth these ideas in the _Wood Snipes_ and having made such an analysis of our reality proves that the one hope, which can enkindle millions, bring to the height of a pathos for the struggle for Ukraine, for the people is national rebirth, the rebirth of the nation.... In the beginning it is necessary to create firm cadres of a new Ukrainian tempered intelligentsia. In the beginning there must come a tempered Ukrainian Longfellow, to lead the Ukrainian people to the state of another great social movement, and only after this can there be new economists, new workmen, to lead the economies and social life of our country to other days.... The only means of safety is nationalism. It is necessary to see to it, that Thermidor develop to the creation of a powerful Ukrainian national state. And there is no doubt that if a Ukrainian ‘communist’ does not do it, a Russian ‘communist’ will do it, for he will act against him, against the Ukrainian, in order to hand over to his own Fascist ‘a single indivisible’ (land). In the minds of the heroes of Khvylovy, the